News & More
Citizen science has become an important tool for scientific research. Now, as funds for federal agencies and state natural resources departments around the country shrink, using ordinary folks to gather and record wildlife and environmental observations stretch limited research dollars by getting reams of data for free. NASA relies on amateur astronomers for asteroid observations.
Nature & Wildlife
As many as 900 Yellowstone National Park American bison may be exterminated in winter 2014-2015. It’s estimated that our nation’s last, pure herd of free-ranging bison that have managed to continuously live on their native grounds currently numbers at 4,900. That means that a fifth of this near-threatened species is soon to be killed.
Nature & Wildlife
While anyone who has traveled to Yellowstone National Park knows that the sights alone are enough to take your breath away, I’m always struck by how unprepared I am for what I would describe as the “timeless sounds” of Yellowstone: the howls of wolves on the wind, the yips of coyotes on the hills…
Nature & Wildlife
Visiting the Grand Canyon is a watershed moment for every American. Whether you gaze upon it from the North Rim or the South, the polychromatic rock walls that stretch away from you a mile down to the Colorado River and the canyon floor play with your sense of time and reality.
News & More
The spike in illegal wildlife trade continues: in 2013, poachers killed 1,004 rhinos in South Africa alone; and in 2012, some 15,000 elephants were slaughtered at 42 sites across 27 African countries, according to CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
News & More
It was supposed to be a fall wedding in the heart of Yosemite National Park’s beautiful, famed valley.
Videos
It’s fall in Wisconsin where I live; and during these moody, gray November days, the white-tailed deer “begin to run,” as we say. It’s the time of year when I see them the most.
News & More
It’s National Park Week in the USA. At a moment when the federal budget is as strained as it’s ever been, our parks are nonetheless open free of charge to all comers from April 16-24. It’s a perfect opportunity to discover a new destination or get reacquainted with an old favorite.
Conservation
America’s first national park is 139 years old today! Yellowstone became the first federally protected national park by an Act of Congress signed into law on March 1, 1872.
