Nature & Wildlife
After more than 50 years, the largest captive-breeding-and-release program for whooping cranes is closing. Housed at the U.S. Geological Survey Eastern Ecological Science Center in Laurel, Maryland, the $1.5 million program was cut from the federal budget for fiscal year 2018, which began October 1, 2017.
Conservation
Wildlife tourism—tourism specifically based on encounters with undomesticated animals—accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the total $1 trillion annual, global tourism industry. This comes from a paper published in late 2015 in the peer-reviewed, science journal PLOS ONE. The paper further states that wildlife tourism is the leading foreign-exchange earner in several countries.
Videos
Lionfish, a colorful native of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans (the Indo-Pacific region) have now taken up what could become permanent residence in the Atlantic Ocean—from North Carolina to Florida, in all Gulf of Mexico states and in the Caribbean. That isn’t good news.
Videos
As we reflect back on 2015, we have to admit it’s been a tough year for the world. Biodiversity is being lost, droughts continue and wars go on. But there is also much to be thankful for, as photographer Harald Albrigtsen shows us in the short video below.
Conservation
Coffee. In my opinion—other than clean, pure water—it just may be the best drink on Earth. That’s why I celebrated last Thursday, October 1, the first official International Coffee Day, with several cups of my favorite brew.
News & More
To help meet our growing energy needs, in recent years we have increasingly turned to wind power. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that in 2014, 4.4 percent of the electricity we generated came from wind. However, the wind industry is set to expand exponentially from the current 60,000 megawatts of capacity to 300,000 by 2030.
Nature & Wildlife
The year 2014 is now in its final hours.Traditionally, during these last, waning days, we look back on what kind of year we just had, what we accomplished and what we could have done better.
Nature & Wildlife
When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released its Living Planet Report 2014 on September 30, it wasn’t the usual doom-and-gloom environmental news story that is forgotten the next day.
Videos
Food, water, shelter and the freedom to travel—these are the fundamental needs of wildlife. In fact, according to the National Wildlife Federation, for many species that last-listed essential could mean the difference between survival and extinction. Our open spaces, however, are increasingly being chopped up and fragmented.
