Travel Tales
This travel tale is brought to you by Wendy Klausner, NHA Adventure Specialist I can’t believe it was 20 years ago that I took my first trip to China. I had the good fortune to return this year on Nat Hab’s Wild Side of China adventure with seven other NHA guests.
Conservation
Antarctica is the Earth’s only continent without a native human population, and no one country can claim to own it. Unique in the world, it is a land dedicated to science and all nations. However, that could soon change.
Travel Tales
Sandra Elvin always thought she would grow up to be a veterinarian. Sandra acquired her love for nature from her father, who after spending one day in Canada’s open spaces, decided to move his family there. Trained as a wildlife biologist, Sandra is currently pursuing a Ph.D.
Nature & Wildlife
10. The first panda came to the United States in 1936—a cub to a zoo in Chicago. It took another 50 years before the States would see another. 9. A newborn panda cub is 1/900th the size of its mother and is comparable to the length of a stick of butter.
Videos
While green herons didn’t make this list of Top 25 Most Intelligent Nonhuman Animals, one particular green heron recently demonstrated why these birds make a good candidate for inclusion. Watch the video below, in which a green heron uses a piece of bread as fishing bait.
Nature & Wildlife
Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pulverized nearly six tons of illegal African and Asian elephant ivory. A conservative estimate of this ivory, which was seized at our nation’s ports of entry from the late 1980s to the present, is that it represents 2,000 animals.
Travel Tales
NHA Staff Naturalist Brad Josephs just returned from leading the first of two Natural Habitat nature adventures in China’s less traveled mountain country. These trips explore remote mountains and forests of Sichuan and the Tibetan Plateau, areas of China that are rarely seen by foreigners.
Travel Tales
Nat Hab expedition leader Brad Josephs just got back from leading the first two groups of our brand new China trip, The Wild Side of China: A Nature Odyssey. The success of the itinerary was beyond our wildest expectations, no pun intended!
Videos
Snow leopards are powerful and beautiful big cats, native to the mountains of central Asia. Insulated by thick hair and possessing wide, fur-covered feet that act as natural snowshoes, they are well adapted to their environment. Their long tails, which help in maintaining their incredible balance, double as blankets against severe cold.
Videos
Giant pandas are among the world’s most uncommon and elusive animals. China’s State Forestry Administration estimates that there are only about 1,600 of them remaining in the wild, down from 2,500 in the 1970s. They inhabit the mountainous regions of China’s Sichuan (1,200 pandas), Shaanxi (300 pandas) and Gansu (100 pandas) Provinces.
Conservation
When images of a wild giant panda gnawing on a takin carcass in China’s Sichuan Province were recently captured on motion-sensor cameras, researchers were caught by surprise. Although pandas are technically carnivores, their diets today consist almost entirely (99 percent) of bamboo leaves, stems and shoots.
Nature & Wildlife
Like fragments of glass, 114 lakes shimmer across the landscape of Sichuan’s Jiuzhaigou National Park on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Indeed, legend relates that the lakes originated in the shattering of a mirror presented to the beautiful goddess Woluo Semo by an adoring mortal.
