Conservation
Cute, adorable animals are often used to garner support for environmental causes in places that are remote. After all, it’s hard to have concern for an area that is at the opposite end of the Earth from where you live and for which you have no plans to ever see.
Antarctica & Arctic
Big dreams of exploration were not uncommon in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But one explorer may have taken such aspirations to the next level: in 1895, at a London conference on polar exploration, a Swedish engineer named Salomon August Andree declared his intention to reach the North Pole via hot-air balloon.
Nature & Wildlife
An arctic fox off the coast of Baffin Island has recently proved that wanderlust isn’t restricted to humans. Apparently, this little canid—and some others of her kind—has a propensity for it, too. In spring 2008, Canadian biologists fitted 29 arctic foxes with tracking collars and began monitoring their movements by satellite.
Nature & Wildlife
After missing for more than eight years, Petunia, an American Staffordshire terrier, was found. She had disappeared from her home in Virginia sometime around Thanksgiving 2003. Last weekend, she was located in an animal shelter in California, more than 3,000 miles away. How do we know the dog is truly Petunia?
Travel Tales
Great adventures make for great books; and if you browse the “adventure” shelves of any bookstore, you’re likely to find tales of mountain climbing feats, polar expeditions, diving derring-do or deep wilderness hiking. Rarely, though, when we want a tome of adventure do we think of perusing the children’s books section.
Travel Tips
We humans seem to have a great need to anthropomorphize; that is, we tend to want to ascribe human characteristics to inanimate objects, nonhuman animals and natural phenomena, such as the wind, rain or sun.
News & More
While “the Arctic” may conjure up images of sprawling icefields and endless snow-mantled landscapes, polar bears, and fur-clad Inuit bundled against the cold, it’s a whole different scenario in the summertime. Check out these amazing Arctic adventures for your next summer vacation!
Conservation
The statistics regarding a worldwide climate trend toward global warming and the resultant loss of biodiversity are alarming—and attention getting, to say the least. Most of us have heard the often-quoted statement that the planet’s polar bears could be gone by the year 2050.
Travel Tips
You’ve probably got one in the bathroom, bedroom or basement or perhaps tucked away in a closet. It’s that piece of exercise equipment, such as a treadmill or foldable “home gym,” that you thought would be the quickest route to a healthier you.
News & More
Upon meeting someone new, we usually try to find out two salient facts about the person within the first 30 seconds of being introduced: his or her name and what he or she does for a living. It hasn’t always been that way, of course.
Travel Tips
I’m usually too busy to watch television, so it’s perhaps not surprising I didn’t know who Samantha Brown was, when a friend told me she had her dream job.
