Conservation
Today, across the planet, hundreds of millions of acres of land are being abandoned due to what’s known as rural outmigration, or people leaving for urban centers. Some people leave their rural lives behind to seek economic prosperity in cities when agriculture is no longer profitable.
Nature & Wildlife
Our relationship with forest fires is complicated. Beginning in 1947, one of the world’s most recognizable characters and one of our nation’s most beloved spokespeople, Smokey Bear, told us that “only you can prevent forest fires.” (That slogan was changed to “Only you can prevent wildfires” in 2001.)
Nature & Wildlife
Ever since the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, there has been controversy and debate about the benefits and ecosystem services that the predators have actually provided; whether it was a good idea to bring the wolves back to their ancestral home or not.
Nature & Wildlife
Here, looking out from the Anthropocene, we tend to regard nature as something other than ourselves.
Conservation
The new year rang in a landmark win for conservation in the Galapagos as land iguanas were reintroduced to Santiago Island for the first time in 184 years. One of the last people to record land iguanas, Conolophus subcristatus, on Santiago was the celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin in 1835.
U.S. National Parks
John Muir revered them. Western settlers nearly wiped them out. The final chapter in the story of North America’s rarest sheep is yet to be written. Watch!
Nature & Wildlife
Eastern cougars (Puma concolor couguar) were officially declared extinct last week, on January 22, 2018. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has now removed them from the Endangered Species list, where they had been placed in 1973.
Nature & Wildlife
It’s a story too often told. Once, a predator roamed wildlands and then was relentlessly hunted to extinction or to the brink of it. In the Lower 48, the histories of bison, gray wolves, beavers, grizzly bears and whooping cranes come to mind. In Great Britain, the story includes Eurasian lynx.
