Asia & The Pacific
As the largest member of the cat family, tigers are compellingly powerful and stealthy. It’s no wonder they’ve been one of nature’s most feared predators for roughly two million years! But in just the past 150 years, the tiger’s range has shrunk by nearly 95%.
African Safaris
The quintessential “big cat,” the leopard is the most generalized of the Pantherines. The four others—lion, tiger, jaguar and snow leopard—are more specialized and less adaptable. Yet all share an ancestral link to a pre-historic feline that looked and behaved much like the modern leopard.
Europe
As you prepare for your trip to the European Arctic by luxury train, harken back to the days of Imperial Russia on a city tour through the streets of St. Petersburg.
Nature & Wildlife
Because of ongoing and potential loss of their sea ice habitat resulting from climate change, polar bears were listed as a threatened species in the United States under the Endangered Species Act in May 2008.
Videos
Watching wild animals being returned to their natural habitats after an accident or injury is immensely gratifying and often thrilling. Restoring even just a bit of nature makes our hearts instinctively feel that a wrong is being righted. Our senses of justice are assuaged.
News & More
On the tundra of Siberia, near the coldest city on Earth, there’s a place that local people have come to call a “gateway to the underworld” or a portal to hell. It’s a huge crater, and it has been growing for years. Currently, it measures a mile long and nearly 400 feet deep.
Nature & Wildlife
The woolly mammoth—an animal that went extinct 4,000 years ago—is currently being considered for legal protection under conservation trade rules. “How that can be?” you might well ask. The answer lies in a story that’s entwined with some very modern-day issues: climate change and the rampant poaching of today’s elephants.
Conservation
Last night, I watched a movie titled Merchants of Doubt. In this 2014 film, director and producer Robert Kenner lets us in on a secret that’s hiding in plain sight: there is a small—but highly paid—group of charismatic, silver-tongued “pundits” who present themselves in the media as scientific authorities, even though they have few credentials.
Conservation
I was pondering the cycle of life yesterday as I walked along a creek full of spawning salmon in Juneau, Alaska where I live. I’m somewhere in the middle of that cycle with young kids and aging parents serving as my bookends.
Conservation
The world’s tigers face considerable threats today: poaching, habitat loss, depletion of their prey and retaliatory kills by humans when the big cats take livestock. But now, a new threat has surfaced: the canine distemper virus (CDV).
Nature & Wildlife
On Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 13 countries that have wild tiger populations agreed to take part in a global census of the endangered big cats. The hope is that this count will then lead to improved policies to protect them in order to meet a goal of doubling their numbers by 2022—a plan known as Tx2.
News & More
We are thrilled to announce that WWF program officer Elisabeth Kruger will be joining our November 10 – 16 Classic Polar Bear Photo Adventure this winter.
