The beginning of a new year often makes people philosophical, thinking about what has or hasn't worked the year before and what they resolve to improve. Most of this is positive, at least for me. Lately, though, and I imagine also for many, it's getting easier to let those thoughts become tinged with concern for... Continue Reading →
Manatees, Mermaids, and Wetland Conservation
Manatees are hard not to love. It's not exactly that they're charismatic - slow and ponderous, their beady little eyes constantly on the prowl for the next snack. But nonetheless, they capture the hearts of many people, for their cuteness, playfulness, and tendency to appear in warm water of places like Florida, which gives people... Continue Reading →
A Little World Within Itself: My First Voyage to the The Galápagos
In 1835, Charles Darwin wrote these worlds in the Voyage of the Beagle: “The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous population.” Chapter XVII: "Galapagos Archipelago" (second edition, 1845), entry for... Continue Reading →
Postscript: Build It and They Will Spawn
I braved the over-friendly mosquitos to get some photos. You can also make out some of the many pond snails who hitchhiked in on the aquarium plants. In my last post, I wrote about my utter failure to build a successful frog pond. This was based on considerable research, and no experience whatsoever. What all... Continue Reading →
No Place for Frogs
Last summer, listening to nights filled with frog calls from the trees around our house, I resolved to put in a frog pond in our garden. My hope was to encourage breeding and bring our property a tiny step further towards being a well-rounded habitat for native wildlife. A Gray Treefrog, one of the species... Continue Reading →
Jackson Wild, CITES & UNDP – Raising the Profile of Wildlife in Peril
Mother and baby lion-tailed macaque. Image: Nagaraj Papanna 2017 A mother lion-tailed macaque cradles her baby against her, undisturbed by the camera crew in close proximity. Polar bears trudge across sludgy ice floes to find ringed seals in winter. A herd of pronghorn antelope bounds across the screen and condors fly high over herds of... Continue Reading →