"Hi, my name is Paul Rosolie. I'm a naturalist based out of southern Peru and today I'm headed into the jungle to show you a place that very few people have gotten to see. I'm in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, this is the far western Amazon and some of the deepest jungle on earth."
posted by stbalbach
on Feb 20, 2013 -
10 comments
DNA analysis has confirmed the
death, by poaching, of the last Javan rhino in Vietnam. This marks the official extinction of the Vietnamese subspecies of Javan rhinoceros. The entire species is now represented by just 35 individuals from the Indonesian subspecies, all of whom reside in Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia.
posted by Scientist
on Jan 16, 2013 -
52 comments
"Decades ago, the Mbuti typically sold about half the meat they captured; now they sell nearly every carcass, saving only the prized entrails and heads for themselves. The hunt, in essence, has devolved into an all-out commercial endeavor, staged not for subsistence, but to feed growing regional markets.
And the impact is clear."
posted by Scientist
on Nov 13, 2012 -
20 comments
This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for “Urban eXperiment.” UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris. - Wired.com
"The New French Hacker-Artist Underground"
posted by The Whelk
on Jan 24, 2012 -
20 comments
"The Western Soundscape Archive [...] features audio recordings of animals and environments throughout the western United States." "The project's geographic focus includes eleven contiguous western states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming - as well as baseline sound monitoring in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska."
[more inside]
posted by OmieWise
on Dec 14, 2011 -
4 comments
Most people know that Venice has long been threatened by chronic flooding, but in recent years the Queen of the Adriatic has faced a rising tide of a different sort:
advertising.
From the
Doge's Palace to
St. Mark's Square to the bittersweet
Bridge of Sighs -- named for the grief its splendid views once inspired in crossing death row prisoners -- immense billboards
lit late into the night now mar the city's most treasured places.
Allegedly built to cover the cost of restoration work in the face of government cutbacks, the ads have brought in around $600,000 per year since 2008 -- a fraction of the shortfall -- and show no sign of going away any time soon. Their presence prompted a consortium of the world's leading cultural experts led by the
Venice in Peril Fund to air
an open letter demanding the city government put a stop to the placards that "hit you in the eye and ruin your experience of one of the most beautiful creations of humankind." Mayor Giorgio Orsoni, for one, was not moved, saying last year "If people want to see the building
they should go home and look at a picture of it in a book."
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 4, 2011 -
59 comments
I drive past the
Meadowlands every day now for the past 2 years on the NJ Turnpike. I kept seeing construction equipment and this area of dead dumping land slowly transform into one with actual streams like out of some
plan. Turns out, there
was.
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posted by rich
on Apr 29, 2011 -
19 comments
In 1975, with $3,000 in savings
Roxanne Quimby and her boyfriend moved to Maine. They bought a tract of land on which they built a cabin and an outhouse. Near her Guilford homestead, Quimby later met beekeeper Burt Shavitz and used his beeswax to create candles (making $20,000 in her first year selling at local crafts fairs) -- and later their (yes, the two
cofounded a company together) best selling product
Burt's Bees Lip Balm (it's
Burt's image that still graces many of the company's products). With the phenomenal success that followed, she
sold 80 percent of her shares in the company to New York investors in 2003 (
eventually the company was sold to Clorox) to help
fund significant land purchases. For years Maine sportsmen have been outraged with Quimby for forbidding hunters, loggers, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles on the 120,000 acres of woodlands she now owns. Quimby has recently offered a compromise. She wants to
donate 70,000 acres to help create a new national park (
Maine Woods National Park) while "
setting aside another 30,000 acres of woodlands ... to be managed like a state park, with hunting and snowmobiling allowed."
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posted by ericb
on Mar 28, 2011 -
49 comments
Five years ago this week, the BBC started broadcasting one of the most extraordinary documentaries ever to grace television:
Planet Earth. The culmination of
five years of field work, it employed
the most cutting-edge of techniques in order to capture life in all its forms, from
sweeping spaceborne vistas to shockingly intimate close-ups -- including
many sights rarely glimpsed by human eyes.
Visually spectacular, it showcased footage shot in
204 locations in 62 countries, thoroughly documenting every biome from the snowy peaks of the Himalayas to
the lifegiving waters of the Okavango Delta, a rich narrative tapestry backed by
a stirring orchestral score from the BBC Concert Orchestra. Unfortunately, the series underwent
some editorial changes for rebroadcast overseas. But now fans outside the UK can rejoice -- all eleven chapters of this epic story are available on YouTube in their original form: uncut, in glorious 1080p HD, and with the original narration by renowned naturalist
Sir David Attenborough. Click inside for the full listing (and kiss the rest of your week goodbye).
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posted by Rhaomi
on Mar 7, 2011 -
69 comments
You didn't much like
Raptorize and were hoping for something about real raptors (not F-22 fighters), therefore I am pleased to give you the goods on
Birds of Prey. Raptors are
birds that hunt (or scavenge) for meat, not plant life, and share several
physical traits (although they can vary in size from
miniature (pygmy) owls to
Andean condors).
Eagles and
hawks (
accipitridae), among the
largest birds of prey in the United States),
falcons (
falconidae),
condors,
harriers,
kites,
ospreys (
pandionidae),
owls (
tytonidae and
strigidae),
secretary birds (
sagittariidae) and
vultures (
cathartidae) are all raptors; all have hooked beaks,
fantastic visual
acuity and
sharp talons. The word raptor comes from the Latin
rapere (to seize),
apt description of their
hunting style. Raptor
breeders abound, as do raptor associations (quite a list at the
Global Raptor Information Network).
Rescue and
rehabilitation organizations
nurse injured raptors back to health; you can
Adopt-a-Bird, and even donate regularly to help the birds via your very own
Raptor Center Credit Card. Failing that, you can always
help others
learn more about
conservation of these
magnificent and
beautiful creatures. And if you are super keen, you can attend the
Winter Raptor Fest 2011.
[more inside]
posted by bwg
on Dec 14, 2010 -
22 comments
Every day, our world gets a little bit smaller and a lot more complex. So much so that even minor decisions can have major consequences. Not just for trees or frogs or polar bears, but for human lives, and livelihoods. At its core, sustainability is about people.
The Living Principles for Design aim to guide purposeful action. It is a place to co-create, share and showcase best practices, tools, stories and ideas for enabling sustainable action across all design disciplines.
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posted by netbros
on Sep 20, 2010 -
9 comments
The American Great Plains
rival the Serengeti, according to National Geographic, but unlike in apparently more progressive Africa, the USA never protected the plains
on a large scale. Now private interests under the
The American Prairie Foundation are buying up land in Montana
hoping to create a multi-million acre preserve that would be the largest privately funded conservation land venture on the planet, bigger than Yellowstone National Park, that one day may see the return of great migrating herds of bison, pronghorn antelope, deer and elk.
Not all Montana ranchers are happy with the new Serengeti neighbor.
posted by stbalbach
on Aug 21, 2010 -
33 comments
Today Minnesota finalizes a $44 million deal to conserve approximately 188,000 acres of forest, wetlands, and shoreline through what is known as a
conservation easement. In addition to private funds from entities such as the
Blandin Foundation, the easement is being paid for through the
Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment to Minneosta's state constitution, which just over a year ago created permanent funding for natural resource, arts, and cultural projects through a 0.375% state sales tax. UPM-Blandin Paper Co., will continue to own the land and be allowed to harvest wood, but the land cannot be developed or subdivided and the public must have access to the land.
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posted by Muddler
on Jul 8, 2010 -
31 comments
Attenborough's Pitcher, an "Udderly Weird Yam," a two-inch phallic mushroom already immortalized on
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and the "Bombardier Worm" ("Chaff worm" would seem a more accurate name) are just four of the newly described species making the International Institute for Species Exploration's totally arbitrary
Top 10 New Species list.
[more inside]
posted by dust of the stars
on May 26, 2010 -
6 comments
Rising up from deep within the aquifer, cool clear water flows from hundreds of springs that dot the Florida landscape.
Florida springs are natural wonders that are threatened constantly.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Dec 24, 2009 -
14 comments
Most people have heard about how rising CO2 levels are resulting in a
changing global climate. Fewer have heard about the other consequence of rising CO2 levels- when the CO2 is absorbed into the oceans, it disassociates into carbonic acid. This alters the pH of our world's oceans, and it's called "
Ocean Acidification". This changing ocean chemistry has many important and devastating consequences.
[more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter
on Sep 5, 2009 -
21 comments
