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1 month ago | 
blog.nature.org | Cara Byington |Matthew Miller |Justine E Hausheer
New research published in Global Food Security shows that the paths to sustainable livestock production in systems around the world require a better understanding of environmental, economic, and social and cultural factors at scales small enough to be locally relevant, but broad enough to inform effective policy and funding interventions.
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1 month ago | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Cara Byington |Mary Terra-Berns
We hike up the wooded trail on a warm August day, as cardinals, blue jays and other songbirds dart back and forth into the brush. Within a few minutes, we see much larger wildlife. The forest opens, revealing a large meadow–once the site of a coal minefield–and our group looks out upon it. I’m here with colleagues from The Nature Conservancy as well as biologists from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA). Earlier in the day, they had noted we’d have a high likelihood of success.
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1 month ago | 
blog.nature.org | Cara Byington |Mary Terra-Berns |Natalie van Hoose |Matthew Miller
Next time you’re in need of an odd animal fact to fill a conversational lull, consider the nesting preferences of the Humboldt penguin. To protect their eggs and hatchlings from sun, heat and other elements, they dig nests and burrows out of the accumulated guano (poop) of generations of Humboldt penguins and other sea birds. Native to western South America, Humboldt penguins take their name from the Humboldt current that flows a few miles offshore.
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1 month ago | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Cara Byington |Justine E Hausheer |Bebe Crouse
At first, it looks like just another clump of leaves. A large clump of leaves, but otherwise unremarkable in this dense forest. Look closer. As I strain my eyes, this isn’t just another rainforest plant. You can see the leaves and branches have been constructed as a platform. It’s been carefully constructed, almost like a hammock high above the rainforest floor. An orangutan nest. Our little group has been on a hilly hike through rainforest in Kalimantan, Borneo.
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1 month ago | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Cara Byington |Justine E Hausheer
I stepped outside my little cabin into the humid rainforest air, leaves still dripping from the previous night’s rain. Even at dawn, I could see little but I immediately heard a peculiar whoop echoing through the trees. Gibbons. For the past couple of mornings, the gibbon chorus greeted us as we traveled around East Kalimantan in Borneo. The gibbon’s morning call—a tremulous hoot—is one you almost feel as much as you see. Soon a local community member would lead us to search for these apes.
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2 months ago | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Cara Byington |Meg Wilcox |Justine E Hausheer
Boone Bowling knows what local residents say about his hometown of Middlesboro, Kentucky. The murmurs, the complaints. All his life he’s heard it: This place stinks. There’s nothing to do here. When he was a high-school sophomore, Boone recalls a conversation that perhaps changed the course of his life. “A classmate was talking bad about Middlesboro,” Bowling says. “And I turned to him and said, someday I’m gonna be mayor.”He made good on his statement.
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2 months ago | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Cara Byington |Natalie van Hoose |Justine E Hausheer
We’re crouched down, peering at wildflowers and other native plants, bees buzzing through the air. An eastern newt crawls out of a nearby puddle. Just a couple years earlier, the scene here would have looked quite different. I’m touring a restoration site in the Cumberland Forest with Chris Garland, central Appalachians project director for The Nature Conservancy. Make a lasting impact for nature when you join The Nature Conservancy.
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Jan 21, 2025 | 
blog.nature.org | Cara Byington |Matthew Miller |Natalie van Hoose
I am not what you would call a “Snow Person.” I do not like snow to come to me, per se, I prefer to go to it—on my terms, which means I can leave if I want to. For years, my go-to move when snowy or really cold weather came to me was to hunker down and wait it out. Inside. Then Matt Miller ruined hibernation for me because now, whenever it snows or gets frosty where I live, I hear his voice in my head.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
blog.nature.org | Keith Williams |Cara Byington |Justine E Hausheer |Matthew Miller
I peered at the Eight Mile River as I hiked upstream through the Pleasant Valley Preserve, 235 acres protected forever by the Nature Conservancy near Lyme, Connecticut. “Ugh. Tannin water,” I thought. Streams that flow through watersheds dominated by conifers often run tea stained. The color is caused by tannins, yellow/brown colored organic compounds that leach out of decomposing pine needles. It makes the underwater world of streams dark and imposing. But that wasn’t much of a deterrent.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Christine Peterson |Cara Byington |Matthew Miller
About 20,000 years ago, somewhere along the crease where the Cascade Mountains drop into the plains, black-tailed jackrabbits and snowshoe hares mated. But as snowshoe hares, with their unique ability to seasonally change from brown to white, bounded away, they took with them a black-tailed jackrabbit gene, one that would serve them well millennia later: the black-tailed jackrabbit ability to stay brown all winter. Help protect threatened lands and waters around the globe.
