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1 month ago | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Justine E Hausheer |Lauren Pharr |Natalie van Hoose
Even where they’re numerous, seeing a wild orangutan takes a bit of luck. The rainforest is dense and the orangutans keep mainly to the trees. Sure, there are forest fragments and national parks where orangutans are more reliably viewed, but in much of their habitat they’re a rare sighting. Last year, I visited East Kalimantan in Borneo as a trip to see conservation that benefits orangutans and other species.
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Sep 4, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Eleanor Salisbury |Justine E Hausheer |Lauren Pharr |Annie M. Lindsay
This story is part of a series designed to introduce the perspectives of alumni from the National Geographic Society and The Nature Conservancy’s global youth externship program. Each guest author is an emerging leader in conservation and storytelling. The morning air feels cold along the river’s edge as I watch the fish in front of me jump for insects. Whilst I wait in my spot amongst willows and nettles, a flash of blue makes me gasp.
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Jul 10, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Cara Byington |Justine E Hausheer |Lauren Pharr
Mark Twain once wrote that, in a period of 176 years, the lower Mississippi River was shortened by 242 miles. While the famous author used this in service to his satire, his calculation was true. This is because the Mississippi was channelized and straightened, removing the natural bends and curves of the river. This same engineering affected rivers across the United States and has had numerous ecological consequences. A river meanders naturally.
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Jun 3, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Cara Byington |Lauren Pharr |Matthew Miller |Justine E Hausheer
Research from French Polynesia and TNC’s Palmyra Atoll Preserve shows that, by feeding on microbial pathogens in marine sediment, the weird and wonderful sea cucumber can enhance reef resilience by suppressing coral diseases. The sea cucumber, a humble bottom-dwelling marine invertebrate famous for both eating and breathing through its butt, hardly seems to fit the role of a protector for anything, much less something as beautiful and intricate as a coral reef.
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May 30, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Cara Byington |Lauren Pharr |Lisa Marie Ballard
Lizzie McLeod laughs at the memory: She’s rushing from her job at a local bank to The Nature Conservancy’s office in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. There, she’d spend her lunch hour in a dark room/closet scanning a marine biologist’s old slides to digital. McLeod, now The Nature Conservancy’s Global Director for Oceans, has fond memories of those days. “I began with TNC as a volunteer in a dark room,” she says.
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May 26, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Justine E Hausheer |Lauren Pharr |Annie M. Lindsay |Christopher Moorman
What can dive deeper than a submarine, swims across entire oceans, is covered in polka-dots, and has a mouth straight out of a horror movie? It sounds like the setup for a bad joke, but leatherback sea turtles are all of these things and more. Leatherbacks are perhaps best known for their massive size and unusual carapace. But there’s more to these creatures than you might realize. Read on to learn more about the world’s largest turtle.
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May 12, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Jenny Rogers |Cara Byington |Justine E Hausheer |Lauren Pharr
Late in the summer of 2023, New York City-based photographer Michael George traveled to a remote finger of land jutting off of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula out into Lake Superior. The land, known as the Keweenaw Peninsula, formed as lava poured out of a rift in the Earth 1.1 billion years ago—the same geologic shift that resulted in the deep basin now known as Lake Superior.
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May 5, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Christine Peterson |Justine E Hausheer |Lauren Pharr |Lisa Marie Ballard
Think for a minute about the veery with its cinnamon wings, plump little body and seductive call. Each spring, as the earth begins tilting away from the sun in central and southern Brazil and the days begin to shorten, it knows it’s time to fly north. The thrush makes a quick trip, traveling sometimes up to 100 miles in a night, over mountains and countries and vastly different ecosystems, on a race to arrive at its breeding grounds in leafy woods as far north as southern Canada.
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Feb 12, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Cara Byington |Justine E Hausheer |Lauren Pharr
There are those who get excited by warblers, and those who do not. Both were in evidence on a recent visit to the local city park. I could not tell where individuals stood as far as political affiliation, sport team allegiance or any of the myriad other ways we choose to divide ourselves. Except warblers. I could tell in an instant where any given person stood on warblers. Team Bird was out in full force on this otherwise dreary winter day. They predictably had cameras and binoculars.
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Feb 4, 2024 | 
blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Justine E Hausheer |Lauren Pharr
Around me, ten people fidget with spotting scopes, attach long lenses to cameras, sip coffee and casually reference recent eBird reports. It is, for all intents and purposes, a typical birding field trip. Except for one significant detail: the location. Forget a peaceful morning at the local marsh. Around us, heavy machinery beep-beep-beeps as it backs up, and large trucks constantly rumble up the road. The scenery is dominated by scraped earth. And trash. Mountains of trash.
