Natalie van Hoose

3 weeks ago | blog.nature.org | Justine E Hausheer |Matthew Miller |Natalie van Hoose

It’s a dark, rainy night in the beech forests of New Zealand. As the rain patters on the leaf litter, a slow-motion chase plays out on the forest floor. A predatory snail is on the hunt. The size of a lemon, it slides along the forest floor, leaving a glistening slime trail in its wake. It’s prey: an unsuspecting earthworm, wriggling along the snail’s path. A pause, and the snail lunches forward, grasping the worm in its mouth and slurping it down like a long, saucy strand of spaghetti.

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.

1 month ago | blog.nature.org | Eric Seeger |Justine E Hausheer |Dustin Solberg |Natalie van Hoose

Eric Seeger is the deputy editor at Nature Conservancy magazine. He grew up surfing hurricane swells in Florida during the 1990s and 2000s, and has lived the last 18 years near Asheville, North Carolina. He wrote about his experience in the wake of the historic floods and landslides that hit North Carolina and Tennessee in 2024. “As this article was going to press, images of the devasting wildfires in Southern California were hitting the news,” he says.

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.

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.