The Periyar Tiger Reserve is famous for its elephant population. According to the 2010 Forest Department census, there are about 1279 wild elephants in the reserve. The world population of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) is estimated to be around 60,000, about a tenth of the number of African elephants.
It was an experience worth revisiting. Here’s one more the photo that Tal shared, Michael on that misty morning.
Rainforests have dense canopies. The plants in the undergrowth struggle to survive using the limited sunlight that reaches the lower levels of the jungle, and many plants don’t make it. When the weak plants die, their lifeforce nourishes the survivors. It has been this way for millions of years, and walking through the forest, the evidence crunches and crackles underfoot, or in more moist areas, decomposes rapidly into a soft, nutritious humus. Easing oneself out of the forest and into a clearing can be soothing – only upon emerging into the vivid sunlight and open air does one realize how resonant the forest can be. Continue reading
One of our Contributors recently posted from Panama, including a brief summary of his visit to the Panama Canal and Panama City. Here is a nice two minutes worth of additional footage, courtesy of one of the few worthwhile channels on television.
Another vertical panorama, the Keyhole is a more artistic than depictive, unlike most of my photographs. I was struggling to get the shots I wanted to use in the picture (there were about 10) because of the lighting differences between the rocks on the bottom, the undergrowth in the lower third, the canopy, and the skyline. Getting an even light level in all the shots was complicated, requiring checking each shot and retaking them multiple times to ensure accuracy. After over 20 minutes I finally felt satisfied, and laboring twice that long in the digital darkroom resulted in the following image Continue reading
Left: Ivory Billed Woodpecker by John James Audubon;
Right: Imperial Woodpecker by John Livzey Ridgway
In the world of ornithology and bird watching, scale is as important as plentiful plumage, vivid color or song style. From Cuba’s Mellisuga helenae (bee hummingbird) to the Andean Condor, life lists are often based on superlatives. The Campephilus (woodpecker) family has its own followers, especially the larger species that have eluded scientists and amateurs alike for decades.
While in Chaihuín, part of the Nature Conservancy’s Valdivian Coastal Reserve in Chilean Patagonia, we saw the Magellanic Woodpecker, a sighting that preceded a “Stop the Jeep!” moment of excitement. Part of that excitement was based on the memory of a Cornell Lab of Ornithology film we’d recently seen about the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Continue reading
We have noted before the intriguing coincidences that link the “old world” to the “new world”–not least the desire to establish trade with what is now Kerala and the accidental discovery of somewhere else; and other links in both directions. “Old” and “new” become fuzzy qualifiers when considering “modern” European travelers of the 15th century sailing to “ancient” India and instead encountering people we now call Pre-Columbians. Seth has posted on the environmental impacts of people from that so-called old world as they settled in the new world and brought their definitions of progress with them. Now, thanks to an article in Smithsonian Magazine our attention is brought to a book and a man who broaden our horizons back to the old world from which those people came. Continue reading
Global climate change will soon be changing ecosystems around the world to such an extent that many species will no longer have proper habitats to survive and reproduce in. Over the past several years, the scientific community has been discussing the possibility of moving such species to new ranges in order to conserve biodiversity and reduce potential for extinction. This controversial process, known as assisted colonization or managed relocation, might be able to save some species from their current state of risk, but it may also prove dangerous for the natives of whatever area the “colonizers” are moved to. By diligently evaluating the perils and uncertainties of relocation and carefully considering the repercussions of leaving species to their shrinking habitats, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), given its mission and vision statements, should determine that in most cases, the costs of assisted colonization outweigh the benefits.
By assisting the colonization of species with limited ability to adapt or relocate, the annual number of species gone extinct might be lowered in the coming decades. There are, however, disagreements as to whether or not humans should meddle with species movement. Continue reading
Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir at Yosemite 1903
One hundred and fifty-two years after his birth, Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy as a conservationist lives on in the nearly 230 million acres of land he helped place under public protection. During his 2 terms as the 26th President of the United States of America he established 150 National Forests, 51 Federal Bird Reservations, 5 National Parks, 18 National Monuments, 4 National Game Preserves, and 21 Reclamation Projects, in many cases designated the first of their kinds. Continue reading
Tim Chen has covered ecosystem services as they relate to ecotourism; below I’ve written some additional information on how the process might work on the market.
As developing countries increasingly convert natural ecosystems to areas controlled by humans, ecosystem services (e.g., waste absorption, water purification, soil conservation) are being lost. In order to prevent these shifts, people who live in urban areas or have no close relationship with, for example, their sources of drinking water are often willing to pay people who do have direct impacts on the watersheds. Payment for ecosystem services (PES) has become a measure by which higher-resource groups can induce lower-resource communities or individuals to protect local wetlands, forests, or other areas in order to maintain the ecosystem services that support a particular standard of living. Before such payment schemes can be established, however, certain scientific analyses must be carried out to determine the most efficient allocation of resources and facilitate the selection of the right service providers. Continue reading
“Mists, ah, very problem!”
I glanced sideways at the boisterous Mallu man driving the jeep along the winding mountain road. Like his passengers, he was peering out of the vehicle at the steep slopes around us, scanning them for wildlife, abetted by the pre-dawn lighting and the heavy mists.
If any elephants or bison were grazing upon the high hills we drove through, they were impossible to see thanks to the cotton-thick mists blanketing the tall grass and trees that covered the terrain. As the vehicle banged and clunked over potholes at high speeds, I held determinedly onto the railing for dear life, occasionally risking freeing my hands for a photograph of the scenery speeding past.
Some ways down the road, once the sun had risen above the horizon, the jeep rolled to a stop under a densely canopied corridor. My eyes began to search the trees for the reason of our stop to no avail – the driver pointed to what I had previously taken for a pile of rocks, proclaiming it to be a tribal temple. Upon a second look, I realized that the blocks of granite were hewn into rough rectangles, and while in no particular order, they were indeed surrounding a small garlanded icon. Continue reading
Humans’ ecological footprint has been increasing while the Earth has remained the same size. Especially in the last three centuries, the impact of human populations on surrounding landscapes and resources has grown enormously. In the United States, the footprint’s swelling can be explained in large part by the change from subsistence to profit-minded production. The colonists who brought European ideas and techniques to America instigated this shift, which began in the late seventeenth century and has arguably continued till the present. The abundance of resources in early America, and the fact that they could be so easily exploited, facilitated this change towards a profiteering mindset. It is with this observation in mind that I can suggest that the fertile nature of early America contained the seeds of our profit-oriented attitude of today, leading to an ever-growing ecological footprint.
Arthur Rothstein “Soil erosion, Alabama, 1937”
Men such as Gifford Pinchot and John Muir realized the dangers of the attitude towards excess and, in order to avoid exploitation of American forests and mountains, attempted to Continue reading
When the Estonian city of Tallinn was named the 2011 European Capital of Culture organizers immediately started planning a festival to highlight the fact that the city has much more to offer than the picture postcard views. The LIFT11 Urban Installations Festival is intended to showcase the city’s innovative use of public space from 12 June to 22 October 2011.
The temporary urban installations range from objects of art and architecture, to land art installations set up in and around the city space. The pieces are meant to be interactive, asking visitors to use their senses in how they perceive them, including their sense of humor. Continue reading
When I described, a couple weeks ago, the echo of hope emanating from the Gulf of California it is fair to say I was pleasantly surprised. That may be putting it too mildly, especially in hindsight now that I have seen a major new entrepreneurial initiative come to life there. I will be writing more about that in the coming days.
But for now, I am in the Galapagos Islands and another echo is resonating. In this case, for me, the echo is an eight year feedback. As mentioned in this earlier post I had worked here on and off over several years, and the last time I was here there were some challenges that seemed intractable. Today, upon arrival and for the remainder of the day, I had the opposite feeling of the last time I was here. The photos below show the first thing I did with Reyna and Roberto after leaving the airport. In the first photo you can see, as I did, just a simple conversation between them and one of the workers; then slowly a parade of otherworldly creatures crept into the photos…
In my last post, I walked along a border–the one separating the land of nostalgia from the land of meaning–and am still not sure which side of the border I was on. One person’s memory lane is full of madeleines, and another’s may have no particular there there (so be it, glass houses and all). The link to Brother Blue is the puzzle. Can anyone, out of context, realize who that man was and what he accomplished from that little bit of Lear jive? I do not know. But recycling is an ethos that India is instilling, so I go with it.
The thread linking Thoreau and Brother Blue for me the other day kept un-spooling, and led me back to my favorite living artist:
“Nature is my manifestation of God.
I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day’s work.”
― Frank Lloyd Wright
Architects taking their inspiration from nature isn’t an innovation, in fact, its retrieving what has often been forgotten. Sometimes that inspiration leads them outside of the building process altogether and into the sphere of Art, or to be more precise, into the sphere of Land Art Installation. Continue reading
Organikos 