Nature

Birding from VdF: Sierra de la Laguna

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Sierra de la Laguna and its highest point, El Picacho, as seen from SJD International Airport

Check out my last post for an introduction to this series and to read about the San José Estuary.

Down here at the tip of Baja California Sur, some part of the Sierra de la Laguna mountain range can be seen pretty much from anywhere with a good view inland. In fact, when you land in the Cabos airport, it feels next-door. When we were last here at Villa del Faro in July, Jocelyn wrote about some spots in the southern region of the Sierra Biosphere Reserve, and for our second trip last week, we visited the north (the middle is the most mountainous, with no access roads that we know of, just 6-hour hiking trails).

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Conservation, Nature & Culture

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Ping Zhu

A writer who captures the nuanced relationship between conservation of nature and culture has our attention:

The Lost Cultures of Whales

By SHANE GERO

Aboard the Balaena, Caribbean — I am alone on deck, my headphones filled with the sounds of the deep ocean. I have been tracking the sperm whales since 4 a.m. Now the island of Dominica imposes its dark shape in front of the rising sun.

“We have whales!” I shout down to Hal Whitehead, who founded the Dominica Sperm Whale Project with me a decade ago. He puts the kettle on and asks who it is as he comes on deck. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Banff National Park, Canada

/ Jocelyn Toll / 2 Comments
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Peyto Lake, one of the many lakes in Banff. Image via authentikcanada.com

Established in 1883 by three railway workers who discovered a natural hot spring on the slopes of the Canadian Rockies, Banff National Park is Canada’s first national park and the birthplace of the world’s first national park service. Located in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, the park boasts more than a thousand picture-perfect glaciers and glacier-fed lakes, Castleground Caves (the country’s largest cave system), and several national historic sites. It also encompasses Banff, the highest town in Canada at an elevation of 4,540 ft, which makes it feasible and convenient to enjoy the sights over a period of days (which you will surely want to do).

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Stromatolites & You

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We humans are part of a very tiny slice of history, whereas in Western Australia we can have a glimpse at a big slice of history. It is humbling, and at the same time inspiring. As good science journalism should be. We are not too proud to admit that these had completely escaped our attention until just now:

The natural wonder that holds the key to the origins of life – and warns of its destruction

Stromatolite-building bacteria once ruled the Earth, then changed its climate so much they nearly became extinct. Michael Slezak visits the world’s largest surviving colony in Hamelin pool, Western Australia

Just shy of the westernmost tip of the Australian continent lies a pool that provides an unparalleled window into the origins of life on Earth. In its warm, briny waters a biological process takes place that began just as the continents were starting to form.

It is this very process that made the abundance of life on the planet possible and studying it today promises insights into how life began as well as what the Earth was like 3.7bn years ago. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

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Plitvice Waterfalls

Source: holicoffee.com

Granted UNESCO World Heritage status in 1979, Plitvice Lakes National Park is Coratia’s largest and most popular park. Sixteen lakes, all inter-connected over a distance of 8 km by series of waterfalls and cascades, are set deep in the woodland and have a height difference of 135 meters (Veliki Slap, the largest waterfall, is 70 meters tall). Although the terraced lakes comprise only a small area of the total 300 sq km park, they offer a stunning sight with their changing hues throughout the seasons and garner practically all the attention from local and foreign tourists alike. Continue reading →

Fly-Fishing In The Rockies

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Scott Tarrant is the fly-fishing manager at the Broadmoor resort and hotel in Colorado Springs. Ryan David Brown for The New York Times

We always think we have the best occupations, but occasionally we see what someone else is doing and start having second thoughts. But, as we know, there is a reason why it is called work:

The Curative Power of Water, Waders and a Fly Rod

Vocations As told to PATRICIA R. OLSEN

Scott Tarrant, 46, is manager of fly-fishing at the Broadmoor, a resort and hotel in Colorado Springs. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Ruaha National Park, Tanzania

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As Tanzania’s largest national park, Ruaha National Park boasts of untouched and unexplored ecosystems at the center of Tanzania. The 20,226 sq km park is the watershed between the Mzombe and the Great Ruaha rivers, with a distinctive escarpment, above which are large stretches of miombo woodland. Below lie undulating plains of dry bush country to treeless grasslands, swamps and evergreen forests, all with sand rivers intersecting through them. Continue reading →

Beauty Is A Beast

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Culling could undermine the viability of the entire Norwegian wolf population, say conservationists. Photograph: Roger Strandli Berghagen

We love sheep, and sheep farmers, and shepherds, and wool, and so on. But we cannot read this without feeling more sympathy for the wolves, at this moment:

Norway’s wolf cull pits sheep farmers against conservationists

Norway’s recent decision to destroy 70% of its tiny endangered population of wolves shocked conservationists worldwide and saw 35,000 sign a local petition. But in a region dominated by sheep farming support for the cull runs deep

Elisabeth Ulven and Tone Sutterud in Oslo

Conservation groups worldwide were astonished to hear of the recent, unprecedented decision to destroy 70% of the Norway’s tiny and endangered population of 68 wolves, the biggest cull for almost a century. Continue reading →

Forest Protection By Any Other Name, For Any Other Purpose, Through Any Other Means, Is Just As Sweet

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Richard Fortey and Derek Niemann among the beeches in Grim’s Dyke Wood. Photograph: Sarah Niemann

We do not favor private sector conservation efforts over all other options; we favor them over the option of no conservation at all. Governments around the world have rightly done the heaviest lifting on preserving nature, considering their resources, eminent domain, and other factors including the most salient; public lands effectively belong to an entire nation’s citizens. Philanthropies have also done enormous good. We have written plenty on both public and philanthropic conservation schemes. Today, a more modest story, but no less lovely:

A walk in the woods with Richard Fortey

Henley, Oxfordshire The palaeontologist and author offers a tour of Grim’s Dyke Wood, which he bought in 2011

Derek Niemann

Five years after the palaeontologist Richard Fortey bought Grim’s Dyke Wood, a small Chiltern beech wood, he shows no diminution in enthusiasm for his “nature reserve”. He gives me a tour, though in truth we delight in each other’s discoveries. I find him a ring of bright feathers on a pile of rotting pine logs, a raptor’s kill, the buffs and browns speaking of a song thrush forever silenced. He finds bracket fungi that have insinuated themselves into the thin, horizontal lesions on a cherry tree’s trunk. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

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Source: parquetorresdelpaine.cl

For the type of jaw-dropping  sights that Torres del Paine National Park in Chile has to offer, it is only fair to know a bit of geological history that formed these towering, sheer ridges and deep, mirrored lakes. Located in the southern tip of the Andes of South America, the landscape of the park is owed to earth movements which occurred 12 million years ago and the gradual glacial erosion thereafter, which formed the “torres” (towers) measuring more than 2,200 meters in altitude. The 2,422 square kilometer area was established as a park in 1959; since 1978 it has been part of UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserve system. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Jiuzhaigou National Park, China

/ Jocelyn Toll / 2 Comments

 

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Five Flower Lake. Source: thousandwonders.net

Located in the northern part of Sichuan province in China, Jiuzhaigou National Park is comprised of a speckling of multi-colored lakes surrounded by deep woodlands and impressive conic waterfalls in between precipitous mountains. Given the high altitude of the jagged valley, 4,800 meters, the landscape has a range of diverse forest ecosystems over the 300 square km and half of which is virgin forest. About 140 bird species inhabit the valley as well as a number of endangered plant and animal species, including the giant panda, the Sichuan takin, and the golden snub-nosed monkey. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Ergaki National Park, Siberia

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Photos by Moscow based photographer, Alexander Ermolitsky

Colloquially referred to as the “Russian Yosemite,” Ergaki National Park is a mandatory stop for those who ever plan to travel to Russia, and more specifically, to Siberia. Located in the Western Sayan Mountains of Siberia, this 342,873 hectare park of steep mountain ranges and glacial streams and lakes will break your camera lens with its beauty – figuratively speaking.

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National Park of the Week: Acadia National Park, Maine, U.S.A

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Source: ouracadia.com

I am happy to introduce Acadia National Park in Maine, U.S. as the first feature on our new weekly segment – shout out to Justin for the recommendation! This park is one of many firsts: it was founded as the first national park east of the Mississippi River by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 (so yes, it is celebrating its centennial along with the National Park Service). In addition, it is famed for being the first place to see the sunrise in the U.S. when standing at the top of Cadillac Mountain during certain times of the year (part of the fall and winter seasons). Continue reading →

A New National Monument

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Early morning haze colors from Mount Katahdin and its surrounding mountains. All images from: npr.org

Just in time for the U.S. National Park system centennial, a total of 87,500 acres of mountains, forests and water were donated yesterday by the co-founder of Burt’s Bees, Roxanne Quimby, and then declared a national monument. President Obama announced the creation of the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, a land that used to feed paper mills and is now permanently protected from lumber extraction. The monument will be managed by the National Park Service and allow recreation while protecting resources.

The designation of the woods as protected territory has been in the works for years — and has been controversial among locals, who worried about federal oversight of lands that used to be central to the regional economy.

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eBird Workshops in Guatemala

/ Daniel Aldana / 1 Comment

First of all I would like to give to you a brief introduction of myself since it’s the very first time I have the great opportunity to write a post here – by the way thanks Amie, Crist and Seth Inman for the invitation.

I am a 20 year old birder from Guatemala and I have been in touch with nature and birds since I was a little kid. I remember being carried by my dad on his back and going out to the field to go birding. He needed to take care of me but he didn’t want to just stay at home wasting valuable hawk migration time, so he took me with him no matter what. I remember I enjoyed it A LOT, not only because I liked being carried, but the memories of the field guide open in my dad’s hands and his binoculars hanging by his neck and his trying to point out the bird and later showing it to me in the book are things I will never forget. Of course I was too young to actually spot the bird and appreciate it in the field but I do remember looking at the birds carefully in the field guide. A few years later I was so excited when he gave to me my first pair of binoculars as a Christmas present! I felt like a pro ornithologist (although I didn’t know that word yet). That same year he bought his first spotting scope so when I wasn’t able to see the bird and observe it through my binoculars myself he would find it on the scope so I could enjoy the beauty, behavior, different plumages – everything of the birds. I immediately fell in love with birding and all of what biding had to offer to me. Continue reading →

The Bosnian Tree Elder

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Certain species of trees can grow to be very old, and a group of scientists from Stockholm University  discovered a Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) that would certainly classify as ancient. The solitary Bosnian pine is growing in the highlands of northern Greece and has been dendrochronologically dated– that is, analyzed to see how old the tree is – to be more than 1075 years old, making it the oldest known living tree in Europe.

“It is quite remarkable that this large, complex and impressive organism has survived so long in such an inhospitable environment, in a land that has been civilized for over 3000 years” says Swedish dendrochronologist, Paul J. Krusic, leader of the expedition that found the tree. It is one of more than a dozen individuals of millennial age, living in a treeline forest high in the Pindos mountains.

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A New Weekly Feature!

/ Jocelyn Toll / 2 Comments

 

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Ergaki National Park. Source: siberiatimes.com

Drawing inspiration from our site’s Bird of the Day, a new weekly feature titled National Park of the Week will publish every Sunday starting on August 28th. We love birds – but other wildlife too! – and we love the environment they (as well as we) live in, so we decided to start this new “column” (if this was a newspaper) to promulgate the protected areas that reflect the range of biodiversity and natural beauty around the globe. Although this weekly article has the words national park in the title, all types of government-protected areas, such as refuges, reserves, sanctuaries, and parks, will be featured in this category.  Continue reading →

The Chan Chich Trails

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View from the top of one of the knolls (i.e., former Mayan structure) surrounding the compound

Day by day I’ve been exploring the trails around Chan Chich Lodge, and during each excursion I find some kind of surprise. I tend to tag along Seth’s bird outings not only to learn about the birds fluttering about, but also to increase the chances of spotting some type of wildlife mammal.  Certain trails are better for finding the animals that I hope to see (such as a Margay or a White-nosed Coati), but I have diversified my search in order to avoid discriminating against all the other stunning wildlife at Chan Chich and to take into consideration my birder companion’s interests.

Climbing to the top of the grassy mounds (concealing Mayan structures) that surround the central hotel area is one option that offers an elevated perspective of the lodge and allows for a less constricted view of the trees that attract Brown-hooded Parrots, White-collared Seedeaters, and Tropical Kingbirds. Most of the knolls have a bench at the top, which I believe serve more as a scenic embellishment than a respite from the twenty stair-step “hike.” At one of the mounds there is a wooden platform on the edge of the hill that provides a private outlook towards the forest canopy. I found this outlook at sunset, which made the discovery all the more memorable, and I will not reveal its precise location to encourage visitors to find it on their own. Continue reading →

The “Wildman” in You

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Whether you live in an urban or rural setting, the abundance of edible plants that surround us typically remains unconsumed unless we are referring to the plants that are growing in our own gardens. “Wildman” Steve, NYC’s famed foraging expert, is an avid naturalist who learns about the properties of common plants growing in neighborhoods in order to identify their utility for human consumption, including their medicinal attributes in some cases. He shares his findings through various forums and even has a phone application to offer a practical and user-friendly tool for those who want to get “in the field” and learn.

All of his videos, like the one below, remind us of the plethora of flavorful plant species right in our own backyard or neighborhood park and the following one highlights the joy it can be to do it with someone you love.

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Dawn Rays at Villa del Faro

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Yesterday morning I got up early to see the sun rise from the balcony at the hotel, and was pleased to see the full golden orb rise from the watery horizon to the east. While facing the ocean, I heard some distant slaps, like someone smacking their palm against the surface of the water, and looked across the kilometer or so (less, most likely) between the balcony and the shore to see some rays––eagle rays, I think––leaping out of the water, but also just poking the tips of their “wings,” or side fins, into the air without leaving the waves themselves.

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