A Fluttery Meal Companion

/ Jocelyn Toll / Leave a comment
img_9901_zps957eyelg

White-bellied Emerald by Seth Inman

You are always guaranteed to have a fluttery companion at every meal at Chan Chich Lodge. Whether you are sipping on an early morning cup of Gallon Jug coffee or munching on a hearty black bean burger for lunch, a variety of hummingbird species will perch on nearby branches, whiz by your ears, and fight one another for a precious sip of sugary liquid from the hummingbird feeder and nearby flowers. It is an entertaining and lively spectacle full of reproachful tweeting and muffled buzzing as the hummingbirds dive and zig-zag through the different obstacles (sedentary, observant humans included) that surround the dangling feeder.

Continue reading →

Living with Jaguars

/ Emil Flota / 3 Comments

Note: Mr. Flota was born in the village of San Lazaro in the Orange Walk District of northern Belize. He works at Chan Chich Lodge in Gallon Jug, which is situated in a protected private forest that has one of the highest densities of jaguars in the world. He is the bartender and horse wrangler for the Lodge. Mr. Flota related this story to Jacalyn Willis, a biologist working in the tropics and at the Lodge. She wrote down his story as he told it.

One sunny morning in July I decided to take a walk on the old limestone road here called Sylvester Village Road. It cuts through forest that has been selectively logged, leaving a mixed habitat good for birds. I took my binoculars and camera. As I came out of the little housing area where I live at Chan Chich Lodge, and swung around a bend in the path to get onto the road, I saw a jaguar walking ahead of me in the same direction. Now, we live in jaguar territory in a private preserve in northern Belize, so it happens fairly often that someone will see a jaguar, which usually disappears quickly. But this jaguar had not yet noticed me and was about 30 yards ahead.

Continue reading →

Dirty Rio

/ Jocelyn Toll
wireap_206705173401436b8c64a3b0e628ca89_16x9_1600

Source: ABC News

The 2016 Rio Olympics start in two days and in three days athletes will have to face the uncontrolled pollution debris and hazardous water contamination levels. The 1,400 athletes participating in water competitions and 300,000 to 500,000 foreigners expected to visit Rio de Janeiro and the beaches at Copacabana and Ipanema are at risk of becoming ill. This unfortunate predicament comes even after the city’s 2009 Olympic bid when authorities pledged that they would invest in a billion-dollar cleanup program to “regenerate Rio’s magnificent waterways.” Continue reading →

Growing Hops & Crafting Beer

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
hops_custom-06d73795999a6d93f111680ade5849c244609f3f-s1400-c85.jpg

Ripe summer hops good for making beer. Tim Newman/Getty Images

We are anticipating another post by one of our authors, on a topic related to this news story below (thanks to NPR’s great special section, the salt), so let this serve as a reminder and a harbinger:

Hop Growers are raising a glass to craft brewers. The demand for small-batch brews has helped growers boost their revenues, expand their operations, and, in some cases, save their farms.

“Without the advent of craft brewing, a few large, corporate growers would be supplying all of the hops and local, family owned farms like ours would have gone bankrupt,” says Diane Gooding, vice president of operations at Gooding Farms, a hop grower in Wilder, Idaho. “It’s saved the industry.” Continue reading →

Jumping Mobula Rays at Villa del Faro

/ Seth Inman / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I wrote about the dawn rays at Villa del Faro, when I saw the jumping fish coming out of the water and slap down in almost-graceful belly flops. I finally got a little footage of the interesting behavior in the video above, and I found an article from BBC Earth that covers the topic – in the Gulf of California, no less – while still not providing an explanation for why the rays jump like they do:

Soaring high above the waves as easily as a bird, mobula rays appear perfectly designed for this astonishing aerobatic display.

Continue reading →

Corpse Flower Diaries

/ Amie Inman / Leave a comment

Photograph by Kathy Willens/AP

I first became aware of the amazing Amorphophallus titanum 4 years ago during a “bloom watch” of a Kenneth Post Lab Greenhouses specimen at Cornell University.  At the time the concept of a “Greenhouse Cam” was completely new to me, and I followed it, and the science behind the study of the plant, with fascination. Despite the rarity of the flower, a handful have bloomed within the past several years, the most recent being at the New York Botanical Garden.

All that said, the Corpse Flower by nature is the botanical version of a “comedic straight man” in the set up of story-based jokes. (For example, the scientific name means “giant misshapen phallus”.) Continue reading →

My First Encounter with Chan Chich Lodge

/ Jocelyn Toll / Leave a comment

img_9736_zpscnhylmqj

Chan Chich Lodge is camouflaged deep within the Belizean forest and within the ancient ruins of a Mayan structure. When you are driving along a rocky one-way limestone road through a variation of open cattle pastures and the dense forests for several hours, you don’t realize you have reached the lodge until you have driven past the welcome sign and are passing by one of the twelve wooden cabañas. Disclaimer: perhaps this first impression is singular to me because I first arrived to the hotel via ground transportation, at dusk, and in a drowsy state. Continue reading →

Turns Out the Red Wolf is Part Gray, Part Coyote

/ Crist Inman / 1 Comment

John Woodhouse Audubon – Red Texas Wolf – Google Art Project via WikiMedia Commons

Last time I recall linking to a story with gray wolves, it was in the context of rewilding. And though I haven’t written about the red wolf before, it’s another North American species that is protected under US federal law in the Endangered Species Act. But new genetic research published last week on the DNA of North American wolf genomes is showing that the red wolf is in fact a hybrid species; a mix of gray wolf and coyote. The same goes for the Eastern gray wolf, another protected species. Carl Zimmer reports for the New York Times:

The finding, announced Wednesday, highlights the shortcomings of laws intended to protect endangered species, as such laws lag far behind scientific research into the evolution of species. Continue reading →

USA National Park, Feisty Leadership Outlier

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
Lake Superior Presque Isle Royale National Park Michigan in USA Great Lakes no not people nobody isolated low angle horizon

Lake Superior Presque Isle Royale National Park Michigan, USA, Great Lakes

We like the idea of a leader of a national park with a “feisty nature,” since sometimes that is exactly what it takes for conservation to succeed, either in the public or the private sector; so this profile from the BBC, in its ongoing appreciation of the National Parks Service’s 100th anniversary, is the kind of story we are especially happy to share:

…Isolated and iconoclastic, Isle Royale National Park is something of an anomaly among US National Parks, with its territory spread over 200 islands and outcroppings emerging from the frigid waters of Lake Superior, part-way between the US state of Michigan and Canada.

Isle Royale’s former Superintendent, Bill Fink (no relation to me), is an iconoclast himself, almost as if the qualities of the archipelago rubbed off on him during his four years running operations there from 1990 to 1993. Continue reading →

A Defining Moment In Papua New Guinea

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Screen Shot 2016-08-01 at 9.05.37 AM.jpg

Interesting to see, in one publication we depend on for interesting news and commentary related to community and conservation around the world, a bookend to the item just published in another publication we turn to frequently:

Defining Moment: a photographer’s snap decision in the face of danger

Wylda Bayron traveled solo around Papua New Guinea for 18 months. What she found was a nation fraught with violence but also filled with striking beauty Continue reading →

Thanks As Usual, Monsanto

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
img_3117_edited-8ee56f2024cb095b7e2552ed630ec23e085d621b-s1400-c85.jpg

These soybean leaves show evidence of damage from dicamba. It could cut the the harvest by 10 to 30 percent. Courtesy of the University of Arkansas

We live at a time when figuring out how to feed an already-oversized global population (relative to the earth’s natural resources and known agricultural methods) is a monumental task. But Monsanto seems determined to take shortcuts that do as much harm as good. And that is probably putting it too politely, considering the number of times their misdeeds come to our attention (thanks to National Public Radio, USA):

Crime In The Fields: How Monsanto And Scofflaw Farmers Hurt Soybeans In Arkansas

by Dan Charles, August 1, 2016

When agricultural extension agent Tom Barber drives the country roads of eastern Arkansas this summer, his trained eye can spot the damage: soybean leaves contorted into cup-like shapes.

He’s seeing it in field after field. Similar damage is turning up in Tennessee and in the “boot-heel” region of Missouri. Tens of thousands of acres are affected. Continue reading →

Indigenous-Outing

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

160808_r28495-1200

Mr. Anderson’s work is often, like his colleague Elizabeth Kolbert’s, unusually thick in detail, and often kind of heavy. This item is heavy, detailed, but fascinating. His writing is often without illustration yet this piece is reported with abundant and excellent photography. Read a snippet below to get a sense of the interior of the article:

AN ISOLATED TRIBE EMERGES FROM THE RAIN FOREST

In Peru, an unsolved killing has brought the Mashco Piro into contact with the outside world.

By Jon Lee Anderson

…The Ministry of Culture’s team gathered a few months ago in Cuzco, high in the Andes, where a van was loaded with provisions. The leader was an anthropologist named Luis Felipe Torres, a slim man in his early thirties with an aquiline face and the unassuming manner of a professional observer. He was joined by Glenn Shepard, an American ethnobotanist. A youthful-looking man of fifty, Shepard had lived for a year in the nineteen-eighties among the Matsigenka people, who shared territory with the Mashco; he had learned their language and returned many times since. Shepard worked at the Emílio Goeldi Museum, an Amazonian-research center in Brazil, but he travelled to Peru frequently as an informal adviser to Torres’s department.

Continue reading →

National Park Service Service

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
lead_custom-7aa8c94bf10d83452c0788e0437655e91158e9c4-s1400-c85.jpg

Brad Metler (left) and Mason Phillippi position a rock that will serve as an abutment for a small footbridge across the Oconaluftee River to an old cemetery in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Both men work for the park’s trail crew, which maintains more than 800-miles of trail in the park. Nathan Rott/NPR

Thanks to National Public Radio (USA):

Life In The Park: Finding Meaning In Park Service Work

There’s a popular refrain among National Park Service employees, one that doubles as a reminder, of sorts, after a long, wearisome day: “We get paid in sunrises and sunsets.”

For many park employees, the pay is seasonal and not great. The hours are long. The question is usually the same (“Where’s the bathroom?”). And no matter how many pamphlets you pass out, instructions you give or “Attention!” signs you put up, people still wander off trails, carve their names in trees and get too close to the bears. Continue reading →

Good Bag News from England

/ Seth Inman / Leave a comment

Image via Pinterest

Last year in October, a five pence charge (around seven US cents) for plastic bags at supermarkets was introduced to discourage shoppers from using the wasteful and unnecessary receptacles – and prevent pollution at the same time. With this extra cost, use of the bags dropped by over 85%, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. But England hasn’t led the charge (pun intended) in this effort: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all successfully employed the 5p cost prior. Rebecca Smithers reports for The Guardian:

Retailers with 250 or more full-time equivalent employees have to charge a minimum of 5p for the bags they provide for shopping in stores and for deliveries, but smaller shops and paper bags are not included. There are also exemptions for some goods, such as raw meat and fish, prescription medicines, seeds and flowers and live fish.

Continue reading →

Climate Change Deniers Meet Their Match

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
Oreskes.jpg

Naomi Oreskes. Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

Thanks to Harvard Magazine for this interview that puts into perspective how science writers can best serve the interest of accurate information about climate change:

Naomi Oreskes on How to Write about Science

by MARINA N. BOLOTNIKOVA

HISTORY OF SCIENCE professor Naomi Oreskes talks about climate change the way one might expect of both an earth scientist and a historian. “Science has to be part of the conversation on climate change,” she says, “but it’s not the whole conversation. At this time, I actually don’t think it’s the most important piece. There’s a basic issue of justice here, and we desperately need economists and sociologists and philosophers and artists to be heard.” Her humanist instincts allow her to move a wide audience in a way most scientists never achieve. Her work has helped broaden the public’s acceptance of climate change as an issue of scientific consensus rather than debate, and for taking up this public mantle of climate change advocacy, she will be honored with the Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication this winter. Oreskes recently talked to Harvard Magazine about the climate-denial industry, the political role of scientists, and writing about academic research for a wide audience. Continue reading →