A Great Race

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As I type this post the 20 4 person co-ed teams participating in the 2016 Patagonia Expedition Race are hopefully getting a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s Kayak and Rope evaluations. From our collaboration with the organizers, both behind the scenes and in the field, we know the teams are going to need it!

Statistically, fewer than half the teams that start the grueling combination of trekking, mountain biking, kayaking and rope traverses complete the race. The teams receive minimal assistance – basic maps that require extreme orienteering and problem solving – to make the best time from checkpoint to checkpoint in often inhospitable environments.

Imitating the journeys of our Indian forefathers, competitors advance over plains, mountains, glaciers, native forests, swampland, rivers, lakes and channels; guided only by mind and spirit but driven on by physical stamina and experience.

Every edition features a unique route. Past racers have found themselves in the Southern Continental Ice Field, the Strait of Magellan, Torres del Paine, Tierra del Fuego, the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn. The land is diverse, the challenge real, the adventure untamed. Continue reading →

Great Backyard Bird Count at Xandari

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Patricia works at Reception, with the Great Backyard Bird Count sign behind her

Xandari Resort & Spa’s Great Backyard Bird Count started off with the piercing whistle of a Common Pauraque, followed by some wren vocalizations and a Great Kiskadee‘s eponymous (“great kis-ka-dee!”) call. While drinking my morning coffee before the scheduled birdwatching tour I listened to the sounds from the forest and recorded my first GBBC checklist of the day at 5:30.

Then, some guests and I watched birds from the restaurant terrace for almost half an hour before walking through the gardens as well, leading to two more checklists. The most exciting sightings this time were a small group of White-crowned Parrots and a Zone-tailed Hawk soaring alongside a Short-tailed Hawk.

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Let Yourself In

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It’s been scientifically proven that people respond emotionally to color and light. The artist Vincent van Gogh was a master of both, and the vibrant, intimate paintings of his bedroom in Arles are evocative examples.

Not only have the curators at the Art Institute of Chicago brought together the artist’s three versions of the room, they’ve created an installation that invites the viewer into a 3-dimensional experience of the iconic painting.

This exhibition is the first to truly delve into the fascinating history of these three paintings and explore the motif of home and its significance to Van Gogh—as haven, creative chamber, and physical reality. The show features approximately 36 works by the artist, including paintings, drawings, and illustrated letters, as well as a selection of books and other ephemera known to have been in Van Gogh’s possession. Continue reading →

For Whom the Bell Tolls

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Tony Furnivall beside one of the dozen bells in Trinity Church's clocktower. (Photo: Ella Morton)

Tony Furnivall beside one of the dozen bells in Trinity Church’s clocktower. (Photo: Ella Morton)

If you’ve still not knocked off “do the new” on the year’s bucket-list, we have a suggestion. Join the Wednesday Night rites of New York’s church bell ringers.

Bell ringing, also known as change ringing, is what Furnivall calls “an ultra-niche interest.” Originating in medieval England, it is practiced by an estimated 40,000 people around the world today, mostly in the United Kingdom and among countries of the former British Empire. In the U.S., there is a small but enthusiastic bell-ringing scene, spread across 42 towers. The North American Guild of Change Ringers, established in the 1970s, calls ringing “a team sport, a highly coordinated musical performance, an antique art, and a demanding exercise.” “We ring bells to celebrate,” Furnivall says, and if you’re spry enough to clamber up a clock tower, you can grab a rope and join in the fun.

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To Dam or Not to Dam

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In southern Laos, near where the Don Sahong dam will soon rise, a fisherman’s son snoozes above his father’s weir, waiting for fish migrating upstream to tire and wash back into the trap. PHOTO: David Guttenfelder

In southern Laos, near where the Don Sahong dam will soon rise, a fisherman’s son snoozes above his father’s weir, waiting for fish migrating upstream to tire and wash back into the trap. PHOTO: David Guttenfelder

Dams are barriers built across rivers and streams to confine and regulate water flow for irrigation and hydroelectricity. However, in recent years, the social, economic, and environmental impacts of these constructions have become a pressing concern. While dams are integral to agricultural irrigation, and can help control floods, the construction causes mass displacement, increases risks of earthquakes and landslides. Along the Mekong in China, the people need clean electricity but also the fish and rice that and undammed river provides.

Ban Pak Ing may be a vision of the future for many Mekong villages. Five more dams are under construction in China. Downstream, in Laos and Cambodia, 11 major dams—the first on the main stem of the lower Mekong—are either proposed or already being built. By disrupting fish migration and spawning, the new dams are expected to threaten the food supply of an estimated 60 million people—most of whom live in villages much like Ban Pak Ing. The electric power generated by the lower Mekong dams is destined largely for booming urban centers in Thailand and Vietnam. Kraisak Choonhavan, a Thai activist and former senator, calls the lower Mekong dams “a disaster of epic proportions.”

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The Master of Filipino Tattoo Art

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A dying Filipino tattoo tradition is being revived – and forever changed – by the international travellers seeking to get inked by its last tribal artist, 97-year old Apo Whang-Od. (Credit: Travel Trilogy)

A dying Filipino tattoo tradition is being revived – and forever changed – by the international travellers seeking to get inked by its last tribal artist, 97-year old Apo Whang-Od. (Credit: Travel Trilogy)

Winging it on a cliche, we’ll say tattoos are forever. And in the far flung, rustic town of Kalinga,  Apo Whang-Od prays it continues to be so. As the last tattoo artist in the Kalinga region, she carries forth the 1,000-year tradition of batok. And the pressure to see to it that she bequeaths the legacy to a worthy successor.

Every Kalinga village used to have a mambabatok (a master tattooist) to honour and usher in life’s milestones. When women would become eligible for marriage, they would adorn their bodies with tattoos to attract suitors. When headhunters prepared for battle, an inked centipede would be their talisman, or when they returned with a kill, an eagle would commemorate their victory. “Tattoos are one of our greatest treasures,” Whang-Od said. “Unlike material things, no one can take them away from us when we die.”

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Models Show Garbage Clean-up More Effective on Shoreline Than in Gyres

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Image of trash on a beach by Flickr user Gerry & Bonni

The health of oceans in the face of massive pollution has been a topic of this blog on multiple occasions, and we’re always interested in learning more about the efforts to clean up the incredible amounts of waste, especially plastic, in one of the most–if not the most–important global ecosystems. New models by researchers at Imperial College London are hypothesizing that, rather than targeting sites like the great Pacific garbage patch, trash pick-up by floating microplastic collectors should be more effective near the coasts, where the rubbish originates. Sarah DeWeerdt reports for Conservation Magazine:

Cleanup efforts for ocean plastics should be concentrated close to shore, at the source of the problem, rather than in areas of open ocean where plastic tends to accumulate, according to a study recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Ideally, if plastic collectors were placed offshore near coastal population centers, they could remove nearly one-third of plastic in the ocean over the next 10 years.

In the study, oceanographer Erik van Sebille and undergraduate physics student Peter Sherman, both at Imperial College London, used data on ocean currents and waste management practices in different countries to simulate the entry and circulation of plastic in the oceans from 2015 to 2025.

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The Grey Parrots Go Missing

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These African Grey parrots were rescued from smugglers and released on Ngamba Island in Lake Victoria. The African Grey parrot is the single most heavily traded wild bird. PHOTO: CHARLES BERGMAN

These African Grey parrots were rescued from smugglers and released on Ngamba Island in Lake Victoria. The African Grey parrot is the single most heavily traded wild bird. PHOTO: CHARLES BERGMAN

In all that we write about conservation, a related tag – unfortunately – happens to be extinction. Brought about by forest loss, miscalculated development plans, social and political apathy towards ecosystems, lack of awareness – the reasons we’ve all heard of. Now, National Geographic reports on the disappearance of the ‘talking bird’:

Flocks of chattering African Grey parrots, more than a thousand flashes of red and white on grey at a time, were a common site in the deep forests of Ghana in the 1990s. But a 2016 study published in the journal Ibis reveals that these birds, in high demand around the world as pets, and once abundant in forests all over West and central Africa, have almost disappeared from Ghana. Uncannily good at mimicking human speech, the African Grey (and the similar but lesser-known Timneh parrot) is a prized companion in homes around the world. Research has shown that greys are as smart as a two-five year-old human child—capable of developing a limited vocabulary and even forming simple sentences.

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Undiscovered Species in Natural History Museums

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Evon Hekkala and a crocodile skull at the AMNH. Photo by Ed Yong.

We’re big fans of museums, especially those of natural history with specimens of life in the world that are invaluable to science. Now, in a piece for the Atlantic, Ed Yong (previously here) writes about the dozens of new species being identified many years–or in the case of some Egyptian mummified crocodiles, millennia–after their collection. These specimens, Yong reports, can inform us further on the evolution of animal body types, on cycles of diversity, and on the origins of epidemics, among other things:

In the darkness of the Akeley Hall of Mammals, swarms of kids gawk at beautifully staged dioramas of Africa’s wildlife. The stuffed safari, nestled in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, includes taxidermied leopards stalking a bush pig, preserved ostriches strutting in front of warthogs, and long-dead baboons cautiously considering a viper. In one corner, in a display marked “Upper Nile Region,” a lone hippo grazes next to a herd of lechwe, roan antelope, and a comically stern shoebill stork.

“This is my favorite one,” says Evon Hekkala, pointing to the display. “There’s a taxidermied crocodile tucked away down there.”

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Malabar Soul Food

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Malabar Soul Food – embodies the spices of the land blended with the memories of distant homelands, taking people back to the time when people who loved them cooked for them in a way that was meaningful and satisfying.

Food is about sense memories: it embodies our personal and social history, giving us a sense of place, of home…

A Lone Couple, a Desert Island, and Turtles

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Despite living in utter isolation on a desert island for 40 years, one inspirational couple has overcome disability and blindness to make a difference. PHOTO: BBC

Despite living in utter isolation on an island for 40 years, one couple has overcome disability and blindness to make a difference. PHOTO: BBC

Isn’t there a line about finding heroes in the most unlikely places? This is the setting of Daeng Abu’s and his wife Daeng Maida’s inspirational story: a desert island off the coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia, disabilities in Abu being blind and facing leprosy, their days spent raising sea turtles and speaking against the cyanide and dynamite fishing that is devastating Indonesia’s reef.

Neither knows how old they were when they entered their arranged marriage on nearby Pulau Pala (Nutmeg Island) – they currently believe they’re in their 80s – but Abu thinks he was older than 20 and Maida remembers it was the dry season. Her uncle fired three shots in the air; she walked over to his family’s home; Abu built a shack from bamboo and palm leaf; and married life began. Little did they know at the time – the couple was bound to become a rather unlikely pair of environmental activists.

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To Our Sisters In Bali, Thank You

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Ted Bali Sisters

A few months ago, with 11 minutes on stage in London at a regional TED event, these two poised and articulate, compelling Balinese sisters made a bold challenge. We commend their decisiveness and commitment, and will do our best to support them both in Bali and on our various home turfs:

Melati and Isabel Wijsen:

Our campaign to ban plastic bags in Bali

Plastic bags are essentially indestructible, yet they’re used and thrown away with reckless abandon.  Continue reading →

Wonky Produce!

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Asda’s wonky vegetable box contains items that are either oddly shaped, have growth cracks or are smaller or larger than average. Photo: Asda

In our vigilance on the waste reduction front, especially with regard to food, we are tracking efforts globally that we believe we, and our readers, will find interesting and useful.

We have long ago come to understand that the standard definition of beauty as it relates to fruits and vegetables–uniformity prized over flavor and nutrition–has done a huge disservice to the environment, not to mention to the consumers who suffer gastronomically as a result.

Thanks to the Guardian‘s Environment section for this news:

Asda puts UK’s first supermarket wonky veg box on sale

Box of imperfect in-season vegetables will feed a family of four for a week and costs £3.50 – 30% less than standard lines

The UK’s first supermarket ‘wonky vegetable’ box goes on sale on Friday, containing enough ugly potatoes and knobbly carrots to feed a family of four for an entire week for just £3.50. Continue reading →