juvenile male – Tacacori, Costa Rica
A Lone Couple, a Desert Island, and Turtles
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.
From Behind the Wheel: Spice It Up
Mattanchery, Kochi, India
Bird of the Day: Pheasant-tailed Jacana
Mysore, Karnataka
To Our Sisters In Bali, Thank You
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!
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
Bird of the Day: American Redstart
male – Tacacori, Costa Rica
Spotted Owls, Intangible Heritage, Future Fortunes
About one minute in to Mr. Ziermann’s story, he explains how his intent to pursue a life of timber logging in Oregon was waylaid by the “rules and regulations” (he did not sound happy about these) to protect the spotted owl in the American northwest. I recommend taking five minutes with the video here, and a moment more below if you want my two cents on it.
A Fraught Search for Succession in Craftsmanship
Video by Andrew PlotskyGeorge Ziermann has been making handmade boots for over 40 years.
Bird of the Day: Peregrine Falcon
Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat
Hatching the ‘Third Eye’
The first tuatara hatchling has been born outside of its native New Zealand. PHOTO: Chester Zoo
Discoveries excite us, an event that defies all odds even more so. Like the hatching of this tuatara outside its native of New Zealand.
After decades of work by a dedicated team at Chester Zoo in England, the first tuatara hatchling has been born outside of its native New Zealand.
“Breeding tuatara is an incredible achievement,” says Isolde McGeorge, the zoo’s tuatara keeper since 1977. “They are notoriously difficult to breed and it’s probably fair to say that I know that better than most as it has taken me 38 years to get here.”
Coffee Going Strong at Xandari
When I got back to Xandari last year in June, I posted a couple photos of the Caturra plot, the Borbón plot, and the bagged seedlings. Since then, all the plants have grown quite a bit, and we’ve gotten a strong yield of cherries–and therefore coffee beans–even though the plants were only a year old in the ground. In fact, many of the plants of both varietals are experiencing a second round of flowers despite the dry season: climate change is putting the plants’ phenology out of whack, and so some shrubs even have cherries and flowers growing at the same time, which normally would never happen. The bees are certainly happy though! Continue reading
How Much Does an Elephant Eat?
An elephant takes in a meal at Elephant’s World, Thailand. PHOTO: Jay Simpson
Our love for pachyderms has found multiple expressions on this blog. With us now journeying with Asian Oasis in Thailand and Kerala as home, this love links our efforts in both these lands, serving as common ground for all that we hope to do in tandem with nature. For all that we’ve penned on elephants, we’ve not stopped to think what or rather how much food keeps their giant souls (and stomachs) happy.
Both captive and wild elephants eat a lot, but what else would you expect from one of the largest land animals on the planet? Wild Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) can spend an average of 16-18 hours of every day eating. In the wild they forage for food, constantly searching for roots, small trees, bamboo, grasses, and any other edible plants.
Bird of the Day: Summer Tanager
male – Tacacori, Costa Rica
Israel to India, To Build Forests
Sadhana Forest shows local people in India, Haiti, and Kenya how to plant trees in dry regions – and improve their lives. PHOTO: Sadhana
Do you believe in a literary cosmos? I do. In the seemingly innocuous collision of two pieces of writing SO removed from each other that they are all that similar. Two articles – one found last evening for work, one chanced upon during the routine Instagram surf on the way to work. One standing out in the mayhem of a news feed; the incredible story of an Israeli man and his wife moving to India in 2003 and buying 70 acres of barren land. To build, sustain a forest. Reafforestation, to be clear. The other titled The Builder’s High. Yes, I’m ‘building’ this up.
What We Are Made Of
Water and light… History and tradition… The patina of layered paint on classic four-part doors, and sun-faded signs help inspire the Xandari Harbour color palette.
The design brief was simple: honor history, but be not a slave to it. Embrace the fresh language of Indian aesthetics while celebrating the materials of the past.
Two entrances are here to welcome you. Choose classic – Choose modern. They both lead inside.
Come see!
Bird of the Day: Shikra
Sivarpanam Palace, Tamil Nadu
El Jefe, Sole Wild USA Jaguar
One may be the loneliest number, but it is not a hopeless number, we hope. Thanks to the Atlantic for this story:
There are about 15,000 jaguars living in the wild today. They are solitary creatures, preferring to live and hunt alone. But the one living and hunting in the United States takes the word “loner” to another level: The jaguar, nicknamed “El Jefe,” is the only known wild jaguar in the country.
El Jefe, which means “the boss” in Spanish, made his public debut Wednesday in video footage released by the Seattle-based Conservation CATalyst and the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. The brief clip shows the big cat roaming the grassy forest floor of the Santa Rita Mountains, outside Tucson, navigating rocky creeks, and just doing jaguar-y things: Continue reading
The Sunny Road Ahead
Wattway panels (treehugger.com)
What do you imagine when you think of a sunny road? Probably not anything resembling a landscape as literally solar as what you would find northwest of Amsterdam in the town of Krommenie, or soon enough in France.
Walking In on the Sari
Pink silk thread on the loom
Golden thread to be woven into patterns in between the sari
Pattern in progress
The jacquard fitted to the loom.
The weaver.
Threading the gold.
The right side of the pattern.
Walk. That’s my one-word gospel for all who will listen in on the best way to discover. Meander. Be curious, the good kind. Because stories wait around corners, discoveries often plonk themselves on one-way streets. And some are found in messy backrooms of squeaky clean shops lined with mannequins and smiles. Like this woven tale of the people, history, and fabric that go into the making of the Indian drape. There’s more than just five yards to the sari, trust me.
Mathematically Inclined Plant Life
We pore the Science section of the New York Times each Tuesday, looking for stories that seem intriguing, and therefore (however much a stretch related to the “fascination with nature”) relevant to our conservation message. We rely on many publications with online outlets for such stories, but always stop at a certain point with stories that simply get us to ick, or which lead to implications not inherently appropriate to a company that operates lodging establishments around the world.
Nonetheless, we read even those stories that make us wince–in the spirit of eat your vegetables, in the interest of learning–but there are some phenomena we promise never to subject our readers to. Not that we do not see the value in understanding such things, but we can only stand so much ick in a day.
