Recently in the Conservation Category
Emmy-winning filmmaker Ken Burns’s new work “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” will begin showing on PBS September 27. It’s a six-episode series directed by Burns and written and co-produced by Dayton Duncan.
You can watch Backpacker magazine’s new 4-minute video interview with Burns here.
“Audubon’s Guidebook to New England soon helped me figure out the plant was bladder campion. Since that initial identification a dozen years ago, this flower has caught my eye everywhere in Maine, particularly on the edges of gravel roads in the north country. In short, one day it did not exist in my life, and forever after I have seen it far and wide.” Ken Allen says guidebooks aid the joy of discovery like almost no other piece of equipment. In Maine’s Kennebec Journal.
On Canada.com, Gary May travels to a rainforest lodge on Golfo Dulce on Costa Rica’s south west coast and finds himself literally living among the animals on the border of Piedras Blancas National Park. “No longer are the distinctive, ghostly roars of the howler monkeys coming from deep in the rainforest, they are right outside our cabin. We lie in bed, beneath our bug net, grateful we’d decided to pull the louvred doors closed the night before, after awakening that day to small animal droppings strewn across our floor.”
“As a former president of the Adirondack Mountain Club, he helped transform the organization from a modest recreational group into a statewide conservation advocacy force with more than 30,000 members. ‘Almy was really a renaissance man in many respects in the world of conservation,’ reflected Neil Woodworth, ADK’s executive director. ‘He was one of the most effective citizen advocates I’ve ever met.’” Justin Mason on DailyGazette.com.
“Our expedition of seven members climbs into a 4x4 and drives 30
minutes over dirt roads into the jungle. Arriving at the trailhead near
dusk, our local guide (we call him the human GPS) leads us on a six
kilometer hike deep into the heart of the forest. We
are mycologists in search of bioluminescent mushrooms, fungi that emit
light 24 hours per day but are best observed at night.” In southern Brazil, biologist Dennis E. Desjardin and friends hike in one of the last areas of old growth Atlantic Forest habitat, looking for answers as to why various rare fungi glow in the dark. On LiveScience.com.
"GrrlScientist" blogs on peer-reviewed research into the steady decline of migratory animals on her blog "Living the Scientific Life." The disappearance of migratory species leaves plenty of room for an explosion in the population of localized populations of rats and mice, she says. And if you like bugs, you'll like the data on the disappearance of songbirds: "But it isn't just fish whose numbers are steeply declining. Similar population declines are occurring among neotropical migratory
songbirds, whose total biomass currently is estimated at only 30,000 tons (which translates into 3,000-10,500 tons of insects consumed per day -- before they begin rearing their chicks)."