Several years ago, on a solo trek in northern India, I was joined by an eight-year-old boy wearing a tattered red vest. He startled me with a phrase in perfect English: “Excuse me, sir, but what is your hobby?” Startled, I stammered a brief but no doubt incomprehensible reply about astrophotography. The lad took my […]
Preparatory construction activities are reportedly underway on a massive dam project in China’s Yunnan province that will displace local tribespeople and wash away a section of the Yangtze River valley thought to be the location that inspired writer James Hilton’s Shangri-La. The Huaneng Group, China’s largest independent power producer, is managing the project, which has […]
A 15-year ban on the sale of ivory from illegally slaughtered elephants has boosted the popularity of fossil ivory. The ancient tusks of wooly mammoths, elephant-like creatures that lived between 20,000 and 5,000 years ago, have been recovered from sandbars near the Arctic Ocean, where they’d been carried by the Siberian tundra’s melting waters. Mammoth […]
The World Wildlife Fund recently released its biennial “10 Most Wanted Species” list, which draws attention to plants and animals that are endangered because of illegal trade and consumer demand. Such familiar species as the great white shark are listed alongside lesser-known species like the humphead wrasse, a coral-dependent fish whose lips are considered a […]
Scientists recently discovered new evidence of the trend toward global warming. Blue mussels, which normally favor warm water, were found 800 miles from the North Pole, where they have not been recorded for a thousand years. In Canada, Inuit reported seeing robins for the first time. “The climate is changing fast,” said Geir Johnsen of […]
