Category: Saving Nature Collection

Biodiversity Needs You – and your Smartphone!

May 11, 2011 Stuart Pimm

Photograph of a coastal horned lizard about to be entered into INaturalist. Photo by Ken - ichi Ueda.

May 9, 2011

by Stuart Pimm

Biodiversity Needs You and Your Smartphone

Our knowledge of biodiversity is not good. We don’t know the names of most species. For the ones that we do, we don’t know where they once lived, let alone where they live now. It’s even worse for species that are rare, for they may soon not live anywhere.

Now, armed with your iPhone and a great new app, you — and I do mean you — can change all that.

First, the prosaic details. We have over a million scientific names for animals and about 350,000 names for flowering plants. There are probably another 15% more flowering plant species waiting to be discovered.

For animals — which are mostly insects — best guesses — and I do mean guesses! — involve several million. So, the great majority are unknown.

It gets worse. We have maps of geographic ranges for only a tiny fraction of species worldwide — birds, mammals, and amphibians.

For only some countries do we have some other species. The British, living on their cold, damp sceptred isle off the continent at the very bottom of the international league table of biodiversity, seem to have maps of just about everything. “Another Eden”, according to Shakespeare; perhaps, but they don’t have many species to worry about.

How do we produce those maps? The conventional way is to go to museums, look at the specimens there, and record where they were collected.

That’s so 19^th Century!

Now, the news. All this is about to change with that 21^st Century innovation — the smart phone — and a great new project that started when Dr. Scott Loarie of the Carnegie Institute for Science at Stanford, in California teamed up with Ken-ichi Ueda, a software developer in Silicon Valley.

Scott also lives in Silicon Valley, spends hours in front of a computer writing code, and fills out many of the boxes on the checklist of being a nerdy techie. So you have to watch my video of him: he isn’t.

In the field, he moves from flowers to birds to lizards with an enthusiasm that is instantly infectious. I’ve never met anyone who is so passionate about the outdoors of California and few with such a wide ranging knowledge of its natural history.

“I study the impact of land use change and climate change on biodiversity.”

Holding up a coastal horned lizard, (Phrynosoma coronatum) Scott asks:

If I wanted to know where this lizard survives and where it doesn’t, I’d go to a museum and look at all the specimens collected over the last 100 years or so. It used to live in most of the chaparral around here, in the Bay Area of San Francisco.”

“But this is one of those species that is rapidly disappearing. And we’re not exactly sure why. It may be climate change. It may be changes to the ants that make up its diet. It might be the urban sprawl that is isolating its habitat.”

“We need to know exactly where this species persists. And, we need more data.”

Scott’s solution is not an army of well-funded professionals with sophisticated equipment. That isn’t going to happen. He wants you — the citizen scientist and a piece of equipment you likely already own — your iPhone. And, of course the App.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

The simplest way to do things is to take a photo of an animal or plant, upload it to the web — at www.inaturalist.org — along with the location where you saw it.

That’s so late 20^th Century!

— not that I want to discourage you. Your smart phone, however, is technology straight from Star Trek. You point, you click, it takes a photo, it records your exact location using the build in GPS and the application uploads this to the web site.

My fellow Trekkies, will naturally sing Commander Data’s song “life forms, tiny little life forms … where are you?” while they do this.

Doing this (whether singing or not) helps with the problem as old as time — we all tend to put things off. After that long day in the field, it’s all too easy to forget. Now, you can record a species the moment you see it.

So what happens if I don’t know the name of my species, or am unsure? The world can help — putting the observation up means others can comment, help, discuss, argue, threatened duels with feather dusters at 50 paces over rival interpretations — all that kind of thing.

Bird people have many places to share their observations. It’s a great community tool, one that works well. Yes, birders make mistakes, or see something that they cannot identify, and make outrageous claims. We know so very much more about where bird species are found worldwide than we do for any other group of species, because citizen science is both nurturing and demanding.

In time, the collections of observations on iNaturalist are going to provide a unique record of where a given species lives. And with more time, we’ll understand more about how that “where” is changing.

iNaturalist also works “backwards,” too.

One can ask: what species am I likely to find on (say) Mount Diablo, in California — where I interviewed Scott?

When Scott first met Ken-ichi, iNaturalist was a social network for naturalists. Scott quickly persuaded Ken-ichi that beyond the potential of getting citizen scientists together with each other for fun was the chance to unite them with scientists to tackle one of the most pressing environmental issues of our age.

iNaturalist is intentionally subversive, in another way too. Scott told me.

What I think is so compelling about iNaturalist is that we are using these technologies — iPhones, apps — that are cutting us off from the natural world. Too often, these are keeping us indoors, narrowing our focus. Now we’re using them to get back out in nature. To the extent we can use this new tool to get people enjoying the outdoors, tuning in with the world around them, that’s a great thing!”

Categories: Research, Saving Nature Collection, Science, Technology

Exploration 101: The Dream Jobs Begin with a Slog

October 25, 2009 erinwilligan

October 25, 2009

Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm has a long and brilliant career as a scientist. Author of numerous research papers and books, he has given lectures in distinguished forums across the world. Yet he is never happier than as a teacher and mentor.

In this blog entry Pimm addresses what it takes to be a young explorer in the field, interviewing some of his protégés about the high and low points. He finds that much of the excitement and challenges of getting started have not changed over the past forty years. It all begins with a willingness to pay your dues.

Exploration 101: The Dream Job Begins with a Slog

By Stuart L. Pimm

Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

The Seven Stars is not the oldest pub in Derby, England. Nearby, the Dophin dates from 1580–a hundred years earlier. But in the late 1960s, the Seven Stars served draft Newcastle Brown ale. It was worth hitchhiking home to Derby from Oxford at the weekend. Beer in the south of England was terrible.

As I elbowed my way to the bar, a vaguely familiar face introduced himself, a conversation ensued, and seven months later, I drove with him and ten others overland to Afghanistan.

My career as an explorer had begun.

That it almost ended that summer–I came back so sick that I had to miss a year of university–is another story.

The story I write here is how one starts a career in exploration–and in this century, rather than in the last one, when I started mine.

So I turned to three remarkable young explorers: Dr. Luke Dollar is a National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer–and a former student of mine. The other two are undergraduates at Duke–Varsha Vijay and Ciara Wirth.

“How did you get started,” I asked them.

Luke was first. “I spent three years cleaning up lemur poop at the Duke Lemur Center. I ingratiated myself in every way with Professor Patricia Wright and eventually was invited to do equally menial stuff in Madagascar.” (Like me, Pat is a former member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration.)

“I was the first up, the last down, and at the end of the day the dirtiest, most tired, most sweaty of everyone.”

From that experience, Luke returned year-after-year, working first for Pat, then on his own, with the island’s largest predator–the fossa.

Almost every year, Luke takes teams to his study sites with Earthwatch–an organization which people pay to do field research for a couple of weeks each northern summer.

Each year, Luke needs the same kind of assistance that Pat needed–someone who is prepared to start by doing the very basic stuff in the field and what is often quite numbing organization to get there.

(I remembered from the first expedition I led, how much time we spent on calculating how many rolls of toilet paper we’d need for 14 people in the field for several months. We didn’t think it would be easy to buy in Afghanistan.)

Varsha got her start helping Luke for one summer in Madagascar.

Then came Ecuador. This was a chance to work with Ciara Wirth, other students from Duke, and Save America’s Forests. Varsha did not hesitate.

Ciara and Varsha worked with Waorani Indians in a remote part of the Amazon.

I told them: “You fly to Quito, then fly across the Andes into the Amazon lowlands, then take a bus for a day — or longer if it gets stuck in the mud — then two days by canoe.”

“Madagascar, the Amazon … two of the most amazing places on Earth! How could I say no?” Varsha replied. And after the first summer there, she took a year off from Duke to continue her work in the field. Ciara came back for a second summer too.

“What were the high points and what were the low points?” I asked them.

“Food”–was near the top of Varsha’s list. ”Growing up in a Hindu family, we did not eat meat. Going from that to eating monkey parts and every kind of rodent was a challenge.”

And the language. Ciara had traveled extensively with her very adventurous parents and spoke Spanish. Varsha did not. Remarkably, both have learned the language of the Woarani Indians.

Initially, they did so in a remarkable way–by talking over Skype in the evenings whenever their Woarani guide, Manuela, came into Puyo and would log onto the computer in an Internet café. The transition from rain forest nomad to using the latest communications technology happens within a generation.

“How did you make friends?”

Varsha’s story was that she regularly joined the women in the traditional villages in making chica–manioc “beer.” “You chew the manioc for a few minutes, spit it back into the bowl, grab another mouthful, and start chewing again.” And yes, it’s a communal bowl.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

“So what went wrong?” All of us have stories of bad experiences.

Ciara’s project depending on mapping–and the essential tools were the GPS units she had taken with her. She left them in a taxi–threatening the viability of the entire project.

After a frantic night and a visit to the police station–” a scary place at night”–they found the taxi and within hours were on their way.

When they arrived, “it was one of the greatest experiences Varhsa and I had the entire summer–a really beautiful community,” Ciara said.

Through all the challenges, all the things that go wrong, Luke and Varsha were all excited about going back into the field. And Ciara is there now, working in Africa.

Luke’s final advice: “Keep your mind open–and be prepared for anything.”

Categories: Madagascar, Saving Nature Collection

Why Boycott Madagascar’s Rosewood and Ebony?

October 6, 2009 Stuart Pimm

Photo of baobab trees in Madagascar by Stuart L. Pimm

October 6, 2009

Representatives of Malagasy civil society, conservation and development organizations and the international community issued a statement today lamenting the ongoing destruction of Madagascar’s last fragments of forest for the illegal harvest and export of precious woods. Consumers of rosewood and ebony products are asked to check their origin, and boycott those made of Malagasy wood. The full statement is at the bottom of this page.

Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm writes about his observations of the diversity in Madagascar and how the current pillaging of the country’s natural heritage threatens not only to destroy decades of conservation work, but also ruin the one chance that communities adjacent to national parks have to escape poverty.

The Call to Boycott Madagascar’s Rosewood and Ebony Explained

By Stuart L. Pimm

Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

Madagascar has long been the worst country to be a tree. In the last year, things have got even nastier.

“To how many continents have you traveled with National Geographic,” people ask me. “Eight,” I reply with complete confidence. “But there are only seven continents!” I will not win the National Geographic Bee. I am unmoved, nonetheless.

Madagascar is the eighth “continent,” and no one who loves the great diversity of life on Earth would disagree. Almost everything a naturalist sees in Madagascar is unique to the place.

There are the lemurs, of course. But even to a birdwatcher, broadly familiar kinds of birds are so special to the island that they must have “Madagascar” in front of their names: Madagascar partridge, Madagascar pochard, Madagascar buttonquail–and on down a long list. It turns out that most of these birds are not all that familiar–they are peculiarly from Madagascar.

Simply, Madagascar is an entirely isolated world. It has landscapes that could be the sets for science fiction movies, and one odd lemur, the aye-aye, that is too incredible to belong in one.

Most of Madagascar’s trees–and other plants–are also unique.

Sadly, Madagascar is a wretchedly bad place to be a tree, even in the best of times. Most of the country has been deforested. A coup earlier this year ejected a democratically elected president. In the lawlessness that has followed since, the remaining trees are getting an even worse deal than they have in the past.

Along with other members of National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration (CRE) a few years ago, we flew from the capital city, Antananarivo, towards the northeast end of the island–the Masoala peninsula, a place of exceptional diversity.

But almost as soon as we took off there was smoke in the air–and on the ground beneath us we could see fires, small and large. I know from looking at satellite images that many are large enough to be seen from space.

I first traveled to Madagascar with my then graduate student, Luke Dollar–now a National Geographic emerging explorer. On the ground, the problem was obvious. To clear their fields or to give a short flush of nutrients for the grasses on which their cattle feed, villagers set fire to the land.

The remnant patches of forest–often in national parks–would go up in flames too as the fire spread into them. Wherever we traveled, we saw forest edges that had been recently burned.

“Why should they care,” Luke asked. “They get no benefit from parks.” Rural areas of Madagascar contain some of the poorest people on Earth.

Luke, and my fellow CRE member, Professor Patricia Wright, spend their energies ensuring that poor people near Madagascar’s parks do benefit from the sanctuaries.

Luke founded a small restaurant near one park, for example. The committee ate there during our visit. (Rice and beans, French fries and eggs–a definite improvement on the food we ate during our field work in earlier years.)

With an income stream from the restaurant, the children in the village were all in school. Literacy is the first step on the ladder out of poverty.

Pat’s efforts in Madagascar are even more extensive. Near the Ranomafana National Park her lemur research helped establish, she’s created the research station where almost every young conservation biologist–Malagasy or foreign–goes to learn the craft.

“I watched an aye-aye from the dining room of the research center,” she told me on my first visit to the facility, bursting with obvious pride and excitement.

An entire community has come to depend on the benefits of Ranomafana and the money it generates from visitors.

All this makes what is happening now in Madagascar so tragic.

Reports from the field make it clear that in the last year there has been a surge in logging inside protected forests. The trees involved are mostly “rosewood” and “ebony,” Peter Raven told me.

Peter is the chairman of National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration and has overseen many National Geographic grants to local and international researchers in Madagascar.

In his other capacity as president of Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter is responsible for a large staff in Madagascar. Missouri Botanical Garden runs a multitiered botanical training program in the country, with a network of local collectors working in parks and reserves.

Peter Raven is truly in the middle of the country’s research and conservation.

Rosewood and Ebony

I asked Peter for more information about the rosewood and ebony trees, for these common names are misleading.

“Rosewood is Dalbergia, a legume, and it has some 47 endemic species in Madagascar, and Diospyros, ebony, which is also being logged, we now believe has nearly 200 species–a remarkable array of endemics in each case,” he told me. (“Endemics” are those species found only in the country.)

I’ve not seen the illegal logging firsthand in Madagascar. But I know the way it works in other countries. The essential ingredients are a good river and bad policing. You select a tree near a river, fell it with a chain saw, float it downriver. There will always be someone to pay for the chain saw, so long as he doesn’t get caught.

So who buys these trees? Try typing “Madagascar rosewood” into Google. The first couple of hundred entries are almost all about guitars. And I gave up checking after that.

There’s a lot of money to be made in poaching trees that provide beautiful wood that we desire. Do you know where your guitar came from?

There was a time when people thought that leopards looked best as skins draped over expensive women. Then we learned that they never look more beautiful than when they’re in their natural habitat.

I hope there will be a time when we’ll agree that there is nothing so lovely as a tree. (I borrowed that.) Except, perhaps for the lemur sitting in it.

But more than anything, there is nothing more precious to behold than the children in the schools that tourist dollars build.

Text of statement released today by conservation groups regarding forests and export of wood from Madagascar:

Malagasy government’s decree for precious wood export will unleash further environmental pillaging

Recently Madagascar’s transitional government issued two contradictory decrees: first, the exploitation of all precious woods was made illegal, but then a second allowed the export of hundreds of shipping containers packed with this illegally harvested wood.

Madagascar’s forests have long suffered from the abusive exploitation of precious woods, most particularly rosewoods and ebonies, but the country’s recent political problems have resulted in a dramatic increase in their exploitation.

This activity now represents a serious threat to those who rely on the forest for goods and services and for the country’s rich, unique and highly endangered flora and fauna.

Precious woods are being extracted from forests by roving and sometimes violent gangs of lumbermen and sold to a few powerful businessmen for export.

Madagascar has 47 species of rosewood and over 100 ebony species that occur nowhere else, and their exploitation is pushing some to the brink of extinction.

Those exploiting the trees are also trapping endangered lemurs for food, and the forests themselves are being degraded as trees are felled, processed and dragged to adjacent rivers or roads for transport to the coast. No forest that contains precious woods is safe, and the country’s most prestigious nature reserves and favoured tourist destinations, such as the Marojejy and Masoala World Heritage Sites and the Mananara Biosphere Reserve, have been the focus of intensive exploitation.

Currently thousands of rosewood and ebony logs, none of them legally exploited, are stored in Madagascar’s east coast ports, Vohémar, Antalaha, and Toamasina. The most recent decree will allow their export and surely encourage a further wave of environmental pillaging.

Malagasy civil society, conservation and development organisations and the international community are united in lamenting the issue of the most recent decree, in fearing its consequences and in questioning its legitimacy. Consumers of rosewood and ebony products are asked to check their origin, and boycott those made of Malagasy wood.

October 6, 2009

CAS California Academy of Science

CI Conservation International

DWCT Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

EAZA European Association of Zoos and Aquaria

ICTE Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments

MBG Missouri Botanical Garden

MFG Madagascar Fauna Group

The Field Museum, Chicago

Dr Claire Kremen, University of California, Berkeley

Dean Keith Gilless, University of California, Berkeley

Robert Douglas Stone, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

WASA World Association of Zoos and Aquariums

WCS Wildlife Conservation Society

WWF World Wide Fund for Nature

Zoo Zürich

Categories: Madagascar, Saving Nature Collection

Pythons in Florida Everglades

September 6, 2009 Stuart Pimm 1 Comment

Burmese python caught in Everglades National Park Photo courtesy NPS

September 6, 2009

By Stuart Pimm

Special Contributor to National Geographic Voices

Pythons have invaded the Everglades, where they flourish in warm, wet habitat that has an abundant buffet of native species to feast on.

The giant snakes were imported to North America as pets, but released or escaped into Florida’s wetlands they are proliferating, challenging alligators for the top of the food chain, and potentially positioning themselves to invade much more of the United States.

Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm has dedicated his life to protecting species–but an infestation of 16-foot alien snakes in Florida’s iconic Everglades National Park has got him wondering how to eradicate this one. He is worried about the impact on indigenous species–and what could happen if pet owners release other big reptiles into the watery wilderness.

Everglades National Park, Florida

Most April mornings for the last 15 years have started well before dawn, with a cup of coffee and the drive into Everglades National Park. We’re in the helicopter while the sun is still below the horizon. No brilliant conversation at this hour.

Through my headset I hear, “Seven eight four, one six three bravo hotel.” A women’s voice echoes, “seven eight four, one six three bravo hotel.” Our pilot replies, “heading west from the Beard Center to 80 46 30, 25, 41 15, four souls on board, two and half hours of fuel.” The women’s voice repeats the numbers.

“Roger that, thank you,” and the conversation ends. There is no chit chat. We let the Park know where we’re going just in case the helicopter breaks down–which happens, but not often.

The sun is still not up and the colors are muted. The stands of pine trees are dark green, the prairies are dark buff. There’s a mist over them, gray in this light, but thin, translucent, rumpled by the most gentle breeze. Anything stronger would destroy the veil. It’s thin enough, sometimes, that I will stand with my head above it when we land.

The helicopter leaves and I listen in complete solitude. There’s a faint “bzzzz” to the north, so I check “one” on my clipboard. The Cape Sable sparrow– one of the rarest birds in North America and one found only in the Florida Everglades, is at home.

I know what you want to ask. Alone–and a very long, tough walk from the nearest road–what happens if I run into an alligator (there are lots of them), or a cottonmouth (you smell them first), or a Burmese python? A Burmese python?

The alligator and cottonmouth belong in the Everglades, but I really don’t relish the prospect of meeting a 4-meter (13-foot) constrictor, curled up on her eggs, as I wait for the helicopter to return to pick me up. I’m just not a snake person. And the pythons do not belong there.

There are snake people, of course. And the problem is that there are people who thought they were snake people, but grew out of it. Well, the snake grew them out of it, more correctly.

One of the Ten Largest Snakes in the World

The Burmese python grows to be one of the ten largest snakes in the world. Without doubt, it’s a beautiful animal. And a very popular pet. Type the name into Google and you immediately get advice on how to care for one.

It also comes with a warning too few people heed: They can grow to more than 5 meters long (16 feet) and weigh more than 80 kilos (200 pounds). And you have to feed them. And they get very large very quickly.

What starts out as a cute, mouse-eating novelty, can become a liability in a couple of years.

I talked to Dr. Nicolette Cagle, a Duke University colleague who did her Ph. D on snakes. Her husband, Mark–a vet–was an essential part of the conversation: It took both of them to hold Boa, their pet boa, as can be seen in the photo below.

Boas are snakes related to pythons and, like pythons, grow quickly to a large size. “They’re fascinating creatures,” Nicolette told me, “so many people are afraid of them–but there’s no reason to be.

For the most part, they’re even-tempered–we like to show her to school groups.”

Nicolette and Mark have had Boa since she was just over a meter (four feet) long. But handling such a large snake requires dedication.

So, what to do if you are unable to manage such a large reptile?

If you live in South Florida, the temptation often proves irresistible–you let your pet go.

Many people have done this, even though this is against the law and there are humane alternatives. The result is that today the Everglades is home to perhaps thousands of Burmese pythons. And they’re breeding.

It’s not just pythons that are immigrants in the Everglades. The waters of this unique freshwater marsh have been populated by a veritable United Nations of tropical fish species. They too were dumped by owners who tired of them.

There are green iguanas across southern Florida, too–and the list of alien species that have taken up residence in the Sunshine State goes on.

The damage that such invasive species cause is huge and, in the Everglades, many native species could be at risk. Alien species of all kinds are eating native species, or their food. Pythons could be emerging as the Everglades’ alpha predator.

On the far side of the world, the brown treesnake was responsible for eating all of Guam’s birds to extinction in the wild. That’s what can happen when an alien predator is introduced into a habitat where it has no natural enemies. (You can read more about the Guam situation on the USGS Web site.)

Python hunters have been recruited to go after the snakes in Florida. But even with the help of snake-sniffing dogs, the bag has not been impressive thus far.

What I do for a living is to understand why species go extinct– and what we can do to prevent extinction. In this case, we want to know how to make Burmese pythons extinct in the U.S. wilderness, somewhere they do not belong.

So what are this species’ vulnerabilities?

I talked to Dr. Lucas Joppa, another Duke University snake expert. “These pythons have an amazing advantage in the Everglades,” he told me. “They are superb predators on the land–and they are superb predators in water, too.”

A weakness, however, may be the python’s need for warm places to lay its eggs. After giving birth, female snakes remain with their eggs for over a month to keep them warm,” Joppa added.

Joppa thinks one way to control pythons in the Everglades may be to provide them with a kind of battery, or solar-powered electric blanket. “Create somewhere nice and warm to lay eggs and that’s where mother python will be in the breeding season.”

Ironically, pythons are threatened with extinction in the wild, Joppa noted. “They’re hunted for their skins and for their meat.”

Hiss-kabobs

Even if python stir-fry, or my personal suggestion, hiss-kabobs, might not catch on, the skins could create interesting incentives for python hunting.

Perversely, because the snake is listed by CITES — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species — trading python skins internationally is illegal.

Burmese pythons top the list of reptiles for sale by pet dealers, but they are not the only species on the list.

Boas are a popular pet and have the same size issues as pythons. Are they and other big snakes also headed for the Everglades?

I worry that the worst is to come.

Categories: Florida, Research, Saving Nature Collection, Science

Biodiversity Needs You – and your Smartphone!

Biodiversity Needs You and Your Smartphone

Now, armed with your iPhone and a great new app, you — and I do mean you — can change all that.

That’s so 19^th Century!

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

That’s so late 20^th Century!

iNaturalist also works “backwards,” too.

Exploration 101: The Dream Jobs Begin with a Slog

Exploration 101: The Dream Job Begins with a Slog

Why Boycott Madagascar’s Rosewood and Ebony?

The Call to Boycott Madagascar’s Rosewood and Ebony Explained

Rosewood and Ebony

Malagasy government’s decree for precious wood export will unleash further environmental pillaging

Pythons in Florida Everglades

Pythons have invaded the Everglades, where they flourish in warm, wet habitat that has an abundant buffet of native species to feast on.

Everglades National Park, Florida

One of the Ten Largest Snakes in the World

So, what to do if you are unable to manage such a large reptile?

So what are this species’ vulnerabilities?

Hiss-kabobs

Help Us Have a Bigger Impact

before you fly

Sign-Up for Our Newsletter

Biodiversity Needs You – and your Smartphone!

Biodiversity Needs You and Your Smartphone

Now, armed with your iPhone and a great new app, you — and I do mean you — can change all that.

That’s so 19th Century!

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

That’s so late 20th Century!

iNaturalist also works “backwards,” too.

Exploration 101: The Dream Jobs Begin with a Slog

Exploration 101: The Dream Job Begins with a Slog

Why Boycott Madagascar’s Rosewood and Ebony?

The Call to Boycott Madagascar’s Rosewood and Ebony Explained

Rosewood and Ebony

Malagasy government’s decree for precious wood export will unleash further environmental pillaging

Pythons in Florida Everglades

Pythons have invaded the Everglades, where they flourish in warm, wet habitat that has an abundant buffet of native species to feast on.

Everglades National Park, Florida

One of the Ten Largest Snakes in the World

So, what to do if you are unable to manage such a large reptile?

So what are this species’ vulnerabilities?

Hiss-kabobs

Help Us Have a Bigger Impact

before you fly

Sign-Up for Our Newsletter

That’s so 19^th Century!

That’s so late 20^th Century!