The Fight to Save Western Pacific Leatherbacks
Sand crunches beneath bare feet as the rangers walk along the beach. Voices muffled, they scan the tide line with flashlights, looking for the wide tire-tread marks left behind by…
Satellite Tracking Endangered Pacific Leatherback Turtles
“Turtle coming up, turtle coming up. Sector 25.” I’m sitting on a driftwood log, watching waves crash against the moonlit shore when the walkie-talkie crackles. It’s just after 9:30 pm;…
Women Lead Leatherback Conservation in the Solomon Islands
“In the past, we treated turtles like they were our enemy.” I’m sitting on the wooden verandah of the ranger station at Haevo, a narrow black-sand beach in the Solomon…
It Takes A Village – Cool Green Science
In the conservation world, much is made over exciting new scientific advances. NGOs pride themselves on being science-based, journalists write about new technologies that could help pull an endangered species…
To Save Pacific Turtles, Focus on Small-Scale Fisheries
Longline fisheries are a well-recognized threat to sea turtles. But a new study finds that local, small-scale fisheries cause significantly greater mortality, harvesting up to 97% of the ~12,000 turtles…
Flower “Extinct” Since 1902 Blooms
Bird watchers walk the woods with eyes up, binoculars in hand, notebooks or phone apps in back pockets. Tom Doubleday knows the exploration posture well. He’s practiced it for 60…
Spring Flowers Are Blooming Earlier in Greater Yellowstone
You walk into a grocery store only to find the shelves empty of your favorite food. Most of us have experienced this recently. It can be annoying, but not life…
Witches’ Broom and the Conservation of “Ugly”
In the 1960s, park managers cut and poisoned more than 6,000 trees at Craters of the Moon National Monument in southcentral Idaho. The trees were not invasive species. They posed…
What It’s Like to Document California’s Disappearing Kelp Forests
In the summer of 2022, documentary videographer Tyler Schiffman set out to capture an ecosystem that is rapidly fading away. Commissioned to create a short film on California’s struggling underwater…
Saving a Forest, Pandemic Edition
Tara Poloskey tentatively stepped towards the cliff’s edge, out of breath from a long hike at 7,000 feet. Her backpack full, an unwieldy 17-foot pole saw in her hands, she…