Saving Dixie: 24 Hours Caring for a Wallaby Joey
The crows had eaten her eyes by the time we found her. Splayed on the road’s shoulder, the agile wallaby is about the size of a small labrador. There’s no…
Bringing Beavers Back to Britain
This story is part of a series designed to introduce the perspectives of alumni from the The Nature Conservancy and National Geographic Society’s global youth externship program. Each guest author…
Scientists Re-Discover Giant Rat Not Seen in 30+ Years
Like many moments in field science, it came down to a lucky accident. A team of scientists and local villagers were conducting a biological survey on Mt. Sasari, a cloud-forest…
the Long-Nosed Chilean Shrew Opossum
Camera traps in Chile’s Valdivian Coastal Reserve and adjacent Alerce Costero National Park recently documented a significant increase in sites where the long-nosed Chilean shrew opossum—a marsupial largely unchanged for…
Crested Rats? Hairy Porcupines? 7 of the World’s Coolest Rodents
As a kid at scout camp, I feared late-night visits to the outhouse. The wooden structure was covered in impressive gnaw marks, left there by a North American porcupine drawn…
Photographing Eels in the Dark
American eels are cryptic. They’re often confused with snakes. (They’re actually elongated fish.) They move in the dark, often unseen. They live much of their lives in rivers in the…
Overlooked Native Fish in National Parks
I’m on a quest to catch a fish in each of the 50 U.S. states—and to use each adventure as a means to explore conservation, the latest fisheries research and…
50 Fish, 50 States: Bartram’s Bass
I’m on a quest to catch a fish in each of the 50 U.S. states – and to use each adventure as a means to explore conservation, the latest fisheries…
Freshwater Migratory Fish are in Trouble All Over the World
Published in advance of World Fish Migration Day (2024), the Living Planet Index finds monitored populations of the world’s migratory freshwater fish species have, on average, declined by 81% between…
Borax Lake Chub: Conserving a High Desert Survivor
We pass signs warning against swimming and wading in the lake. For good reason. The waters here are high in dissolved arsenic and heavy metals. In short, the lake is…