On a warm, humid December night, a female leatherback hauls herself from the waves. She labors up the beach, one heave at a time, to lay her eggs within the dark, volcanic sands of the Solomon Islands. After just a few hours on shore, she’ll slip back beneath the ocean’s surface and begin a journey … Read more
Lizzie McLeod laughs at the memory: She’s rushing from her job at a local bank to The Nature Conservancy’s office in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. There, she’d spend her lunch hour in a dark room/closet scanning a marine biologist’s old slides to digital. McLeod, now The Nature Conservancy’s Global Director for Oceans, has fond memories of those … Read more
The rich lands and waters of Colombia’s department (state) of Vichada are valued around the world for their biodiversity, which in Colombia, includes the local cultures and communities. La Primavera, one of the state’s six municipalities, is located in the heart of what the indigenous Sikuani Peoples called ‘witzara,’ and takes its name from the Spanish … Read more
Off the coast of Brazil, on an island called Alcatrazes once used by the Brazilian government as a naval shooting range, lives a tree frog the size of the top joint of your thumb. It’s on the brink of extinction. Or it was, until a group of conservationists rallied to start a captive breeding program … Read more
The boat emerges from a wall of fog into a magical scene. Pods of dolphins swim in our wake. Several humpback whales spout nearby. Flocks of Wilson’s storm petrels – small sea birds – fly all around us. We take a moment to take it all in. Then it’s time for action. Carl LoBue, oceans … Read more
The striped skunk is likely one of the most acquainted mammals of North America, immediately recognizable by sight or odor. However there are 9 different species of skunks, and arguably the cutest of the bunch is the noticed skunks. There are three very comparable species of noticed skunk that stay over a variety of the … Read more
It’s not every day that a young female scientist is honored alongside David Attenborough and E. O. Wilson. But that’s exactly what happened to TNC scientist Suzana Bandeira, who earlier this year was immortalized in Linnean binomial when a new Angolan skink species was named in her honor. “It’s such an honor,” says Bandeira, speaking … Read more
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 is an emerging leader in conservation and storytelling. The morning air feels cold along the river’s edge as I watch the fish in front of … Read more
Yes, you read that right. In the forests of Chile’s Valdivian Coastal Reserve, there is a small mammal known, in English, as the “long-nosed Chilean shrew opossum.” In Spanish, it’s comadrejita trompuda, and to scientists, it’s Rhyncholestes raphanarus. In all languages, this fascinating relict marsupial is the last of its kind—the only known living member … Read more
Digicam traps in Chile’s Valdivian Coastal Reserve and adjoining Alerce Costero Nationwide Park just lately documented a big enhance in websites the place the long-nosed Chilean shrew opossum—a marsupial largely unchanged for thousands and thousands of years—is understood to be current. The Gist The long-nosed shrew opossum (Rhyncholestes raphanarus) is the one surviving member of … Read more