My friend Amanda possesses a heart of gold. She has always loved the environment and all the critters native to both her hometown in Virginia and her new home in Destin, Florida. She is alsoContinue reading
Category: alumni
alumni
Anne Martin
alumni, climate, conservation, environmental health, environmental policy, ESC, sustainability, travel, Undergraduate, water
alumni, climate, conservation, environmental health, environmental policy, ESC, sustainability, travel, Undergraduate, water
Cape Cod Salt Marshes
I woke up early, just as the sun was beginning to soften the night’s hold on the world. I ate breakfast watching the tree leaves reappear under a sky steadily filling with light. This isContinue reading
Unique Fundraising from the Yellowstone Park Foundation
Many of us must be involved in some aspect of fundraising as part of our job responsibilities, be it grant applications, content generation, or direct contact with individual donors. I’m no different, and as aContinue reading
As if humpbacks were not astounding enough…
As if humpbacks were not astounding enough, a small subset have learned to break their solitary habits and form cooperative bubble net feeding groups with distinct specialities. The screamer calls the cadence and petrified the herring with a high pitch squeal that causes them to ball up. Then fin flappers flash the white underside of their pectorals to add a bewildering stimulus while a bubble blower ascends from below creating a rising spiral of expanding effervescent gas that forms a net to contract the fearful fish. Then altogether these unrelated whales rise and engulf in their huge maws the school of fish taking up to 16,000gallons in a single gulp and straining the contents back across their baleen. Not only does this suggest these animals have culture but also that they are tool users not so unlike ourselves!
Straight from the reels of Jumanji…
Straight from the reels of Jumanji (but shrunk considerably, thank heavens) this carnivorous Sun Dew makes up for the fact that it can’t get nutrients from the acid rich peat bog by trapping and eating insects! Peat bogs locally called “Muskeg” make up some 10% of Southeast Alaska and form in a process called “paludification” when sphagnum moss colonize the dense forests. Sphagnum acidifies the soil and attracts more water which leaches out the minerals till they sink below and form a hard pan that traps more water, collects more acid, which grows more sphagnum until a bog with its hardy bog plants replace the forests. Bizarrely this often happens even on slopes. Only the churning of soil by trees falling seems to be able to stop it!
Anne Martin
alumni, conservation, environmental economics, environmental health, environmental policy, ESC, sustainability, travel, water
alumni, conservation, environmental economics, environmental health, environmental policy, ESC, sustainability, travel, water
At Home Realities
I hope that we’ll take what we saw in Rio as a reminder of our own domestic environmental policies and regulatory failures. I hope we’ll continue to work to do better. I hope the kind of activism and determination that culminated in the Clean Water Act will carry into the future, uplifted on a new generation committed to local, regional, and national activism.
Three Species of Rescued Sea Turtles
While at the local Gulfarium to film educational interviews about sea turtle monitoring, I had the opportunity to go “behind the scenes” to meet the rescued turtles currently recuperating in their C.A.R.E. center. As IContinue reading
Rescue in the Towers
I sat in my tent watching the sun sink down lower over the Cirque de Towers in the Wind River Range. I was beginning to worry about my boyfriend (Kipp) and his climbing partner (Garret).Continue reading
Releasing Four Sea Turtles on Okaloosa Island
A Gulfarium staff member carefully opened the plastic container, lifting a flapping Green Turtle into the morning sunlight along the Emerald Coast. Walking quickly, but carefully, she made her away across the beach sand andContinue reading
The Wild West
We drove out of the mountains from Banff, Alberta, and crossed the border back into the United States. The mountains with their snowy peaks had long given way to flat grasslands and a steady, darkContinue reading