Survival International’s Sarah Shenker visits Guaviry; a Guarani community under siege in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Three gunshots. Bang, bang, bang. The night was pitch black. It was impossible to know where the gunmen were. “They’re sending a message,” Genito Guarani said. “They’re watching our every move.” Like everyone at…
Students at Foulks Ranch Elementary School, with teacher and National Geographic Education Fellow Jim Bentley, completed the final phase of their Geo-Inquiry project to address the question, “How can we make water more accessible and reduce plastic waste in our parks and school?”. The students helped Cosumnes Community Services District park administrators install a bottle-filling station…
Australasia is renowned for their unique and unusual animals, and their birdlife is no exception. In Australasia you can see birds like Emus, Cassowaries and Logrunners. Australia and New Zealand are endemism hotspots, with 71% of New Zealand’s birds being unique to the islands. This is largely because they have been separated from other continents…
Solipsism is the belief in the idea that my self and my mind is the only thing that I can be certain of. If this is something people struggle with, then a path to overcoming it would be found in the last two days of the Explorers Festival. This past Saturday a main question was…
If yesterday was a day in which we focused on the connections and the connective tissue that we share by being part of this planet and thanks to our work at National Geographic, then today is the day that we identify some of the catalysts, some of the sparks, that will be ignited. On the…
Africa is home to some 2341 bird species, 67% of which are endemic to the continent. We were overwhelmed by the number of photographs submitted this week! It seems that many have been enchanted by Africa’s amazing birdlife. As Rudyard Kipling said: “One cannot resist the lure of Africa.” We invite you to join us on…
We are always part of interrelated processes of momentary events. That is what one of my mentors in college used to explain to us, his students, during the Buddhist Philosophy course. He was teaching us about the interconnectivity of it all, according to a buddhist system of thought called abhidharma. Nothing is independent. Everything is interdependent….
By Alistair Leuner The lion prides in the greater Kruger National Park have a habit of surprising people, but this time they really turned what we know about the species on its head. The textbooks tell us how lions should behave. But in truth, their expected actions are often completely disproven by what we see…
Returning to sea for the first time in nearly a decade brought back memories of the wildest three weeks of my life — when we sailed Mir down the Red Sea in July 2010 during her maiden voyage from Malta to Singapore and were faced with suffocating heat, sun-blotting dust, grumpy sharks, and the very…
Wild Bird Trust presents the Top 25 Birds of Europe. Europe is a fairly species poor continent, with about 700 birds recorded. European bird populations are under severe threat from human development, particularly agriculture. A recent review found one third of all birds in Europe to be threatened. Even common birds like the European Turtle…
By Safina Center Staff Pebble Limited Partnership is the mineral exploration corporation behind a proposed project to build a gold and copper mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska, imperiling the world’s last great sockeye salmon run. Environmentalists, scientists and local residents have criticized the project as a wish for certain destruction of this…
Lately, the news about immigrant children have been bleak. The stories have been controversial, heartbreaking, and deeply disturbing. When one story, a story about immigrant children being lost by the US government, proved to be untrue, there was a moment of hope: perhaps all the horrors along the US-Mexico border that we had heard of…
By Marlene Cimons Brown anoles are one of the most successful species on the planet. These resilient creatures have settled throughout a large portion of the Western Hemisphere, even landing in such distant places as Hawaii and Singapore by hitching rides across the Pacific in shipments of ornamental plants. In the southeastern United States, they…
When I was growing up in Colombia I had the privilege of learning the art of how to be a diver. I became a skin diver amidst the coral reefs of San Andrés island, a scuba diver whilst exploring the crystal waters of Providencia Island, and I earned my advanced scuba license with one of…
Al crecer en Colombia tuve el privilegio de aprender el arte de cómo bucear. Usé mi snorkel entre los corales de la isla de San Andrés, buceé explorando las aguas de la isla de Providencia, y me convertí en buzo avanzado con uno de mis amigos de la niñez en Barú, cerca de Cartagena. Pero…
