Fulbright National Geographic Stories

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Quick Stop at the Petrel Station

I drove through Punakaiki recently. Once a year this west coast town holds a festival to welcome the Westland petrel back home to New Zealand after its annual sojourn to South American waters. Amid a weekend of music and revelry, ...

World Seabird Twitter Conference

The fourth annual World Seabird Twitter Conference took place over this past week, with seabird researchers all over the globe chiming in around the clock for three days straight. You don’t need a Twitter account to peruse the presentations: #...

The Glorious Primitive Crane Fly

(Patagonia’s Untold Stories)   Scraping sand grains and pebbles for nutrients, it has wandered the river bed for ten months.  After hiding from predators under submerged rocks it is time to leave the safety of the river behind. Among ...

Seabird Riches on the Poor Knights Islands

In the far north of New Zealand lie the rugged Poor Knights Islands, off-limits to terrestrial tourism, but surrounded by a stunning marine reserve containing one of Jacques Cousteau’s top ten dive sites. Why are these prismatic waters so ...

Artist in Kyrgyzstan Using Coffee to Express Kyrgyz Identity

Coffee is a powerful force in human history – it unites people, transcends cultures, and kindles the imagination. A cup of coffee is a cup of inspiration. For centuries, coffee has been used as a tool to invigorate the mind and ...

7 Things You Didn’t Know About Plastic (and Recycling)

Recycling is a complicated system dictated by market demand, price determinations, local regulations, the success of which is contingent upon everyone, from the product-designer, to the trash-thrower, to the waste collector, to the recycling factory worker. We consumers play a ...

The Rare Primitive Crane Fly and the Inelegancies to Find It

(Patagonia’s Untold Stories) While packrafting the southeastern edge of the Northern Patagonia Ice Field along Chile’s largest river, the Baker, in search of primitive crane flies, Anand Varma and I came across an exciting find. In a fragmented ...

Ghostbusting the “Extinct” New Zealand Storm Petrel

It’s well past midnight on Little Barrier Island, called Hauturu in Māori—”resting place of the wind.” Six of us have been lying on our backs in the wet grass since nightfall, squinting through the spatter of raindrops ...