Celebrated sea captain James Cook implanted a British flag down into the rocky, icy ground on the shore of South Georgia in 1775. When he did so, he claimed ownership of the icy, mountainous Antarctic island not only for his country’s humans, but, inadvertently, also for its rodents. From the arrival of Cook onward, ships […]
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Congratulations to Carl Safina, 2018 Indianapolis Prize Finalist!
Carl Safina is one of six conservation heroes in the running for the quarter million-dollar Indianapolis Prize INDIANAPOLIS – Officials from the Indianapolis Prize today named the Safina Center’s Carl Safina as one of six Finalists for the world’s leading award for animal conservation. Carl Safina joins conservation heroes Dr. Joel Berger, Dr. P. Dee Boersma, […]
The Power Forest
In the course of writing a book about what free-living animals learn from each other, I find myself on the Tambopata River in southeast Peru. The nearest town is Puerto Maldonado but from there the trip is all upriver. Wheeled vehicles are useless in this forest, and there are none. The surrounding forest has […]
Tilikum. A Killer Whale’s Tragic Life
Tilikum has died. Involved in the killing of three humans, the focus of the movie Blackfish, and the book A Death at SeaWorld, Tilikum was certainly the most famous whale, and quite possibly the most noted and notorious non-human being, in the world.He was above all a performer. But beneath all, he was a killer whale. It’s a […]
The Great East Coast Return To Abundance—Your Help Needed
One of the greatest recoveries on any coast is happening now. But it is threatened with reversal by one giant fishing corporation. Here’s what is happening and how you can help right now. Earlier this summer, some friends of ours told us they’d gone to the beach in Amagansett on the east end of Long […]
Wild voices: Audio “notes” from Beyond Words
During my field time in writing Beyond Words, I often dictated notes into a little digital recorder. While in the wild, there were a couple of opportunities to record sounds from some of the exact same individual wolves and killer whales (orcas) who I write about in the book. I find these callings extraordinarily haunting. […]