Despite the presence of tar balls and tar mats in the waters off Padre Island National Seashore, biologists have released more than 100 Kemp's ridley sea turtle hatchlings into the Gulf of Mexico.
Terrestrial and planetary dunes scientists from three continents met in May at Alamos, Colorado, to explore opportunities for collaborative planetary dunes research. The dunes at Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve are similar to ones on Mars, so a field trip to the park was a workshop highlight.
Several years ago we wrote “The Best National Park Trip,” an article that described the wonders of visiting Zion, Bryce Canyon, and the Grand Canyon during a tour of the West. This is indeed a great trip that can be extended with visits to Lake Powell, Cedar Breaks, and other nearby units administered by the National Park Service.
With underwriting from the National Parks Conservation Association's National Parks magazine, the folks at Wild Collective filmed and produced the following 4:26-minute travelogue of Hawaii and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
We were on our second-floor balcony reading when we noticed someone below walk to the wooden railing separating the lodge grounds from the surrounding countryside. He pointed west toward the woods. Coming through the trees and into the small meadow were two bear cubs that commenced frolicking in the grass. They ran back and forth and one suddenly jumped and caught the side of a tree.
While progress is being made on the renovations to the Bodie Island Light at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, much remains to be done before the light is back in action.
Last fall, Cheyenne, Wyoming, attorney Karen Budd-Falen made an astonishing claim that has reverberated all the way to Washington, D.C. Writing a guest editorial for the Wyoming Livestock Roundup, she said environmental law firms had collected billions in public tax dollars by filing and winning frivolous lawsuits against federal natural resource agencies.