Wild Watch
Asian biodiversity under threat
Feb 7, 2001 As we travel south through the broad swath of continental Asia, we move along two contrasting gradients. First, land area declines as we approach the tropics from the Arctic. Second, and in direct contrast, species diversity increases enormously, as do elements that are uniquely Asian. ...
Asian environmental extremes
Jan 17, 2001 As if the greatest mountain range on earth were not monument enough to the scale of Asia, other ranges, such as the Tien Shan and the Altai, join ranks with the Himalayas to make Central Asia the roof of the world. ...
Asian continent in league of its own
Jan 3, 2001 First of three parts As the third millennium dawned, the light of the rising sun swept westward across the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. It brought a gray half-light that crept slowly across the dark ice-locked wastes of northeast Asia. Farther south, the sun’s fiery-orange disc rose majestically from the sea off the temperate coasts of E...
Glaciers prove ecological succession
Dec 20, 2000 That powerful forces have shaped the world we live in is somehow easier to grasp when one lives in a country wracked by earthquakes, dotted with calderas and pocked with active volcanoes. ...
Won't you come into my bower?
Dec 6, 2000 A string of minor thefts may have gone unnoticed in Mount Malloy. ...
The coolest dudes of the Kalahari
Nov 29, 2000 Where the Auob River drains out of Namibia and runs in to South Africa, the land is dry, desertlike, the soil sandy and red. This is the Kalahari, or more precisely, the Kalahari-Gemsbok National Park, a finger of land between Namibia and Botswana, linked across the border with a park on the Botswanan side. One can follow a track that meanders back...
The secretive rabbits of Amami
Nov 15, 2000 Hunting rabbits is something I have only ever done on one island. When I say hunting, I don’t mean with a gun; I mean armed with a spotlight, binoculars and notebook. The rabbits I hunt stay alive. That’s rather crucial, because I am talking about the rabbits to be found marooned on an isolated island in the Nansei Islands. They have survived t...
Japan's rich natural diversity
Nov 1, 2000 For a naturalist, traveling the length and breadth of Japan is an endless magical mystery tour. Living in any one part of the country one can easily forget the phenomenal diversity in this immensely varied archipelago. ...
Seeing spots before your eyes
Oct 18, 2000 Rain brings changes to the African savanna. As storm clouds near, even the smells change. The temperature flutters, falls; the stuttering, buzzing and sawing of insects takes on a different pitch; then a hush, before the pittering of raindrops splashes dust from the baked ground. The pittering turns to a pattering, then to a deluge, soaking and str...
Many life cycles under the moon
Oct 4, 2000 A fluttering of powdery wings, silent in the night, and the moon moth came, drawn to the proverbial candle flame. Its guidance system, fine-tuned over millions of years of evolution to a satellite system predating our GPS systems by billions of years, was overwhelmed and confused by a modern source of light mere hundreds of meters away. Captured in...