Earlier this month, under sunny skies, I boarded a plane for the Hawai‘i Conservation Conference in Hilo, predicted to be the landfall site for Hurricane Guillermo. By the time we pushed back from the gate, sun still shining, rain had started to fall and steam sizzled off the sunbaked runway. “I’ve asked myself more than…
Tag: endangered species
Celebrate Oceans. Refuse Plastic.
Beach finds last week: Plastic toothbrush; plastic baby powder bottle; plastic hagfish (eel) trap; plastic coat hanger; and a sundry of unidentifiable bits and chunks of plastic in a rainbow of colors—none of it left behind by beach-goers but based on its snagged and worn condition, arrived by water. I imagine a fisherman up early,…
Endangered Species Have the Coolest Tongues
Albatross have pointy tongues. Humpback whales have tongues that are the size of Volkswagen bugs. The tips of Hawaiian monk seals’ tongues are bifurcated, a fancy word for split. Pretty cool, huh. And that’s just tongues. Wait until we get to the throats. Today is recognized as Endangered Species Day. The goal of the day…
Report from Ranger Rogers: St. Pat and Scat
St. Patrick must have been a friendly guy. I suppose all the raucous celebration of him is testament to that. Because his day—Tuesday, March 17th—seemed to put everybody in a good mood at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge last week. As if the place itself (gorgeous) and the wildlife (cool) living there isn’t enough to…
On Walking and Resolutions.
At 3:00 in the afternoon on New Year’s Day, my FitBit tracker read a measly 785 steps. After a couple weeks of morning walks with my college roommate Linda, who was visiting and encouraged me with texts that went, What amazing place will we walk to today, I was close to failing to rack up…
An Afternoon of Monk Seal—and People—Watching
By the time I get to the remote end of a North Shore beach where two Hawaiian monk seals are hauled out, there are already three naked people under the heliotrope tree where I usually sit. But they’re nice, offer me a piece of their Peruvian fruit, yacón, and report the seals galumphed onto the…
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