January Ecotourism Last summer, when my cousin was married in Colorado, my extended family and I shared a condo in the mountains for the wedding week. Even though there were no listed instructions for recycling, I was resolute that we sort our trash and I spent more than a few minutes searching the local municipal website to learn where recyclable materials were collected. Because my family loves me - and the planet Earth - they went along with my insistence ...Continue Reading →

December Christmas Bird Count We have a window-mounted platform bird feeder at our house. It is frequented by a Mourning dove whom we've named Larry. He's a stalwart bird and we can tell him from "Mrs. Larry" because he gives us a stare-down as we walk by the window, whereas Mrs. Larry noisily flaps away, as Mourning doves are prone to do. One grey afternoon, as my son and I (and the cat, too) sat watching the feeder, we counted 9 ...Continue Reading →

October Whooping Cranes While on a stroll through my neighborhood last month, I heard the familiar call of cranes approaching from overhead. I slowed my pace but not too much since, you know, Sandhill crane sightings are no big deal these days. (Although, this wasn't always the case - they were considered near extinction in Wisconsin in the early 1900s.) But as the trumpeting duo neared and flapped into view, I could have sworn I saw black-tipped wings, the tell-tale sign of the endangered ...Continue Reading →

September Environmental Education I started working at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center and with Nature Net in the year 2000, when the field of environmental education was "middle-aged" - that is, halfway through its existence to date - and perhaps just reaching the cusp of its full potential. It was the early 1970s when Earth Day was born and a civil movement began around the idea of caring for and protecting our natural resources. Not long after, in 1977, delegates ...Continue Reading →

June/July Conservation Have you ever heard the origin-story of the teddy bear? The story goes that Teddy Roosevelt had taken a break from the Oval Office in the fall of 1902 to go black bear hunting in Mississippi. On the second day of the hunt, while the president was back at camp for lunch, the dogs cornered a bear and the hunting guide - wanting the president to have the honor of killing the bear - gave the beast a knock on ...Continue Reading →

May Woodlands Last November, after the risk of spreading oak wilt had passed, we had a huge, ailing White oak tree taken down in our yard. This old grandmother of a tree was about 100 inches in circumference and we figure was at minimum reaching the century mark. It was sad to see her go but dead limbs 80 feet up were dangerous, and we were rewarded a healthy stack of firewood. Seemingly on an unrelated note, the grass and some of ...Continue Reading →

April School Gardening One of my favorite teachers at my children's elementary school was able to sense when the kid's energy level reached a non-productive level. Her go-to response was to head out to the school garden to weed, water, and mulch. Usually they would go for just 10 minutes - but that was enough. Marta, who was named the 2015 Formal Environmental Educator of the Year, intuitively knew the power of outdoor time, gardening, and fresh air on student's ability ...Continue Reading →

March Algae We set the topics for these Nature Net News posts a year in advance. I dropped in this vivid green image and sat wondering what I wanted to share about algae. The very next day, at the UW Arboretum Winter Enrichment Lecture - a series that I regularly attend - Professor Ben Zuckerberg, who was there to present on Birds & Climate Change, started talking about algae. It's funny - and wonderful - how the universe sometimes speaks to you. Zuckerberg's bird/climate/algae ...Continue Reading →

February Polar Regions When BBC's Planet Earth series came out in 2006, our family was psyched. Although the entire first series is now conveniently available on Netflix, back then, watch-on-demand technology did not exist (at least not in our house). So, we marked the calendar for the days it would air, and cozied up to watch and learn about shallow seas, deserts, and polar regions. I remember telling my uncle, who has always held a place in his heart for nature and the natural world, ...Continue Reading →