Wild & Wondrous - Favorite World Press

The FWP weekly digest of wondrous wildlife happenings
and other interesting items from the natural world

Creatures to meet | Things to learn
Things to do

Lisa S. French

Mountain hare (Lepus timidus) with white fur in snowy landscape

1.5-minute read

Whales, wolves, and wildebeest do it. Butterflies, bats, and birds do it. What do they do? Migrate—traveling hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles every year to secure food, water, and family-friendly habitat. While some animals have the natural capacity for long-distance movement, Arctic hares are not known to travel far afield. Despite what may seem like a big-footed advantage, the hopping herbivores typically shift their seasonal location by less than six miles. But in the autumn of 2019, one determined female decided to cover new ground and go the distance—and go, go, go she did.

According to Canadian researchers tracking the movements of 25 Arctic hares, the lone ranger known as BBYY traveled 241 miles over 49 days—the longest recorded journey for her species. Because traveling great distances requires a lot of energy, staying local increases the odds of survival in smaller land animals like rabbits and hares. So, what compelled BBYY to thump across the tundra and boldly go where no hare had gone before? Scientists studying the movement of the Arctic animals conjecture that the intrepid hopper may have been motivated to go those extra miles by the slightly warmer microclimate and more abundant plant life at her lakeside destination.

And why on Earth does Arctic hare mobility matter? Like conservationists tracking the movements of elephants in Africa, researchers are keeping tabs on when, where, and why Arctic critters move. Understanding how the animals adapt to environmental change and what it will take to keep northern food webs and ecosystems healthy and functioning will benefit both people and wildlife in a warming world.

In case you were wondering, FYCI (For Your Creature Information), hares and rabbits are two different kinds of hoppers. Rabbits are typically smaller, have shorter ears and legs than hares, and are born without fur. A group of hares is known as a down, a band, a husk, or a warren, and a group of wild rabbits is known as a colony or a… fluffle. No, not making it up—fluffle. And that’s our perfectly soothing word of the week. Fluffle on, fellow travelers!

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Lisa S. French January 24, 2022

Herd of Elephants in Africa walking through the grass in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

African Elephants Walk this Way

1.5-minute read

As you chart your course for 2022, whether you choose the road less traveled or the path of least resistance, to get to your best there from wherever your current here is may require a few rounds of trial and error. For many of our friends in the animal kingdom, when it comes to fulfilling their creature-life destiny, picking the right path comes naturally. They instinctively follow patterns that meet their needs for food, water, space, family, and safety. So, when conservationists working in Kenya set out to pinpoint and protect the most critical habitat and travel corridors to help ensure the survival of African elephants, they let the perceptive pachyderms lead the way.

The accelerating loss of roaming room is one of the greatest threats to the iconic, endangered mega-mammals. To determine which areas and pathways are vital to supporting the species, from 2001 to 2019, researchers from the Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory and Save the Elephants used GPS tracking to monitor the movements of 138 elephants whose environment was under pressure from rapid infrastructure development. They mapped the nearly two decades of movement information using Artificial Intelligence to identify the elephants’ preferred pathways and habitat—dubbed the movescape.

Like most living beings, African elephants can’t survive in just any old place. The AI-enhanced elephant expertise can help determine conservation area carve-outs based on what the elephants have shown us they need to exist in the natural world. Preserving wildlife habitat is not just essential to saving endangered species; protecting and restoring the wild also helps keep humanity on the right path by providing valuable environmental, social, educational, and economic benefits—free of charge.

Exercise Your Grey Cells
FYI, today, January 14th is World Logic Day. Exciting! What are we celebrating? Logic and reason! Why are we celebrating? We’ll let you draw your own conclusions—or you can read about the thought behind the commemoration here.

If you’re keen to give your grey cells a workout in between bouts of COVID dodging, you can take a crack at the hardest logic puzzle ever—no peeking at the solution. Or here are some kinder, gentler nature riddles for you and your budding in-house brainiacs. If you don’t have the energy to tackle any of those, how about some soothing animal cams from the Bronx Zoo—no active thought required. From our perspective, logically speaking, leaping lemurs equals blissful brain!

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Lisa S. French January 14, 2022

So far, so good!

Happy, Shiny New Year!

Heartening words to guide you through 2022
from the late, very great naturalist and biologist
E. O. Wilson: 1929-2021

“You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you
and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably.
Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.”

Onward,

LSF • WW • FWP

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Lisa S. French January 1, 2022

Adult polar bear walking away over a flat snow covered landscape

Looking back, moving forward

I am a book of snow,
a spacious hand,
an open meadow,
a circle that waits,
I belong to the earth
and its winter.

Pablo Neruda

As the peaks and valleys of 2021 recede in the rear-view mirror, we’d like to express our absolute appreciation to our dear readers for making room for Wild & Wondrous in the space in between. Whether you’re a regular visitor or just passing through on your internet travels, we’re glad to have you with us as we explore the wonders of the natural world.

With your support of the Favorite World Press read-and-plant partnership, you’ve helped create a more sustainable future by empowering us to plant trees that nurture our planet. Trees that turn down the heat, purify air and water and provide habitat for our furry and feathered friends. Well done, and thanks very much, tree people!

In 2022, we’ll be focusing more of our efforts on a new sustainable development project also aimed at protecting and preserving the world’s remaining forests and biodiversity.

Wild & Wondrous will be back with more creatures to meet, things to learn, and things to do. Until we meet again, wishing you a healthy, happy, light-filled New Year, chock-full of leaps from peak to peak.

xo Favorite World Press

The W & W

60-second
Year in Rear-View

Networking giraffes,
your fair share of trees,
a snowy owl in the city,
plastic-free seas

Moths that jam sonar,
a blue bird that trills,
leafy seadragons
flaunting their frills

The rarest of rhinos,
chimps that have heart,
the plight of the manatee,
urban bird art

Tree-planting readers
putting down roots,
wild African horses
in bug-zapping suits

Big bison feelings,
a yard habitat,
the return of cicadas,
an award-winning bat

Night lights for lions,
blinking bug love,
bird feeder smack-downs
won by a dove

A headcount for walrus,
disease-busting bees,
traveling wildebeest,
fish that don’t freeze

A shout-out for science,
the songs of the Earth,
a month celebrating
what the planet is worth

Running for wildlife,
how whales keep us cool,
movie star bees,
why brainy girls rule

A hairy-nosed wombat,
the last bird of its kind,
a plan to save forests
to restore peace of mind

A remembrance of sorrow,
the pure magic of snow,
hope for our oceans,
a sea creature’s glow

The prettiest pictures,
lunar fox feet,
reducing emissions
to turn down the heat

Bringing back monarchs,
green roofs for birds,
a big meeting in Scotland
where they said lots of words

A built-in eye compass,
how mollusks got clever,
and gratitude for our readers
that goes on forever.

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Lisa S. French December 31, 2021

So Much Like Stars

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”

Mary Oliver

May the beauty of the world
fill your heart this season
and always.

Wishing you joyful holidays,

with love,

Favorite World Press

PS: And jingle all the way – FWP Holiday Playlist.

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Lisa S. French December 20, 2021

NYC is for the Birds

1.5-minute read

What if New York City, the most densely populated urban area in the United States, could be transformed into a green oasis that’s also a haven for winged wildlife? Can we make more room for nature, so the city is less concrete and more jungle? You bet—think vertical!

There are roughly 36,700 acres of handily sun-facing rooftops in NYC—equivalent to 27,803 football fields or 44 Central Parks. That’s a whole lot of valuable space to create healthy, productive habitat for plants, pollinators, and feathered friends—sky meadows teeming with life—wildflowers, songbirds, butterflies, bees. Greening rooftops would not only make the city a force for nature restoration but would help to preserve wildlife in non-urban areas as well. Connecting fragments of habitat would provide migrating and breeding birds with access to life-sustaining vegetation and food resources where and when they’re needed most.

Researchers from Fordham University investigating the potential for NYC green roofs to attract semi-urban and non-urban birds compared avian visitors to green and conventional roofs in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx during spring migration and summer breeding seasons. They found that birds that typically avoid the Big Apple will make an exception for green roofs that provide the right combination of plants and insects for foraging.

With rapid urbanization and loss of green space, most migratory birds will encounter cityscapes in their travels. Providing rooftop recharging stations planted with bird and insect-friendly vegetation will help increase their odds of survival in a warming world. And green roofs aren’t just for the birds—they also benefit people by cleaning and cooling the air, decreasing noise, and reducing storm runoff. Plus, they’re more lovely to look at. Now that’s a sweet city!

You can check out some inspiring examples of NYC green roofs here and global living architecture projects here. And if you’d like to learn more about what it takes to turn regular old urban rooftops into beautiful life-sustaining habitats, watch this video from NYC Audubon.

Whether you’re urban or rural or somewhere in-between, if you’ve been topping up the winter chow to help out hungry local birds, you can get the inside scoop on the pecking order at the feeder and who comes out on top from Audubon. Here in Manhattan, it’s the doves—always the doves. Update: Be sure to have a look at Carla Rhodes’ wonderful snaps of New York birds getting their fair share—doves on cleanup crew.

Speaking of local birds, congratulations to the 2021 MLS Cup Champions—the New York City FC, aka the Pigeons. Well done and welcome back to your urban habitat!

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Lisa S. French December 14, 2021

The Big Benefits of the Big Love of Bison

1.5-minute read

Do you have a favorite nature spot where you go to feel all of the good feelings—joy, hope, optimism, comfort? Whether your outdoor sanctuary is a lofty mountain peak, a pristine stretch of beach, an enchanted forest, or a wide-open prairie, connecting to nature is broadly acknowledged to improve human well-being. Interestingly, the mood-enhancing benefits of time spent in nature also benefit nature. How so? Well, according to biologists at Colorado State University, the positive emotions that we associate with a specific soul-soothing place on the planet also aid conservation by increasing our inclination to keep the great out there intact. And what is one of the best ways to amplify emotional connections to a particular landscape? Add wildlife.

To better understand what motivates people to care about preserving the natural world, researchers set out to determine if the reintroduction of bison to the Colorado prairie after a 150-year absence would increase visitor attachment to the North American grasslands—one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world. In the 18th century, bison, the largest mammals in North America, roamed grasslands in the tens of millions. By 1889, only 541 remained. Thanks to ongoing restoration efforts, today, there are around 20,000 of the hefty grazers in parks and reserves in the United States and Canada.

So do these iconic animals have a role to play in connecting people to nature and conservation? How do humans feel about bison, anyway? As it turns out, pretty darn good! Surveying visitors to the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area in Fort Collins, Colorado, before and two years after the reintroduction of a herd of bison, researchers measured a significant increase in how attached people felt to the conservation area. Soapstone Prairie visitors felt more at home, wanted to visit the area more and a resounding 95% felt that it was more important to protect the space after the high plains drifters returned to their historical home on the range. Bringing back bison had an immediate positive impact on people feeling a connection to conservation. We want to protect what we love, and if the experience of visitors to Soapstone is anything to go by, to know bison is to love them. And that’s good news for the preservation of our grasslands and native wildlife.

If you’d like to experience those big bison feelings for yourself, and you’re up for a winter road trip, you can find a list of all of the places they roam here.

And if you’d like to learn more about ongoing bison restoration projects across the rolling plains, visit American Prairie.

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Lisa S. French December 3, 2021

Giving Thanks for the Planet Appreciators

In this season of giving, we want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to our tree-planting readers.

Every single tree that we plant with your support is the start of a forest. A forest that will help to clean the air, cool the planet, purify water, and provide food and shelter for wildlife.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring. You are so welcome here!

Wishing You

a Beary

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Lisa S. French November 24, 2021

The Planet Cooling Power of Whale Poop

1.5-minute read

In nature we never see anything isolated,
but everything in connection with something else
which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sometimes, solutions to our most complex problems come from unexpected places. Could the restoration of great whale populations help us to combat climate change?

If left to its own devices, nature has a tremendous capacity to heal itself and protect us from the harmful impacts of a rapidly warming world. When we maintain greenhouse gas emissions at people- and planet-friendly levels, Earth systems can absorb enough GHG’s to keep global heating in check. Currently, about 25% of the CO₂ emissions that contribute to global heating are absorbed by oceans. Most of the carbon dioxide in oceans is consumed by microscopic algae called phytoplankton. Like trees, the tiny green plants utilize CO₂ for growth. Globally, phytoplankton absorb as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as tropical rainforests. Similar to the effects of deforestation, a reduction in phytoplankton can lead to more GHG emissions in the atmosphere and more heating. That’s where whales come in, or more specifically, the poop of whales.

According to scientists at the University of Tasmania, great whales have a big role to play in helping to cool the planet by dispensing the iron that carbon-absorbing phytoplankton need to grow. Adult whales in the Southern Ocean can eat two tons of iron-rich krill a day—that’s about 40 million mini-crustaceans. Because what goes in must come out, the krill consumed by whales converts to a whole lot of iron-infused phytoplankton fertilizer. By recycling an essential nutrient at a concentration ten million times higher than occurs in seawater, whales contribute to the continued functioning of one of Earth’s most important carbon sinks. The Tasmanian researchers estimate that a 12,000-strong population of iron-excreting sperm whales could stimulate the growth of enough phytoplankton to remove 200,000 tons of carbon annually—the CO₂ equivalent of 17,000 cars traveling 9,320 miles a year.

Marine biologists believe that tens of millions of whales were removed from oceans in the thousand years of active whaling prior to the international moratorium in 1982; this estimated 90% decline in the planet’s largest inhabitants has likely altered the functioning of marine ecosystems. As if we need another good reason to keep on saving the whales other than their all-around awesomeness, protecting and restoring populations of the colossal animals will help maintain healthy oceans that continue to absorb GHG emissions and reduce global heating. A win for the super-poopers is a win for people and the planet.

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Lisa S. French November 20, 2021

Aerial view of blue lake and green forests on a sunny summer day in Finland. Drone photography

Tons of Trees and Tiny Bats

1.5-minute read

Forest Protection – That’s A Yes
Here’s a quick update on forest conservation commitments from the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference:

To prevent the planet from warming beyond 1.5℃, we must reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next eight years. Planting trees and keeping carbon-absorbing forests intact is an important component of this monumental but achievable mission.

Every six seconds, we’re losing a football pitch of tropical rainforest to deforestation. Millions of acres of forest in northern regions are also being lost to drought, pests, and wildfires worsened by climate change.

Aiming to avert catastrophic heating, last week, international delegates in Glasgow made some progress on the forest protection front. In a strong show of support for the future of the planet, 110 world leaders pledged to end deforestation by 2030, restore damaged land, develop sustainable agriculture for rural communities, and reaffirm financial commitments to Indigenous and local communities. The combined pledges account for 85% of the world’s forests.

To ensure that COP26 signatories walk the walk and deliver on commitments, real-time global satellite monitoring of forests will be critical. You can find out how eyes in the sky are helping to keep tabs on trees from Global Forest Watch.

The Best Bird is a Bat
And in case you missed it, the Forest & Bird numero uno, all-around champion, New Zealand Bird of the Year is—wait for it, a bat. The 2021 winner is the pekapeka-tua-roa, a.k.a. the long-tailed bat, one of the rarest bats in the world and one of only two mammals native to the island country. In an upset victory, the thumb-sized, furry night-flyer edged out 76 amazing birds to capture the crown.

The forest-dwelling micro-bat roosts in trunks and large limbs of trees in colonies of hundreds to thousands. As a result of introduced predators and deforestation, the bug-munching pekapeka is now in serious trouble. Because a bat’s gotta hang, and with only 14% of New Zealand’s indigenous forests remaining, conservationists are working to increase the number of potential roosting sites by preserving habitat, so the stretchy-winged wonder has a fighting chance at survival.

Although we apparently have a faulty bird chooser, as we’re zero for two with our 2021 Bird of the Year predictions, we’re always happy to celebrate the recognition of any precious creature in need of TLC (tender loving conservation). Congratulations little pekapeka, this year you’re batting 1000%!

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Lisa S. French November 10, 2021