News Briefs
Prominent Rock Climber Sentenced for Rape
Big name rock climber and author, Charles Barrett sentenced to life imprisonment for rape in a case filed by the National Park Service.
World’s Largest Dark Sky Sanctuary
A 2.5-million-acre area of Oregon certified as International Dark Sky Sanctuary by DarkSky International. The sanctuary is roughly one-half the size of New Jersey and
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Participatory Science with Journey North
It was a crisp morning following a cold night in Goleta’s Coronado Monarch Butterfly Preserve. As an 8th grade homeschool class crossed a beam that had been dropped across a swampy area, one student looked up at the Eucalyptus grove and—with one part expectation and one part disappointment—quietly sighed, “Where are the butterflies?”
Stop talking about loss and extinction, and stop trying to educate people about the science. Rather, openly celebrate and share the wonders of the natural world. Try to evoke a sense of shared destiny and compassion for people and the rest of nature.
By the age of six, John Pickering had built an insect zoo for wooly bears and ballbugs. A few years later he had been converted to the collectors’ “culture of death” — catch it, kill it, pin it, put it in a museum. Before long he was running Malaise insect traps from Canada to Panama, which is an efficient way of filling collection cabinets and freezers full of dead insects.
