Eco-Literacy

By John Hornstein | My mother was happiest when foraging for mushrooms. Being an immigrant from Germany, she had difficulty adjusting to life in rural Maine. Foraging became a way for her to stay connected to her childhood. It also connected her to something more primal, the natural world. As a child tagging along on…

By W. George Scarlett | In E.B. White’s classic children’s book, Charlotte’s Webb, Charlotte, the spider, becomes the kind and smart friend of Wilbur, the pig. Charlotte saves Wilbur from the usual destiny of farm pigs by weaving into her web words praising Wilbur and making him famous among the surrounding humans.  But if that were all there…

Video: Banded Brothers | Series 1 Episode 1 | BBC Featured image by Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Editors note: It’s important that we all check for ticks and remove them from our bodies.  Here’s someone getting a lot of help to do just that – remove ticks from his…

By Robin Huntley and David Sobel | Start a conversation about using the natural environment, or taking learning outside, or studying the bobolinks in the meadow, and ticks start crawling through the recesses of school administrators’ and parents’ minds. Ticks and their associated diseases are perceived as a scourge across the northeastern United States, and…

By Jack Ridge | This is a story about collecting. Not the kind of collecting that clutters our basements and garages because we can’t let go, but the kind of collecting that stimulates life-long curiosity for the natural world. This story is about the natural objects we collect, the ones we look upon with curiosity…

By Doug Tallamy | If you live with at least some green around you, chances are you have never thought of space just outside and next to where you live as a wildlife preserve that represents the last opportunity we have for sustaining plants and animals that were once common throughout the U.S.. But that…

By James Cassell | Perhaps the most impressive architects of the natural world, beavers are famous for their iconic buck teeth. Using their teeth, these furry engineers build dams to flood and sculpt their environment. In doing so, they not only provide protection and lodging for themselves, they also form stagnant ponds that provide…

Review by Marion Reynolds | Science journalist Sy Montgomery and photographer Nic Bishop’s latest addition to the Scientist in the Field series, The Hyena Scientist dispels myths and misunderstandings about the of true nature of the African spotted hyena, profiles the presence of women in science, and tells the story, through anecdotes and examples, of…

By Osita Achufusi | 415,000. That’s how many African elephants are left in the wild as of 2018, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. While this may seem like a sufficient amount, it’s not. Consider that an estimated 10 million of these gentle giants roamed Africa just a mere 90 years ago and that there…

By Lisa Sideris | The connection between wonder and children and childlike states is one we often take for granted. Yet wonder is also the province of scientists whose expert knowledge far exceeds that of the average layperson.

By Ashley Lin | What can we do when the world is turned upside-down? How do we help young people grapple with the uncertainty, stress, and anxiety that is a constant in life but heightened during a pandemic? How can we come out triumphant, even a bit stronger?

By Tina Grotzer | I grew up in a rural environment with woods and streams all around me. Others would say that we were poor, but I never felt impoverished. I climbed trees, explored the pond, got stuck in the mud, and jumped onto the gnarled, moss-covered roots in the middle of the creek to…

By Megan Mueller |
What is it about our relationships with pets that make them so enduring, and how do they connect us to the wider, natural world – making it more likely that we will act as earth stewards? For many, experiences with pets are experiences akin to some of the most positive and…

By Melissa Wishner | Picture a stone-grey river. The river is wide—too wide to swim across. Under its glassy surface lives a thriving community of eels, snapping turtles, fish, crabs, and other plant and animal life. You wouldn’t think a river like this would be easy to ignore.

By Bian Xia | After four visits to China, Howard Gardner wrote in To Open Minds, a seminal text comparing education in China and the United States: We might contrast the Western, more “revolutionary” view with a more “evolutionary” view espoused by the Chinese.