WILD

CHIMPANZEE – The Taï chimpanzees are featured in the new Disneynature film

Oscar, Freddy and Isha are the stars of the new Disneynature film CHIMPANZEE which opened Friday April 20th! This marks the first time ever that a feature film was shot entirely in the wild, and uses footage from the chimpanzees living in the Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire and in the Kibale National Park, Uganda. The 3 main stars, Oscar, Freddy and Isha, belong to the chimpanzee groups that Max Planck Director Christophe Boesch and his team have studied for the last 33 years in Côte d’Ivoire.

Tracks of Giants: Driving to Rocky Point

30 April, at the base camp in Purros, NW Namibia– We packed for the first 5 days which would be a Wilderness Leadership School type wilderness trail, or trek, that would launch TRACKS on the coast of Namibia, headed east for 5 months to the Indian Ocean.  Packed and ready to go, at 1000 hours we piled into the back-up vehicles for the drive through the rough, dune-dotted, arid landscape towards the coast. Vehicles were full, so I did the day on top of the land cruiser, jostling and bouncing for the entire 90 km. We stopped along the way for a spot of some local fun…dune-surfing…and to wake up the “roaring dunes,” a phenomenon described by Clive Crook in The Atlantic Magazine:

Tracks of Giants: Getting Ready

After meetings in Washington DC in late April, everything was focused on gathering exit speed in the US to head to NW Namibia to join the team members assembling from all points of the compass to launch the Tracks of Giants expedition.  As I departed the US on 25 April, my watch broke. As we approached Johannesburg after the 17 hour flight and lots of work, I powered down my laptop…only to have it fail to re-start during my 8 hour transit.  When I landed in Windhoek my local cell phone quit…things were going great (!), clearly telling me that I was overdue for a break-away in the wilderness, sans tech.

2014 as the International Year for Wilderness

WILD Foundation president Vance Martin attended via Skype conference the Wild Europe steering committee meeting in Brussels recently. Wild Europe is an NGO-driven process in cooperation with the European Commission in which WILD has been one participant among others such as Toby Aykroyd (Wilderness Foundation, UK), Zoltan Kun (Executive Director of PAN Parks), and many more. It has been coordinating efforts for several years across the continent to develop a wilderness definition for Europe in response to the European Parliament’s resolution on wilderness in February 2009. In the meeting and in a letter afterwards, Zoltan suggested that the civil society sector take on the idea of nominating 2014 as the International Year of Wilderness:

Andrew Muir Awarded at World Economic Forum on Africa

Five leading innovators were named the Social Entrepreneurs of the Year 2012 Africa by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Among the five winners is WILD’s close friend and colleague Andrew Muir, Executive Director of the Wilderness Foundation South Africa!

Return of the Lynx

In my undergrad ecology class at SUNY at Buffalo we studied predator/prey cycles and a well-studied phenomena of ecology is the predator prey cycle of the Canada lynx and Snowshoe hare.  I worked in a struggling record store while in college that also had used books for sale.  I would flip through the dusty, dank books to find any gems and came across a wildlife book.  When I flipped through it and landed on this photo, my heart stopped and I was mesmerized by the intensity of survival of this moment:

Tracks of Giants expedition to launch May 1st!

May 1st is just around the corner! The Tracks of Giants website has been launched, the intro video is complete, people are following along on Facebook and Twitter, and the team is ready to go. Don’t miss out on this exciting journey–be sure to follow along with this team of dedicated conservationists as they traverse over 5,000 kilometres through six countries, through South Africa as they complete the entire journey on foot, by kayak, and on mountain bikes, without the use of motorized transportation.  This expedition will raise global awareness of the importance of human/wildlife issues and transfrontier conservation – nature conservation across political borders–in Southern Africa.

Florida Wildlife Corridor featured on NPR

On Earth Day 2012, the Florida Wildlife Corridor team –a partner project of The WILD Foundation– closed their 100 day, 1,000 mile expedition at the Stephen C. Foster State Park in Georgia. The FWC explorers — photographer Carlton Ward Jr, bear biologist Joe Guthrie, conservationist Mallory Lykes Dimmitt and filmmaker Elam Stoltzfus — successfully traveled from the Florida Everglades to the Okefenokee Swamp in Southern Georgia.

Veterans Expeditions to Wilderness

Yesterday afternoon, our friend and colleague Stacy Bare paid us a nice visit at the WILD office. Stacy recently wrote an article for our International Journal of Wilderness about his experience with the war in Iraq, where he served as a U.S. Army Captain from 2006-2007 and received the Bronze Star for Meritorious Service.

When Stacy returned home from service, he had difficulty readjusting to the non-war, soft lifestyle of everyday American life.  He was not alone in feeling uninspired and bored with chain restaurants, the daily routine, and pop culture…his fellow soldiers felt this too.  In his article, Stacy refers to a marine sergeant who questioned why he fought while sitting inside a large chain restaurant two weeks after he returned from deployment.  Had he really fought for two-for-one appetizers and gimmicky, cheap cocktails?

Dr Ian Player receives the Anton Rupert Award

On 5 April 2012, the inaugural Anton Rupert Award for Lifetime Achievement in Conservation was presented to Dr Ian Player by Mr Werner Myburgh, Peace Parks Foundation CEO, and Dr Frank Raimondo, member of the Peace Parks Foundation Board of Directors. By handing him the Award, Peace Parks Foundation and the Rupert Family gratefully applaud and pay tribute to the exceptional contribution Dr Ian Player has made to conservation and the environment.