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By Samuel Littauer, Development Officer at World Wildlife Fund
Alaska has always carried a certain mythos in my mind—its rugged wilderness, untamed landscapes, and wildlife larger than life itself. For years, I heard tales of its vast beauty and isolation, as though it were a last frontier where nature still reigns supreme. But it wasn’t until I traveled there, to Natural Habitat’s Bear Camp in Lake Clark National Park, that I truly understood the reputation Alaska holds. It was here, surrounded by towering mountains, wild rivers, and the iconic coastal brown bears, that I saw firsthand why this land captures the imagination and inspires a deep reverence for the natural world.
© Samuel Littauer / WWF-US
Before Lake Clark National Park was officially established in 1980, this region was preserved for millennia by the Dena’ina Athabascan people, who referred to it as Qishjeh Vena, meaning “a place where people gather.” This term captures the essence of what this land represents—not only a sanctuary for bears and other wildlife but also a gathering place for people who come to experience the wild beauty of Alaska.
The true magic of Bear Camp lies in the intimacy it fosters with the bears and their environment. This is not a place where you simply observe wildlife from a distance; it is a place where you feel part of the landscape. The sight of a large male bear digging for clams on the tidal flats, the smell of the saltwater air, and the sound of the wind through the trees—all of it creates a deep sense of connection with the wilderness around us.
© Samuel Littauer / WWF-US
Our days began with quiet anticipation as we ventured into the meadows and tidal flats to observe the bears as they started their morning feasts. These coastal brown bears can weigh up to 1,500 pounds before entering their winter torpor. During the summer, they feast on clams among the salt flats and graze on sedge grasses that flood the fields beyond our accommodations. The riparian environment provided a true smorgasbord for the bears, while also setting the stage for observing every imaginable bear behavior.
Bear Camp’s close proximity to the world of these giants allowed us to feel personally connected to the storylines that unfolded across the fields. Families of bears would roam together, occasionally fleeing an aggressive male or, in some cases, welcoming his advances. Rival males competed for mates, giving us a glimpse into the intricacies of bear society.
One afternoon, our group spent time admiring the bears as they gathered across the sedge fields for a leisurely snack. Suddenly, a sizeable male bear paused his feast to take a dip in the river running through the heart of the fields. We stood still, holding our breath to better hear him as he cooled off after a long day of wrestling matches and indulging in the lush offerings of the valley. Another bear soon approached, seeking the same cool respite, which led to an intense wrestling match before one claimed the river. It was a scene of whimsy and survival, a reminder that life here, though majestic, is also fragile.
While observing the bears of Lake Clark, it was not lost on me that similar neighboring ecosystems have been in jeopardy for decades. The headwaters of Bristol Bay, several hours west of Lake Clark, have long been threatened by the potential development of Pebble Mine. Nearly half of the world’s sockeye salmon comes from Bristol Bay, supporting a $2.2 billion fishing industry and employing 15,000 people. World Wildlife Fund partnered with the Bristol Bay Victory Challenge, an Indigenous-led fundraising initiative to block the Pebble Mine for good. In 2022, this initiative established a 44,000-acre conservation easement, protecting critical habitat and securing a brighter future for local communities that have lived harmoniously with this landscape for generations.
© Samuel Littauer / WWF-US
As I departed Bear Camp, I carried with me more than just memories of brown bears and the vast Alaskan landscape. I left with a renewed sense of responsibility to advocate for the protection of these precious lands and their inhabitants. The bears, the land, and the people who have lived in harmony with this wilderness for generations remind us that nature’s balance is fragile—and it is up to us to ensure it endures.
For me, this experience among the bears, on the ancestral land of the Dena’ina people, underscores the need to protect these last strongholds of nature. The conservation of land, to ensure the protection and flourishing of both people and wildlife, is imperative to creating a harmonious world where both can thrive. It’s in the Alaskan wilderness, among the bears, in places like Lake Clark, that people arrive in a gathering place and leave enchanted by the wild world to which we all belong.
© Samuel Littauer / WWF-US
The post A Gathering Place: Nat Hab’s Alaska Bear Camp first appeared on Good Nature Travel Blog.
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“Love at first sight,” is how conservationist Helen Freeman described meeting a pair of Earth’s rarest creatures one fateful day in 1972. Nicholas and Alexandra had made the long journey from Russia (then known as the Soviet Union), to be raised and studied at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington. Their silvery white fur, marbled by dark rosettes, looked like bare trees in a snow storm. Their piercing eyes met Helen’s, and with unbridled compassion, she embraced the cubs as her own. The siblings were a big cat species so obscure, local communities had consigned their kind to the name, ‘Ghost of the Mountains.’ But Helen Freeman was determined to save them, and their snow leopard kin, from vanishing from their Himalayan home.
Freeman was volunteering for the zoo’s veterinary staff when she fell in love. The position was an unusual calling for a woman trained in business administration and born into a family of Greek immigrant café-owners. However, Freeman was drawn to animals and was curious to learn more about their behavior—a yearning that ultimately led her back to the University of Washington to earn a second degree.
The countless hours spent observing Nicholas and Alexandra developed into a multinational research project, launching a series of successful captive-breeding programs. In 1979, Freeman was promoted to the zoo’s Curator of Education and tasked with increasing public awareness about the threats snow leopards faced. She taught visitors about the importance of protecting endangered felines and preserving their natural habitat.
Though Freeman filled this role until 1986, she wanted to do more for the species. She believed the most effective way to save snow leopards from extinction would be to inspire the local communities in Asia who lived among them. So, with cultural identity and grassroots efforts at the heart of her mission, Freeman founded the Snow Leopard Trust in 1981. At the time of Freeman’s passing in September of 2007, the Trust employed a diversity of staff throughout China, India, Mongolia, Pakistan and the Kyrgyz Republic.
On July 6, 2017, a male leopard was born at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, carrying forward the legacy of Helen Freeman, for whom the cub’s mother was named in honor. The zoo celebrated with the following announcement: “Helen’s cub will be a wonderful ambassador for its wild cousins, and we’re very excited to welcome him to the world and to our backyard!”
Under Helen’s leadership, the Snow Leopard Trust fostered integral relationships with the global conservation community and established conservation and research programs across the 12 range countries (Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan—a range that covers an area of nearly 772,204 square miles, with 60 percent of the habitat found in China).
Woodland Park Zoo has remained an important ally throughout the organization’s 40+ years of existence. “Helen made a special connection with the snow leopards at the zoo and came to understand how these animals are conservation ambassadors for their cousins in the wild. Her drive to protect the species led her to build an organization that works with real communities to save these animals in their natural habitat. We miss Helen, but are proud to be part of helping her work and dream continue to succeed,” shared former Woodland Park Zoo President and CEO Dr. Deborah Jensen.
Throughout her illustrious career, Freeman consorted with Maharajas in India, trekked the Himalayas in Nepal, sailed the Yangtze River to Chungking in China and organized snow leopard symposia across the continents. She received numerous awards and acknowledgments for her achievements, including the Alumni Achievement Award from Washington State University in 1990, Acknowledgment of Appreciation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1997, the prestigious Evergreen Award in 1998–“In Recognition of Worldwide Partnerships in Wildlife Conservation and Understanding,” and also a medal of honor from the Woodland Park Zoological Society.
Freeman’s tireless efforts to protect this snowy spectral are supported by Natural Habitat Adventures and World Wildlife Fund. More than 70 percent of snow leopard habitat remains unexplored. Through our innovative Travel Partnership, we are transforming how people perceive snow leopards with conservation through exploration.
Photographed by Nat Hab & WWF Expedition Leader © Surya Ramachandran
Snow leopards not only play a key role in managing prey species populations as an apex predator, but they are also sentinels of snow—melting snow that is. They serve as indicators of the impacts of climate change and human encroachment on the health of their high-altitude environments. If snow leopards thrive, so will countless other species, as well as the largest freshwater reservoirs of the planet. This big cat is under threat, however; poaching for their fur and bones, habitat fragmentation, prey depletion and retaliatory killings resulting from human-wildlife conflict are driving them to the edge.
In the Eastern Himalayas, WWF reduces human-leopard conflict by helping local communities install predator-proof pens for their livestock, create livelihood enterprises and innovate local insurance plans. WWF also works on public education programs, including with goat herders in Mongolia, to build awareness.
You can learn more about the snow leopard plight by watching the video below or any of the other Daily Dose of Nature webinars we host!
If you’re feeling adventurous, join us on our next trip to the Land of the Snow Leopard and search for these mysterious cats in the heights of Ladakh alongside top trackers and naturalists!
The post Helen Freeman: The “Jane Goodall” of Snow Leopards first appeared on Good Nature Travel Blog.
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It seems fitting that WWF’s Living Planet Report 2024 arrived in my inbox the day Hurricane Milton slammed into my hometown.
I grew up on Little Sarasota Bay, with the Intracoastal Waterway and a view over to Siesta Key in the backyard.
When we moved into that waterfront house in the summer of 1981, jumping mullet slapped the surface of the bay constantly and pelicans were plentiful. Now you can spend the day in the backyard before you hear a mullet splash, pelicans are rarer, and an alligator was even spotted nearby—runoff makes the bay’s salt water brackish.
On September 26, 2024, the storm surge from Hurricane Helene flooded homes on our block for the first time; the water was several feet deep in living rooms.
Less than two weeks later, on Wednesday night, October 9, Milton, the second-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded over the Gulf of Mexico, made landfall in a direct hit to Siesta Key.
Sunset at Siesta Beach in Siesta Key © Rebecca Self
On the west coast of Florida, we’ve seen multiple hurricanes in a single year before, even in rapid succession, but the scale and intensity of these storms and their storm surges are unprecedented.
WWF’s report makes clear something Floridians are seeing firsthand: we are at a tipping point.
What is a tipping point? The term has been applied to a wide variety of processes in which, beyond a certain point, the rate of the process increases dramatically. From human behavioral sciences like economics and sociology to epidemiology, ecology and physics, the fundamental notion remains the same. In colloquial terms, if we were being pessimistic, we might call it the point of no return.
WWF’s Living Planet Report 2024 authors describe tipping points as:
“When cumulative impacts reach a threshold, the change becomes self-perpetuating, resulting in substantial, often abrupt and potentially irreversible change – a tipping point.
The Living Planet Report details numerous case studies in which ecological degradation combined with climate change increases the likelihood of reaching local and regional tipping points:
Tipping points, whether local, regional or planetary, can initially be gradual, but then sudden and irreversible. Ecosystems may not instantaneously change from one state to another, but beyond a certain point of stress, change becomes unavoidable and rapid.
There are also positive tipping points. For example, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has long used the term tipping point in a different way, fighting climate inaction and despair with the power of positive tipping points.
In a recent interview, he shared his belief, and rationale, that we are at a political tipping point:
Momentum toward positive tipping points is undeniably growing; WWF’s report shows it’s just not fast enough.
In the face of global tipping points, WWF’s Living Planet Report asserts it is urgent to recognize the interconnectedness of nature, climate and human well-being. Tackling climate, biodiversity and development goals together simultaneously opens up opportunities to conserve and restore nature, mitigate and adapt to climate change, and improve human well-being.
My first takeaway from the report is to redouble my own efforts to support businesses, non-governmental and political organizations and individuals actively addressing ecological tipping points—to build toward positive, regenerative tipping points.
WWF’s Living Planet Report (LPR) is a comprehensive study of trends in global biodiversity and the health of the planet. Now in its 15th edition, the report provides a science-led overview of the state of the natural world and includes the Living Planet Index (LPI), which tracks how species populations are faring around the world.
This year’s Living Planet report reveals a catastrophic 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations over just 50 years from 1970 to 2020.
I was born in Tampa, Florida, in 1970. The report indicates that in my lifetime, based on almost 35,000 population trends and 5,495 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles:
At a regional level, the fastest declines have been seen in:
Declines have been less dramatic in Europe and Central Asia (35%) and North America (39%) because large-scale impacts on nature were already apparent before 1970; some populations have stabilized or increased thanks to conservation efforts and species reintroductions.
Wolverine, Russia.
The LPI monitors changes in the size of species populations over time, which is an early warning indicator of extinction risk and helps us understand ecosystem health.
When a population falls below a certain level, a species may not be able to perform its usual role within the ecosystem—whether that’s seed dispersal, pollination, grazing, nutrient cycling or other processes that keep ecosystems functioning.
Stable populations provide resilience against disturbances like disease and extreme weather events; a decline in populations, as shown in the global LPI, decreases resilience and threatens the functioning of the ecosystem.
Kirsten Schuijt, Director General, WWF International, shared:
“The linked crises of nature loss and climate change are pushing wildlife and ecosystems beyond their limits, with dangerous global tipping points threatening to damage Earth’s life-support systems and destabilize societies.
Although the situation is desperate, we are not yet past the point of no return. The decisions made and action taken over the next five years will be crucial for the future of life on Earth. The power—and opportunity—are in our hands to change the trajectory. We can restore our living planet if we act now.”
Wildlife Russia. Tiger in the water pool in the forest habitat. Siberian tiger cat in the lake.
There is good news, too: despite the alarming overall decline in species populations, many populations have stabilized or increased as a result of conservation efforts. Protected and conserved areas have slowed the extinction rate for mammals, birds and amphibians by an estimated 20–29%. Recent analysis showed that conservation actions have had a net positive effect.
Isolated successes, species-based approaches, and merely slowing nature’s decline are not enough. We need to do more, faster, and in a more coordinated, regenerative way.
It’s a message Al Gore has been sharing for decades, and his stress is on solutions, too. He says:
“A lot of people go straight from denial to despair without pausing, intermediate, to solving the problem. And so that’s definitely an issue and I have been emphasizing justifiable optimism for quite a long time. And it’s not an artifice.
…We are gaining momentum in an impressive way and we have the basis for success. …We’re in the midst of a major sustainability revolution that has the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution coupled with the speed of the digital revolution. …It is still undeniably true that the crisis is still getting worse faster than we have yet begun to deploy these available solutions. Now we are gaining momentum, and I’m certain that we will soon be gaining on the crisis itself.”
In his climate presentations and trainings, Gore ends with a call to take hopeful action, emphasizing facts like:
My second takeaway from the Living Planet Report is really a reminder: all the solutions we need already exist. We already have the frameworks, technologies and nature-based solutions needed. This is a matter of will and collective action.
WWF’s Living Planet Report provides a framework for solutions, pointing to 4 urgent transformations to focus upon.
Sloth in nature habitat. Beautiful Hoffman’s Two-toed Sloth, Choloepus hoffmanni, climbing on the tree in dark green forest vegetation. Cute animal in the habitat, Costa Rica. Wildlife in jungle.
To maintain a living planet where people and nature thrive, we need collective action that meets the scale of the challenge, including more coordinated, effective conservation efforts while addressing drivers of nature loss. It will require nothing less than a transformation of our food, energy and finance systems.
Protected areas currently cover 16% of the planet’s lands and 8% of its oceans. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) calls for 30% of lands, waters and sea to be protected by 2030, and to restore 30% of degraded areas by 2030.
Countries need to:
Wildlife ranger protecting Uganda and Rwanda’s great apes © Richard de Gouveia
Food production is one of the main drivers of nature’s decline: it uses 40% of all habitable land, is the leading cause of habitat loss, accounts for 70% of water use and is responsible for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
Coordinated action is needed to:
Indigenous women harvesting tea, Sri Lanka.
The way we produce and consume energy is the principal driver of climate change. We must
rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to cut greenhouse emissions in half by 2030. In the last
decade, global renewable energy capacity has roughly doubled; costs for wind, solar and
batteries have fallen by up to 85%.
Over the next five years, we need to:
Nat Hab Electric Safari Vehicle © Justin Sullivan
Redirecting finance toward business models and activities that contribute to the global goals on nature, climate and sustainable development is essential. Globally, over half of GDP (55%)—or an estimated US $58 trillion—is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services. Our current economic system values nature at close to zero. In fact, private finance, tax incentives and subsidies that exacerbate climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation are estimated at almost $7 trillion US dollars per year.
Financing green involves mobilizing finance for conservation and climate impact at scale, while greening finance entails aligning financial systems to deliver nature, climate and sustainable development goals. We need both.
The Report states that what happens in the next five years will determine the future of life on Earth. What can we each do?
I heard an idea at the Mountainfilm Festival earlier this year that has stuck with me:
As explorers and travelers, our returns are essential. How we share our adventures and expeditions determines how exploration makes a difference and how it translates into action toward positive tipping points.
I am a researcher, writer, leadership advisor and professor; that’s how I make a difference. Photographers document the environment and practice visual advocacy when they share their photos and the stories behind them.
How will you contribute toward transformation and positive tipping points? Are groups and organizations you are a part of driving transformation?
Sunda bearded pigs, Borneo, Malaysia.
At Nat Hab, we’re working to transform travel so it contributes to the conservation and regeneration of the local communities and wild places we visit. Our mission is conservation through exploration: protecting our planet by inspiring travelers, supporting local communities and boldly influencing the entire travel industry.
Since 2007, Natural Habitat Adventures has been the world’s first 100% carbon-neutral travel company. We embarked on that ambitious project in partnership with Sustainable Travel International, reducing and offsetting the carbon emissions that result from all office- and trip-related activities.
In 2018, we began partnering with South Pole, a sustainability consultancy that works with businesses and governments to reduce carbon impacts by offsetting greenhouse gas emissions via third-party verified projects around the world. In 2019, we offset all our travelers’ flights to and from our global adventure destinations, increasing the total amount of our carbon offset by 300-400%.
Nat Hab & WWF “Discovering Our Planet Together.” Photographed by Nat Hab Expedition Leader & Sustainability Director © Court Whelan
Conservation travel makes natural habitats even more valuable and appreciated by bringing positive attention and economic resources into local communities. From Madagascar to Namibia, conservation travel has inspired individuals and whole communities to protect wild places and the life that thrives there. Our hope is that after travelers experience the beauty and silence of the wilderness, they become ambassadors for conservation in their own communities.
Coastal brown bear in Lake Clark National Park. Photographed at Nat Hab’s Alaska Bear Camp by Expedition Leader © Rylee Jensen
The post WWF’s Living Planet Report: Biodiversity, the Climate Crisis & What’s Next first appeared on Good Nature Travel Blog.