Treesearch

Navigator Nainoa Thompson for Hōkūle‘a, a replica of an ancient voyaging canoe, coined the phrase, “Navigating Change,” to implant inspiration in the hearts and minds of Hawaii’s youth to take better care of their island home. Ultimately, it was about instilling hope and a cultural based value of responsibility in our younger generation. In 2001, the Navigating Change Educational Partnership (NCEP) was formed and began to develop tools to complement Hōkūle‘a’s voyage, based on the Navigating Change vision, to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. During the voyage, over 1,800 students were...

Brazil has approximately 3.6 million km2 (1.4 million mi2) of forest, with the majority concentrated in the Amazonian region. The Atlantic Forest was reduced to less than 8 percent of its original territory. Development activities are being implemented without consideration for the local environment, causing both biodiversity and habitat losses. Establishment of protected areas is one of the specific strategies to protect the biodiversity in situ, therefore, the Brazilian government has an international commitment to maintain 10 percent of the country’s landscape under the integral...

Wildlife viewing, a growing industry throughout North America, holds much potential for increased revenue and public awareness regarding species conservation. In Alaska and British Columbia, grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) viewing is becoming more popular, attracting tourists from around the world. Viewing is typically done from a land-based observation platform that forces tourists into a centralized location. Studies addressing the impacts of tourism on grizzly bear population fitness have based data collection from similar platforms or towers that overlook the entire viewing area. In larger...

To identify the remaining areas of the Interior Cedar- Hemlock Forest of North America and prioritize them for conservation planning, the Craighead Environmental Research Institute has developed a 2-scale method for mapping critical habitat utilizing 1) a broad-scale model to identify important regional locations as the basis for a Conservation Area Design (CAD), and 2) fine-scale models for analyzing habitat quality and connectivity at site-specific locations targeted by the broad-scale analysis. The basic assumption is that if we can maintain healthy populations of focal species, we can...

This work focuses on the issue of public use management in protected natural areas, based on shared responsibility between management and visitors and the potential for development of environmental ethics to inspire respect for those areas, help protect them, and reduce the need for restrictive control interventions. Based on the premise that responsible, well-informed visitors will act to minimize impacts, allowing regulations in protected areas to be less restrictive, we worked with the following hypotheses: (1) visitors have no knowledge of appropriate minimum impact techniques to be...

American Indian tribes recognize the most important resource for protecting the values of wild places is within youth. The Nez Perce Tribe, the San Carlos Apache Tribes and the Warm Springs Tribe are among many who have long emphasized the importance of initiating youth by providing experiences, activities and education in remote locations and carried that practice into modern day youth practicums. In addition, the USDA Forest Service has partnered with tribes through various federal training and youth programs. The Native American Fish and Wildlife Society continues to sponsor an annual...

Tourism in rural Alaska is an education curriculum with worldwide relevance. Students have started small businesses, obtained employment in the tourism industry and gotten in touch with their people. The Developing Alaska Rural Tourism collaborative project has resulted in student scholarships, workshops on website development, marketing, small business development, and customer service. Project results include community profile updates and, regionally, a business inventory, market research, website, branding and a marketing plan. All topics relate to the Copper River Basin’s current...

Wilderness managers have limited time to initiate international exchanges. Additionally, the benefits to developing capacity for wilderness management around the globe are not significant enough to make the effort cost-effective. International assistance, including wilderness management exchange programs, is critical to protecting wild areas around the globe. Former Chief of the Forest Service, Jack Ward Thomas, stated, “our mission is to provide international technical assistance and scientific exchanges to sustain and enhance global resources and to encourage quality land management. By...

Paddling the Big Sky began as many expeditions do: out of past trips and in the stories, banter and daydreams of a group of friends. The journey, by canoe, departed from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, stretched over 2,800 km (1,740 miles), crossed prairie, the width of the boreal forest, and then the “barren lands.” It included a 29-day university outdoor education program, lasted 100 days, and ended at Kugluktuk on the shores of the Coronation Gulf in Canada’s Eastern Arctic territory of Nunavut. Seven people participated, one member left the expedition in Yellowknife and there the...

Protected areas have long served two masters: providing recreation, tourism and economic opportunities while conserving resources. As wild lands have become more scarce, there has been increasing realization that recreational use of protected areas is not benign. Consequently, there has been growing discussion and debate about how to reconcile human use with conservation. British Columbia is still within an active park creation phase with an increase from approximately 5.6 percent of the land-base protected in parks as of 1992 to approximately 13 percent today with new areas being added...