April 22, Earth Day, is celebrated around the world as tens of millions of people make time to attend their environment. The United Nations calls this International Mother Earth Day because “Mother Earth” is a multi-national common expression used in most cultural references to…
On March 13, 1941, American biophysicist and environmentalist Donella (Dana) Meadows was born. She was a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Meadows regarded sustainability as something experienced through living it, an ability she saw in humankind to meet the needs…
On March 1, 1872, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant declared Yellowstone a National Park. Located principally in what is today Wyoming, Yellowstone was not explored until late in the 19th century. By that time, geologists and naturalists were able to help bring to the…
On February 5, 1947, American astronaut Mary L. Cleave was born. Plant and soil sciences intrigued her as she grew up. She specialized in microbial ecology then concerned herself with what might be possible if she could apply scientific and engineering principles to the…
On February 2, 1997, World Wetlands Day was first celebrated. Grown from an international convention held in Ramsar, Iran, on the present and future of the world’s wetlands, the organization is headquartered in Switzerland. Each year on this date, government agencies, citizen groups, and…
On January 9, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt established Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, the world’s first cave designated as a national park. It is named for the whistling, rushing noise of the wind at the mouth of the cave. The cave breathes…
On October 14, 1994, Saguaro was redesignated a National Park from a National Monument. This Arizona park covers elevation ranges from desert floor to mountain top, up to 2600 m (8600 ft). The park’s lowest elevation is a desert ecozone with chaparral and grassland…
On September 25, 1890, Sequoia National Park was established to protect a forest of giant trees called sequoias. That’s what to do with the largest trees on Earth – build a national park around them! The largest tree is named the General Sherman tree…
On September 14, 1907, Jasper Forest Park was established, expanding into national park status in 1930. With its 11,000 km² (4200 mi² ) area, Jasper National Park of Canada is larger than the country of Jamaica. On hundreds of individual sites throughout Jasper, there…
On September 12, 1940, close to the town of Lascaux, four teenaged boys enlarged the entrance to an old river cliff cave so they could explore. They found it to be so large and complex … they got their teacher involved and… anthropologist Henri…