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from Photographers Blog:
Set free in the Mongolian wild
By Petr Josek
Bulgan airport in the southwest part of Mongolia reminds me of a small train station from the spaghetti western film "Once Upon a Time in the West." It's slow, hot and once a week people wait for an airplane with no more then 20 passengers on board to arrive.
The day of July 17, 2012, was different.
The Czech Army plane Casa brought on board four Przewalski mares. They are endangered animals with a sandy brown coat and faintly striped legs, extinct in their homeland since the early 1970s.
Now the animals were landing on a dirt tarmac after a 6,000 km (3,728 miles) flight from the Czech Republic. It was a challenge for the pilots, required extra airport staff and was an attraction for local residents. It's hard to say if the customs officer was taking pictures for professional reasons or just for himself as a souvenir from the unusual event.
The horses went from an air conditioned plane to the hot air of their predecessors' homeland. From green grass to dry desert and after more then 17 hours on the plane, their journey had not finished yet. Another 250 km (155 miles) in old, unreliable vehicles awaited the animals, with over 70 kms of those on dirty bumping roads. Several dozen villagers came to wish good luck to their beloved animals - and they really needed it. After just a few minutes of driving one car stopped with a broken cooling system. Rangers quickly reloaded a box from it onto another car which already had one horse on board.
from Photographers Blog:
On the road at Euro 2012
By Kai Pfaffenbach
As a news photographer working for Reuters in Germany it is quite normal to spend some time in your car. It is not unusual to drive between 3000-5000km per month. So I expected nothing different when coming to Poland for the Euro 2012 covering the soccer matches in Warsaw and Gdansk. During our tournament planning we agreed on traveling in a big van with our team of three photographers and one technician. That seemed a lot easier than spending more time getting all the equipment to an airport than actually flying.
Four times we had to hit the road towards Gdansk and back to Warsaw. About 360km one way shouldn’t last longer than 3 to 4 hours. “It’s about the ride from Frankfurt to Munich to cover some soccer at Allianz Arena. Entering the highway in Frankfurt and three hours later you take the exit in front of the stadium”, I thought to myself. As a matter of fact our trips were different and we experienced quite a few new things on our journey - everything in an absolutely positive way. Even though there’s not much of a highway to begin with, we had a lot to see. In retrospect we divided the trip in three parts.
Part 1: the strawberry and cherry alley – not one or two people were offering self-harvested fruits here, but dozens. They displayed the freshly picked fruits on the hood of their cars, sitting next to it under a sunshade waiting for customers. Of course we took the opportunity, made a good deal and used the strawberries for a refreshing milkshake after coming back. Some refreshment was needed as the drive on the country road is somewhat challenging as well. Some Polish drivers are very “creative” when using the space of only two lanes. It is nothing special if you face three cars driving towards you next to each other. Thank god that didn’t lead directly into the next part of our journey….
from Photographers Blog:
Owners of The White Silence
By Anton Golubev
When I was a little boy, I adored the books of Jack London. The Nature of the North - that was the thing that captivated me. The White Silence; a chilling title, words that are hard to appreciate for a city dweller used to the din of cars and neon lights. The majority of Russians seldom leave cities further than to go to the dacha, the country houses that most people own just outside the city limits. Some might travel to some mountains or woodlands. Only a few will visit such a godforsaken place as the Russian North. The land where The White Silence reigns.
The North is a cruel place. Here, where the population density reaches one person per ten square kilometers, there is no transport links, there is nobody to ask the way, there is nobody to ask for a light or hot food, and there is little chance that anybody can help you if something happens. You can count on yourself only. The White Silence is a jingling calm when you can't hear any sound around, it's a thin line of a low northern wood on the horizon between two halves of the white nothing, it's a blizzard when the boundless white Tundra flows together with the overhanging northern sky, it's a half-strewed snowmobile track which you follow to reach the light and warm of a human dwelling.
from Photographers Blog:
Nerves of peace in troubled Kashmir
By Fayaz Kabli
As the year nears its end, the Chinar trees have turned a crimson red and the water in the Dal Lake is still and calm. The peace in the troubled Kashmir region has a hold of the nerves of the Kashmiri people.
From 2008 to 2010, Kashmir saw its worst period of unrest which claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed much of its economy.
from Photographers Blog:
Paradise city in grizzly bear country
"Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. Take me home. Oh, won't you please take me home."
Apparently those few lyrics from the Guns 'N Roses 1987 hit song Paradise City are the only parts of the song I know and also the only song I know the lyrics to. I can't even recite the Star Spangled Banner. But singing in a false seagull strangling soprano while hiking and camping in grizzly bear country was my way of not creeping up on a bear and surprising it and thus becoming bear food.
from FaithWorld:
Japanese Buddhist priest discusses spiritual toll of nuclear crisis
(Sokyu Genyu during an interview with Reuters in Tokyo June 4, 2011/Chisa Fujioka)
In Japan, where nature is believed to cleanse spirits, how do people cope when treasured mountains and oceans are tainted by leaks of radiation from a nuclear power plant?
from Photographers Blog:
In the hunt for Malaysia’s endangered wild elephants
Trekking deep in Malaysia’s dense rainforest, a group of wildlife rangers went on a risky mission to locate and capture wild elephants in a bid to preserve the endangered species that are fast dwindling due to the loss of their natural habitat.
I recently joined in the mission of official “elephant hunters” -- a 10-day ordeal that took us to the forested land in the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia -- and ended up with a wild elephant after missing another.
from Afghan Journal:
Huge natural stone arch new Afghan treasure
photo courtesy of Ayub Alavi/Wildlife Conservation Society
Afghanistan surprises most first-time visitors (including many on military transport planes) with stunning natural beauty -- there's little room in column inches taken up with war to describe snow-topped mountains, lush valleys, spring fields scattered with crocus and other pleasures of living here.
The country's dazzling blue Band-e Amir lakes are almost unique geologically (not the way they are formed, but in their size), there are endangered animals like snow leopards roaming the country's more remote corners, and now naturalists have discovered one of the world's largest natural stone arches.
from Environment Forum:
Is Earth due for a mass extinction?
It has all the signs of a sick good-news/bad-news tale. The bad news is that Earth may be ripe for a mass extinction, where 75 percent or more of the life on the planet vanishes forever.
The good news is it's unlikely to happen for at least three more centuries.
Scientists writing in the journal Nature warn that we could be on the brink of a mass extinction, the kind of species loss that has happened just five times in the last 540 million years.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Egrets, I’ve had a few…
An egret stands among anemone flowers...
* * * * * *
Honey, you can stop cooking, it looks like the Hendersons can't make our dinner party after all!
Damn those people! How do you know?
Look out in the garden, they sent their egrets!
Some friends they turned out to be, huh?
Yeah, with friends like those, who needs anemones?
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An egret stands among anemone flowers in Ben-Shemen forest, near the Israeli town of Modiin, February 21, 2011. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
