7 Travel Stories to Help You Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day

Due to the fact of coronavirus constraints, a lot of of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day have been forced indoors and online. To assist offset the isolation of worldwide social-distancing measures, the Vacation desk has gathered a sequence of stories to assist remember the spirit of the yearly celebration.

But all of them, we hope, will remind you of the natural world’s a lot of splendors — and why environmental protections will be of vital worth for the foreseeable future of our planet.

Up in the suitable-hand corner of Alaska, like one thing freezer-burned and half-remembered in the back of the countrywide icebox, lies a location termed the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. On a river excursion by means of this starkly gorgeous space, a writer demonstrates on what we’re eager to gamble for oil and income. Examine more.

In a dying reef planet, tiny Bonaire — a minimal island in the Caribbean Sea — is a achievement story, predominantly thanks to the relative paucity of persons, which has retained advancement to a minimum amount. Its reefs are also thriving for the reason that of a forty-yr-previous marine maintenance procedure, and a coral reef restoration effort and hard work, both of which are styles for the rest of the Caribbean. Examine more.

“There are no other Everglades in the planet. They are, they have often been, one particular of the one of a kind areas of the earth distant, never ever wholly acknowledged,” wrote Marjory Stoneman Douglas in her 1947 e book, “The Everglades: River of Grass.” But the Everglades are profoundly imperiled by pollution, human strategies to drain and command it, invasive animal and plant species and sea level increase. As salt h2o breaches the limestone bedrock close to the Florida peninsula and enters the aquifer, this natural freshwater marvel is threatened like never ever just before. Examine more.

On the two times-annually journey to move grazing animals in between summertime and winter pastures, a writer finds a deep link to an ancient custom. “The long journey at the cows’ pace,” she writes, “is a salve to the spirit of the accompanying human beings, a retreat from the mechanized pace of fashionable everyday living, a chance to hook up to both nature and the past — all when immersed in amazing Italian landscapes.” Examine more.

Britain’s hills, lakes and heaths make for perpetually awe-inspiring settings. But, especially as one particular presses at any time northward into the Scottish Highlands, the moorlands can also make for a demanding and occasionally perilous landscape. Rustic shelters termed “bothies” — mostly concentrated in Scotland — are a portal to these places. In all their understated glory, bothies permit for prolonged access to Britain’s rugged and restorative corners, places that could possibly normally establish unforgiving or impractical as day-hike destinations for the casual explorer. Examine more.

Vietnam is one particular of the world’s very hot spots of biological range. But its wild populations, previously hemmed in by habitat destruction for the reason that of an exploding human populace, are also being shot, snared and are living-captured so effectively that countrywide parks and other natural areas are now mostly stricken with “empty forest syndrome”: suitable forest habitat from which even smaller animals and birds have been hunted into regional extinction. Examine more.

The subject of local climate alter is everywhere in Fiji. The island country’s reliance on tourism, put together with vigorous advancement and the outcomes of climbing global temperatures, have conspired in opposition to its fragile setting. It faces major environmental worries, such as deforestation, unsustainable fishing procedures and the introduction of invasive species, this sort of as the crown-of-thorns starfish, that have led to the destruction of coral reefs. Climbing sea degrees have also led to the erosion of Fiji’s coastal areas, and the intrusion of saltwater has destroyed farmland and forced residents to move to safer ground. Examine more.