The world is becoming increasingly altered in ways that drastically affect habitat quality for wildlife (Seto et al. 2012). Moreover, the majority of people now live in urban and suburban areas (United Nations Population Fund 2007), so this is where primary interactions with nature and wildlife are occurring (Cook et al. 2012). Human society is also facing drastic losses of biodiversity and “extinction of nature experiences” in each generation (Dirzo et al. 2014, Soga and Gaston 2016).

The future requires that natural history instructors develop innovative approaches to pedagogy or risk losing an audience that has grown up peering...

Natural history is a “practice of intentional, focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy”...

Field-based teaching has long been an essential component of natural history education, providing students with spatial, temporal, and sensory...

Persistent questions regarding the identities of organisms and their relationships to environments have driven natural history through the...

Natural history is who we are as ecologists. I understand such a general statement is not quite this simple, but as natural history informs our...

One reason why natural history is so important now is that we do not know what questions we will need to ask in the future. Natural history...

There have never been people without natural history – the practice of natural history attentiveness is the oldest continuous human tradition....

In spring of 2017, two of us (HB and FC) met on a weekend-long class in the Eastern Sierra Nevada taught by Richard Nevle. The class combined an...

Eleven years ago, we wrote with both excitement and determination about the need for a “natural history renaissance” (Trombulak and Fleischner...

Eager to study natural history, adult students have gathered at an Audubon Camp on the Maine Coast. We have explored the Wreck Island Great Blue...

Opportunities for natural history education at American colleges and universities are in decline (Noss 1996, Futuyma 1998, Wilcove and Eisner 2000,...

London, 1948: a city in recovery. This is the post-war urban landscape in which Jacqueline Palmer began her career as an educator at the renowned...

Over a decade ago, I sat at a table in a dimly lit room with five ecologists talking about the restoration and use of degraded lands. One of them, a...

Introduction One of the major challenges of university science education is to increase the quality of the undergraduate educational experience....

“Like most women she wished to exaggerate the significance of small deaths.” – Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007) My naturalist...

A Reluctant Introduction I teethed on chalk. I think primary thoughts through pencil on yellow lined paper. But my professional life has been...

Dr. Steller was, for the most, not exactly a happy man, and in the last years of his short life he may at times have bitterly regretted having...

Describing, recording, and drawing field observations represent the first steps of field-based scientific inquiry and creativity. These observations...

In the midst of a global biodiversity crisis and human-driven changes in the composition and function of the earth’s ecosystems, the documentation...

Natural history instruction is made more successful when students make their own natural observations, effectively communicate these observations,...

Louv (2005) introduced the phrase “nature-deficit-disorder” to characterize the growing concern over children’s isolation from nature. He suggested...

Here’s how to start.  Buy food for fourteen people for two weeks.  Stuff rough totes with equipment:  spotting scopes, mist nets, GPS units, maps,...

The first song of a male Red-winged Blackbird in late winter reminds me of the many hours I have spent among these birds studying their social lives...

The first annual Northeast Natural History Gathering: Warblers and Wildflowers Weekend was held at Hosmer Point Camp in Craftsbury, Vermont, May...

Engaging children and young adults in natural history is an important challenge. Natural history—“a practice of intentional focused attentiveness...

Winter sun glints through the mesquite bosque as we stride along the dirt road almost in sight of the imposing border wall that cleaves the Sonoran...

Alexander Skutch needs little introduction to any enthusiast of tropical birds. Skutch was born in the United States, but he spent more than sixty...

Some relationships are legendary: Laurel and Hardy, Lennon and McCartney, Stanley and Livingstone, Astaire and Rodgers, … Han and Chewbacca.  While...

A broad-based education must include opportunities for engagement with the natural world. A useful approach, especially for students in the...

Species’ traits are important ecologically.  Examples of species’ traits include body size, generation length, habitat breadth, and mating system. ...

Natural-history writing comes in many flavors. Sometimes it takes the form of a catalog of observations of plants and animals, other times it...

Whenever I first visit someone’s house the first thing that I find myself doing is scanning for bookshelves. The absence of books can tell one...

The natural world demands a response that rises from the wild unconscious depths of the human soul. – Thomas Berry (1999) Recent discussions about...

Many people who currently advocate for nature, and for the importance of nature in human lives, focus on what can be termed domestic, nearby,...

Today, I have come to Mount Auburn to see what is here – no lions, no tigers. Just minutes away from the daily business of my usual life, I enter a...

The world needs natural history now more than ever. Because natural history – which I have defined as “a practice of intentional focused...

Continuing our “tropical” theme from the previous column, I would like to recommend the reader’s attention to Henry Walter Bates’ The Naturalist on...

Darwin always said that of all the books he wrote, he had the greatest affection for his “first born” – the volume most of us know simply as The...

Each time I teach an environmental science class, I bring my students to a stream near campus. The students are animated, glad to be freed from the...

There is nothing in which people differ more than in their powers of observation. – John Burroughs Perception is one of the greatest of all natural...

Frederick von Hohenstaufen was born into troubled times. By one account, his mother gave birth to him in the public market place in order to...

Prologue From the lakeside gravel road, our group follows a path that immediately enters a mixed deciduous and evergreen forest. Flickering green...

Part way through the by now classic film Young Frankenstein, the heroes are wandering disconsolately through a lab, trying to reconstruct the work...

The mission of the Natural History Network is to promote the value of natural history by discussing and disseminating ideas and techniques on its...

One of the most widely appreciated branches of the Tree of Life is that of the birds. It is almost certainly no exaggeration to say that we know...

In their Autumn 2001 issue, Orion magazine listed a scant nine institutions of higher education with programs in natural history.  That same year I...

We gather at sunset on a rocky promontory that juts into Low Lake, at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, near the town of Ely in...

“H. G. Wells had it right when he said that we are in a race between education and catastrophe. This race will be decided in all of the places,...

Yes, the title of this editorial is a mouthful.  Yet it makes an important point.  Over the past year and a half since the Natural History Network...

It is our misfortune to live in an age of rapid biological decline. Ever since the emergence of Homo sapiens as a tool-using species, capable of...