a few of my favorites

Sunrise on North Padre Island
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

Just a super quick update. I am so close to being done with a full draft of my book. So close that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel but it's still not done which frustrates me because I was only one half-chapter away when I got back from Montana and I have not had time to just do that single half chapter!! I understand why, just basically getting caught up at home, spending time with my beautiful awesome kiddos when I can, some time with Doug, and then writing several Animal Planet blog posts so I can have a week to focus - this week. And here it is, Tuesday!

I wanted to link to some of my favorite Animal Planet Animals in the News blog posts in case you haven't had a chance to read them.

Massive oil spill off Australian coast puts marine life at risk - The news in yesterday's post horrifies me because some 400-2,000 barrels of oil per day are spilling into the Timor Sea off Western Australia and it's been going on since August 21st. Yet it's barely made the news. WWF-Australia made an expedition there to survey the damage to wildlife.

Hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" may kill animals- I like this post because it reports on something that, once again, has only started getting the public attention it deserves. It's a frightening story that we all should be aware of! My friend Sharon Wilson who writes the Blue Daze blog has been a longtime advocate of drilling reform in the Barnett Shale of Texas.

Open Season on Gray Wolves - I like this one because it's based on my recent visit to Yellowstone National Park and seeing the wolves in the wild, then I give an update on the first wolf hunting season in recent history.

Costa Rica’s “Leatherback National Park” threatened - Discovery Channel sent me to Las Baulas National Park in 1999 for a totally amazing expedition Love & Death on Turtle Beach! Now the national park may get downgraded by Costa Rica's own government.

Meatless Mondays - I have enjoyed writing about food/meat issues on the blog, which is something "animal" related that I never originally intended to write about. But as I come across story ideas, more and more I realize that food issues affect us all, and actually a lot more than many other wildlife or animal stories. I am trying to do "meatless monday" which means no meat on Mondays, and it's embraced by the likes of Paul McCartney and many others. The goal is to help curb global warming because meat production is one of the leading contributors to greenhouse gases. This post gives the facts about meat consumption as gathered from various sources, and the low-down on meatless Mondays.

Good year for endangered coho salmon - Again part of this was based on my visit to the Pacific Northwest and I really like writing about the places I visit, and learning more about the salmon hatcheries and the endangered species of salmon that live there. I like to choose sustainably harvested seafood and this blog has helped me learn a lot in that regard. According to most seafood watch reports, Alaska salmon is mostly ok, farmed salmon is bad to eat, and it depends on which precise river drainage in the Pacific NW you get your fish from on whether it's sustainable or not...

That's all for now! :) Visit and leave some comments, if you get a chance!

Zumbalicious!

I love you gentlest of ways
who ripened us as we wrestled with you.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Love Poems to God

Leatherback sea turtle nesting at dawn at Playa Grande, Costa Rica.
Copyright (c) 1999 Wendee Holtcamp

I love sea turtles. I just finished a piece on a controversial sea turtle project in India, and so thought I'd link to some of my past sea turtle pieces. The photo above is from when Discovery Channel sent me down to Costa Rica to report live for 2 weeks back in 1999. It was before the word "blog" was invented, but that's basically what it was.. It was an amazing experience. Though the whole thing is no longer on the Discovery Channel Online website, it's reprinted at the Wayback Machine website (minus images). Love & Death on Turtle Beach is a 2-week series so there are several entries. I linked to my favorite piece of the several I did, Turtles Troubles. It starts:

I am feeling restless in my skin tonight, out here under the stars, surf roaring furiously. I want to do cartwheels in the sand. I want to make sand angels. I want to talk about the meaning of life. I want to know why we as a society have gotten so far from the animals we love so deeply. But no one's talking in profundities tonight

The nesting ritual I just witnessed blew me away, so primeval yet so unifying. I feel at once distant from this massive beast with a quarter-ounce brain, yet so connected to her -- as a mother, as a child, as a fellow animal. My mind sings, "Where have all the turtles gone? ..."

J Nichols and a colleague take measurements on a sea turtle we caught in Magdalena Bay, Baja Mexico.
Copyright (c) 1998 Wendee Holtcamp

I also want to give a shout out to my friend J Nichols who wrote this incredibly moving OpEd for Good Times, Santa Cruz' Weekly newspaper, The Annhilation of Cynicism. It's reprinted at his blog (that's what I've linked to). I wrote an article about J's amazing work that he pioneered in Baja, Mexico working with fishermen and locals to get them to stop eating sea turtles and to help them conserve them instead. His non-judgmental and open-minded approach has made a minor miracle down there. I traveled down there and wrote this piece for Animals Magazine back in 1998, which is reprinted on my website. It Takes a Village. A couple snippets from J's OpEd:

The foundations of science, education, intellectual honesty, empathy, understanding, partnership, humility, service, reason, passion, conservation, cooperation, caring, equality, responsibility and community have regained their footing, which had slipped so far, so fast.

For this moment the cynicism—the angry hateful kind that has infested us in these times—has been annihilated. One notices its absence in the smiles, the tears and the hopeful songs that are pouring out all over the planet.

A couple years ago I also did a piece on Kemp's Ridley sea turtles, the world's rarest sea turtle species and one found in the Gulf of Mexico. I went to Corpus Christi with the kids and watched them release hatchlings which was really amazing. They're so tiny and adorable! I have a bunch of photos on the blog from the visit. And I wrote this article, Surf's Up for These Sea Turtles for Defenders Magazine. The sea turtle hatchling image on my website is from this trip!

So this morning I went to Zumba for the first time. Wow - I love it! My friend Trish (aka Trishalicious) teaches it and I've been meaning to go since I joined my gym about 4 months ago but had not made it until today. I used to do aerobics classes all the time but in the past several years have gotten away from them and more into running, yoga, pilates and just doing weights and the stepmill at the gym. So it kicked my butt! Zumba is almost a free form dance but you do follow the instructor's moves but anyway you just have to experience it! It's a blast. I love dance and body movement, it always makes me feel so alive. It reminds me of Nietzsche's Zarathustra in his final stage of his life where he decides that movement and body expression is one of the most important aspects of living and feeeling alive. I may have this wrong, I have not read all of Zarathustra but have studied some of it and it's on my book reading list! So forgive me if I got that wrong! Anyway there's a song in the Zumba class that says Zumbalicious and so now I know why Trish calls me Wendeelicious and herself Trishalicious! :)

Oh and how could I forget - I just booked a Christmas trip to visit my dad and other family and Jimmy, my high school sweetheart in Oregon and Washington. I am so excited!! Needless to say, I love Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Though I've been away a long time it will always be my "home." I'm a blue state kinda gal!! (I was born in California... moved to Oregon... and then became a gypsy wandering soul after that).