Jonathan C. Slaght's Blog, page 3

By Chance: Food & Shelter

The latest from my Scientific American blog, East of Siberia: North of Ternei, in the province of Primorye where I conduct most of my research, there are no hotels and no restaurants. There are barely even people. There are only a half-dozen small settlements: logging towns or subsistence villages that are remote islands of humanity scattered broadly … Continue reading By Chance: Food & Shelter

Arsenyev in the Land

My latest from Scientific American:  Crossing a channel of the Serebryanka River, a place explored by Arsenyev in 1906.  I feel a kinship with Vladimir Arsenyev, the Russian topographer who explored Primorye a hundred years ago. We both know the secret places of these forests: the rivers where salmon spawn and the rocky outcroppings where tigers … Continue reading Arsenyev in the Land

Tigers & the Art of Persuasion

The latest from my Scientific American series, East of Siberia: THE TEMPERATE RAINFORESTS OF PRIMORYE become dense and green in summer, a vastness lost on those within it. Visibility can drop to almost zero along shrub-crowded game trails, where dew-drenched grasses cling like needy toddlers and spider webs tangle in the unshaven faces of those pushing through. […]

An Osprey, Until It Wasn’t

  The latest from my Scientific American series, East of Siberia: In autumn, 2012, hunters found a young osprey wandering the forest of coastal Primorye. Whereas most of these fish-eating raptors had long flown south for the winter this one walked, dragging its broken wing behind it through the fallen leaves. The hunters chased the bird […]

Walking Rivers with Tigers

My most recent post at Scientific American: Why do tigers always seem to turn up when I’m looking for owls? My Russian colleagues and I spent about a month surveying for Blakiston’s fish owls in the Sikhote-Alin Reserve this winter, but mostly what we found was snow, cold, and tiger tracks. In fact, if we had […]

Fish Owls on the BBC

  Earlier this month I spoke about fish owls on a BBC World Service program called Outlook, which reaches approximately 52 million listeners across the globe. I think it turned out well. If interested, follow the link to hear this seven-minute piece. They added music and sound effects to make it moody!

Where There Is No Tractor

This post first appeared on 16 March, 2016 on Scientific American. One of my favorite Russian sayings, roughly translated, is that the better your off-road vehicle, the further you’ll have to walk to find a tractor to pull you free when you get stuck. I consider this phrase regularly during each Blakiston’s fish owl winter […]

A Kettle of Firewood

This post first appeared on 16 March, 2016 on Scientific American.   Amgu, like many of the small, sparsely-scattered coastal villages of Russia’s northern Primorye, faces whimsies of nature on a regular basis that few of us would care to experience. Life is tenuous, uncertain, boom-and-bust. When there’s a fire, Amgu burns. When there’s a […]

Clean Water & Healthy Living

This post first appeared 01 March, 2016 on Scientific American Despite nearly twenty years of experience in the Russian Far East, I unambiguously remain an outsider here. I am clumsy on backcountry skis, I’m a terrible fisherman, and I am unable to repair a vehicle with scraps I found lying about (or at all). These […]

A Brief Encounter with a Goral

Languid waves massage the sands of Khuntami Bay below, while somewhere inland a wildfire smolders and pushes an ashy haze towards the Sea of Japan.