04/22/2026
EARTH DAY 2026
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In honor of please read Michael George’s beautiful post
“This rātā forest is the most stunning example of crown shyness I’ve ever seen. It is so precise I had multiple people message me and ask if it is computer generated. It’s not fake, but it would be nearly impossible for you to see it in real life. The forest is found on Enderby Island, one of the most remote places on the planet. Close to 300 miles south of the mainland of New Zealand, Enderby is part of the Auckland Islands. It is one of the rare “pest free” islands where endemic species can thrive without the fear of being killed by the countless invasive mammals we’ve brought to that part of the world. There’s the rare yellow-eyed penguin, New Zealand sea lions, and birds with songs that sound like video game sound effects. If you turn your sound on, you can hear one of those birds in this video.
PS: For those bewildered by the term in my opening sentence, crown shyness is “a phenomenon observed in some tree species, in which the crowns of fully stocked trees do not touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like gaps”