1.
International Union for Conservation of Nature
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The International Union for Conservation of Nature is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It is involved in gathering and analysis, research, field projects, advocacy, lobbying. IUCNs mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of resources is equitable. Over the past decades, IUCN has widened its focus beyond conservation ecology and now incorporates issues related to equality, poverty alleviation. Unlike other international NGOs, IUCN does not itself aim to mobilize the public in support of nature conservation and it tries to influence the actions of governments, business and other stakeholders by providing information and advice, and through lobbying and partnerships. The organization is best known to the public for compiling and publishing the IUCN Red List. IUCN has a membership of over 1200 governmental and non-governmental organizations, some 11,000 scientists and experts participate in the work of IUCN commissions on a voluntary basis. It employs approximately 1000 full-time staff in more than 60 countries and its headquarters are in Gland, Switzerland. IUCN has observer and consultative status at the United Nations, and plays a role in the implementation of several conventions on nature conservation. It was involved in establishing the World Wide Fund for Nature, in the past, IUCN has been criticized for placing the interests of nature over those of indigenous peoples. In recent years, its relations with the business sector have caused controversy. It was previously called the International Union for Protection of Nature, establishment In 1947, the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature organised an international conference on the protection of nature in Brunnen. It is considered to be the first government-organized non-governmental organization, the initiative to set up the new organisation came from UNESCO and especially from its first Director General, the British biologist Julian Huxley. At the time of its founding IUPN was the international organisation focusing on the entire spectrum of nature conservation Early years. Its secretariat was located in Brussels and its first work program focused on saving species and habitats, increasing and applying knowledge, advancing education, promoting international agreements and promoting conservation. Providing a solid base for conservation action was the heart of all activities. IUPN and UNESCO were closely associated and they jointly organized the 1949 Conference on Protection of Nature. In preparation for this conference a list of endangered species was drawn up for the first time
2.
United States Virgin Islands
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The United States Virgin Islands, officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of islands in the Caribbean that are an insular area of the United States. The islands are part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. The U. S. Virgin Islands consist of the islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas. The total land area of the territory is 133.73 square miles, the territorys capital is Charlotte Amalie on the island of Saint Thomas. Previously the Danish West Indies of the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway, they were sold to the United States by Denmark in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies of 1916. They are classified by the U. N. as a Non-Self-Governing Territory, the U. S. Virgin Islands are organized under the 1954 Revised Organic Act of the Virgin Islands and have since held five constitutional conventions. The Fifth Constitutional Convention of the U. S. Virgin Islands met in October 2012 to address these concerns, in 2010 the population was 106,405, and mostly Afro-Caribbean. Tourism and related categories are the economic activity, employing a high percentage of the civilian non-farm labor force that totalled 42,752 persons in 2016. Private sector jobs made up 71 percent of the total workforce, the average private sector salary was $34,088 and the average public sector salary was $52,572. In a May 2016 report, some 11,000 people were categorized as being involved in some aspect of agriculture in the first half of 2016, at that time, there were approximately 607 manufacturing jobs and 1,487 natural resource and construction jobs. The single largest employer was the government, in mid February 2017, the USVI was facing a financial crisis due to a very high debt level of $2 billion and a structural budget deficit of $110 million. The U. S. Virgin Islands were originally inhabited by the Ciboney, Carib, the islands were named by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493 for Saint Ursula and her virgin followers. Over the next two hundred years, the islands were held by many European powers, including Spain, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark-Norway. The Danish West India Company settled on Saint Thomas in 1672, settled on Saint John in 1694, the islands became royal Danish colonies in 1754, named the Danish West Indian Islands. Sugarcane, produced by labor, drove the islands economy during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The Danish West India and Guinea Company are also credited with naming the island St. John, the Danish crown took full control of Saint John in 1754 along with St. Thomas and St. Croix. Sugarcane plantations such as the famous Annaberg Sugar Plantation were established in great numbers on St. John because of the intense heat, the establishment of sugarcane plantations also led to the buying of more slaves from Africa. In 1733 St. John was the site of one of the first significant slave rebellions in the New World when Akwamu slaves from the Gold Coast took over the island for six months, the Danish were able to defeat the enslaved Africans with help from the French in Martinique
3.
Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands
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Charlotte Amalie, located on St. Thomas, is the capital and the largest city of the U. S. Virgin Islands, founded in 1666 as Taphus. In 1691, the town was renamed to Amalienborg after Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel, protected by Hassel Island, the harbor has docking and fueling facilities, machine shops, and shipyards and was a U. S. submarine base until 1966. The town has been inhabited for centuries, when Christopher Columbus came here in 1493, the area was inhabited by Island Caribs and Taíno. It is on the shore at the head of Saint Thomas Harbor. In 2010 the city had a population of 18,481, hundreds of ferries and yachts pass through town each week, and at times the population more than doubles. The city is known for its Danish colonial architecture, building structure and history, the town has a long history of pirates, especially stories of Bluebeard and Blackbeard. In the 17th century, the Danes built both Blackbeards Castle and Bluebeards Castle attributed to the pirates, Blackbeards Castle is a U. S. National Historic Landmark. Another tourist attraction is Fort Christian, the oldest standing structure in the Virgin Islands Archipelago, a copy of the Liberty Bell is in Emancipation Park, which is a tourist attraction. Before the time of the Danish West Indies, the city was known as Taphus for its many beer halls, Taphus is Danish and directly translates to beer houses, beer halls, or taphouse. In 1691 the town received a respectable name by being named Amalienborg in honor of Danish king Christian V’s wife. In English, Charlotte Amalie is pronounced SHAR-lut uh-MAHL-yuh or AH-muh-leh, between 1921 and 1936, the city was named St. Thomas. In 1936 it was renamed Charlotte Amalie, on his second voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus encountered Native Americans living in the present-day archipelago of the United States Virgin Islands. Archaeological records indicate that the islands have been home to Indian tribes, including the Taíno people, Arawak people, Kalinago people, several of them lived in present-day Charlotte Amalie in small fishing communities. As was the case in most of the Americas, the population died relatively quickly from disease when the Europeans settled. The Danish West India Company chartered Charlotte Amalie in 1671 after King Christian V decided to secure them for plantations, as early as in 1672, the Danish government began the construction of Fort Christian on Saint Thomas Harbor in Charlotte Amalie. In 1675, the Danes constructed four pubs near the edge on the western side of the fort. The Danish government supplied convicts to work the plantations but soon allowed colonists from neighboring islands to settle there, in 1680, there were more black African slaves than white European settlers. Adjacent Water and Buck Islands served as pasture lands for the city and it was the main port of the Virgin Islands Archipelago and was connected to about 50 plantations by one road, which remains the main highway today
4.
National Park Service
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It was created on August 25,1916, by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act and is an agency of the United States Department of the Interior. As of 2014, the NPS employs 21,651 employees who oversee 417 units, the National Park Service celebrated its centennial in 2016. National parks and national monuments in the United States were originally individually managed under the auspices of the Department of the Interior, the movement for an independent agency to oversee these federal lands was spearheaded by business magnate and conservationist Stephen Mather, as well as J. Horace McFarland. With the help of journalist Robert Sterling Yard, Mather ran a publicity campaign for the Department of the Interior and they wrote numerous articles that praised the scenic and historic qualities of the parks and their possibilities for educational, inspirational, and recreational benefits. This campaign resulted in the creation of a National Park Service, Mather became the first director of the newly formed NPS. On March 3,1933, President Herbert Hoover signed the Reorganization Act of 1933, the act would allow the President to reorganize the executive branch of the United States government. It wasnt until later that summer when the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Roosevelt agreed and issued two Executive orders to make it happen. In 1951, Conrad Wirth became director of the National Park Service, the demand for parks after the end of the World War II had left the parks overburdened with demands that could not be met. In 1952, with the support of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, he began Mission 66, New parks were added to preserve unique resources and existing park facilities were upgraded and expanded. In 1966, as the Park Service turned 50 years old, emphasis began to turn from just saving great and wonderful scenery, Director George Hartzog began the process with the creation of the National Lakeshores and then National Recreation Areas. Since its inception in 1916, the National Park Service has managed each of the United States national parks, Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the United States. In 1872, there was no government to manage it. Yosemite National Park began as a park, the land for the park was donated by the federal government to the state of California in 1864 for perpetual conservation. Yosemite was later returned to federal ownership, at first, each national park was managed independently, with varying degrees of success. In Yellowstone, the staff was replaced by the U. S. Army in 1886. Due to the irregularities in managing these national treasures, Stephen Mather petitioned the government to improve the situation. In response, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane challenged him to lobby for creating a new agency, Mather was successful with the ratification of the National Park Service Organic Act in 1916. Later, the agency was given authority over other protected areas, the National Park System includes all properties managed by the National Park Service
5.
National park
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A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns, although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea, the conservation of wild nature for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, although Yellowstone was not officially termed a national park in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use national park in its legislation was the USs Mackinac Island. Australias Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park, as a result, Australias Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence. The largest national park in the meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park. According to the IUCN,6,555 national parks worldwide met its criteria in 2006, IUCN is still discussing the parameters of defining a national park. National parks are almost always open to visitors, in 1971, these criteria were further expanded upon leading to more clear and defined benchmarks to evaluate a national park. In 1810, the English poet William Wordsworth described the Lake District as a sort of property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive. It was known as Hot Springs Reservation, but no authority was established. Federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877, John Muir is today referred to as the Father of the National Parks due to his work in Yosemite. He published two articles in The Century Magazine, which formed the base for the subsequent legislation. President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on July 1,1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley, according to this bill, private ownership of the land in this area was no longer possible. The state of California was designated to manage the park for use, resort. Leases were permitted for up to ten years and the proceeds were to be used for conservation, a public discussion followed this first legislation of its kind and there was a heated debate over whether the government had the right to create parks. The perceived mismanagement of Yosemite by the Californian state was the reason why Yellowstone at its establishment six years later was put under national control, in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the United States first national park, being also the worlds first national park. In some European countries, however, national protection and nature reserves already existed, such as Drachenfels, Yellowstone was part of a federally governed territory
6.
Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands
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Saint John is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands, an unincorporated territory of the United States. At 50 km2 the smallest of the three main US Virgin Islands, Saint John is located four miles east of Saint Thomas. It is also four miles southwest of Tortola, part of the British Virgin Islands and its largest settlement is Cruz Bay with a population of 2,700. St. Johns nickname is Love City, since 1956, approximately 60% of the island is protected as Virgin Islands National Park, administered by the United States National Park Service. The economy is based on tourism, Saint John is 50.8 km² in area with a population of 4,170. As of the 2010 U. S. Census, the population of the US Virgin Islands territory was 106,405. Saint John was first settled by the Taíno Indians who migrated north from coastal areas of present-day Colombia, the Arawak inhabited the island until around the year AD1300, when they were driven off by the more aggressive and warlike Carib. Extensive archaeological work started in 1996 at Cinnamon Bay, the artifacts from this dig are being studied and are expected to yield more detailed information on pre-Columbian civilization in the US Virgin Islands. Explorer Christopher Columbus, traveling on behalf of the Spanish Crown, is credited with being the first European to see the Virgin Islands in 1493, during his second voyage to the New World. A Catholic, he named the group of islands as Once Mil Virgenes, in honor of the feast day of Saint Ursula. The Danish West India and Guinea Company represented the first Europeans to settle the island in 1718 and they are also credited with naming the island Saint John. The Danish crown took control of this and nearby colonies in 1754, including those founded on the similarly named islands of Saint Thomas. Sugar cane plantations, such as the famous Annaberg Sugar Plantation, were established in great numbers on Saint John, the establishment of sugarcane plantations created a high demand for labor. The indigenous Carib and Arawak were initially used as slave labor, the planters imported many slaves from Africa in an established slave trade dominated by Portugal in the early years, but which Britain also entered. In 1733 Saint John was the site of one of the first significant slave rebellions in the New World, enslaved Akwamu from the Gold Coast rebelled and took control of the island for six months before being defeated by a combination of better armed forces. The Danish defeated the enslaved Africans with help from French colonists of Martinique, instead of submitting to captivity and slavery, more than a dozen men and women shot and killed themselves before the French forces reached them. It is estimated that by 1775, slaves outnumbered the Danish settlers on Saint John by a ratio of 5,1, denmark finally abolished slavery in Saint John and its other islands on July 3,1848. In 1917, during the First World War, the United States purchased the U. S. Virgin Islands for $25 million from the Danish government in order to establish a naval base and it was intended to prevent expansion of the German Empire into the Western Hemisphere
7.
Hassel Island, U.S. Virgin Islands
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Hassel Island is a small island of the U. S. Virgin Islands, a United States territory located in the Caribbean Sea. Hassel Island lies in the Charlotte Amalie harbor just south of Saint Thomas and east of Water Island, the roughly 136-acre island was once a peninsula of Saint Thomas, known as Orkanhullet. Hassel Island was separated by the Danish government in 1860, in March 2012, the MTVs reality TV series The Real World was filmed for its twenty-seventh season on Hassel Island. It is the season that the television series has filmed in the Caribbean. The season completed its two months later in May 2012. In 2015, that land was purchased to be used as a lot for a home, there are under five homes built on this island. It does not seem to be a fast growing populous place, careening Cove, a bay on Hassel Island, appears on maps as early as 1687. The Danish used Hassel Islands strategic location to defend the busy Charlotte Amalie harbor in the 18th and 19th centuries, the British occupied Hassel Island during the Napoleonic Wars. The ruins of several British buildings remain on Hassel Island, including Fort Willoughby, which was built on the site of the older Prince Frederiks Battery, Fort Shipley, all three were constructed around 1802. In the 1840s, the St. Thomas Marine Railway Company constructed the St. Thomas Marine Railway Slip, later renamed the Creque Marine Railway, it is one of the earliest steam-powered marine railways in the western hemisphere and perhaps the oldest surviving example of such a railway. The Hamburg-based Boulton Company built the steam engine. In the 1860s, the Danish government dug a channel which separated Hassel Island from Saint Thomas, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company operated its West Indies hub on Hassel Island from about 1850 until the 1870s. In 1871, the Hamburg America Line set up a station on Hassel Island. There was also a leprosarium on the island, the channel was widened by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1919, shortly after the United States purchased the Danish West Indies. The United States Navy also established a station on the island. In the middle of the 20th century, most of Hassel Island was owned by the prominent local Paiewonsky family, the Royal Mail Inn, a small hotel located on Hassel Island, may have been the hotel immortalized in Herman Wouks novel Dont Stop the Carnival. The Creque Marine Railway and a station at Cowells Battery were in operation until the 1960s and 1970s respectively. In 1978, the Virgin Islands National Park purchased most of the island from the Paiewonsky family, the rest of the island is divided between the territorial government and a few private residences
8.
Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
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Located on the island is the territorial capital and port of Charlotte Amalie. As of the 2010 census, the population of Saint Thomas was 51,634 about 48. 5% of the US Virgin Islands total, the district has a land area of 31.24 square miles. The island was settled around 1500 BC by the Ciboney people. They were later replaced by the Arawaks and then the Caribs, christopher Columbus sighted the island in 1493 on his second voyage to the New World. The Dutch West India Company established a post on Saint Thomas in 1657, the first congregation was the St. Thomas Reformed Church, which was established in 1660 and was associated with the Dutch Reformed Church. Denmark-Norway conquered the island in 1666, and by 1672 had established control over the island through the Danish West India. The land was divided into plantations and sugarcane became the primary economic activity. As a result, the economies of Saint Thomas and the islands of Saint John and Saint Croix became highly dependent on slave labor. In 1685, the Brandenburgisch-Africanische Compagnie took control of the trade on Saint Thomas. Saint Thomass fine natural harbor became known as Taphus for the establishments located nearby. In 1691, the settlement there was renamed Charlotte Amalie in honor of the wife of Denmarks King Christian V. It was later declared a port by Frederick V. In December 1732, the first two of many Moravian Brethren missionaries came from Herrnhut Saxony in present-day Germany to minister to them, distrusted at first by the white masters, they lived among the slaves and soon won their confidence. From 1796 a small Jewish community developed in Charlotte Amalie and it established a historic synagogue, Beracha Veshalom Vegmiluth Hasidim, the oldest synagogue in continuous anywhere in the United States or its external territories. The first British invasion and occupation of the Danish West Indies occurred at the end of March 1801 when a British fleet arrived at St Thomas, Denmark-Norway accepted the Articles of Capitulation the British proposed and the British occupied the islands without a shot being fired. The British occupation lasted until April 1802, when the British returned the islands to Denmark-Norway, the second British invasion of the Danish West Indies took place in December 1807 when a British fleet captured St Thomas on 22 December and Santa Cruz on 25 December. Denmark-Norway did not resist and the invasion was bloodless and this British occupation of the Danish West Indies lasted until 20 November 1815, when Britain returned the islands to Denmark. While the sugar trade had brought prosperity to the free citizens
9.
Scuba diving
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Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving in which the scuba diver uses a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus which is completely independent of surface supply, to breathe underwater. They may include additional cylinders for decompression gas or emergency breathing gas, closed-circuit or semi-closed circuit rebreather scuba systems allow recycling of exhaled gases. The volume of gas used is reduced compared to that of open circuit, therefore, scuba divers engaged in armed forces covert operations may be referred to as frogmen, combat divers or attack swimmers. A scuba diver primarily moves underwater by using fins attached to the feet, scuba divers are trained in the procedures and skills appropriate to their level of certification by instructors affiliated to the diver certification organisations which issue these certifications. A minimum level of fitness and health is required by most training organisations, the closed-circuit rebreathers were first developed for escape and rescue purposes, and were modified for military use, due to their stealth advantages, as they produce very few bubbles. The first commercially successful closed-circuit scuba was designed and built by English diving engineer, Henry Fleuss in 1878, while working for Siebe Gorman in London. Sir Robert Davis, head of Siebe Gorman, improved the oxygen rebreather in 1910 with his invention of the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus, rebreathers have been increasingly used by civilians for recreation, especially since the end of the Cold War. This reduced the risk of attack by Communist Bloc forces. After that, the armed forces had less reason to requisition civilian rebreather patents. The single hose two stage scuba regulators trace their origins to Australia, where Ted Eldred developed the first example of type of regulator. This was developed because patents protected the Aqualungs twin hose design, the single hose regulator separates the demand valve from the cylinder, giving the diver air at the ambient pressure at the mouth, rather than ambient pressure at the cylinder valve. The term SCUBA originally referred to United States combat frogmens oxygen rebreathers, SCUBA was originally an acronym, but is now generally used as a common noun or adjective, scuba. It has become acceptable to refer to equipment or scuba apparatus—examples of the linguistic RAS syndrome. Scuba diving may be performed for a number of reasons, both personal and professional, recreational diving is done purely for enjoyment and has a number of technical disciplines to increase interest underwater, such as cave diving, wreck diving, ice diving and deep diving. Divers may be employed professionally to perform tasks underwater, some of these tasks are suitable for scuba. There are divers who work, full or part-time, in the diving community as instructors, assistant instructors, divemasters. Other specialist areas of diving include military diving, with a long history of military frogmen in various roles. Their roles include direct combat, infiltration behind enemy lines, placing mines or using a manned torpedo, in some cases diver rescue teams may also be part of a fire department, paramedical service or lifeguard unit, and may be classed as public service diving
10.
Tropical rainforest
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True rainforests are typically found between 10 degrees north and south of the equator, they are a sub-set of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28 degree latitudes. Within the World Wildlife Funds biome classification, tropical rainforests are a type of tropical moist broadleaf forest that includes the more extensive tropical seasonal forests. Tropical rainforests can be characterized in two words, hot and wet, mean monthly temperatures exceed 18 °C during all months of the year. Average annual rainfall is no less than 1,680 mm and this high level of precipitation often results in poor soils due to leaching of soluble nutrients in the ground. Tropical rainforests exhibit high levels of biodiversity, around 40% to 75% of all biotic species are indigenous to the rainforests. Rainforests are home to half of all the animal and plant species on the planet. Two-thirds of all flowering plants can be found in rainforests, a single hectare of rainforest may contain 42,000 different species of insect, up to 807 trees of 313 species and 1,500 species of higher plants. Tropical rainforests have been called the worlds largest pharmacy, because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered within them and it is likely that there may be many millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms still undiscovered in tropical rainforests. Tropical rainforests are among the most threatened ecosystems globally due to large-scale fragmentation as a result of human activity, habitat fragmentation caused by geological processes such as volcanism and climate change occurred in the past, and have been identified as important drivers of speciation. However, fast human driven habitat destruction is suspected to be one of the causes of species extinction. Tropical rain forests have been subjected to heavy logging and agricultural clearance throughout the 20th century, tropical rainforests have existed on earth for hundreds of millions of years. Most tropical rainforests today are on fragments of the Mesozoic era supercontinent of Gondwana, the separation of the landmass resulted in a great loss of amphibian diversity while at the same time the drier climate spurred the diversification of reptiles. The division left tropical rainforests located in five regions of the world, tropical America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Madagascar. However, the specifics of the origin of rainforests remain uncertain due to a fossil record. Several biomes comprise the general term tropical forest, Lowland equatorial evergreen rain forests are forests which receive rainfall throughout the year. These true rainforests occur in a belt around the equator, with the largest areas in the Amazon basin of South America, the Congo Basin of Central Africa, Borneo, Mindanao, Indonesia, and New Guinea. Moist tropical seasonal forests receive high rainfall with a warm summer wet season. Some trees in these forests drop some or all of their leaves during the dry season
11.
Cruz Bay, U.S. Virgin Islands
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Cruz Bay, U. S. Virgin Islands is the main town on the island of Saint John in the United States Virgin Islands. According to the 2000 Census, Cruz Bay has a population of 2,743 people, Cruz Bay, located on the west coast of Saint John, is the islands largest commercial center and the location of the main port on Saint John. The primary access to Saint John is through Cruz Bay Harbor, frequent barge and ferry, including car ferry, service connects Saint John to the neighboring more-developed island of Saint Thomas. Ferries also run regularly between Cruz Bay and Tortola, Virgin Gorda, and Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, Cruz Bay is home to numerous shops and restaurants which are frequented by tourists and locals alike. The Virgin Islands National Park Visitor Center, the Elaine Sprauve Library, Cruz Bay beach is lined with beach bars and shops. The beach has white sand, a designated swimming area. The National Park Service has its headquarters near the waterfront in Cruz Bay as does U. S. Customs, the Cruz Bay Town Historic District was listed on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places in 2016. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Cruz Bay has a savanna climate
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Travel guide from Wikivoyage
of the National Park Service
