Downtown Austin is brimming with big-brand hotels (and has more on the horizon), so what makes this one unique? With 1,012 guest rooms, three restaurants and 42 meeting rooms, the property, which opened in February, is the city’s largest hotel and the second-biggest JW Marriott in the world. (JW Marriotts are part of a luxury brand within Marriott International that includes Ritz-Carlton.)
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Austin is the Lone Star State’s golden child: the quirky alternative to more conservative, less navigable urban locales—a place where cowboys, politicos, students, and hippies mingle over smoked brisket and ice-cold pitchers of beer. There’s live music at every corner, natural springs for swimming, and new bars and restaurants opening faster than you can say, “Keep Austin Weird.” To explore the capital city’s more intimate corners, book a room at one of its finest boutique hotels.
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“Sit here,” Chaba says. “And stay still. Imagine you’re a termite mound.”
The sun is just beginning to light up the eerily white Makgadikgadi salt flats when I make like a mound. It’s quiet—deafeningly so—until I hear a series of squeaks coming from behind me. The meerkats are awake and slowly emerging from their underground den. Suddenly, a self-appointed sentinel looks up at me with tiny spectacled eyes before climbing up my body—all the way to the top of my head, where he stands guard.
Read MoreEven the king of the jungle can't escape getting his picture taken these days. In June the Kenya-based Lion Guardians launched the Lion Identification Network of Collaborators (LINC). The database of lion profiles was built with the first facial-recognition software specifically designed to analyze the mugs of these big cats and distinguish them from one another. With LINC, the conservation organization and other wildlife researchers will have an easier way to monitor the beasts' whereabouts.
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It's got to be one of the worst ways to go: pulled to the surface against your will, changes in pressure attacking your body, only to be tossed away, no relief in site.
Fish inadvertently caught by sport and commercial fishers are known as “bycatch” and billions of them die every year. The ones affected by shifting pressure experience barotrauma and often due senseless deaths, but a new device wants to give them a fighting chance.
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To an outside observer, it must have looked strange when I decided to go to wild Namibia in the summer of 2009. I’d spent the previous two years as an unhappy securities lawyer in London, so with the financial recession roiling markets and my firm announcing a coming round of layoffs, I figured it was a good time for a career change. And when I heard about a three-week volunteering program at the Harnas Wildlife Foundation, I knew I had to go.
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In 1872 Ulysses Grant, America's 18th president, proposed Yellowstone, the world's first national park, for "the benefit and enjoyment of the people". A century later, protected areas were arising purely out of environmental concerns. These days, 193 countries together host 209,000 protected areas, spanning 15.4% of the terrestrial realm and 3.4% of the world's oceans. But to set aside an area is not, by itself, to protect it. That requires resources that include funding—and the funding is increasingly coming from unexpected quarters.
Read MoreAs many as twenty million Mexican free-tailed bats spend their summer months in Bracken Cave, Texas, making it home to the largest congregation of warm-blooded animals in the world. Join me as I capture the unforgettable sight of these bats emerging at dusk to feed and spend time with leading bat expert and photographer, Merlin Tuttle, to discuss the threats facing these often misunderstood mammals.
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San Antonio’s biggest attraction remains the Alamo; tour it before venturing to the Menger Hotel, where Teddy Roosevelt assembled his motley crew of Rough Riders. A replica of the House of Lords pub, the Menger Bar, which opened in 1887, is the ideal place for a Texas brew.
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Brass reading lights flanked a gilded bed frame, whose blue fabric headboard provided a pop of color. Draped across the bed was a faux-fur blanket that I loved for its substantial weight. A black, spidery light fixture dangling from the ceiling added a contemporary twist to the vintage vibe. The cozy room with oak herringbone floors and delicate crown moldings gave me the feeling of being in someone’s brownstone.
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We risk losing one of the most intelligent, iconic, and emotionally sensitive animals on the planet—an animal upon which entire ecosystems depend—simply because consumers want aesthetically pleasing products that emphasize their buying potential. All things considered, stopping the trade of ivory seems like a no brainer.
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It’s no secret that Africa’s elephants are in danger. Widespread poaching, fueled by demand for ivory in China and ineffective regulation, have led to alarming population losses, from 1.2 million in 1980 to only 500,000 this year. Today, approximately 96 African elephants are killed by poachers every 24 hours.
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“The Pearl is becoming as popular as the Alamo,” says Jesse Perez, executive chef of Arcade Midtown Kitchen, one of Pearl’s newest tenants and listed among the country’s “most anticipated openings of 2013″ by national blog Eater.
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Topnotch is on a five-mile recreation path trailing a winding river — suitable for year-round outings — and close to Smuggler’s Notch State Park. Guests can unwind with a spa treatment or make use of the indoor pool, sauna, steam room and shower, which are comparable to what’s behind closed doors in the spa.
Read More"TIGERS and human beings cannot occupy the same space," says Prashanth Kumar Sen, former director of Project Tiger. Human-wildlife conflict arises whenever people and predators share terrain. It is acute in India, where large carnivores like tigers and leopards coexist with dense human populations. Although only 5% of Indian land is classified as protected, India's population of 1.24 billion means that 5m people dwell inside the country’s natural havens.
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The San Antonio River has been at the heart of the Alamo City for centuries — long before Texas gained independence from Mexico or joined the United States — but our relationship with it has always been complex due to flooding caused by the overflow of its banks. City officials have been mitigating this risk since 1724, when a severe flood forced them to move the Alamo.
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Falmouth sits in the center of the “Cornish Riviera,” England’s charming southwestern coastline, and the port is its lifeblood. For centuries, the world’s third deepest natural harbor ushered in commercial and military vessels, and in the past 70 years it witnessed epic send-offs, including D-Day troops bound for Normandy.
Read MoreDEMAND for wildlife parts is pushing many species to the brink of extinction. In China, where a rising middle class flaunts wealth by displaying ivory at home, traders call elephant tusks "white gold". But elephants, tigers, rhinos and other "charismatic megafauna" are not the only animals in trouble.
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Entrepreneurs: Four students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched Ministry of Supply (MoS) to create stylish business clothing for men with "tech under the hood." Their wearable inventions are made of specialized fabrics that breathe, regulate heat, zap moisture and neutralize the bacteria that causes body odor.
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