This Earth Day, RealPage® is proud to acknowledge individuals who are committed to bettering our world. Enjoy these inspirational stories, videos, and podcasts.
We know you’re stuck at home, so we’re bringing the world to you via live video feeds! Travel to an African watering hole or watch a pair of eagles tend to their brood. Dive into a Shark reef and get an up-close view of delicate sea nettles!
RAY COLLINS
For years, Ray Collins earned a living in a place far, far away from the ocean – a coal mine. That all changed after a workplace injury left him physically limited. A knee in healing meant no working, no driving and little mobility. So he picked up a camera as a way to keep his brain engaged. His subject? The ocean’s waves. His portraits make time stand still, capturing a split second of motion and freezing it. The hope is, of course, to make lasting impressions, but he also wants to make sure these photos don’t become historical snapshots of an ocean that once was. Instead, he wants the beauty to stir something in us and drive us all to protect its delicate balance.
ALFRED BROWNELL
Under threat of violence, environmental lawyer and activist Alfred Brownell stopped the clear-cutting of Liberia’s tropical forests by palm oil plantation developers. His campaign protected 513,500 acres of primary forest that constitute one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, enabling indigenous communities to continue their stewardship of the forest. For his safety, he is living in temporary exile in the United States.
ANKIT AGARWAL
Ankit is the founder of Kanpur Flowercycling Pvt. Ltd, a social enterprise that owns the brand Helpusgreen. Helpusgreen preserves the Ganges River from becoming a religious sewer by flowercycling the waste from temples and mosques that is dumped in the Ganges River into patented fertilizer and incense products. This, in turn, provides livelihoods to manual scavenger families in India.
DR. EMILY DARLING
This is the story of what happens when you combine some of the planet’s oldest living and under threat organisms – corals – with some of the newest inventions of modern day society – coding and open source technology. At the centre of this story is Dr. Emily Darling, a conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). She specializes in coral reefs and, along with some of her peers, is helping shake up the traditional ways (read: publishing papers) that scientific knowledge is shared. Open-source technology, social media, code – these are the game-changing tools that will speed up collaboration in a race against time, Dr. Darling is a key player in that game.
LIVE NATURE CAMS
Watch this wild African camera which has been set up at the eye level of a leopard so as to get a unique view of the scale of the animals that frequent the waterhole. The giraffe and elephant tower over the camera giving the viewer a completely different perspective. The animals that visit this camera can range from cheetah, lions, elephant, giraffe, impala, baboons, warthog, owls, Egyptian geese, genets, meerkats, waterbuck and porcupines.
This bald eagle nest is located near a trout hatchery in Decorah, Iowa. After two of this pair's nests were destroyed, the Raptor Resource Project team began constructing this nest with the hopes that the eagles would take it over and build upon it--and they have! Watch live as they raise another brood.
Many different species of shark can be found swimming around the Aquarium of the Pacific's shark lagoon. Stay tuned to watch live feedings!
Get an up-close look at the delicate sea nettles at the Monterey Bay Open Sea Aquarium exhibit. Watch as their long tentacles and lacey mouth-arms move smoothly through the water. But don't let these unassuming invertebrates fool you—their graceful trailing parts are covered in stinging cells used for hunting. When their tentacles touch tiny drifting prey, the stinging cells paralyze it and stick tight. The prey is moved to the mouth-arms and then to the mouth, where it's digested.