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Mark Brazil

Mark Brazil, a Briton based in Hokkaido, has written about the natural history of Japan in his Wild Watch column for over 30 years. After careers in conservation and natural history television, Mark taught for nine years at a university in Hokkaido before going freelance. He now travels the world as a lecturer and leader on wildlife-focused expeditions.

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Apr 15, 2004

Fungal alchemists snatch bodies to live

Step back in time a mere 1,000 million years and the three great domains of the Plantae, Animalia and Fungi shared a common ancestor.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Mar 18, 2004

The wonder that is winter

The seasons have a powerful effect on me, which perhaps explains my need to anthropomorphize and personify them. Temperate Japan's six distinct seasons roll on inexorably: spring, rainy, summer, typhoon, autumn and winter. Though battered and bruised by the perceptible effects of global climate change,...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Feb 19, 2004

Distance lends enchantment

Take a look at a map of the west side of the Pacific and you'll find a fractured scatter of islands from the Kuriles south of Kamchatka, through Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea and New Caledonia all the way to New Zealand and its sub-Antarctic Islands straddling the Roaring 40s and the...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Jan 15, 2004

An island alone that is worlds apart

If it were possible to view the Japanese archipelago rising from the Pacific in profile, a distinct, lonely, broad cone would be immediately apparent between the high peaks of the Japanese Alps of Honshu and the even higher peaks of Taiwan. That cone is the long-isolated, mountainous island of Yakushima,...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Dec 18, 2003

Cold feet over winter camp

Camping is a wonderful way to unplug from the computer and e-mail, catch up on sleep, and escape the never-ending round of deadlines and commitments. While summer and autumn camps offer opportunities to "shoot the breeze" around a campfire, on dark evenings in the winter there is nothing more one can...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Nov 20, 2003

Relicts of the distant past

Time passes; it flows on, sometimes seemingly at breathtaking speed like a mountain torrent, at others crawling like a meandering backwater. Personal time expands and contracts. Geological time is relentless; grinding, shaping, wearing; sufficiently prolonged to isolate islands, to raise landmasses,...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Oct 16, 2003

Tyulenii fur seals are all washed up and in no hurry to go

It felt as if we were an invading force as we set the bows of our black rubber zodiac boat for the shore. Tyulenii Island, a raised tableland of sandstone barely a kilometer long and less than half that wide, was our target. Winds blowing up the Sea of Okhotsk were pushing a rising swell along the unprotected...

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Sep 4, 2003

Labrador tea and forests to walk on

During the heat of a Honshu summer it is hard to imagine that there are hints of tundra here, or that refreshing tea might come from an unusual source. However, the alpine regions of high-altitude Japan, and small areas of the cool, fog-shaded regions closer to sea level in southeast Hokkaido, not only...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Aug 21, 2003

Thrills on the hills

It happened again. Underfoot was the crunching tephra of Akan Fuji, black tinged with orange; it stretched away on either side of me, an arid, seemingly sterile environment. I'd zigzagged my way almost to the skyline and the distant view was opening up. Behind me to the north lay the cone and constantly...

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Aug 7, 2003

Golden 'weeds' of wondrous ways

It was a breezy day at Cape Notoro overlooking the Sea of Okhotsk on Hokkaido's north coast. The sun was glinting on the waves below the cliffs and a skylark singing somewhere above was producing a cascade of summer sound.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Jul 31, 2003

Busy by astonishing design

Earlier this year, I watched a number of bumblebees droning back and forth over the ground cover in mountain forest near my home in Hokkaido. They were seemingly oblivious to me. Occasionally one would land, and disappear beneath the leaf litter, or go down a mouse hole or into a crevice, only to emerge...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Jul 17, 2003

Humble marvels of nature

The mechanics of flight are beyond me, and I especially can't imagine how bumblebees can become airborne. Images of a jumbo jet taking off without a runway spring to mind.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Jul 3, 2003

What a week that was

It was a week filled with surprises and excitement.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Jun 19, 2003

A world rich in avian resources

From time immemorial, wild birds have been important food sources for rural populations.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Jun 5, 2003

Winged wonders of nature -- and more

We humans share the world with perhaps as many as 100,000,000 species, yet among the most conspicuous and best-loved of all these are the mere 10,000 species of birds.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

May 29, 2003

Targeting nature on a Texas shootout

Texas summons up images of cowboys and longhorn cattle, Western boots and horses, Stetsons, vast ranches, oil and gas -- and that Texan drawl.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

May 15, 2003

Big-mouth bulbuls time it just right

Second of two parts Imagine, if you can, an opinion poll of Japanese forest plants. Question: which bird is most important to you? The brown-eared bulbul, or hiyodori, would have to take a bow.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

May 1, 2003

Feathered friends of the forest

In a passive way, plants have got birds sussed. They use them, abuse them (ever seen a thrush drunk on fermenting apples?) and mess with their digestive systems. Birds are willing pawns, though; brightly colored flowers and gaudy berries send a simple signal to the bird brain that shouts -- energy!

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Apr 17, 2003

A natural sense of belonging

I pass through the Heidelberg area of Baden-Buerttemberg in southwest Germany several times a year, and though I am transient there, I feel that I have roots -- roots that come from a natural connectedness with the earth. The several thousand hectares of land sandwiched between the gently rising hills...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Apr 3, 2003

Mistletoe magic

I am back in my local wood in Hokkaido yet again. From one spot, I can see the fluffed-out form of a Ural owl sunning itself at the entrance of its day roost, while looking in another direction and a little higher in the canopy of a towering elm, I find more than half a dozen spherical clumps, like strange...

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