Tag: conservation

“I have sat inside her rib cage. And yet I know nothing about her.”

“Peering in, I see that last week’s eggs are now chicks. Tiny bright-yellow beaks, mouths opening and closing silently. This is the magic.”

The quest to save the American chestnut tree.

We’re developing high-tech genetic tools to pour new life into animals lost to human destruction. Deciding how — and whether — to use that power is as complex as the science behind it.

“And if you’ve never seen a seahorse in the wild before, you will feel honored and awed, as if you’ve just seen a unicorn beneath the sea.”

Pupfish: 1, Drunk hooligan: 0

Growth advocates in St. George, Utah want a billion-dollar pipeline to support a rising population. Conservationists don’t.

Can humans coexist on the beaches of Santa Monica along with wildlife? A beach “rewilding” project aims to find out.

One of the best ways to protect the world’s oldest, largest trees is to conceal their location.

“…female Cuban crocs, who might normally struggle to find a mate from their own small population, suddenly encounter exotic suitors of an appealing size and shenanigans ensue.”

Driving through the Amazon Basin on a single road to see whether Brazil can balance economic development with rainforest conservation.

A small group of park rangers help protect Congo’s wetlands from poachers and smugglers.

Following endangered Mexican gray wolves from their captive birth to their release in New Mexico.

“We believe the harm has been irreparable and will already have ramifications for decades to come,” [Geoffrey] Shester said. “We’ve basically reduced the carrying capacity of the ecosystem to support the populations of other species that depend on sardines. The more fish we take, the more it is going to make that situation even worse.” […]

But the Maasai of Loliondo are not alone in disputing these supposed benefits. Worldwide, 8 million square miles—a landmass almost as large as the entire African continent—have been classified as protected areas by governments and conservation groups. In turn, the locals have mostly been pushed off their lands. Though no one formally counts people displaced […]

It’s not clear what the Audubon Society did to piss off Jonathan Franzen. But the Audubon that emerges from Franzen’s essay is a band of once-scrappy conservationists who have grown content to peddle squeaky plush toys and holiday cards; we’ve seized on climate change, apparently, in a last grab at relevance. In order to gin up […]

The contrasting conditions of the resurgent Föritz and the depleted forests of Albania are a microcosm of the planet. We are living in the Anthropocene, a time when human activity, more than anything else, shapes the earth’s climate and ecosystems. Our hunting, fishing, deforestation, overgrazing, and pollution have created a period of mass extinction the likes of which haven’t occurred since the dinosaurs. E. O. Wilson, the preeminent biologist and conservationist, predicts we could lose half of all species on the earth by the end of this century.