A small group of park rangers help protect Congo’s wetlands from poachers and smugglers.
environmental issues
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Where Were You the First Time You Realized the Government Wasn’t Always On the Ball?
The 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara galvanized environmental activism, and Pacific Standard’s oral history is a great read.
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘The Ocean Is Boiling’: The Complete Oral History of the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill
On January 28th, 1969, crude oil erupted from a rig off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, triggering a worldwide alarm that energized the nascent environmental movement.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Science & Nature
The Conservative Movement to Get the GOP on Board With Global Warming
These conservatives are hoping to rally Republican voters around global warming in a way that gets the GOP to finally listen.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Compost King of New York
What happens to food scraps? Charles Vigliotti, chief executive of American Organic Energy, has a vision to turn food waste, a largely untapped resource, into clean energy.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Loving the Difficult Places
Kate Schimel narrates her grueling trek into Oregon’s Kalmiopsis Wilderness with the people who voluntarily clear its impenetrable trails and swim its clear creeks, showing why America needs road-free, undeveloped areas just like it
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Fishing Lower on the Food Chain
From the perspective of small fish, the potential collapse of predatory species such as cod, tuna, and swordfish, which are popular with diners, would seem to be good news. However, as the larger, high-value fish became increasingly scarce, the fishing industry turned to farming, and those penned fish needed something to eat. Commercial fishermen have […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
It’s A Big Ocean, Full of Seaweed
In Lucky Peach‘s twelfth issue, Rachel Khong writes about the harvesting of wild algae, more commonly known as “seaweed,” on California’s coast: The seashore is where all our stories start. It’s understood that present-day humans evolved in littoral spaces, where the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and shellfish, originally from seaweed, were needed to evolve complex nervous systems […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When Conservation Threatens Indigenous Peoples
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 […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Are We in a New Era of ‘Re-Wilding’?
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.