The Age of Megafires: The World Reaches a Climate Point
In the late 1980s, three massive fires occurred in China, Canada and the United States. In the spring and summer of 1987, one of the largest wildfires ever recorded—the Black…
Is the number of species a true measure of ecosystem health?
A major extinction is underway across most of the planet. From the Amazon forests to the suburbs of the American hinterland, from the depths of the oceans to the mangrove…
With Activists Silenced, China Moves Ahead on Big Dam Project
The Yangtze River courses from the Himalayan Plateau in Tibet down into southwestern China’s Yunnan province, carving a path through a breathtaking landscape where steep ridges are covered in Yunnan…
How Traffickers Got Away with the Biggest Rosewood Heist in History
On March 11, 2014, the MV Oriental Pride, a 325-foot-long, roughly 5,000-ton, Kelly green cargo ship, arrived in the port of Jurong, Singapore, where it was met by agents with…
Psychic Numbing: Keeping Hope Alive in a World of Extinctions
In June of 1976, as an undergrad, I drove all night to New Jersey’s Island Beach State Park, arriving shortly before first light. Whip-poor-wills filled the pre-dawn with their name…
Brazil Hopes to Make the Amazon a Model for a Green Economy
“We must ensure that taking care of the forest is more profitable than cutting down the trees.” So declared Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a pitch to…
As the world’s deltas sink, rising seas are far from the only culprit
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims flock to Sagar, a teardrop-shaped island in the Hooghly Estuary, 60 miles south of Kolkata. A temple stands on its southern tip,…
Fortress Conservation: Can a Congo Tribe Return to Its Forest?
A landmark ruling from the African Union, the continent’s foremost intergovernmental body, has called into question who should run many of its 250-plus national parks, home to much of its…
Despite biotech efforts to revive species, extinction is always forever
I was on the ground, 50 feet away from an aurochs. At least it looked like one. Eight generations of rearing had resurrected an animal reminiscent of the giant bovine…
Will Putting Honey Bees on Public Lands Threaten Native Bees?
Honey bees heavy with pollen and nectar foraged from wildflowers on Utah’s Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest collide with tall grass and tumble to the ground. They are attempting to land alongside…