HarperOne
Thanks to National Public Radio’s Barbara King for this review:
The film My Octopus Teachertells the story of a man who goes diving every day into the underwater South African kelp forest and forms a close relationship there with an octopus. That man — the diver, and also the filmmaker — was Craig Foster, who delighted millions of nature lovers around the world and took home the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Continue reading
Latpanchar, North Bengal
Scalloped hammerhead sharks are critically endangered. But the discovery of a schooling population in the Caribbean is giving local researchers hope. Blickwinkel/Alamy Stock Photo
Thanks to David Shiffman writing in Hakai Magazine:
In the Caribbean, Hammerhead Sharks Return to School
The detection of schooling behavior is a promising sign of recovery for this iconic and endangered animal.
Hammerhead sharks—fish with pronounced oblong heads and bodies as long as small cars—are unmistakable. Continue reading
Murray Lake, San Diego, California
illustration: javier jaén/getty images
The Economist shares this news:
Carbon emissions are dropping—fast—in Europe
Thanks to a price mechanism that actually works
“Our most pressing challenge is keeping our planet healthy,” declared Ursula von der Leyen on the day she was elected president of the European Commission in July 2019. Continue reading
Iles de Salut, French Guyana
A JBS facility in Tucuma, Brazil. JONNE RORIZ / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Reducing meat in our diet was easier living in India, and we committed specifically to cutting beef consumption. This effort has been assisted by awareness of this issue. Thanks to Yale e360 for bringing the work of this team to our attention:
Marcel Gomes (center) with colleagues at Repórter Brasil’s offices in São Paulo. GOLDMAN ENVIRONMENTAL PRIZE
Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
Journalist Marcel Gomes has traced beef in supermarkets and fast food restaurants in the U.S. and Europe to Brazilian ranches on illegally cleared land. In an e360 interview, he talks about the challenges of documenting the supply chains and getting companies to clean them up.
Investigative journalism can be a very deep dive. By the end of his probe into the supply chain of JBS, the world’s largest meat processing and packing company, Marcel Gomes reckons he and his team at the São Paulo-based nonprofit Repórter Brasil knew more about the origins of the beef it supplies from the Amazon to the world’s hamburger chains and supermarkets than the company itself. Continue reading
San Diego River estuary, San Diego, California
Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty.
We have done our part to share, perhaps erroneously, that honeybees are in trouble. We hope we have been wrong:
For years, people have understood them to be at imminent risk of extinction, despite evidence to the contrary. Why?
Everyone, for so long, has been worried about the honeybees. Continue reading
Mt Falakro, Greece
Rewilding Spain’s sustainable forest management support service helps municipalities generate income through activities such as resin extraction. NEIL ALDRIDGE
In the decade since we have been watching the work of Rewilding Europe we have seen income generation growing in importance:
Allowing trees to grow old in healthy ecosystems can help to lock up and store huge amounts of carbon.
JUAN CARLOS MUÑOZ ROBREDO /Rewilding forest generates revenue for communities in the Iberian Highlands
Rewilding Spain has signed its first agreement to protect an old-growth forest in the Iberian Highlands. A change in forest management will support natural regeneration, delivering benefits to both nature and people. With other owners of old-growth forests interested in signing similar agreements, there is significant scaling-up potential.
The old-growth forest protected by the new agreement is popular with mushroom pickers.
SEBASTIAN URSUTAThe importance of old-growth forests
Letting forests naturally regenerate is one of the most practical, immediate, and cost-effective ways of addressing our ecological and climate emergencies. As vital ecosystems that support millions of animals and plants, mature natural forests – or old-growth forests – lock up and store huge amounts of carbon. They are more resilient to climate change and disease than young tree plantations, with their diverse mix of native species allowing them to better adapt to a far wider range of conditions. Continue reading
Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, California
Illustration by Bjorn Lie
Cicadas were in our pages a few times a decade ago but now is the real time for celebrating them. This story by Rivka Galchen is as good as any:
The Peculiar Delights of the Enormous Cicada Emergence
As loud as leaf blowers, as miraculous as math, the insects are set to overtake the landscape.
Their parents passed away thirteen, or maybe seventeen, years ago. They grow up alone, hidden in tunnels of their own making, nursing from the rootlets of trees. Continue reading
Finca Forestal Rubel Chaim, Guatemala
Thanks to Hanna Rosin, an Atlantic writer whose podcast conversation with this author brought the book above to my attention:
If Plants Could Talk
Some scientists are starting to reopen a provocative debate: Are plants intelligent?
When I was a kid, my best friend’s mother had a habit of singing arias to her houseplants. Continue reading
Guatemala
This book came to my attention through an episode of Ezra Klein‘s podcast:
Cows Are Just an Environmental Disaster
The environmental data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that climate technology is increasingly catching up to the world’s enormous need for clean energy and with a few changes, a more sustainable future is in sight.
Adule Female
Christmas Mountains Oasis, Brewster County, TX
Today completes a trifecta of shared articles about trees, and Sam Knight gets extra thanks for the link with a part of food heritage our family is especially fond of (which led to finding the video above):
Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker
The English Apple Is Disappearing
As the country loses its local cultivars, an orchard owner and a group of biologists are working to record and map every variety of apple tree they can find in the West of England.
In June, 1899, Sabine Baring-Gould, an English rector, collector of folk songs, and author of a truly prodigious quantity of prose, was putting the finishing touches on “A Book of the West,” a two-volume study of Devon and Cornwall. Baring-Gould, who had fifteen children and kept a tame bat, wrote more than a thousand literary works, including some thirty novels, a biography of Napoleon, and an influential study of werewolves. Continue reading
Adult Male
Christmas Mountains Oasis, Brewster County, TX
Organikos 