Rishikesh, Uttarakhand
Southern Cone Rewilding
A horse and rider pull a tourist boat through the Iberá marshes
When we have linked to stories about conservation and efforts to rewild in the Southern Cone, it has been a mix of big cats and the efforts of Doug and Kris Tompkins. Our thanks to Patrick Greenfield and the Guardian for taking these themes long form:
El Impenetrable national park, home to thousands of charismatic plants, flowers and animals, including jaguars.
How to rewild a country: the story of Argentina
It began with a philanthropic couple buying a swamp but has become one of the world’s boldest experiments in restoring degraded habitats, bringing wildlife and landscapes back from the brink
Chapter one
The return of the jaguar
It took about three seconds for piranhas to devour part of her left foot, biologist Deborah Abregü recalls, as we sit waiting for pizzas to cook on an open fire in Argentina’s El Impenetrable national park. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Red-winged Blackbird
male
Williamson County, TX
Bears Ears Co-Management
Muley Point in Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Mark Holm for The New York Times
After plenty of contention, a move in the right direction, at last:
In a Return to the Land, Tribes Will Jointly Manage a National Monument
Five Native American tribes will work with the Bureau of Land Management to plan and conserve Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, officials said.
Bears Ears National Monument, whose red-rock landscape sprawls across more than 1.3 million acres in southeastern Utah, will be managed jointly by the federal government and Native American tribes in what administration officials said represents a “one-of-a-kind” model of cooperation. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Kori Bustard
Etosha National Park, Namibia
Ed Yong Explains Umwelt
Sally Deng
Ed Yong’s new book was already on our reading list, but just got notched up in the priority list:
Spectacle floods into my eyes whenever I watch a wildlife documentary. A vortex of small fish is gradually picked off by waves of oceanic predators. Snakes chase after marine iguanas. Giraffes clash at sunset. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Golden-cheeked Warbler
Burnet County, Texas
Biblio-Entrepreneurship, Alive & Well
Ana Cabreira/InOssining.com/AP. Amy Hall, owner of Hudson Valley Books for Humanity in Ossining, N.Y., poses for a picture in her bookstore. Ms. Hall, who offers mostly used books that reflect economic and ethnic diversity, is one of many new bookstore owners who recently opened their own store.
We have a thing for independent bookstores. They are better in several important ways. We have a thing against one particular big online retailer, whose start in books was just one step in the wrong direction. Our thanks to Hillel Italie, the Associated Press and the CS Monitor for this story, and especially to the biblio-entrepreneurs showcased in this article:
Indie bookstore boom turns page to a more diverse America
The year 2021 saw a substantial increase in the number of independent bookstores in the United States. And a growing proportion of these stores is owned by individuals from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds.
Laura Romani, a Chicago-area resident with a background in education and library science, had long been thinking of a new career. “I was at home a couple of years ago, reflecting on all the experience I gained and how I wanted to contribute to the Latino community, while also allowing myself to be on my own and make use of my love for books and passion for multilingualism,” she said. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Indian Roller
Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand
Sylvia Earle, Her Deepness
Sylvia Earle. Illustration by João Fazenda
Yesterday’s post got me looking back at our attention to marine science over the years, making me wonder whether we have given that topic its fair share. Yes, probably, but more is needed. I already knew this name because it has appeared in our pages a few times over the years. But just recently I heard her name from two different people who have had the chance to know her personally. One of them, when I mentioned the name, replied with Her Deepness replacing Sylvia Earle’s given name. Thanks to Dana Goodyear, who had me at puma, but who also knows a thing or two about water, now this:
Without Sylvia Earle, We’d Be Living on Google Dirt
The marine biologist and aquanaut evokes a Bond girl with a Ph.D. To save a species, she says, you have to know it.
Do you like to breathe?” This is a question that the marine biologist and deep-sea explorer Sylvia Earle asks frequently. The ocean produces half of the oxygen on Earth. If it dies, humanity can’t survive, so humans better pay attention to it. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Montane Woodcreeper
Cabañas de San Isidro, Ecuador
Lionfish Leather
A lionfish caught off Venezuela, where the authorities organise sport fishing competitions to curb the dangerous proliferation of the invasive species. Photograph: Yuri Cortéz/AFP/Getty
Lionfish came to our attention in a series of posts starting in 2014. That year we came to see that fighting this invasive species would require innovative entrepreneurial conservation methods. We published more posts and series about initiatives in the years since then, but the problem continued to grow. For some reason the stories about initiatives started fading from our attention and then stopped with a post in 2018. Now, 22 posts since the first post and four years since the last one, lionfish are back in our thoughts thanks to Inversa’s innovation:
Lionfish leather. Inversa says it is helping to solve an environmental crisis by using an invasive species that eats lots of other fish but has no predators in much of its range. Photograph: Inversa
Fish leather is here, it’s sustainable – and it’s made from invasive species to boot
An avid diver saw how lionfish have devastated populations of Florida’s native tropical fish and resolved to help solve the problem
Aarav Chavda has been diving off the coast of Florida for years. Each time he became increasingly depressed by the ever-growing void, as colourful species of fish and coral reefs continued to disappear. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Reddish Egret
El Paredon, Guatemala
Why Are Starbucks Workers United?
Maggie Carter, a Starbucks barista in Knoxville, Tenn., keeps a stack of union cards with her. Audra Melton for The New York Times
We wrote one time previously about the Starbucks union drive, wondering why Starbucks is against it. We know the typical corporate reasons, but Starbucks has represented itself as atypical. So, we wanted to know. And in related news, the company’s efforts to keep unionization at bay has a new leader. Today we consider a related question, this time from workers’ perspective:
Why a Rhodes Scholar’s Ambition Led Her to a Job at Starbucks
Jaz Brisack became a barista for the same reasons that talented young people have long chosen their career paths: a mix of idealism and ambition.
Most weekend mornings, Jaz Brisack gets up around 5, wills her semiconscious body into a Toyota Prius and winds her way through Buffalo, to the Starbucks on Elmwood Avenue. After a supervisor unlocks the door, she clocks in, checks herself for Covid symptoms and helps get the store ready for customers. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Stripe-tailed Hummingbird
Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, Costa Rica
Good Journalism, Excellent Environmental Coverage
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff. A white ibis flies over the Everglades, where many bird species nest each year. Restoration efforts in Florida’s “river of grass” have begun to show signs of progress.
The CS Monitor was the newspaper delivered to our home when I was growing up. Lucky me. These days it still offers good journalism, but is no longer a paper. They made the switch to digital-only in 2008. In earlier years of my monitoring dozens of news sources for this platform it was the source of numerous stories of environmental interest in our pages. But in the last few years, for no particular reason, I failed to monitor their website for stories. And then today, this:
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff. Birds look like white flecks from the air.
‘River of Grass’: Inside the quest to restore the Everglades
Richard Mertens Special contributor
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff. Three eggs sit in a nest in the Everglades.
Eight hundred feet up, the helicopter banks hard to the left. The horizon disappears. Mark Cook, an avian biologist, peers out his side window at a small irregular patch of water below. It’s hardly distinguishable from innumerable other patches that lie in every direction, dark and shining amid a ragged expanse of brown marsh grass and green tree islands. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Pacific Parakeet
Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala
Action Is The Thing
ILLUSTRATION: WIRED; GETTY IMAGES
Climate inaction is a theme bookending the first decade of our chronicling news stories and analytical essays. Why, we have stopped bothering to wonder, is inaction so persistent? Whether activism or other forms of action, there is not enough of it relative to the scale of the crisis. We thank Eleanor Cummins, a freelance science journalist and adjunct professor at New York University’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program for these ideas as published in Wired:
‘Thinkwashing’ Keeps People From Taking Action in Times of Crisis
When it comes to issues like climate change, too many let the perfect become the enemy of the good, while the world burns.
LESS THAN A decade ago, “wait and see” arguments about climate change still circulated. “We often hear that there is a ‘scientific consensus’ about climate change,” physicist Steven E. Koonin wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2014. “But as far as the computer models go, there isn’t a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences.” The idea was that the world needed more data before it could respond to the threat posed by global warming—assuming such research indicated a response was even necessary. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-winged Stilt
“Mating” – Leander Khil Photography
Seewinkel National Park, Austria
Science Communication Celebrated
Illustration by Michael Dunbabin; Source photograph by Kevin Winter / Getty
Alan Alda was not likely to appear in our pages before, even though we knew about this work that he has been doing starting some years ago. Not likely because celebrity is more often than not a distraction. But this conversation is worth sharing, because we care about science, and effective communication about science:
Alan Alda Is Still Awesome
The actor and director talks about his podcast, the comedic chops of Volodymyr Zelensky, and being called an “honorary woman.”
Few actors inspire the warm fuzzies like Alan Alda. At eighty-six, he’s still the platonic ideal of “nice dad”: the type of guy you’d find in a cardigan, reading a copy of the Sunday Times in an armchair. But the popular image of Alda doesn’t cover the remarkable breadth of his career. Continue reading
Organikos 