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All Hail the Beaver, Mighty Linchpin of the Natural World
The beaver—yes, really, the beaver—is Animalia’s most generous member. By building woody dams and engineering ponds, beavers furnish habitats for just about every creature that flies, walks, and swims...
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Paul Kingsnorth’s Transhuman Apocalypse Unfolds in an Old English Fenland
Paul Kingsnorth’s tenth book, Alexandria, completes the trilogy that began with the Booker-longlisted The Wake (2014) and 2016’s Beast. Unfolding over 2,000 years, from 1066 until the early 3000s, the...
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N. Scott Momaday on the Vulnerability of Prairielands
When I was a boy my father took me to a place where relatives once lived. Nothing was left of the house but traces of a foundation. The place was far out on the plain, so far that mountains were in...
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On the Meeting Place of Scientific Knowledge and Indigenous Ways of Knowing
Emergence Magazine is a quarterly online publication exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. As we experience the desecration of our lands and waters, the extinguishing of...
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Contemplating the Devotions of W.S. Merwin in the Wilds of North Jersey
The bear arrives out of the darkness—as perhaps all bears do, emotionally, spiritually—and lumbers toward the brook. There is grace in its lumber; it is silent in the snow, packed hard from caravans of...
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To Abandon Civilization with Glee: Tracking Tigers in the Russian Wilderness
The world is only as big as we allow it to be. Wild places and animals pass along their secrets only if we listen. A touch of danger would help. You need to know you can die: a surprise rapids the...
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The Pervasive Problem—and Far-Reaching Impact—of Tree Poaching
The first case of tree theft I ever encountered occurred within the stands of ancient old-growth on the southwest shores of Vancouver Island, in Ditidaht territory. One day in the spring of 2011, a...
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How a Scientist’s Dire Climate Warning Was Left Unheeded
Sydney, July 1998 Lesley Hughes was nervous as she stepped up to the podium. The aging lecture hall at Macquarie University was packed to the rafters with seven hundred attendees from across the globe....
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How the Resurgence of Whale Populations Impacts Our Ecosystem
The parking lot at the Sitka campus of the University of Alaska Southeast may be one of the most scenic parking lots in the nation. It sits on one side of Sitka Channel looking east across the water...
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Why Should We Care About Penguins?
I braced against the wind in the middle of a chinstrap penguin colony blanketing a rocky ridge. All around me penguins waddled through the colony or sat incubating their eggs on nests built from...
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David Quammen’s Conservationist Manifesto From Landscapes of Wonder, Peril...
Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right...
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When Predator Becomes Prey: Why Sharks Need Protection From Humans
The summer of 1983 was hot. By Labor Day, the northern plains were begging for federal aid during the worst drought since Dust Bowl days. “We’re asking Uncle Sam to help where Mother Nature has cruelly...
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Familiar Yet Strange: Why Turtles Are Worth Saving
Why turtles? Alexxia Bell, Turtle Rescue League’s president and co-founder Natasha have, in their years together, rescued other creatures, from squirrels to salamanders (including a skunk they found on...
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Evolutionary Links: What Great Apes Tell Us About Being Human
When we enter the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, with five million other visitors each year, we step simultaneously into the age of the dinosaurs and into the Victorian age. We inhabit a...
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The World’s Most Beautiful Bird Lives in Yellowstone National Park
Nothing compares to a peregrine falcon. Of course, comparing anything in nature is foolhardy. Nonetheless, when beholding this bird, perched or flying, one can only think of superlatives. Strikingly...
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What the Marabou Stork Taught Me About Writing in an Era of Mass Extinction...
The Marabou stork is a scavenger bird usually found on the African continent south of the Sahara. Like most storks, it has long legs and a long, stout bill, perfectly engineered for catching fish and...
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For the Love of Plants: 11 Books on Nature and Conservation Coming Out in 2024
Over the holidays, while traveling out of state to visit family, I left my outsize houseplant collection in the hands of our pet sitter, a wildly talented cat whisperer but a less-than-expert caretaker...
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How a Multitude of Voices Can Broaden Our Understanding of the Natural World
A 2021 article in The Guardian revealed that “for the top 10 bestselling female authors (who include Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood, as well as Danielle Steel and Jojo Moyes), only 19 percent of their...
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Taking the Long View: Why There Might Still Be Hope For the Earth’s Oceans
First, they were bright white dots moving in the distance between sea and sky. Then, as I reached the end of the land at the cliff’s edge, the gannets were everywhere. From eyeline to the waterline six...
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Paradise in Progress: On Creating a Natural Refuge in the Blue Ridge Mountains
My first time on the mountain, it was August; relentless heat, bright sun beating down, no place to hide. I was surrounded by the frenzied growth of a meadow that had been left to its own devices for...
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