In Montana’s Northern Plains, Swift Foxes Are Back from the Brink
The swift fox — known as Nóouhàh-Toka’na to the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes — once roamed the Western plains from Texas to Canada, eating small rodents and insects. But their…
To Foil a Deadly Pest, Scientists Aim for a Beetle-Resistant Ash Tree
The tree Radka Wildova and Jonathan Rosenthal wanted to show me was only a few hundred feet from the trail at Tivoli Bays, a state wildlife management area in Rhinebeck,…
With Hotter, Drier Weather, California’s Joshua Trees Are in Trouble
In 2020, the Dome Fire swept through Southern California’s Mojave National Preserve, blackening nearly 70 square miles of highly biodiverse desert. The conflagration killed 1.3 million Joshua trees, including most…
As World’s Springs Vanish, Ripple Effects Alter Ecosystems
Strong winds sweep over the Rhön, a vast region of rolling, forested hills and pastureland in central Germany. Undeterred, Stefan Zaenker, leading a group of four volunteers, runs through his…
Ukraine Rewilding: Will Nature Be Allowed to Revive When War Ends?
It was a monumental disaster. The dynamiting of the Kakhovka dam on Ukraine’s Dnieper River just before dawn on June 6 last year rapidly emptied Europe’s largest hydroelectric reservoir. Some…
Will UN Carbon Market Work? Indonesia Will Provide First Test
The United Nations’ market for carbon trading will soon be open for business. Approved at the U.N. climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, last month, it will for the first time…
How One South African Community Stopped Shell Oil in Its Tracks
For nearly a decade, Nonhle Mbuthuma has traveled with a bodyguard. The founder of the Amadiba Crisis Committee — a local group formed to fight a proposed titanium mine along…
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…
Rethinking Monarchs: Does the Beloved Butterfly Need Our Help?
To help the monarch butterfly, Texas writer Charlie Scudder decided to home-rear its caterpillars. Checking the milkweed in his garden one August evening he spotted two of the flamboyant black,…
As Climate Talks Near, Calls Mount for a ‘Phaseout’ of Fossil Fuels
It is boom time in the deserts of New Mexico and West Texas, where vast oil reserves buried in the Permian geological basin are getting a second life, thanks to…