Ten Fun Facts about the Conservationists of Nature's Allies

Given election results that have further empowered political leaders who deny climate change, it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of environmental challenges like massive deforestation, biodiversity loss, and dying oceans. At a time when it seems like we are moving backwards and progress is stalled by partisanship and bureaucracy, conservation success stories provide the inspiration and courage needed to move forward.

A Community Approach to Climate Resilience

How to accumulate and leverage social capital to achieve healthy freshwater ecosystems, green infrastructure improvements, and triple-bottom-line benefits.

Aid, Poverty, and Global Biodiversity

International efforts to conserve biodiversity in developing coun­tries are recognizing the need to provide alternative livelihoods.

Guest Opinion: We need a moon-shot for the environment more than ever

This week, more than 193 nations will celebrate Earth Day. The annual event is a marker for the environmental movement begun on April 22, 1970, when Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson organized a peaceful teach-in. At the time, rivers were on fire, oil spills fouled Santa Barbara’s coastline, spaceships were headed to the moon, and the nation was at war.

This Earth Day, Focus on 21st Century Conservation

April 22 is not a moment to celebrate the wonder of this unique planet. It’s an opportunity to recognize what next steps we need to take to secure a better future.

Rants from the Hill: After many years of essay writing, a wave goodbye

The Rants from the Hill essay series has appeared in High Country News online every month, without fail, since July 2010. A lot has happened in those (almost) six years as we—my wife, Eryn, and our daughters, Hannah and Caroline—have lived as fully as possible our shared life here on a remote hill in western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. And now, with this farewell Rant, I draw the essay series to a close.
Photo credit: Flock/bandada by Flickr.com user Rafael Edwards

Breaking Down the Human-Environment Barrier

While sitting in a board meeting of the Great Northern Large Landscape Cooperative recently the perennial question came up of if the organization that was working on a vast landscape from Yellowstone National Park to northern Canada needed more biological or social science in their program development. As I reflected on the question the answer came to me that my response would be that we need more of neither.
Photo credit: Flock/bandada by Flickr.com user Rafael Edwards

Recovery of the Great Bear?

As was the case for other large carnivores in the lower 48 United States, by the 1960s grizzly bears were nearly extinct.

The Count: Tracking a Formerly Endangered Species

They went into the muslin bags easily as we freed them one by one from under the heavy net. Some were stunned, frozen, immobile; others struggled between the strands, exploding with powerful wings when handled. I was a tag-along, a newbie, an invited guest to this fall ritual of trapping, counting, banding, and collaring Aleutian cackling geese (Branta hutchinsii leucopareia), an annual joint venture between the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).
Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Conservation in a world of uncertainty and change

What does it mean to conserve is an era of ever growing rates of cultural, social, and ecological change? One dictionary definition of conservation I found defined it as the act of preserving, guarding, or protecting. But what does one guard or protect when gone is the certainty that even a particular habitat, species, park or preserve will remain viable in the relatively near future (next 100 or so years). What does that mean for how we conceive of conservation?

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