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Conservation

Invisible Extinction

December 3, 2020

This past summer, “murder hornets” became high-profile pests, joining the ranks of monarch butterflies and bumblebees as insects that capture our attention.

Illustration by Lola Dupre, Photo by Ryan Bradley

Waterlogged

March 2, 2020

The man appeared suddenly, out of the darkness and around the bend. He was standing to the side of the asphalt, near the edge of the floodlights illuminating a barricade of orange traffic barrels and, beyond, a great pile of dirt disappearing into the night. Half of the mountain road was blocked off—was, in fact, no road at all past the barricade and the pile.

Lieutenant Ponce Pilate Mbenga, a Central African Army officer with the Chinko Project, looks on as one of the rangers examines a leopard skin confiscated from Mbororo poachers during a camp raid.

The Fight for Chinko

In the ungoverned wilds of the Central African Republic, a group of young conservationists uses every resource it can muster—from technology to armed confrontation—to protect a vital habitat.

Photo by Andrew Kornylak

Forty Acres and a Year

Even with the challenge of below normal rainfall, spring turned out to be a beautiful time of year at Charlane Plantation. While the drought continues, the good news is that we have had rain at critical times, which for the most part has kept the woods green and beautiful—and the wildlife happy and healthy.

Grunts, as seen from Aquarius Undersea Laboratory, near Key Largo, Florida, 2006.

The Sweet Spot in Time

This month Glamour magazine named scientist and aquanaut Sylvia Earle a Woman of the Year for her lifetime of work advocating for the ocean. Her essay on breaking gender barriers as an ocean explorer appeared in our Fall 2012 magazine. "I took pleasure in turning questions such as 'Did you wear lipstick? Did you use a hair­dryer?' into a discourse on the importance of the ocean as our primary source of oxygen," she writes, "the value of coral reefs, mangroves, and marshes as vital buffers against storms, and the delightful nature of fish, shrimp, lobsters, and crabs alive, swimming in the ocean."