Mallards

Nature Fakers and Real Naturalists

John Burroughs, supported by Theodore Roosevelt, castigated popular nature writers for being too sentimental. They responded by calling Roosevelt a sham naturalist.
Brown Bears Sitting Together

Celebrate World Bear Day!

The joy and concern we feel on World Bear Day perfectly represents our complicated—and sometimes contradictory—feelings about these massive mammals.
Watercolor painting of the earth by Martin Eklund

Planetary Health: Foundations and Key Concepts

The groundwork for the field of planetary health was laid by a range of disciplines and movements, including medicine, ecology, health, and feminism.
Green-Wood Cemetery with Manhattan in background

Restoration in the Heart of the City

Green-Wood cemetery in New York City is also a site of urban grassland management and restoration, an effort to mitigate its contributions to climate change.
A map of Trinidad showing the location of Fondes Amandes

How a Rastafari Community Protects the Land in Trinidad

A small community grows around ecosystem preservation and shared beliefs, to the benefit of the residents and the land they live on.
The Chiang Mai crocodile newt

The Quiet eDNA Revolution Transforming Conservation

The aquatic monitoring tool has powerful potential.
Swimming beaver (Castor fiber)

A Comeback for Beavers?

As two researchers found out, rewilding a species can be done in different ways, sometimes with different outcomes.
Volunteer collecting garbage from park

The Problem with Unpaid Conservation Work

In the fight against climate change, many underfunded conservation groups depend on volunteers.
A grizzly bear c. 1955

The Scientist Who Wanted Grizzly Bears Eliminated

In the late 1960s, two highly visible deaths from grizzly bear attacks led to a debate about whether humans and bears could coexist.
Black and white drawing of settlers in South Carolina in 1670

How Conservation Is Shaped by Settler Colonialism

The legal concept of "terra nullius"—meaning "no one's land"—influenced European colonialism and continues to shape the practice of conservation.