Policy and Social Issues
Inside Story
As outdoor recreation wanes, will conservation commitment go with it?
Photo: ©Nathan Watkins/iStock.com
By John Weier
April (Vol. 9, No. 2)
Two years ago, when Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic declared that people were forsaking U.S. national parks to play video games and surf the Net, their research sparked an intense and wide-ranging debate. Pergams and [...]
Is It Contagious?
Lethal diseases that make the jump from wildlife to humans are on the rise
A Witness to Violence
Long before the Darfur crisis, Michael Fay foresaw that the murderous Sudanese horsemen would not stop at killing elephants.
By J. Michael Fay
April-June 2008 (Vol. 9, No. 2)
Twenty-five years ago, I arrived in Manovo-Gounda-St. Floris National Park in the northern Central African Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer to be the botanist for [...]
An Agricultural Crime against Humanity
It doesn’t get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty percent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava.
Urban Myths
When most of us think about environmentally friendly places, we imagine a terrain untouched by concrete. Cities seem like ecological nightmares. But perhaps the conventional wisdom is exactly backward.
What Does “Wild” Really Mean?
Some ideas are like burrs stuck in your boots. If you don’t stop and deal with them, they’ll keep on troubling you. But coming to terms with a troubling idea is never as simple as shaking out your boots.
Born Again
WILLIAM MCDONOUGH, A RADICAL ARCHITECT, dismisses traditional recycling as tired and inadequate. Instead, he’s invented “industrial ecoystems” in which substances and machines are infinitely recycled.
Brand Name Wilderness
Marketing European Parks in Madison Avenue Style
The Vision Thing
Imagine swapping Tony Blair for Winston Churchill. Would it transform the timid politics of global warming?
Wildlife Contraception
A lone elephant hurries toward a stand of trees as the whoop-whoop of a helicopter looms overhead. The helicopter swings within a few yards of the elephant, and she breaks into a run—but not soon enough. A rifle shot rings out, and a splash of red erupts onto her thigh.