Conservation
Elements
The Highest Tree House in the Amazon
In 2023, conservationists and carpenters converged on Peru to build luxury accommodations in the rain-forest canopy.
Letter from Nepal
Consider the Vulture
We think of scavengers as gross—but they clean up nature’s messes, and they need saving.
The Weekend Essay
The Problem of Nature Writing
To succeed—to get people to care about preserving the world—it can’t be only about nature.
Elements
The Race to Save the World’s DNA
A scientific rescue mission aims to analyze every plant, animal, and fungus before it’s too late.
The New Yorker Documentary
On a Tropical Beach, Conservationists and Poachers Collide
Juma Adero’s short documentary “If Turtles Could Talk” chronicles the effort to save endangered sea turtles near Mombasa, Kenya.
The New Yorker Documentary
Can You Save One Species by Annoying Another?
In “Eco-Hack!,” the filmmakers Brett Marty and Josh Izenberg document a conservation biologist’s novel strategy for rescuing the desert tortoise: booby traps.
Elements
The Strange Story of a Cat Lockdown
Feline residents of Walldorf, Germany, can’t go outside when certain birds are breeding. Is it cruelty or conservation?
Daily Comment
The Inside Story of the U.N. High Seas Treaty
A new global agreement protects marine life in parts of the ocean that laws have been unable to reach.
Letter from the South
The New Fight Over an Old Forest in Atlanta
The plans for an enormous police-training center—dubbed Cop City by critics—have ignited interest in one of Atlanta’s largest remaining green spaces.
Annals of Nature
Swamps Can Protect Against Climate Change, If We Only Let Them
Wetlands absorb carbon dioxide and buffer the excesses of drought and flood, yet we’ve drained much of this land. Can we learn to love our swamps?
Letter from Los Angeles
An Urban Wildlife Bridge Is Coming to California
The crossing will span Route 101, providing safe passage for mountain lions and other animals hemmed in by the freeways that surround the Santa Monica Mountains.
Afterword
The Ultimate Tiger Mom
In the Indian preserve where she lived, the extraordinarily fecund Collarwali was a boon to her threatened species.
Elements
The Hunt for a Lost Bat
The obsessive people who track down disappearing species are their own variety of rare—sparsely found across a wide geographic range, in all sorts of habitats.
Letter from Idaho
Killing Wolves to Own the Libs?
The predators were reintroduced to the state in the nineties—and have been the object of political controversy ever since. An aggressive new law allows people to hunt or trap as many as they can.
Annals of Fashion
Should Leopards Be Paid for Their Spots?
Style-setters from Egyptian princesses to Jackie Kennedy to Debbie Harry have embraced leopard prints. Proponents of a “species royalty” want designers to pay to help save endangered big cats.
Culture Desk
One Bird at a Time
The artist visits the Wild Bird Fund, a small nonprofit wildlife hospital on the Upper West Side.
The Control of Nature
The Great American Antler Boom
Every spring, shed hunters head to the woods looking for deer and elk antlers that may fetch thousands of dollars, or social-media fame.
Afterword
The Tallest Known Tree in New York Falls in the Forest
The white pine known as Tree 103 had lost the dewy glow that it had back in 1675.
Postscript
Richard Leakey’s Life in the Wild
In the fight to preserve Kenya’s animals, he combined an uncompromising sense of purpose and a keen instinct for publicity.