In 2005, fishers in northern Thailand captured a Mekong giant catfish of gargantuan proportions. Tipping the scales at 293 kilograms (646 pounds), the critically endangered Pangasianodon gigas raised a question…
It’s too easy nowadays to look at the state of the world and feel a sense of hopelessness. Scientists tell us we face not one but two potentially existential menaces…
In her new book, Karen Bakker relates a story from Brazilian researcher Rafael José de Menezes Bastos that crystallizes how differently some humans process and respond to the sounds around…
“How do we tell the stories of people that history forgets and the present avoids?” journalist-turned-author Jori Lewis asks in the preface to her debut book, Slaves for Peanuts: A…
It might be surprising to learn that, in a lake as large as Victoria, a single fish could shape so much of East Africa’s history, culture and, now, an uncertain…
The signs of human impact seem to exist just about everywhere we look. We live in a world in which microscopic bits of plastic have found their way onto the…
Sit on a beach and watch the waves. If powered by a storm, the waves may chew away at the beach, depositing sediment in an underwater sand bar that actually…
For more than 50 years, Earth Day has been a celebration of protecting the planet and the array of life, including us, that it supports. Though that common goal seems…
Toilets: They’re not any easy subject to discuss. Even though eliminating waste from our bodies is an essential function we all must do, talking about how we deal with that…
Books have provided a welcome refuge in 2020. The global pandemic has, in many cases, turned even routine travel into a risk not worth taking, and it has left many…
Tim Beatley will humbly tell you that he’s not a birder. But in his new book, there are enough appearances by obscure members of the class Aves to suggest that…
Over 25 years ago, world-renowned scientist Edward O. Wilson (often referred to as E.O. Wilson), published his celebrated homage to his personal journey as a scientist, biologist, and human being,…
Early on in his new book, The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild, marine ecologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence Enric Sala offers a warning about our ability to…
In 2016, a mountain lion known as P-45 killed 10 alpacas on a ranch in California’s Santa Monica Mountains. That’s rare behavior for a mountain lion, writes wildlife biologist Mark…
Cottongrass Summer, a new book by the British author Roy Dennis is a breath of fresh air among the mountains of doom and gloom reads about the environment, the climate…
In his 2006 book, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, science writer David Quammen says, “Some people admire soldiers, or surgeons, or firemen, or astrophysicists, or medical missionaries, or cowboys. I admire…
The statistics capturing the effects that pets have on wildlife are mind-boggling. Cats in the United States alone kill at least 1.3 billion birds and up to 22.3 billion small…
Humanity is migrating to cities. More than half of the world’s human population now lives in urban settlements, and by 2050, nearly 70 percent of people will live in cities,…
You hear a lot about new and important discoveries scientists make in the field, but you don’t often hear about their failures. A new book aims to change that —…
Sea turtles spend most of their lives at sea, below the waves and out of human sight. Fortunately, in India, they nest in large numbers, giving biologists a chance to peek…
In “Where Have All the Animals Gone?: My Travels with Karl Ammann,” author and natural historian Dale Peterson recounts his adventures with Karl Ammann, an eccentric award-winning wildlife photographer, as…
Need an antidote to all the gloomy and frustrating environmental news? The new book No More Endlings: Saving Species One Story at a Time may prove just the thing. No…
Flying over the endless forest of the West Amazon, while searching for short-eared dogs. From so high up it was possible to see just how much forest there really is,…
Rare Birds of North America, written by renowned birders Steve N. G. Howell, Ian Lewington, and Will Russell, is a technical tour de force. Its technical expertise is exact and…
Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record reaches into your imagination and draws you closer to the final days of a variety of extinct animals on Earth. Lost Animals: Extinction…
Birds of the Serengeti: And Ngorongoro Conservation Area by Adam Scott Kennedy may be the best birding book available covering the general safari region for northwestern Tanzania and southern Kenya.…
Animals of the Serengeti: And Ngorongoro Conservation Area by Adam Scott Kennedy and Vicki Kennedy is an easy-to-use guidebook that is also very readable. The region covered by the book…
Primates of the World: An Illustrated Guide is stunning. There is simply no better way I can think of to gain an appreciation of the primate family than to peruse…
In the new book, On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth, Dr. Toby Tyrrell analyzes 40-years of data for and against the Gaia hypothesis. Dr.…
Novel Ecosystems: Intervening in the New Ecological World Order is a recent textbook published by Wiley-Blackwell edited by Richard J. Hobbs, Eric S. Higgs, and Carol M. Hall that describes…
