I never knew a northern spotted owl could parachute vertically through the forest. This delightful image came from a researcher who spent eight years studying the owls in the Oregon Cascades. He had personally witnessed a descent and could hardly contain his excitement when he told us about it. To find the reticent Strix for …
When People, Dogs, and Fungi Form an Inseparable Whole
This was the third time I had witnessed Andrea, the gruff Italian woodsman and truffle hunter, working closely with his dog Zara. Zara is a short-haired pointer, an awkward-looking blend of floppy ears, long legs, and bountiful canine energy who just happens to be excellent at sniffing out the black truffles that lie beneath the …
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Why Offsets Must Return to the Climate Radar
Carbon offsets - a technique for demonstrating that your greenhouse gas emissions have real costs - are strangely absent from most people's sense of their climate obligations. While purists seem to take great pleasure in pointing out that carbon offsets are not a perfect solution for greenhouse gas emissions, the result has been that very …
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Of Moose and Sturgeon: Lessons from the Ragged Edges of the Anthropocene
A mother and calf moose were found bedded down in an alleyway in downtown Missoula, Montana this last Friday morning. They were resting up somewhere between a law office and a bank. People showing up for work at the end of the week were warned to look both ways before they ran across the street …
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What a Christmas Tree Taught me about Politics
Although it happened nearly three decades ago, I still remember the smugness with which the visiting professor announced to the class that his op-ed had been published. The Washington Post had printed a piece he wrote about how nobody should be cutting down Christmas trees in order to bring them into their living room for …
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Plastics: A Problem Reaching Beyond the Space and Time Horizon
This post was printed in The Conversation US last week. In the context of recent efforts to start cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it asks questions about the prospects for genuine plastics recycling. "The ocean is better off without it, of course, but the plastic problem has many more layers than it first …
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