In the mid-thirteenth century, William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan friar, traveled to the Mongol Empire. The main purpose of his visit was to undertake missionary work, but he also wrote a colorful account of his travels for King Louis IX of...

Your community needs leaders who care about the environment. As climate change, pollution, and loss of biodiversity threaten our planet’s health, we can’t afford to wait for governments or corporations to solve these problems. We need individuals who are willing to take action, inspire others,...

While there are rare (and very cute) exceptions, cats and birds do not get along. Cats are predatory by nature; their hunting instinct never goes away. Birds are one of their primary targets—and the fatality statistics are staggering. “There are now over 100 million...

Although there is no evidence that the European bison (Bison bonasus), known as wisent, ever roamed the islands of the United Kingdom, its genetic heritage suggests that it is attuned to the environment. The European bison is a hybrid that descends from the

When Babur, the great conqueror and founder of the Mughal Empire, first entered India with his armies in the 16th century, he was not impressed by how people dressed. The climate and landscape of the Indian subcontinent were very different to that of Samarqand (in...

One halcyon spring day in 1903, the 69-year-old anatomist and naturalist Dr. James Bell Pettigrew sat at the top of a sloping street on the outskirts of St. Andrews, Scotland, perched inside a petrol-powered airplane of his own design. Over the course of 40 years,...

The Serengeti ecosystem is regarded as one of our planet’s greatest natural treasures, where one can witness“the largest remaining unaltered animal migration in the world,” according to UNESCO. ...

I saw macaques for the first time along the river’s edge on the island of Borneo in 1983. I was in a boat with scientist and conservationist Dr. Biruté Galdikas on our way to the orangutan rehabilitation and research site she established on the island....

The sight and sound of a bumblebee or a honey bee buzzing from flower to flower in an alpine meadow or a roadside planting is calming to many, yet it invokes outright panic in others. This happens frequently in Western cultures, where we usually reach...

All organisms in an ecosystem are interconnected, and any imbalance in this complex relationship can have irreversible consequences for both humans and nonhumans. Numerous examples illustrate how the destruction of one species can lead to unforeseen and devastating impacts on others. ...