Tending the Garden of Eden in the Twenty-First Century
Among the many themes that can be discussed in the biblical story of Adam and Eve is the divorce between humans and nature: After being immersed in nature, humans were banished from the garden and began to experience nature as strange and foreign. Seen from this angle, the big question conservationists must ask is: how […]
Remembering Paul Ehrlich and His Ecological Legacy
Paul Ehrlich was arguably the most influential ecological thinker of his generation. He was a towering human being and intellectual presence, driven by insatiable curiosity, a boundless reservoir of ideas, and an unwillingness to remain silent in the face of injustice, folly, or environmental destruction. For the past fifteen years, I have had the privilege […]
Scientific discoveries and darkspots
Dragons, sea serpents and blank spaces are hallmarks of medieval-European maps, representing geographic spaces that early cartographers knew were not yet known. In our modern age, it is commonly thought that there is no terra incognita left anymore on Earth — the world has been “discovered” and scientifically mapped. Yet there are vast parts of the natural world that remain unknown to us, leading me to wonder where the dragons and sea serpents — metaphorical or literal — will be found….
A visit to Mount Sagyaan
Uri Shanas, TiME’s founder, visited one of the threatened habitats awaiting your vote, Mount Sagyaan, and shares his experience. Let me try to describe the amazing time my wife, Irit, and I had with the Higa-onon people of Mount Sagyaan. Upon arrival at the airport on Mindanao Island, we met Datu Lanelio T. Sangcoan, one […]
Biodiversity through the lens of evolution
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”“What do you mean by that?” said […]
Can our media shape our future?
The things we engage with in our media and the things we enjoy do shape our belief in what is possible in the future. Terra Nil is a nature-restoration video game. Upon starting it, the player is greeted by a vast toxic wasteland where a guidebook with instructions on restoration is found. The player’s task […]
Protected areas & indigenous territories effective against deforestation across amazon
PROTECTED AREAS & INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES EFFECTIVE AGAINST DEFORESTATION ACROSS AMAZON Protected areas and indigenous territories have been shown to be effective in reducing deforestation across the Amazon region. Here are some key points about the effectiveness of protected areas and indigenous territories in preventing deforestation: Overall, protected areas and indigenous territories have been shown to […]
Concluding 2024
People of the living mountains
“The forest is life,” Datu Lanelio T. Sangcoan told me over and over throughout our conversation. Datu represents the Higa-onon people, an Indigenous people in the Philippines whose sacred forest is among the threatened habitats you can protect in TiME’s 2025 campaign. When I tried asking him why is the forest life, he seemed […]
The Tip of the Iceberg
There is more than meets the eye, looks can be deceiving, and ninety percent of the iceberg is underwater. This lesson was famously learned the hard way by RMS Titanic, which relied on the human eye to detect any obstacles in its way. On a moonless night, two lookouts were simply not enough to alert […]