To Conserve Nature, Recognize Its Rights
The Biden administration wants to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Austin Miles asks: what might that conservation look like if it recognizes the rights of nature?
Category: Essays
Badwater (a Kinship Series Essay)
Daegan Miller recounts his close encounter with a buffalo herd and the fraught political history of the Badlands in this essay with audio narration excerpted from Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, a five-volume book series.
For the Love of Frogs
Poison dart frogs in Colombia face threats from deforestation and the illegal wildlife trade. Heather Swan profiles Ivan Lozano, a conservationist who has dedicated his life to breeding and protecting these frogs.
The Collective Work of Urban Conservation
Drawing on examples of urban wildlife refuges in California and Alaska, environmental attorney Nicholas Moore makes the case for not only protecting these places but creating more of them.
Paul Bunyan and Settler Nostalgia in the Northwoods
Kasey Keeler and Ryan Hellenbrand think beyond tourism to show how logging and forestry have impacted a tribal nation in Minnesota—and how storytelling and placemaking can be tools of both colonialism and Indigenous resistance.
This Year, Wisconsin Apple Growers Are Feeling the Squeeze
Apple growers had a historically low harvest this year. Jules Reynolds asks: what does climate change mean for the future of Wisconsin’s orchards?
Visualizing the Volcanic Caribbean
Weaving a reflective essay with a virtual gallery, artist Kwynn Johnson draws upon the rich history of volcano-inspired art to creatively reimagine the twenty-first-century Caribbean landscape.
Green Gentrification in South Philly
“South Philly had Black history but no Black people.” Sterling Johnson, with Kimberley Thomas, ‎follows a century of green gentrification along the Schuylkill River.
Diving into the Aquatic Depths of East Asian Ecohorror
In ecohorror movies like Shin Godzilla and The Host, pollution fights back in the form of rampaging sea monsters. Lindsay S. R. Jolivette traces the significance of water in these films—and what it reveals about our worst nightmares.
How COVID is Reconfiguring Labor in Extractive Industries
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended global circuits of resource extraction. Brian Ikaika Klein, Stephanie Postar, Laura Dev, Hilary Faxon, and Matthew Libassi tell the story of a gold-filled suitcase to show how.
