Obituaries and tributes
In late August, high in South Africa’s Jonkershoek Mountains, a small group of botanists picked their way across steep ground in search of one of the world’s rarest plants. They were surveying Penaea formosa, a critically endangered shrub thought to number fewer than 50 individuals. Donovan Kirkwood, curator
Obituaries and tributes
He was almost always smiling. In eastern Congo, where war and poverty have long eroded hope, that smile and the restless energy behind it mattered as much as any conservation plan. Dr. Augustin Kanyunyi Basabose, who died suddenly on August 18th, 2025, gave communities and colleagues alike the sense that
Obituaries and tributes
When Jim Estes first arrived in the Aleutian Islands in 1970, he expected a routine wildlife survey. What he found was the outline of a scientific revelation. In places where sea otters thrived, the ocean floor teemed with kelp and fish. Where they were gone, sea urchins had multiplied unchecked,
Obituaries and tributes
In a city of relentless noise and concrete, Sunjoy Monga taught Mumbai to look up. The flash of a kingfisher, the silhouette of a kite, the call of a koel at dawn—he urged his fellow citizens to notice these things, not as fleeting curiosities but as reminders that the
Obituaries and tributes
He knew he would be killed. For months, Israeli officials had phoned him with threats: stop reporting, or die. Four days before the end, they offered him a way out, safe passage if he silenced himself. He refused. On August 10th, 2025, an Israeli airstrike struck a tent for journalists
Obituaries and tributes
At the San Diego Natural History Museum, Drew Stokes would slide open a drawer to reveal dozens of bats—some the size of bottle caps, others like éclairs. They were not trophies. Most had died of natural causes and were donated to science. For him, they were data, clues, and—
Obituaries and tributes
For most Americans, the loss of a tree might pass unnoticed. For Rex Mann, it changed the course of his life. As a boy growing up in the mountains of western North Carolina, Mann listened to his father—once a moonshiner, later a Baptist lay minister—describe the American chestnut
Obituaries and tributes
Few men have stood so squarely in the crosshairs of development and conservation in Sri Lanka as Jayantha Jayewardene. A former rugby forward with a spine of steel, he spent decades grappling with a quieter, more consequential struggle: How to protect the island’s dwindling wild elephants amid its swelling
Obituaries and tributes
For most people, the bush falls silent after dark. For Edward McNabb, it came alive. In the folds of night across Victoria’s forests, he attuned himself to sounds few others could name: the resonant trill of a Sooty Owl, the scratch of a glider, the croak of a burrowing
Obituaries and tributes
To work in Alaska as a wildlife biologist is to accept hardship as part of the job: blizzards, isolation, and a daily intimacy with life, death, and the difficult questions in between. For John Landsiedel, it was not only worth it—it was the dream. He arrived in Dillingham in
Obituaries and tributes
Among those who cared about freshwater fish—and there were many—Paul Loiselle stood out not for how loudly he spoke and cared, but for how deeply he understood. His grasp of ichthyology was vast, his judgment trusted across both scientific and aquarium hobbyist circles. But what set him apart
Obituaries and tributes
When flames overtook the hillsides above the Zagros and Hassanabad neighborhoods in the Abidar highlands of Iranian Kurdistan, there was no formal emergency response team. No firebreaks. No protective gear. Only a handful of local environmentalists—among them Hamid Moradi—stepped in, as they had so many times before, to