Obituaries and tributes
Note: In July 2025 I discovered this piece was still in drafts. I published it now, about a year after intended. It began with a buffalo. The animal lay slumped beside a dry waterhole in Tsavo West National Park, its great ribs rising and falling slowly in the dust. No
Obituaries and tributes
The eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of Congo are no strangers to tragedy. Yet the loss of two Virunga National Park rangers in a surveillance plane crash near Ishango on July 23 underscores once again the mortal risks faced by those charged with defending one of the world’s
Obituaries and tributes
He spent a lifetime defending an animal few people understood, and even fewer could name. In 1967, on the spring-fed waters of Florida’s Crystal River, a teenager named James “Buddy” Powell encountered a stranger in a rowboat. The man, a Cornell graduate student, was looking for manatees—a
Obituaries and tributes
In the final months of her life, Sharon Haussmann could still be found walking fence lines, coordinating anti-poaching patrols, and debating the finer points of dehorning protocol with field rangers and policy-makers alike. The work was unrelenting, the stakes immense. But for Haussmann, the head of the Greater
Obituaries and tributes
In the United States, there are few things more American than ice cream. And few names more synonymous with it than Baskin-Robbins. The company’s pastel storefronts, pink spoons, and 31 flavors became part of the cultural wallpaper. John Robbins could have had it all: the corner office, the
Obituaries and tributes
It was hard to say whether Rémi Parmentier preferred the corridors of power or the prow of a Zodiac. He navigated both with equal ease—and equal irreverence. In one breath, he might denounce the chemical industry’s quiet influence over international law. In the next, he might pull out
Obituaries and tributes
She made a home for species few noticed, and a future for those too often ignored. Most people would have walked past the flower. Even fewer would have recognized the insect on it. But in 2009, Sheila Colla did both. As her car left Ontario’s Pinery Provincial Park, she
Obituaries and tributes
She bore no records, only witness. For more than a century, Vatsala stood. Through wars and heatwaves, bureaucracies and monsoons, she moved through India’s forests with a gait that outlasted the institutions around her. She died where she had lived for decades, in the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya
Obituaries and tributes
Andrew Kassoy was not a revolutionary by temperament. His bearing was deliberate, his language restrained, his approach systems-focused rather than confrontational. Yet the work he chose and the institutions he helped build reshaped how tens of thousands of companies understand their responsibilities. Profit, in his view, was not the
Obituaries and tributes
For a man who spent his life studying the movements of wildlife, Roberto Zolho was most at peace when not moving at all—drifting in a kayak down the Guacheni channels, pausing to admire an egret, a kingfisher, or a sunlit curve in the reeds. In these secluded corners of
Obituaries and tributes
In a world that treats foxes as either fur or folly, Mikayla Raines saw something else entirely: Sentience. Not the cartoonish cleverness of folklore, nor the soft luxury of fashion, but the quiet, confused lives of animals bred to die or discarded as inconvenient pets. From the age of 15,
Obituaries and tributes
In the forests of Vidarbha, where he spent most of his adult life, Maruti Chitampalli did not walk so much as listen. While others mapped territory, he absorbed language—of birds, of trees, of the people who lived among them. Over four decades as a forest officer in Maharashtra, he