Obituaries and tributes
Over more than six decades, he helped reshape how scientists understand the natural world—not as a set of isolated species, but as a network of relationships. His work on coevolution, developed with Paul Ehrlich in the 1960s, showed how plants and animals shape one another over time. It remains
Obituaries and tributes
In a zoo, a crisis often begins before anyone names it as such. An animal stops responding to treatment. A pregnancy fails to progress. A procedure goes as planned, yet recovery does not follow. The work is technical and uncertain, and the margin for error is narrow. Outcomes depend on
Obituaries and tributes
“One of the great tragedies of the 21st century,” Schaffer once said, “will be humanity’s homogeneity.” The remark was less a warning than a diagnosis. In a world where landscapes were being simplified and species reduced to remnants, she concerned herself with what would be lost when difference itself
Obituaries and tributes
For much of the late 20th century, oil development in the Ecuadorian Amazon proceeded with little restraint. Wastewater and drilling residues were discharged into rivers or left in open pits. Forest was cleared. Communities downstream relied on contaminated water for daily use. Over time, residents reported rising rates of illness,
Obituaries and tributes
There are moments in natural-history films when the camera seems improbably close: a polar bear’s breath fogging the lens, a seal pausing to look back, an orca pod moving beneath broken ice. The impression is of nearness without disturbance. In practice, such images depend on time, restraint and
Obituaries and tributes
In the long arc of conservation, recovery is often slow enough to be mistaken for stasis. Populations dwindle, habitats shrink, and reversal depends less on moments of triumph than on decades of patient observation, persuasion, and persistence. Progress is recorded not in headlines but in ledgers: nests counted, territories mapped,
Obituaries and tributes
Birutė Galdikas, orangutan researcher and advocate, has died, aged 79 In the early 1970s, orangutans were poorly understood and rarely observed in the wild. Their forests in Borneo and Sumatra remained extensive, though early signs of logging and land conversion were already visible. At the same time, a small group
Obituaries and tributes
Environmental policy in Europe has long promised more protection for the seas than the water itself often reflects. Governments have pledged sustainable fisheries, established marine protected areas and endorsed scientific advice on catch limits. Yet enforcement has often proved uneven. Industrial fishing practices still operate in places meant to safeguard
Obituaries and tributes
Paul Brainerd did two things that rarely sit comfortably together. He helped make publishing cheaper and easier, then spent much of what he earned trying to protect the landscapes that were being consumed by growth. He died on February 15th 2026, aged 78, at his home on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Obituaries and tributes
In Madagascar, frogs are not background noise but a measure of how much forest still functions. The island holds an extraordinary share of the world’s amphibian diversity, almost all of it found nowhere else. When habitat thins or disease arrives, species cannot retreat to safer ground. Conservation therefore depends
Obituaries and tributes
José Albino Cañas Ramírez did not die in a war zone, though war had shaped the place where he lived. He was shot at his home in the community of Portachuelo, in Colombia’s Caldas department, on the evening of February 16th. Two men came to the shop he ran
Obituaries and tributes
For much of South America’s history, the arrival of a missionary has carried two reputations at once. One is charitable: a figure with medicine, schooling, and a language of human dignity in places where the state is often absent. The other is coercive: an agent of conversion and acculturation,