ecology

Sometimes the best way to move forward is to go sideways, and while exploring mangroves in Brazil I took time out to visit my son in Salvador de Bahia, and gained inspiration from an art exhibition and a Brazilian sport. . .

I was privileged to meet one of the leading experts in mangrove restoration in his home state of Florida. Robin Lewis has spent his working life fine-tuning methods for restoration former mangrove wetlands to full ecological functionality. As he explained and showed me, mangrove restoration is a lot more than just planting seedlings in the mud. . .

The Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge is one of the great mangrove preserves of the United States. In fact, here mangroves are spreading where they’re not wanted—into former freshwater swamplands that were drained for a grandiose housing project that failed to get off the ground. I travelled to the refuge with a Fish and Wildlife researcher who was gathering groundwater data that will help environmental managers make the right decisions about how to restore the unique ecology of the area.

Three springs ago I visited the Leopold Memorial Reserve—the depleted Wisconsin sand county farm Aldo Leopold bought in 1930 known as the “shack.” In the 1940s he recorded in his field notes that without large predators such as wolves to regulate their numbers, deer were eating aspens and other trees and shrubs to death.