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wildlife
Small Voices in the Jungle: An Ode to Horton the Elephant and the AI Resistance
We need to keep listening—and we need to keep speaking. For we don’t know whose “yopp” or “yapp” or any other utterance will break through the racket of the Big Tech buildout.
Jul 01, 2026
When my son was three years old, he insisted upon hearing Horton Hears a Who! every night. Twice. As this lasted for several months, I got pretty good at reading quickly, tearing through the opening page in one breath—"On the 15th of May, in the Jungle of Nool, In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool"—so that the words ran together, like a kind of Dr. Seuss verbal soup. Horton is a sweet story about a keen-eared elephant determined, against all odds,to save the diminutive Whos, despite being ridiculed because no one else could hear them.
Given all the great picture books around, this restrictive reading diet left me perplexed. Was its appeal that it was set on May 15, the day before my son’s birthday? (To this day we all mark “Horton’s Day” with a round of silly texts.) Or that it was the teensiest Who whose off-hand “yopp” finally nudged Whoville past the aural threshold? Perhaps it was Horton’s stalwart conviction that "a person’s a person, no matter how small," a sentiment that must have enchanted a small boy stuck in a land of grownups. I venture it’s all three.
The feeling the story evokes so well—that of being invisible, and, in this case, inaudible—is universal. Everyone who was once a child has been there. Despite writing a bunch of books and giving all sorts of talks, this feeling now resonates far more than when I was a young mom speed-reading to my toddler. For you don’t need to live on a speck of dust to know that today, more than ever, little people aren’t seen and their concerns rarely get heard.
We are all Whos now.
There is indeed a crescendo of voices railing against the spoilage and surrender of nature for tech.
One scenario that really makes me feel like a Who—pounding brass pans so that someone, anyone, listens—is the way new technology buildouts are harming the natural world. Here in New England, forests and once-productive farms are being cleared for solar, while water-hungry data centers claim chunks of land in areas vulnerable to drought. Around the globe—from India to Mexico, Papua New Guinea to Mongolia—entire areas are rendered toxic due to mining the metals that animate our devices. In several places, most notoriously Congo’s cobalt mines, children as young as six spend their days in tunnels plying ores with their bare hands.
In the book, Horton is repeatedly mocked for tending the particle upon which the Whos live. The mama kangaroo and her joey say, "Humpf!" and the gang of monkeys calls the existence of Whos “nonsense”—before conspiring to drop the speck in a sea of clover. Here in our jungle equivalent, hostility to tech infrastructure is derided as “NIMBYISM” and those opposed to it scorned as Luddites. Expanding computation and energy capacity is vital for progress, even marquee environmentalists tell us. As for the ecological and human cost, well, we can’t achieve a “green energy transition” without making a bit of a mess.
We also hear from our political reps, many of whom stand to benefit handily from AI expansion, that the spread of resource-intensive computational apparatus is “unstoppable” and “not going away.” Really? The truth is: People don’t want this. At college commencements, tech titans called in to inspire new graduates about AI’s rosy future have been met with boos. But you have to listen hard, past the din of machines and the money—a bunch of zeros on a screen—that feeds them. It seems the plan is to ram all this development through so that a critical mass are dependent on the technology and the rest of us have no choice but to use it. “Inevitable,” indeed.
We need to keep listening—and we need to keep speaking. For we don’t know whose “yopp” or “yapp” or any other utterance will break through the racket. It could be the cries of juvenile sea turtles that drift about the Blake Plateau, a biodiverse undersea basin now eyed for mining nodules rich in rare metals. Or the weeping of Gullah-Geechee ancestors, thousands of whom died here during the Middle Passage en route to Charleston. Or the plaint of hundreds of villagers in a 1,000-year-old Scottish village gathered to call bullshit on claims that a massive new “hyperscale” data center would serve the community. Or the high-pitched cackle of the Andean Flamingo: outrageously pink on stick-thin legs—Dr. Seuss would have had fun drawing them. The birds are lamenting that their wetland habitat in the Atacama Desert highlands is being pumped to produce the lithium essential for energy storage.
There is indeed a crescendo of voices railing against the spoilage and surrender of nature for tech. Just like the townsfolk of Whoville, we need all of us to exclaim, "We are here! We are here! We are here!"
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'They Knew Exactly Who Mona Khalil Was': Israel Kills Lebanese Turtle Conservationist
"The murder of Mona Khalil sends a chilling message: Even those whose only weapon is compassion, whose only mission is preservation, are not spared," said one observer.
Jun 22, 2026
For more than 25 years, she protected the endangered sea turtles that laid their eggs near her beachside home in southern Lebanon. But Mona Khalil could not protect herself from Israeli invaders who spared neither her sanctuary nor its steward.
Khalil, 76, was mortally wounded when Israeli forces bombed her brightly painted conservation hub and ecotourism site, called the Orange House, in al-Mansouri, Tyre province, on June 4. She suffered injuries including severe burns during the attack, which also wounded her Ethiopian assistant, and was transported to a hospital in Beirut for treatment.
"They knew exactly who Mona Khalil was," Lebanese journalist and professor Marwa Osman said on social media following Khalil's death. "They knew the bright orange house... They knew it was not a military site, not a command center, not a battlefield position. It was one of the most recognizable symbols of environmental conservation on Lebanon's southern coast; a sanctuary dedicated to protecting endangered sea turtles and preserving life."
The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday that Khalil "was not a target."
"There is no known IDF strike in which she was injured,” the military said. “However, strikes were conducted in the area after the IDF issued evacuation warnings.”
Khalil—who was born in Nigeria in 1949 and held Dutch and Lebanese citizenship—co-founded the Orange House Project in 1999 in what had once been her grandmother's home. Khalil and volunteers gathered there each nesting season to protect sea turtles, their eggs, and hatchlings from both predators and people. She also fought against the privatization of beaches, habitat destruction, dynamite fishing, and other threats.
"For decades, Mona dedicated her life to protecting endangered sea turtles and their nesting habitats," the Lebanese environmental group Green Southerners said on Instagram. "Through the Orange House, she inspired generations of Lebanese to value and protect their natural heritage and coastal ecosystems. Her work made her one of Lebanon’s most respected voices for marine conservation and biodiversity protection."
Green Southerners co-founder Hisham Younes told the BBC on Saturday that Khalil "used to talk about the beach like it was a person."
"Her bond to the sunset, her bond to the water and the turtles... she was really into conservation, and into the soul, the spirit of conservation," Younes added.
According to Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health, Israeli attacks have killed at least 4,106 people—including 383 women, 251 children, and 135 medical workers—and wounded 12,153 others since March 2. Over 1 million Lebanese have also been forcibly displaced.
Over the weekend, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said his country's forces "need to go berserk" and "obliterate" Lebanon, all of which, he said, "must burn."
Ben-Gvir's comments were widely viewed as part of Israel's efforts to sabotage an elusive peace agreement between the United States and Iran, which has endured 114 days of an illegal US-Israeli war of choice.
Israel's Lebanon onslaught, occurring amid a backdrop of its ongoing genocide in Gaza, did not deter Khalil.
"When the war broke out, she said, 'No one should tell me to leave. I don't want to leave,'" Lebanese journalist and environmentalist Fadia Joumaa told Al Jazeera on Monday. "She made the decision to stay. What she said was, 'I'm a civilian. I don't have a weapon. I'll lock myself inside my home. This is my life.' She made that choice and remained in her house."
The Lebanese environmental group Green Southerners decried the Israeli strike, which "targeted a site that had long been known for environmental conservation, biodiversity protection, and public awareness."
"[Khalil's] death stands as a stark reminder of the devastating toll that Israeli attacks continue to exact on civilians, environmental defenders, and the natural heritage they sought to protect," the group said on Instagram. "We condemn the killing of Mona Khalil and reaffirm that those responsible for attacks on civilians and environmental defenders must be held accountable."
Recalling Khalil's successful campaign to ban dynamite fishing and the violent backlash it sparked from opponents, Joumaa told NPR: "Mona was a fighter. She did not like diplomacy. There were times when they shot at her house."
"She always told me: Defend the beach, defend the turtles, defend your country," she added.
Osman called the Israeli strike that killed Khalil "an assault on a woman whose life's work was devoted to safeguarding life itself, a woman known internationally for her environmental activism, whose name had become synonymous with the protection of Lebanon's coastline and its endangered sea turtles."
"The murder of Mona Khalil sends a chilling message: Even those whose only weapon is compassion, whose only mission is preservation, are not spared," Osman added.
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In an Era of Hardening Borders, Wildlife Corridors Bridge Peoples and Species
From Costa Rica to Colorado, wildlife corridors have been about the connections people make when they care about animal mobility.
Jun 14, 2026
Driving on the Interamerican Highway from Monteverde Biological Reserve to Rincón de la Vieja National Park, I couldn’t help but notice a series of rope bridges that crossed the six lanes of traffic. Each crossing structure featured traffic warning signs with silhouette images of monkeys or sloths as nonstop flows of diesel semitrucks and electric cars zoomed by.
Costa Rica is known for its protected areas, which cover one-third of the country and function as core zones for conservation, but the “green republic” should also be recognized for its corridors. What started as an NGO effort in the 2000s when organizations like Kids Saving The Rainforest started installing aerial bridges to improve habitat connectivity later became national policy with a 2024 presidential decree requiring electrical companies to build crossing structures so that animals like howler monkeys and kinkajous avoided electrocution from using power lines. These monkey bridges also keep tropical rainforest more intact for mobile creatures.
Beyond Central America, wildlife corridors are popular in the western United States. According to recent surveys from the Environment America Research and Policy Center and the Pew Charitable Trust, respondents approve creating more wildlife crossings at rates of 85-90%. And that support spans the political spectrum. In March 2026, the Idaho State Legislature passed Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 124, officially supporting the development of wildlife crossing infrastructure, such as highway overpasses and underpasses, to reduce animal-vehicle collisions. In December 2026, California’s Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is set to be completed across 10 lanes of Los Angeles freeway, making it the largest structure in the world.
Wildlife corridors could receive a financial boost by the bipartisan BUILD America 250 bill, considered by US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week. If passed, it would increase funding for the Federal Highway Administration’s very popular Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program (WCPP) to $80 million annually ($400 million total). The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated $350 million to 35 projects across 30 states, but demand far exceeded with $500 million in requests.
Today, the benefits of conserving wildlife corridors might be just as much about the social as the biological.
If we’re living in a worldwide golden age for wildlife corridors, where did this idea come from? I trace the origins of this dominant conservation strategy in my new book, Borders of Biodiversity: How Gray Wolves, Monarch Butterflies, and Giant Sequoia Transformed Large Landscape Conservation, published by University of North Carolina Press.
In the 1970s and 1980s, new technologies provided windows into animal mobility. For wolves, radio- and satellite- telemetry allowed US biologist Diane Boyd and Canadian biologist Paul Paquet to track the interchange of dispersing juveniles along the Rockies. For example, Boyd collared wolf #8551, named Kay, west of Glacier National Park; the wolf turned up six months later dead after it was legally shot near Pouce Coupe, British Columbia. The 600-mile movement northward was interesting scientifically because it was two-thirds of the way to the Yukon Territory, but Kay’s movement also had major conservation implications. Wildlife corridors facilitated wolf dispersals; transborder dispersals could facilitate wolf recovery under the Endangered Species Act.
In the 1990s, wildlife corridors were thought of as proactive tools against habitat fragmentation. Responding to Boyd and Paquet’s work, conservationists in Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming created the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative in 1993 to keep core areas—like Yellowstone National Park or Banff National Park—connected. Projects included lobbying the Canadian government to build wildlife overpasses and underpasses along the Trans-Canada Highway, which Y2Y founder Harvey Locke called the “Berlin Wall of Biodiversity” for its high rate of wolf and elk fatalities. Or investing in predator-deterrence tools like range riding and electrified fladry fencing for ranching communities so wolves and grizzlies could use rural spaces as biological passageways.
By the 2000s, however, wildlife corridors were also understood to help with climate adaptation in a warming world. A scientific meta-analysis documented that of 4,000 animals recently tracked, almost three-quarters of them shifted their ranges to cooler lands or waters. Terrestrial species, on average, were moving 12 miles (or 20 kilometers) every decade toward the poles. Animals relocate to adapt.
Today, the benefits of conserving wildlife corridors might be just as much about the social as the biological. In 2012, Ben Bobowski of Rocky Mountain National Park and Yaxine María Arias Núñez of Santa Elena Biological Reserve created a series of personnel exchanges between the two protected areas called the Naturalmente Juntos-Naturally Together Project. Their connection was based on bird banding studies that revealed 150 bird species, like yellow warblers, migrated along the Continental Divide between Colorado and Costa Rica. In 2015, Rocky and Santa Elena entered a formal sistering agreement.
From Costa Rica to Colorado, wildlife corridors have been about the connections people make when they care about animal mobility. In an era of border-hardening nationalism, corridors can help people of different nationalities facilitate solidarities among shared species.
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