Plus, the sea’s superfood, ancient bio-haven lanes, and Sylvia Earle's big day.
 | PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICHARD ALLENBY-PRATT
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Hope is the thing with petals, growing through a crack in the pavement.
In southeastern England, an organization called WildEast is creating cracks in the human-dominated landscape, encouraging landowners to let nature run wild again on 20 percent of whatever gardens, farms, or vacant lots they control—they’re at 20,000 acres so far. In the southeastern Netherlands, as this story from our Dutch edition explains, the countryside is crisscrossed by ancient sunken lanes that had long been neglected, even used to dump old cars or appliances—but turn out to be refuges for badgers, bats, and beetles, and various rare plants. And in the United States too, as Emma Marris writes in this month’s cover story, the idea is catching on that “we need to do conservation everywhere.” That means not just in national parks, but in abandoned strip mines in Virginia and in downtown Yonkers, New York.
“We all need to take personal responsibility for whatever space we’ve got,” one of the founders of Britain’s WildEast, Hugh Somerleyton, told Nat Geo’s Tristan McConnell. “Ordinary people doing ordinary things, that’s where the power lies.” | | | |
Pictured at top, the river valleys of Suffolk, England, were historically used for grazing sheep. Above, Marie and Gerry Lagerberg’s wildflower meadow in the village of Hoxne is cut once a year with double handed scythes, just as it was in the long-ago era before mechanized farming introduced heavy machinery that can compact the soil and harm wildlife.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY JOEL SARTORE, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | | Bison boon: Turns out there are many benefits to having a home where the buffalo roam. A new study, 29 years in the making, shows that the keystone species (above) can help restore tallgrass prairies, which once extended across Texas and into southern Canada, Jason Bittel reports for Nat Geo. The study’s findings suggest that ongoing efforts to reintroduce American bison into their former stomping grounds benefits not just Native peoples but the environment, too.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM LAMAN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | | Tree champs: Climbing trees is a particular specialty of field biologist Tim Laman. The Nat Geo Explorer and photographer ascends the treetops to highlight less-well-known animals, such as orangutans in Borneo. In this photo from the April 1997 issue of National Geographic, Laman captures researcher Cheryl Knott mid-climb into the rainforest canopy in Gunung Palung National Park in Borneo, Indonesia.
Related: Learn the secrets to becoming an ‘arbonaut’ | | | |
 | | The best present would be that out of this terrible, tragic time that we're all experiencing, there will be a renewal of optimism in a better world that we know is possible, that we can, through our individual and collective actions, turn to a new era of respect for the natural systems that keep us alive, and for one another. | | | | Sylvia Earle, marine biologist and Nat Geo Explorer in Residence | | Happy birthday, Sylvia! Dive into more of her birthday reflections from 2020. | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID PESKENS | | Holloways holla! Writer Niels Guns was on a class trip in the Netherlands in 1997 when he spotted them—sunken ancient lanes carved millennia ago. Over time, these “holloways” became biodiverse hot spots for flora and fauna (like the young tawny owl pictured above resting in the Savelsbos forest), making them the most beautiful part of the Limburg province, Guns tells Nat Geo. But with encroaching agriculture and tourism, these cultural and natural treasures are under threat. Learn how locals are planning to save them.
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| Today’s newsletter was edited and curated by Jen Tse, Heather Kim, Sydney Combs, Anne Kim-Dannibale, Alissa Swango, Allie Yang, and Janey Adams. Have an idea? Write david.beard@natgeo.com. | | | |
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