Rhett Ayers Butler
In 1991, botanists Calaway Dodson and Alwyn Gentry proposed that dozens of plant species known only from a deforested ridge in western Ecuador—Centinela—had likely gone extinct. The idea became known as the “Centinelan extinction hypothesis”: that clearing a single site could cause the immediate, global loss of narrowly distributed species. The claim was influential. It [Continue reading]
To those who map the world for conservation, the forests of northeastern Gabon can appear almost empty. Satellite images show an unbroken canopy, and global datasets classify large areas as “intact forest landscapes,” supposedly free of human influence. On paper, such places look pristine. In Massaha, a village in Ogooué-Ivindo province, that picture does not [Continue reading]