January-March 2005

Volume 6, Number 1

Features

BORN AGAIN
William McDonough, a radical architect, dismisses traditional recycling as tired and inadequate. Instead, he’s invented “industrial ecoystems” in which substances and machines are infinitely recycled.
by Jim Robbins

PIPE DREAMS Cover Story
If the twentieth century was the era of the megadam and the ecological destruction of the world’s rivers, the twenty-first century could be different. It could. But will it?
by Fred Pearce

HEALING POWERS
With the finesse of modern market research, a team of undercover conservationists set out to probe the 3,000-year-old demand curve for endangered species in traditional Chinese medicines.
by Douglas Fox

Innovations

SPIDA-WEB
Artificial neural networks fill in for taxonomists.
By Erik Ness

AN ANSWER TO OUR PRAYERS
An interfaith investment group is conservation’s new patron.
By Nancy Bazilchuk

A BETTER DISTORTED VIEW
The physics of diffusion transforms the way we see maps.
By Ivars Peterson

Numbers in Context

GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY, GOOD FOR US?
Conservation spending is tethered to the U.S. economy—for better or worse.

Essay

THE ACCIDENTAL RAINFOREST Print Only
by Fred Pearce

Journal Watch

Thousands of Divers Pivotal to Major Seahorse Survey
Predicting Habitat Size Needed for Pollination Services
Elephants Help Zebras Coexist with Cattle
Overfishing Implicated in Sea Urchin Epidemics
People Eat More Bushmeat When Fish Are Scarce
Discarded Fishing Lines Kill Coral Colonies
Wetlands Need Bigger Buffers
Deforestation Leaves No Survivors

From Readers

YOUR LETTERS AND COMMENTS Print Only

Uneasy Chair

MEASURE US BY OUR SAGE GROUSE
by Jon Christensen