【推荐1】Qiu Shi and her colleagues often patrol (巡逻) in the mountains, with only bread and sausages to eat. They are members of the first all-woman patrol team in the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, Heilongjiang Province, which was established in 2019 to help with wildlife protection and provide employment for local women.

Qiu, 36, is the oldest of the six guards. They are in charge of protecting Siberian tigers and other wildlife in the reserve. Each patrol they conduct in the mountains requires tens of thousands of steps. In summer, their clothes are completely wet from sweat. Bai Xue used to have fair skin, but after a few months of patrolling, she developed a tan (棕褐色皮肤). Removing traps set by poachers (偷猎者) is one of their most important tasks. At first, the team wasn’t able to destroy the traps, but it became easier with more practice, although their hands are now callused (长茧) from the heavy work.

The team has collected a great deal of information about the mountain environment in which they operate. “We see human footprints, but also animal tracks which can tell us about the wildlife population in a certain area and their main range of activity.” Qiu said, adding that the most exciting thing about patrolling the mountains is checking the cameras monitoring animals’ movements. Every time seeing an image of a Siberian tiger sleeping or wandering about, they are excited. It’s like finding treasure. And the images collected by the team suggest that the wildlife populations are increasing. The data will be provided to experts to study the migration (迁移) patterns of Siberian tigers and other animals. During patrols, they also rescue injured animals wherever they find them.

The work is hard and the days are long, but they intend to continue, determined to protect the wildlife of this important natural habitat.

【推荐2】The Maasai people are the most easily identifiable in Kenya with their very colorful clothing and ornaments on the body. They live a nomadic life, raising and hunting animals near some of Kenya’s most visited wildlife parks.     1    

It is a tradition for a young Maasai man, called a moran in the Maasai language, to kill a lion alone with a spear to show that he is a man. With the kill, a moran would be able to win a “lion name” and admiration among young women.     2     Instead, the young Maasai will take part in a javelin (标枪) throwing competition at an event called the Maasai Olympics.

Mingati Samanya, at the age of 69, is one of the Maasai elders. During his youth, Samanya killed two lions to show he was a man.     3     Samanya is now among the elders who are trying to push the young Maasai to do something different to prove themselves, which includes participating in javelin throwing, jumping and other activities in the community Olympics.

    4     In the past, they killed lions and didn’t get any benefit from it. Right now, when the morans throw a javelin, run or jump, they get not just medals, but also some money.     5     Thanks to the Maasai Olympics and its appealing practice in particular, the lion population in parts of the Kimana Sanctuary (保护区) near Mount Kilimanjaro has increased 10 times over the last 20 years.

【推荐3】To many people, honey bees symbolize prosperity (兴旺), sustainability and environmentalism. But as a honey bee researcher, I have to tell you that only the first item on that list is defensible. Although they are important for agriculture, honey bees also destabilize naturar ecosystems by competing with native bees - some of which are species at risk.

The rise in hobby beekeeping, now a trendy activity for hundreds of thousands of Americans, followed strong awareness campaigns to “save the bees.” But as a species, honey bees are least in need of saving Sheila Colla, a conservation biologist, says, “People mistakenly think helping honey bees is somehow helping native bees. They have a surprisingly poor understanding of the diversity of pollinators (传粉者) and their roles in pollination.”

There are millions of honey bee colonies (群) in NorthAmerica. Around 30,000 bees per colony, that’s roughly a billion honey bees in Canada and the U.s. alone. Huge numbers of honey bee colonies increase competition between native pollinators, putting even more pressure on the wild species that are already in decline. Honey bees are extreme generalist foragers (觅食者), leading to exploitative competition — that is , where one species uses up a resource, not leaving enough to go around.

Alfredo Valido and Pedro Jordano, researchers from the spanish National Research Council, used the Canary Islands to study how honey bees affect the native pollinating community. In the highlands of the islands’ Teide National Park, thousands of honey bee colonies are introduced seasonally for honey production and removed again at the end of the flower season, creating an excellent condition for experimentation. Their results do not make honey bees look like the sustainability celebrities they have become. Bringing in honey bees reduced the conneetedness of the plant-pollinator networks. Besides, the resilience (恢复力) of the ecosystem has also declined.

I used to believe that honey bees were a gateway species, and that concern over their health and prosperity would spread to native bees, benefitting them, too. However, evidence shows that misguided enthusiasm for honey bees has likely been the native bees’ disaster.

【推荐1】Howard first put forward his garden city idea in 1898 in a book titled To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform, later reprinted in 1902 under the name Garden Cities of To- morrow . In his book, Howard described “town” and “country” as magnets(磁石)drawing people to them for different reasons. He described the pros and cons of each—for example, the country offers “beauty of nature” but a “shortage of society”, while the town features “social opportunity” in exchange for a “closing out of nature” . Howard thought that neither the town nor the country was good enough and suggested creating a “third magnet” to satisfy people’s needs.

Howard decided to create a town-country mixture that would offer both the conveniences of the town and the peace and beauty of the country. He had a detailed plan in mind: His garden cities would include, starting from the center of the circle, a huge public garden with public buildings such as the town hall, theaters, and a hospital, a huge shopping center where people would shop at a covered market and enjoy a “winter garden”, about 5, 500 building lots for family homes, and so on. In its perfect form, the Garden City would become a network of smaller cities built around a larger central town.

Howard was a successful fundraiser. In the first years of the 20th century, he built two garden cities: Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City, both in Hertfordshire, England. Letchworth was quite successful, but Welwyn quickly became a common place. Still, garden cities took off elsewhere. In the US, for example, garden cities developed quickly in New York, Florida, and Virginia.

Even today, Howard’s ideas are the subject of both praise and criticism(批评) . Some of his ideas go against the views of today’s environmentalists. On the other hand, the idea of a garden city became widely accepted in city planning, leading to the rise of green spaces in cities.