【推荐1】“The trees are precious to us,” says Priscilla Hunter. “We believe our ancestors’ spirits are there.”

Hunter is a member of the Pomo Indians in Norther California. She’s also a founder and chairwoman of the Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council (ISWC).

In 1997 the council acquired 3,844 acres of the Sinkyone wilderness, about 200 miles along California’s Lost Coast. It’s “lost” because scenic Highway 1 avoids it, cutting inland to escape the rough coastal terrain (地形). One could also say it’s lost because less than 2 percent of the original old-growth redwoods there survived logging decades ago. Now the 10 tribes that formed the union are working to protect and preserve their sacred land. David Brindley, the interim editor of National Geographic, asked Hunter how they were accomplishing that. “We’re just letting it heal. It takes a long time to heal an area that has been cut and cut,“ ”she told him, “People are saying: ‘What are you guys doing with it?’’ Letting it heal.’”

Their efforts have gained attention. Last December the Save the Redwoods League(SRL), an established nonprofit organization, gave the council 523 acres of California coastal forest. The forest, named as Tcíh-Léh-Dûñ-meaning “fish run place” in the Sinkyone language, includes nearly 200 acres of old-growth redwoods. “We were really pleased to have a place that still has some of the ancient trees. So the critters will have a place to be safe-the fish and birds and all that,” said Hunter.

The Sinkyone council is just one example of how indigenous peoples, in communities across the United States and Canada, are taking control of their land, laws, and fate.

Basing on the above, Brindley wrote this month’s cover story “We Are Here”. It explored how native nations are reclaiming their sovereignty and rebuilding their cultures.

【推荐3】In some parts of China, mainly in Anhui Province and Zhejiang Province, spread groups of grey-tiled and white-walled houses, forming one of the most typical scenes captured in traditional Chinese landscape paintings. It is Hui-style architecture, one of the major Chinese architectural styles of ancient times.

Hui-style architecture developed into a significant building school in the Song Dynasty. In the mid-Ming Dynasty, gardens and houses constructed with Hui styles developed very quickly along with the success of Hui commerce (商业). Hui-style architecture soon stepped out from Huizhou and was introduced to big towns.

Hui-style architecture is characterized by the arrangement of villages together with nature, and a simple and beautiful exterior (外观).

Hui-style houses are usually ones with skylights (天井). With a square skylight surrounded by houses from four sides or from left, right and backside, these houses can reduce the beat of sunshine and enjoy ventilation (通风). All the houses gathers water from the skylight which means fortune will not run off outside.

In ancient times, the colors used for buildings were very strict Bright colors could only be used in palaces, temples and for government officials. So people in Huizhou chose the black and white colors to paint their houses.

Generally speaking, the exterior appearance of Hui-style buildings differs little while their interior can vary a lot based on the wishes of the owners. Home decoration is characterized by three types of Hui carving: stone carving, wood carving and brick carving.

To take a look at the Hui-style architecture, Xidi Village in Yixian County, Anhui Province, is the best place to go. It is a site of typical Hui houses, and one of the “Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui” that have been collectively listed as a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO.

【推荐2】For years, David James, who studies insects at Washington State University, had wanted to examine the migration (迁徙)patterns of West Coast monarch butterflies (黑脉金斑蝶). The route the butterflies travel has been hardly known because the populations are too small to follow. For every 200 monarchs tagged (打标签)by a researcher, only one is usually recovered at the end of its trip, James says, and finding even 200 in the wild to tag is unlikely. Knowing the route is vital to conservation efforts, but James had no way to figure it out- until he got a phone call from Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

The prison was looking for new activities to improve the mental health of those serving long-term sentences. So James began working with prisoners to raise monarchs through the whole process of their transformation. The adult insects were then tagged and released from the prison. Over five years, nearly 10, 000 monarchs flew from the facility. Elsewhere in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, researchers released another few thousand.

The tags included email addresses, and soon after the first butterflies took off, James started receiving messages from people who had spotted them. The butterflies, the reports confirmed, wintered in coastal California. Twelve of them landed at Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz. Several more headed to Bolinas and Morro Bay.

The work helps researchers identify ideal places to plant milkweed and other vegetation that are important to the life cycle of West Coast monarch butterflies. It also brought out the gentler side of some of the prisoners. “They were very worried that they were going to harm the butterflies, ”James says. Watching the monarch change their form also touched the men. “This butterfly changed, ” James recalls prisoners telling him, “and maybe we can too. ”