2 . Imagine you are on a cold mountain with steep rocks around. As you climb higher, the air gets thinner and the sun’s rays stronger. Just before you reach the snowline, you find what you came for—a small white flower, the edelweiss, which only grows in alpine areas.

Plants face many challenges living in alpine areas, and only 200 kinds of plants can grow there. Plants rely on oxygen, water, and sunlight to make their own food through the process of photosynthesis. The alpine means less CO2, which makes the process more difficult. It also brings plants closer to the sun. The sunlight is so strong that it can burn a plant’s leaves. There is little water here, so the soil is dry and rocky. You also won’t find high trees because the cold wind would blow them over！

Alpine plants have advantages that help them survive the bad conditions. Like all alpine plants, the edelweiss stays close to the ground to avoid the wind. The cold water is deep underground, so the edelweiss grows very deep roots. Its leaves have a thick covering, which protects the plant from the wind and the sun’s bright rays. All these special characteristics help it grow, but very slowly.

The edelweiss can live in the conditions, but humans can’t. Climbing in the high and cold mountains is dangerous and difficult. This is why the edelweiss became such a special flower. Long ago, a young man would pick an edelweiss flower to prove his love to a girl, although it was risky. Many men died while trying. Getting the flower proved that the man was physically strong, brave, and devoted.

Alpine plants can’t spread seeds, so it’s difficult for new plants to grow. Once all the edelweiss flowers are gone in an area, they will not regroup. Governments help protect the edelweiss because it is considered an endangered plant.

3 . After the birth of her second child in 2019, Keet was motivated to make changes by the thought of what kind of world her children were going to have. “I was totally awake in the middle of the night having climate anxiety,” she said. “I just brought this person into the world—what does her future look like? What does my son’s future look like?”

Keet started the seeds of Planetarian Life based on her experiences doing Meatless Monday, but with fewer restrictions and a larger sense of purpose. “There’s vegetarianism(素食主义), but these things don’t describe my why,” she said. “I’m eating this way for the planet.”

That’s the most basic definition of who a planetarian is, according to Keet: someone who is changing the way they eat and live for the good of the Earth.

With Planetarian Life, Keet decided to take a small-steps approach. Instead of cutting out meat entirely or working with unfamiliar ingredients, planetarian eating works around making small replacements in your usual meals on your own schedule and to your own preferred tastes.

This can be as simple as using chickpeas instead of rotisserie chicken to make chickpea “chicken” salad or cooking a big batch of quinoa to keep on hand for quick skillet vegetable bowls throughout the week.

Like compound interest, the minor changes made to familiar meals add up to a bigger lifestyle change over time—and they are easier to stick with than drastic cuts. Because no foods are banned from the planetarian way of eating, it’s up to every individual to take it as far as they want to go.

4 . Set 40 kilometers northeast of the city of Ambatondrazaka, the Zahamena National Park's landscape consists of (……组成) valleys surrounded by a flowing mountain range.

It has an overall land coverage of 64, 300 hectares, but only 42, 000 hectares is open to the public due to strict conservation (环境保护) reasons. It receives an average yearly rainfall level of about 6 feet and experiences frequent rain showers even during the dry season between April and October.

One really interesting thing about the Zahamena National Park is that the unique territory of its highland has paved the way for the development of several ecosystems that exist at the same time in this park. This is the reason why the types of wildlife living in one area are different in another, which makes it quite exciting to explore.

This protected area is divided into two parts, with a separate piece of land in the middle where many small villages are situated. These villages are inhabited (居住) by the members of the Sihanaka and Betsimisaraka ethnic groups.

The Zahamena National Park gets its name from the local Zahana Mena tree, an uncommon type of hardwood that grows in the lower regions of this protected area. It is characterized by its resilient (坚韧的) wood that can be rather challenging to cut, join, shape and carve even with modern tools.

Established as a strict natural highland reserve in 1927 (and one of the first of its kind in all of Madagascar), the Zahamena National Park was officially given its national park status (地位) in 1997 and was eventually opened to the public. Due to its remarkable territory and unique biodiversity, this national park was later listed as a key part of the collective UNESCO World Heritage Site called the Rainforests of the Atsinanana in 2007.

5 . It takes courage to live on Montana’s short-grass prairie (大草原). The native people successfull, adapted to the difficult environment over many centuries. For the last 150 years, wild animals have given the basic habitat up to cows, which makes this rare habitat decline ecologically.

Today, though, parts of the landscape are being shaped by a different resident—the North American plains bison (野牛). Tribes and conservation organizations have recently started bringing the bison back. And scientists studying the returns are discovering that getting the 900 kg grazer back in its native ecosystem could be a key to the future of the prairie.

An adult bison eats about 11 kg of grass a day. The grasses adapt to their search for food. Vegetation across the plains uses the nutrients in their waste. Birds pull out their fur from bushes to keep the heat of nests from passing out.

Bison also shape the land literally. They roll in the dust and create muddy areas that hold water after rainstorms. After the bison move on, insects flourish in these pools and become a feast for birds and small mammals. Pronghorn antelope survive by following their tracks through deep winter snows.

Plains bison spent thousands of years engineering a distinctive grassland ecology from Northern Canada through Montana to Mexico. But more than a century ago, this influence suddenly stopped. A few decades of killing led the number of bison to fall suddenly from 60 million to barely 800 living wild in the US and Canada by 1889.

Today, however, bison are getting a second chance. Tribal reservations are at the forefront of their recovery, taking extra bison from Yellowstone National Park and restoring them to treaty lands. Now some scientists are keeping close watch on the changes of the lands after the return of bison.