Saving Habitat: Just as Much for Humans as for Everything Else

Andrew Revkin provides a biographical article about E.O. Wilson on the occasion of the famed conservationist's 90th birthday.

Describing him as "one of the great figures in biology and conservation of this, or any, century," Revkin also introduces Wilson to an audience that might not have encountered his work until now.

The gist of Wilson's worldview was expressed recently in his book, Half-Earth, summarized here by Revkin: "for humans to set aside half of our planet’s terrestrial and oceanic space for other species within the next few decades."

"Conserving this amount of space for nature, he has calculated, can safeguard some 85 percent of the world’s species, offering the prospect of a sustainable long-term human relationship with the planet once our population stabilizes and we learn how to satisfy human needs without undermining ecological health," explains Revkin.

According to the article, despite retiring "only in the technical sense," Wilson has a lot of frying pans in the fire, and fans of his work will have plenty of projects to keep track of in the near future.