In a world where so much life is vanishing, these nature-loving obsessives bring us much-needed good tidings.
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News of the world environment
NEWSLETTER | JULY 25, 2025
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The Finders
LAST YEAR, the slender-billed curlew was declared extinct — the first documented extinction of a bird species (Numenius tenuirostris) whose range extended from mainland Europe to North Africa and West Asia. So too the Orkney charr (Salvelinus inframundus), the Taiwanese swallowtail butterfly (Papilio machaon sylvina), and a host of other plants and animals. Their fate is an indicator of a grim future for biodiversity. In fact, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, more than 47,000 species currently face the threat of extinction, including a quarter of all mammals and freshwater fish, a third of tree species, four in ten amphibian species, and nearly half of all reef-building corals.
But beyond that parade of horribles, that litany of gloom and doom, is a bit of good news: the continuing discovery of previously unknown species by dedicated researchers who love the living world. These discoveries are often made by nature-loving obsessives, whose dedication, patience, and persistence can be hard to understand. I call them Finders.
“When we look at scientists, they have this intrinsic passion or curiosity for a particular subject, and it was not crushed out of them,” clinical psychologist Edward Hoffman, an adjunct faculty member at Yeshiva University and my longtime friend, told me when I asked him what drives Finders. That passion “was nurtured and encouraged by parents and teachers and mentors,” explained Hoffman, who is a leading researcher in positive psychology. “We know people who are highly creative in the sciences tend to be optimistic; they tend to enjoy challenges and solving problems. They tend to have a need for novelty. They get bored quickly if this passion is not fed in their lives.”
How long can that depth of passion, that excitement, that thrill of the quest last?
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Photo courtesy of Rob Gandola.
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