How to Write About a Vanishing World

Scientists chronicling ecological destruction must confront the loss of their life’s work and our planet’s riches

On a stormy night in 1987, an American herpetologist named Marty Crump was getting ready for bed when she heard a tapping at her door. This was in the mountains of northwest Costa Rica, where evening callers were rare. The visitor had braved the downpour to give Crump what counted, in field-biology circles, as a hot tip: the golden toads had emerged.

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