Ben Goldfarb

3 weeks ago | nationalgeographic.com | Ben Goldfarb

The East Troublesome fire erupted on October 21, 2020, whipped by strong winds and fueled by drought-parched forests. The fire roared through northern Colorado’s spruce and fir woods; it leaped roads and rivers and the Continental Divide, scaling mountain passes above tree line. It incinerated historic buildings in Rocky Mountain National Park and homes in Grand County, killing two people. Ultimately, it torched nearly 200,000 acres, making it the second largest fire in Colorado’s history.

1 month ago | defector.com | Ben Goldfarb

Reliable sources tell me that you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. Until you actually read the thing, though, it’s the only data you have to go on. So here’s what I first noticed about Abundance, Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s zeitgeisty manifesto touting a construction-oriented liberalism: the wildlife.

2 months ago | vox.com | Ben Goldfarb

Few individual animals have ever been more important to their species than 2323M — a red wolf, dubbed Airplane Ears by advocates for his prominent extremities, who spent his brief but fruitful life on North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Red wolves, smaller, rust-tinged cousins to gray wolves, are among the world’s rarest mammals, pushed to the brink of extinction by threats such as habitat loss, indiscriminate killing, and road collisions.

Nov 16, 2024 | newyorker.com | Ben Goldfarb

The Italian wall lizard—a cigar-size Mediterranean reptile with a green back, mottled copper flanks, and a whiplike tail—is more or less the animal you picture when someone says the word “lizard.” Their ubiquity in places like Pompeii and the Colosseum has earned them the moniker “ruin lizards.” Their known range extends to Slovenia, Croatia, and, since the nineteen-sixties, Long Island, which they may have colonized after making their way out of a Hempstead pet store.

Nov 11, 2024 | lastwordonnothing.com | Ben Goldfarb

One October morning in 2013, I walked into the Canmore offices of an organization called the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, or Y2Y, to speak with its reluctant leader. I was at the outset of my career in journalism, fresh out of graduate school and loose on the land in the Northern Rockies. With my then-girlfriend (now wife), Elise, I was spending two months traveling the length of Y2Y, perhaps the world’s longest wildlife corridor and certainly its most famous.