Ben Goldfarb

The vast network of roads carved into Brazil’s sensitive ecosystems improve citizens’ quality of life, but it threatens countless species and the country’s biodiversity, few more than the giant anteater. As scientists develop the growing field of road ecology and grapple with ways to protect biodiversity, they face the larger problem: How can humans protect anything when we keep building new roads?

In Maine, a strange legal debate is raging over rights to the state’s most important seaweed. At least, it seems to be a seaweed.