The year 2025 might be seen as one of backsliding when it comes to tackling the environmental crises that face our planet. Political leadership in places like the U.S. and elsewhere chose to throw their support behind the increased use of fossil fuels and cutting protections long put in place for the lands and waters that house wildlife and nurture critical ecosystem services. Progressive rules aimed at slowing deforestation, like the European Union’s regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR), met with further delays and attempts to weaken their provisions. And amid a clawback in overseas development aid from wealthy countries, key thought leaders like Microsoft founder Bill Gates played down the threat that humanity faces from climate change. All of that can lead to a feeling of helplessness, as though the world is heading in the wrong direction, particularly as scientists amass ever more telling data about the ill state of Earth’s health. And yet, a bevy of storytellers, from the fields of journalism and science, the law and the visual arts, have put years into the subjects they’ve dissected for Mongabay’s book list this year. They offer a clear-eyed look at the scary situations that we face on this planet. They tell the stories of the people who have made it their life’s work to find solutions, whether the problems they’re confronting are the crash of fisheries, the loss of habitat connectivity for iconic and not-so-iconic species alike, or the dangers of bearing witness to the environmental crimes that happen…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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