Articles by Michelle Nijhuis
Michelle Nijhuis is the author of the 2021 book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in the Age of Extinction. Follow her on Twitter.
All Articles
-
In China, Yu Xiaogang is helping locals fight back against dams
China has spent decades trying to harness its powerful river systems with dams. Enormous hydroelectric projects, most notably the Three Gorges Dam now under construction on the Yangtze River, have devastated local economies and ecosystems. Yu Xiaogang. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. Chinese environmentalist Yu Xiaogang, founder of the group Green Watershed, says the people harmed […]
-
Silas Siakor put his life on the line to save Liberia’s forests
The forests of the West African nation of Liberia cover almost 12 million acres, and are home to nearly half of Africa’s mammal species — including the region’s largest forest-elephant population. But these forests, and the communities that call them home, have been ravaged by 14 years of brutal civil war. Liberian President Charles Taylor […]
-
Meet this year’s winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize
The winners (left to right): Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor, Yu Xiaogang, Tarcísio Feitosa da Silva, Anne Kajir, Olya Melen, and Craig Williams. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. Though the connection between people and their surroundings is undeniable — a serving of clean air, anyone? — defense of the environment is still sometimes considered antisocial behavior. But this […]
-
![]()
![]()
Jacques Leslie’s Deep Water sheds light on dam dramas
What does hell look like to an environmentalist? In the classic Encounters With the Archdruid, writer John McPhee imagines this particular inferno. The outer ring, he writes, is a moat filled with DDT. Inside lies another moat brimming with burning gasoline, and still deeper are masses of bulldozers and chainsaws. In the middle — at […]
