Institute for Continued Learning Variations on A Theme of Extinction 10 7 25

"In the fifty years that Kathleen Dean Moore has been writing about nature, the populations of North American robins and red-wing blackbirds have been cut by a third. Only a quarter of migrating shorebirds remain. How did this come to be? Why must we care? What are we going to do about it? Moore says, “Unless the world acts to stop extinctions, I will write my last nature essay on a planet that is barely half as song-graced and life-drenched as the one where I began to write.” Kathleen Dean Moore is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Environmental Philosophy at Oregon State University. She has authored several books of nature essays. Her main focus is on environmental ethics and our moral, spiritual, and cultural relationships to the natural world. "