The famed naturalist’s newest book, written from a retirement home, is a provocative and urgent call to save the planet, and its species. By Claudia Dreifus, Audubon Magazine, September-October 2015.

“At 86, Edward Osborne Wilson, Harvard University research professor emeritus of comparative zoology, is among the most famous scientists of our time. Only Jane Goodall and Stephen Hawking can draw a larger crowd. Over the decades he’s made his mark on evolutionary biology, entomology, environmentalism, and literature. In all there have been 31 books, two of which, On Human Nature and The Ants, received the Pulitzer Prize.  He’s written many of those books from his unconventional office at this retirement community…“There is no household maintenance to worry about. The result is that I’ve written 13 books in 13 years… My visit coincides with the completion of Brookhaven book No. 13, tentatively titled Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. Scheduled to be published in March 2016, Half-Earth is centered on the unfolding extinction crisis. “Everywhere, you see it,” Wilson laments. “In New Guinea, forests are cut wholesale. In Central America, trying to find the forests, you have to go such long distances. The extinction is accelerating. The conservation organizations, they’ve only saved 20 percent of the endangered species. It’s far below what’s needed.” Half-Earth is his answer to the disaster at hand: a reimagined world in which humans retreat to areas comprising one half of the planet’s landmass. The rest is to be left to the 10 million species inhabiting Earth in a kind of giant national park. In human-free zones, Wilson believes, many endangered species would recover and their extinction would, most likely, be averted…”