DYNAMIC DUO

HUMANS AND EARTH ARE OFTEN AT ODDS, BUT WHEN DISASTER STRIKES, THEY CAN COMBINE THEIR POWERS TO BRING NEW LIFE TO LANDSCAPES.

- MEERA SUBRAMANIAN

IN THE SLIVER OF TIME SINCE the Industrial Revolution, human enterprise has turned disastrous, ramping up extinctions, causing nuclear meltdowns, and altering the atmosphere that’s kept Earth’s climate stable for more than 10,000 years. Nature, to its credit, always tries to claw back, like a fire-resistant seed sprouting to life after the flames. But in many cases, the damage we’ve wrought runs too deep for an organic fix.

There is hope, however. By putting our ingenuity and resources toward science-based restoration efforts, we can complement nature’s ability to adapt—and even boost it further. The five catastrophes on the following pages show it takes patience (and more than a little humility) to play Earth’s sidekick. But minding cues from when that symbiosis flourished in the past could be the key to keeping the planet healthy and averting even bigger upheavals.

WAR AND PEACE

GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK, MOZAMBIQUE

RECOVERY INITIATED: 1995

PROGRESS: NEARLY COMPLETE

DISASTER: When ecologist Kenneth Tinley flew over Mozambique’s Rift Valley in 1972, he saw abundance. By his estimate, the nearly million acres of Gorongosa National Park were home to upward of 30,000 large grazing animals, including buffalo, wildebeest, and elephants—along with hundreds of lions. But in 1977, after the African nation freed itself from close to 500 years of Portuguese rule, Mozambique erupted in civil war. The two sides wouldn’t reach a truce until 1992, by which point 1 million residents had died and combatants had slaughtered more than 90 percent of some mammal populations to feed and fund the fighters.