Biodiversity

A retrospective of our journey this past year offering a picture of what is being born during this time of global transformation.

Don Alverto Taxo is a master Iachak of the Atis people from the Cotopaxi region of Ecuador. During a gathering of Andean Elders in 1989, he was given the responsibility of sharing the ancient Andean wisdom with the US and Europe. He has traveled to the US and Europe several times where he has taught and lectured. We met with Don Alberto in the village of Membrilla in the high Andes where he lives with his wife and children.

Stephan Fayon is an agriculture and organic farming expert who directs Kokopelli India, an international seed savers association based in Auroville, South India. A resident of Auroville for the past twelve years, he directs several reforestation programs and runs a tree farm. He has planted 250,000 trees over the past ten years.

Penny Livingston is a permaculture expert and founder of the Permaculture Institute of Northern California and the Regenerative Design Institute. She lives and works at the Commonweal Garden in Bolinas, California.

Medha Patkar is a social activist who has led the struggle for the people affected by the controversial Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada river in Gujarat, India. She founded the Narmada Bachoao Andolan and National Alliance of People's movements and is recipient of numerous awards including the Goldman Environmental Prize, Amnesty International's Human Rights Defender's Award and the BBC's Green Ribbon Award.

Anjali Desai is a volunteer at Manav Sadhna, a NGO based at Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, whose mission is to serve the underprivileged. Seva Cafe is one of its many projects in Ahmedabad.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.

Joel Salatin has been a star in the Eco-Agricultural community for some time. We the eating public are fortunate that he and his kind are gaining wider recognition as conscious stewards of our landscape. He may be one of the smartest guys I know. If you want the skinny on local farming read his latest book "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal."

Turn mankind's darkest hour into its finest.

A Bush Administration proposal would allow the slaughter of nearly 600 gray wolves in Greater Yellowstone and Central Idaho – while they're still on the endangered species list. Both Wyoming and Idaho are planning to use aerial gunning, as well as baiting and trapping, to exterminate wolves as early as this winter.