Five hotbeds of biodiversity

Here are five flora- and fauna-rich ecologies that Conservation International, a nonprofit organization in Arlington, Va., says are more than 70 percent intact.

3. New Guinea

Christopher Austin/ Louisiana State University/REUTERS
Paedophryne amauensis, the world's smallest frog, is pictured in this undated handout photo received by Reuters January 12. Discovered by scientists during recent field work in eastern Papua New Guinea in 2009, the adult P. amauensis is an average of 7.7 millimeters long. The tiny amphibians live amongst the leaf litter on the rainforest floor. The new species was announced January 11 in the online journal PLOS One.

Islands often have exceptionally rich biodiversity as does New Guinea - it is the world’s highest and second largest behind Greenland, located in the Southwest Pacific. 1000 species were discovered since 1998 - from birds, butterflies, coral, dolphins, fish, orchids, reptiles, and sharks.

3 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.