Endangered beetles are boring. Except this one. Whose story (published this month in Scientific American) includes: a .38, a .45/.410 combo, a bowie knife, a Viking range, slate tile, feral hogs, rotting Walmart fryer chickens, frack rigs, frack tanks, meth buckets, the smell of death, (extinct) passenger pigeons, angry Oklahoma politicians, and “consultants with coolers full of dead things to attract imperiled things that no one knows is there and no one is likely to miss.”
It’s a story about the efforts people make to save creatures that fly beneath our notice–and why it matters, and why some people believe it doesn’t or shouldn’t.
There’s a paywall, so you can’t see the pretty beetle photos, but you can read the article here.