I came across Guilty Planet, a blog that is new to me, thanks to a link from Survival Acres. It is the work of a very talented post doctoral research fellow, Jennifer Jacquet.

In this post she discusses the Listening Cone created by Maya Lin pictured above, which evokes the vanishing sounds of lost biodiversity. Most interesting to me is the focus of the blog on the concept of shifting baselines, described thusly:

The notion is more fully explained here.

Now, this perfectly describes the situation with the trees on the US East Coast, and the reason hardly anyone realizes we are on the verge of a total ecosystem collapse.

Sigh.