Author Archives Bruce Byers

About Bruce Byers

Bruce Byers Bruce Byers is an ecologist, writer, and international ecological consultant. His creative nonfiction writing tells stories of science and conservation from around the world. As an independent consultant, he assists government agencies, NGOs, and the private sector in the United States and worldwide with strategies for conserving biodiversity and improving the human-nature relationship.

Picnicking in Deep Time

Leaning against a big old log while eating lunch, I felt vaguely uneasy. It reminded me of a big driftwood log I’ve sat by on a beach in Oregon, except this log was solid rock. I was in the Petrified
Read More

Screeching Macaw, Unseen Jaguar

Forested ridges rolled away in the early morning light as far as the eye could see from the top of Canaa, Sky Place Temple, at the ancient Mayan ruins of Caracol. Howler monkeys were still roaring from the tall trees
Read More

Belizean Blues

Earth is a water planet. Over seventy percent of her surface is water (the word “earth” comes from roots in ancient Germanic languages, and she was portrayed as a goddess, hence “her”), and the atmosphere is full of gaseous water.
Read More

Ecological Musings in the Maya Forest

March 2013. On our second night in Belize we camped at Caracol, now the ruins of what once was the largest and most powerful Mayan city in what is now that country.  In the 7th Century AD – or better
Read More

Ukrainian Spring Continued: Into the Dark Forests of Polissya

March 2011: In my last episode, recounting a trip to the Russian-speaking steppe region of eastern Ukraine in March, 2011, I described the larks singing, the crocus blooming, the blue sky and sunshine on the golden steppe as it was
Read More

Ukrainian Spring

March 2014. Almost exactly three years ago, in March, 2011, serendipity handed me the opportunity to lead a biodiversity conservation assessment for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Ukraine, and I worked with a team of exceptional Ukrainian consultants.
Read More

Outer Banks Encounters

November 2013. In the second week of November I found myself in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, watching the ocean from a beachfront balcony.  Last year at about this time I wrote about thoughts triggered by a hike in Nags Head
Read More

Following John Muir’s Footsteps in the Petrified Forest

October 30, 2013. Just after the death of his wife Louie Strenzel Muir in August, 1905, seeking to escape his grief and find relief for his youngest daughter Helen’s tuberculosis, John Muir travelled with his daughters to eastern Arizona. They settled
Read More

Searching the Black Forest for Fire Scars on Halloween

October 31st, 2013. In my last story I described how my dad and I found a piece of a fossil tree trunk thirty years ago with what turned out to be the first fossil fire scar ever reported or described. I
Read More

Fire Scar on a Triassic Tree

November 2013. Fire scars on trees have fascinated me since I first learned to recognize them.  Maybe because of their metaphorical quality: fire burns through the forest, but this tree survives with only part of its bark burned and cambium killed.
Read More

  • Stay in the know!

  • Connect With Me

    Bruce Byers Consulting Facebook Bruce Byers Consulting LinkedIn Bruce Byers Consulting Email

  • Recent Posts

    Nature on the Edge: Lessons for the Biosphere from the California Coast My new book from Oregon State University Press will be out in September 2024! You can pre-order online at Oregon State University’s website: Nature on the Edge: Lessons for the Biosphere from the California Coast I hope you enjoy and learn from Nature on the Edge!  I am planning a number of in-person events (readings, …...
    The View from Mukuntuweap February 2024. The canyons here are eroded into mostly Jurassic strata that were deposited near sea level roughly 200 million years ago, and later folded up by orogenic forces that raised them to elevations of up to 10,000 feet. In the recent instant of geological history since our human species reached this continent, this landscape …...
    The Cream in the Gooseberry Fool It’s a tale of obsession, religion, money, passion, beauty, science, and sex—every good story should have at least some sex in it, right? And it’s a tale of mystery. Actually, it’s two interwoven tales. The first relates to the Reverend Gilbert Henry Raynor, rector of Hazeleigh, a small village in Essex, England, at the turn …...
    Revisiting Poetry Cove August 2023. In my last story, I wrote about revisiting the tidepool at Middle Cove of Cape Arago on the central Oregon coast where I’d done some of my doctoral research. On that trip I also went back to another significant place at Cape Arago that I call “Poetry Cove.” Here’s the background: During my …...
    Revisiting the Great Tidepool Sunday, August 13, 2023. It was a decent low tide, less than a foot below the MLLW (mean of lower low water), the “0” of tide tables, but still low enough to easily get into the mid-intertidal zone. And at a decent hour too, a little after 0-dark-thirty. It was already starting to get light …...
    Whalers and Quakers On a recent trip to Cape Cod, we spent the first night in New Bedford, Massachusetts, once known as “the city that lit the world” because its whaling fleet was the largest in the world and whale oil was the fuel of choice for oil lamps (and spermaceti, from sperm whales, for the best candles). …...
    Walking the Cape with Henry Cape Cod, Thoreau’s last book, begins with “Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean…” and the final sentence concludes “A man may stand there and put all America behind him.” It was published posthumously in 1865, three years after his early death from tuberculosis at the age of …...
    The View from Limuw The indigenous inhabitants of the island called it limuw, “in the ocean.” A prosaic but apt geographical name for the place. The name has a very matter-of-fact, here and now implication. But the Spanish who explored the Chumash Channel and its islands beginning in the 16th century and colonized the area with their string of …...
    The Chumash Channel and its Islands When Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo sailed into the Santa Barbara Channel in 1542, he found a thriving indigenous maritime culture living along the coasts and on the Channel Islands. One thing that impressed the Spaniards were the large seagoing canoes. One major coastal village had so many canoes on the beach that Cabrillo called it …...
    The Art of Ecological Restoration on Santa Cruz Island The large fabric print hanging on the west wall of the dining room of the Santa Cruz Island Reserve research station caught my eye immediately. A tangle of creatures drawn in detailed black covered the white background, intertwining in almost Escher-like fashion. There were sheep and foxes, eagles and jays, oaks and mallows, skunks and …...