Richard Schiffman

Mary Inhea Kang for The New York Times
Set incongruously in the middle of Rikers Island’s post-apocalyptic landscape of low-slung jail blocks and razor wire is a lush garden, teeming with birds and butterflies, that seems to have been teleported down from some happier planet.
“That’s my baby,” said Mike Cruz, a stocky young man who is serving time at Rikers. He was gesturing toward a patch of flowers whose flamboyant shade of orange matched the stripes on his prison jumpsuit.
“It’s a Mexican ...

Is the vaquita’s plight linked to the US government’s failure to take advantage of one of its most powerful wildlife crime-fighting tools?

Green Chimneys, a school on a farm outside of New York City, is in the vanguard of using animals to help special-needs children learn.

Valentine’s Day is known for two things: romantic love and chocolate. Romance is famously fickle—it comes and goes. But our love affair with chocolate never seems to wane.
Americans spend more today on chocolate products than the gross national product of some of the countries where cacao is grown. The research group Euromonitor International reports that U.S. sales of chocolate went from $14.2 billion in 2007 to $18.9 billion in 2017, a period during which overall sales for candy declined, l...

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Scientifically Engineered Coral Could Survive Clima...

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Botanicas sell herbs and oils to customers wary of mainstream medicine

Arctic sea ice on September 13, 2013, as measured b...

Plankton can save the ocean. But who will save the ...

Recently a friend confided over dinner that her job was “killing” her. I was surprised. She is a director of a midsize nonprofit that is doing citizen diplomacy work in the Middle East, and she...

War's toll on elephants - chicagotribune.com

WIRED Opinion: The DEA is Wrong to Ban a Cure for O...