Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 06/10/2026“Utilizing Landscape Restoration to Build Sustainable Socio-Ecological Systems.” Somewhere along the way, conservation stopped being about protecting wild places and became a competition to see who could say almost nothing while sounding extraordinarily important. 32413
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Colorado’s wolf population has “stalled” at 45. Colorado is roughly 104,000 square miles. That works out to about one wolf for every 2,300 square miles. And we’re already debating how many of them need to be killed. 12610
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 02/10/2026People often underestimate the oversized role predators play in ecosystems. New essay Sunday: How Mountain Lions Destroyed the West 0112
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 13/09/2026The story of how a common animal disappeared without notice. Substack essay this evening: The Quiet Disappearance of Porcupines 2265
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 13/08/2026More than 1,500 idle ships may soon carry marine species from the Persian Gulf to ports around the world. By land and sea, humans have become the planet’s great dispersal mechanism—spinning ecological roulette wherever we go. insideclimatenews.or... 2269
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 24/07/2026While conservation waits for the perfect lawsuit, destruction proceeds without delay. New essay: Waiting for the Perfect Environmental Lawsuit — Sunday 0183
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 17/07/2026The American West isn’t just managed by ecology and politics. It’s also managed by mythology. New essay: Myth and Mirrors — Sunday. 1163
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 12/07/2026Some people take “reconnecting with nature” a little too literally. 5221
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 12/07/2026Shifting environmental baseline on steroids. Here is the difference between the “recovered” forest and the original forest. 34313
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 08/07/2026This administration has reduced the role of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to Pictionary status. 15017
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 28/06/2026This badger wasn’t photographed in a zoo or a wildlife refuge. It was photographed earlier this month in the Trout Creek Mountains of Oregon. This is also the landscape being considered for a new lithium mine. Every mine begins as someone else’s habitat. 59140
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Imagine an animal the size of a black bear living in wetlands from Alaska to the Gulf Coast for tens of thousands of years. Now imagine that animal disappears. What happens next? New essay Sunday. 0221
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 10/06/2026Heavy trucks are tire-wear machines. Studies in some countries find trucks and buses generate more than half of all road-transport tire wear despite being a minority of vehicles. One of the largest sources of microplastics isn’t packaging. It’s transportation. 24110
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 24/05/2026This is not dust. It is centuries of accumulated fertility leaving a field in a single afternoon. 34311
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 05/05/2026This is what fire-proofing looks like in many places now. Remove the forest. Leave the trees. And pretend the system is still intact. 5289
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 29/04/2026We talk about a water crisis while ignoring livestock overgrazing—the process that strips soil cover and turns infiltration into runoff. It’s like worrying about your health while smoking and living on fast food. The problem isn’t just water. It’s how we’re managing land. 43311
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 24/04/2026Typical large wind turbine foundation: • 1,000–2,500 tons of concrete • 30–60 ft diameter • 10–30 ft deep Concrete accounts for ~8% of global CO₂ emissions. It persists for centuries. It may be the most environmentally consequential material humans have ever invented. 6266
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 22/04/2026:) You just can’t make this up. I almost didn’t need to do anything but quote and voila……satire. 3112
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 22/04/2026This essay was inspired by Katherine Hayhoe and her podcast guest last Fall. 010
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 01/04/2026Yesterday, I posted satire about the “God Squad.” Today, it isn’t satire. A federal panel has voted to exempt oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico—home to the last ~50 Rice’s whales. This committee exists to decide when extinction is acceptable. 63217
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 31/03/2026For the past several days I’ve introduced species that have spent years “getting in the way.” Today the God Squad meets. The Endangered Species Act protects species from extinction. The God Squad exists for the moments when we decide not to. 1288
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 30/03/2026Rice’s Whale — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It lives only in the Gulf of Mexico. Fewer than 100 may remain. The God Squad meets tomorrow to consider exemptions for offshore drilling in the same waters. 13612
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 29/03/2026Red-cockaded Woodpecker — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It depends on old longleaf pine forests in the Southeast. Those forests once covered tens of millions of acres. Most are gone. 22813
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 28/03/2026Florida Panther — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It survives in a shrinking corner of south Florida. The problem isn’t the panther. The problem is that millions of people also want to live there. 43110
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 27/03/2026Desert Tortoise — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It lives in the Mojave Desert, where solar projects, transmission lines, and development are expanding rapidly. The future is green. The tortoise is not so sure. 2299
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 26/03/2026Delta Smelt — another potential candidate for the God Squad. This small fish lives in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. For years it’s been blamed for water shortages. The real problem is that we promised more water than the rivers can provide. 2268
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 25/03/2026Northern Spotted Owl — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It became the symbol of the old-growth logging wars in the Pacific Northwest. But the owl didn’t stop logging. It revealed how little old forest remained. 0347
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 24/03/2026The Greater Sage Grouse—another God Squad nominee. In the 1990s states formed working groups to keep it from declining to the point it needed listing. I hired a Nevada biologist in 2000 who had been on one. That was 25 years ago. 1256
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 23/03/2026The Lesser Prairie Chicken—another potential God Squad nominee. When I worked at U.S. Fish & Wildlife it was a candidate species. Conservation agreements were supposed to protect it so listing wouldn’t be necessary. That was decades ago. 1297
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 22/03/2026The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard—a potential God Squad nominee. It lives in the Permian Basin sand dunes — one of the most productive oil regions on Earth. I worked on this species years ago at U.S. Fish & Wildlife. Conservation agreements were supposed to protect it. A few decades later, here we are. 03615
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 18/03/2026One of the largest industrial systems on Earth operates almost entirely outside environmental accounting: the global military. War is not only a humanitarian catastrophe. It is an ecological one. 25118
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 16/03/2026War is usually measured in lives lost and cities destroyed. Rarely in forests burned, soils contaminated, rivers poisoned, and wildlife displaced. But the biosphere pays a price for every conflict. 46117
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 16/03/2026In 1981 the federal grazing fee was $2.31. In 2026 it was raised… to $1.69. During that same time: • U.S. home prices rose ~6× • Gas prices nearly tripled • Household income more than tripled A subsidy hiding in plain sight. 53712
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 01/03/2026Wildlife policy has entered a strange phase where killing is marketed as education, profit is framed as stewardship, and eradication is sold as management. Wolves are a complex part of functioning ecosystems being turned into a revenue stream. This isn’t conservation. It’s commodification. 64210
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 06/02/2026NYT: These Four States Are in Denial Over a Looming Water Crisis Reality: These six continents are in denial over a looming biosphere collapse. 35018
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 01/02/2026Your Bible verse for the day. 🫤 Mission Accomplished! 10396
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 01/02/2026A 4000+ year old Mediterranean cypress It survived in spite of us, not because of us. It endures alone, but no longer functions. 3235
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 22/01/2026If ~84% of wildfires are started by humans, why do wildfire “solutions” keep focusing on forests instead of people? Because blaming forests is a political winner. Managing human behavior is not. 0419
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 20/01/2026I’ve spent decades in ecosystems labeled “sustainably managed.” There was none that weren’t deteriorating. 913321
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 14/01/2026In a moment of compassion, my doctor gave me this pamphlet. 4121
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 11/01/2026The problem wasn’t the trees. It was the idea that an ecosystem is something you can mass-produce. Billions of planted conifers can dry soils, lower water tables, and shift rainfall. Green doesn’t always mean alive. 35014
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 08/01/2026Ground sloths: not an Ice Age curiosity; a missing force in vanished ecosystems. I’ll share an article this Saturday. 1149042
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 06/01/2026AI isn’t being built to fix ecological problems. It’s being built for convenience, speed, and entertainment. The energy use is a feature, not a bug. The problem isn’t AI. It’s wanting more of everything on a finite planet. 13910
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 05/01/2026Ecosystem collapse doesn’t always start with extinction. It often starts with timing failure. Flowering, pollination, migration, dormancy; increasingly out of sync. Systems can look intact long after they’ve stopped functioning. 49523
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 25/12/2025The best Christmas decorations are the ones that don’t need to be taken down: Golden-crowned kinglet, high-elevation forest. Merry Christmas! 🎄 846839
Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 20/12/2025The fossil record preserves bones, not biodiversity. But extinction happens at the scale of bacteria, fungi, mosses, microfauna, parasites, soil invertebrates. Entire kingdoms of life disappear without leaving a mark. 16677116