Exciting news on the extinction front emerged last week from Indonesia: An orangutan used a rope bridge strung high between trees by humans to cross above a public road.

You might think: Why should I care about an ape on the other side of the Earth? And, what's the big deal anyway?

That crossing was a milestone in the worldwide fight to preserve species from extinction, and an important marker in our inconsistent effort to mitigate the destructive impact we humans have on the rest of the natural world.

The backdrop is well known. We are in the midst of what some scientists call Earth's sixth mass extinction. We can quibble about the term but it is clear human development is devastating many plant and animal species by significantly changing their habitats. Reasonable estimates find species going extinct at a rate 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than if humans were not around. That's catastrophic. Species do not exist in vacuums. They are interconnected and interdependent in ways that help produce clean air, clean water, fertile soil and pollinated plants.........

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