We know how to mourn other humans – but what about ecological grief?

In Iceland, people commemorated its first glacier formally declared lost to climate change. Western culture needs more of these rituals I remember interviewing a North Atlantic right whale expert years ago. He was a practical, science-minded man. But as we discussed a female whale that had lost her calf, he became visibly emotional. She had lost the previous one, too, struck by a ship. He seemed almost embarrassed by the depth of his feeling. I wasn’t surprised. I found his grief honorable. There are fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales left. Every birth is a celebration; every death is mathematically and emotionally devastating. Scientists who spend years studying endangered species inevitably form attachments to them. So do many of us, whether to an endangered tree, a stretch of crumbling coastline, or summer nights once filled with fireflies. Yet our culture has almost no language or rituals for this kind of grief. Just outside Manchester, Vermont, there’s a heron rookery I’ve driven past for nearly two decades. Each year, the elegant great blue herons and their nests dotted the skeletal marsh trees. The birds stood guard over their young through sleet and torrential