signed some owl books in Beijing today; made a pudgy fish owl out of the O. 🦉💙📚

morning exercise, Beijing

the Swift Tower in Beijing's Olympic Forest Park. More than 2,000 birdhouses in an avian highrise. 🪶

So this is like antiquity columns that were painted, but got bleached white & lay people subsequently assumed that’s how they were. Future civilizations will assume white flags were the standard earth symbols.

A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say. This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.

Olympic Park, Beijing, now

landing at Incheon (Seoul, South Korea) airport yesterday at low tide

nice tiger art at the Seoul airport (ICN) 🐅

Book tour time! Excited to be hitting the road this fall to talk about Matthiessen and TRUE NATURE with these incredible people. Ticket links and full details at lancenrichardson.com/events. ❄️🐆

I wrote about the Reiser brothers and their hilarious, disgusting Listers documentary for Slate: slate.com/culture/2025...

Mongolian translation of George Orwell's 1984 in an Ulaanbaatar bookstore 📚💙

reposting with alt text because this feels incredibly significant. the right-wing disinfo machine means a lot of the people grieving Charlie Kirk never heard any of the things he said that would have tarnished his brand as Guy Who Just Wants to Have Dialogue Across the Aisle

Was at a camp in the Gobi Desert for a work meeting. A device near the gers (yurts) made the same announcement every ~15 min, all day + night. After a few days I asked what it was saying; the Mongolians in our group didn't know but the Chinese did: "No Network Detected. Check Connection."

in a preview of autumn 2025 books, Christopher Borrelli of @chicagotribune.com calls my TIGERS BETWEEN EMPIRES a "pure widescreen epic." Out November 4th! www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/11/f... 📚💙🐅

Yolyn Am, the Gorge of the Bearded Vulture, in Gurvansaikhan National Park, South Gobi Desert, Mongolia.

these camels know how to party

good night from Gurvansaikhan National Park in the South Gobi Desert, Mongolia. There are snow leopards in those hills!

dawn at Khustai National Park, Mongolia

back in Mongolia!

Bde Mka Ska and Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis, just now

Sunday Oct 12! Free! MN STEM Book Fest @ The Bakken Museum in #Minneapolis. I am on a Nature, Climate Change & Sustainability panel w/@ashleyshelby.com & Heather Holm; @mtosterholm.bsky.social is on a later panel about the next pandemic. I will also be signing owl books! Details: shorturl.at/TdRJN

Finally someone did the cows vs. bison math, and we have WAY more cows. But the "we've always had bison" is a weird argument anyway. So what? The fact that some other ruminant emitted historical methane has no bearing on cows today.

<70 degrees + raining? That's sauna weather my friends

in the Recombobulation Area of the Milwaukee airport, just past Security, heading home after a long weekend in this fine city

Lake Michigan, with the city of Milwaukee in the distance

went to a brewery tour today at @lakefrontbrewery.bsky.social in Milwaukee & it was way hornier than I was expecting

no words.

just landed at the Milwaukee airport + was reminded that someone here painted "Welcome to Cleveland" on a nearby rooftop just to mess with arriving travelers. www.atlasobscura.com/places/welco...

remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature

Article on the surge of interest for tigers in Korea (b/c of the show “KPop Demon Hunters”), w/Dr. Lim Jeong-eun, "Korea’s only on-the-ground tiger researcher." Discusses likelihood of tigers in Korea + value of int'l support for tiger conservation. 🐅🧪🌍 koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-08...

Limited edition Absolution now available for ordering. Look at the interior art by Scott Eagle subterraneanpress.com/vandermeer-a/

biked 53 miles (85 km) of the Mesabi Trail in northern Minnesota last week, a stop included the Tower Train Depot Museum in Tower, MN

here's the Kirkus review of Tigers Between Empires: "a well-crafted story of a successful conservation effort, against all the odds." Book comes out November 4th! www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews... 📚💙🐅🌍🧪

"a captivating account....vivid detail and suspense." Nice review of "Tigers Between Empires" (November 4 from @fsgbooks.bsky.social) at @publisherswkly.bsky.social: www.publishersweekly.com/9780374610982 📚💙🐅

good night from Bear Island Lake, Minnesota

great to see my "Owls of the Eastern Ice" as a staff pick at the Piragis book store in Ely, MN! 📚💙

biked 53 miles yesterday along the Mesabi Trail in Minnesota (round trip from Ely to Tower); great ride! Upland pines + lowland boreal swamp along a smooth, undulating, curvy path

I'm in northern Minnesota this week, in grey wolf forests, reading this galley of Neal Shea's "Frostlines," a stunning text on the beauty and sadness of a changing Arctic. 📚💙

If you loved @jonathanslaght.com's Owls of the Eastern ice, you'll enjoy this Thursday's talk with Nick Russo. Nick spent years in the dense rainforest of Cameroon tagging & tracking hornbills. Which turned out to be spectacularly challenging. binoculars-to-binomials.disco.co/share/o/T2Nj...

ready for some car camping

Presents came today! Not only did @jonathanslaght.com send me the book Crossings, by @bengoldfarb.bsky.social, he also was kind enough to send me a signed (!!!) copy of his own work, Owls of the Eastern Ice. So stoked!!! @zanadu.bsky.social was quite happy as well! People really win on Bluesky!

so, in the course of a month, the New York Times reassigned four veteran critics, the Washington Post’s film critic took a buyout, Vanity Fair decided it doesn’t need a film critic at all, and the Associated Press got rid of book criticism altogether? Cool.

Science friends, life is difficult now, but please still try to peer review papers if you can. I'm the editor handling a paper that just had it's 43rd person decline to review. We may have to reject it because no one is willing to review it, which sucks for the authors.

audiobook recording of "Tigers Between Empires" starts....now! This will be available 04 November, same day as physical release. Preorder here: us.macmillan.com/books/978125... 📚💙

In a Mongabay Newscast episode in July, Jean-Gaël “JG” Collomb, CEO of WCN, advocates for giving more unrestricted funding to local groups who know the environment best, allowing them to decide how to use the money.

hey @chawkeye.bsky.social! This is yours if you want it! DM me a good address by end of day Thursday (Aug 14) and I'll put it in the mail.

Hi @fritzyritz.bsky.social! Hoping to hear from you so I can send you this book. Otherwise will pick someone else tomorrow morning (Wed, Aug 13)

Last week, we marked 22 years of conservation in Mongolia with the opening of the new Gobi Ecological Research Station. This will be a dedicated hub for wildlife research, conservation, and community engagement in the heart of the Gobi-Steppe ecosystem. bit.ly/4mdsSCV 🌏

Some early endorsements of TIGERS BETWEEN EMPIRES have come in--here's one from David Quammen. Only three months now to publication--a great time to preorder! shorturl.at/UrWuz 🌍📚💙

nice weather for a thirty-mile ride around the Twin Cities area this morning! 🚲