Contributors

Bernd Heinrich first became interested in the ecology of death and decay when a sick friend asked him to arrange a sky burial for him if he died. The burial is part of a Tibetan ritual where the deceased is left in the open air of mountaintops, exposed to animals and the elements. Fortunately, his friend pulled through, but it got Heinrich thinking about the role of death and decay in natural ecosystems. He was studying ravens at the time, but, an entomologist by training, he began mulling over all the ways in which beetles contribute to decomposition. Today Heinrich spends much of his time in a cabin he built in Maine near where he grew up, surrounded by several hundred acres of woodland and some familiar friends of the feathered variety, who he is following for his next project. “I know all the birds; I know the species, now ...