About

A publication about what is still here, and what it would take to keep it.

Field Notes publishes short, sourced essays about species on the edge of disappearance, about the words and numbers used to describe them, and about the strategies that might leave enough of the planet to everything that was here first. It is written for people who care about the living world and want to read something checkable.

The question

Whether, and how, roughly half of the Earth’s land and sea could be set aside for other species is an idea argued at book length by the biologist E. O. Wilson in 2016 and debated ever since. This site does not belong to any organisation that carries that name. It treats the idea as an open question worth reporting on: what the targets are, what a protected area actually protects, where corridors and rewilding have worked, and where the numbers are softer than the headlines. Argument is welcome on every side of it, as long as the argument is sourced.

The rule

A claim never exceeds its evidence. Every checkable figure in a note carries at least two independent sources a reader can open. Ranges stay generalised; no note prints a nest, a den, or a coordinate. Nothing here says that reading, sharing, or using an app produces a conservation outcome, because it does not. The full standard is on the atlas under Method.

Witness

Field Notes is published by the maker of Witness, an iPhone app that puts one endangered species in front of you each week, with its true story, its sources, and one honest action. The thirty species records in the archive are the app’s own catalog. The illustrations on this site are original plates drawn for the app, not documentary photography.

Who makes it, and how it is paid for

One person, Alberto Villalpando, writes, edits, and publishes it, with guest writers as they come. There are no advertisements and no sponsors. The site is paid for by the app’s paid editions and by the person making it. If that changes, this page will say so.

Write for it

Guest notes carry the writer’s name and one link, pass the same gate as everything else, and stay the writer’s to publish elsewhere afterwards. The brief is here.

Contact

Corrections, pitches, and questions: albertovillalpando@gmail.com. A changed claim gets a new verification date.