A man bought 51,000 acres of degraded land in Florida; decades later, it is the largest private restoration project east of the Mississippi

He is 85, known as the father of sociobiology, has been at Harvard for 60 years, and has won a hundred scientific awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes. Yet what E.O. Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, is focused on is a new conservation approach, a new ecological Grail which is a quest to refute conservation sceptics who think there isn't enough left of the natural world to be worth saving, according to a report by Smithsonian Magazine.Through the 544 million years or so, since hard-shelled animals first appeared, there has been a gradual increase in the number of plants and animals on the planet, despite five mass extinction events. While the high point of biodiversity most likely coincided with the moment modern humans left Africa and spread across the globe, over the years, species faltered and vanished. It was slow at first, but now, the event is taking place at an acceleration where Wilson predicts the oncoming of a "biological holocaust," a sixth mass extinction event, caused by humans. According to him, the only way humans could prevent a mass extinction crisis would be to set aside half the planet as permanently protected for the ten million other species.While one would b...