Our devastation of nature is so extreme that reversing even a small part of it requires painstaking, quixotic efforts. By Nick Paumgarten 
The birds left Bavaria on the second Tuesday in August. They took off from an airfield, approximated a few sloppy laps, and then, such are miracles, began to follow a microlight aircraft, as though it were one of them. The contraption—as much pendulum as plane—reared and dipped as its pilot, a Tyrolian biologist in an olive-drab flight suit and amber shooting glasses, tugged on the steering levers. Behind him, in the rear seat, a young woman with a blond ponytail called to the birds, in German, through a bullhorn. As the microlight receded west into the haze, the birds chasing behind, an armada of cars and camper vans sped off in pursuit. The birds, three dozen in all, were members of a species called the northern bald ibis: funny-looking, totemic, nearly extinct. The humans were a team of scientists and volunteers, Austrians and Germans, mostly, who had dedicated the next two months, or in some cases their lives, to the task of reintroducing these birds to the wild in Europe, four centuries after they disappeared from the continent. | 
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