Noah's choice

In the Sans Bois Mountains of Oklahoma, a lustrous orange and mahogany beetle drags a tiny carcass across a patch of ground shaken by bulldozers clearing the way for a new highway that threatens the beetle's existence. Workers at a housing development near Austin, Texas, cut a swath through a tangle of young oaks and sumacs, once home to a colony of rare, olive-winged birds. On a sand dune bordering a shopping center in Albany, New York, a security guard patrols a chain-link fence, keeping curious shoppers out of an area reserved for several hundred little blue butterflies. These are scenes…