Providing plants and animals with the ability to move across boundaries to renew their genetic viability and to fulfill their migrational and territorial needs is essential. And as climate change encroaches, plants and animals already on the move need to be able to get where they're going.

Extreme attempts to stifle illegal human immigration are as counterproductive as extreme attempts to stifle life's ecological imperative.

We need a strong Endangered Species Act now more than ever. Unfortunately, that's not the way things have been headed lately, and the reasons are political.

As a difficult human year draws to a close, I find myself looking for a similar sense of order and hope in the behaviors of our own hive.