Wildlife for All’s executive director Michelle Lute, PhD, reflects on losing longtime WFA advisor and personal hero Don Molde.

Losing Don Molde: On Living, Dying, and Loving Anyway

Lately I’ve felt overwhelmed by how beautiful and tragically hurt our world is. Joanna Macy said it better: “Between the beauty of this world and the knowledge of what we are doing to it came a luminous and almost unbearable grief.” 

I imagine many of you can relate, as working in conservation is a lesson in observing losses. The fireflies that no longer illuminate childhood. The birdsong we don’t wake to. The wildness everywhere that has been silenced, oppressed, subjugated. No matter how long or short our lives are, we’ve all experienced it, witnessed it, grieved it, fought it, and maybe even accepted it. 

In one of my more accepting but angrier moments, I recently wrote of my generation: All we inherited was death and stories of abundance so we knew to properly grieve. 

But I’m not entirely sure we know how to properly grieve immense losses. Losses that are so incomprehensible they take your breath away. Losses that forever change you as a person: you have who you were before and who you are after, as you continue on without the person you lost. 

One of those profound losses hit our Wildlife for All community just last week with the passing of one of our most dedicated and stalwart wildlife advocates, Don Molde. Don was not only a Wildlife for All advisor, but my personal hero and friend. I last visited him in person early in 2024. When I left his house in Reno, I was aware I might not see him again, only because we never know how much time we get to spend together. During that visit, Don and I traded beers and stories. He was as sharp and inspiring as ever, having lived an epically full life filled with demonstrating courageous activism and compassion for the most vulnerable in our society— shelter dogs, incarcerated people, wild horses, cougars, coyotes. I doubt Don ever made an exception. He cared for everyone, even the Nevada Board of Wildlife Commissioners that he long endeavored to reform.

I also suffered another personal loss in the last two weeks with the passing of my grandmother. She was a true matriarch of our large family and will be greatly missed. Like Don, she lived a full life in service to community. As overwhelmed by grief as I may be in this moment, I know to be grateful for ancestors who taught me so much. I am honored to count Don among my personal ancestors whose guidance I will always seek. 

“Between the beauty of this world and the knowledge of what we are doing to it came a luminous and almost unbearable grief.”
—Joanna Macy

Those ancestors now also include the luminary Joanna Macy whom I quoted above, whose long legacy of scholarship has taught countless environmental advocates how to grieve our losses. She explained that grief “turns to reveal its other face, and the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world, our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.”

 Now, I realize this might be an odd thing for a biologist to admit, but I don’t really understand living and dying. And yet it’s the most natural thing to do. I spend my days trying to protect all forms of life, and have benefitted from the lessons the great teachers have given us, from Don, Joanna, and my grandmother to the animals that have allowed me to observe their living and dying. If you’ve ever buried a bird, watched a deer disappear into the trees, or met the eyes of a dying animal, you’ve known the sacredness of their lessons. Animals do not shy away from death. They do not deny it. And they keep on living. So I should know what it means to live and what we often consider its opposite, to die. We’re exposed to it all the time, on the news, in the animals that surround us, in English class when we read Shakespeare struggling with it—”Out, out brief candle!”

I know not where life goes when it leaves our ability to observe it. I do know our ancestors are here with us still, though no longer in animated carbon, corporeal bodies. I know that they live on in our hearts and in our minds. I know they feel very near to me when I’m in nature. 

Whether you call them ancestors, friends, mentors, family—our lost loved ones are not gone. When we remember how they lived, how they embodied love, and how they continue to inspire us today, we can emulate their example and live in service to each other and the wild community we call home. 

So perhaps in a way I do understand living and dying. It’s about loving all we can, while we can. And our departed loved ones, human and more-than-human ancestors, continue to show us how to do that. They are our north stars now.

Last night, I thought I was witness to yet another loss. A fledging sparrow was in my front yard, in a bad way but for reasons I couldn’t tell. I scooped them up, placed them in a quiet box with ventilation, and hoped against hope they’d be alive in the morning for me to take them to the local wildlife rescue. When I checked in the morning, with breath held, steeling myself for a tiny tragedy, I found the baby bird full of life and ready to be released. Perhaps they just needed a little respite for the big chaotic world (I bet many of us can relate). When they hopped away, the entire family of sparrows arrived immediately, chittering at the baby, chittering at me. And for a moment, the world felt again very possible and full of life. And in that moment, I heard Don talking to me, telling me that he’s still here with us in this fight. 

May all we live to embody the wisdom, strength and determination of our ancestors, and along with it, the moxie of baby sparrows in a big, bright world.

Grief, Hope, and the Will to Keep Loving This World

If—or more realistically, when—the time comes for you to grieve, whether it’s over the state of the world or a more personal loss, you’re not alone. Some days, the grief arrives as sorrow. Other days, it arrives as rage, numbness, or fatigue. All of it is valid.

“Despite how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can’t help it.”
—Nick Cave

Sometimes, we need words. Sometimes, we need silence. And sometimes, it’s good to set the book down, walk yourself somewhere wild, sit quietly, and wait for our animal teachers to show us how to live, die and everything in between.

Below are a few books, essays, and conversations that have helped us at Wildlife for All, and many others, face this world with broken hearts and open eyes:

• Joanna Macy’s Active Hope – A foundational book for grief-tending and transformation. Her teachings remind us that our pain for the world is a reflection of our deep love for it.
• Albert Camus’ body of work – As this blog explains, Camus has a lot of good advice for us in the anxious age of the Anthropocene, including: “Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”
• Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge – A raw, luminous meditation on death, illness, and desert ecology. She writes, “Grief dares us to love once more.”
• Terry Tempest Williams’ essay from her book Erosion: Essays of Undoing – The seminal environmental author probes the depth of grief over her brother’s passing, his grief over environmental loss and their shared connection to the land and its protection.
• “Buckeye” by Scott Russell Sanders – A quiet, powerful reflection on mortality and the connection to land, family and all life.
• Nick Cave’s Faith, Hope and Carnage – An extraordinary memoir shaped by the death of his sons. As Cave writes, “Hope is optimism with a broken heart.”
• Hot Take Podcast – Thoughtful, emotionally honest conversations on climate and justice with nuance and heart.
• Project Drawdown – A science-backed plan for climate solutions, showing that we do have the tools—if we choose to act.
• The All We Can Save Project – A beautiful, fierce collection of essays from women climate leaders, offering truth and grounded hope.
• Cristina Eisenberg on Wolves as Teachers – A story about how wolves taught a scientist to listen, learn and live lightly on the land.