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by Robert Kunzig. Until he retired in twenty twenty four, Moolain was one of several dozen chief architects of historic monuments in France who oversee restoration projects at hundreds of historic sites. He worked on the Chateau of Fontainebleau and the gardens of Versailles, as well as San Denis, where he restored the west facade and the stained glass. The way he tells it, the story of how the church

lost its steeple is a slightly sordid one. It's a tale of the harshness of men and what he calls the original crime committed by France's vaunted Monument's Service, the agency to which Mooloan himself devoted his career. Sandini is named for the first Bishop of Paris, a third century martyr who was decapitated for preaching the Gospel to skeptical Parisians. According to legend, Dennis picked up his own severed head and walked with it four miles north to what became

his grave site. By the sixth century, a small church stood above the grave, and by the twelfth century the church was part of a prestigious abbey and crowded with pilgrims. That's when it underwent a crucial transformation at the hands of a visionary abbot named Suget. In just over a decade from roughly eleven thirty to eleven forty four, Suget dramatically expanded the building, adding a massive and richly decorated facade to the way front and a Gothic apse to

the east end. His choices were a bold departure from the darkness of the prevailing Romanesque style, with its massive walls and small windows. Souget believed that beauty in this world could transport people to a higher one, and that sunlight flooding into sun Denis would show the way to

the true light, that is to God. His vision survived intact for nearly seven centuries, but on June ninth, eighteen thirty seven, lightning ripped through the Sandinese fire, piercing three large holes, including one more than six feet high, as the bolt jumped to a nearby building and exploded a gargoyle. Within a year of the storm, Francois Debray, an architect who had been restoring Sundynys since eighteen thirteen, had dismantled and rebuilt the spire. The Monuments Service, though, which had

been established in eighteen thirty, didn't thank him. What its ambitious leaders really wanted, Leniold has found was to take control of one of France's most coveted restoration projects. To do that, they had to oust the old guard Debray. In eighteen forty five, when a series of storms again damaged the steeple, the Service blamed the weight of Debray's restored spire wrongly, according to Moulan, Debray was forced to

dismantle it. Then they replaced the sixty nine year old pioneer with their hand picked thirty two year old Fenomme Eugene Manuel Bruila le Duc, who had just begun a two decade long restoration of Notre Dame. Boiles le Duc dismantled the tower under the spire too, saying he intended to rebuild the whole steeple. Instead, he sold off the stones. Boiles Le Duc hated debray Leniold says that's clear San Deni was their battleground, Mulan has argued, and the steeple

paid the price. Bourles le Duc's own status as a pioneer in the monument's service is unassailable. His restoration of Notre Dame was masterful, albeit with many additions of his own,

including the gargoyles and a new spire. Nor is there any disputing the service's tremendous work preserving France's rich heritage, But especially in the past half century or so, its doctrine has evolved, and Mulon believes gotten too rigid and too devoted to restoring monuments only to their last documented state, preserving changes made through their previous history, but adding as

few new ones as possible. Consider how Fidipe Villeneuve, chief architect of historic monuments at Notre Dame, described the restoration he led after the twenty nineteenth fire. We leave no trace of our passage. Moolah favors a more interventionist approach, and from the start his plan to rebuild Debray's spire

at San Deini has faced blowback. In twenty seventeen, when he first presented the plan, national Commission on Historic Monuments rejected it, arguing that San Deni's steeple had been gone so long its absence had become part of the church's history. Rebuilding it now, the Commission said, would be problematic in

terms of the authenticity and materiality of the monument. The monument's commission as well respected, but its opinions our only advisory, and by twenty twenty one, two successive presidential administrations had endorsed the project and the Culture Ministry had authorized it. That's when the national newsweekly Laponte published a letter of outrage opposition signed by one hundred twenty eight experts. The Basilica of San Denis doesn't need a spire, it began.

Matieur le Jeune, a young historian who did his pH d on Gothic spires, was one of the petition's two co authors and remains opposed to the project. It's an intact monument. He said last spring, shortly after construction began and its being denatured just to build a Neo Gothic spire. The city government seized the steeple as an economic development

project that will help revitalize the city center. Nicholas Matijad's Josik, director of Souavese La Fleche follow the Spire, the non profit that's managing the project, predicts it will double annual attendance to around three hundred thousand, still only a tiny fraction of the twelve million expected at Notre Dame this year. One afternoon in May, on top of the Basilica, architect Christophe Boltineau knelt down on what's left of the front

wall of the North tower. With Moulal now retired, Bolteneau fifty sixth has taken over the project. He was examining one of the first new stones to be added to the wall, and he wasn't happy. Its top service was perfectly smooth. The optic authenticity he and Moulan are aiming for in the new towers a matter not just of historical documentation documentation, but also of craftsmanship. Mulon is dismayed by what he perceives as the shoddy work of some

restoration projects. I've seen horrors, he says. Among the most common building stones cut by mechanized saw into perfect rectangular blocks, then distressed with a power tool to make the visible face look old. This method was used even at Notre Dame after the twenty nineteen fire. It off fends Mulam. Medieval church builders carved every block by hand, and they wasted no energy on things no one could see. They put a final smooth finish only on a block's visible face.

The back faced inside the hollow wall, so they'd leave it lumpy and unformed. Then they'd roughly shape the fore sides with a large chisel and join them by mortar to neighboring blocks. The irregular blocks create a visual effect of vibration. Batineaux calls it that is easy to distinguish from the rulers straight joints of the machine age. He and Lulon want the new tower to have that vibe.

Their goal is not to go full medieval, it's to achieve the original chiseled look with practical methods available today. Power saws are forbidden, but eighty five percent of the fifteen thousand, two hundred stones for the new steeple will be cut off site using handheld pneumatic chisels. The remaining fifteen percent of the stones will be cut in the

shed at San Denis without any machines. It was a gorgeous spring afternoon, five months before the construction site was opened to the public last October, when I went up into the scaffolding with Boutineau. A few miles south that Notre Dame, crowds of tourists would be queuing on the plaza waiting to get in. We looked down at the square in front of San Denis. It was empty. On the stone pavement. A festive graphic in blue and white

stencil outlined the shape of the missing steeple. Some day soon the new one will cast its shadow there when the sun rises behind it once again. Next Into the Kingdom of Sea Horses by Lindsay Lyles. On a Bahamian island in a landlocked lagoon, the planet's densest collection of sea horses is offering scientists new insights into the secret lives of one of the world's most reclusive fish. Heather Mason was used to her quarry being much more elusive.

Sea horses are often only a few inches long, can change colors like a chameleon, and rarely gather in groups. Their ability to disappear into their habitats tropical sea grasses, mangroves, and reefs helps keep the slow swimming, largely defenseless fish from becoming an easy meal. That makes devoting a career

to studying them. As Mason, a marine ecologist of the University of Tampa, has done for decades and exercise in patience, but when she first snorkeled the pristine waters of Sweding's Pond on the Bahamian island of Eluthera, she found herself in a sea horse studded heaven. Over her first weekend in the pond's clear blue water in twenty thirteen, she counted sixteen sea horses, far more than the one or two she'd be lucky to spot during multi week research

trips along the coast of the Bahamas. Immediately, Mason realized that the mile long Sweeting's Pond was special, a safe haven for one of the ocean's most enigmatic creatures. It was life changing as someone who looks for sea horses in the wild, she says, and this rare window into their existence has revealed fascinating behaviors. Mason's life changing moment can be traced back some seven thousand to ten thousand years.

That's when scientists estimate Sweeting's pond filled with ocean water that filtered in from nearby Hatchet Bay, roughly one mile east through underground cracks and holes. The land locked salt water lagoon in turn became a fortress for brittle stars, spider crabs, octopuses, bio luminis, sint plankton, and of course, the sea horses, a refuge who are several of the species regular predators, skates and rays, Tuna sharks can't possibly break in. It's an island on an island, explains Mason.

Inside Sweeting's pond, Mason found sea horses as singular as the body of water itself, with oddly long snouts, squat bodies, and short tails. They differed radically from anything she had seen since she'd begun studying the creatures in nineteen ninety. She and her collaborator, evolutionary biologists Emily Rose, classified them as lined sea horses Hippocampus erectus. But the sea horses of Sweetings are on the path to becoming their own subspecies.

Observing so many of them in isolation offers an opportunity to study evolution in action, as Mason puts it. But the biggest breakthrough came in the dark. Botanist Ethan Freed, who works for the Bahamas National Trust, the nonprofit that manages the country's national parks, had originally learned from locals about Sweding's seahorse population and contacted Mason after the marine ecologist's initial visit field. Freed had an idea, what if they explored the pond at night under a starlit sky.

Mason and Freed donned scuba gear with dive lights and waded into sweetings. They could barely believe their goggled eyes. I ran my light across the bottom, and it was like road reflectors at night, Mason recalls. You could see seahorses lit up everywhere. Freed describes the scene as resembling

a seahorse rave. On a later trip, over the course of four days and nights, Mason and a research team documented eight hundred sea horses, roughly five times as many as they'd counted during daylight hours in the same limited area. Some were just a few days old. A surprise as tiny, jubilant juveniles are rarely seen, and little is known about what happens to newborn sea horses in the wild. Most striking was the difference in the fish's behavior. During the day.

The sea horses are face down, their cryptic their hiding, Mason says, and at night they come up higher in the vegetation, so they're upright and obvious that nighttime. Rave. As Freed puts, it doesn't necessarily mean all sea horses are nocturnal. Sweetings is isolated and its sea horses behavior

may be unique. Nor does the research team understand why these sea horses spend their days face down, though it's possibly possible their testing resting after a night of eating plankton and small crustaceans or hiding from birds that feed on them in shallow waters. Still, the overnight survey and subsequent research resulted in the first published paper on sea

horses nocturnal lives. In twenty twenty three. The team reported that Sweeting's pond is home to the highest known density of sea horses in the world, a number in the thousands. At the time of the Dark of Night discoveries, the pond was still open to the public but Mason's years of research helped the Bahamas National Trust petition the Bahamian

government for protection. Two years ago, Sweeting's Pond became part of the newly created Seahorse National Park, a preserve that spans five hundred forty eight acres and includes Hatchet Bay Cave, one of the longest dry cave systems in the Bahamas. The park closed the pup to the public a few months later, and the Trust now raises funds and prioritizes

conservation over access. Macemills still pluming the data she collected over a decade and hopes to return to the pond answers to questions about courtship rituals, the reason for mail pregnancy, and where seahorses babies go after being borne. May float in the ponds, plants, placid waters. Sweetings might also show how the species responds to rising water temperatures. Before this project, I would have hesit to ever use this word about

a system, but Sweeting's Pond is magical. Mason says. There is a sea of questions to answer for now, the seahorses of Sweeting's Pond are safe in their island inside an island, and can keep their secrets a little while longer. Next, the poles are teeming with more life than we can see by Andrew Zeleski. In order to understand the massive changes afoot in the warming polar regions, oceanographer Alison Fong

is hunting for the tiniest clues. The northern and southern reaches of our planet are heating up faster than anywhere

else on Earth. While researchers already know that the region is poised to change dramatically with ice melting and sea levels rising, there's a larger question of just what species may survive under these new conditions, which is how micro bi Microbial oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer Alison Pong found herself wearing a dry suit and eighty pounds of scuba underneath a twenty six foot thick ice floe in the

Arctic Ocean. Clutching a glorified turkey baster, Fong was using the enormous syringe to slurp up a thin film of tiny organisms living in the floes underbelly. These microbes, like photosynthetic phytoplankton and sea ice algae, are fundamental to the habitat habitability of Earth. She says by studying them, we can understand how ecosystems are thriving or not, and how different parts of the planet will transform as climate change accelerates.

In polar food webs, microbes can capture energy from the sum and become nutrients for all the animals above them in the food chain. But unlike larger creatures like polar bears and whales, microbes have short life spans, sometimes as brief as a few days, making them much more responsive

to what's happening in their environments. In the past six years, Following has measured oxygen concentration in microbial communities found in sea ice at both poles to assess what biologists call abundance, which is a measure of the nutrient availability in an environment. The research could provide a window into the types of species that are able to flourish and those that may flounder.

Take the Pacific cod Currently, there are hardly any of these fish in the High Arctic because there isn't enough available food, but as sea ice decreases, more sunlight will reach the water. In turn, some scientists expect the microbe population to grow, providing nutrients at the base of the food chain. Thereby allowing the fish to migrate and making

the far north and South a potentially lucrative opportunity. One report from the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University of British Columbia Project projects total fisheries revenue in the Arctic may increase as much as thirty nine percent by twenty fifty. But commercial exploiting the waters of the Arctic would have huge implications for both the ecosystem and the indigenous communities that rely on early marine life to support

their subsistence livelihoods. Experts warned that models predicting new fish stocks are extrapolating too much from a small amount of available information. After all, the Arctic is a massive area where few people have collected reliable data. Thong is well aware of how her measurements may be construed. People could look at our data at the base of the food web and then make a couple of leaps, she says. When minute you're measuring microbes, the next a government department

is saying the poles are ripe for the picking. From Pong's perspective, that makes capturing the most complete picture of how the region is changing ever more urgent. When we lose sea ice from our polar regions. She says, we are altering the landscape of what can and cannot exist. Next the wolf keepers Erika Biri High in the mountains of western Mongolia, Kazakh herders have lived in careful balance with wolves for centuries. Now they are increasingly compelled to

haunt the creatures they have revered for generations. The horse's body was still warm when the three men came upon it in the snow. From only the wounds in a constellation of tracks around the horse, the trio of Kazakh herders could unspool. The morning, a pair of wolves had jumped onto the horse's upper back and brought it to its knees because its tender rear flank was missing, the part a wolf might gorgehn and then later regurgitate to a nursing mother tending to her young. The hunters were

confident there was a den nearby. Eyes peeled, they stowed their guns and traveled on. The wolf hunt continued. The hunters Ibolat Koulmeshkan, Galim Bapar and Serakbo Koshigen belonged to a community of nomadic Kazakh herders that has been shepherding livestock for generations through Mongolia's jagged, wind swept Altay Mountains. Though Kazakhs make up only four percent of Mongolia's total population, they represent ninety eight percent of the roughly one hundred

five thousand inhabitants. Inhabitants in Bayan old Ghi, the country's highest and westernmost province, nestled along the border of China and Russia, they raise sheep, yax, horses, and occasionally camels for income and year round sustenance. But it's the gray wolves, both predators of their livestock and in the herder's culture, sacred beings with which they have the most complex relationship. Sarahk Pole says his ancestors, the Blue Turks, who conquered

Central Asia in the sixth century, descended from wolves. Most of the Kazak herders are Muslim, but their spirit dual regard for wolves is rooted in an animism that extends to horses and eagles as well. Occupy a special place, though and are revered for many of the same reasons they are feared, including their intelligence, courage, and heightened senses. The wolves and herders have coexisted in the Aultae for millennia, Surviving the ebb and flow of empires and shifting borders.

An increasingly volatile climate has pushed the wolves to attack livestock more frequently over the past several years, more often than ever. The Kazakh nomads are forced to balance their reverence for the wolf with their duty to protect their herds and their livelihoods. This wolf hunt in April twenty

twenty three was the community's first in two years. It came on the heels of a particularly brutal stretch, a Zazud year, as it is known in the region, with a summer scorched by record breaking wildflowers wild fires, followed by a subzero winter. Rather than relief, spring had brought whiplash, days warm enough for rain than nights so cold that some wet animals within the herd froze to death. Syrah Bowl says a neighbor lost two hundred animals over night

in one snap. At night, Sarah Bowle and his wife would bring the weakest animals into their gurr, a type of traditional tent, for warmth. He would often scale cliffs in search of wild grasses to feed his malnourished livestock. We've had hard winters before, but never a dazud like this in our lives, he says. The Mongolian wolves were just trying to survive. The dazud too. A species of gray wolf, they live throughout the region, though it's difficult

to estimate their numbers. Slightly then there at North African counterparts. They tend to hunt in smaller packs. When their natural prey, such as wild sheep and red deer, become scarce, the wolves unsurprisingly turn to livestock for an easier meal. We have a saying in Mongolia the wolf fattens during a dzud, says Bazar Saran, bold eve and ecologist at the National

University of Mongolia in Ulang Batur. Complicating matters, livestock herd sizes across western Mongolia have gone up while the number of herders has gone down, leaving domestic animals less protected. More than ninety percent of bayon Olghi's surveyed herders reported losing livestock to wolves. According to a recent study, on average, nearly fourteen animals per herder, seven times more than just

two decades earlier. That costs each herder nearly thirteen hundred dollars a year, or around forty percent of the herder's annual income. In nature, wolves are the ones who control the number of other animals, sarah Bole says, but there is nothing to control the number of wolves. Back on the wolf hunt, Aborat Galim and serak Bole alternated between horseback and foot as they moved through belly deep snow. Spotting a wolf meant crouching, sometimes for hours with binoculars.

When the hunters finally approached a den the next day, the choreography was precise, removing their boots to step quietly through snow in socked feet. They moved only when the wind blew their scent in the opposite direction. That day, they killed an adult wolf and discovered a den of

eight pups, eyes still pinched shut. Had the pups been a few weeks older, the Cossacks would have considered taking most of them home to raise to adulthood, a form of population control passed down through generations, with the stipulation that at least one pup is always left in the den for the mother. Once grown, the wolves would have been killed, their pelts and other parts used for warmth

and traditional medicine. These pups, though, were barely a week old, so herd her tradition said they were too young to touch. The men left them alive in the den, despite knowing they would grow to become a risk to live stock. There has to be humanity in your tradition. Sarah Fall says that humanity goes beyond veneration, and Kazakh herders understand the rural wolves play in the fragile mountain ecosystem, killing off weak in old animals on the step and strengthening

the overall vitality of the herd. Sarah Bull once left a few male sheep behind when he changed pastures for the season, only to come back a year later to find they'd survived. Syak Bull bred those sheep deemed strongest in the face of predators and had the healthiest herd around wolf. We call it an ecological doctor, says Sakin Asphan, a park ranger who works in wildlife management in bayan Olghi's al Thai Tavan the Good National Park. If the

wolf disappears, there will be lots of diseases. Months later, on a separate hunt, Sarah Bull took home a pup from another den. He treated it like livestock, feeding it meat as it matured while keeping it tethered in the yard of his household. When the wolf is full grown, he'll say a prayer and raise his gun Sarah bull so the pelt into a winter proof vest and use

parts of the animal medicinally. The herders believe that a raw tongue tied around the neck can help with thyroid issues, and that a wolf's brain boiled into soup lower's blood pressure bullets are expensive, so to recoup some costs, Cerikole will sell the wolf's skull, but he'll keep the ankle bones for himself. The herders wear them to ward off bad spirits. They know their prosperity remains intertwined with the wolves,

even in death. Serrakol prays before taking the life of a wolf he captured as a pop and raised for his community. Killing the creatures a sacred act born from a belief that their Turkish ancestors were descendants of wolves. Increasingly extreme temperatures wreck have it on both the wolves prey and the herder's livestock. Serakole pulls a mother yack

away from a calf that dyed. Weaker animals often perish when their rain soaked coats freeze over night during the fall harvest or Sogim serah Bol and his son Musa rest below freshly butchered meat from their livestock that's been hanging to dry. It will be the basis for the family's food supply during the brutal winter months. The Kazakh herders use many methods to protect their livestock from wolves, loud dogs bringing the animals closer to their gurs at night,

and some creativity. Serkol built a kind of scarecrow made of fabric and a willing horse. Dmitri s. Dazzuski was on a twenty sixteen trip with Mongalian guide nirbolot Len when he first learned about Kazakh herders who both revere and hunt wolves in Nirbolot's native bayan Olique province. It was Nirbolat's father who shared a cryptic Kazakh ottage horse boasts I can see half the world at night. This concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader,

husband Marsha, thank you for listening. Than keep on listening and have a great day. Story did Stradisky since its meaning. The wolves are so elusive they seem omniscient. This records