Network for Ecology brings together storytelling, education, outreach, and connections around one purpose: helping all life flourish.
I’m building NFE to help people understand important issues, discover meaningful work, and find their own ways to contribute—from caring for individual animals to supporting thriving ecosystems and healthier communities.
The vision is broad, but deeply personal: a world where caring for nature becomes something more people can understand, participate in, and bring into everyday life.
Why I Started NFE
I’m Dale Hoskins, founder of Network for Ecology.
One of the experiences that led me here happened beside a river in southern Mexico. I stood watching the water flow past, shocked by how polluted it appeared and the smell of raw sewage.
It brought back a feeling I had known since childhood.
As a boy, I explored the countryside near my grandfather’s house. Down by a ravine, I remember seeing an oily residue in the water and dead salamanders. I did not understand everything that had happened, but I knew something was wrong. That memory stayed with me.
Nature has always been more than scenery to me. It is where I feel most at home—hiking a trail, swimming in a lake, or spending time among trees. A tree I once climbed or a patch of countryside I explored becomes part of my history and sense of belonging. When a familiar place is damaged, it feels personal.
“The ground beneath our feet is sacred.”
Later, while working in construction, I saw trees removed when I believed there could have been another way. Those experiences deepened a question I could not leave alone:
How could we meet our needs while showing greater respect for the living world around us?
From Concern to Connection
There were times when what I witnessed left me overwhelmed. I cared deeply, but struggled with the scale of it all.
Over time, I began learning that caring did not mean carrying the whole world on my shoulders. I could acknowledge the pain without allowing it to become my only response. But looking away was not the answer for me, either.
I wanted to turn that concern into something constructive: learning, sharing the work of people responding, and bringing others into the effort.
That is why I am building Network for Ecology.
I believe caring for the world can involve curiosity, friendship, generosity, and celebration—not only grief about what we are losing. NFE is my way of helping that care become a shared effort.
One Vision. Many Ways to Take Part.
NFE is developing a connected collection of long-term campaigns united by a continuing purpose: helping animals, nature, and communities thrive.
The starting points are tangible, but the vision reaches widely:
- Caring for animals—from a dog needing food and shelter to wildlife threatened by exploitation.
- Helping nature thrive where we live—from native plants in a schoolyard to neighborhood gardens, community orchards, and healthier shared spaces.
- Protecting and restoring ecosystems—from a local stream to forests, wetlands, mangroves, and coral reefs.
- Connecting people with the living world—and with opportunities to learn, contribute, and care for it.
- Helping meaningful work grow—sharing people’s stories and connecting their initiatives with interested audiences, useful relationships, and support.
These are connected parts of one larger vision: care for individual lives, thriving ecosystems, and communities able to help sustain both.
Not every campaign will be active at once. I’m beginning with focused chapters and developing the work over time.
Our Campaigns. Their Stories. Shared Purpose.
NFE is developing its own education, storytelling, and outreach campaigns. Within them, we will introduce people, nonprofits, and community initiatives whose work helps bring each subject to life.
Someone may care deeply about animals but never have encountered a sanctuary’s work. A business owner may want to help protect nature but be unsure where to begin. A resident may be interested in river restoration, native plants, or community gardens and need a clearer starting point.
I want NFE to help make those connections.
Through stories, educational resources, carefully selected existing material, and outreach, NFE explores what needs attention, how people are responding, and where others can contribute. As the project grows, I aim to expand its original interviews, videos, reporting, and follow-up stories.
The people behind featured work will remain at the heart of their stories, with clear credit and direct ways to learn more.
The aim is more than visibility. It is to help people discover opportunities to contribute support, skills, resources, introductions, and ideas.
What It Means to Network for Ecology
For me, networking for ecology means bringing people together to care for our living world—and helping meaningful work grow.
It means listening, sharing stories, reaching out, making thoughtful introductions, and following up so a conversation has a chance to become something more.
It means helping turn:
- Curiosity into understanding.
- Concern into participation.
- An individual interest into a shared effort.
- A promising conversation into a practical next step.
Not everyone will contribute in the same way. Someone may share a resource. Someone else may volunteer, offer a skill, introduce a business, or help fund a campaign.
You do not need to take on a large project to belong here. Curiosity and a willingness to learn are meaningful places to begin.
Discover the Living World Together
NFE Field Notes is a free monthly journey into the living world for curious people, families, and children—featuring true stories, nature facts.
Each edition will also include brief updates on NFE’s campaigns and ways to get involved. Read it on screen or print selected pages at home.
Help Bring the Work to Life
Community support and business sponsorship can help NFE research issues, create stories and resources, develop its campaigns, and build useful connections.
Support for NFE helps sustain our own storytelling, education, outreach, and campaign work. Giving directly to a featured organization or initiative is a separate choice.
As NFE grows, I will share what we create, what participation we can document, what we learn, and what remains unfinished.
A Network We Can Build Together
My hope is to help build a world where businesses help sustain meaningful work, people discover causes they never knew existed, and communities feel better equipped to care for the places around them.
Read a story. Share an initiative. Offer a skill. Make an introduction. Support work you believe in.
I started with a deeply personal concern for the places and creatures around me. Through NFE, I want to help turn that care into something we can act on together.
— Dale Hoskins
Founder, Network for Ecology