Ecology in an Era of Fragmentation As a species, we produce gardeners, devoted caretakers, and also arsonists. ▪ Fall 2025 An era has recently closed. It ran from roughly the end of the Cold War until now, although it has been in crisis for nearly a decade. Its basic logic took shape in the 1990s, but it reached its apex in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It was an era of uniquely dominant American power—military, economic, cultural.