The problems facing the ocean sometimes feel overwhelming. But like surfers we can look for the perfect wave — and ride it to protect these vital ecosystems.
I will never forget my first time paddling out at Teahupo’o, on the southwestern coast of Tahiti. There, I connected with the ocean in a way I never had before. As the first wave approached, the current began to feel the abrupt reef bottom and started to bowl into the iconic, perfect wave that we now find so familiar.
My first thought, humbled by the wave’s size and power, was “absolutely not!” I wasn’t even going to try and paddle for that thing. It was too fast, too steep, it seemed insurmountable.
It took hours in the lineup to feel more comfortable. Even then I remained timid.
But the longer I stayed out there, the more that magical place revealed itself — the stunning reef, the humpback whales breaching offshore, the majestic mountains rising above the sea behind the town. As I became more comfortable and took in everything around me, I began to feel like it was something that I could do and be a part of.
Some of the most ferocious and formidable waves on Earth challenged surfers during the Olympic Games this year. And the nonsurfing world was introduced to the French Polynesian village of Teahupo’o — a place of amazing natural beauty and unbelievable waves.
Photo: Manu San Félix/National Geographic Pristine Seas
But they may not have also realized that Teahupo’o is experiencing the stress being felt across the world’s oceans. Destructive human activities are intensifying, draining marine ecosystems of their resources and leaving the future in doubt.
A Wave of Destruction
At times the list of threats can feel like I did when I first paddled into the lineup — that the problems are overwhelming and insurmountable:
Overfishing is draining the ocean of its biodiversity. We’re losing species at every part of the food chain, including the apex predators critical to keeping the ocean healthy. Five of the most common reef sharks, for example, have experienced population declines of up to 73%.
Bottom trawling, a particularly destructive fishing practice, drags large nets across the ocean floor, ensnaring everything in their paths, clearcutting entire ecosystems, and releasing as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire international aviation industry.
As those greenhouse gases increasingly heat up the Earth’s surface, ocean temperatures are also increasing. This has resulted in a global coral bleaching event that’s devastating marine ecosystems already hammered by overfishing and bottom trawling.
New threats like deep-sea mining are emerging as industrial activities extend to locations and environments on the planet that were previously out of reach.
But if we take a moment to observe the ocean around us and listen to the people who have lived alongside and conserved the ocean for generations, there’s an obvious solution to these problems: Marine Protected Areas, a conservation tool that sets aside rich ocean habitats so biodiversity can flourish and recharge the overexploited areas in the vicinity.
A Swell of Protection
Tahiti is home to one of the world’s largest coral reefs, composed of rose-shaped corals that grow up to six feet wide and 100 feet in depth. The country’s waters are bursting with colorful, unique corals that provide shelter to sea creatures and absorb carbon to help mitigate global warming. But these reefs lack the safety of a marine protected area.
Nearby, though, local children eager to protect their ocean helped to establish the Marquesas Educational Managed Marine Area, which is governed by rules that safeguard these volcanic islands’ reefs from damaging human activities. It also serves as a source of education for students interested in studying the ocean.
Pacific Islanders, who have a long history of living intertwined with the ocean, have led in establishing effective Marine Protected Areas and other unique conservation strategies.
Photo by Manu San Félix/National Geographic Pristine Seas Partnering with the PEW Charitable Trusts and CRIOBE (Centre de Recherche Insulaire et Observatoire de L’Environnement) on the expedition, the team produced new data and visuals that allow people around the world to know for themselves the beauty and value of this remote and barely touched region.
For example, in 2022 the government of Niue implemented a plan to manage 100% of their waters. Fishing is allowed in 60% of them — as long as it’s done sustainably. The rest makes up the Moana Mahu Marine Protected Area. There all human activity is banned, including fishing, seabed mining, and oil exploration and extraction.
Protection of the Southern Line Islands enabled its spectacular reefs to bounce back from a devastating ocean warming event. We have seen through our own research expeditions to the area how the coral reefs and the life they support have thrived.
And we expect more announcements about Marine Protected Areas, not just from the Pacific, but from across the globe, including South America and Europe. A major gathering on biodiversity taking place in Colombia in October will provide the world with an opportunity to take stock of how much of the ocean has been protected.
The goal is to safeguard 30% by 2030 — and not just any 30%, but the stretches of ocean that deliver the greatest biodiversity and climate benefits. It’s ambitious but attainable. Leadership in the Pacific is giving us the greatest hope.
Simply establishing Marine Protected Areas isn’t enough, of course — true safeguards must be in place to ensure that destructive activities such as bottom trawling cease in these zones.
As Goes Tahiti, So Goes the World?
There’s more to Tahiti, French Polynesia, and the Pacific region than beautiful coral reefs and inspirational surfing. The Olympics provided an opportunity to showcase all that’s beautiful in the Pacific — not just the islands but their marine ecosystems, protected areas, and traditional approach to conservation. If the rest of the world fails to protect its vital ecosystems, there soon will be nothing left except highlight videos of the surfing that once was.
In the same way I learned from observing Olympic athletes tackle the intimidating waves at Teahupo’o, we can all learn to consider the lessons of generations of Pacific Island conservation practices and marry that cultural knowledge with science to make important changes that could have profound impacts on our oceans.
The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.
“Collectors” threaten these tiny bats, whose big ears can’t protect them from the humans loving them to death.
Wildlife is traded for many reasons, but the trade in painted woolly bats is among the most senseless. These animals’ unique and beautiful coloration is the reason behind their popularity and the growing trend of using the species for decorative purposes — a trend we hope to help end.
Species name:
Painted woolly bat (Kerivoula picta)
Description:
This tiny bat (weighing just over an eighth of an ounce, or roughly 5 grams) has a spectacular appearance, with bright orange fur and mostly black wings, within which the finger bones are surrounded by bright orange skin. Their tiny eyes are barely visible because of the thick, long fur covering most of the face. But you can’t miss their big ears (which remind us of Mr. Spock), needed to hunt small arthropods, especially spiders and insects, by echolocation.
Painted woolly bats live in southeastern China, South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka), and Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam). Their habitats include dry scrub and agricultural fields (especially banana plantations — they often roost alone or in small groups under dried banana leaves, within 6 feet of the ground).
IUCN Red List status:
In 2020 the IUCN changed the conservation status of the painted woolly bat from Least Concern to Near-Threatened based on a suspected 25% population decline.
Major threats:
The biggest conservation threat to the painted woolly bat is likely attributable to their distinct looks, which appeal to collectors of taxidermied-bat and other oddities for decorative purposes. These can be purchased at numerous online and physical marketplaces. To satisfy that demand, bats are hunted in the wild — there’s no captive breeding of this species. Other threats include disturbance of their roosts, notably in plantations, and habitat destruction (especially logging and the conversion of agricultural areas to residential or other land uses).
Notable conservation programs or legal protections:
While the painted woolly bat is protected at national levels in some Asian range countries, international trade is not regulated and there’s very little in the way of protection in consumer countries. Clearly, what protection is in place is not sufficient to prevent online trade in North America and the European Union. The goal of our work is twofold: to have strong legislation in consumer countries to prevent import and trade and to have international trade regulated through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Ultimately we’d like to see the major online trade platforms that enable and facilitate the trade in painted woolly bats take action and effectively disallow any further online advertisement and trade.
Our favorite experience:
While studying the trade in painted woolly bats, we reviewed hundreds of Amazon, eBay, and Etsy listings for taxidermied bats offered to consumers in the United States over a three-month period. We needed to record how many of the specimens were painted woolly bats. Scouring thousands of photos of dead bats was no fun at all. But we were motivated to get through the task by our conviction that this work could, by documenting the extent of the trade, lead to effective legal protection. Indeed, it has resulted in a petition now before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add Kerivoula picta to the Endangered Species Act — a move that would make buying and selling of the species in the United States illegal. (Full disclosure: The Center for Biological Diversity, publisher of The Revelator, filed this petition in conjunction with Chris’s organization, Monitor Conservation Research Society.)
Kerivoula picta for sale on Amazon.com. Revelator screenshot, Aug. 9, 2024
More recently we began looking at the trade in Vietnam, which we expect to generate the evidence we need to encourage the government to take action. Further evidence of illegal and unsustainable trade will, ideally, catalyze action from range and consumer countries to list this species in one of the appendices of CITES.
We hope this work pays off and that painted woolly bats will one day enjoy legal protection. But more challenging, and perhaps more urgent, is reducing demand. We need buyers and would-be buyers to stop purchasing bats in picture frames, bats made into hair clips, Halloween decorations made from bats, and bats used to hang on Christmas trees. Wake up, folks — buying these items not only contributes to the decline of this species in the wild but also supports illegal wildlife trade networks.
What else do we need to understand or do to protect this species?
We found hundreds of individual painted woolly bats offered for sale just in the small sample of listings we examined, covering three shopping websites in one country. But we know they’re sold year-round on dozens of other websites and in physical shops in many other parts of the world.
Kerivoula picta for sale on Etsy. Revelator screenshot, Aug. 9, 2024, nearly two weeks after the site officially banned sales of bat products.
Like most bats, painted woolly bats reproduce slowly (they only have one pup per year) and live much longer lives than expected considering how small they are. In other words, they have a slow life history. Unfortunately, all species with slow life histories are intrinsically vulnerable to overharvesting because of how long it takes their populations to rebound from declines. And as painted woolly bats are usually solitary and maintain non-overlapping home ranges of 12-14 acres, they are relatively scarce on the landscape compared to other bat species. This suggests that hunters likely search large areas and kill all the individuals they find to satisfy the demand.
To accurately estimate how much of a threat this trade poses, we must evaluate the offtake (number and demographics of harvested painted woolly bats) against the potential availability of individuals. These are total unknowns, as this bat’s ecology has barely been studied. So we need on-the-ground studies to gather data on population sizes and trends. To gauge total offtake, we can conduct a thorough investigation of all shipments of bats that are seized at U.S. ports of entry and identify all specimens to species (using genomics, if necessary, as skulls and skeletons are impossible to identify visually). This would allow us to get a sense of offtake for many other bat species, too.
We also see the need for social-ecological network analysis. This approach would allow us to identify and visualize all the stakeholders (human and nonhuman) in this trade and the connections between them. That would reveal the ecological roles and importance of painted woolly bats in ecosystems and to human wellbeing, while also showing the key human actors and links that could be used as levers to end this trade.
What can you do to help? Obviously, do not buy painted woolly bats. But also, educate others around you and inform them of this problem — spread the word. Write to your governments and ask if painted woolly bats are protected in your country, and if not, why not? Finally, support efforts to prevent the poaching and illegal trade in painted woolly bats. These bats may weigh next to nothing, but public support for them is everything.
In France the unthinkable has happened: The working-class Yellow Vest movement, racial equity movements, and progressive climate activists have joined forces in a multiracial, cross-class coalition called Earth Uprisings. In uniting the climate movement with broader social justice causes, “Les Soulèvements de la Terre” is not just making history in France; it’s offering a blueprint for global environmental resistance. But the response has been shockingly violent and extreme.
1. The Start
On an icy day in January 2021, French climate activists gather in a wetland area in Notre-Dame-des-Landes around one depressing observation: None of their efforts have succeeded in making a real dent in the current environmental collapse.
That’s why they’re meeting. Like many other movements, they feel like they’re out of options. “The first wave of the ‘climate movement’ confronted us with this powerlessness,” some of the activists will later write in a collective book titled Premières Secousses (First Shockwaves). “From COP meetings to massive marches, from climate action camps to IPCC reports, we have not managed to significantly curb the ongoing devastation.”
So here they are, 200 of the foremost climate activists in the country. There are anti-nuclear activists; unions of smallholder farmers; and members of newer movements such as Youth for Climate or Extinction Rebellion. The room is full. Many have been holed up at home for weeks, waiting for the second Covid lockdown to lift. There are still curfews and restrictions in place, but they decide this meeting is too important.
“It’s been a year of one lockdown after the next,” an anonymous participant writes. “Residents of [Notre-Dame-des-Landes] decide to issue an invitation to an assembly called to ‘move heaven and earth’ with some concrete proposals. Little notes are sent to long-time comrades as well as to people just met… It is still forbidden to meet, but impossible not to get organized.”
They’re exhausted and desperate. They have no idea that they’re about to form the most feared climate movement of the 2020s in this country — a movement that both the government and polluting industries will dread. And a movement that could offer a blueprint for global climate resistance.
They get to work. After two days of discussions, and sometimes heated debates, they land on something new: a sort of loose coalition of local struggles across France, with a variety of actors and tactics, all acting under one banner, Les Soulèvements de la Terre. The Earth Uprisings.
Their slogan: We are the Earth defending itself.
The initial round of brainstorming produces ambitious ideas: “We must besiege Monsanto in Lyon,” “make the biggest intrusion ever carried out on a concrete plant,” “block the Yara synthetic fertilizer production terminal in the bay of Saint-Nazaire.”
Then the reality kicks in: They’ve just created a new movement, they have no idea whether it’s going to take, and actions in the past have yielded little result. They decide to test it out for six months, then come back and reassess.
But politically, their ambition is clear in the first call to action they publish a few weeks after the meeting. The focus is on three goals: taking back the land from polluting industries and intensive agriculture; ramping up tactics to include occupation and sabotage; and uniting all actors who have an interest in curbing the climate emergency. In the founding text, one of the things they emphasize is that they want to get rid of the class divide that has plagued the climate movement — not just in France but all over the world. They write: “We do not believe in a two-tiered climate activism in which a minority prides itself on eating organic and driving a hybrid SUV while the majority is stuck in jobs they don’t want to do, long daily commutes, and low-cost food. We will not accept to watch the end of the world, powerless, isolated, and locked in our homes.”
So they call to target, block, and dismantle three key industries: concrete, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers.
2. The Basins
After months of localized struggles to save natural land from urban development projects, one issue emerges and quickly gains traction: the fight for water.
In France, to counter more and more frequent droughts partly caused by climate change, the government is helping build “mega-basins” — large aboveground pools used to pump water in groundwater tables in the winter and irrigate large-scale farms in the summer.
But pumping water makes droughts worse. And the reservoirs can only be used by a handful of large agribusinesses, which are mainly focused on cornfields and other irrigation crops for export. Activists argue that mega-basins effectively privatize water resources, sidelining small-scale, eco-friendly farmers.
“I guess it became a real realization for a lot of people, what the fight for water meant and access to water,” recounts Lea Hobson, a former Extinction Rebellion activist who now organizes with the Earth Uprisings. “I think that resonated for a lot of people. And it meant that a lot of people came from all over France.”
The campaign they launch to stop the construction of these mega-basins will radically reshape their future and the future of the French climate movement.
It will also unleash state violence against environmental activists on an unprecedented scale.
The first big protest takes place in October 2022, at the site of one of the basins in Sainte-Soline, a small village of about 600 people in western France. Thousands of activists turn up. So do hundreds of police officers, who use tear gas grenades to disperse protesters peacefully occupying the empty reservoir. Dozens are injured, and six people are arrested.
In the coming days, the public narrative of the events in Sainte-Soline becomes its own battle. Local officials say “very violent activists” wreaked havoc at the protest. Gerald Darmanin, the French minister of interior, calls the activists “eco-terrorists” — a rare term for a French government official discussing climate activists — and promises to fight them.
“This is an extremely strong word for a country which suffered deadly terror attacks in 2015, which left a lot of families in mourning,” points out Alexis Vrignon, a professor at the University of Orléans who specializes in the history of environmental conflict. “The tactics of the water protesters can be discussed in terms of ethics or effectiveness, but they are totally different” from those of terrorist groups, he adds.
According to Michel Forst, the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, the “campaigns of vilification by public officials also have a great impact, which is very unfortunate, on public opinion. When you have a minister … and members of parliament calling those people eco-terrorists or simply terrorists or comparing them to the Taliban, then it’s not only the people who are under pressure, but the cause they’re fighting for, which is also being debated.”
Despite these attacks in the media, activists reconvene in Sainte-Soline five months later. This protest is set to be bigger, more ambitious. The protesters — farmers’ unions, working-class Yellow Vests, and many other unlikely allies — arrive from all corners of France and even beyond. In a field a few miles away from the reservoirs, hundreds of brightly colored tents pop up around the protest camp.
There are also 3,000 officers on site, waiting for protesters.
“You had a lot of people who were not essentially in climate movements but heard of what was going on and so would come there … as their first big mass action,” Lea Hobson, the activist, remembers. “The diversity of people — I’ve never seen that in any actions that we’ve had in Extinction Rebellion, for example.”
On the morning of the protest, thousands start marching to one of the basins. Their goal is to stop construction, take apart some of the pipes that have already been installed, and get a moratorium on any new reservoirs being built with public funds. The march is joyous. There are families with kids, people playing accordions, dancing in their blue workers’ outfits, and huge mascots representing local species that are threatened with extinction: an eel, an otter and a type of bird called a bustard.
Then, in the space of a few minutes, the peaceful march descends into chaos. “You had police that kind of started to arrive from everywhere,” Hobson recalls. Tear gas grenades and rubber pellets start falling from the sky nonstop — almost one explosion per second for two hours. The only sound that cuts through the explosions is that of protesters screaming for street medics whenever a new person gets hit.
By late afternoon 200 protesters are injured, including dozens with severe injuries. Two people are in a coma, fighting for their lives. But on the news that evening, journalists describe violent protesters who caused altercations with the police. Even the president, Emmanuel Macron, says protesters were out to kill security forces.
In this violence against protesters, France is an outlier in the region. “France is the country where we have the most violent response by the police compared to other countries in Europe,” explains Forst, from the UN.
Hobson adds that “more people have been involved — organizations, collectives, charities, political movements — so the more diverse the movement has grown, the more repression there has been. The more massive the movement has become, the more repression there has been.”
Just days after the protest, activists are scrambling to care for the injured and the traumatized, and two men are still fighting for their lives. But as public opinion turns against the protesters, Darmanin, the minister of interior, takes advantage of the opportunity and announces the legal dissolution of the Earth Uprisings. To do this he uses a 1936 law initially passed to combat the violent far-right groups that were proliferating at the time, which has since been used against Muslim groups and activist movements.
3. The Trial
Ironically Earth Uprisings never had anything official to dissolve. It never had legal organizational status, it didn’t establish itself as a nonprofit, and under French law it was simply a “de facto gathering of people.” But dissolution would mean that anyone organizing events using the name and logo of Earth Uprisings risked being fined or imprisoned.
Darmanin’s announcement is a huge blow to activists and marks the start of a lengthy legal battle that will question the methods of the Earth Uprisings and the legitimacy of sabotage itself as a form of protest in the current climate emergency — a question that’s moving through climate movements around the world.
The accusations of violence don’t come as a surprise to the organizers. From the get-go, written in the invitations to the January meeting, was a call to discuss stronger modes of action — in particular, civil disobedience. The coalition openly leans on three tactics: occupation, blockages and sabotage (which the activists call disarmament).
“Disarming is the promise of appeasement. It is not a violent term,” the group’s lawyer, Antoine Lyon-Caen, argued at the trial. Echoing these sentiments, Stéphen Kerckhove, the president of Agir pour l’Environnement (Act for the Environment), explains the rise of Earth Uprisings as “an admission of failure of our legal [climate] nonprofits.” Despite efforts ranging from petitions to legal actions, change has been elusive, he says. “All the work we do never leads to anything. We shouldn’t be surprised that there are people advocating for disarmament.”
After each of the two protests at Sainte-Soline, the minister of interior, Gerald Darmanin — a highly controversial figure who has been accused by human-rights advocates of orchestrating an increase in violence against protesters, and whom several women have sued for sexual abuse — says that dozens of police officers have been injured. The Revelator and Drilled could not independently verify those claims. After the March protest, the public prosecutor announced that 47 officers had been injured. But 18 of those were included in the count as a result of suffering “acoustic trauma,” most likely as a result of the hundreds of explosions the police itself caused.
There is, however, abundant evidence of protesters being injured, sometimes nearly fatally, by security forces, documented in detail by human rights observers and journalists and corroborated by our sources.
The dissolution case rises through several courts before ending up at the Council of State, the highest court in France, which finally rejects the push for dissolution on Nov. 9, 2023. It also concludes that members of Earth Uprisings engaged in material degradation, but the movement was not responsible for any violence perpetrated against people.
“The targets of our actions are always material,” confirms Lena Lazare, a spokesperson for the movement. “We never target people. But often, when we are asked these questions, it is also a way to draw a line between ‘bad demonstrators’ and ‘good demonstrators.’ And we don’t think there are any bad demonstrators. We also think that the violence of the demonstrators is created by the police repression.”
The police brutality at Sainte-Soline was never addressed by the government. And the demonstrators are clear: Their actions are only legitimate in the context of the current environmental collapse, which sees tens of thousands of people die every year from heatwaves in Europe alone.
4. The Future
The months of court dates and appeals help drudge up public support for the group. Within days of Darmanin’s dissolution announcement, nearly 200 new Earth Uprisings committees sprout up across France. Thousands of people join. Actors, scientists, and politicians join the rallying cry: “You can’t disband a movement.”
“What that created was a massive outburst of support, and the creation of local groups all over France,” says organizer Lea Hobson.” And that’s something that’s quite new. You had people coming from loads of different backgrounds who started to be like, wait, we can’t let this happen.”
Its radical approach has also intensified conversations about environmental activism, nudging even the most traditional climate groups in France to reconsider their tactics. Earth Uprisings has made inroads into mainstream discourse, influencing political agendas and policy development. Most French people had not heard of a mega-basin before October 2022. Now the issue of water use is abundantly covered in mainstream media. Several of the mega-basin projects have been abandoned.
Most importantly, Earth Uprisings has created an unprecedented alliance among progressive groups across France, and built a blueprint for an agile, fluid, and ever-evolving movement structure that has, so far, eluded governmental and legal threats.
“There wasn’t much collaboration [among progressive groups],” says Hobson. “But when you start having a movement that collaborates and that accepts and uses different forms of tactics, how do you stop that? I think that’s going to be impossible to repress.”
And for the people who have come out of Sainte-Soline intact, she says, “the rage and the willingness to do things” has only grown. “It’s weird because you have a feeling of exhaustion and you feel that what is coming next” — both the climate threats and the crackdowns — “is probably going to be 10 times worse. Yet the fact that more and more people and groups are coming together, when they wouldn’t even speak together a few years ago, is a sign that things are changing really quickly.”
Everyone needs time to recharge. Here are some new ideas to help finish the summer season right and come out stronger for the environmental challenges ahead.
This has been an epic year so far — and we expect the last four months of 2024 to be increasingly important and potentially world-changing.
With that in mind, we’re about to take our annual summer recharge break. We’ll be back with new articles and commentaries Sept. 3.
We’ll have plenty to keep us busy in the meantime — including researching, writing, and editing some great stories we have lined up for September and October.
But we’ll also devote ourselves to absorbing new influences and inspiration, experiencing nature, talking to friends and colleagues, and reflecting on where we’ve gone so far in 2024. We hope you have an opportunity, now or later, to do the same.
Meanwhile, we have an assignment (or 16) for you — things you can do over the next couple of weeks to help set the path for a powerful fall:
Go someplace new. There’s probably a park, wildlife refuge, beach, river, forest, or other natural place nearby that you haven’t had a chance to visit yet. Maybe it’s a place you’ve always meant to go or a new spot you’ve just discovered on the map. Don’t wait: Make a plan and go there.
Thank someone for helping the planet or those who live on it. Think about a scientist, activist, journalist, neighbor, business owner, or even politician who has made a difference in the past year. Too many good deeds go unrecognized, and even the briefest appreciation can do wonders to help someone keep moving forward.
Look at a bug. I mean really look at one. Get down on your hands and knees, if you’re able, and watch an ant or a butterfly or a slug (not a bug, I know, but any invertebrate will do). Watch how they interact with plants, the soil, and the rest of the world. You may come away with a new appreciation for the species around you.
Call your mayor and ask for stronger local environmental protections. In this season of national elections, it’s too easy for people to overlook their mayor, town councilmember, city manager, or other local leaders as potential environmental leaders or advocates. Assume they’re lonely during these dog days of summer and pick up the phone.
Set your environmental goals and strategies for the rest of the year. There’s an endless chain of opportunities to help make a difference. Look for upcoming events in your local paper or on Facebook, Meetup, or your local environmental groups’ websites. Or maybe pick a cause (say, cleaning up a neighborhood park or advocating for a faraway endangered species) and strategize five steps you hope to take before the end of the year.
Fix something, learn how, or teach someone else. In an increasingly disposable world, everything we keep out of a landfill is a victory. (Check with your local library; many of them offer free repair clinics a few times a year. Sign up to get your stuff fixed, or to volunteer and help others.)
Think about writing something for us. We’re always looking for local voices from around the world to pen op-eds or submissions to our Species Spotlight and Protect This Place features. Full details here. (Freelance journalists: We’ll reopen to pitches for your stories in November.)
Take a friend in need to a green space. Maybe you have an elderly neighbor or relative, a friend without access to transportation, a special-needs child, a coworker in grief, or a neighbor who’s lonely. Share some time and some outdoor experiences with them. Make some memories.
Read an environmental book. We have hundreds of recommendations to choose from. And you don’t have to read them at the beach — anyplace quiet will do.
Donate to or volunteer with an environmental group or disaster-recovery organization. Time, money, and expertise are all needed and valued. (An extra tip: Donating blood is often simple and always in need. That’s not a specifically environmental act, but in this age of ever-increasing disasters, it could save a life.)
Plan for the November elections. Start by checking your voter registration — it never hurts to make sure you haven’t accidentally fallen off the rolls. You can also volunteer for a get-out-the-vote initiative, help a campaign, sign up to be a poll worker, or plan to help other people vote. (We have a couple of dozen other ideas here.)
Start a nature sketchbook. Drawing nature is fun, and it gives you a new way to look at and appreciate the world around you. Use your journal to capture the details you might only see when you really look closely at a landscape, plant, or animal. Don’t get stressed out about the quality of your drawing, just pick up a pen, pencil, or marker and enjoy. This isn’t for publication; it’s just for you — like the nature you’re about to experience with fresh eyes. (Check out this video for some great tips on getting started.)
Plant some native vegetation. We don’t all have land to rewild, but even an outdoor flowerpot can make a difference to local pollinators. And if you can convince your local business, HOA, or park to replace nonnative species — even better. (Not sure how to start? Check out these great state-by-state lists from the Xerces Society.)
Put your feet in the water. A river, an ocean, a pond, a stream. Let it wash over you. Feel connected.
Write a protest song or an environmental poem. Be creative. Express your rage, anxiety, hope, aspirations, or passions. Then share your work. Submit it to a literary magazine, go to an open-mic poetry reading, post it to YouTube, or just share it with your friends.
Subscribe to our newsletter! Be prepared for the latest headlines as we return from our publishing break.
That’s it for now. We’ll see you on Sept. 3. Until then, stay safe, recharge, and stay connected.
The historic act, which recognized a river as a legal entity, deliberately moves away from litigation and places community decision-making at its center.
In 2017, after more than a century of legal struggles by the Māori people of the Whanganui River (Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi), the 292-kilometer Whanganui River — also known as Te Awa Tupua — became the first river in the world to be recognized as a legal entity, granting it the same rights and powers as a legal person.
The passage of the Te Awa Tupua Act has been a milestone for Aotearoa New Zealand — a name that reflects the country’s Māori identity and colonial history. It has also been read as an encouraging example for the granting of legal personhood to ecosystems in other parts of the world.
While Whanganui personhood is a good news story, we must recognize that the path to Parliament’s passage of the Te Awa Tupua Act was entrenched in colonial dynamics. Māori Iwi of the Whanganui region have long had to advocate against an often conservative and Western-minded government structure. Their relentless advocacy efforts have shaped the narrative of Te Awa Tupua, a story rooted in the deep connection between culture, land, and water.
The clash between Te Awa Tupua and Western legal frameworks, alongside Indigenous law, serves as the backdrop for continuing political and cultural dynamics. More recently, with the inauguration of Aotearoa New Zealand’s new coalition government led by conservative Christopher Luxon, these challenges have become more conspicuous.
We believe that the Te Awa Tupua Act should not only be read by law- and policymakers as a legal framework, but also as an inspiration for communities to embrace a leadership model entrenched in Tupua Te Kawa principles, the system of principles underpinning Te Awa Tupua.
A History Steeped in Colonialism
To understand the future of Te Awa Tupua, we must first understand its greater context.
The historical background to the recognition of Te Awa Tupua as a legal entity is deeply intertwined with the colonization of Aotearoa New Zealand by the British and the subsequent conflicts and wars in the 19th century.
Since 1873 Whanganui Iwi have sought recognition of their authority over the Whanganui River, including by pursuing one of New Zealand’s longest-running court cases, the Native Land Court application of 1938 contesting the ownership of the riverbed. The case was finally settled in favor of the Crown by the Court of Appeal in 1962. Given the colonial nature of Iwi-Crown (government) relationships, the Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975 as a standing commission of inquiry to make recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to legislation, policies, actions, or omissions of the Crown that are alleged to breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi. Ultimately, however, the tribunal has limited powers, especially in preventing treaty violations from happening.
Ruruku Whakatupua, the Deed of Settlement for the Whanganui River (2014), is the culmination of more than a century of effort by Whanganui Iwi to protect and provide for the special relationship of Whanganui Iwi with the river. Ruruku Whakatupua settles the historical Treaty of Waitangi claims of Whanganui Iwi in relation to the river. While the Whanganui River Iwi view the river as a living being, it is in the context of a more-than-human being rather than a human person. The framing of the Te Awa Tupua Act as legislation concerning legal personhood is more for the appeasement and convenience of European sentiments than for the Māori.
The Te Awa Tupua Act
Te Awa Tupua is one of numerous cases in which a history of injustice exists. Its recognition as a legal entity is therefore a decisive event not only in the history of Aotearoa’s environmental legislation, but also in coming to terms with its own colonial past.
Te Awa Tupua is the longest navigable waterway in Aotearoa New Zealand. It has always been a source of sustenance, spiritual connectedness, and of course a main transport and trade route. There are numerous Māori tales that link the formation of the riverbed to a dispute between various North Island volcanoes. However, almost since the beginning of colonization, Te Awa Tupua has been abused. The destruction of eel weirs to make way for early riverboat service caused the loss of food sources for Whanganui Iwi. Furthermore, commercial forestry entities have planted all the way to the water line, and other irresponsible farming developments on marginal land have continually increased the sediment accumulation in the river and its tributaries. Since the 1970s a portion of the very upper reaches of the Whanganui River has been diverted and commercially developed to generate electricity. This has seriously affected the ability of the river to flush itself naturally.
In 2014 Māori communities and the Crown signed a deed of settlement regarding Te Awa Tupua. In 2017 a corresponding Act was approved by Parliament in which the river — including its physical and metaphysical elements — is recognized as having the “rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.”
In the Act, Te Awa Tupua is assigned two legal representatives: one representing the Māori Iwi and another representing the government. They make up a committee given the name Te Pou Tupua — the human face of the river — and represents its interests. Te Pou Tupua is supported by an advisory group (Te Karewao) and a strategy group (Te Kōpuka). In addition, Te Kōpuka has been entrusted with the task of developing a strategy plan, called Te Heke Ngahuru, the final version of which has recently been passed.
A Strategy for Implementing the Act
Embedded within Te Awa Tupua, Te Heke Ngahuru holds as a collective effort to develop a comprehensive strategy addressing the environmental, social, cultural, and economic aspects of Te Awa Tupua’s wellbeing. Te Heke Ngahuru establishes Te Pā Auroa — a legal framework that grants the Whanganui River and its catchment the status of a legal entity. This framework, understood to be synonymous with the First Autumn Migration of Eels in Māori tradition, is guided by the four Tupua Te Kawa principles, which emphasize the interconnection of the river’s elements:
Ko te Awa te mātāpuna o te ora: The River is the source of spiritual and physical sustenance.
E rere kau mai i te Awa nui mai i te Kahui Maunga ki Tangaroa: The great River flows from the mountains to the sea.
Ko au te Awa, ko te Awa ko au: I am the River, and the River is me.
Ngā manga iti, ngā manga nui e honohono kau ana, ka tupu hei Awa Tupua: The small and large streams that flow into one another and form one River.
Te Heke Ngahuru imagines a future where Iwi assume full custodial rights of the awa (river) via efforts that protect the health and wellbeing of the Whanganui catchment. This requires a transition away from Western models of governance and toward a Te Awa Tupua-centric approach to decision-making, led by the Crown, local government, and Iwi. Through collaboration and strategic action, Te Heke Ngahuru offers a roadmap for innovation and opportunity, laying the groundwork for a sustainable and prosperous future for Te Awa Tupua and its people.
Te Awa Tupua Between Rights of Nature and Indigenous Law
Te Awa Tupua has been enthusiastically embraced by many Rights of Nature activists as a paradigm-shifting example.
At the same time, however, it’s easy to overlook how the Te Awa Tupua Act deliberately moves away from litigation and places community decision-making at its center. Shifting this power to the local level has profound implications for rebuilding Iwi-Crown relationships in light of centering kawa principles within Whanganui leadership.
There are two important reasons for this. The first is that the power shift strengthens Indigenous law and the Tupua Te Kawa principles. According to the third Kawa, the people and the river are intrinsically linked, so Te Awa Tupua isn’t merely the river but also includes the surrounding communities — which challenges Western notions of property and human-made law. The relationship between the Iwi and the river goes beyond mere geographical proximity and includes spiritual and affective care for each other.
The second reason is that the shift results in less dependence on state jurisdiction and the strengthening of Indigenous self-determination. Māori Iwi have a generations-long experience of changing governments, from left-wing to right-wing and back again, which encourages them to strategize wisely and cautiously. It’s therefore crucial to see the Te Awa Tupua Act and Te Heke Ngahuru as a decisive strengthening of Indigenous law and Māori self-determination.
New Challenges From a Right-Wing Government
Unfortunately, the new coalition government — consisting of the three National, Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, and New Zealand First political parties and led by Prime Minister Luxon — has shown clear intent to decrease the cultural and social standing of Māori and, by extension, the importance of the Treaty of Waitangi. For example, this government has attempted to deconstruct the use of Te Reo, the Māori language, within government departments that use Te Reo in their branding, messaging, websites, and front-office greetings.
That said, at this stage there’s little threat to Te Awa Tupua or its legitimacy. Of far greater concern is that future acts or legislation of parliament could overlap, dilute, or even supersede the 2017 Act.
This has happened before. In 1903 the Coal-mines Act Amendment Act provided that the beds of all navigable rivers “shall remain and shall be deemed to have always been vested in the Crown.” This national law was passed directly in response to Whanganui River Māori claims at the time.
Under current norms and sensibilities, such extremes are highly unlikely in Aotearoa New Zealand today. What will be of interest to Te Pou Tupua, Te Karewao, and Te Kōpuka, though, are any new laws coming into being that may affect and indeed overlap Te Awa Tupua in areas such as resource management or conservation.
Inspiration From Te Awa Tupua
Examining the Te Awa Tupua Act and Te Heke Ngahuru reveals that their focus isn’t limited to a legal framework and its implementation. Taking the Third Kawa and the corresponding interrelationship of ecosystems and surrounding communities seriously can motivate communities to defend and take care of the health and wellbeing of the ecosystems to which they relate. However, we don’t suggest that communities should copy or universalize the Te Awa Tupua Act.
The signing of Te Awa Tupua constitutes a narrative that can be read in the context of the Rights of Nature, but it can also be read in the context of decolonial law and communal self-determination. It can inspire local communities around the globe — including the global South and the global North — to take responsibility for the rivers, mountains, lakes, and other ecosystems to which they belong, which becomes vital at a time when right-wing governments around the world are beginning to challenge the previously established consensus on environmental and climate policy.
The opinions expressed above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity, or their employees.
Former politician turned city official Jessyn Farrell, who still calls herself a “Save the Whales environmentalist,” tackles sustainability from all angles.
Jessyn Farrell is late meeting me at the Seattle Green Festival in early July — not because she’s late entering the conference, but because it seems she can’t walk through a crowd of sustainability and environmental experts without being stopped.
As the director of the Office of Sustainability & Environment for the city of Seattle, Farrell holds a position that, in other cities, might not be particularly high profile. But in the Emerald City, which regularly ranks as one of the most sustainable cities worldwide, it garners its own type of fame. That position — along with Farrell’s tenure on the Washington House of Representatives from 2013 to 2017, her decades of environmental and transit activism in the region, and her two (unsuccessful) runs for mayor — makes her a known figure.
We hadn’t met before, but once we began our interview, we found that our personal and professional experiences overlap in several key areas. We share a passion for sustainable buildings: She helped pass legislation to decarbonize residential buildings, and I’m a U.S. Green Building Council LEED Green Associate. We’re both dedicated to food security and creative solutions for urban gardening and farming. And we’ve also both spent most of our careers living in and working toward sustainable cities — she in Seattle, and me in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. (This interview has been edited for clarity and length.)
Jessyn Farrell at the Green Festival. Photo by Molly McCluskey
How did you get your start in environmental activism?
A lot of my environmental consciousness and love of this place started because it’s such a beautiful, amazing place to live in. When I was a child, my uncle was a researcher for orcas at the Ken Balcombe Center on San Juan Island, and we’d go out in his little boat and, like, hang out with orcas. That was magical and incredible.
And the thing that stuns me about living here is you still see whales. Even 40 years later, when my kids and I are on the ferry, we’re always scanning for whales, and they’re there.
I would say that I am literally a Save the Whales environmentalist. That’s where I got my start — as, you know, an ’80s bumper sticker.
An orca dorsal fin seen from Discovery Park with West Point lighthouse in background. Photo via Seattle Parks, Discovery Park Staff (CC BY 2.0)
How has that love of the environment translated into your urban activism?
Over time, I really came to appreciate how important it is to make cities wonderful places to live as a way of preserving our wild places. Growing up in Seattle — which, like San Francisco, is a place of really rapid change — I could really see the forests and the fields turn into suburbia over the past decade.
As a result, over my career, I’ve asked myself, how do we make these cities places where everyone can live? That’s where you get into the intersection of environmental justice and affordability and human health and social capital — by asking, how do you get people to live in a dense urban environment?
You do that by making it really wonderful. So that’s been the guiding principle for my career.
Why has transportation been such a core piece of your professional life, given the Save the Whales environmentalism that you come from?
I think one thing that all big, wonderful cities have in common is an amazing transit system. And Seattle didn’t. In the 1970s, voters [rejected] what was called Forward Thrust. Federal funding had been approved to build a system here. The voters voted against the local match, and so it never got built.
After law school, I went into transit policy and ran a small nonprofit called Transportation Choices Coalition. I had an amazing team of five. Our budget the first year I was there was $250,000. We didn’t get paid very much. But we fought the highway guys and the mall guys and the oil industry on their own turf in Bellevue and got the city council to support light rail, which it had voted down for decades. It was just a lot of fun, and it was a purpose.
What I love about [transportation] is that it helps address all these different issues — economic, race, and social justice, climate, livability, safety — just by building trains and having great bus service.
Whether you’re old or young or middle aged, transit is literally what connects us.
Why venture into politics?
I was voted “most likely to be a politician” in high school. I always dreamed of going into politics, but I think, like a lot of women, I felt I needed to be credentialed. I felt like I needed to have a lot of experience.
It wasn’t until I was working in a transit agency and lobbying these legislators who were five years younger than I was that I thought, if these guys can do it, I certainly can too. [That was] in 2012, [when] I had a two-year-old and a four-year-old. It was not easy by any means, but I jumped in and ran as an environmentalist and transit advocate.
We are very, very polarized right now. Climate is the unifying issue. We’ve passed this building emissions performance standard. We got the climate activists and the building owners to get — maybe if not on exactly the same page, [then] to a willingness to create space to do a heavy lift on a policy.
What’s your vision for Seattle?
My basic take is we actually know exactly what to do around climate change. This is not a mystery. It’s not a big research and science experiment. We have the solutions. The big challenge is: How do we scale and go big, fast? And how do we do that in a way that is community-centered and people-centered? Those two things have an inherent tension, because scaling requires speed, efficiency, and cookie-cutter approaches.
What we do at the Office of Sustainability & Environment is a lot of piloting and a lot of iterating, and then we package up our little fledglings and pass them on to capital departments that can really scale them. One good example of that is the Green Seattle Partnership, which started at OSC, which connects nonprofits to help steward our wild parts of our parks. We started small and learned how to run that well and then passed it on to the parks department.
Not everything can be a success right out of the gate. What are some initiatives that had some greater challenges or just haven’t worked out?
Well, one we’re really dogged about and not willing to give up yet is dredge truck electrification. Those are the diesel trucks that run between the port and logistic facilities.
Often environmental justice-impacted neighborhoods are right next to the port, and they have massive particulate impacts. There’s all of this [Inflation Reduction Act] funding, and there’s state funding, which is awesome for electrification. It offers tremendous potential, but getting there is challenging.
We’re not so worried about the really big entities. They’re going to figure out how to buy or finance $500,000 trucks.
It’s the small, 20-trucks-and-under, immigrant refugee-owned small businesses that can’t float loans, may not even have traditional banking. The price of these trucks is just really high. Then where do they charge?
Electrification has been a city priority now for several years. Our signature environmental justice program is in the Duwamish Valley, which is a port-adjacent neighborhood. In 2016 the Duwamish Valley Action Plan, which lays out the vision for that neighborhood, identified the need to electrify these trucks because this is really impacting people’s health. So we’ve been working on this for a long time, and we’re not ready to give up.
That’s one of those examples where we’re not there yet, but we’re learning a lot.
Climate Pledge arena in Seattle. Photo by Molly McCluskey
Seattle is implementing a multi-tiered approach for sustainability. Most cities have so many similar problems and solutions. What advice would you have for city officials in Fargo or Tempe, or smaller cities that maybe don’t have massive budgets but still want to do something to advance sustainability in their city and maybe feel overwhelmed? Where would you recommend they start?
We have the Buildings Accelerator Program. We passed the regulation, and that’s the stick. It says you have to decarbonize by 2050, and you have to meet benchmarks over the next 25 years. But one of the things that we really took very seriously is how we then partner and provide resources from the technical engineering side to meet the actual funding needs of under-resourced buildings to help them meet those targets.
We’re partnering first this year with affordable housing, just because there aren’t a lot of air-conditioned homes or air-conditioned multifamily homes, especially the older ones that tend to be more affordable.
So that’s a really fun project born out of many, many years of working with the building community and paying really deep attention to what they need and how we can show up best as government. Because at the end of the day, we want decarbonization to happen. We have an amazing staff that has expertise, but we’re also really reliant on community expertise to understand what the barriers are.
Washington shows up regularly on the top 10 states of U.S. Green Building Council LEED-certified buildings.But on that list, it’s ninth for number of credentialed LEED professionals.As Seattle moves to decarbonize its buildings, how are you fostering expertise in green buildings?
We passed legislation a decade ago that was our foundation for getting to emission performance standards and building benchmarking and tune-ups. We built in a certification program where we would help support people getting their credentials. We partner with South Community College to do that, which is really cool.
The feedback we received from building owners was to give them a long lead time. We’re in a downtown crisis, a commercial real estate crisis. We need time to make these big investments. And we’re willing to do it because we see the reason behind it. But they need time. That was one of the compromises, because the climate science obviously tells us we need to do this yesterday.
The activists wanted a 2030 deadline. But our role as the Office of Sustainability in negotiating this was, we don’t want a goal that’s impossible to meet.
We need you guys to actually decarbonize. And if that means having some flexibility around how we do it, [or] the deadlines, you have to do it. We built in a lot of flexibility because we want to have the end result.
In a year from now, what do you want the Office of Sustainability & Environment to be able to say it accomplished?
I would love within the next year or two to really have that sense of how we’re going to go the distance on decarbonizing our residential homes.
Then there are a lot of other really exciting projects that we’re doing.
One of them is creating a resilience hub strategy. Resilience hubs are trusted community facilities where people can go if there’s a heat event, but also throughout the year to build social capital. I would love to be in a place where the plan is launched, which we expect to do, and we have the political cohesion to start putting together the funding and the will to make sure that every single neighborhood in our city has these kinds of places where people can hang out when it’s too hot — or even in floods, [or if] your refrigerator goes out [and you need] a safe place to store your food.
With regards to climate, Seattle does have this ethos that’s still alive and well. I think it’s that issue that brings people together in a way that other issues don’t right now.
In June, we witnessed the earliest ever category 5 hurricane to form in the Atlantic Ocean. The storm caused more than 1 million people to lose power for more than four days and caused deaths as far away as Vermont.
The climate crisis isn’t coming — it’s here now. We see it all around us — in cities and rural areas, and on the coasts and in every state in between. It impacts everything, from our economy to our national security.
Each passing year brings unprecedented heatwaves, wildfires, and extreme weather events that wreak havoc on our communities in more ways than one. Rising temperatures strain energy resources, escalate health care costs due to heat-related illnesses, and displace vulnerable populations from their homes.
The climate crisis demands swift and decisive action — like bolstering public transportation.
The dirty secret is that the transportation sector is the largest source of U.S. climate pollution — and 80% of transportation emissions come from the cars and trucks on our roads. It’s one of the only major sectors where emissions are still rising.
Because of this, investing in public transit is one of the most sensible and impactful things we can do to address the climate crisis on the scale that’s needed.
First and foremost, public transit offers a direct solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike personal vehicles, which contribute significantly to carbon dioxide and other pollutants, public transit systems can transport large numbers of people efficiently and with reduced environmental impact per capita. Robust public transit networks decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, curbing emissions that drive climate change.
Moreover, investing in public transit promotes sustainable development. By prioritizing accessible, reliable transit options, cities can mitigate urban sprawl and reduce the need for expansive road networks and parking infrastructure.
Public transit also promotes more equitable access to opportunities.
In much of the country, transportation remains a barrier that limits access to jobs, education, and health care, particularly for marginalized communities. By expanding and improving public transit services, policymakers can enhance mobility options for all residents, promoting economic inclusivity and reducing disparities exacerbated by car-centric planning.
Investing in public transit also bolsters resilience against the impacts of climate change. As extreme weather events become more frequent, public transit can serve as a critical lifeline, ensuring that communities remain connected and functional during emergencies. From evacuations to disaster response efforts, a robust transit system enhances a city’s ability to respond swiftly and effectively to crises.
Despite this, for far too long, policymakers in Washington have prioritized highways and cars over public transit.
Luckily, there’s new legislation in Congress to fix this. Bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate to provide more money to states and municipalities to increase their transit options. Congress should pass these bills without delay.
The climate crisis necessitates bold and proactive measures. Investing in public transit isn’t merely an option — it’s a moral imperative and a practical solution to combat climate change while fostering equitable and sustainable urban development. By prioritizing public transit, policymakers can chart a course towards a more resilient, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable future for all.
The time to act is now. As this summer has shown, we don’t have a moment to spare.
Science says many types of animals can serve as “umbrella species.” But donors and the public pay the most attention to tigers, orangutans and other charismatic megafauna.
Scientists have started to debate the long-held notion that conserving so-called “umbrella species” — typically charismatic megafauna — offers the best opportunities to protect ecosystems and the rest of their wild inhabitants. We see this in a new study published in the journal Biological Conservation titled “Selecting umbrella species as mammal biodiversity indicators in tropical forest,” which focuses on the 2.6 million hectare Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra, the last place on Earth where four classic umbrella species — orangutans, tigers, rhinoceroses, and elephants — are still found together in the wild.
The traditional idea goes like this: If species such as tigers and orangutans are protected, then all the smaller taxa beneath them enjoy protection as well. That approach still holds, but the authors of the study argue that smaller species — in this case Sunda clouded leopards and Sambar deer, as well as amphibians and invertebrates — are in fact better umbrella indicators because they tend to be found in areas with greater levels of species richness and ecological function.
As important as these “less charismatic” species are, there are several problems with the debate over broadening the definition of umbrella species.
As someone who has spent over a decade fundraising and doing fieldwork to survey and protect wildlife, and to develop ecotourism in Sumatra and Cambodia to get local community buy-in for conservation efforts, I can attest that charismatic megafauna are essential for habitats, particularly “protected areas,” to survive in Southeast Asia. It is surely no coincidence that the presence of these four charismatic species is why the Leuser Ecosystem, and the rest of its forest denizens, still exists.
A friend and I founded a small NGO called Habitat ID, and our first project was in Virachey National Park in northeastern Cambodia. At the time we started in 2012, it was the Kingdom’s largest national park but deemed a “paper park” — a term often used to describe protected areas that exist on maps but lack real protections. In this case poachers flooded into Virachey over the borders from Vietnam and Laos and from within Cambodia itself. The park was considered hopeless because its topography made it nearly impossible to patrol, and there were also allegations of mismanagement.
But an important question lingered over Virachey: Did it contain tigers?
Tigers had not yet been declared extinct in Cambodia (that happened in 2016), but at the time we held out hope that some of the big cats remained in the park. Having done my doctoral work studying the animist spirit mountains that form a pantheon along the Cambodia-Laos border, an area that had never been surveyed — and seeing that forest-smothered expanse of mountains from the panoramic Phnom Veal Thom Grasslands — I was willing to believe it was possible that a few tigers hung on there.
We held various fundraisers — actual in-person parties, as well as outreaches through online platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. We explained the vast remoteness to potential donors, and soon funding came through to buy camera traps, batteries, and protective cases, and provide money to pay the guides and porters (we paid for our own flights for this survey project, which spanned six years, and never earned a salary from it).
Tigers were never uncovered, but we did find a lost population of wild elephants; they hadn’t been confirmed in the park for well over a decade when we camera-trapped a herd of 17 in 2017. A paper about our elephant records appeared in The Cambodian Journal of Natural History, and today, largely thanks to our work searching for tigers, the long-established British NGO Fauna & Flora International is working in Virachey on a variety of programs, researching and protecting everything from frogs to the large-antlered muntjac to gibbons. Their involvement is set to be long term and to benefit the entire Virachey ecosystem.
None of this would likely have happened had Habitat ID not gone looking for tigers who, unfortunately, weren’t there. Tigers, even in their absence, provided conservation investment, benefitting less-charismatic species.
Another case in point comes from Sumatra, the focus of the new study. Numerous conservation NGOs work in the famous Leuser Ecosystem, striving to preserve the Sumatran elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and orangutan species that coexist there and nowhere else, so we never felt the need to piggyback on whatever they were working on. Instead Habitat ID centered on a neglected landscape in a mountain range south of Lake Toba called the Hadabuan Hills. With just four camera traps, we quickly confirmed the presence of Sumatran tigers and Malayan tapirs.
This endeavor, which is today expanding under PRCF’s stewardship, is working not only protect the obscure area’s tigers, but also other species listed as critically endangered by the IUCN such as helmeted hornbills and Sunda pangolins, as well as endangered species such as the Malayan tapirs, Sunda clouded leopards, marbled cats, Siamang gibbons, and everything “beneath” them on the conservation radar.
Again, it took a charismatic megafauna species to make this happen. And this is only our work.
Around the world charismatic megafauna attract money for conservation. The millions of dollars required to pay rangers to patrol, remove snares, and combat illegal logging and agricultural encroachment are not going to be raised by advertising the need to save deer, hog badgers, and wriggly worms, as important as they are to an ecosystem and as accurate as they may be as overlooked indicators of ecosystem health. Clouded leopards are beautiful animals, but it’s doubtful they could pull in the tens of millions of dollars desperately needed in besieged critical landscapes like the Leuser. On the contrary, donors piled in millions of dollars to protect Leuser’s “big four” within the last few years alone. Without them, the ecosystem would almost certainly suffer severe neglect.
These umbrella species also motivate action against one of the most serious threats to all wildlife and their forest habitats: infrastructure development in form of roads, dams, and palm oil plantations. When development plans are announced (or even unannounced, as is the case with the thousands of miles of “ghost roads” carving up Asia’s forests), there has to be a call to action in an attempt to halt them. Such was the case with the Tapanuli orangutan in Sumatra’s Batang Toru Ecosystem, designated as a new species in an effort to draw attention to a Chinese-funded dam project that would level much of forest landscape. While that designation of a new charismatic megafauna species has not stopped the dam — or the construction of a gold mine in the area, either — it has forced the government to take a closer look at what is going on in this ecologically important region. The outcome remains uncertain; but the matter is, at least, very much on the conservation and government radar.
Other cases are easy to find. In Thailand it’s largely believed that camera-trap images of a tigress with six young cubs in Mae Wong National Park in 2017 stopped or postponed the construction of a large hydroelectric dam that would have had devastating effects on the ecosystem and its wildlife. Kaziranga National Park in India exists because it’s home to a highly successful (if controversial) conservation program to protect its astounding population of 2,400 Indian one-horned rhinos; the park is also home to tigers, elephants, and plethora of other species. Many more protected areas in countries across Asia follow similar patterns.
Exciting news: Recent camera trap footage shows the presence of a new female tiger in Mae Wong National Park. Learn more about what this means for tigers: https://t.co/aJJ67gOiQrpic.twitter.com/5hKKSW3yW1
— World Wildlife Fund (@World_Wildlife) June 29, 2021
And megafauna umbrella species have an oversized ecological impact. Protection and even reintroduction of umbrella species such as leopards in India and wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the United States have been proven to be scientifically successful, and highly so.
In his 2021 book Leopard Diaries, Sanjay Gubbi writes: “The kingly mammal, a symbol of a healthy ecosystem, effectively helps in the conservation of smaller, lower-profile predators as well as other species that live in and make up its home range,” and he lists jungle cats, rusty-spotted cats, civets, four-horned antelopes, chinkara, pangolins, and porcupines among the beneficiaries of the presence of leopards (who are certainly considered “charismatic megafauna” in Sri Lanka and increasingly in Thailand’s Kaeng Krachan National Park, one of the Indochinese leopard’s final strongholds). Gubbi explains that leopards are superb seed dispersers — much more effective than often-cited primates, as leopards have home ranges nearly 10 times that of the primates of India. As such, roaming leopards keep forests healthy and even expand them.
Likewise, the wolves of Yellowstone, reintroduced in 1995, have had a transformative impact on the ecosystem, essentially saving the park’s ecology. By keeping the elk population in check, wolves have enabled riparian forests to regrow, allowing fish and amphibians to flourish in landscapes that had been denuded by the explosion in herbivore populations that thrived when the wolves had been hunted to extinction. The elk that the wolves don’t kill are fearful of the apex predators’ presence and don’t breed as much, allowing willow trees to grow unmolested again, which has helped beaver populations bounce back, with a complex cascading effect of benefits to all manner of smaller species.
The same thing happened in southern India when leopards were reintroduced, writes Gubbi: “The elimination of leopards ‘had created a landscape of fearlessness,’ where herbivores browse freely, impacting local vegetation. However, as soon as the large predators were reintroduced the area began to regain its vegetation, as the carnivores controlled where the herbivores browsed, bringing back a balance in the entire ecosystem.”
Umbrella species also inspire the public. Tourists from around the world fly to places like Sabah, Kalimantan, Sumatra, Thailand, Nepal, India, and many more countries specifically because they want to have a chance to see orangutans, tigers, rhinos, and elephants. The authors of the study would do well to ask the guesthouse owners, jungle guides, and protected area officials in places like Bukit Lawang or Ketambe in Sumatra, the Kinabatangan River Wildlife Sanctuary in Sabah, or Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan if they think tourists would fly from halfway across the world and spend money on their services if they didn’t have a shot at seeing orangutans and other large species. Locals need tourism money, and it’s the megafauna that draws international tourists in.
Finally, a new study in the journal Science argues that conservation does work, and umbrella species are a big reason why that’s true. Titled “The positive impact of conservation action,” the authors posit, among other things, that the establishment of protected areas is key to long-term conservation success. Relevant to the case for focusing on megafauna, the authors write: “Even when conservation interventions didn’t work for the species or ecosystem that they were intended to benefit, other species either often unintentionally benefited, or we learned from the result, ensuring that our next project or conservation action would be successful.”
At the very least, smaller species are not neglected by the emphasis on megafauna, at least in the sense that efforts are made to protect the large natural habitats needed for megafauna to live in the wild, and this is especially true in Asia. From the protection of hawksbill sea turtles in Bangladesh to the preservation of fishing cats across Asia’s dwindling wetlands to the last rhinoceros in Java, a strong focus on the preservation of charismatic megafauna will continue to play in vital role in overall conservation well into the future.
A veteran conservationist once put it to me bluntly: If the forest doesn’t have tigers or other big animals, then it’s shit. Most conservation scientists would disagree with that, but donors, activists and ecotourists probably won’t. And without them on board first, we may never get around to protecting everything else.
The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.
A single Franciscan manzanita plant nicknamed Francie, the last of its kind from the wild, charts an unlikely comeback in San Francisco.
Most visitors to San Francisco’s famed Presidio have no idea they’re strolling through the latest setting in a most implausible botanical story.
The star of the tale is a shrubby, red-limbed Franciscan manzanita, nicknamed Francie, and the fate of its kind may well rest on a combination of protection, the latest science, and the whims of reproduction.
But don’t go looking for Francie or its offspring just yet. The plant’s exact location remains a secret, its very existence fragile and its future not yet guaranteed.
In October 2009 a botanist driving along a busy San Francisco freeway spotted something growing in a traffic island surrounded by ramps near the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a “fairly ugly” bush, as Dan Gluesenkamp described it later, but he knew it was a manzanita — a genus of evergreen shrubs and small trees — and suspected it was the long-lost Franciscan manzanita, last seen more than 60 years earlier.
While California is home to 95 species and subspecies of manzanita, only two have been documented to live exclusively in the Bay Area. Both are exceedingly rare specialists adapted to that place’s soil configurations and fog. They are the Raven’s manzanita (Arctostaphylos montana ravenii) and the Franciscan manzanita (A. franciscana), named for the only city where it has ever grown in the wild and thought to have gone extinct in the wild in 1947.
Gluesenkamp was spot-on with his identification that day, and his timing couldn’t have been better: That section of Highway 101 was undergoing renovation. In fact, it was thanks in part to the project that Gluesenkamp could spot the bush at all. Before construction started, roadside trees had concealed the bush. Now those trees were being churned into wood chips, but a patrol car parked on the traffic island during the chipping operation spared the bush from being buried under the chip pile. For the first time in decades, the small island’s remaining vegetation had become visible from the road.
It was a little patch of serpentine substrate, caused by the state’s complicated geologic history. Serpentinite is California’s state rock, apple-green to black, often shiny and mottled with light and dark areas. Thanks to past earthquakes, San Francisco is laced with rocky outcrops of this unusual soil that stretch through the city. It’s rotten soil for most plants because it’s high in heavy metals, but manzanitas are adapted to it, thrive in it, and that’s where Franciscan manzanitas used to grow, on hills and ridges throughout San Francisco.
The traffic island had been disturbed just enough by earlier road crews that the single shrub was able to germinate and survive. But highway construction would soon doom its home to destruction. For this plant to survive, something had to be done — and fast.
Since they couldn’t build the new highway around the bush, the California Department of Transportation worked alongside conservationists to move it in 2010. Knowing that the last wild plant of its kind might not survive the ordeal, scientists took many precautions, including stem cuttings that could be rooted and cloned in a lab. The cuttings then went to six different institutions in the region, mostly botanical gardens. Scientists also took rooted branches that could be grown into separate shrubs. And the plant was in fruit, so they collected seeds and soil.
Then the last-known wild Franciscan manzanita was dug up and trucked about a mile away to a secret location in the Presidio, the old military post that had become part of Golden Gate National Park in 1994. The freeway-rescue was planted there and nicknamed “Francie.”
And the transplant was a success. Away from the freeway exhaust, the plant thrived. But could Francie reproduce?
Friends With Benefits
Michael Chassé is an ecologist with the National Park Service. He coordinates both the rare-plant monitoring program in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and weekly volunteer programs that engage the community in habitat restoration. At the time Francie was found, he was working on a master’s thesis about San Francisco’s two endangered manzanitas. “The existing Franciscan manzanita is one genetic individual,” he says. “You can clone it. But if you have a second genetic individual, you’re expanding the genetic capacity for the individual. When you have cross-pollination, you have genetic recombination.”
Each unique genetic individual is what’s called a genotype. Bringing different genotypes together allows for greater diversity.
Francie was already producing seeds before she was relocated in 2010. Manzanitas have both male and female reproductive parts, but they still need to cross-pollinate to produce viable seeds.
“You want to avoid inbreeding depression,” explains Chassé. “Some naturally rare species have the ability to exist with a small number of individuals, but with ecological restoration you want to maximize their ability to adapt to change over time.”
While Francie may have been the last plant of its kind in the wild, it was not the sole surviving Franciscan manzanita. Turns out there were others, salvaged during the Great Depression from a San Francisco cemetery slated for destruction.
“We’re fortunate in that folks back in the 1930s saw that habitat for these rare manzanitas was being lost pretty rapidly,” Chassé says.
Thanks to prescient botanists nearly a century ago, those salvaged plants still live in Bay Area botanical gardens. What’s more, they’re genetically distinct, meaning they can cross-pollinate with Francie. Park staff planted cuttings from the cemetery survivors nearby, hoping that in time cross-pollination would occur.
Franciscan Manzanita cuttings are taking root at the Presidio Nursery in hopes of growing our rare plant populations. pic.twitter.com/5sIDzSdrrJ
Genetic diversity is Chassé’s biggest concern for the survival of these endangered plants. “We face an uncertain climate future, so we need to maximize genetic diversity to adapt to changes over time. That’s true for a common plant like yarrow and true for a rare plant like the Franciscan manzanita.”
The Presidio is working with California State University East Bay, looking at the genetics of the Franciscan manzanita to determine how many distinct individuals there are in the world.
“It’s a small number. We think there are maybe four,” Chassé says.
So far, despite flowering and occasional fruits, staff have seen no reproduction, according to Lew Stringer, associate director of landscape stewardship at Presidio Trust. Along with Chassé, Stringer helped identify Francie in its original location. If Francie can’t reproduce, is there a different scenario that might constitute recovery?
Perhaps, Stringer says. In attempting to recover certain endangered plants, scientists may be shifting away from a focus on pure gene strains and shifting toward “gene flow,” allowing different but closely-related species — some nearly lost, some not — to cross and thus create new strains of manzanitas able to survive over time.
Enter a second endangered manzanita, even more hard-up than the last.
What Constitutes Survival?
The Raven’s manzanita is named after Peter Raven, who made botanical history at age 13 when he rediscovered the species. That was in 1952; not another living specimen of its kind has been seen since. Many a last-of-its-kind has perished over the past century, so the recovery plan for the Raven’s manzanita is still more challenging than the one for its kin.
The end goal here, Stringer says, is gene flow. For the Raven’s manzanita to carry on, scientists will intentionally cross its genes with those of its closest relative (not the Franciscan, although Raven’s has the potential to cross with that and other manzanitas). Next they’ll analyze the genes of those offspring and determine which crosses align best with Raven’s.
The blossoms of the Raven’s manzanita must be pollinated by another plant in order to produce berries and seeds. Photo: Michael Chasse/NPS
At this point in time, the genetic prospects for the Franciscan manzanita probably look brighter. But even if Francie manages to produce viable offspring, there remains the same challenge faced by so many recovering species: vanishing habitat.
Both manzanitas once cascaded down hillsides, growing out of rocky outcrops and ridges of serpentine substrate that stretch through the city. But in San Francisco, habitat is also real estate, and much of that land is now covered in buildings. Parks are the closest thing left to the wild, so that’s where Chassé and other staff are focusing their efforts, clearing out invasive plants to restore what habitat remains. So far they’ve placed more than 150 Franciscan manzanita plantings in six sites, all within the Presidio.
It’s a small world. But in the case of the Franciscan manzanita, it was a small world to begin with. The plant’s natural habitat probably never extended far beyond San Francisco. Compare this to bison, a species that once roamed most of the continental United States. Which recovery has further to go?
Some might argue that a plant that only lives within the confines of one park isn’t living in the wild. Yet Chassé, who leads efforts to recover both species, cites our love of national parks as one of the challenges to doing that. While the location of both plants is undisclosed, San Francisco is a very popular tourist destination, he says, and “the habitats are pretty sensitive. Keeping people on trails, making sure they’re not trampling rare plants like these, is a concern.”
One species she discovered, a critically endangered plant, eluded modern researchers for decades but has recently been rediscovered — as has Barber herself.
As my “Extinction Countdown” column approaches its 20th anniversary, I’m revisiting some past stories that still resonate today. Here’s one that’s been adapted, updated and expanded from an article originally published in April 2016.
Mary Elizabeth Barber, South Africa’s first woman ornithologist and botanist and a correspondent of Charles Darwin, described dozens of birds, plants and insect species over the course of her lifetime. More than a century after her death in 1899, several of those species still bear her name.
Barber herself, however, has all but been forgotten, like so many pioneering women scientists whose accomplishments have been eclipsed by their male colleagues.
But one species Barber discovered in 1862 may help to change that.
The striking plant called Mrs. Barber’s beauty (Lotononis harveyi) has long been a bit of a mystery. Although the samples Barber collected can still be examined in museums, the living flowers eluded rediscovery for more than a century.
But flash forward a few decades, and the beautiful white flower with densely hairy petals was finally found once again and photographed for the very first time in 2014.
Vincent Ralph Clark of Rhodes University in South Africa actually rediscovered Lotononis harveyi in 2009 — 147 years after Barber’s description was first published — while conducting field work in the Great Winterberg mountain range for his Ph.D. At the time he didn’t realize exactly what he had seen. A sample he collected that year was reexamined in 2014 by University of Johannesburg botany professor Ben-Erik Van Wyk, who suggested the white flower could be the lost species.
With that encouragement, Clark returned to the Winterbergs later that year and extended his search. He not only found the individual plant he saw in 2009 but also located several others. The confirmed rediscovery was finally published in 2016 in the journal PhytoKeys.
Clark also found that Mrs. Barber’s beauty probably eluded rediscovery not just because of its remote location but also due to its slow growth rate and rarity. He found just six specimens, two of which had damaged stems, and no evidence of recruitment of the next generation of plants. This, along with potential threats from fire and livestock, led him to suggest that the flower should be considered critically endangered.
There could be more than just those six plants out there, of course, since the steep mountain does a pretty good job of keeping its secrets. Additional expeditions would be required to find them, as well as to learn more about the elusive Mrs. Barber’s beauty. The 2016 paper noted that we know “virtually nothing about its biology.” That means that although this rare flower has now finally been found once again, we don’t know what it would take to preserve it or its habitat.
Eight years later we still don’t know much. No additional scientific papers have been published about Mrs. Barber’s beauty, and no observations of the species have been recorded on iNaturalist. However, the South African National Biodiversity Institute officially declared it critically endangered in 2021, noting that it’s “potentially threatened by grazing, fire, and competition from alien invasive species, which occur at low densities in some parts of its range.” The assessment still noted just six known examples of the plant.
But at least it’s been found. That’s just one step toward reaffirming the legacy of Mary Elizabeth Barber, whose scientific writings and artwork have enjoyed a bit of a posthumous resurgence since the rediscovery of the plant that bears her name. Historian Tanja Hammel published a 360-page monograph about her in 2019, which notes:
She would ultimately paint many more than the one hundred watercolors of plants, butterflies, birds, reptiles and landscapes that remain to this day. Sixteen of her scientific articles as well as a volume of poems were published. To achieve the publication of her articles, she corresponded with some of the most distinguished British experts in her fields, such as the entomologist Roland Trimen, the botanists William Henry Harvey and Joseph Dalton Hooker, and the ornithologist Edgar Leopold Layard. In doing so, she contributed not only to botany but also to entomology, ornithology, geology, archaeology and paleontology.
Meanwhile a 303-page collection of Barber’s correspondence — edited by Hammel, Alan Cohen, and Jasmin Rindlisbacher — was published in 2020. The book, Growing Wild — titled to symbolize “how Barber emancipated herself both from her wider social environment and from the ideal of the Victorian ‘angel in the house’ in order to publish her work and have her research archived and her life and career remembered” — reveals her pioneering feminism and unflinching determination.
At the same time, these new examinations of Barber’s history and legacy also shine a light on her disturbing 19th-century colonialist attitudes. For instance, as Hammel wrote in a 2015 paper, Barber greatly benefited from traditional knowledge and labor from her African collaborators but “she silenced or obscured [their] share in her work as part of a tactic to keep her credibility among urban and metropolitan scientists and to stress her authority as local expert.”
This last aspect, which Hammel puts into a broader historic context in her monograph, darkens the legacy of Barber, as it does other naturalists of her day. That’s one reason why so many peoples’ names are being removed from the species they described.
Maybe Mrs. Barber’s beauty will one day also be renamed. For now, though, this rediscovered plant serves a reminder of a groundbreaking feminist naturalist history has all but ignored or forgotten — like so many other women in science — and who, like the flower that bears her name, should not be allowed to fade into extinction.
As my “Extinction Countdown” column approaches its 20th anniversary, I’m revisiting some past stories that still resonate today. Here’s one that’s been adapted, updated and expanded from an article originally published in April 2016.