Hunting enthusiasts moved species like muskoxen and mountain goats to new environments, but their survival in those faraway lands may help animals in other areas.
In his dark 1967 sonnet “All Along the Watchtower,” Nobel Laureate songwriter Bob Dylan painted a dour picture of businessmen and plowmen abusing earth while clueless of its value. If it were written today, phrases like “climate catastrophe,” “pollution,” “species extinctions,” and “a planet gasping for air” might have made the list.
Echoing the song’s twin sins of greed and moral corruption, some may believe only a small sliver of the world’s stunning biodiversity remains healthy. Yet for those of us in the conservation arena, where we’ve long battled, there’s always room for optimism about the natural world. As a case in point, several notable mega-beasts have been arising as climate refugees, though their entry has been through an accidental backdoor.
Persistent but little-known species like Arctic muskoxen and North America’s mountain goats — one black in color, the other white, both with dark horns — survive in the cold icy shadows of melting mountain glaciers and Arctic tundra. Their survival in parts of their rapidly heating and deteriorating ranges has more to do with happenstance a century ago by hunting enthusiasts than any carefully crafted strategy to thwart our current climate conundrum.
Moveable beasts have been part of human history for a long time, as animals were purposefully transported to places where they never previously occurred. An answer to the “why” question is simple: to establish food security or provide trophies of “heroic” gamesmanship. In that context species little known to anyone but big game hunters were brought to the most unlikely of remote places.
Europe’s red deer and mountain-climbing chamois were sent to New Zealand. Mouflon, a wild sheep from the Lesser Caucasus, was resituated to Patagonia’s rugged mountains in South America and to New Mexico. Caribou and moose went to subpolar islands north of Antarctica, while other deer found transit to South Africa and Australia.
Smaller animals, too, were widely transplanted. That’s how beavers came to Tierra del Fuego, where they’ve now crossed the Straits of Magellan and some 100,000 may persist in Patagonia. Weasels, foxes (red and Arctic), and snowshoe hares were moved far from their natural northern boreal or Arctic homes, but they’ll never reunite with original populations since they’re on islands. All this human meddling has led to countless ecological disasters resulting from the impact of invasive species on local fauna.
Have any of these cold-adapted transplants — species moved well beyond their native ranges for our human fancy — contributed real conservation gains that safeguard Earth’s biodiversity? If so, the resituated cold-adapted quarry must benefit their brethren back in their natural ranges. Most do not.
Yet bright spots exist.
In the 1930s muskoxen from Greenland were transplanted to Alaska’s Nunivak Island in the Bering Sea. In these previously ungrazed and predator-free lands, they did well. In the 1970s descendants of those original transplants were released into Arctic Alaska, where original muskoxen had gone extinct by the 1890s. Others served the U.S. government’s collaborative interests with Russian scientists as additional descendants were moved in the 1970s to Chukotka’s Wrangel Island — where Joel has since studied them.
For mountain goats the journey to an inadvertent climate refuge shares similarities in the enhancement of biodiversity. First introduced to Washington’s Olympic Mountains in the 1920s, they flourished. Sometime after the 1938 establishment of Olympic National Park, goats were considered a nonnative species. Across recent decades, extending into the 2020s, goats were removed; yet their conservation value remains realized as they’ve been relocated to the Cascades, where they supplement native populations.
Now, decades later — and this is the central point — some of these forced emigrants to faraway lands of wind and tundra have been returned to their original ranges, where they augment the persistence of their native cold-adapted relatives.
Other cases demonstrate more nuanced but successful trajectories. In 1941 bison from Yellowstone were shipped to the Henry Mountains high above the warm deserts and canyons of southern Utah, where evidence of prior existence lacked. There, however, in the suitable cooler climes up to 11,000 feet, they reproduced successfully. Descendants were transferred back to areas of Uintah and Ouray Ute Reservation lands where bison once had persisted and where they now play important biocultural roles as a source of food and spiritual value.
In different ways success stories like these highlight examples where past relocation efforts contributed positively, if unintentionally, to current biodiversity and species protection. Needless to say, all of this begs the question of who decides when we should play God — what, when, and where various species should be transplanted, restored, or just introduced.
Economic and ethical tradeoffs will always reign — with a burden on the animals themselves. While Dylan had his metaphorical watchtower and plowmen digging up earth, today we’re the guardians. We know what biodiversity is worth. We must not only celebrate inadvertent past successes where species found their way to suitable climate “refuges” that helped them survive and thrive, but be deliberate and be proactive to continue achieving victories for conservation.
Animal-rights activists come together in San Diego to stand up for tortured animals and hope others will follow.
SAN DIEGO — I heard the protests about two blocks before I saw them.
It was a Wednesday night in mid-February and I was in California on a rare vacation, hoping to take a brief recharge before covering the latest environmental abuses of the second Trump administration. But I hadn’t fully disconnected: My news alerts carried continuous updates about mass program cuts and federal workforce firings initiated by Elon Musk’s DOGE team, not to mention the resulting protests that had started to pop up around the country.
So when I heard the chants and shouts on Pacific Beach that night, I wondered if people were out in force protesting Trump’s budget cuts.
Imagine my surprise when I realized I’d stumbled across a good old-fashioned animal-rights protest.
A small group of activists had gathered outside PB Shore Club, a second-floor sports-themed bar and restaurant just off the boardwalk. With their bullhorns blaring, the activists carried signs bearing slogans like “Every animal is someone,” “End Speciesism,” and “Fish feel fear.”
They were there, one of the organizers told me, to protest PB Shore Club’s weekly “goldfish races.” In these casually cruel events, two goldfish are placed in long, side-by-side tanks and patrons push them to the finish line by blowing through straws into the water behind the fish. Winners get part of their bar tab paid.
“We’re telling people that fish are just like us,” co-organizer Brooklyn Fontana told me on Feb. 19, the night of their third weekly protest. “They feel pain, they have families, and they don’t want to be exploited for cruel bar games.”
Videos of events posted by PB Shore Club show obviously distressed fish panicked from the air bubbling out of the straws behind them and bouncing off the sides of the tanks as they’re driven forward. And in a recent TV news report, two regular supporters of the goldfish races acknowledged that the fish live “for weeks” — goldfish can live a decade or longer if properly cared for — and that “some people try to eat the fish.”
Despite that support the protest was obviously working: The club’s outdoor patio, normally full of rowdy patrons, sat empty while crowds of people walked by on their way to other bars or restaurants.
While I spoke with Fontana, I saw several other people stop by to ask what the protest was about. A few shook their heads in disbelief.
“When people take the time to stop and ask us, they’re typically disgusted that the Shore Club is holding goldfish races,” Fontana said. “We have had at least five groups of people tell us that they’re no longer going in, and several people tell us that they have been upset about the goldfish races for a long time and are thankful someone is finally speaking up.” They’ve also received hundreds of signatures on their online petition and received positive coverage from local media.
But those opinions weren’t universal: Ten minutes before I arrived, someone had driven by the protest on a motorcycle and pepper-sprayed the activists and nearby crowds. The sting of the irritant still hung in the air.
The activists have also experienced verbal abuse. “Some of the younger crowd — especially those going to the bar — think it’s funny to harass us, mock us, or try to argue with us while usually not even understanding the cause or being passionate about goldfish racing,” Fontana says.
The fate of two goldfish may seem like a relatively minor thing to protest while crises like climate change, mass extinction, and environmental injustice are overwhelming us. But the cruelty and indifference at the root of all these problems remain the same.
And the tools to fight these societal ills all share common, effective elements: building community and vocal protest.
“If you see something you’re against, then go speak out on it,” said 19-year-old co-organizer Justice Owens. “Use the anxiety as fuel to help those who are being tormented. Their torture will always outmatch our anxiety and sometimes we just need to tell ourselves that. Because there is someone suffering that needs a voice, and we can be that voice.”
The activists, who affiliate under the name Bold Activists for Animal Liberation, a group founded by Owens, mostly found each other through social media. They suggest that might help people organize protests against abuses in their own communities — while building up their own networks and support systems.
Protestors in front of PB Shore Club. Photo: John R. Platt/The Revelator
“There are likeminded individuals wherever you are, even if you feel alone,” says Fontana. She recommends creating events on Facebook “and sharing it to as many local and animal-rights groups as possible.” For example, they received support from the action team at PETA, who added them to their database and provided some signs and leaflets.
Owens also suggested going to “go to vegan events, marches and protests. Make sure to network all you can to get your foot in the door.”
Starting a protest may require getting out of your comfort zone. “My advice is to be brave and get active,” said Fontana, who was arrested last year at the San Diego airport while protesting SeaWorld’s history of orca captivity. “It can be intimidating and uncomfortable to start, but it’s nothing in comparison to what the animals you are fighting for must be going through.”
Owens echoed that: “A lot of people aren’t willing to take on the task, but once you start, some will be inspired.”
Western monarchs face myriad threats. A network of advocates is doing everything they can to mitigate the dangers and unravel mysteries about monarch movements and behavior.
Every fall dozens of monarch butterfly enthusiasts deploy to groves on the California coast to tally the orange-and-black insects who spend the winter clustered on tree limbs. In 2024 there were more volunteers than ever, but dreadfully few of the colorful butterflies to count.
On Dec. 9 a monarch lover named Saunie Holloway posted numbers from her annual pilgrimage to the Pismo Beach grove on the Western Monarch Advocates Facebook page. This grove is usually a favorite: More than 16,000 butterflies had adorned the eucalyptus trees there in 2023.
In 2024 volunteers counted fewer than 200.
“I just stood in the grove and wept,” Holloway wrote.
On Jan. 30 the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation announced the official peak season numbers for Western monarchs: just 9,119 butterflies in 257 overwintering sites. It’s the lowest count since 2020, and the second-lowest since 1997.
The distressingly low numbers coincided with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Dec. 12 proposal to list the monarch as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The population west of the Rocky Mountains is in especially dire straits. Western monarchs, already a fraction of the size of the eastern population, has shrunk to just 1% of its historic abundance. If nothing changes, the Service estimates, western monarchs face a 99% chance of going extinct in the next 50 years.
As numbers have plummeted, advocates have doubled down to save their western butterflies. This loose network of conservationists, educators, and citizen scientists — as dispersed as the butterflies themselves — have used technology and social media to connect and effectively share their messages. Both awareness and acres of pollinator habitat planted have expanded.
These efforts have been critical, says Isis Howard, an endangered species conservation biologist at Xerces Society.
But to help monarchs recover, she says, “We need to work at a larger scale and address widespread issues … beyond what voluntary efforts have been able to achieve.”
Complex Behavior, Complex Challenges
Most western monarchs overwinter at some 400 sites on the California and Baja coasts. They leave their coastal groves in late winter and early spring, dispersing into California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and beyond, breeding along the way. It takes several generations to make these yearly journeys; the butterflies who return to coastal groves are not the same individuals as the ones who left the year before.
The reasons for western monarchs’ decline are complex. Pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change are the most oft-cited factors. With numbers so low, other factors — predators, disease, and extreme weather events, for example — loom larger.
This January, volunteers with the Western Monarch Count made a horrific discovery near the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary: dozens of monarchs scattered across a lawn, spasming as they died. Testing revealed their bodies contained an average of seven different pesticides.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has called for information and input on pesticide use as part of its public comment period on the animals’ proposed Endangered Species Act listing, which runs through March 12.
Climate change is also affecting monarchs across their range. In January the Palisades Fire destroyed monarch habitat in lower Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. More severe winter storms also threaten overwintering butterflies. Howard of Xerces Society says extreme heat likely affected the third and fourth generation of monarchs last year.
Tom Landis, a retired U.S. Forest Service nursery specialist, says climate change isn’t just making it harder for monarchs to thrive; it’s also changing their behavior.
Landis lives in southern Oregon, where he teaches workshops to help people plant critical “stepping stone” habitat for migrating monarchs — milkweed and nectar plant waystations within densely developed areas. He says he’s honed in on a bottleneck that may be preventing monarchs from making it to his region in the first place.
To successfully breed, monarchs who leave their overwintering sites in California must lay their eggs on milkweed — the exclusive diet of their caterpillars. “I don’t think they’re finding it,” says Landis. This is because the butterflies are leaving earlier than they used to.
Native milkweeds die back in winter and put out fresh new leaves in spring, too late for these early season migrants. Landis thinks we can — and should — help accommodate the butterflies.
Two California species emerge before all the others. Planting these in key places could help that first generation of monarchs as fly inland, Landis explains.
“We need to get them out on sites along the coast range and the interior valley so that when monarchs come out, they have some place to lay their eggs.”
Xerces Society has named planting pesticide-free early season native milkweed and nectar plants in the “early breeding zone” in California a top priority for recovering Western monarchs. Landis has been traveling to California to collect seeds, and with the help of a master gardener in Yuba City he’s developed techniques for successfully growing them in pots. Now California nurseries and master gardeners are helping him propagate them. The Forest Service has provided some funding to cover basic expenses.
Landis grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where monarchs were “annoyingly common.” He became enchanted with them after moving to the Pacific Northwest, where sightings are rarer, and co-founded Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates. He says isn’t surprised so many people are willing to help with his project.
“Everybody loves monarchs,” he says. “I call them charismatic microfauna.”
Calling All Citizen Scientists
Helping western monarchs will rely on filling in knowledge gaps about their movements and behavior — a difficult task with such a widely dispersed population. Xerces Society is supporting several efforts to better understand key characteristics, including fire risk, at overwintering groves. One project is experimenting with tiny GPS units that track butterflies as they migrate.
From the hundreds of volunteers with Western Monarch Count to backyard gardeners, citizen scientists have played a key role in helping unravel monarch mysteries over the past decade. David James, an associate professor at the Department of Entomology at Washington State University, has enlisted the help of citizen scientists to tag and track Western monarchs. Among other things his work has helped illuminate the migration routes of thousands of butterflies from Washington state.
The Fish and Wildlife Service wants people to help save monarchs, and its proposed listing is purposely flexible so people can actively engage in conservation. The listing may contain a “4(d) exception” — named after a section of the regulation that would otherwise prohibit handling, netting and small-scale captive rearing of monarchs.
Robert Coffan, who cofounded the organizations Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates and the larger Western Monarch Advocates, says he’s pleased the Service’s proposal doesn’t prohibit citizens from tagging butterflies. Affixing tiny wing tags on monarchs to help trace where they go has already yielded important insights about western monarch movements and behavior.
Coffan says hands-on citizen science can also light the passion of young conservationists by giving them the “monarch miracle.”
“To have them write the data down for the tag and let them know they are part in research for the whole country, they absolutely love it,” he says. “And if one of their tags is found, it’s absolute mayhem.”
Susie Vanderlip, a public speaker and monarch advocate who lives in Orange County, California, hopes the federal listing will prompt California to lift its restrictions on handling and tagging monarchs, which have been in place since 2021.
“Citizen scientists keep the focus on the value of monarch butterflies,” says Vanderlip, who has connected with monarch experts from around the country and exchanges information through her Facebook page. “Not just the value, but the iconic beauty and the spirituality that they represent to so many people.”
Vanderlip has accumulated anecdotal knowledge about Southern California monarchs, but she would like to see a study that tracks monarchs from her part of the state.
“Nobody’s tagged a bunch of monarchs in Southern California to see where they go. So we don’t know,” she says.
A Chain of Pearls
Loss of habitat is one of the primary reasons for the monarchs’ decline. A big factor is the dramatic increase in so-called “Roundup Ready crops,” bred to be resistant to the pesticide glyphosate. When Roundup is applied to herbicide-resistant corn and soy, it kills everything else that might compete with the crops, including milkweed and nectar plants.
Logging, urban sprawl and development have also displaced pollinator plants.
While replanting habitat — including both milkweed and the nectar plants that adult butterflies need — will likely not by itself save the monarch, it’s a critical piece of the puzzle and something nearly everyone can do.
“Having a chain of pearls of connected habitat in urban areas is really important,” says Coffan, adding that “waystations” along migratory routes can help ensure monarchs complete their migratory journeys to the coast. “Every single one of the monarchs in those [coastal] clusters came from somewhere else, either in California or from one of several other states.”
In Portland, Oregon, where monarch sightings are relatively rare, Ida Galash is on a mission to expand pollinator habitat.
Galash fell in love with the showy butterflies in 2019. She began documenting caterpillars and adult butterflies that visited her garden and posting the sightings to her neighborhood NextDoor group. Eventually she launched a Facebook Group called Portland Monarchs. Still not satisfied, she began stocking seed libraries with free native seeds and information sheets.
“I can’t save the monarchs myself,” says Galash. “I try to take down barriers and make it easier for other people to create habitat.”
In recent years she’s given away more than 4,000 seed packets for native showy and narrowleaf milkweed and 30 kinds of native, nectar-producing flowers.
Her social media posts have dispersed seeds of their own.
In December a woman named Pam saw Galash’s post about the dismally low overwintering numbers.
“After a few days of wringing her hands, she decided she had to do something,” says Galash. Pam, who lives in Salem, Oregon, posted on her local Buy Nothing group, offering to help anyone who wanted to replace their lawn with pollinator habitat. Twenty people responded. Pam purchased seeds and 300 native plants and recruited people to help install the new gardens.
“She was right on it,” says Galash. “One person can really make a difference.”
These new comics collections use satire, poetry, and science to shine a light on human failures — and who and what we need to save.
In 1970 the lead character in cartoonist Walk Kelly’s popular “Pogo” comic strip found himself in an ecosystem overtaken over by pollution and uttered the immortal words, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” *
More than 50 years later, comic books and graphic novels continue to tackle environmental issues, sometimes from Kelly’s satirical perspective, other times from a place of anger, and increasingly as an educational tool.
Here are our reviews of eight new or forthcoming graphic novels and comic-strip collections that tackle the Earth’s problems — from pollution and fossil fuels to extinction and climate change — as well as some of its marvels. You’ll find books for both adults and kids that will inspire you or make you angry (and then perhaps inspire you some more).
As always the title of each book is linked to the publishers’ sites, but you should also be able to find most of these volumes through your local library, bookseller, or comic shop.
Intense, lovely, and dreamlike, this collection of poems in comics form embraces the pain of fire, flood, and capitalism-driven climate change. More importantly, it crystalizes our collective strife into a call for justice. The book’s 17 poems are presented in a series of painted images, mostly four panels to a page.
In addition to the emotional text, the poems use the visuals to set or continue the mood and narrative. Some sequences go on for several pages without a single word — poetry by way of image and imagination. It’s a powerful experience that deserves our attention while it attempts to heal our souls. (Available March 25.)
What an utterly charming book for young readers — heck, even this jaded older guy enjoyed it. Lambelet walks, or swims, us through the amazing variety of cephalopod life, using an insecure dumbo octopus (a real species from the genus Grimpoteuthis) as our tour guide. This is a science-based book — it doesn’t shy away from big words like “chromatophores” — but it’s also narrative-driven, colorful (both in art and character), and full of humor. You can’t help but love the doubt-filled narrator (who gains some self-confidence by the end of the book), or the other octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, and nautiluses we meet along the way.
Quite simply this is science comics done right, and it could help any young reader gain an appreciation for the ocean and everything that lives in it. It’s also apparently the first book in an intended series on marine life, although the subject of next title has not yet been announced. Whatever that one covers, you can guarantee we’ll be first in line to read it. (Available March 4.)
If you found yourself in possession of a time machine, would you travel to the past to kill Hitler before he started World War II and the Holocaust? Or would you go forward to better understand the pending threats of climate change — and then hopefully prevent them from happening?
Since this review is published in an environmental publication, I’m sure you can guess which path the protagonist takes in this entertaining (and occasionally tense) graphic novel.
Lay, best known for humorous and satirical efforts such as the “Story Minute” comic strip and the Simpsons comic book, takes a more serious turn here. Following cues from H.G. Wells’ most famous novel (presented in this context as nonfiction), our 67-year-old heroine (based on Lay herself) bounces forward in time, encountering autocracies, out-of-control heat, biodiversity loss, flooding, fire, civilizational collapse, and what may become Earth’s dominant form of … life?
That sounds bleak, but strong cartooning and stronger characters — and yes, an undercurrent of humor — make this a welcome exploration of both today and our potential tomorrows.
In the not-so-distant future of this melancholy and magnificent graphic novel, Earth has all but used up its energy supplies and civilization (if you can call it that) has started to collapse. In a last-ditch hail Mary, a dying loner (or is that “loser?”) finds himself recruited to make one-way race to Mars. If he becomes the first human to set foot on (occupy) the red planet, he can lay a claim to its mineral and fossil-fuel resources on behalf of his corporate fake-meat “benefactors” — who in turn promise to save humanity (and net a healthy profit).
The weightlessness of space, the company tells him, will slow his cancer’s growth, but his inevitable death remains part of the plan. He’s disposable — a human flag to plant in the soil, useless to his corporate masters after he completes his mission. As long as he gets there first and fast, extraction crews can follow, and the energy (and money) will flow.
If you’ve read anything else by Russell (God Is Disappointed in You, Not All Robots), you know he touches on climate change and other environmental problems in many of his graphic novels, which also dig deep into history, philosophy, social issues, and religion, usually with a satirical lens. This one is no different.
What is different in Traveling to Mars is the tone. The satire is subtler, while the introspection is ramped up to 11. This is a book about a man left alone on a spaceship for months with little more than his thoughts, and those thoughts dig deep. I don’t know if readers will come out of it with any insight into energy issues, but Russell’s character-driven ruminations on the state of the planet and humanity are sure to energize those who take the journey.
Just as George Orwell’s Animal Farm took on Stalinism, this graphic novel uses domesticated animals — in this case dogs, cats, and rabbits living in a shelter — to satirize and warn about the rise of Trumpism.
It starts simply. The animals, tired of seeing their unadopted brethren euthanized, stage a revolution and take over the shelter. The cats and dogs form an unstable alliance and election system, with the rabbits going along mostly out of fear of being eaten. But hunger threatens them all — they drove off the humans who fed them, after all —until a kitten points out the shelter’s webcam, which the workers had used to promote animals up for adoption.
The animals soon start performing on the webcam for an eager audience around the world, earning donations and food to be delivered to the shelter.
That opens the door for a cartoonish, overweight buffoon of a bulldog named Piggy to rise to fame and power — with bloody, revenge-soaked repercussions.
Published as five issues starting in 2023, long before the election, this new collected edition packs an extra powerful wallop now that Trump is back in office. It’s not really an environmental book, although the early pages contain several strong messages about animal rights. It is, however, a brutal examination of our times and a cautionary tale of power and personality.
King, a former CIA counterterrorism officer, has a lot to say about fascism and cults. It’s a bit heavy-handed at times, and comes about six months too late, but perhaps it will serve a warning for all of us animals about who or what might follow. (Available April 1.)
This painfully funny collection of one-page comic strips from the “War and Peas” webcomic takes a hard-edged satirical razor to humanity’s follies, including climate change, deforestation, extinction, and all the other laugh riots of the 21st century.
Of course, the creators aren’t mocking climate change. They’re making fun of people, and I’m sure you’ll recognize a few of their characters’ actions. You might even find a few moments when reading the book feels like holding a mirror up to yourself.
Like many webcomics the art here is somewhat simple and the gags are occasionally crude. But Hi, Earth comes with a unique point of view: Nature is celebrated, Earth survives, and people get knocked down a few pegs — although at one point a tree acknowledges that it sure is nice to be hugged.
This is a short book — you can dive through it in half an hour — but it will leave you thinking (and maybe chuckling under your breath) long after you’ve finished reading it. (Available April 1.)
An ambitious graphic novel that aims to read like a paranoid celluloid thriller. Alone on Canada’s Baffin Island in the Arctic, videographer Brynne Brautigan has spent months trying to get “the shot” of endangered red knots. She’s on deadline, feeling pressure from her bosses, and possibly starting to crack from extended isolation. In the first few pages, she courageously (if improbably) frees a wounded polar bear from a trapper’s snare, an act that’s supposed to illustrate … something about her, but which immediately puts the book on awkward footing.
Speaking of awkward footing, Brynne soon spies two mountain climbers through her camera. As they make their way up the icy, precarious peak, they turn on each other. Did Brynne just witness a murder?
It all twists and turns from there, getting ever-more paranoid and ever-more improbable. The book moves like a blizzard — fast, dark, and frigid — but ultimately falls flat and left me feeling cold. I’ll give it bonus points for the wildlife angle, but the humans never come to life on the page.
Hazel McCrimlisk can talk to animals — but she’s no Dr. Doolittle. She’s an 11-year-old girl living in a science experiment gone wrong and learning to communicate with the genetically modified animals around her. She’s also on her own following the kidnapping of her scientist parents by a mysterious monster (a crime that’s been completely ignored by the people who run the Perfect Animals Worlds Biosphere). Hazel and her animal friends, including a pint-sized elephant named Nina, set off in search of her parents and journey through a man-made ecosystem that’s supposed to be an ecological wonderland but gets darker at every turn.
Fitzgerald, a frequent New Yorker and New York Times cartoonist, fills the pages of this book — her first foray into fiction — with lush brush strokes and an appreciation for nature (and some underlying, if softly spoken, contempt for what humans can do to it). She’s developed some interesting characters, especially Hazel, who is full of doubts and fears and makes mistakes but uses her brain and keeps moving forward. Her animal characters are both fully drawn and a little too convenient (Nina has a few abilities that further the plot but make little biological sense).
As for Fitzgerald’s villains — spoiler alert — I found them a bit shallow and not much of a mystery (despite the book’s title). The kidnapping and the entire ecosphere turn out to be a plot to rewild the planet with genetically modified animals — at base, a good intention, warped by anger, arrogance, twisted science, and capitalism.
But Hazel loves animals more truly and deeply than the eco-terrorist bad guy, so of course she wins in the end. It all adds up to a fun journey that may generate some conversation without being too heavy-handed. (Available April 1.)
That’s it for this month, but you can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations — including several more graphic novels — in the “Revelator Reads” archives.
* Correction: This column originally attributed the Pogo quote to a 1952 comic strip, but it actually first appeared on a 1970 Earth Day poster, and in the strip the following year. Cartoonist Walt Kelly first used a version of the quote in the text introduction to his 1953 book, The Pogo Papers. Thanks to several keen-eyed Pogo fans for the corrections!
Home to important plant and animal species, this mountain and its spectacular views face threats from climate change, wildfires, and the border wall.
The Place:
Located just north of the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego County, Otay Mountain is the highest summit within the San Ysidro Mountain range at 3,568 feet (1,087 meters). This rugged habitat is part of an ancient chain of volcanos creating the foundation of fertile metavolcanic soils that support numerous rare plant species and plant communities of coastal sagebrush and chaparral.
Why it matters:
Otay Mountain is a unique ecosystem and home to many sensitive plants and animals, including the largest stand of Tecate cypress trees (Hesperocyparis forbesii), which is the host plant for the imperiled Thorne’s hairstreak butterfly (Callophrys gryneus thornei), whose larvae feed on young Tecate cypress stems. Only five very small populations of the butterfly exist following the fires here in 2003 and 2007.
Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
A few other important plant species on the mountain include:
Mexican flannelbush (Fremontodendron mexicanum)
Otay manzanita (Arctostaphylos otayensis)
Otay Mountain ceanothus (Ceanothus otayensis)
Otay Mountain lotus (Hosakia crassifolia var. otayensis)
Cleveland’s bush monkeyflower (Diplacus clevelandii)
Southern mountain misery (Chamaebatia australis)
Gander’s pitcher sage (Lepechinia ganderi)
Chaparral pea (Pickeringia montana)
Meanwhile the mountain is also home to several species of sensitive fauna:
While it’s protected from development, Otay Mountain is not safe from wildfires or the impacts of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The construction of roads and grading have negatively affected the sensitive habitat. Migrant camps can degrade habitat and increase fire risk, and the heavy border patrol presence adds to pressures on the land. So does other off-road activity, as this has become a popular OHV destination.
Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Climate change also has a detrimental effect and has increased fire frequency. Fires can be particularly destructive to Tecate cypress. Although it does benefit from fire for seed germination, burned trees do not re-sprout from the roots and may take a decade to become mature enough to produce cones and longer to reach peak reproduction. An increase in fire frequency prevents the Tecate cypress from building up a healthy quantity of cones amongst its branches, limiting their ability to bounce back from back-to-back fires.
The habitats in general are prone to degradation with increased fire frequency. Fires offer more opportunity for erosion, invasive grasses to take over, and other effects.
My place in this place:
This mountain has high biodiversity, particularly for rare plant species. The Native Plant Gene Bank Collection, which I oversee, gathers rare plant seeds here for long-term conservation. We began collecting seeds from plants (rare or not) in 2006 and to date we have more than 65 collections from the area.
Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
I love visiting this mountain. The views as you approach the peak, which are accessible to the public via Minnewawa Truck Trail or Otay Truck Trail, are spectacular. On a clear day you can see the rural foothills east of Tijuana into Tecate, Otay Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, and suburban San Diego. The roads can be quite rugged, with steep drops into canyons. In addition to the views, these steep hillsides will be awash with color from the many plants that comprise the coastal sage scrub or chaparral bloom profusely in the spring. You’ll also observe the skeletal remains of large Tecate trees that burned during the most recent fire.
Exploration is better on foot, and there are various paths leading through the habitat.
Who’s protecting it now:
The Otay Mountain Wilderness is a designated U.S. Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Protection Act and has been managed by the Bureau of Land Management since 1998, effectively preserving 18,500 acres. California Department of Fish and Wildlife also protect 1,200 acres of the nearby Otay Mountain Ecological Reserve. There are other property boundaries that are managed by other local government or privately owned entities.
What this place needs:
The legal protections for the land are important but insufficient. Protected areas can’t safeguard against climate change and fire; nor are they very effective against border impacts. Otay Mountain needs active management and increased awareness. This ecosystem needs funding support from the federal legislature to help BLM do weed management and clean up illegal camps, make seed collections to conserve diversity, and provide a resource to reseed post-fire. Supporting government funding of our “green infrastructure” helps the land managers with these needed management actions.
Experts say the growing commercial trade in wild, threatened species like corals is unacceptable and irresponsible.
On any given day, in shops around the world and online, customers can pay as little as a few dozen dollars to buy living corals for their aquariums. While some of these coveted, brightly colored pieces of coral are sourced from farms, others come directly from ecosystems that are dying, such as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
“Every place I know is dying at different paces,” says Tom Goreau, president of the nonprofit Global Coral Reef Alliance. “We’re looking at the last survivors almost everywhere.”
Yet the commercial trade in live corals from the Great Barrier Reef continues — as it does from other reefs around the world — and in fact has increased dramatically over the past 20 years.
Remarkably, trade endures even during catastrophic bleaching events. The Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst bleaching event on record in 2024 as temperatures in the Coral Sea hit a 400-year high. Despite this historic event Fisheries Queensland — the agency that manages fishing activities there — neither temporarily closed its commercial coral fishery nor imposed emergency restrictions on extraction.
For Goreau the continued trade in corals at this juncture begs a question: “Should we be exploiting an ecosystem that’s going extinct in front of our eyes?”
Trade is not Goreau’s area of focus, but identifying and tackling threats to reefs certainly is. In the 1980s he developed the method for using satellite sea surface temperature data to predict coral bleaching. Goreau is also the co-creator of BioRock, a technology that facilitates the recovery of marine ecosystems like reefs.
Goreau acknowledges that global warming overwhelmingly poses the biggest threat to reefs. While he describes trade as a “small part of the problem,” he opposes commercial exploitation of corals at this critical time because these ecosystems are already so dangerously at risk.
Countries “shouldn’t be exporting corals in this day and age,” he insists.
A Presumption of Innocence, a Wide-Ranging Trade
Queensland, on the other hand, has long considered the coral trade to pose little threat to the Great Barrier Reef. The state’s coral fishery — the area where it permits corals and similar organisms like sea anemones to be fished — has operated under the principle that “impacts of harvesting are likely to be low,” as explained in a 2021 assessment of the fishery by Australia’s federal government.
Authorities have considered the exploitation to be low risk because fishers selectively target corals guaranteed to sell in the aquarium trade and extract them by hand, rather than using broader or more destructive methods that risk harming other marine species, among other reasons.
Marine conservation ecologist Morgan Pratchett has conducted extensive research into Queensland’s fishery. As he put it to me last year, the state government has “assumed” coral extraction on the Great Barrier Reef to be sustainable. However, with reefs at risk from escalating threats like climate-induced bleaching, he said the trade in corals from Australia and elsewhere is being subject to increased scrutiny and restrictions.
Some global bodies have recognized the trade as a threat to reefs for decades. Notably, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora has restricted commerce in stony corals, meaning corals with a skeleton, since 1990.
This treaty body regulates global trade in wild species where commerce itself is among the risks to their conservation. It lists species depending on their risk of extinction and the trade rules vary accordingly.
In the case of stony corals, CITES regulation does not forbid commercial trade but makes it subject to conditions such as permit requirements.
But even with that modicum of control, the global trade in corals has grown substantially in the past few decades, with Indonesia and Australia currently topping the list of exporters. “Harvesting” of corals in the Queensland Coral Fishery has increased by around 700% since 2006, reaching over 620,000 pieces in 2021. Meanwhile Indonesia permitted the harvesting of more than 411,000 live corals in 2021. Fisheries commonly target stony corals to supply the aquarium trade. But other reef materials like coral rock with soft corals or other live organisms attached are also traded.
In some countries corals are also targeted for the curio and jewelry trades. Some but not all of this trade is regulated by CITES. NOAA warns that the exploitation of Corallium corals — typically for jewelry — is often unsustainable and media reports show there is extensive illegality associated with it.
Some harvested corals don’t go to the end-consumer: They end up in coral aquaculture, which grows and breeds coral that will then end up on the market. Experts generally view this as a more sustainable form of exploitation. Around half of Indonesia’s exports originate from coral farms, according to its 2023 sustainability assessment of the trade, whereas Australia largely exports wild-sourced corals.
Countries that are party to the international treaty meet every two to three years to consider at-risk species for new or additional protection, with interim meetings of its specialist committees happening in between. The process for listing and uplisting species in CITES’ Appendices is notoriously slow. This means the treaty often fails to adequately restrict trade in species prior to them becoming threatened.
There are exceptions to this. For instance, CITES has listed entire groups of species in the treaty at their taxonomic level — i.e., genus, family or above. These listings typically occur to safeguard groups that are particularly vulnerable to overexploitation or to protect at-risk species within “lookalike” groups, meaning species that are hard to distinguish from each other. This is how all stony corals came to be regulated by CITES, including species not yet officially recognized as threatened.
However, species like stony corals — which face sudden, sharp catastrophic events that ultimately contribute to their longer term declines — highlight a particular flaw in the CITES system: It does not have an “emergency brake” mechanism that could quickly prohibit trade entirely when a species faces an abrupt crisis, as has happened with corals in the past two years.
Conservation biologist Alice Hughes points out that individual countries can list species in CITES’ Appendix III — which requires permits for all trade — on an intersessional basis, meaning that this appendix offers a quicker route to trade prohibitions than typically happens within CITES. However, Appendix III is country-specific, so parties are able only to list and prohibit trade in their national populations of a species; populations from outside those countries remain unprotected unless they have their own listing.
But Hughes says this appendix is rarely applied as an emergency brake to safeguard species facing climate disasters, disease, or other crisis situations. Rather, countries tend to use Appendix III for listing endemic species where trade itself poses the risk.
That means CITES still lacks adequate mechanisms to prohibit trade in species that are hit by sudden crises. Instead, countries decide — slowly — whether to make changes in these circumstances. In some cases, that can take years.
Many experts worry that coral reefs don’t have that kind of time.
Managing the Coral Trade: Each Country Is on Its Own
On the national level, neither Indonesia nor Queensland mandates closure of its coral fisheries during bleaching events, according to email responses provided by Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries and Indonesia’s Director General of Marine Spatial Management Victor Gustaaf Manoppo.
Fisheries Queensland and Manoppo’s Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries respond to bleaching in other ways, such as working with varied stakeholders to monitor, evaluate, and disseminate information on bleaching. Both departments say these findings inform long-term plans for reef management.
Additionally, the jurisdictions have management frameworks in place that protect certain corals from exploitation during bleaching events.
Manoppo tells me by email that fishing is prohibited in the core zones of Indonesia’s Marine Protected Areas. These areas are safeguarded for their “ecological value including resilience to climate change,” he explains, which means reefs here are “expected to have a higher chance of survival” in the event of bleaching. In other zones, Manoppo says, utilization is permitted but controlled, such as through restrictions on the scale of activities and fishing gear types.
The Indonesian government also sets a quota for the harvest of different genera or species in each province where extraction is permitted, according to its sustainability assessment.
Meanwhile coral extraction is prohibited in around 38% of Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. In emailed statements, DPI points out that harvesting is permitted only under license, with species-based catch limits in place that “ensure biomass levels are maintained at 60% for key stocks.” DPI insists that its management approach is “highly precautionary” and ensures targeted corals are resilient to pressures like fishing and bleaching.
Queensland has also worked with industry over the years to develop response plans for events like bleaching, which include a provision for emergency closures of fisheries. I asked DPI whether this provision has ever been utilized. I received no response.
The plans also contain voluntary recommendations for fishers, such as instructions to avoid targeting stressed corals, although this guidance is not subscribed to by all industry members, according to Australia’s federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
Nonetheless, in its emailed statements DPI says coral fishing “does not occur in areas impacted by climate events” because “impacted and unhealthy corals are not commercially desirable or viable to harvest.”
Troubling Findings
Despite the coral trade being subject to management and CITES oversight, Hughes argues that “with bleaching and acidification posing major risks to corals, stacking more risk from harvest seems unnecessary and irresponsible.”
She adds, “Even if the fisheries are purported to be precautionary, that does not mean they properly account for all risks.”
Accounting for all risks is impossible because there are many unknowns in the trade, according to Pratchett. He told me we lack robust information about the populations of targeted species, the level of exploitation they face, and how vulnerable they are to other stressors.
To address some of these information gaps, Australia’s climate and environment department commissioned Pratchett to carry out surveys of nine heavily targeted coral species — “key stocks” in the Queensland fishery — in 2023-24. This authority decides whether Queensland is permitted to export corals.
The department disclosed some of Pratchett’s findings in an assessment of the QCF in October. He found a “significant difference” in the abundance and biomass of several species in fished areas compared to unfished areas. In some fished areas, certain species had biomasses less than 60% of those in unexploited areas, while other species had similarly lower abundances than their counterparts in unfished areas.
Pratchett also found reductions in average sizes and color varieties in fished areas, presumably because fishers extract the bigger, more colorful corals.
Although the environment department acknowledged that the surveys pointed to “significant localized depletion” for some species, it approved coral exports for another three years in its assessment. The approval came with conditions, including a requirement that Queensland review information on coral species at risk from the fishery and change catch limits where necessary by August 2025.
The department also instructed the state to develop and implement a “Severe Event Response Plan” to formally guide fishery management in the event of emergencies like bleaching by October 2026. A spokesperson confirmed by email that Queensland is required to “adaptively manage” the fishery in the interim, too.
Asked about its plans for adaptive management, DPI sent this unattributed statement: “Fisheries Queensland will continue working in collaboration with key stakeholders during all future events in support of responsive, adaptive management, with a significant amount of work already underway and planned for responding to severe weather and disturbance events.”
Considering Pratchett’s findings, prohibiting exports seems a wise choice because the impacts he uncovered, such as lower abundances and reduced sizes of heavily targeted species, have implications for reef ecosystems.
For one thing, Goreau explains, corals’ reproductive capacity is “determined by size and not by age.” This means reduced coral sizes risks impacting spawning because “if corals are too small, they’re not reproducing,” he says.
In turn, diminished populations of Acropora species risks inhibiting recovery of wider reef communities after bleaching because they are ecological engineers. Goreau describes Acropora as “the best corals of all.” As fast-growing, branching, reef-building corals, he says they provide high surface cover and dissipate waves that risk breaking other corals, while also providing the optimal habitat for fish.
Considering factors like this, trade seems to be an important block in the teetering Jenga tower of corals’ future survival.
Business As Usual
While the coral trade offers a stark example of how wild organisms continue to be exploited while on the brink of disaster, there are many others.
Hughes points to Asian songbirds as another example. They’re in crisis, threatened by both a loss of their homes and the wildlife trade. Even with trade as a known primary threat for this group, conservationists face a lengthy battle convincing CITES to regulate their trade, Hughes says. She explains that each species will have to assessed and listed separately, which is extremely challenging as countries do not collect robust data on the populations and exploitation levels of most wild species.
Hughes says CITES could take practical steps to protect species in crisis, such as working to better enable swift decisions on regulating trade in those species. But on a more fundamental level, Hughes believes a paradigm shift is necessary.
“We need to reconsider how we view wild species,” she argues, highlighting that they are often seen as commodities above all else.
For Goreau, the commodification of coral reefs and their inhabitants right up to the ecosystems’ bitter end is regrettable but not surprising.
“There are many factors killing reefs,” he says, and the determination of countries — particularly rich ones — to maintain business as usual for trade in nature’s “goods” is at the core of every reason he mentions, be it dredging, agricultural pollution, or fossil fuel production.
“We have pushed reefs past their capability for surviving,” he warns. “They really can’t take very much more.”
From tiny seeds come big results: replanting seagrass meadows that help fish, protect coastlines, and absorb climate-heating carbon dioxide.
Chris Patrick is optimistic about seagrass restoration.
“There are lots of kinds of restoration happening in the world — mangroves, oyster reefs, forests, coral reefs,” says the director of the aquatic vegetation restoration program at Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “But seagrass is one of the only systems I can think of where it happens very fast if conditions are right. You get a 15 to 1 return. For every acre planted, 15 acres grow. Some restored areas look like they did 100 years ago.”
What a difference a century can make.
Since the early 1900s, vast coastal seagrass meadows — think of underwater fields of long, swaying plants that host hundreds of nearby marine species — have dwindled and even disappeared around the world. They’ve succumbed to a growing list of insults that includes thermal stress from climate change, dredging, coastal development, intentional removal, disease, and increasing pollution runoff from agriculture and other human activities.
Because seagrasses live below the water, out of sight, the magnitude of the loss has only recently begun to sink in. A 2020 study reported a global net loss of 29% or more than 19,000 square miles (about the size of Costa Rica). The western Gulf of Mexico alone saw a 23% decline and parts of the United Kingdom 44%.
On the other hand, scientists restoring these coastal ecosystems see more success than with other marine environments. Collecting seeds and placing them in suitable habitat is generating the most positive results along the U.S. East Coast and elsewhere.
Why Seagrass Matters
Seagrasses — which evolved from terrestrial plants — have roots, stems, and leaves and produce flowers and seeds. They form vast underwater meadows that provide multiple ecosystem services such as habitat for a variety of marine animals. They provide foraging and spawning grounds for dugong and sea turtles and shelter for fish and invertebrates.
Seagrasses also are nursery habitat — key areas for young animals to grow — for over 20% of the world’s largest fisheries, according to information provided via email by the UK-based conservation group Project Seagrass. One study estimated that the UK’s historical seagrass meadows could have supported about 400 million fish. Today its remaining meadows support approximately 50 million.
Project Seagrass also notes that the plants improve water quality by filtering out pathogens, bacteria, and pollution.
The plants also benefit the planet as a whole: They sequester up to 18% of carbon stored in the ocean, capturing it 35 times faster than tropical rainforests.
The roots of seagrasses strengthen the seafloor and, along with their leaves, weaken wave energy and storm surges to help protect coastal communities. This slowing of waves also causes sediment to drop out of the water, feeding bacterial communities that metabolize nitrogen compounds and reducing excess nutrients in the water that can lead to algal blooms and low oxygen levels.
Spreading Seeds
Damaged meadows can regenerate on their own from pockets of surviving plants — but only if what caused the damage passes or is removed and only in areas close enough to be reseeded by those survivors.
That happened along much of the U.S. East Coast after a disease in the 1930s wiped out about 99% of the most common species, Zostera marina, or eelgrass, Patrick says.
But regeneration never happened on Virginia’s coast, where bays are too isolated from each other to be reseeded by survivors outside of them.
Today these bays have the right conditions for seagrass growth, though, which made them natural targets for restoration efforts. In 1999 scientists from the University of Virginia’s Coastal Research Center, The Nature Conservancy, and VIMS distributed more than 70 million seeds in these bays. To date the effort has created new meadows covering more than 10,500 acres.
With funding from NOAA, the participants seeded another 80 acres in Burton’s Bay in fall 2023 and another 45 acres in fall 2024. Teams also have set up stations to collect water quality data and to monitor marine life. The project is set up to be funded through 2027 and has not yet been affected by the general threat to all federal funding under the Trump administration.
A Garden Experiment
Another effort kicked off in 2022. A series of workshops hosted by The Nature Conservancy brought together experts on seagrasses, corals, agriculture, forestry, and plant genetics to explore restoration strategies used for other ecosystems.
“We went to forestry groups, coral groups, all these different silos to find out their thinking,” says Boze Hancock, senior marine restoration scientist with The Nature Conservancy’s global oceans team. “Forestry and grassland groups are dealing with the same thing on land: changes happening too fast for natural adaptation to keep up. But different strains of plants on different hills and mountains at different latitudes have a lot of adaptations to test. The quickest way to look at all the variables and tease out which ones work in your area is a common garden experiment.”
This strategy grows populations from the same species collected from different regions and microclimates under common conditions to see how they respond. Scientists can use that information to identify strains more likely to thrive in specific conditions and then strategically relocate them, a process called assisted migration. This technique also is being used in coral restoration.
Growing seagrasses from different latitudes along the East Coast in a common garden could help match genetic tolerance to conditions such as water temperature and pollution in specific locations, explains Hancock. A population thriving in a Virginia estuary today, for example, might be suited for the warming waters of Long Island in the future.
Scientists from national parks and National Estuarine Research Reserves on the East Coast, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Stony Brook University, and other involved groups plan to use those “most likely to succeed” strains in restoration.
Using seeds allows scaling up of restoration efforts. That, says Hancock, is key to keeping up with the rapid rate of change.
“Back in the 1980s, [seagrass] restoration tended to be slow and steady, transplanting root stock one plot at a time.”
Across the Pond
Over on the other side of the Atlantic, the same list of insults killed off as much as 92% of seagrass meadows in the UK during the past century, according to Project Seagrass.
In 2019 the organization, along with Swansea University and the nonprofit Pembrokeshire Coastal Forum, piloted the UK’s first major seagrass restoration project, “Seagrass Ocean Rescue: Dale,” off the southwest coast of Wales. According to information provided by Corrinne Cox, communications officer at Project Seagrass, the effort collected and planted over 1 million Z. marina seeds on 2 hectares (almost 5 acres).
The team chose the site based on habitat suitability modelling and historic and anecdotal records indicating the Welsh coast had much more extensive seagrass historically than now. Seeds were hand-collected primarily in North Wales by scuba divers, snorkelers, and people wading at low tide.
According to Cox the project collected and processed an estimated 750,000 seeds in summer 2019 and another 450,000 in summer 2020. They used the Hessian Bag method, which places a mixture of seagrass seeds and sterile sand into containers made of vegetable fibers (also known as burlap) ready for planting.
Project Seagrass worked with volunteer groups throughout the UK to prepare the bags. Community support and commitment has been key to the effort, according to Cox, and representatives from the local community continue to guide management of the seagrass, along with users of coastal waters and regulators.
Monitoring and More
Monitoring whether efforts are successful and what adjustments may be needed for subsequent projects is key to restoration. Monitors typically measure total area covered and number of shoots per square meter.
“Basically, if it is growing in area and thickness, it’s working,” Hancock says. “It’s not rocket science. It is complicated somewhat by the fact that eelgrass grows during spring and summer and tends to die back in the fall. So the timing of monitoring is important, as is repeating it over years.”
Ongoing monitoring in Dale, for example, showed a threefold increase in shoot density throughout the restoration area by fall 2024, Cox reports. Scientists also saw increased shoots per clump and clumps more than eight times larger on average from two years before, showing that the grass is spreading.
Some projects engage citizen scientists. Anglers, divers, beach goers, and other visitors to coastal waters can report sightings of seagrass on the Project Seagrass app, SeagrassSpotter. The app is a way to expand the number of people contributing to mapping distribution and status of the plants from a few hundred scientists to hundreds of community members.
People also can help by taking action on climate change and encouraging others to do so — important today more than ever. Individuals can support community efforts to switch to clean energy or ramp up public transportation, buy products from companies with sustainable practices (and buy less overall), or donate to and volunteer with projects restoring habitats like seagrass that sequester carbon.
Boze adds that another way to help is by reducing excess nutrients in coastal bays by avoiding use of fertilizers on lawns or commercial properties.
The recreational boating community can help reduce physical damage to seagrass from anchoring and mooring. The Dale project installed three moorings as an alternative to anchoring for visiting boats and encourages users to donate to support the upkeep of the buoys.
In a world where many species and habitats continue to decline, these attempts to bring back seagrass offer a ray of hope. Restoring seagrass habitat takes a lot of effort, the experts admit. But with the right conditions, tiny sesame-sized seagrass seeds can lead to massive results — not just for seagrass itself, but for everything and everyone that depends on it.
Scientists also declared several other extinctions, including the first documented plant extinction in New Hampshire.
In 2009 teams of volunteers fanned out across 35 countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia looking for something that, in all likelihood, no longer existed.
The object of their quest: a 14-inch-long shorebird with long legs, a curved beak, and a mix of white and gray feathers.
Last officially seen in 1995, the slender-billed curlew (Numenius tenuirostris) had once been plentiful enough to hunt — perhaps most notably for museum specimens. That pressure, combined with habitat destruction, reportedly pushed the birds into decline.
In November 2024, after years of searches, scientists declared that the species was gone for good — the first documented extinction of a bird species from mainland Europe, North Africa and West Asia.
“It is a tragedy on a par with the dodo and the great auk, and we should hang our heads in shame,” wrote Mary Colwell of the conservation group Curlew Action. “Our disregard for wildlife speaks volumes for who and what we are. The slender-billed [curlew] may not have had an economic value, it contributed nothing to the bottom line of anyone’s financial spreadsheet, no one relied on these birds for their jobs or wellbeing, there was no conceivable reason to drive them to extinction. But it seems that is exactly what we have done.”
The biggest tragedy about this bird’s loss: We didn’t act soon enough to save it.
“Conservation attention came too late for the slender-billed curlew,” researchers wrote in the paper announcing its probable extinction. “The potential decline of the species was highlighted [in 1912] and stated more explicitly [in 1943]. These warnings were not acted on however, and the species was not recognized as being of conservation concern until 1988. After this, a [1991] review of the species and an action plan [in 1996] followed. Our analysis indicates the species was on the verge of extinction or extinct when the action plan was published.”
They continued, warning that this extinction is a call to action to prevent future species losses:
“Such extinctions are an indicator of the failure of international cooperation on biodiversity conservation as surely as climbing carbon levels currently measure our failure adequately to address climate change. With more advanced technologies than were available even 20 years ago — including optical and photographic equipment, bird-tracking and remote-sensing methods, and an evidence base on methods for protection, management and restoration — there is even less excuse for further failures.”
But the slender-billed curlew won’t be the last species we lose, and it wasn’t the only species scientists declared extinct (or regionally extinct) in 2024. Here are some of their stories.
Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii) — This coastal plant still grows on a few scattered islands, but not on the island that gave it its name. Encroaching seas have wiped it out in the past couple of years, making it “the first local extinction of a species caused by sea-level rise” in the United States. That’s shocking for a population that was considered “thriving” as recently as 2021.
“Unfortunately, the Key Largo tree cactus may be a bellwether for how other low-lying coastal plants will respond to climate change,” Jennifer Possley, director of regional conservation at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, said in a statement announcing the extinction.
Expect more in future. But we can also use this as an opportunity: Scientists saw it coming and collected enough cactus flowers and fruits to keep the species growing in a greenhouse. Maybe one day they’ll be able to return to Key Largo. Until then the island has a hole in its ecosystem.
Key Largo cactus, photo courtesy Florida Museum of Natural History
Obliterated whitefish (Coregonus obliterus), Ören whitefish (Coregonus trybomi) and Zug whitefish (Coregonus zugensis) — These Swiss fish were among seven species redescribed and taxonomically reassigned by scientists in 2023. The IUCN assessed them as extinct in 2024, reflecting a greater scientific consensus.
The obliterated whitefish (a name that just kills me) was last seen in Lake Zug in 1939 and, according to a press release, “would have been completely forgotten if specimens had not been found by Eawag scientists Oliver Selz and Ole Seehausen in the historical Steinmann-Eawag Collection.” It and other species died out from eutrophication — lack of oxygen in lake water caused by algal blooms, themselves caused by phosphates from domestic wastewater and fertilizer runoff from agriculture. (The Ören declined due to introduced predators like Eurasian pikeperch and acid rain.)
Lest we get completely depressed, the press release presents a lovely counterpoint, noting that “the only whitefish species still found in Lake Zug today, spawning near the shore, is the ‘Balchen.’ Testifying to its survival is its new scientific name — Coregonus supersum (‘I have survived’).”
The seven Coregonus species. Courtesy: Eawag
Java stingaree (Urolophus javanicus): This small Indonesian stingray was only observed once, at a fish market in 1862. The IUCN declared it extinct in December 2023 — calling it the first marine fish extinction caused by human activity — although the media didn’t notice until after January (which is why it’s on this year’s list).
“Intensive, generally unregulated fishing was likely the major threat resulting in the depletion of the Java stingaree population, with coastal fisheries catches already declining in the 1870s,” the extinction assessment reads. “Catches on the northern coast of Java in 1940 were down to almost half the annual catch landed in the 1860s. Additionally, the northern coast of Java, particularly Jakarta Bay, is heavily industrialized, and extensive habitat loss and degradation may also have impacted this species.”
Round Island hurricane palm (Dictyosperma album var. conjugatum) — As reported by Mongabay, the last wild tree of its kind “snapped during a windstorm.” The tree had stood on Mauritius “for decades as the only survivor of its kind.”
Bogardilla (Squalius palaciosi) — Last seen in 1999, this Spanish fish disappeared after dams and weirs limited its habitat and a half-dozen introduced species either ate it, outcompeted it for resources, or brought new pathogens to the area. It serves as a reminder that extinction is often the result of multiple factors chipping away at a species’ survival — a death of a thousand indignities.
Seven plants in Bangladesh: The Asian nation released its updated Plant Red List in November and announced that seven native plant species were no longer found within its borders. Most appear to be regional extinctions and still grow in other countries or in private collections, with the sad exception of the last plant on this list.
Fita champa (Magnolia griffithii)
Ironweed tree (Memecylon ovatum)
Jiringa (Archidendron jiringa)
Kathphal (Myrica nagi)
Syzygium venustum
Drypetes venusta
Thurma jam (Syzygium thumri)
Four Egyptian plants: A paper published last January assessed many native plants of Egypt and declared four species and one subspecies extinct:
Bellevalia salah-eidii — a perennial bulb that grew in sandy areas but hasn’t been since 1966.
Muscari salah-eidii — a perennial bulb last seen in the field in 1967.
Vicia sinaica — an annual or perennial herb once restricted to North Sinai and last collected in 1955.
Limonium sinuatum romanum — a perennial herb last collected in the field in 1949. The main species is known as wavyleaf sea lavender.
The paper doesn’t speculate on what causes these species to disappear but notes a long list of threats to Egyptian plants, including climate change, extreme weather, droughts, pollution, habitat alteration, roads and railways, agriculture, and biological resource use.
Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis) — A paper published this July reports several regional extinctions for this embattled predator, now down to a population of about 450 animals. “We describe three population extinctions and three local extinctions within fragmented populations, and present evidence of factors accelerating the extinction process, such as disease (rabies and canine distemper virus), persecution, road kills and poisoning.” The situation isn’t likely to improve: “Hard borders imposed by expanding subsistence agriculture lock Ethiopian wolves into further isolation, with few opportunities for dispersal and recolonization,” they write. Shockingly, this species is still assessed as “endangered,” when its plight has obviously reached critical levels.
Sangihe dwarf kingfisher (Ceyx sangirensis) — A bird we didn’t know to keep looking for before it disappeared. A paper published this past March details decades of taxonomic confusion — enhanced by poor documentation of the first scientific specimen in the 1870s — that kept the animal from being recognized as its own species. Once native to Sangihe Island in the Philippines, it apparently no longer exists there.
Malagodon honahona — A paper published this past April described this newly recognized fish species from Madagascar … and also announced its possible extinction. The researchers — Emily M. Carr, Rene P. Martin, and John S. Sparks from the American Museum of Natural History — recount how they first encountered this species in a small, isolated swamp in 1994, where introduced mosquitofish (Gambusiaholbrooki) were competing with the native fish for resources.
But that wasn’t the only pressure, as they wrote: “The region upstream of their only known habitat lies outside the Réserve Spéciale de Manombo protected area and is afforded no protection. As a result, the watershed has experienced rapid deforestation in recent decades such that the fragile type locality has suffered severe degradation. It is likely M. honahona became extinct in the late 1990s, not long after it was first discovered.” In that fate it joins a similar species, M. madagascariensis, which Sparks and other researchers declared extinct in 2018 as part of an IUCN assessment of Madagascar’s freshwater fish.
Smooth hornwort (Phaeoceros laevis) — This wide-ranging plant isn’t extinct, but a 2024 assessment of liverwort and hornwort species in Serbia calls it “possibly extinct” within that country, making it a noteworthy regional extinction.
Digitaria laeviglumis — This species of smooth crabgrass once grew in New Hampshire but was last seen in 1931 and had since almost been forgotten. A paper published this July declared it extinct. Some of the last samples of the crabgrass have sat in the University of New Hampshire’s Albion R. Hodgdon Herbarium for generations; recent DNA analysis helped to identify it as a unique species, revealing it as the first documented plant extinct in the Granite State.
“Documenting the extinction of Digitaria laeviglumis has significant implications for biodiversity conservation,” herbarium collections manager Erin Sigel said in a press release. “It highlights the vulnerability of endemic species, particularly those with very limited geographic ranges, and understanding the factors that led to the extinction of this grass can help inform conservation strategies for other at-risk species. This case underscores the vital role herbaria play in preserving specimens and providing essential data for scientific research.”
Hieracium tolstoii — This Italian plant presented scientists with some challenges. The Hieracium genus (better known as hawkweed) has more than 10,000 documented species, many of which remain under debate due to variations in their appearance and frequent hybridization, as well as a mutation process called polyploidization that can cause dramatic shifts in chromosomes. But a paper published this past September examined the records and confirms H. tolstoii (which once grew on “ancient brick walls” but hasn’t been seen since 1938) as a unique species — one that went extinct at some point in the 20th century. (Previous research had also declared it extinct but maintained some doubt it was a unique species.)
Fucus virsoides — This “glacial relict” algae species isn’t extinct, but it’s rapidly disappearing and deserves a shoutout. A paper published this past August warned that we could be heading toward “the first documented extinction of a marine macroalga in the Mediterranean Sea.” The researchers wrote that “F. virsoides could be considered functionally extinct in Istria (Croatia), critically threatened with extinction in Italy and Montenegro and locally extinct in Slovenia.” They hypothesize its decline has been caused by “a variety of anthropogenic stressors (e.g. habitat destruction, pollution, overgrazing) exacerbated by climate change,” all of which increased the Adriatic Sea’s surface temperature and salinity.
Taiwanese swallowtail butterfly (Papilio machaonsylvina) — Rumors of this butterfly’s extinction have fluttered around for years. It was last seen in 1999, before the Jiji earthquake struck Taiwan, killing more than 2,400 people, destroying the homes of 100,000 more, and causing $300 billion in damage. According to a paper published this past November, the earthquake also caused “multiple landslides” that “permanently altered” the butterfly’s habitat. Research published in 2018 and 2023 suggested the earthquake caused the butterfly’s extinction. This new research examines its morphological characteristics and DNA to confirm that it was a unique subspecies and notes that it “was well on its evolutionary track to become its own distinct lineage as a separate species.”
The paper also notes the butterfly’s importance to Taiwanese culture — “its image is imprinted on the personal ID cards of Taiwanese citizens,” the researchers write. They also suggest we keep looking for it: “Even though the butterfly has not been seen or collected since 1999, one can always hope that it still persists in the remote mountain regions in the Taiwan highlands.”
White-chested white-eye (Zosterops albogularis) — The Australian government has listed this 5-inch bird as extinct since 2000, but scientists kept looking for it for several years. The IUCN finally reassessed it as probably extinct in 2024. Native to Norfolk Island, the bird suffered most of their declines due to introduced black rats, which predated on their eggs. They were last officially observed in 1979, although possible sightings persisted into this century.
Multiple Polynesian tree snails — The IUCN listed several snail species as extinct this past year (although the scientific assessments were all done several years earlier). They include:
Partula langfordi — Last seen in 1992, wiped out by deforestation and the predatory invasive rosy wolfsnail.
Partula magistri — A “large, conspicuous” species observed alive just one time. The sole specimen was found in 1992 amid empty “freshly killed” shells left behind by wolfsnail predation.
Partula dentifera — Last seen in 1972, although it persisted until at least 1991, when only empty shells were found. The rosy wolfsnail again gets the blame.
Partula diminuta — Last seen on Tahiti in 1980, three years after the rosy wolfsnail arrived on the island. You can guess what happened next.
Pohnpei ground partula snail (Partula guamensis) — Another “large, conspicuous species” last recorded in 1936. This one has deforestation and a host of introduced species to blame: the New Guinea flatworm, three rat species, and possibly the rosy wolfsnail.
邛海白魚 or Qionghai white fish (Anabarilius qionghaiensis) — A freshwater fish frequently caught and eaten by the people living around China’s Qionghai Lake for decades (if not centuries), this species was last observed around 1970. Development, pollution from pesticides and fertilizers, overfishing, introduced species, and destruction of aquatic vegetation all conspired to do this fish in.
Limnophila limnophiloides — Scientists only documented this aquatic plant once, in 1918, in India’s Bhushi lake. Extensive surveys have failed to find it, so the IUCN this year declared it extinct. We don’t know exactly why or how it disappeared, but the assessment notes that the “area is converted into high intensity tourism area and the habitat is completely altered to a small reservoir which is used for bathing, swimming and other recreational purposes by more than a lakh (100,000) of people every year.”
Vachellia polypyrigenes and V. zapatensis — These Cuban plants were last seen in 1951 and 1940, respectively. The IUCN declared them extinct in 2024, blaming urbanization and petrochemical activity for the first species, and “the expansion of human activity” for the second.
Starnberg whitefish (Coregonus renke)and Chiem whitefish (Coregonus hoferi) — Native to the lakes in southern Germany for which they were named, these fish were last seen in the late 1800s and 1940s-1980s, respectively. They were assessed as extinct by the IUCN in 2024.
Orkney charr (Salvelinus inframundus) — This Scottish cold-water fish hasn’t been seen since the 1950s. Scientists suspect dams and other engineering projects build during the 19th century “disturbed tributary streams into which this species migrated to spawn.” The IUCN listed this species as “data deficient” for years but moved them into the “extinct” category in 2024. Nonetheless, some sources say the fish or another species that looks like it has recently been observed in Loch Meallt, so…fins crossed?
This list isn’t comprehensive, in several notable ways — because it can’t be.
First, these extinctions are not reported in real time. The last days of the last members of a species are rarely observed by human eyes. They occur in the cracks beyond our perception, out of sight, the disappearance of a shadow or a sunbeam, here and then gone.
Second, even when scientists suspect a species has died out, they don’t give up hope. They keep looking — often for decades. And on a not-uncommon basis, theyfindthem.
There’s an incentive to keep searching: Giving up too early ensures that a species won’t get the protection it deserves. Species have gone extinct simply because they were declared extinct too soon, protections were removed, and threats worsened as a result.
These endless quests aren’t easy: Tiny frogs who hide in deep jungles or plants that only flower a few nights a year don’t make themselves easily known.
It’s also hard to prove a negative: If you lay eyes on something, you know if exists. If you don’t see it, that’s not proof that it’s gone.
It’s also been a hard few years for science. Fewer researchers got into the field during the pandemic, and people still have a lot of catching up to do. Budgets have also gotten tighter or more unpredictable. We’ll see (or not see) the effects of the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn of federal research funding in the months and years ahead.
Finally, we must remember that most of the species we lose are “invisible extinctions” — species that have never been observed, documented, named, or studied by modern science. One study last year estimated that humans have caused 1,500 bird extinctions, half of which were of species we’d never documented. Another study estimated that Australia loses 1-3 invertebrate species every week. If a species doesn’t have a name and goes extinct, did it ever really exist?
Of course, it did — which is why stories of these extinct species remain so important. They’re a reminder to celebrate the diversity of life around us — and to protect it while we still can.
The Trump administration has already rolled back planned limits on PFAS chemicals, which have been linked to cancer and other health problems.
The water flowing from taps in Wilmington, North Carolina, looked clean, tasted normal, and gave no indication that it carried an invisible threat. For decades the Cape Fear River had provided drinking water to hundreds of thousands of residents in the region. But in 2017 tests revealed what many had feared: high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), chemicals linked to cancer, immune dysfunction, and reproductive issues, coursing through their water supply.
The contamination had been traced to Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont, which had been releasing PFAS chemicals from its Fayetteville Works plant for years.
The discovery sent shockwaves through the community, triggering lawsuits, emergency water-treatment plans, and a reckoning over how corporations and government regulators had failed to protect public health. But even as residents fought to hold polluters accountable, the company responsible for much of the contamination was tightening its grip on the agencies meant to regulate it.
A former DuPont and American Chemistry Council lobbyist, Nancy Beck, now holds a key position at the Environmental Protection Agency, shaping chemical safety policies that will determine how — or if — PFAS pollution is addressed. In the first days of the second Trump administration, the agency withdrew a proposed rule that would have imposed limits on PFAS discharges, a move that watchdog groups say amounts to giving polluters free rein to continue contaminating water supplies.
Across the Atlantic a similar threat looms. In Bentham, England, residents had unknowingly consumed water laced with a staggering 1.2 million nanograms per liter of PFAS — nearly 12,000 times the legal limit. The contamination originated from a nearby firefighting foam testing facility, a mirror to the industrial discharge in North Carolina.
The crisis in Cape Fear and Bentham reveals the creeping, silent danger of PFAS, which has infiltrated groundwater, rivers, and drinking-water supplies across the world.
And yet, as the Trump administration accelerates its environmental rollbacks, the ability to regulate and mitigate this growing threat in the United States is being systematically dismantled.
“North Carolina is one area that I’m most familiar with where there’s an entire river system that serves hundreds of thousands of people [and] is very badly contaminated with PFAS,” Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Revelator. “A lot of people are drinking that water every day.”
From Miracle to Menace
When first introduced in the 1940s, PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemical company Dupont hailed them as “miracles of science.” Their unique properties — resistance to heat, water, and oil — made them indispensable in a variety of industries. From nonstick pans to waterproof clothing, PFAS became embedded in daily life.
But the very quality that made them so useful — resilience — also makes them a nightmare for the environment. They do not break down naturally, persisting in soil, water, and even the human body for decades.
According to Andrea Tokranov, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey specializing in PFAS contamination, 71 to 95 million Americans rely on groundwater with detectable PFAS levels before any treatment. She was the lead author of a 2024 study, published in the journal Science, that found that 50 to 66% of people in the United States who rely on groundwater as their primary water source could be exposed to PFAS contamination.
The predictive modeling used in her research highlights a grim reality: millions of Americans may be drinking contaminated water without knowing it.
“This is a fairly large number,” Tokranov told The Revelator. “And the implications are striking.”
Meanwhile recent research from the Keck School of Medicine at USC, led by postdoctoral fellow in population and public health sciences Hailey Hampson, uncovered disturbing insights into PFAS’ effects on human health.
The study, which focused on young adults in Southern California, found that higher PFAS exposure was linked to worsened kidney function over time. The research also established that changes in gut bacteria and related metabolites mediated up to 50% of the kidney function decline.
“We saw that exposure to PFAS was potentially altering the composition of the microbiome, associated with lower levels of beneficial bacteria and lower anti-inflammatory metabolites,” Hampson told The Revelator. This disruption, the researchers suggest, may contribute to long-term kidney damage and other chronic health issues.
The study also highlights a troubling disparity: Hispanic young adults, already at a higher risk for chronic kidney disease, were disproportionately affected by PFAS exposure. The inequities in exposure, driven by geographic and economic factors, mean that the most vulnerable populations are bearing the brunt of the contamination crisis.
But what makes this crisis especially insidious is its uneven burden. Rural and low-income communities, already struggling with limited infrastructure and regulatory oversight, are disproportionately affected. The places with the least political clout are the ones most exposed to this creeping poison.
The situation is compounded by deregulation at the federal level.
Trump, PFAS, and the EPA
During Trump’s first term, the Environmental Protection Agency delayed action on PFAS, weakened oversight, and stalled cleanup efforts. Now, with a second Trump presidency, the rollbacks have already escalated.
A statement from the Environmental Working Group describes the latest policy changes as “a gift to polluters and a disaster for public health.” The group sounded the alarm when Trump’s EPA withdrew a proposed rule that would have limited PFAS discharges from chemical manufacturers into the water supply.
An EPA Instagram post from before the Trump administration took office:
Trump’s executive orders have triggered sweeping environmental rollbacks, dismantling protections for clean air, water, and climate policy. Advocacy groups warn that his actions prioritize polluters over public health, leading to increased pollution, higher energy costs, and worsening climate-related disasters such as wildfires and extreme weather. Without intervention, communities will face greater exposure to harmful pollutants like PFAS.
As the administration continues its rollback of environmental protections, environmental advocates, scientists, and public health experts warn that PFAS contamination will only intensify, disproportionately affecting low-income and rural communities who have fewer resources for mitigation
Olson, who has spent decades advocating for clean water regulations, warned that “the more we continue to make this stuff and spew it out into the environment, the more those cleanup costs just exponentially continue to increase.” He estimates that the public will ultimately bear hundreds of billions of dollars in liability and cleanup costs due to the unchecked spread of PFAS.
Addressing PFAS Beyond Borders
PFAS contamination is not a crisis confined to the United States. It’s a global problem, requiring international collaboration and stricter regulations. While Europe has been at the forefront of addressing the threat, efforts to control PFAS are gaining momentum worldwide.
Megan Kirton, senior project officer at Fidra, a Scotland-based environmental nonprofit, pointed out that while the United Kingdom lags, other European nations are leading the charge in restricting PFAS use.
“The UK government should be doing more to safeguard our water sources from PFAS pollution,” Kirton told The Revelator. “We are seeing stricter PFAS standards across the EU, and some nations like Denmark and Germany are already taking major steps to ban certain PFAS compounds altogether.”
The European Union has proposed a comprehensive PFAS restriction under the REACH regulatory framework, which could lead to a near-total ban on PFAS use in consumer products. Countries such as Germany and Sweden are pushing for aggressive enforcement, with new PFAS limits in drinking water set at 100 nanograms per liter for a sum of 20 PFAS compounds — a much stricter limit than what exists in the United States.
But beyond Europe there’s a growing recognition that PFAS is a transboundary issue, affecting low- and middle-income countries disproportionately. According to Olson, the dumping of PFAS-contaminated waste in developing countries is a major concern.
“We’ve seen this pattern before — where wealthier countries tighten regulations, but companies shift their PFAS waste and contaminated products to lower-income countries that lack strong regulatory frameworks,” Olson told The Revelator. “It’s not just the dumping of waste; it’s also the continued sale of products laden with PFAS in these regions.”
Efforts to create a global coalition against PFAS contamination remain fragmented. While some organizations work under the Stockholm Convention, a global treaty aimed at eliminating persistent organic pollutants, Olson believes international coordination remains weak.
“There are groups that work on implementing the Stockholm Convention, but it’s not as effective as it should be,” he said. “I’d love to see more cooperation between the Global North and activists in developing countries because right now, I don’t think there’s very effective coordination.”
Meanwhile, some countries have begun exploring alternatives to PFAS-based products. The Toxic Use Reduction Institute in the U.S. is actively researching safer replacements, and some governments are investing in “green chemistry” solutions to eliminate reliance on PFAS altogether.
Despite these efforts enforcement remains a major challenge. Loopholes in international trade allow PFAS-laden products to continue circulating in markets with weaker regulations. And as the U.S. continues rolling back environmental protections, other nations are left to grapple with the consequences.
Olson believes that the only viable path forward is a global agreement on PFAS.
“We need a coordinated effort,” he said. “Countries must phase out nonessential uses of PFAS and push for a binding international agreement that holds companies accountable. Otherwise, the problem will just keep shifting from one part of the world to another.”
Fighting Back
For advocates and scientists, the fight against PFAS is far from over.
“We will be in court if we have to be,” Olson told The Revelator. “We don’t like to be in court, but if that’s the only way to do it, we will go to court and try to protect the public against these chemicals.”
Olson and his colleagues at NRDC are working with community activists to intervene in lawsuits challenging EPA’s PFAS regulations, ensuring that industry groups don’t weaken existing protections. He believes that public pressure remains critical.
“I don’t think anybody voted for more toxic chemicals in their drinking water… As the public learns about the extent of the problem, I think they are unhappy with efforts to roll back protections.”
But legal battles alone won’t solve the crisis. Scientists argue that the only way to truly curb PFAS contamination is to shut off the tap.
“We need to stop spewing these things into the environment and making this stuff,” Olson said. “But we still have to figure out a way to destroy these chemicals because right now, we don’t even have a good method for doing that.”
The scientific community is exploring alternative chemistry and biodegradability, with groups like the TURI researching safer replacements. But Olson warns that funding for green chemistry remains woefully inadequate.
“We would love to see the world move towards cleaner chemistry, green chemistry,” he said. “But the research is underfunded. The companies profiting from these chemicals should be the ones paying for their cleanup.”
Efforts are also underway to phase out nonessential uses of PFAS. Some U.S. states have banned PFAS in consumer products like cookware, dental floss, and ski wax. But Olson argues that industry lobbying continues to stall meaningful federal regulation.
“There are all these uses that are absolutely not necessary and that are still contaminating our bodies and our environment,” he said. “We need to move away from PFAS chemistry and towards safer alternatives.”
Despite the challenges, Olson remains optimistic.
“This isn’t going to be easy. But when people stand up and demand action, change happens. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again.”
Earthen homes present an opportunity for building sustainably, but first we need to overcome several institutional barriers.
In October 2020, as the Bobcat Fire threatened to scale the San Gabriel Mountains and descend into Pasadena, my family and I packed our essentials and temporarily relocated with loved ones across the country in Ohio. The fire wasn’t just a natural disaster; it was a symptom of larger systemic failures. Between the fire, terrible air quality, and the ongoing COVID pandemic, my wife and I felt the acute fragility of our situation as we sheltered in the Midwest with our 7-month-old daughter, who is now 5 years old.
That evacuation marked a turning point for me. Instead of pursuing a tenure-track academic job immediately after earning my doctorate, I joined the CalEarth Institute’s Long-Term Apprenticeship Program to learn and teach others how to build SuperAdobe homes, structures designed to withstand the realities of fire, floods, earthquakes, and the broader polycrisis of climate collapse.
Apprentices finishing the domes. Photo courtesy Kenjus T. Watson, Ph.D.
My work in Apocalyptic Education, an educational collective advocating for communal sustainability and self-determination, deepened my understanding of how communities survive and adapt to catastrophe. Rooted in the African diaspora’s long history of enduring repeated world-ending crises, Apocalyptic Education actively learns from and applies these proven strategies, alongside those of other Indigenous communities, to meet the intensifying challenges of our time. My grounding in this collective gave me a framework for understanding the fires as an emergent opportunity to re-indigenize how we live amid intense challenges.
The fires raging through California are not new phenomena, but they’ve become catastrophically unmanageable. Los Angeles has experienced fire seasons for thousands of years, managed by Indigenous nations through cultural burns and sustainable fire stewardship. These practices were systematically and violently dismantled by U.S. and California state policies beginning in the mid-1800s. Combined with worsening climate collapse and decades of corporate-fueled ecological destruction, today’s fire seasons have become deadlier and more widespread.
For Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other communities of color, the cascading negative impacts of these disasters are disproportionately severe. Altadena, a historically Black community north of Pasadena, has faced devastating losses from wildfires. Entire blocks have been reduced to rubble, displacing Black families who once defied national trends with an 81% homeownership rate in the area. The compounded grief of displacement and destruction, unfolding alongside these new realities, reflects the enduring legacy of systemic racism intertwined with climate collapse.
Policies like redlining created conditions where communities of color were forced to live in areas with higher environmental vulnerabilities, while being deprived of investments in resilient infrastructure. In Los Angeles, the planned lack of shade, exposure to drought, and extreme heat in many of these neighborhoods today are direct consequences of these inequities.
This history of exclusion from resilient infrastructure is compounded by the materials commonly used in home construction today. Far too many dwellings throughout Southern California were constructed using problematic materials, such as synthetic insulation, vinyl siding, and asphalt shingles, chosen for their affordability and ease of construction. But these materials are highly flammable, exacerbating the risk of destruction during fires.
Some estimates suggest building with wildfire-resistant materials and design can add up to $27,000 to the cost of already overpriced homes in Southern California.
However, sustainable building structures built from earthen materials offer a much more affordable alternative. They provide resilience against California’s worsening fire seasons and are emblematic of a broader shift toward environmentally sustainable construction.
Many of these structures are a modern adaptation of ancient building practices. Earthen-based structures may include the use of rammed earth, sandbags, and barbed wire to create homes that are fireproof, environmentally sustainable, and cost-effective. SuperAdobe, for example, according to a 2018 study, also provides high thermal mass that improves energy efficiency and protects against extreme heat while being durable enough to withstand natural catastrophes like floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes.
In the summer of 2022, I joined a team of seven other apprentices to construct a single-family SuperAdobe dome (including a 11-foot main dome with an 8-foot add-on/apse) over the span of just 17 workdays. The total cost for a fully functional dwelling (excluding labor) is just around $25,000.
The author (and kids) compact (tamp) the earth into a bag to coil into the dome. Photo courtesy Kenjus T. Watson, Ph.D.
That experience transformed how I imagined resilience and sustainability for communities like Altadena. I envisioned neighborhoods of these domes, standing strong against the fires, droughts, and earthquakes that are becoming increasingly common.
However, widespread adoption of earthen homes faces significant barriers, including regulatory challenges, limited funding, and resistance from conventional housing industries. For example, while some of the building systems are approved by the International Code Council, the standards organization that creates the International Building Code used throughout the United States, additional engineering is often required for California projects, and further efforts are underway to include SuperAdobe in the International Residential Code.
These changes would make these types of technology more accessible regionally, but the process is costly and requires significant collaboration and support from public policy and varied stakeholders invested in creating resilient communities.
Still, I am one of countless Earthen builders who continue to hold this vision. I’ve watched as the fires in California destroy not just homes but entire lives. The daycare my children once attended somehow still stands amid rubble, and the home we fled in Pasadena came dangerously close to burning down. Yet on a decimated block in Altadena, a single structure remains intact: a SuperAdobe dome, built by visual artist James Séamus Knight.
Lone domes and earthen structures surviving fire are not just isolated outcomes. They highlight the inspiring potential of re-indigenizing our dwellings in alignment with the land we live on. Imagine a neighborhood where every home is designed to withstand the specific disasters associated with their geographies, fundamentally transforming recovery efforts and demonstrating that a resilient future is not yet out of reach.
If we can transform our homes in a way that’s in “right relation” to Southern California ecology, it’s an important step toward creating more sustainable neighborhoods, towns, and cities.
The families and communities affected by the fires of today and future calamities are demanding more than temporary fixes or increased precarity due gentrification to disaster capitalism. There must be a fundamental shift in how we approach housing and infrastructure in the face of ecological collapse. In my work on my own campus, I maintain a somber urgency to explore how Apocalyptic Education can help us confront the complexities of disaster preparedness and safe, affordable housing. This is premised on the notion that through interdisciplinary approaches, we can foster solutions that honor the past while equipping communities for the challenges ahead.
As impacted families and mutual aid networks continue to navigate the daunting terrain left in the wake of devastation across these communities, Southern California has the opportunity to lead — not by reinvesting in unsustainable and inequitable systems, but by embracing community-led, adaptation-focused, and land-honoring approaches to rebuilding homes and resilience.
In addition to the emotional text, the poems use the visuals to set or continue the mood and narrative. Some sequences go on for several pages without a single word — poetry by way of image and imagination. It’s a powerful experience that deserves our attention while it attempts to heal our souls. (Available March 25.)
Quite simply this is science comics done right, and it could help any young reader gain an appreciation for the ocean and everything that lives in it. It’s also apparently 
The weightlessness of space, the company tells him, will slow his cancer’s growth, but his inevitable death remains part of the plan. He’s disposable — a human flag to plant in the soil, useless to his corporate masters after he completes his mission. As long as he gets there first and fast, extraction crews can follow, and the energy (and money) will flow.
Published as five issues starting in 2023, long before the election, this new collected edition packs an extra powerful wallop now that Trump is back in office. It’s not really an environmental book, although the early pages contain several strong messages about animal rights. It is, however, a brutal examination of our times and a cautionary tale of power and personality.
Fitzgerald, a frequent New Yorker and New York Times cartoonist, fills the pages of this book — her first foray into fiction — with lush brush strokes and an appreciation for nature (and some underlying, if softly spoken, contempt for what humans can do to it). She’s developed some interesting characters, especially Hazel, who is full of doubts and fears and makes mistakes but uses her brain and keeps moving forward. Her animal characters are both fully drawn and a little too convenient (Nina has a few abilities that further the plot but make little biological sense).
