The drag superstar and environmental activist talks with us about finding joy in nature, standing up to fascism, and getting creative.
In 1982 cartoonist Bob Thaves wrote that dancer Fred Astaire “was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did… backwards and in high heels.”
When it comes to environmental and LGBTQIA+ activism, nothing could be truer of drag queen extraordinaire, Pattie Gonia, who first went viral in 2018 after posting a video of herself hiking in six-inch-heeled boots. Overnight she became the “backpacking queen.”
With her fiery auburn hair and mustache and fantastical costumes made of upcycled and recycled clothing and other materials, Pattie has become the fierce voice of a generation determined to combat climate change. She has capitalized on her ever-growing platform of more than 700,000 social media followers to spread her message through gloriously entertaining videos and stage performances at festivals across the world.
Ever since she discovered drag to express herself authentically, Pattie has merged powerful, often comedic performance art with her unwavering, inspiring dedication to raise awareness about threats to nature, both manmade and otherwise.
Pattie Gonia on stage in Denver. Photo: Monica Lloyd Photography, used with permission
A leading advocate for inclusivity and diversity in the outdoors, Pattie co-founded the Outdoorist Club, a nonprofit that encourages LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and femmes to venture into the outdoors through community and education. She is also a board member of Brave Trails, which provides a summer camp and backpacking trips for queer youth, as well as the founder of the Queer Outdoor and Environmental Job Board, a free career sourcing tool.
To date she has fundraised over $2.7 million for LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and environmental causes. Her passionate pursuit has garnered several prestigious awards including the “Next Gen Leader 2024” from Time, “Nat Geo 33 Changemaker” by National Geographic, and “Person of the Year 2022” from Outside.
We spoke with Pattie Gonia during a break from her ambitious international touring schedule, which is currently bringing a team of environmentally focused drag queens to venues around the United States.
Aside from “going outside,” where do you find your source of personal strength and joy to continue your work as an environmental activist?
My chosen family. Other drag performers like Sasha Velour, Shea Couleé and VERA!
And knowing that every time I take action for people and the planet, a little bit of fascism dies a sweet death.
Now that we are witnessing the rapid-fire dismantling of protections for federal wildlife lands and nature preserves, has your approach to environmental activism changed? Do you see it changing with the rollback of laws that have preserved our environment?
Now is an important time to remember what our queer elders who founded the queer rights movement knew well –– we mourn in the morning, we fight in the afternoon, and we dance in the evening –– and it’s the dancing that keeps us going. We need to fight hard but we also need to celebrate the wins, build the community and make the joy that will sustain the movement.
Do you see your approach to your drag art form evolving to meet these new threats, or will it remain the same?
Yes, [a lot of] drag represents a fight for nature, just as much as the fight for equality of the people on it.
Is it harder to find the “joy” at the center of your message? Or have you found a renewed strength in the new challenges ahead?
Joy is and always will be the goal. They take joy away from us and what do we got? Make no mistake, people in power want us to believe we don’t deserve joy. That’s when they win. I won’t let them have that.
In a time when millions of people are feeling disheartened, demoralized and even terrified for the future, what would you say to rally them to continue their efforts to fight for the protection of our environment and find their joy?
Inaction is an active choice. Doing nothing is doing something. People in power want us to believe that we can’t affect change. Yet, if we look at history, we can see that time and time again, the people united will never be defeated.
What are three things that members of the LGBTQIA+ community can do today to show the world that they still believe in the protection of nature and our world? How can they use self-expression to promote the cause of saving our natural environment?
One: We must remember that nature is gay as fuck. I’m not talking gay whales that have sex with each other, which is true. But I’m talking about a broad definition of queerness in nature –– the way nature problem solves, resists, gets creative and survives against adversity. That’s queer nature to me.
Two: Go outside with people you love in a way you love. Doesn’t have to be a 20-mile hike. How about a picnic or a blunt or a walk outside at a local park?
Three: When we go outside, we build a relationship to nature. Through that relationship we realize how needed it is to fight and protect nature, because we fight for what we love.
Pattie Gonia’s current projects include a touring drag show entitled SAVE HER!, a TV series with Bonnie Wright of “Harry Potter” fame, and collaborations with artists and musicians across a variety of environmental spaces. To learn more about Pattie and her organizations and nonprofits, visit her website or find her on Instagram and TikTok @pattiegonia.
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Holler, Denali Sai Nalamalapu’s new graphic novel, shares the stories of everyday people who stood up against the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
What would you do if an energy company declared that it planned to build a natural-gas pipeline through your property, your community, and the surrounding countryside?
For many residents of Virginia and West Virginia, that question became a reality in 2014 when a consortium of energy companies announced plans to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline, using eminent domain to claim a wide swath of public and private lands.
Residents and activists spent the next 10 years fighting the project. In the process, they connected with each other, built community resources and mutual-aid networks, and inspired other activists around the country.
They lost the fight — the pipeline started transmitting gas in 2024, two years after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin struck a deal with President Joe Biden to help push the climate legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act over the finish line.
But their experiences offer valuable lessons for other communities, says activist and artist Denali Sai Nalamalapu, who spent several years involved in the battle against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Nalamalapu has now collected six residents’ stories — including a single mother, a photographer, a teacher, and an Indigenous seed keeper — in the new book, Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance (Timber Press).
The Revelator recently sat down with Nalamalapu to discuss the graphic novel, the ongoing climate fight, the problem of “false hope” narratives, and how to find balance in a worsening crisis. (This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.)
Could you put this book in the context of your greater activism?
I’ve been a climate organizer since I graduated college in 2017. I was living on Borneo in Malaysian territory through a Fulbright grant and was surrounded by the impacts of palm oil plantations and rainforest destruction. I was thinking a lot about how complicated environmental destruction and climate change are, even though our impulse is often to simplify things. That made me want to go into climate organizing and climate communications, where I became very interested in who was being left out from the narrative and who we weren’t speaking to, because climate communications can be very scientific and can be specific to Western audiences.
Ultimately I landed in the Mountain Valley Pipeline site in Appalachia in 2021.
One of my big questions there was, where could we be more accessible and who are we leaving out of our audience, because the audience could be so big with a fossil fuel pipeline during this point in the climate crisis.
And you carried that over to the book, where you interviewed a range of people who seem like the people who would often get ignored in these narratives. Are you hoping that readers have six opportunities to see a little something of themselves in that book?
Yeah, that’s a big part of why I wrote the book and how I wrote it. In talking to people like Karolyn Givens, whose story is featured in the second chapter, I was struck by how many of us have grandmothers who are nurses or other people in our family who worked in the medical field. I hope that people pick up the book and see someone like Karolyn or Becky Crabtree, who is a science teacher. So many of us have teachers in our lives.
And they can see how these ordinary people use the skills that they already had to be part of resistance to a powerful, giant, fossil fuel project, even though they weren’t career activists.
I’m so taken by the artwork in this book. It’s pared down, a little cartoony. But the linework is very evocative and reveals the destruction and the pain on these people’s faces. Did you learn anything through drawing it in this approach?
I always felt like my path as an artist was too winding, like I didn’t have necessarily a specific medium that was my thing. I was just always obsessed with making art, whether that was painting portraits most recently, or in my very early days of childhood that was cartooning and comics. And the thing that surprised me is that all those different journeys —through ceramics and printmaking and cartooning and portraiture — did come together in this large project.
For example, I spent so much time during the pandemic in oil and acrylic portraiture, so I learned a lot about the shadows on people’s faces. There’s not a lot I could do to really make those emotions on people’s faces be super realistic, because by design they weren’t supposed to be. But shadows are one way to connect them to the way I see people.
Now, this is a fight that did not pan out. A lot of people and land faced a lot of destruction. The pipeline still pretty much went through as planned. But there’s still an important message you’re trying to convey here about hope and about continuing to fight these pipelines. Can you speak about that?
I feel that at this point in the climate crisis and in the climate movement, we can’t just be looking for 100% crystal-clear wins, because the reality is that our future will be imperfect — especially when we think about how reluctant and combative leaders and the United States have been to retiring fossil fuels. And when we look at the way capitalism has such a tight grip on our world, I think that it’s important to tell stories that have more complexity than just “we won.”
And the Mountain Valley pipeline is one of those stories. Being part of the movement, I saw every day that it mattered that we fought against the pipeline for 10 years.
There were some anecdotes that suggested that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline getting canceled was connected to the fierce direct-action movement against the Mountain Valley pipeline. The Atlantic Coast developers didn’t want to put up with that degree of resistance.
And there are many other ways to look at the community that was built, the mutual aid networks that were built around monitoring water quality across the route, the ordinary people who learned about our regulatory agencies and how we can advocate for planetary well-being and community well-being in those agencies.
All these things felt very important in the day-to-day and I think, looking back, are important to remember. Because I think we lose out if we just have complete 100% happy hope or complete despair. There’s so much in between, and I hope that this book can contribute to all of the stories and possibilities in between.
There are now hundreds of smaller pipelines in the works or in the planning phases around the country. People in those communities could learn from this book.
We’re definitely seeing that with the Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate site, where many people living on the main line still support the resistors on the extension that MVP is trying to build into North Carolina.
Generally, the fossil-fuel industry has changed its playbook from the massive pipelines we saw 10 years ago to much smaller pipelines.
I think one thing that feels important and makes me feel hopeful as an activist is that many people see the connections between all these pipelines, all these small projects and the banks and insurers behind them. And people are seeing more clearly how capitalism is behind this, and corporate greed is behind this.
There’s certainly a lot of work left to do, and a lot more people to share the message with. But the reality of this massive pipeline going through — and then MVP pursuing a tiny extension along with a bunch of other smaller projects in the southeast — is that these movements are quite connected and the pipeline fighters are learning from each other.
I hope that this book can be part of people’s journey, whether they’re shifting from the mentality of fighting big projects to fighting many smaller projects, or they’re newer to the climate movement and they’re trying to learn about the history of the fight and all the possibilities that are before them in terms of how they resist.
You’re on tour now. You’re doing some signings and some events. What kind of reaction are you getting?
I started writing this book before the MVP was greenlit and completed. I didn’t know how it would change the reception that it was a completed project. But I’m really pleased that people are still willing to learn from the people in the book and the overall story, even though the project was completed.
I have also really enjoyed meeting expat Appalachians who feel so connected to the region and to the history of fossil fuel resistance.
Every place I go, I meet people who are very connected to these mountains, where the Appalachian Trail runs and where people have either childhood memories or hiking memories. That’s a beautiful thing, because I live in Southwest Virginia because of my love for the mountains.
And then, more broadly, I’m hearing from people about this moment.
One thing that I’m hearing is that people are very disinterested in false hope and people talking down to them about how “everything’s going to be okay.” Because we’re all seeing so clearly that things are not okay and that they are getting much worse, and that what’s happening on the federal level is very violent and is hurting people.
So, what comes next? Are you still in the fight? Are you looking at other stories to tell? Or are you just working on trying to help people in their communities right now?
I really enjoy a life of balanced organizing and creative work. I think after the November election and after the Mountain Valley pipeline was greenlit and then constructed — and the gas is flowing now — it became clear to me that two of the most important levers of power we have are our local elections and our mutual aid networks.
In terms of organizing, that’s what I’m really interested in: how we can elect climate champions on the local levels, given the clown show that is the federal government right now. And then I think it’s important that we know our neighbors and develop mutual aid networks and are prepared for storms like Hurricane Helene or other disastrous floods and wildfires.
One thing I learned working on a pipeline site that we lost is that it can be a precarious thing to anchor your hope in one action. Something that’s important to me is that I’m working on local elections near me and around the country, involved in my mutual aid networks, doing creative work — just having a diversity of things I’m doing that address climate change in different ways that are rooted in community. Right now I’m thinking about that notion of hope and what it means to actually believe in a possibility of a climate future — or of a better future in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s diluting oneself or diluting the reader in terms of false hope.
I find that having creative projects ongoing as I organize is a helpful way to keep up my energy. Otherwise, I get too pigeon-holed in one part of the work, and it’s easy to feel more despair.
Specifically, I’m interested in creating more stories for younger audiences, because I think we can never have enough support and stories for young people who are figuring out the world they’re going to enter.
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I helped restore wetlands that kept the Gulf coast safe while my colleagues tracked hurricanes. Now we’re out of a job — just in time for hurricane season.
Every summer brings the familiar joys of sunny weather, family barbecues, and beach vacations. But for Americans on the Gulf or Atlantic coasts, the daily weather forecast always comes with a constant thrum of worry — any small disturbance in the Atlantic has the potential to evolve into a major storm.
And as hurricane season gets underway, the palace intrigue, staffing cuts, and general upheaval of the Trump administration could have dire effects for people on these coasts.
We know hurricanes all too well. I was still in elementary school when we had to evacuate for Ivan and fret over Dennis in my small northwest Florida hometown. And I was in middle school in 2006, when refugees from Katrina were still pouring into my school district to enroll in my class — since their schools no longer existed.
I was in college at Louisiana State University when torrential rains flooded Baton Rouge in 2016. And just one year later, Hurricane Harvey stalled over southwest Louisiana, causing catastrophic flooding in that corner of the state.
I’m no stranger to natural disasters, and that’s exactly why I felt called to spend my career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — one of many federal agencies that work together to both predict hurricanes and repair the damage when one strikes.
Each hurricane can feel like an act of God. Why this storm? Why now? Why my town, and why me? The longer I worked at NOAA, the more I came to appreciate how many experts work together to predict these storms and respond to them.
I wasn’t a storm chaser or a hurricane expert. I managed the budget for a major coastal wetland restoration program called the Coastal Wetland Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act.
CWPPRA is a piece of legislation spearheaded back in 1990 by Senator John Breaux of Louisiana. Five federal agencies work together to implement CWPPRA projects that build back land along Louisiana’s coastline, and NOAA alone has already restored 14,000 acres of coastal land since the law was passed 35 years ago.
Some of NOAA’s restoration projects protect the shrimp fisheries that are vital to Louisiana’s economy. Others restore habitats for migratory birds as they pass through Louisiana on their long journeys north or south. Some reinforce levees to protect crucial hurricane evacuation routes. And others still restore land that was lost in Hurricane Katrina.
It’s hard to overstate what a great investment coastal restoration is. Dozens of other government employees and I worked hard every day to design effective projects and get money out the door so that local Louisiana businesses could build land on what used to be open water.
At first glance, it might seem like my program has nothing to do with hurricane preparedness. But as any Southerner knows about hurricanes, the further inland you are, the safer you are.
That land protects every Louisianan, especially the poorest residents who are least likely to evacuate when a storm makes landfall, and most likely to suffer the consequences. And when Louisiana is protected from storm damage, that’s money FEMA doesn’t have to spend to rebuild destroyed schools, homes, and highways.
But unfortunately, NOAA — and the CWPPRA program specifically — is among the victims of this administration’s slash-and-burn tactics. And I’m one of thousands of NOAA employees who’ve lost their jobs since the president took office in January.
Without my financial expertise, money isn’t getting out the door to rebuild South Louisiana. Cuts to FEMA loom on the horizon. And soon, hurricane season will ramp up ferociously. I worry about my hometown in Florida, the people of South Louisiana, and everyone in states affected by hurricanes.
It’s not too late to protect the federal workers who remain in their roles working on hurricane preparedness. Much of the damage from hurricanes this summer can be restored, but you can’t bring back the dead.
Our continuing newcomer’s guide to protesting looks at the foundational movements that shape our current and future efforts.
Today’s most effective environmental activists — including Bill McKibben, Jane Fonda, and others — draw large crowds and inspire us. To accomplish this, they draw upon history’s most transformative leaders as a model for how to make our voices heard even in difficult situations.
Whether those activists chain themselves to trees or bulldozers, stand strong en masse at government buildings, block transport of fossil fuels or deadly chemicals, or peacefully interrupt privatization of protected lands, these leaders all employ strategies established by historical figures who challenged authority.
Protesting has a long, rich history that you should familiarize yourself with. After all, the United States itself was born out of protest. And protest may determine how we move forward.
Gandhi’s Passive Protests
Mahatma Gandhi’s passive protesting, also known as satyagraha, was a philosophy and practice of nonviolent resistance to injustice, love for one’s opponent, and a commitment to truth as the means to achieve social and political change.
Key aspects of satyagraha include:
Nonviolent Resistance: Gandhi believed violence is weakness and that true strength exists in nonviolent action, such as boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience.
Self-Suffering: This is the willingness to suffer for one’s beliefs, to awaken the conscience of the oppressors and inspire them to change through hunger strikes and peaceful noncompliance/nonparticipation.
Conversion, Not Coercion: Do not just defeat opponents but convert them to a cause through persuasion and by demonstrating the moral superiority; winning hearts and minds.
Boycott Power: Organize widespread boycotts – vote with your wallet and reject unethical products, political actions, discriminatory laws and unscrupulous business models.
Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance has been highly influential worldwide, inspiring civil rights movements and other social justice campaigns by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
Do you fear protesting because it may disrupt your social, professional or political standing? Nelson Mandela tells us: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
King’s Lessons on Nonviolence
Martin Luther King Jr. was a central figure in the American Civil Rights movement, renowned for his leadership in peaceful protests. He advocated for nonviolent resistance to inspire social and political change. His approach emphasized challenging injustice without using violence. King’s nonviolent resistance, a strategic and morally sound approach, included sit-ins and boycotts, marches and demonstrations, civil disobedience, and an emphasis on love and reconciliation.
The King Center’s Six Principles of Nonviolence:
Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice or evil, not people.
Nonviolence means that unearned suffering for a just cause can educate and transform.
Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.
In his 1964 Nobel lecture, King said: “Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love…violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”
John Lewis reinforced this message for all who resist injustice, saying: “Before we went on any protest, whether it was sit-ins or the freedom rides or any march, we prepared ourselves, and we were disciplined. We were committed to the way of peace — the way of non-violence — the way of love — the way of life as the way of living.” Sociological and political scientific research confirms that non-violent protests are more effective than violent ones. Peaceful protests are much more effective.
When authorities repress protests, it can strengthen peaceful movements. When protesters are violent, it often creates news coverage that is more sympathetic to the opposition, whose chosen media outlets will edit the most inflammatory clips of non-peaceful participants in your protest and create video loops and memes that will play repeatedly in the social media landscape and worse, go viral. This drowns out your protest message and its importance, meaning, and intent.
Protesting in Private
If you feel shy about joining a protest, or maybe you have physical limitations that may hinder your participation, you can often make everyday resistance by “voting with your wallet,” i.e. researching your grocery and goods purchases, your credit card corporations, the companies and stores you frequent as a consumer.
You can also spend time contacting your city, state, local and federal representatives if you find them lacking in leadership for the environment and human rights.
Next Time: This series will continue with a look at how, after you’ve gotten some effective protesting experience under your belt, YOU can organize a protest.
Are you active in protests this summer? Tell us about it! Share your ideas, inspirations, aspirations, and advice to newcomers in active movements and protests. Send your comments, suggestions, questions, or even brief essays to [email protected].
The Dominican Republic aims to modernize its waste-management system. But what will happen to the thousands of people — many of them undocumented — who rely on garbage to survive?
San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic — It’s eight in the morning and the landfill wakes up under a veil of smoke. There are no fences, no trees, no shade. Just heaps of smoldering waste blending into the tropical heat. Dozens of people walk across the trash, sacks slung over their shoulders, worn-out rubber boots on their feet. They search for cans, copper, cardboard, plastic, fabrics — even scraps of food.
They search for what no one else wants.
Among them is Kiko, who has worked here since he was a child. Now 30, he knows this place like the back of his hand.
“My mother always went to the landfill,” he says. “I used to beg her to take me with her. I must have been eight the first time I came. For me, it felt like a game, like an amusement park…and time just went by.”
That, Kiko says, is how he became a buzo, the local name for those who scavenge through waste to recover and sell recyclables. He didn’t mean for it to happen. “But I am one, because I live their life.”
Now, like many others, Kiko fears that this world might vanish, a mostly invisible world that’s vital to over 12,000 people across the Dominican Republic.
Many are undocumented Haitians, or children of Haitians born in the bateyes — former sugar cane settlements that now survive as impoverished communities, remnants of a declining economy now replaced by the service sector, with tourism as its core.
A Necessary Law, an Unexpected Threat
Tourism is booming in the Dominican Republic: over 11 million visitors in 2024 — nearly matching the country’s population of 11.4 million. That’s a 35% increase from 2023, almost double the pre-pandemic figure of 6.4 million in 2019, and more than twice the 5 million recorded in 2014 — a dramatic surge that fuels consumption and, in turn, waste.
But where does all that garbage end up?
Each year, the country produces more than 7 million tons of solid waste. Only 7% of it is recycled, according to a 2023 report by the Economic and Commercial Office of the Spanish Embassy in Santo Domingo. The rest mostly ends up in open-air landfills — 358 across the country — many of which lack even basic environmental or sanitary controls. It’s no coincidence that the country ranks 165th for waste management in Yale’s 2024 Environmental Performance Index.
To address this crisis, the Congress of the Dominican Republic passed the General Law on Comprehensive Waste Management and Co-processing (Law 225-20) in 2020 with a goal of completely overhauling the national waste system. One of its most ambitious measures: the progressive closure of at least 30 open-air landfills, as part of a shift toward a cleaner, more formalized economy.
At first glance, this seems like a positive step for the Dominican Republic’s environment — and it is. But there’s a darker side: the law fails to include effective mechanisms for integrating informal recyclers — the buzos — who live and work in these areas. Nor does it acknowledge the social and economic role that these informal networks play for thousands of families.
Without clear inclusion policies, closing landfills could leave thousands of people outside the system — without income, without support, and with no real alternatives.
“It’s a necessary reform and undoubtedly a significant achievement,” says Felipe Rosario Nolasco, coordinator of the National Movement of Recyclers of the Dominican Republic, an organization founded to advocate for the rights of buzos. “However, there’s one aspect that deeply concerns us. The law does not clearly define what role recyclers will play in this process. There’s no regulation that mandates our inclusion, nor have any working groups been set up to discuss the matter. We risk being excluded from the very system we have helped sustain for years. Instead of recognizing and strengthening our work, it is being pushed aside.”
According to Nolasco, private companies are already taking advantage of the situation, “as in Santiago de los Caballeros, where a single company has taken control of the entire recycling sector.” Corporate jobs go exclusively to citizens, which excludes most buzos, who overwhelmingly lack official immigration status or papers.
Nolasco says he worries about the social cost of this legislation. “Without addressing the human dimension, this won’t be a just transition — it will be the systematic exclusion of the most vulnerable.”
Life on the Margins, Lived with Dignity
Life in the landfill is harsh. Kiko knows it well.
“Working here is dangerous,” he says. “You reach into a sack and you might get pricked by a syringe or cut by glass. You feel nauseous, you vomit. Sometimes you can’t take the flies. I’ve seen terrible things… We’ve found newborn babies, dead, thrown into the trash. Even murdered people — burned, abandoned.”
Kiko. Photo: Raúl Zecca Castel
And still, Kiko would rather be here. Because despite everything, in this place that others avoid, he has found a way to live — and to exist — that he wouldn’t trade for anything.
“I like working in the landfill. I won’t lie — I grew up here, and I feel like I belong. Some might find it disgusting, but I was born and raised here. Nothing bothers me,” Kiko says, his eyes bright with a kind of quiet pride. Then he adds: “I’d much rather work here than cut sugar cane. In a day here, you make what would take a week over there. And you’re alone. No one bosses you around. No one tells you what to do or how long to work. You’re your own boss.”
More than just a dump, the landfill is, for many, a space of freedom. Precarious, yes, but real. Because this place, full of danger and debris, also offers something the outside world never gave them: freedom, respect, a sense of belonging.
Altagracia, a 48-year-old woman who used to work in the cane fields and now sells second-hand clothes in the bateyes, says it plainly: “There’s respect here. In the landfill, we’re all equal. If you respect yourself, others respect you too. I like that. I feel like I’m with family here.”
Nairobi. Photo: Raúl Zecca Castel
Nairobi, 24, found something unexpected in the landfill: love. She arrived after leaving a job selling food on the plantations — work that didn’t pay enough to survive.
“People would buy on credit and then couldn’t pay me back,” she explains. Now she’s been recycling plastic and cardboard for three years.
Her partner, Francisco, unable to work after surviving an assault, stays home with their child while she earns their daily income under the sun. He shares their story with a quiet smile, as if he still can’t quite believe it: “We argued a lot at first, but you know, talking and talking… in the end we fell in love. It happens. And now look at us — we’ve lived together for a year and have a child.”
In the landfill, homes, families, and futures are built — even among waste and neglect. Here, thousands of people — invisible to the system — find new ways to live, to resist, to reinvent themselves.
But this fragile web of autonomy and dignity rests on shaky foundations: lack of documents, structural discrimination, and the constant threat of being expelled.
The Price of Informality
“There are so many people like me without papers,” Kiko says. “I couldn’t go to school because of it. And without documents, you can’t do anything.”
His story is far from unique.
According to the Dominican Republic’s National Movement of Recyclers, between 60% and 70% of landfill workers lack legal migration status. As a result, they cannot be formally recognized as “service providers” under the new waste management system set out by Law 225-20. Under this law, service providers would be authorized actors responsible for tasks such as waste collection, transport, transfer, and sale — key operations in what is meant to become a formalized recycling chain. The law envisions a gradual integration of informal recyclers into this system, but without legal status, most remain excluded. They’re informal workers who are invisible to the system and are denied access to rights and services.
The situation is compounded by a disturbing trend: in the past six months, more than 180,000 Haitians have been deported by Dominican authorities, amid rising xenophobia and political tension between the two countries. By comparison, the Trump administration deported fewer than 66,000 people during its first 100 days.
“Law 225-20 aims to modernize the nation and build a cleaner recycling economy. But unless structural barriers — undocumented status, systemic discrimination, migration policy — are addressed, the closure of landfills won’t be a step forward, but a social catastrophe for thousands,” warns Nolasco, offering a stark reminder of the human cost behind policy decisions.
Nairobi earns the equivalent of $4.50 a day — but it’s not a fixed wage. Like everyone else, she works by the piece: if she gets sick or doesn’t collect enough recyclables, she earns nothing. And what she does manage to make supports not just herself and her young son, but also Francisco, who stays home to care for the child. “I don’t want my son to work here,” she says. “I want him to go to school and decide for himself what to do with his life. But now… without papers, there’s no other option.”
Kiko poses. Photo: Raúl Zecca Castel
Kiko writes songs, sings, and dreams of performing on stage. “Maybe one day I’ll become famous. Who knows if I’ll still be here. Today I am. Tomorrow… maybe not. But anything could happen.”
No one should need to rely on a landfill or put their health at risk to process a nation’s waste, but Kiko and the thousands of other buzos have adapted to society’s failures. Shutting down the landfills without creating real alternatives isn’t progress. It’s throwing away the lives of those who live among the waste — yet fight, every day, for their dignity.
Watch a trailer for “Chibol: Lives of Waste,” the author’s documentary about the buzos of the Dominican Republic:
Conservationists in Argentina’s Patagonia region have helped save the country’s most threatened amphibian, the El Rincon stream frog.
Editor’s note: In 2021 conservation scientist Federico Kacoliris profiled the imperiled El Rincon stream frog in The Revelator’s “Species Spotlight” feature.
“The El Rincon stream frog only lives in hot springs at the headwaters of a small Patagonian stream,” he wrote. “With just a handful of decimated populations remaining, the critically endangered frog is struggling to survive.”
But a foundation founded by Kacoloris was already making strides toward protecting this critically endangered frog. “I was part of the first reintroduction attempt of this endangered species in the wild — in a restored habitat where a local population had become extinct,” he wrote. “Releasing captive-born individuals into a wild habitat, where they will be protected and free of threats, makes me happy and confident about being able to do something for the sake of the wild.”
Now we have an exciting update, courtesy of Mongabay writer Mark Hillsdon. The story below was originally published by Mongabay and is republished under a Creative Commons license.
On a Patagonian Plateau, a Microendemic Frog Makes a Hopeful Comeback
A first look at Argentina’s Somuncurá Plateau reveals features somewhat predictable for a Patagonian steppe: shrubs, grass, plains, and rocky outcrops. Only the occasional volcanic peak breaks the monotony of the
landscape spanning an area larger than Switzerland across the provinces of Rio Negro and Chubut. But in this apparent monotony, life abounds as the plateau’s conditions make it one of Patagonia’s key biodiversity areas and home to several endemic species.
Among those, one critically endangered species has caught the attention of researchers and, more recently, of the wider conservation world. Measuring less than 5 centimeters (2 inches) in length, the El Rincon stream frog (Pleurodema somuncurense) relies on the warm headwaters of the Valcheta stream, fed by the Somuncurá’s hot springs. Here, the microendemic amphibian, whose habitat measures no more than 10 square kilometers (3.7 square miles), finds refuge from the plateau’s large temperature variations.
The species was described by scientists in the late 1960s, but went on to be largely ignored by science until the early 2000s, when it became increasingly exposed to habitat loss, invasive species and cattle ranching. That earned it the status of critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, making it one of the world’s most threatened amphibians.
Argentina’s Somuncurá Plateau provides an unexpected haven for microendemic species. Image courtesy of Federico Kacoliris.
Federico Kacoliris has long studied the El Rincon stream frog. Aside from adding knowledge about the species and its habitats, Kacoliris, who leads the Somuncurá Foundation, has mobilized a conservation movement around this tiny amphibian. So far, the effort coordinated by several NGOs with ranchers and local communities has boosted the frog population by about 15% to date from an initial count of just over 4,500 adult individuals in 2018. These restoration efforts have also benefited the critically endangered naked characin fish (Gymnocharacinus bergii), Patagonia’s only endemic fish species, found only in the Valcheta stream.
For his work, Kacoliris was recently named a winner of the Whitley Award, a prestigious prize known as the “Green Oscars” that supports grassroots conservation across the Global South.
“As a conservation symbol, the El Rincon frogs are very important because … they are the most threatened amphibian species in the country,” Kacoliris tells Mongabay.
Federico Kacoliris, who heads the Somuncurá Foundation, has mobilized a conservation movement around the species inhabiting the plateau, bringing benefits to the wider ecosystem. Image courtesy of Federico Kacoliris.
A key action to conserve the frogs has been tackling the predatory species that have invaded their habitat. Predatory rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were introduced in the Valcheta stream, and across Argentina, during the 1920s; a highly aggressive species, it quickly became the top predator, pushing the El Rincon frogs into the headwaters and a few isolated tributaries. But even in these small patches away from the trout, the frogs saw their habitats threatened by cattle, which trampled on vital vegetation and polluted the waters, causing eutrophication, or low-oxygen dead spots, Kacoliris says.
Removing the trout was “the only way to guarantee the long-term survival of the frogs,” he adds.
Using a system of natural features such as waterfalls, alongside artificial barriers, the team from the Somuncurá Foundation has cleared the stream one section at a time, increasing the frog’s natural habitat by more than 15%, Kacoliris says. They then released thousands of tadpoles into the trout-free, restored areas.
To address cattle invasions, the Somuncurá Foundation works with local ranchers. Traditionally, they raised sheep here, but about 10 years ago, as increasing numbers of sheep fell prey to pumas and Andean foxes, they switched to cattle, Kacoliris tells Mongabay. This despite the land and climate being too hostile for ranching.
Creating dams to manage restrict trout from entering the areas inhabited by the El Rincon stream frog. Image courtesy of Federico Kacoliris.
In many places the Valcheta stream runs through private properties, and Kacoliris has worked with individual ranchers, striking deals to fence off key areas of the stream, where the thermal waters bubble to the surface, and where both the frogs and fish go to breed. Water troughs are provided so the cattle still have easy access to water. Kacoliris also encourages ranchers to return to sheep farming, showing them it can be much more lucrative, and providing them with guardian dogs to protect the livestock from predator attacks. At the same time, the program is working to discourage the shooting of pumas and Andean foxes.
“The frogs are like [a] flagship species,” Kacoliris says. “[The ranchers] are really proud about being neighbors of these incredible animals, it’s a kind of local symbol.”
Marta and Benedicto Ortiz are siblings who have been farming sheep and goats across about 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) on the plateau for more than 50 years. Speaking through Kacoliris, they say that when they were children, the stream was full of frogs, but that over the years these disappeared.
They’ve allowed the foundation to fence off some of the stream that runs across their family’s land, and say they’re proud to help protect the frogs and naked characins living there.
The naked characin fish (Gymnocharacinus bergii) is Patagonia’s only endemic fish species, found only in the Valcheta stream. Image by Hernan Povedano courtesy of Federico Kacoliris.
The siblings also have three guard dogs that they say have reduced the loss of sheep to predators.
Over the last four years, the Somuncurá Foundation, in partnership with the U.K. charity World Land Trust and partner NGO the Habitat and Development Foundation (Fundación Hábitat y Desarrollo), have acquired 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) across the plateau, which now forms the region’s first nature reserve. The ultimate aim, Kacoliris says, is to donate the land to Argentina’s National Parks Service, which will give it a higher level of protection.
This marks a rare success for conservationists working to save the world’s amphibians. According to research published in February, amphibians worldwide receive just 2.8% of all conservation funding, despite the fact that 41% of the entire class are threatened with extinction.
“Amphibians are the most threatened animals on the planet,” says Jeanne Tarrant, director at Anura Africa, an NGO supporting amphibian conservation across Africa.
Yet conservation efforts are “massively underfunded compared to other groups [such as] charismatic mega-fauna,” she says.
Amphibians, along with reptiles and insects, have an image problem, she adds; they lack the perceived charisma of iconic species such as pandas and tigers. It’s an issue that goes back to the earliest days of zoological study, Tarrant says, when Carl Linneaus, the 18th-century father of modern taxonomy, described reptiles and amphibians as “foul and loathsome.” The label has stuck in the mind of the public and potential donors.
Since 2018, the Somuncurá Foundation has increased the El Rincon stream frog population by about 15%. Image courtesy of Federico Kacoliris.
But Tarrant says perceptions are starting to change and there’s now greater recognition of the important role that frogs, lizards and beetles play in maintaining healthy ecosystems. “There really does seem to be a genuine increase in interest in the smaller, less charismatic things,” she says.
Typically, she says, biologists have shunned the limelight, preferring to work alone out in the field. But that has had to change and they now play a crucial role as storytellers, as well as working with other academics, such as social scientists, to understand the fears and concerns of local communities.
“[People] want to know why something is useful,” Tarrant says, and it’s important to explain the significance of a species and the role it performs.
The big sell with frogs, she says, is that they’re great natural pest controllers, eating insects that could otherwise destroy crops. They even play a role in human health; one study linked an increase in malaria cases in Central America to the decline of amphibian populations, which allowed disease-carrying mosquitoes to flourish.
To help breed El Rincon stream frogs, in 2016 the researchers set up an initial facility at La Plata Museum in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, the country’s first facility for threatened amphibians. After two successful reintroductions of 200 juvenile frogs born at the facility, in 2022 the ex-situ program moved to Buenos Aires Eco-Park, a conservation center based at the former city zoo.
Borja Baguette Pereiro is a conservation coordinator at the eco-park and worked with Kacoliris to nurture the eggs into tadpoles and eventually juvenile El Rincon stream frogs for release back into the wild. He agrees that biologists need to be good storytellers, too. “The priority is that people become familiar with the species: for them to know where it lives, what it looks like, what it eats and what threats it faces.”
Somuncurá Foundation aims to restore all the headwaters of the Valcheta stream by 2030 in order to protect the El Rincon stream frog in the long term. Maps courtesy of Federico Kacoliris.
While the eco-park also runs conservation programs for more iconic species such as the Andean condor (Vultur gryphus) and the South American tapir (Tapirus terrestris), Pereiro’s team is also focused on saving less captivating species such as the minute Apipé water snail (Aylacostoma chloroticum), the scorpion mud turtle (Kinosternon scorpiodes), and endemic species living in remote environments, such as the Pehuenche spiny-chest frog (Alsodes pehuenche), which only inhabits the meltwater streams high in the central Andes.
“Species such as frogs or small reptiles are frequently endemic, highlighting the importance of the local community recognizing them as their own,” Pereiro says. “Without their involvement in conservation, no one else will step in.”
Kacoliris agrees that creating a narrative is an important part of conservation, especially when dealing with amphibians. “The way we share our enthusiasm about conserving these small animals is by telling the story,” he says. Schoolchildren from the village of Chipauquil, on the Somuncurá Plateau, for instance, have taken part in the project, adopting the frogs and monitoring them after their release.
“It is key to engage the local people in the conservation actions,” Kacoliris says, “because they are the final guardians of the whole biodiversity of the region.”
This is how hedgehogs coexist with us in the urban environment. Their time is when most of us are sleeping; their place is in the gaps and disregarded spaces of our busy city lives.
Hedgehogs are nocturnal so there was little possibility of seeing one when
my new colleague, Elizabeth Vander Meer, led a small group from the University of Edinburgh’s Sustainability in Education Research Group to the student accommodation at Pollock Halls, where there is a healthy population.
In fact, a sighting would have been concerning, perhaps indicating injury or dehydration, so none of us would have liked to encounter one that day. An unusual adventure then: to move close but never reach each other; to search but never find.
This is how hedgehogs coexist with us in the urban environment. Their time is when most of us are sleeping; their place is in the gaps and disregarded spaces of our busy city lives. Every now and then, paths cross and these prickly night wanderers reveal something of their hidden worlds.
As part of the Hedgehog Friendly Campus initiative, Elizabeth and her colleagues have been mapping, recording and documenting the journeys and behaviors of the University’s hedgehog community. Their work has led to rewilded corners of the campus, new shelters made of logs and targeted planting, training programs, surveys, community engagement, signage, and student research projects. In 2022 the University was awarded Gold status for “embedding and sustainability of continued actions as well as wider engagement with local and regionally based communities.”
Elizabeth Vander Meer (left) and the Sustainability in Education Research Group at Pollock Halls student residence, University of Edinburgh. Photo: David Overend
And why all this hard work? Well, habitats are reducing, fatalities due to traffic are on the rise, water can be hard to find, the climate is becoming less predictable, and populations are significantly declining. Hedgehogs are now classed as vulnerable to extinction in the United Kingdom. If we can prevent this from happening, then maybe there is hope for us too?
We walked together from Moray House, where many of us work in Education and Sport. The route took us along the edge of Holyrood Park with Salisbury Crags above us and a deep blue sky above them. As we stopped for a moment at the bottom of a grassy bank off the main path, a man with an expensive looking camera asked us if we were the butterfly group. On learning that we were in fact in pursuit of hedgehogs, he made his apologies and was quickly on his way.
Funny how humans do that, I remarked: separating the natural world into specific species and areas of interest, when of course everything is entangled.
Elizabeth asked us if we had seen any hedgehogs recently and the group’s responses were bleak. Some — myself included — had not seen a living, healthy hog since our childhood. Most had seen dead animals on the road in recent months. Only one or two had regular visitors to their gardens in the evenings. We walked on, keen to reach the hedgehog-rich environs of the student halls.
As we arrived on site, Elizabeth shared the evidence of prickly presences. This included the most wonderful image I have seen in some time. Using a tunnel rigged with ink and paper, the team had captured a moment of passage — tiny hedgehog footprints left on a crisp white canvas.
The reaction of the group to this image was like a gaggle of grandmothers meeting a newborn. Hedgehogs seem to move even the most cynical academic into gushing adoration and this group was far from cynical.
Hedgehog footprints captured in the tunnel, Pollock Halls. Photo: Elizabeth Vander Meer (used with permission)
We also saw footage from a camera trap. A brief glimpse of a hedgehog as it approached the tunnel, then a badger trying unsuccessfully to squeeze its bulky frame into the small opening, then a fox taking a more aggressive approach. All these residents of Pollock Halls, living here without the exorbitant fees paid by their student co-habitants.
In the lead up to the walk, Elizabeth had shared an article with us. Exploring the idea of Storied-Places, Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose consider a colony of penguins and a flying fox camp in Sydney, Australia. They explore the ways in which “these animals understand and render meaningful the places they inhabit,” pointing out that “much of what they respond to in the city was not meant for them.” The authors propose an “ethics of conviviality,” which would put the burden back on humans, prompting us “to find multiple, life enhancing ways of sharing and co-producing meaningful and enduring multispecies cities.”
Walking with this idea of a city storied by hedgehogs led us to think differently about the places that we passed through and stopped within. We were becoming attuned to borders and barriers, noting places of safety and vulnerability and imagining ourselves into the lifeworld of the hedgehogs. This enabled a different quality of observation and conversation, and opened up the possibility of creative, experiential modes of enquiry.
For the next part of the session, we gathered in a hidden area of woodland bordering Prestonfield golf course for a workshop activity. I invited the group to work in pairs. One person was tasked with exploring the features of the site that Elizabeth had pointed out and the other would document this investigation with photographs, notes, drawings or diagrams.
At this level, the invitation was simple and straightforward, but I also hoped that the group would be up for a slightly more leftfield approach, so I also gave them the option of doing this task slightly differently. The explorer would look around this place as a hedgehog, or at least with hedgehog-like ways of sensing and moving through the site.
The point was not to pretend to be a hedgehog (although that would not be discouraged if anyone wished to take it in that direction). Rather, the idea was to get close to a hedgehog’s way of being here — to crawl through hedges, to feel the leaf litter, to smell the ground. My suggestion was that the designated explorers should try to get a feel for the point at which they were starting to feel uncomfortable and to stay there for a while or try to move beyond it.
While these participants attempted to inhabit the site as hedgehogs, the documenting partner had a slightly different role: to observe a non-human presence — passage and dwelling. This might change the nature of the task and raise questions about why we would need to do this, what would it tell us, and what does it mean for the hedgehog who is recorded in this way?
To my delight, the group embraced this task with openness and enthusiasm. Off they went into the undergrowth, testing routes, feeling their way across the site, plunging hands into leaf litter and taking seriously the possibility of being more hedgehog (or less human) for a moment.
For 20 minutes, the group’s engagement with the site seemed to transform into something more playful and experimental, but also more tentative and careful. I watched one hedgehog-participant move down the edge of the site, searching for a passing place perhaps, but not finding an accessible section of the wire fence marking the border.
Elizabeth had told us that the ideal habitat range for a hedgehog is 0.9 km², whereas the Pollock Halls site is around a tenth of that. This means that the neighboring sites make a big difference, and beyond this particular fence the golf course was exposed, over managed, and beyond our reach.
As we came back together to bring the session to a close, participants shared their experiences. One of the explorers said that the task had made him feel very big, and everyone agreed that the shift of scale had been important. We reflected on patterns of movement and the need for shelter, wondered about what could be eaten. The wilder areas of the site felt safe and habitable, but the paved areas between them were dangerous and exposed. The group had enjoyed this task, and said they felt that it had provided a space and time to foster a more-than-human relationship with the site.
While the discussion continued, I had to leave promptly to catch a train. As I power-walked down South Bridge, dodging tourists and traffic, it struck me how quickly we can return to our frenetic lifestyles. The built-up city center seemed inhospitable to hedgehogs, and it was easy not to spare them a thought in this part of town.
Nevertheless, my afternoon’s encounter at the fringes of the built environment had offered an alternative way of being and thinking that felt hugely important. We might not often see the non-human others who share our cities, but we need to remember that they are here too. The walk and workshop had allowed us to explore an ethics of conviviality that requires a different way of designing, building, managing and inhabiting urban space. The image of the footprints is a powerful emblem for this project, a reminder that others pass where we walk.
Seven proposals at the upcoming Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species conference of the parties would benefit up to 70 species of sharks…if they pass.
On July 1 more than 70 species of sharks and rays, including beloved species like whale sharks and manta rays, were proposed for strict protections under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES (pronounced “sight-ease”). Oceanic whitetip sharks — once considered one of the most-abundant large animals in the ocean but whose populations have declined by 90% or more — are also up for protections.
These proposals have the potential to help transform international shark conservation.
CITES logo, CITES, Copyrighted, All Rights Reserved – Used by Permission,
This year is an important conservation milestone: the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP) of CITES. Described as “the world’s largest and most influential meetings on international wildlife trade,” the nations meeting at the conference will debate and vote on a variety of proposals that help regulate global trade of plants and animals.
International trade poses a major threat to many species, since the highest demand for wildlife products like meat, fins, feathers, or wood often comes from countries outside of these species’ native ranges. The decisions made at CITES, therefore, have the power to save species of conservation concern from extinction.
Here’s how CITES works, including a look at some of the shark conservation proposals being debated this year.
How CITES Works
CITES — an international treaty among 185 signatory nations known as Parties — places each species it regulates on one of three Appendices, and the goal of most CITES proposals is to get species of conservation concern listed on one of them.
Before that, one or more Parties submit a proposal to protect a species or group of species, often with cosponsors from other Parties to suggest broad support. These proposals go to a vote at COP meetings and must receive a two-thirds majority from the Parties to pass.
In addition to the Parties, a variety of entities with observer status can attend COPs and speak without formally voting. This includes the IUCN and environmental nonprofits. One such nonprofit is the Wildlife Conservation Society, for which I currently serve as a conservation communications consultant. WCS is a longtime leader on global shark and ray conservation and has participated in CITES for many years.
Most discussions focus on Appendix I and Appendix II. An Appendix I listing results in a strict ban on international trade in a species. For example, all species of sawfish (critically endangered shark-like rays) are listed under Appendix I. This means that even though their rostrum, or “saw,” is a popular tourist curio, it is illegal to transport one for sale across national borders. As this is the highest level of protection, it requires the highest standard of evidence, and it is the most difficult listing to achieve. Fortunately, relatively few species need an Appendix I listing.
Rostra of different species of sawfish, image courtesy Florida Museum of Natural History
An Appendix II listing does not ban international trade in products from a listed species. Instead, it heavily regulates that trade, requiring the exporting country to demonstrate that the product was harvested sustainably. (To prove that a product comes from a sustainably managed population, it must carry a document called a “non-detriment finding,” without which trade is banned.) This is the Appendix that most shark products — including jaws, meat, and fins — are regulated under.
CITES also has a powerful rule called the “Look-Alike Rule.” This comes into play where an endangered species looks so similar to a non-endangered species that we can’t expect a customs agent to be able to tell the difference. In this case, the non-endangered species receive the same level of protection as endangered species, because that’s the best way to protect the endangered species. At the most recent Conference of the Parties in 2022, the Look-Alike Rule was used to get the vast majority of shark species whose fins are traded in the global fin trade listed under Appendix II. Now, if customs agents can’t tell whether a detached fin comes from a critically endangered shark species or a similar-looking species with a healthy population, both are restricted and require a non-detriment finding for legal trade. As of 2022, all 56 species of sharks in family Carcharhinidae and all the hammerhead sharks in family Sphyrnidae are listed under Appendix II, many under the look-alike rule.
It’s important to also note what CITES cannot do. As it only regulates international trade, a CITES listing by itself has absolutely no legal authority to stop a species from being killed and used in its home country.
It also doesn’t make it illegal to kill endangered species in general. It just regulates or bans international trade in products made from those species, or in the species themselves (live specimens).
But since so much of the threat to so many species comes from market demand through international trade, this can still be enormously powerful.
Additionally, CITES listings can (and do) result in improving complementary domestic regulations, because countries want to be able to meet the standards needed for a non-detriment finding — for example, so they can legally export shark products.
For sharks, this has often taken the form of improved fisheries quotas and catch limits, including in many countries which previously had essentially no shark fisheries management in place. A new analysis found that for 44 species of sharks and rays listed on CITES, 48% of countries have improved their regulations, including improved data collection and improved compliance and enforcement of rules.
Sharks and CITES
Historically, CITES has been very much focused on terrestrial species conservation — it’s no accident that the logo is shaped like an elephant, as much of the early discussions concerned the international trade of elephant ivory.
However, in recent years, marine species in general, and sharks and rays specifically, have increasingly become part of the agenda. This process first started with species with no significant commercial fishery — gentle giants like whale and basking sharks. It later expanded to listing commercially fished species such as threshers, makos, and porbeagles under Appendix II.
Progress has been slow but steady, resulting in lots of saved sharks along the way.
Proposals at the Upcoming COP
This year’s CITES proposals include seven covering sharks and rays that would affect 70 species.
Several species already listed under Appendix II are proposed for a transfer to Appendix I, strengthening their protections by fully banning international trade in products from the species. This includes mobula rays (also known as devil rays, which include manta rays) whose filter-feeding gill plates are used to make a traditional Chinese medicine tea.
Oceanic whitetip sharks, one of the species of sharks most affected by industrial scale fishing, are also proposed for a transfer from Appendix II to Appendix I.
There’s also a proposal for a “zero quota” for Appendix II listed guitarfish — functionally similar to an Appendix I listing but procedurally slightly different and generally considered to be more appropriate for species who are threatened now but can bounce back relatively quickly if pressure is reduced. The Wildlife Conservation Society’s statement on this notes that “these proposals reflect what scientists and governments have known for years: for some shark and ray species, sustainable trade is not feasible, and the strongest protections are the only path forward.”
There are also some proposals for listing new species under Appendix II. The Wildlife Conservation Society’s statement notes that “with 90% of the shark fin trade now regulated, focus must shift to other drivers of shark overfishing.” One proposal aims to list deepwater gulper sharks, whose oily livers are used as squalene in cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. Deep sea species like gulper sharks were out of touch and out of danger because fisheries couldn’t reach them, but newer technology, driven by demand for squalene, have changed the equation.
Another proposal calls for listing smoothhound sharks, whose meat is eaten all over the world. The shark meat trade notably involves different species and different end-user markets than the better-known shark fin trade, and smoothhound meat is eaten in things like South American ceviche and European fish and chips.
Learn More and Get Involved
The actual COP will take place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan from November 24-December 5, although many countries will decide whether or not they’re supporting or co-sponsoring proposals long before then.
Though the meeting is not open to the public and only governments, not individuals, get to vote, many environmental nonprofits attend as observers. Some, like the Wildlife Conservation Society, will be sharing updates and information in real time on social media, including opportunities for the public to get involved at key moments and encourage their governments to support these key proposals.
The fate of these amazing and beloved animals comes down to these upcoming votes. Let’s not miss this important opportunity.
Shiffman, who often writes for the news section of The Revelator as a journalist, wrote this editorial in his capacity as a conservation consultant working with the Wildlife Conservation Society.
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Science has helped improve management and restoration, but advocates say there still isn’t enough water to go around.
On a Saturday afternoon in late May, Dania Rose Colegrove stood in the shade of an oak tree, waiting for a small group of young runners to crest the hill on a dusty dirt and gravel road.
She and about 60 Tribal members and river advocates had gathered on the banks of the Klamath River near the old Iron Gate dam site in northern California to witness the annual Salmon Run, which follows the migration route of salmon up the Klamath and its largest tributary, the Trinity River. In past years, the race ended abruptly at Iron Gate dam, and runners would shake their fists at the enormous earthen barrier.
This year, the mood was buoyant: for the first time, runners were about to race through an undammed stretch of the Klamath River.
Wooden salmon for the relay race. Photo: Juliet Grable
“It’s been a long time coming, but it happened,” said Rose, a Hoopa Valley Tribal member and long-time activist for dam removal.
Four young women from the Hoopa Valley Tribe started the relay race more than 20 years ago to raise awareness about struggling salmon runs and to pray for the river’s healing.
Now that four dams have been completely removed from the main stem of the Klamath, Tribes and fish advocates are hopeful that water quality and fish runs can recover. But they know the work is just beginning — not just on the Klamath, but its tributaries.
“The Trinity River might be our next fight,” said Rose.
The Trinity River is arguably the Klamath watershed’s most important artery. Historically, it teemed with salmon and steelhead and poured clean, cold water into the main stem Klamath. But for over seven decades, dams have blocked 100 miles of habitat on the tributary, and enormous volumes of water are diverted to an entirely different watershed. An ambitious restoration program is improving habitat and how the river flows, but climate change, over-allocation, and the unpredictability of the Trump administration threaten the river’s recovery.
An Artificial Tributary
Like every California water story, the story of the Trinity River is complicated.
The tributary flows through wild, mountainous Northern California for 165 miles before joining the Klamath River on Hoopa Valley and Yurok homelands.
It’s a fishy river, hosting several runs of steelhead, spring run and fall-run Chinook salmon, coho salmon, green sturgeon, Pacific lamprey, and eulachon.
Like other rivers in Gold Country, dredge mining thrashed the Trinity. In places, you can easily spot the tailings — enormous piles of river-rounded cobbles — that were scooped from the river, sifted through for gold, then dumped beside the banks in the 1930s and 40s.
In the 1950s Congress incorporated the Trinity River into the Central Valley Project, a massive and complex federal water project that supplies irrigation water to Central Valley agricultural land to the southeast. By 1963 three dams, diversion tunnels, and canals were completed, allowing the Central Valley Project to divert up to 90% of Trinity River water away from the Pacific Ocean and into the Sacramento River — an entirely different basin that eventually drains into San Francisco Bay.
Some argued fish runs might benefit from the changes. Young fish aren’t super-strong swimmers, the logic went, so they’d thrive from reduced water flows.
Instead, runs crashed.
The same act of Congress that married the Trinity River with the Central Valley Project also mandated that fish and wildlife on the Trinity be preserved, and that enough water flowed to serve people downstream.
“These provisions are being continually reinterpreted,” says Kyle DeJuilio, senior fisheries biologist at the Yurok Tribe. “And that has resulted in a lot of restoration activities and flow operation changes to try to reverse some of the damage that was done to the fish runs of the Trinity.”
Flowing From the Science
Consistent funding has allowed biologists to continually study the river and adapt management.
One thing they’ve learned: disturbance is good.
Before the dams and diversions, the Trinity River fluctuated wildly, swelling with winter storms, ebbing in the summer. Those big storms did good work, occasionally stripping away swaths of streamside trees and shrubs and spreading out into the floodplain, where gushy wet meadows supported a banquet of fish food for young salmon. The big, flushing flows also washed fine sediment out of the holes and riffles where adult salmon like to spawn.
After the dams were built, flows were managed at a steady state — lower in winter, higher in summer. Without disturbance, shrubs and trees grew thick along the riverbank.
The tamed river “become a really, really fast canal,” says DeJuillio. The vegetated berms also blocked fish from the floodplain, or stranded fish behind it.
To remedy these issues, managers used heavy equipment to physically turn the stream bed over and re-sculpt parts of the river channel. By the 1990s the spawning beds had recovered. But flows still weren’t strong enough to dislodge streamside vegetation or knock through the enormous piles of mining tailings.
In 2000 a federal decision created the Trinity River Restoration Program, which is managed by Tribes, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other government agencies and aims to restore fish runs to pre-diversion levels.
The approach to restoration has evolved over the decades, says DeJuilio.
“River restoration was a really new and novel field of study in the nineties,” he explains. “In a way, we were focused [more] on the physical nature of the system and less on creating those really, really productive conditions at the time when [salmon] fry were present.”
The Oregon Gulch Project, completed in 2024, illustrates this new approach on a massive scale. Here, operators hauled thousands of cubic yards of mining tailings to a nearby quarry and used heavy equipment to sculpt a new meander across the valley. The newly created floodplain should be a haven for young salmon.
But habitat restoration is just one piece of the Trinity River puzzle.
More Water for the Trinity
In fall 2002 at least 34,000 salmon, mostly adult Chinook who had returned to the Klamath River to spawn, died near the river’s mouth after two highly contagious diseases ripped through the population. Warm water temperatures, which favor pathogens, contributed to the catastrophe.
Since then managers have occasionally released cold Trinity River water to keep temperatures in the Klamath from climbing too high and preventing another disastrous fish kill. But in drought dry years, there simply isn’t enough water in the Trinity to meet all of the demands.
Since the early 2000s, more water has stayed in the Trinity, yet on average, half of the river’s volume is still diverted to the Central Valley. In critically dry years, the percentage is often much higher. In 2024 the conservation organization American Rivers included the Trinity River in its list of most endangered rivers due to “outdated water management that has led to reservoir depletion, rising river temperatures, and other environmental impacts” that threaten fish.
The Hoopa Valley and Yurok Tribes are working with the Bureau of Reclamation on a new federal management plan for the Trinity River. Advocates hoped it would be completed last year.
Now, Rose worries how the plan might change under President Trump’s watch. Trump has demanded that water be diverted from northern California, where he claims (without merit) that it is “wasting” into the Pacific Ocean, to feed cities and farms to the south.
“When this Trump stuff comes down the track, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” says Rose.
Regina Chichizola, executive director at Save California Salmon, says state water plans also threaten the Trinity. For example, California Governor Gavin Newsom wants to expedite construction of the Delta Conveyance Project, a controversial proposal that has seen several incarnations over the decades. The “Delta tunnel” would bypass the San Francisco Bay Delta, allowing greater export of water from Northern California to the south during wet years.
Chichizola worries that this and other state plans leave the Trinity River vulnerable.
“There’s nothing to say that they can’t just take more water,” she says, pointing to drought years when the state would draw more water from Trinity River reservoirs to make up for low flows on the Sacramento River.
Her group and others are lobbying for explicit protections for the Trinity.
“Our biggest strategy for a while has been that we need California to put in place protections in all of their plans for the Trinity River,” she says.
This will be especially important as climate change accelerates: The next dry year is not an if, but a when.
But droughts aren’t the only concern, and it’s not just fish that are threatened.
Climate change will also bring bigger floods, and “Trinity dam is dilapidated and deteriorating,” says Rose. An analysis of California dams in the face of climate change revealed the two Trinity River dams as among the most at risk of failing, or overtopping, which would spell disaster for communities downstream.
As the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE gutted federal agencies earlier this year, critics sounded the alarm over how the cuts could compromise safety and management of dams nationwide.
Growing Bigger Fish
When it comes to supporting salmon, DeJuilio stresses that timing of water is just as important as the volume. Here again, science has been informing management.
Starting in 2000, the Restoration Program began releasing pulses of water from the dam in late spring in an attempt to mimic the river’s natural variation. But there’s a problem with this strategy. The water, released from the bottom of the dam, is frigid. The cold water confuses young salmon, who are already heading for the ocean. It also slows their growth.
The Trinity River produces about double the young salmon it did 20 years ago. But the fish are slightly smaller than they were in the past, and the number of adult Chinook returning from the ocean to spawn remains persistently low.
Program biologists want to start releasing this “extra” water from the dam earlier, in sync with winter storms in December, January, and February. These bursts of water would disturb the riverbed, creating conditions that allow yummy bugs to flourish and multiply at the right time of year.
“And the timing of that is almost perfect for when juvenile salmon are exiting the gravels [where they hatched],” says DeJuilio.
So far, this strategy has only been implemented twice, in 2023 and 2025, and it will take several fish generations to see if these “variable flows” translate into bigger, healthier fish.
The Hoopa Valley Tribe has sued to stop the winter releases of water — not because they think it’s a bad idea, but because they’re worried it wouldn’t leave enough water in reserve to bring down temperatures in the Klamath River in summer.
“I think it’s great that [the Restoration Program is] trying to release the water at the right times of year,” says Chichizola. “I just think it’s that they need more water to work with.”
The Restoration Program remains committed to the strategy.
“As with all water issues in California, it’s been highly debated and it’s been in the works for a long time,” says DeJuilio. “But generally, management is moving toward being ever better informed by the science and of what fish actually need.”
Running for the River
Back at the Iron Gate site on the Klamath River, a small crowd circled around as runners from the downriver Tribes exchanged wooden salmon totems with runners from the Klamath Tribes. Then they gathered for a group picture just downstream of where the massive earthen dam used to block the river.
“Undammed!” some of the elders shouted as cellphone cameras captured the scene.
Photo: Juliet Grable
Now that the barrier is gone, salmon can swim freely upstream. A more naturally flowing river should also reduce the risk of disease downstream, which hopefully means better survival of the fish that return up the Klamath and tributaries like the Trinity.
Dania Rose will keep advocating for the rivers, but she knows she can’t do it alone.
“I’m glad to see all these kids,” she says, as the young runners chug up the hill past the old Iron Gate site. “We need to pass the torch.”
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Three simple keystrokes will deliver search results that consume less energy and water — and probably contain better information.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an editorial discouraging environmentalists from using generative AI programs like ChatGPT due to their extraordinary energy and water consumption. If you care about the planet, I argued, you shouldn’t use such climate-damaging systems.
Most people responded to the editorial positively, but one follow-up question kept coming up: “How do I get AI completely out of my life?”
That’s a broad question, and it’s a tough one to answer because artificial intelligence has been wrapped into so many aspects of our daily lives, from cell phones, use of Microsoft Word, customer-service inquiries and, of course, search engines.
That last one bothered a lot of you, who complained about Google presenting AI answers to every search, well before any websites that might contain the same (or better) answers.
Now, search results that present AI-generated answers don’t carry quite the same environmental cost as full-fledged generative AI queries — like asking ChatGPT to “write” a full essay — but some research suggests AI search results will use four to five times as much energy as the old non-AI searches we used to enjoy. That’s not nothing, and in the battle against climate change, every watt counts.
Luckily, it turns out there’s an easy way to get AI out of your Google search results. Simply type these three keys after your search term: -AI
(That’s the minus sign immediately followed by the letters AI, with no space between them.)
Here’s an example: I Googled the phrase “why are tigers endangered” and got this result, leading with an AI-generated overview:
I tried it again with “-AI” at the end of the search phrase and got these results, which start with an authoritative source. Google still includes an overview pulled from the pages, but it doesn’t appear to have been generated by AI:
A second example: I searched for information on data centers and noise pollution (another problem of AI) and got this AI-generated search result:
But I added “-AI” to the search and got a reputable source first. Google still included a few lines from that source, but that’s the point: It was sourced in the first place. A lot of AI-generated texts don’t present their sources, so you can’t judge their veracity.
Google is obviously the king of search, but it’s not the only game in town. I tried this on a variety of other search engines and got similar — but imperfect — results.
A normal search on Bing delivered a detailed AI answer from its Copilot AI system.
Using “-AI” on Bing delivered a search result with a space for Copilot, but that space didn’t populate.
A normal search on Yahoo delivered an AI summary.
Using “-AI” on Yahoo still generated an AI answer, although it appeared after an authoritative source. (This earns Yahoo a failing grade, in my book.)
DuckDuckGo presented an AI “assist” on my first search (which, quite interestingly, included a warning about its possible lack of accuracy).
Adding “-AI” to the search on that platform delivered AI-free results. This made DuckDuckGo today’s winner. (It’s worth noting that DuckDuckGo also receives high marks from security specialists because it doesn’t track your search results.)
None of these results are perfect, and these search engines are likely to modify their systems at any time. But as of this writing using “-AI” seems like a simple and efficient way to reduce the carbon footprint of your online searches — which, as a journalist who searches for stuff dozens of times a day, is something I appreciate.
Credit where credit is due: I got this tip about Google from a video posted by ABC News chief meteorologist Ginger Zee. Watch her video below, and her Climate A to Zee series on YouTube:
Update July 16:
Several readers recommended the nonprofit search engine Ecosia, which does not use AI and which plows its income from ads into planting trees. Unfortunately, my test of this platform prominently displayed an advertisement from a far-right site known for conspiracies, so I’m wary.
Another user on BlueSky pointed out that you can actively turn off AI features on DuckDuckGo by going into their settings, which worked in our tests. We hope more search engines will follow their lead.
Do you have other questions about reducing your carbon footprint or helping wildlife? Or do you have tips to share? Write to us at [email protected].
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Residents and activists spent the next 10 years fighting the project. In the process, they connected with each other, built community resources and mutual-aid networks, and inspired other activists around the country.
I tried it again with “-AI” at the end of the search phrase and got these results, which start with an authoritative source. Google still includes an overview pulled from the pages, but it doesn’t appear to have been generated by AI:
