Are Botanists Endangered?

As funding drops and institutions change, the study of plants appears to be withering on the vine. That’s letting critical skills go extinct.

Researchers in Indonesia recently captured a surprising event on video: A wild orangutan named Rakus, with a deep gash on his cheek, harvested liana leaves, chewed them up, and rubbed them on his wound. His cheek healed without infection. As it turns out the plants have anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, and other chemical properties that help heal wounds.

The great ape saw the plant, recognized the plant, and valued the plant because he knew something about a subject that few humans do anymore: botany.

At a time when our net knowledge about plants keeps growing, our individual understanding of plants is in decline. This is unsurprising, because while we still depend on plants for life, few of us need to know much about them in our daily lives — as long as someone else does. We rely on botanists to identify plants, keep them alive, and in so doing help keep us alive as well.

It’s a lot of responsibility for a group of scientists that isn’t getting any bigger. And that has some people in the field worried.

Crunching Numbers

The National Center for Education Statistics triggered the first alarm about the future of botany in 2015. According to data released that year, the number of annual undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees awarded in botany or plant biology in the United States had dropped below 400 for the fifth time since 2007. In 1988 the number of degrees was 545.

The number soon rose again and so far has stayed above 400. In fact it rose to 489 in 2023 — the highest in decades. (By comparison, American universities gave out more than 45,000 marketing degrees last year.)

The definitive downward trend, though, remains in the number of U.S. institutions offering botany or plant biology degrees — from 76 in 2002 to 59 in 2023.

“Botany Ph.D.’s are disappearing,” says Kathryn Parsley, who got her Ph.D. in biology, not botany, even though her dissertation focused on plants. “The number of botanists is declining rapidly and the people filling those spaces are not botanists.” When a biology department has a job vacancy, she says, they tend to hire a professor who has “nothing to do with plants. The department will have all kinds of scientists in it, with only one or maybe two botanists, sometimes only one or two plant scientists at all.” Because she attended one such school, “a botany degree was out of the question,” Parsley says.

While nobody has tracked the average age of botanists in the United States, students of “pure botany” do seem to be waning, according to Kristine Callis-Duehl, the executive director of education research and outreach at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. “Skills are shifting away from old-school botany. A lot of that’s being driven by funding sources,” she says. “More and more, just being a botanist is not enough in academia.”

Follow the Funding

Experts agree that in recent years, most botany professors aren’t being replaced once they retire. But why?

Money is one reason. The National Science Foundation, for instance, has shifted its funding away from natural history at herbariums and other museums, Callis-Duehl says. “It’s harder to convince Congress that that work — pure botany — contributes to the economy. They prefer basic science that can lead into more applied science, where they can make a case that it fuels the U.S. economy.”

Applied plant science has more NSF options than botany. For example, agriculture is more likely to be funded by USDA, Callis-Duehl says.

Those federal budget decisions shape university budget decisions, she says. The drop in research funding for pure botany has “tanked those programs at schools across the country,” she explains, including two that she attended. “Both saw they weren’t getting the federal funding to justify the existence of a botany department anymore. I see it over and over and over again.”

But shifting funding still begs the question of underlying causes. Some degrees go away because the world no longer needs them, but the world still needs plants and plant knowledge. So why is pure botany in decline?

“A Green Curtain”

For many people, the world’s flora registers as what Parsley calls “a green curtain” — a backdrop for more interesting objects of their attention such as animals or, better yet, other humans. By failing to really notice and distinguish one plant from another, we care less about plant knowledge or even plant survival, she says. And that lack of interest can be profound.

“You can’t talk about the decline in botanists without talking about plant blindness,” Parsley says.

Plant blindness is a term coined in 1998 by two American botanists. They defined it as “the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment,” leading “to the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs.”

Parsley wrote her dissertation on a related phenomenon called plant awareness disparity, which refers to the difference between how we notice and treat plants versus animals. She believes this difference is another reason botany degrees are disappearing. “People think plants are boring. Nobody wants to learn about them.”

Across the Pond

This trend is not unique to the United States. As botany professors retire in the United Kingdom many are not being replaced; fewer students are getting degrees in botany, according to Sebastian Stroud, a teaching fellow at the University of Leeds who, in a 2022 paper, coined the phrase “the extinction of botanical education.”

As in the United States, applied plant science attracts more funding there.

Yet as the winds of restoration begin to blow, the UK has a growing need for people who can identify plants, a set of skills that Stroud says is currently lacking in favor of other plant skills.

Early this year a law intended to reverse the UK’s decline of nature took effect. Biodiversity Net Gain mandates that when developers undertake a project, they must provide a net gain of at least 10% biodiversity, either by creating or enhancing habitat. The idea is to leave the land in a measurably better state than it was before the development.

Restoring degraded ecosystems means many projects will need to hire botanists. These jobs are not in academia but industry, where ecological consultants with strong botany skills identify endangered plants on a site and deliver surveys of what they find.

“They need competent ecologists to understand an area,” Stroud says. “There are lots of jobs and not enough botanists, a real skill gap for the industry. That’s where the real concern is, because if we want to restore nature, we need to have good baseline data.”

At present there’s a gap between what the UK needs — students with a strong understanding of plant identification — and what its schools have been producing. Recent job candidates “didn’t have the identification skills, practical skills, required for extensive surveying work,” Stroud says. “The UK has multiple plant bio-tech programs, few on taxonomy and ecology, species identification or conservation. Reviews by the UK House of Lords identified taxonomy as a science being in a critical state.” A more recent report from the Royal Society of Biology found that “96% of organizations surveyed expressed concerns over gaps in the skills of UK plant scientists.”

Plant taxonomy is the branch of botany that identifies, classifies, and names plants based on their similarities and differences. Increasingly, ecological consultants are taking Stroud’s courses in plant ecology and identification, he says, “because they need to upskill for habitat survey. There are not enough places to accredit professionals in the industry. We can’t meet the demand or deliver enough students and accreditations quick enough.”

A Rose by Any Other Name

The world still needs botanists. In prior generations older botany professors were mostly training younger botany professors. Today’s students, however, are often migrating to other plant majors.

That doesn’t necessarily mean plant knowledge is being lost. It means, according to two 2023 papers, that there’s a mismatch between the careers for which current graduate students are being trained and the careers they’re more likely to end up with. One study found that few of those careers will be in academia. According to the second study, the jobs now are and increasingly will be in the private, nonprofit, and government sectors.

For example, “government employers discussed skills they’re looking for in new hires — plant identification was the number-one skill,” says Callis-Duehl, one of the authors of both studies.

This trend has been growing for a while: In 2018 the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management — which in combination control more lands than any other U.S. agencies —indicated they can’t find enough botanists to deal with invasive plants, wildfire reforestation, and basic land management.

In response to this need, dozens of U.S. legislators have sponsored something called the Botany Bill, which has been introduced twice to the House of Representatives and the Senate. The bill is intended to promote botanical research, generate demand for native plant materials, and protect native ecosystems. It has yet to pass, but its existence suggests a growing recognition that plant knowledge needs to be preserved.

And although the emphasis on pure botany is decreasing, botany may be evolving rather than tapering off. “A lot of botany degrees are becoming joint degrees with, say, ecology,” according to Callis-Duehl.

Stroud agrees. “Just because we don’t have many botany students doesn’t mean there aren’t students of botany,” he says. The same applies to teachers like himself. With his Ph.D. in urban ecology, he isn’t a botany professor by name. Yet he teaches plant content, including those valuable plant-identification skills.

“You don’t necessarily need to be professionally accredited to be a botanist,” Stroud says. “Many people who we might describe as botanists might not identify as botanists. They might call themselves something else. Botany is a broad church.”

Still, both Stroud and Callis-Duehl acknowledge that some skillsets like taxonomy are being lost as the botany field contracts. Plant knowledge lives on in some form, she says. But for now the plant skills that employers seek — and that our planet needs — appear to be in short supply.

Previously in The Revelator:

Rock and Roll Botany: An Endangered Plant Named After Legendary Guitarist Jimi Hendrix

Voting in the Age of Climate Change: How to Vote After a Disaster

If you’re displaced by wildfire, a hurricane, or other extreme weather, here’s how to cast your ballot.

This story by Lyndsey Gilpin & Jake Bittle was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Louisiana experienced a parade of devastating hurricanes. On August 27, Hurricane Laura hit the state’s southwest coast as a Category 4 storm, bringing winds up to 150 miles per hour, extreme rainfall, and a 10-foot storm surge. Hurricane Delta hit the same region six weeks later as a Category 2. Hurricane Zeta then hit the southeast part of the state a week before the election. The storms made voting a chaotic and difficult process: polling locations damaged, thousands displaced from their state, all the necessary paperwork and IDs lost to floodwaters.

It is an experience that many Americans have found themselves in, or will in the future, as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters. According to recent polling from the Pew Research Center, seven in 10 Americans said their community experienced an extreme weather event in the past 12 months, including flooding, drought, extreme heat, rising sea levels, or major wildfires.

The aftermath of a disaster can be terrifying and traumatic, and many victims struggle to secure basic necessities such as food and shelter, or to fill out paperwork for disaster aid and insurance. Finding accurate information about where and how to vote is even harder — so hard, in fact, that many people who have experienced disasters don’t bother to vote at all.

With experts forecasting a historically active hurricane season and a rash of wildfires breaking out across the West, it’s more important than ever to be prepared for disruptions to the voting process in what stands to be a pivotal election year.

The guide below aims to help you navigate early voting, absentee voting, and election day, the rules of which vary widely across the U.S. (Still not registered to vote? You still have time: Find your state’s voter registration rules here.)

In-Person Voting

If a disaster strikes, the governor can extend voting deadlines, allow ballots to be forwarded to a new address, allow local officials to change or add new polling places, or postpone municipal elections. Those rules are different depending on the state, and in the wake of a disaster that information may be hard to find.

The U.S. Vote Foundation has a tool to access your county election office’s contact information. These range by state; they’re typically county clerks, supervisors, auditors, boards of elections, or election commissions. You can try to contact these offices, but it’s not guaranteed they’ll be able to answer the questions. You can also ask voting rights groups in your area and watch local news for any changes or updates.

In the wake of a disaster, first confirm where you should be voting. Has your polling place been damaged or moved? If multiple locations are combined or election day volunteers are scarce post-disaster, be prepared to stand in long lines to vote. If you’re waiting in the heat, make sure to wear comfortable shoes and appropriate clothing (21 states prohibit campaign apparel, so keep that in mind), and bring water. Here are some other resources on heat waves.

Was your car damaged in a disaster? Need a ride to the polls? Some ride share services and public transit systems offer free rides on Election Day. Here’s more information.

Early Voting

Most states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands offer some form of early voting, which is voting in-person before the election anywhere from a few days to over a month early, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. However, the hours, locations, and timing differ for each. Three states — Alabama, Mississippi ,and New Hampshire — do not allow early in-person voting.

Early in-person voting is a useful option if you’d like to avoid lines on election day or will be out of town. It’s also an option for people who live in a region of the country prone to natural disasters or have been recently hit by one. In-person voting on election day, which comes at the tail end of “danger season,” may not be a possibility or a priority. Go here to see the specific rules around early voting in your state.

Absentee Ballots

Absentee voting is often called “mail-in voting” or “by-mail voting.” Every state offers this, but some require you to meet certain conditions, like having a valid excuse for why you can’t make it to the polls on election day. Absentee voting can be a particularly useful tool for people who have been recently displaced by extreme weather, or are at risk of being so. It also safeguards voters who live in the hottest parts of the country, where heat can make waiting in long lines dangerous.

The League of Women Voters explains absentee voting rules by state here. If you reside in a county that gets a federal disaster declaration after a disaster hits, there may be changes to these processes that can offer you more time and flexibility.

Since it’s the height of hurricane season, we’ve included the registration and absentee ballot request deadlines for hurricane-prone states below:

Florida: Registration deadline is October 7. If voting by mail, you must request an absentee ballot 12 days before the election, no later than 5 p.m. (more here).

Alabama: Registration deadline is 15 days before the election. If voting by mail, request a ballot five days before the election if you’re applying in person, or seven days before if you’re mailing your request (more here).

Mississippi: Mississippi does not have online registration. The deadline is October 7, 30 days before election day. The last day to request an absentee ballot is five days before election day (more here).

North Carolina: Voter registration deadline is 5 p.m. Friday, October 11, 2024. You must request an absentee ballot no later than a week before the election (more here).

South Carolina: Registration deadline is October 7, 30 days before the election. You must request an absentee ballot no later than 5:00 p.m. on the 11th day prior to the election (more here).

Louisiana: Online registration deadline is 20 days before election on October 15; in-person or mail is 30 days on October 7. Read the absentee ballot requirements here.

Georgia: Registration deadline is October 7, 30 days before the election. You can request an absentee ballot starting 11 weeks before the election (more here).

Texas: Registration deadline is October 7, 30 days before the election. If voting by mail, you must request an absentee ballot 11 days before the election (more here).

Voter ID Laws

Each state has a different voter ID law. Some require photo identification, others require a document such as a utility bill, bank statement, or paycheck; some require a signature. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a breakdown of these rules here.

If your ID gets destroyed in a flood, fire, or tornado, your state may be able to exempt you from showing an ID at the polls. For instance, after Hurricane Harvey, Texas residents who lost their ID to floodwaters could vote without one if they filled out an affidavit stating that the voter didn’t have identification because of a natural disaster declared by the governor. Your state may also waive the fees associated with getting a new ID.

The best way to find this information out is to contact your county clerk or other election official, or contact a voting rights group in your area.

Know Your Rights

Just as there are strict rules in states around how people can cast ballots, there are also many others that dictate what happens outside of polling places. In most states, you can accept water and food from groups around election sites, but there is misinformation around whether or not it is legal. After the 2020 election, Georgia passed a law prohibiting this within a certain buffer zone. A judge struck down part of that law: there is no longer a ban on handing things to votes with 25 feet of them standing in line, but it’s still illegal to do so within 150 feet of the building where ballots are being cast.

Call or text 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) to report voter intimidation to the Election Protection Coalition. You can also find more information on voter rights from the ACLU.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/elections/your-guide-to-voting-after-a-disaster/.

Previously in The Revelator:

Displaced by Fire or Smoke? Here’s How to Protect Your Right to Vote

How to Vote If You’ve Been Displaced by Hurricanes

Speak of the Devils: The Animals We Fear the Most Are Fading Away

Names matter. When we fear something, it becomes psychologically easier to withhold empathy for it or, worse, kill it. Nobody feels sorry for the devil.

“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

This phrase, chanted by Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man as they cautiously make their way through the dark woods in the Land of Oz, echoed through my head when I learned that there are now more tigers held in captivity than living in the wilderness.

According to the Global Tiger Forum, there are around 5,500 of these big cats living free on our planet, yet in the United States alone an estimated 5,000 or more tigers live in zoos or are privately owned. Would Dorothy be as afraid today knowing that she had better odds of being hit by a hunter’s wayward bullet than coming face-to-face with a tiger?

What about lions? They’re more populous than tigers, with an estimated 30,000 globally. Yet in Africa, the 23,000 or so lions there represent a fraction of the more than 200,000 that existed 50 years ago. In one human lifetime the population has dropped about 90%, and we can easily imagine their trajectory bringing the numbers down closer to those of tigers.

And bears? For those of us living in the Pacific Northwest, black and brown bears can still be encountered in forests. But farther north polar bears are now listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. To be labeled vulnerable is to be placed on a cruel continuum where vulnerable is followed by endangered, then critically endangered, and then extinct. Only with purposeful and intense attention do species move in the opposite direction.

And of course it’s not just fierce lions, tigers, and bears that are in danger.

Consider the Tasmanian devil, so named for the blood-curdling screams this tiny creature makes at night. Tasmanian devils were once common across not only Tasmania but mainland Australia, numbering as many as 140,000. But they were hunted by European colonists both for food and because they were viewed as predators of sheep. Today it’s estimated that there are as few as 20,000 left, and the only devils on the mainland live in zoos. In 1941 devils became a protected species, though they are still frequently killed at night by passing cars. And if that’s not bad enough, they are now suffering from a contagious facial tumor disease that’s almost always fatal.

Having met a few devils at the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary in Tasmania, I can report that these supposedly fearsome creatures are cute as lapdogs, with the body of a terrier and the face of a bear cub. How tragic that they were given “devil” for a name. They would have fared better had “terrier” been used instead.

Names matter. When we fear something, it becomes psychologically easier to withhold empathy for it — or worse, kill it. Nobody feels sorry for a devil.

There are “devils” in the ocean, too, known as devil rays (or manta rays). They are also in grave danger, due largely to worldwide overfishing.

And then there are the other pelagic species we have been taught to fear, such as sharks. Swimming in the ocean is statistically less dangerous than driving to the neighborhood Costco. Nevertheless, thanks in part to Peter Benchley (author of Jaws) and, of course, Steven Spielberg — both of whom later regretted the harm done to sharks by their mythmaking — sharks are viewed as ruthless and reckless predators, far more intent on killing humans than fish. This is not true.

But truth is not what got us to this point in history. I worry for any species with a “devil,” “ghost,” or “hellbender” in its name. I worry for all predators, the wolves and bears and lions and tigers.

Perhaps if media stopped publicizing every bear or shark encounter as an “attack,” people would be less inclined toward fear. Perhaps if more Americans ventured into the woods and learned firsthand that that there is nothing to fear there, maybe then we as a society would turn our fear of animals into a fear of losing what animals we have left.

Even Dorothy, deep in those woods, had little to fear of that cowardly lion. The only true threat was of the make-believe sort: flying monkeys. Oz author L. Frank Baum knew what everyone should now know: that when we step into the dark woods, the most fearsome predator we are likely encounter is us.

Previously in The Revelator:

Breeding the ‘Snot Otter’

Anthrax in Zimbabwe: Caused by Oppression, Worsened by Climate Change

First used as a bioweapon four decades ago, anthrax outbreaks continue to worsen as the country gets warmer and wetter.

A herd of emaciated cows crowd for water at a small dam in the Zimunya area about 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of Zimbabwe’s eastern border city of Mutare.

On the other side of the small dam, a group of children excitedly fetch water, mostly for nondrinking or cooking uses. In this part of the country, water became scarce this year as an El Niño-induced drought — the worst in more than 40 years — ravaged the region. The drought has left nearly 10 million people food insecure. Livestock and people now compete for limited water in many rural areas of Zimbabwe.

Cattle near a dried-out water body — Cattle near the dam during a previous drought. File photo: Andrew Mambondiyani

At the same time, livestock diseases are killing the few cattle that have survived the current and previous droughts. The mix of severe droughts and devastating diseases are making both livestock and rain-fed crop farming in Zimbabwe increasingly untenable. And farmers are worried; summer seasons are becoming shorter — in some cases accompanied by violent storms and heavy flooding.

“We don’t even know how to save our cattle,” says Leonard Madanhire, a small-scale livestock and crop farmer in Zimunya. “The cattle might survive the drought, but we are not sure whether they will survive the diseases like anthrax and theileriosis. Most of our livestock are now too frail to fight diseases.”

Anthrax, a disease that affects wild animals, livestock, and humans, is caused by spore-forming bacteria called Bacillus anthracis. Theileriosis, also known as January disease, is a cattle disease transmitted by ticks.

Anthrax is of particular worry. Early this year several districts in Zimbabwe were hit by an anthrax outbreak that caused a documented 513 human infections, countless livestock infections, and 36 livestock deaths.

To contain this year’s outbreak, the Zimbabwe government imported 426,000 anthrax vaccine doses — 25% of what it initially said it needed — from Botswana. The medicines were deployed in hotspots like Chipinge, Gokwe North and South, Mazowe, Makonde, and Hurungwe.

The government also said it carried out public-awareness campaigns about anthrax risks “to ensure that people are well-protected,” according to statements in The Herald, a state-owned newspaper.

Education on the risks is important: People can be infected by anthrax through breathing in spores, eating food and drinking water contaminated with spores, or getting spores in a cut in the skin. Flu-like symptoms such as sore throat, mild fever, fatigue, and muscle aches are common. Other symptoms include mild chest discomfort, shortness of breath, nausea, coughing up blood, painful swallowing, high fever, and trouble breathing. Animals infected by anthrax may stagger, have difficulty breathing, tremble, and finally collapse and die within a few hours, according to experts.

Eddie Cross, a livestock expert in Zimbabwe, says anthrax poses a serious threat to humans and livestock in Africa.

Anthrax “can survive in the ground for many years and then be activated by appropriate conditions,” says Cross, who is also a former legislator and advisor to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. “People eating meat from an infected animal run a risk of catching the infection themselves.”

Modern Problems, Historic Cause

Though some experts say the current anthrax outbreaks in Zimbabwe have been exacerbated by climate change, outbreaks can be traced back to the time of Zimbabwe’s protracted war of liberation that ended in 1979. At the height of the war, when the country was still known as Rhodesia, the brutal colonial regime of the late Prime Minister Ian Smith reportedly used anthrax as a biological weapon.

Experts say this resulted in the largest global human anthrax outbreak, which occurred in Zimbabwe between 1978 and 1980. More than 10,700 cases of human anthrax and 200 deaths were recorded during that time.

Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, the disease has become endemic in Zimbabwe.

Victor Matemadanda — a veteran of the 1970s liberation war and secretary general of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Association — confirmed to me that many of his colleagues died from suspected anthrax infections. The association is a grouping of former freedom fighters, also known as guerrillas or comrades, who served during the country’s war of liberation (also known as the Rhodesian Bush War). The war culminated in the end of minority white rule and Zimbabwe attaining independence in 1980.

“Many freedom fighters died, I can confirm that,” says Matemadanda, who is also Zimbabwe’s ambassador to Mozambique. “But back then we were not sure whether it was anthrax or not because there was no scientific research to confirm that. But the signs and symptoms showed it was anthrax.”

Unfortunately, due to a lack of knowledge back then, many cases could not be confirmed as anthrax infections. Even some medical doctors were not familiar with anthrax symptoms in humans during that time.

Little has changed. One 2016 study revealed that grossly unusual epidemiological features of the anthrax outbreaks in the late 1970s and early 1980s still have not been definitively explained. However, the authors, from the University of Nevada–Reno, widely agree with a hypothesis proposed by Meryl Nass, an American physician living in Zimbabwe at the time of the outbreaks who suggested that the anthrax epidemic was propagated intentionally.

“Nass emphasized the unusual features of the epidemic: large numbers of cases, geographic extent and involvement of areas that had never reported anthrax before, lack of involvement of neighbouring countries, specific involvement of the Tribal Trust Lands versus European-owned agricultural land, and coincidence with an ongoing civil war,” the study notes.

Witness testimony from some people who lived on Tribal Trust Land — areas reserved for Indigenous Black people during the colonial era — revealed a belief that “poisoning” by anthrax occurred during the war, according to the study. The researchers cited other authors who provided testimony of deliberate anthrax releases during the war by Rhodesian soldiers with support from South African forces. And they say that these activities were part of apartheid South Africa’s biological weapons program, code-named Project Coast.

During the war Rhodesia was under United Nations economic sanctions and was isolated from the rest of the world, although it maintained a close relationship with apartheid South Africa. Through South Africa, Rhodesia Prime Minister Smith managed to bust the U.N. sanctions to fund the war, which lasted for more than a decade.

A New Threat Rises

Today experts fear that anthrax outbreaks in Zimbabwe will become worse due to climate change, which is making some parts of the country warmer and wetter.

Les Baillie, a professor of microbiology at Cardiff University’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in the United Kingdom, tells me that outbreaks of anthrax regularly occur in Zimbabwe and that there have been several outbreaks across Africa since last year.

Baillie shared a report on anthrax he recently wrote with Alexandra Cusmano, another expert from the school, which suggests that climate change may have worsened the anthrax problem in Africa.

Oddly enough, the evidence for their hypothesis comes from a 2016 anthrax outbreak in reindeer in northern Russia. There, anthrax killed thousands of animals and affected dozens of humans on the Yamal peninsula, in Northwest Siberia. Experts, the report adds, identified two primary factors as contributing to this outbreak: a summer heat wave that caused the permafrost to melt, releasing “trapped spores,” and the cancellation of the reindeer vaccination program in 2007, which led to an increase in population susceptibility.

Baillie and Cusmano conclude that: “Outbreaks of anthrax in endemic regions of the world are not unusual. We are likely to see more cases due to a combination of climate change and socio-economic factors, such as food poverty and lack of access to effective veterinary services.”

Another study, published in the journal BMC Public Health this year, modeled the future of anthrax outbreaks in Zimbabwe under climate change. The researchers found that the country’s eastern and western districts will face the greatest threats. These districts are home to thousands of small-scale farmers who depend mostly on livestock and crop farming. The study calls for disease surveillance systems, public-awareness campaigns, and targeted vaccinations, among other control measures.

One of several models for anthrax spread in Zimbabwe. Photo: BMC Public Health

Cross, the Zimbabwe livestock expert, agrees, and says the government should make sure that farmers are aware of the dangers of coming across the carcass of a cow who has died from unrecognized causes. Anthrax infections in humans are mostly by exposure to contaminated animals or their meat.

“[Farmers] should be extremely careful in the way they approach the carcass and, if possible, they should arrange it to be burned, which is the only real way of ending the infections,” Cross says.

Meanwhile, the government says plans are underway to produce enough anthrax vaccines locally starting next year, which could help to eradicate the disease.

But the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy may complicate the fight against livestock and human diseases. Political and economic crises that unfolded following the country’s controversial land-reform program — which started in 2000 — resulted in negative growth rates, skyrocketing inflation, decline in the rule of law, and a disintegration of markets, according to experts. At the same time, the country has become isolated on the international stage due to its frequent human-rights violations.

Time will tell whether Zimbabwe can succeed in eradicating anthrax. But for now the legacy of this wartime bioweapon continues to haunt the country, more than four decades after it was unleashed.

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Previously in The Revelator:

5 Ways Environmental Damage Drives Human Diseases Like COVID-19

How Concerned Neighbors Kept a Conservation Dream Alive

Started by one of Yukon’s most colorful characters in the 1960s, the Yukon Wildlife Preserve still helps rehabilitate injured animals and sends a message about living with wildlife.

WHITEHORSE, Yukon — Thirty minutes’ drive outside northern Canada’s largest city lies one of its best-kept secrets.

The Yukon Wildlife Preserve spans more than 700 acres and features 12 iconic Yukon species in their natural habitat: wood bison, mountain goat, woodland caribou, mule deer, muskox, red fox, thinhorn sheep, moose, elk, Canada lynx, arctic ground squirrel, and arctic fox. It has a long history of rehabilitating injured animals and breeding rare species, and it also serves as a critical stopover and monitoring station for migratory birds.

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The site, which celebrates its 20th anniversary as a preserve in 2024, dates back to the 1960s and a man the Canadian Broadcasting Company once called “one of Yukon’s most colorful characters.”

Founder Danny Nowlan was a former forest ranger and preeminent falconer who grew up skipping school in favor of trapping animals and selling their pelts. In 1967 he purchased the property north of Whitehorse, “determined to build not a zoo, but a showcase for northern species in their natural habitat,” the Yukon Times wrote.

Over the next 35 years, Nowlan and his wife would turn the empty property into what they termed a “game farm,” although they didn’t raise animals for hunting or trapping, as the term typically implies. They raised and sold animals to zoos and game farms throughout Canada and the United States and used the earnings to build a wildlife rehabilitation center. As the years went on, they offered educational tours to allow visitors to see native species in large, semi-wild habitats.

Among the many species the Nowlans raised, in custom-built breeding pens and an avian hospital, were peregrine falcons and other birds of prey. The falcons raised there were either sold — using the proceeds to mitigate the poaching of wild populations — or rewilded as nearby populations declined.

Their conservation efforts garnered a national spotlight, and notoriety, when the couple were swept up in a falcon-trafficking sting, arrested, and charged with laundering wild falcons to Arab royalty. Depending on the telling, Nowlan and his wife were either ruthless masterminds who had found a way to finance their conservation habits by trafficking the very birds they were protecting or arrested without merit.

All the falcons were seized. After three years of a trial that at the time was the longest and most expensive in Yukon history, and the Nowlans’ near-financial ruin, they were acquitted of all charges.

When Nowlan and his wife retired in 2001, they put the site up for sale. Members of the community began advocating for the property to become a public facility, and in 2004 they succeeded.

The site is now owned by the Yukon government and operated by the nonprofit organization formed by those neighbors, the Yukon Wildlife Preserve Operating Society. It received accreditation from the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 2012, joining the ranks of the Toronto Zoo and the Vancouver Aquarium.

The Revelator sat down with Jake Paleczny, the current executive director, to discuss its iconic species, how climate change is affecting the site, and the challenges of keeping it all going.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why is animal rehabilitation a critical component of the work here?

Wildlife rehabilitation is key to our educational outreach because so many of those animals that come in are from some kind of interaction with people or infrastructure. Whether they’re flying into wind, flying into windows, getting hit by cars…some just get injured when a tree with baby eagles in the nest blows over in a storm. We have this opportunity to give something back to those animals and give them a second chance and have a conversation about how they got here.

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A huge part of wildlife rehabilitation is that, whether you think about it or not, we have a relationship with wildlife. I think in the North we have probably a much stronger, closer relationship with wildlife than people do further South or in other parts of the world. As a result, we have a lot to share about that.

We’re thinking about it in terms of rehab, but then also how do we live in our own backyard with wildlife?

How did Nowlan, and now the preserve, choose which species are here?

Many of the species here are ones that Danny Nowlan got into in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. That’s most of the ungulates here. The caribou, bison, deer, elk…there’s a long history here with them. We added lynx and foxes after it became a society to make sure we were really diversifying the species.

Around the time the wildlife preserve became a society, public consultation with First Nations found that there was a real discomfort with the idea of large carnivores in captivity. There was the idea that these were really important species for First Nations, and that having them in captivity wouldn’t be compatible with those animals. That’s why we are the way we are and why we’re not looking to add wolves or bears or anything like that.

What’s your favorite species here?

It is very difficult to pick a favorite. But most of the time, caribou. They’re laid back, curious. They’ll come check something out. And they’re not normally in too much of a hurry.

Not like the muskox. You wouldn’t know it to look at them, but they’re one of the most dangerous animals we have here because they’re aggressively defensive about their territory and they’re not laid back at all. They’re very cautious and standoffish.

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Have you seen any effects of our changing planet manifest in the preserve?

I feel like my history here isn’t long enough to properly speak to that, but a few examples come to mind right away. One is, we have a large aviary that was torn apart by heavy snow loads. It was fine for 15 or 18 years. And then those heavy snow years that we had two and three winters ago were really hard on infrastructure like that.

We [also] had a wildfire come relatively close to the wildlife preserve. We’ve been doing some work on fire smarting, because, in theory, you have a plan that if a place like this was threatened by a wildfire, you’d be able to load up all the animals and ship them.

But here, there is nowhere to take them. The alternatives, the infrastructure just doesn’t exist. So we’re starting to think about how we would defend the property against wildfire.

Another really good example: You’ll see the bird boxes as you’re walking around. Those are monitored and have been monitored for, I don’t know, 20 years now. We have a team of biologists coming out and checking on them a couple of times a year. That’s where you can see very clearly the effects of our changing planet. We used to see a lot more mountain bluebirds — beautiful, stunning birds. That population has come down tremendously over the last 15 years.

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I see bluebirds out my office window, you know, but not nearly as many as we saw 10 years ago.

We’ve had a few really uneven springs in the last 10 years where you have these abnormally late snowfalls that kill all the bugs. Mountain bluebirds or tree swallows, those are insectivorous birds. Then, all of a sudden, all the bugs get taken out with cold and snow. Then when the researchers open up those bird boxes, they’re finding boxes full of dead babies because the parents just couldn’t find enough insects to feed. Oh God, that’s heartbreaking.

You arrived at the preserve in 2013 as an education and visitor services manager. Since 2019 you’ve served as executive director. What are some of the challenges of keeping a place like this going?

There are lots of challenges. I think the first and most obvious one is that we have 136 animals and we exist in a sea of wilderness.

Living up here in the North, we’re pretty far away from a lot of things. Getting the materials and making sure you’ve got the people you need and the veterinarians and the supplies to care for these 136 animals who all have personalities and desires of their own. And then you’ve got all the wilderness surrounding us.

There are other animals just outside of the preserve too, like bears who want to get in.

Money is always a thing. And hiring people and making the books balance and keeping the people happy and keeping staff on. We have an animal care team because, of course, animals need to eat every day, including Christmas. There are no days off. There’s an animal care person here every day of the year. And then an outdoor operations team that do things like plowing snow in the winter and keeping fences repaired and buildings in good condition. I’m happy to say we’ve got a really great team here right now. But these are always challenges.

What do you want people to know about visiting the preserve?

I want people to be able to come here and just enjoy and appreciate feeling that connection with Northern wildlife and understand that we have this incredible asset here.

We exist in a sea of wildlife, which is not something that most people in the world have around them. Our relationships with wildlife in the North are varied. We’ve got hunters hunting for food and we have trappers and we have biologists and we have people who like to hike and see wildlife while they’re hiking and people are going to go paddle in rivers or fly into mountains to go sheep hunting and all these different things. They’re all ways that we relate to and understand wildlife.

I think we have a lot to share with people in other parts of the world as a result of that, you know? It brings it kind of into sharp focus, this opportunity to think about our relationship with wildlife and appreciate it and share it.

Previously in The Revelator:

Four Ways Alaska’s Unending Warming Impacts Everyone

Environmental Injustice: Dispatches From a Black Trauma Surgeon on Health Inequity

For many Black children, asthma and other health problems are ever-present companions in neighborhoods located near dumps, factories, and highways.

An adapted excerpt from The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal (Broadleaf Books)

I did not plan to become a doctor. It did not occur to me that I, a loner with an intense stare and a disheveled afro, could become a doctor like the elderly white male doctors who cared for me. As a youth I saw no one who looked like me dressed in a long white coat adorned with a stethoscope.

One of my earliest childhood memories is the feeling of impending death from lack of oxygen. “You’ll be all right, Brian,” my mother consoled, eyeing me in the rearview mirror. Wheezing like a tortured seal, I bobbled my head in acknowledgment, unable to move enough air through my lungs to speak. My father, a career Air Force noncommissioned officer, was deployed to some unknown locale, so my mother piloted this run to the hospital on her own. “You’re gonna be okay. We’ll be there soon.” I hungered for air, and seconds seemed like hours, but I knew she’d get me there. She always did. Living on an Air Force base, we didn’t have far to go, and minutes after burning rubber from home, we scurried into the emergency room.

After the usual routine — a breathing treatment to loosen the vice grip on my lungs, height, weight, vitals — I sat hunched in an exam room, feet dangling two feet from the floor, as the doctor gently pressed here and felt there along my shirtless torso. Like all the doctors I visited as a child, he was an elderly white man who resembled Marcus Welby, MD, from the famous 1970s television series. And like all those doctors, he inspired my awe. As a military kid I always had access to healthcare, and I assumed that was true for everyone. To be sick and unable to see a doctor? I couldn’t fathom it.

Because of my childhood asthma — a condition afflicting, hospitalizing, and killing Black children at a much higher rate than white children — I made many breathless trips to the emergency room. For many Black children, environmental injustice is an ever-present companion in neighborhoods located near municipal dumps, factories, and highways, resulting in increased exposure to respiratory toxins. My situation differed; my sister and I were trapped in a house with parents who smoked. I wonder if the white doctor judged my parents for that reason. Or because we were Black. Or both.

“Open up and say ahhh.” I coughed as the doctor gagged me with a popsicle stick and gasped when he placed an ice cube masquerading as a stethoscope to my back. “Cold, huh? Sorry about that.” My mother hovered, not saying a word as the man with the soothing voice in the long white coat poked and prodded while asking me about sports and school. “Well, we’re done,” the doctor said, smiling again. He gave my mother instructions about when to return to the hospital, said something to her about smoking, wished me luck in my upcoming game, and walked out.

Squirming into my shirt, I asked: “Are there any Black doctors?” A decade before Bill Cosby reigned as America’s favorite TV dad, Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable — and decades before it became known that he was drugging and sexually assaulting women — my mother smiled like any parent deflecting an uncomfortable truth. I couldn’t articulate it yet, but I felt it just the same. To me the smiling man in the long white coat, with the fancy degrees and plaques and awards broadcasting greatness from his office walls, was a god. And like the Eurocentric religious ideals force-fed to me in Sunday school, his profession of medicine did not seem like somewhere I belonged.

From that early age, I knew an unspoken truth: No matter how smart, articulate, or well-behaved I would become, there were always places Black boys would not be welcome.

Black men in medicine represent less than 3% of doctors, and I know future Black men attempting to cross the threshold are depending on Black doctors like me. Patients have told me to get their “real” doctor, leave the room, remove their tray of half-eaten food, or empty the trash bin. Some have ignored me and others have spat at me. Some have prayed for me and others have wished me dead. I have been called a racist and a healer, a nigger and a sellout, a hypocrite and a hero. No matter our social status, from gang members to doctors, Black men still serve as a mirror for people’s fears. A screen on which to project one’s anxiety — and disgust. An endangered species navigating a world both hostile to and dependent upon our existence.

Even with this backdrop, who is more poised to address the realities of our health inequities than those who have had to survive it? Childhood asthma does kill Black children at higher rates than white children. But so do other respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases. All of this ties back to environmental injustice. And those environmental injustices are inextricably linked to larger societal disparities that position Black and brown communities to be most likely affected.

A Black woman's hand next to several asthma inhalers, with a colorful blanket underneath — Photo: Gulshan Khan Climate Visuals

As a trauma surgeon, I learned to compartmentalize. The trauma team must move on. The hospital must move on. I must be ready for another victim, arriving with lights and sirens. I file away a mother’s son’s death in the emotional lockbox, straining to contain the feelings of injustice for the countless others like him. In these moments I reckon with the role I play as a Black doctor in a society that devalues Black lives. I wrestle with the futile feeling that the nobility of my work doesn’t have a sustainable impact. Is the essence of my job plugging bullet holes in young Black men and women, or watching them unable to breathe properly, or develop healthily? I can’t help but think that the histories and policies designed to quarantine Black people from mainstream American society have somehow managed to reach across generations and plague us today.

I write and act so that other five-year-old wheezing Black boys might be seen as part of a bigger picture that needs attention. I write and act to show you the world of a Black trauma surgeon, in a profession lacking role models, who routinely deals with the human toll from the implications of environmental injustices. I write and act to remind us all that if Black lives actually mattered to policymakers in the United States, they would take action that mattered.

Previously in The Revelator:

Compounding a Crisis: When Public Health Solutions Worsen Climate Change

‘The Mountain Wagtail’: How Pollution and Mining Are Destroying Kyrgyzstan

As mining operations destroy millennia-old glaciers, Kyrgyzstani director Begaly Nargozu’s new film reflects a disappearing landscape and culture.

Every winter young Altyn, the protagonist of Kyrgyzstani director Begaly Nargozu’s 2023 film The Mountain Wagtail, would mount her horse, leave her village in the valley, and head to the syrt, an unchanging landscape of snow and glaciers stretching across the mountaintops of Kyrgyzstan, to help her nomadic grandparents herd their yaks. Altyn’s innocent, kind-hearted nature — nurtured by the beauty of the icy landscape and her grandparents’ reverence for it — is tested when, in the twilight of her teenage years, she moves to the capital of Bishkek to attend university. Staying with her older sister, a fully urbanized entrepreneur with a disdain for all things rural, Altyn soon finds herself confronted by all the trappings and evils of modern-day society, from alcoholism and sexual assault to domestic violence and environmental pollution.

The Mountain Wagtail premiered in 2023 and has recently played at ecology-themed Sprouts Film Festival in Amsterdam and other film festivals across Europe and Asia.

Nargozu says his village, like Altyn’s unnamed hometown, is surrounded by “holy mountains which hundreds of people visit every day to pray and ask for a better life.” His tale of Altyn’s journey to the city echoes the journeys of many young Kyrgyzstani women as heavy industry, mining operations, and high unemployment rates turn the countryside increasingly inhospitable.

“Tons of dust rise into the air each day from mining development and settle on the surrounding glaciers,” he tells The Revelator. “Millions of cubes of ice are melted, billions of tons of harmful substances are poured into rivers. Every year, there are fewer pastures and grasslands. The traditional pastoral life of the highlands is being destroyed, and so people leave the mountains and go to the cities, where living conditions are poorer still.”

In addition to a lack of affordable housing, unauthorized construction, and poor waste management, Bishkek’s air quality is among the worst in the world, resulting in roughly 4,000 premature deaths each year. Contributing factors range from factory and vehicle emissions to the country’s continued and widespread use of coal. Sharing the blame is Bishkek’s landfill, originally dug by the Soviet Union, which was too small to keep up with the city’s growing population and, as a result, regularly caught fire and filled the air with toxic fumes. (After years of struggling to procure international investment and circumvent government corruption, a new landfill opened in 2023.)

Historically, says Nargozu, “the Kyrgyz did not treat the mountains as consumers; they did not look for valuable materials there, blowing up anything and everything. On the contrary, they worshiped and prayed to them, living for thousands of years without major problems with nature, in harmony.” According to Nargozu, it was only with the advent of the colonization of imperial Russia that the extraction of valuable metals and toxic substances from the Kyrgyz mountains on an industrial scale began.

Official film poster for The Mountain Wagtail.

The distinction at the center of The Mountain Wagtail isn’t between urban and rural but syrt and non-syrt. Altyn’s village, though isolated, pastoral, and idyllic by western standards, is presented as a kind of Bishkek writ small: a sign of the future that awaits the Kyrgyzstani countryside. Only the syrt remains free of the spiritual corruption radiating from Bishkek. Up there, accompanied only by snow, sun, yaks, and an ecologist researching the melting glaciers, Altyn’s grandparents live in unceasing peace and happiness. The only couple in the film that treats one another with kindness and respect, Nargozu’s screenplay refers to them as “celestial beings.” But they are also an endangered species.

The Mountain Wagtail’s mixed reception inside Kyrgyzstan reflects the hold heavy industry has on the country and its culture. When Nargozu showed the film at the Ala-Too cinema in the capital in 2023, he says it was warmly received by creatives and the intelligentsia. Government officials were less enthusiastic, though. When the film began receiving awards from international festivals, Nargozu said they asked him: “Why spread negativity about Kyrgyzstan throughout the world? We need to be more patriotic and show only our good side.”

“It looks depressing,” Nargozu says of Kyrgyzstan’s future. “Every year we export tons and tons of pure gold, yet we remain among the poorest countries of the world. Should we continue to mine gold if — instead of happiness — it only brings us closer to environmental disaster?”

In search of answers, he looks to the same place Altyn does when she feels lost — the syrt:

“Maybe we need to live like our ancestors, protecting nature and the traditional, pastoral way of life of the mountaineers.” In The Mountain Wagtail, he uses the color white to symbolize the natural purity of the Mongu-Ata glacier as well as Altyn’s moral purity.

“Just as rivers originate from mountain lakes and glaciers, so Altyn’s spiritual purity begins with her grandfather and grandmother. She is their spiritual heir,” Nargozu says. “The film begins with the snow-capped syrt and white-topped mountain peaks and ends at the Mongu-Ata glacier and the sacred silver lake Kumush-Kol. Such is the fate of Altyn, who descends from the snow-white mountains and, having gone through a series of trials in the city, returns to her own roots, to the traditional way of life and fundamental values of her people.”

Watch the trailer to Mountain Wagtail below:

Trailer: The Mountain Wagtail | SproutsFF24 from Sprouts Film Festival on Vimeo.

Previously in The Revelator:

The Story of Plastic: New Film Exposes the Source of Our Plastic Crisis

No Wave Is Insurmountable

The problems facing the ocean sometimes feel overwhelming. But like surfers we can look for the perfect wave — and ride it to protect these vital ecosystems.

I will never forget my first time paddling out at Teahupo’o, on the southwestern coast of Tahiti. There, I connected with the ocean in a way I never had before. As the first wave approached, the current began to feel the abrupt reef bottom and started to bowl into the iconic, perfect wave that we now find so familiar.

My first thought, humbled by the wave’s size and power, was “absolutely not!” I wasn’t even going to try and paddle for that thing. It was too fast, too steep, it seemed insurmountable.

It took hours in the lineup to feel more comfortable. Even then I remained timid.

But the longer I stayed out there, the more that magical place revealed itself — the stunning reef, the humpback whales breaching offshore, the majestic mountains rising above the sea behind the town. As I became more comfortable and took in everything around me, I began to feel like it was something that I could do and be a part of.

Some of the most ferocious and formidable waves on Earth challenged surfers during the Olympic Games this year. And the nonsurfing world was introduced to the French Polynesian village of Teahupo’o — a place of amazing natural beauty and unbelievable waves.

Photo: Manu San Félix/National Geographic Pristine Seas

But they may not have also realized that Teahupo’o is experiencing the stress being felt across the world’s oceans. Destructive human activities are intensifying, draining marine ecosystems of their resources and leaving the future in doubt.

A Wave of Destruction

At times the list of threats can feel like I did when I first paddled into the lineup — that the problems are overwhelming and insurmountable:

- Overfishing is draining the ocean of its biodiversity. We’re losing species at every part of the food chain, including the apex predators critical to keeping the ocean healthy. Five of the most common reef sharks, for example, have experienced population declines of up to 73%.
- Bottom trawling, a particularly destructive fishing practice, drags large nets across the ocean floor, ensnaring everything in their paths, clearcutting entire ecosystems, and releasing as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire international aviation industry.
- As those greenhouse gases increasingly heat up the Earth’s surface, ocean temperatures are also increasing. This has resulted in a global coral bleaching event that’s devastating marine ecosystems already hammered by overfishing and bottom trawling.
- New threats like deep-sea mining are emerging as industrial activities extend to locations and environments on the planet that were previously out of reach.

But if we take a moment to observe the ocean around us and listen to the people who have lived alongside and conserved the ocean for generations, there’s an obvious solution to these problems: Marine Protected Areas, a conservation tool that sets aside rich ocean habitats so biodiversity can flourish and recharge the overexploited areas in the vicinity.

A Swell of Protection

Tahiti is home to one of the world’s largest coral reefs, composed of rose-shaped corals that grow up to six feet wide and 100 feet in depth. The country’s waters are bursting with colorful, unique corals that provide shelter to sea creatures and absorb carbon to help mitigate global warming. But these reefs lack the safety of a marine protected area.

Nearby, though, local children eager to protect their ocean helped to establish the Marquesas Educational Managed Marine Area, which is governed by rules that safeguard these volcanic islands’ reefs from damaging human activities. It also serves as a source of education for students interested in studying the ocean.

Pacific Islanders, who have a long history of living intertwined with the ocean, have led in establishing effective Marine Protected Areas and other unique conservation strategies.

Photo by Manu San Félix/National Geographic Pristine Seas
Partnering with the PEW Charitable Trusts and CRIOBE (Centre de Recherche Insulaire et Observatoire de L’Environnement) on the expedition, the team produced new data and visuals that allow people around the world to know for themselves the beauty and value of this remote and barely touched region.

For example, in 2022 the government of Niue implemented a plan to manage 100% of their waters. Fishing is allowed in 60% of them — as long as it’s done sustainably. The rest makes up the Moana Mahu Marine Protected Area. There all human activity is banned, including fishing, seabed mining, and oil exploration and extraction.

Protection of the Southern Line Islands enabled its spectacular reefs to bounce back from a devastating ocean warming event. We have seen through our own research expeditions to the area how the coral reefs and the life they support have thrived.

And we expect more announcements about Marine Protected Areas, not just from the Pacific, but from across the globe, including South America and Europe. A major gathering on biodiversity taking place in Colombia in October will provide the world with an opportunity to take stock of how much of the ocean has been protected.

The goal is to safeguard 30% by 2030 — and not just any 30%, but the stretches of ocean that deliver the greatest biodiversity and climate benefits. It’s ambitious but attainable. Leadership in the Pacific is giving us the greatest hope.

Simply establishing Marine Protected Areas isn’t enough, of course — true safeguards must be in place to ensure that destructive activities such as bottom trawling cease in these zones.

As Goes Tahiti, So Goes the World?

There’s more to Tahiti, French Polynesia, and the Pacific region than beautiful coral reefs and inspirational surfing. The Olympics provided an opportunity to showcase all that’s beautiful in the Pacific — not just the islands but their marine ecosystems, protected areas, and traditional approach to conservation. If the rest of the world fails to protect its vital ecosystems, there soon will be nothing left except highlight videos of the surfing that once was.

In the same way I learned from observing Olympic athletes tackle the intimidating waves at Teahupo’o, we can all learn to consider the lessons of generations of Pacific Island conservation practices and marry that cultural knowledge with science to make important changes that could have profound impacts on our oceans.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Previously in The Revelator:

We’re Protecting the Ocean Wrong

Species Spotlight: Going to Bat for Painted Woolly Bats

“Collectors” threaten these tiny bats, whose big ears can’t protect them from the humans loving them to death.

Wildlife is traded for many reasons, but the trade in painted woolly bats is among the most senseless. These animals’ unique and beautiful coloration is the reason behind their popularity and the growing trend of using the species for decorative purposes — a trend we hope to help end.

Species name:

Painted woolly bat (Kerivoula picta)

Description:

This tiny bat (weighing just over an eighth of an ounce, or roughly 5 grams) has a spectacular appearance, with bright orange fur and mostly black wings, within which the finger bones are surrounded by bright orange skin. Their tiny eyes are barely visible because of the thick, long fur covering most of the face. But you can’t miss their big ears (which remind us of Mr. Spock), needed to hunt small arthropods, especially spiders and insects, by echolocation.

A live painted woolly bat in a researcher’s hand. © Rodrigo Barba Quiles via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Where it’s found:

Painted woolly bats live in southeastern China, South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka), and Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam). Their habitats include dry scrub and agricultural fields (especially banana plantations — they often roost alone or in small groups under dried banana leaves, within 6 feet of the ground).

IUCN Red List status:

In 2020 the IUCN changed the conservation status of the painted woolly bat from Least Concern to Near-Threatened based on a suspected 25% population decline.

Major threats:

The biggest conservation threat to the painted woolly bat is likely attributable to their distinct looks, which appeal to collectors of taxidermied-bat and other oddities for decorative purposes. These can be purchased at numerous online and physical marketplaces. To satisfy that demand, bats are hunted in the wild — there’s no captive breeding of this species. Other threats include disturbance of their roosts, notably in plantations, and habitat destruction (especially logging and the conversion of agricultural areas to residential or other land uses).

Notable conservation programs or legal protections:

While the painted woolly bat is protected at national levels in some Asian range countries, international trade is not regulated and there’s very little in the way of protection in consumer countries. Clearly, what protection is in place is not sufficient to prevent online trade in North America and the European Union. The goal of our work is twofold: to have strong legislation in consumer countries to prevent import and trade and to have international trade regulated through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Ultimately we’d like to see the major online trade platforms that enable and facilitate the trade in painted woolly bats take action and effectively disallow any further online advertisement and trade.

Our favorite experience:

While studying the trade in painted woolly bats, we reviewed hundreds of Amazon, eBay, and Etsy listings for taxidermied bats offered to consumers in the United States over a three-month period. We needed to record how many of the specimens were painted woolly bats. Scouring thousands of photos of dead bats was no fun at all. But we were motivated to get through the task by our conviction that this work could, by documenting the extent of the trade, lead to effective legal protection. Indeed, it has resulted in a petition now before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add Kerivoula picta to the Endangered Species Act — a move that would make buying and selling of the species in the United States illegal. (Full disclosure: The Center for Biological Diversity, publisher of The Revelator, filed this petition in conjunction with Chris’s organization, Monitor Conservation Research Society.)

Taxidermied bats in frames — Kerivoula picta for sale on Amazon.com. Revelator screenshot, Aug. 9, 2024

More recently we began looking at the trade in Vietnam, which we expect to generate the evidence we need to encourage the government to take action. Further evidence of illegal and unsustainable trade will, ideally, catalyze action from range and consumer countries to list this species in one of the appendices of CITES.

We hope this work pays off and that painted woolly bats will one day enjoy legal protection. But more challenging, and perhaps more urgent, is reducing demand. We need buyers and would-be buyers to stop purchasing bats in picture frames, bats made into hair clips, Halloween decorations made from bats, and bats used to hang on Christmas trees. Wake up, folks — buying these items not only contributes to the decline of this species in the wild but also supports illegal wildlife trade networks.

What else do we need to understand or do to protect this species?

We found hundreds of individual painted woolly bats offered for sale just in the small sample of listings we examined, covering three shopping websites in one country. But we know they’re sold year-round on dozens of other websites and in physical shops in many other parts of the world.

Photos of mummified or taxidermied bats for sale — Kerivoula picta for sale on Etsy. Revelator screenshot, Aug. 9, 2024, nearly two weeks after the site officially banned sales of bat products.

Like most bats, painted woolly bats reproduce slowly (they only have one pup per year) and live much longer lives than expected considering how small they are. In other words, they have a slow life history. Unfortunately, all species with slow life histories are intrinsically vulnerable to overharvesting because of how long it takes their populations to rebound from declines. And as painted woolly bats are usually solitary and maintain non-overlapping home ranges of 12-14 acres, they are relatively scarce on the landscape compared to other bat species. This suggests that hunters likely search large areas and kill all the individuals they find to satisfy the demand.

To accurately estimate how much of a threat this trade poses, we must evaluate the offtake (number and demographics of harvested painted woolly bats) against the potential availability of individuals. These are total unknowns, as this bat’s ecology has barely been studied. So we need on-the-ground studies to gather data on population sizes and trends. To gauge total offtake, we can conduct a thorough investigation of all shipments of bats that are seized at U.S. ports of entry and identify all specimens to species (using genomics, if necessary, as skulls and skeletons are impossible to identify visually). This would allow us to get a sense of offtake for many other bat species, too.

We also see the need for social-ecological network analysis. This approach would allow us to identify and visualize all the stakeholders (human and nonhuman) in this trade and the connections between them. That would reveal the ecological roles and importance of painted woolly bats in ecosystems and to human wellbeing, while also showing the key human actors and links that could be used as levers to end this trade.

What can you do to help? Obviously, do not buy painted woolly bats. But also, educate others around you and inform them of this problem — spread the word. Write to your governments and ask if painted woolly bats are protected in your country, and if not, why not? Finally, support efforts to prevent the poaching and illegal trade in painted woolly bats. These bats may weigh next to nothing, but public support for them is everything.

Update: Etsy officially banned bat sales on its platform on July 29, but relies on visitors to report listings that remain for sale.

Key research:

- Coleman, J.L., Randhawa, N., Huang, J.C.C., Kingston, T., Lee B.Y.-H., O’Keefe, J., Rutrough, A.M., Tsang, S.M., Thong, V.D., Shepherd, C.R. (2024) Dying for décor: Quantifying the online, ornamental trade in a distinctive bat species, Kerivoula picta. European Journal of Wildlife Research. 70, 75.
- Huang JC-C, Lim LS, Chakravarty R (2020) Kerivoula picta The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. e.T10985A22022952. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T10985A22022952.en
- Lee BPYH, Struebig MJ, Rossiter SJ, Kingston T (2015) Increasing concern over trade in bat souvenirs from South-East Asia. Oryx 49:204–204.

In France, One Group Seeks to Do the Unthinkable: Unite the Climate Movement

In response government officials labeled Earth Uprisings “eco-terrorists” — continuing a worldwide strategy of criminalizing protest.

This story is a joint production of The Revelator and Drilled. Read more from Drilled’s series on the criminalization of protests and activism.

In France the unthinkable has happened: The working-class Yellow Vest movement, racial equity movements, and progressive climate activists have joined forces in a multiracial, cross-class coalition called Earth Uprisings. In uniting the climate movement with broader social justice causes, “Les Soulèvements de la Terre” is not just making history in France; it’s offering a blueprint for global environmental resistance. But the response has been shockingly violent and extreme.

1. The Start

On an icy day in January 2021, French climate activists gather in a wetland area in Notre-Dame-des-Landes around one depressing observation: None of their efforts have succeeded in making a real dent in the current environmental collapse.

That’s why they’re meeting. Like many other movements, they feel like they’re out of options. “The first wave of the ‘climate movement’ confronted us with this powerlessness,” some of the activists will later write in a collective book titled Premières Secousses (First Shockwaves). “From COP meetings to massive marches, from climate action camps to IPCC reports, we have not managed to significantly curb the ongoing devastation.”

So here they are, 200 of the foremost climate activists in the country. There are anti-nuclear activists; unions of smallholder farmers; and members of newer movements such as Youth for Climate or Extinction Rebellion. The room is full. Many have been holed up at home for weeks, waiting for the second Covid lockdown to lift. There are still curfews and restrictions in place, but they decide this meeting is too important.

“It’s been a year of one lockdown after the next,” an anonymous participant writes. “Residents of [Notre-Dame-des-Landes] decide to issue an invitation to an assembly called to ‘move heaven and earth’ with some concrete proposals. Little notes are sent to long-time comrades as well as to people just met… It is still forbidden to meet, but impossible not to get organized.”

They’re exhausted and desperate. They have no idea that they’re about to form the most feared climate movement of the 2020s in this country — a movement that both the government and polluting industries will dread. And a movement that could offer a blueprint for global climate resistance.

They get to work. After two days of discussions, and sometimes heated debates, they land on something new: a sort of loose coalition of local struggles across France, with a variety of actors and tactics, all acting under one banner, Les Soulèvements de la Terre. The Earth Uprisings.

Their slogan: We are the Earth defending itself.

The initial round of brainstorming produces ambitious ideas: “We must besiege Monsanto in Lyon,” “make the biggest intrusion ever carried out on a concrete plant,” “block the Yara synthetic fertilizer production terminal in the bay of Saint-Nazaire.”

Then the reality kicks in: They’ve just created a new movement, they have no idea whether it’s going to take, and actions in the past have yielded little result. They decide to test it out for six months, then come back and reassess.

But politically, their ambition is clear in the first call to action they publish a few weeks after the meeting. The focus is on three goals: taking back the land from polluting industries and intensive agriculture; ramping up tactics to include occupation and sabotage; and uniting all actors who have an interest in curbing the climate emergency. In the founding text, one of the things they emphasize is that they want to get rid of the class divide that has plagued the climate movement — not just in France but all over the world. They write: “We do not believe in a two-tiered climate activism in which a minority prides itself on eating organic and driving a hybrid SUV while the majority is stuck in jobs they don’t want to do, long daily commutes, and low-cost food. We will not accept to watch the end of the world, powerless, isolated, and locked in our homes.”

So they call to target, block, and dismantle three key industries: concrete, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers.

2. The Basins

After months of localized struggles to save natural land from urban development projects, one issue emerges and quickly gains traction: the fight for water.

In France, to counter more and more frequent droughts partly caused by climate change, the government is helping build “mega-basins” — large aboveground pools used to pump water in groundwater tables in the winter and irrigate large-scale farms in the summer.

But pumping water makes droughts worse. And the reservoirs can only be used by a handful of large agribusinesses, which are mainly focused on cornfields and other irrigation crops for export. Activists argue that mega-basins effectively privatize water resources, sidelining small-scale, eco-friendly farmers.

“I guess it became a real realization for a lot of people, what the fight for water meant and access to water,” recounts Lea Hobson, a former Extinction Rebellion activist who now organizes with the Earth Uprisings. “I think that resonated for a lot of people. And it meant that a lot of people came from all over France.”

The campaign they launch to stop the construction of these mega-basins will radically reshape their future and the future of the French climate movement.

It will also unleash state violence against environmental activists on an unprecedented scale.

The first big protest takes place in October 2022, at the site of one of the basins in Sainte-Soline, a small village of about 600 people in western France. Thousands of activists turn up. So do hundreds of police officers, who use tear gas grenades to disperse protesters peacefully occupying the empty reservoir. Dozens are injured, and six people are arrested.

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In the coming days, the public narrative of the events in Sainte-Soline becomes its own battle. Local officials say “very violent activists” wreaked havoc at the protest. Gerald Darmanin, the French minister of interior, calls the activists “eco-terrorists” — a rare term for a French government official discussing climate activists — and promises to fight them.

“This is an extremely strong word for a country which suffered deadly terror attacks in 2015, which left a lot of families in mourning,” points out Alexis Vrignon, a professor at the University of Orléans who specializes in the history of environmental conflict. “The tactics of the water protesters can be discussed in terms of ethics or effectiveness, but they are totally different” from those of terrorist groups, he adds.

According to Michel Forst, the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, the “campaigns of vilification by public officials also have a great impact, which is very unfortunate, on public opinion. When you have a minister … and members of parliament calling those people eco-terrorists or simply terrorists or comparing them to the Taliban, then it’s not only the people who are under pressure, but the cause they’re fighting for, which is also being debated.”

Despite these attacks in the media, activists reconvene in Sainte-Soline five months later. This protest is set to be bigger, more ambitious. The protesters — farmers’ unions, working-class Yellow Vests, and many other unlikely allies — arrive from all corners of France and even beyond. In a field a few miles away from the reservoirs, hundreds of brightly colored tents pop up around the protest camp.

There are also 3,000 officers on site, waiting for protesters.

“You had a lot of people who were not essentially in climate movements but heard of what was going on and so would come there … as their first big mass action,” Lea Hobson, the activist, remembers. “The diversity of people — I’ve never seen that in any actions that we’ve had in Extinction Rebellion, for example.”

On the morning of the protest, thousands start marching to one of the basins. Their goal is to stop construction, take apart some of the pipes that have already been installed, and get a moratorium on any new reservoirs being built with public funds. The march is joyous. There are families with kids, people playing accordions, dancing in their blue workers’ outfits, and huge mascots representing local species that are threatened with extinction: an eel, an otter and a type of bird called a bustard.

Then, in the space of a few minutes, the peaceful march descends into chaos. “You had police that kind of started to arrive from everywhere,” Hobson recalls. Tear gas grenades and rubber pellets start falling from the sky nonstop — almost one explosion per second for two hours. The only sound that cuts through the explosions is that of protesters screaming for street medics whenever a new person gets hit.

By late afternoon 200 protesters are injured, including dozens with severe injuries. Two people are in a coma, fighting for their lives. But on the news that evening, journalists describe violent protesters who caused altercations with the police. Even the president, Emmanuel Macron, says protesters were out to kill security forces.

In this violence against protesters, France is an outlier in the region. “France is the country where we have the most violent response by the police compared to other countries in Europe,” explains Forst, from the UN.

Hobson adds that “more people have been involved — organizations, collectives, charities, political movements — so the more diverse the movement has grown, the more repression there has been. The more massive the movement has become, the more repression there has been.”

Just days after the protest, activists are scrambling to care for the injured and the traumatized, and two men are still fighting for their lives. But as public opinion turns against the protesters, Darmanin, the minister of interior, takes advantage of the opportunity and announces the legal dissolution of the Earth Uprisings. To do this he uses a 1936 law initially passed to combat the violent far-right groups that were proliferating at the time, which has since been used against Muslim groups and activist movements.

3. The Trial

Ironically Earth Uprisings never had anything official to dissolve. It never had legal organizational status, it didn’t establish itself as a nonprofit, and under French law it was simply a “de facto gathering of people.” But dissolution would mean that anyone organizing events using the name and logo of Earth Uprisings risked being fined or imprisoned.

Darmanin’s announcement is a huge blow to activists and marks the start of a lengthy legal battle that will question the methods of the Earth Uprisings and the legitimacy of sabotage itself as a form of protest in the current climate emergency — a question that’s moving through climate movements around the world.

The accusations of violence don’t come as a surprise to the organizers. From the get-go, written in the invitations to the January meeting, was a call to discuss stronger modes of action — in particular, civil disobedience. The coalition openly leans on three tactics: occupation, blockages and sabotage (which the activists call disarmament).

“Disarming is the promise of appeasement. It is not a violent term,” the group’s lawyer, Antoine Lyon-Caen, argued at the trial. Echoing these sentiments, Stéphen Kerckhove, the president of Agir pour l’Environnement (Act for the Environment), explains the rise of Earth Uprisings as “an admission of failure of our legal [climate] nonprofits.” Despite efforts ranging from petitions to legal actions, change has been elusive, he says. “All the work we do never leads to anything. We shouldn’t be surprised that there are people advocating for disarmament.”

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After each of the two protests at Sainte-Soline, the minister of interior, Gerald Darmanin — a highly controversial figure who has been accused by human-rights advocates of orchestrating an increase in violence against protesters, and whom several women have sued for sexual abuse — says that dozens of police officers have been injured. The Revelator and Drilled could not independently verify those claims. After the March protest, the public prosecutor announced that 47 officers had been injured. But 18 of those were included in the count as a result of suffering “acoustic trauma,” most likely as a result of the hundreds of explosions the police itself caused.

There is, however, abundant evidence of protesters being injured, sometimes nearly fatally, by security forces, documented in detail by human rights observers and journalists and corroborated by our sources.

The dissolution case rises through several courts before ending up at the Council of State, the highest court in France, which finally rejects the push for dissolution on Nov. 9, 2023. It also conclude s that members of Earth Uprisings engaged in material degradation, but the movement was not responsible for any violence perpetrated against people.

“The targets of our actions are always material,” confirms Lena Lazare, a spokesperson for the movement. “We never target people. But often, when we are asked these questions, it is also a way to draw a line between ‘bad demonstrators’ and ‘good demonstrators.’ And we don’t think there are any bad demonstrators. We also think that the violence of the demonstrators is created by the police repression.”

The police brutality at Sainte-Soline was never addressed by the government. And the demonstrators are clear: Their actions are only legitimate in the context of the current environmental collapse, which sees tens of thousands of people die every year from heatwaves in Europe alone.

4. The Future

The months of court dates and appeals help drudge up public support for the group. Within days of Darmanin’s dissolution announcement, nearly 200 new Earth Uprisings committees sprout up across France. Thousands of people join. Actors, scientists, and politicians join the rallying cry: “You can’t disband a movement.”

“What that created was a massive outburst of support, and the creation of local groups all over France,” says organizer Lea Hobson.” And that’s something that’s quite new. You had people coming from loads of different backgrounds who started to be like, wait, we can’t let this happen.”

Its radical approach has also intensified conversations about environmental activism, nudging even the most traditional climate groups in France to reconsider their tactics. Earth Uprisings has made inroads into mainstream discourse, influencing political agendas and policy development. Most French people had not heard of a mega-basin before October 2022. Now the issue of water use is abundantly covered in mainstream media. Several of the mega-basin projects have been abandoned.

Most importantly, Earth Uprisings has created an unprecedented alliance among progressive groups across France, and built a blueprint for an agile, fluid, and ever-evolving movement structure that has, so far, eluded governmental and legal threats.

“There wasn’t much collaboration [among progressive groups],” says Hobson. “But when you start having a movement that collaborates and that accepts and uses different forms of tactics, how do you stop that? I think that’s going to be impossible to repress.”

And for the people who have come out of Sainte-Soline intact, she says, “the rage and the willingness to do things” has only grown. “It’s weird because you have a feeling of exhaustion and you feel that what is coming next” — both the climate threats and the crackdowns — “is probably going to be 10 times worse. Yet the fact that more and more people and groups are coming together, when they wouldn’t even speak together a few years ago, is a sign that things are changing really quickly.”

Crunching Numbers

Follow the Funding

“A Green Curtain”

Across the Pond

A Rose by Any Other Name

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In-Person Voting

Early Voting

Absentee Ballots

Voter ID Laws

Know Your Rights

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Previously in The Revelator:

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Modern Problems, Historic Cause

A New Threat Rises

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A Wave of Destruction

A Swell of Protection

As Goes Tahiti, So Goes the World?

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Species name:

Description:

Where it’s found:

IUCN Red List status:

Major threats:

Notable conservation programs or legal protections:

Our favorite experience:

What else do we need to understand or do to protect this species?

Key research:

1. The Start

2. The Basins

3. The Trial

4. The Future