Love Canal: The Black Mothers Behind One of the Biggest Environmental Fights of the 20th Century

When a toxic waste disaster unfolded in the 1970s, a White housewife became the face of the movement. Down the street, Black mothers worked twice as hard to be heard.

This story was originally reported by Jessica Kutz of The 19th. Meet Jessica and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.

In 1978, a young housewife named Lois Gibbs captured the national media’s attention when she learned her community was built on a toxic waste dump.

She lived in Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, which up until that time had been an idyllic suburb to raise a family. Unbeknownst to residents, most of their homes abutted a partially dug canal that had been repurposed to serve as a chemical dumping ground. Decades before, companies had buried over 21,000 tons of chemical waste there. The playground of her son’s elementary school sat directly atop the site.

So when Gibbs read about this history in the local newspaper, and about an investigation that had opened that April to look into a potential health hazard in the community, she connected the dots between her son’s recent health issues, including seizures, to her family’s proximity to the dump.

She began to meet with other housewives and listened as they described miscarriages, birth defects and unexplained illness in their families. That led Gibbs to form the Love Canal Homeowners Association, which held meetings, met with local and national government officials and represented hundreds of families as they demanded accountability for what had happened to their health and homes.

An aerial view of the Hooker Chemical plant in Niagara Falls, New York, where toxic waste was dumped into the Love Canal decades earlier. — An aerial view of the Hooker Chemical plant in Niagara Falls, New York. The company that dumped more than 21,000 tons of toxic waste into the partially dug canal. Homes were later built on and around the site. *(Bettman/Getty Images)*

In her quest for justice, she became a media darling, perfectly encapsulating the narrative of a White working-class community fighting to salvage their American dream. The story of Love Canal eventually catalyzed the creation of the Superfund Act, which tasks the Environmental Protection Agency with cleaning up hazardous waste sites across the country.

But while Lois’s story as a mother protecting her children from a toxic environment resonated with the media, those same reporters were ignoring similar concerns being raised by Black women who lived just across the street in a public housing complex. They were seeing parallel health issues crop up in their families and sent their children to the same school as the other families at Love Canal. A school that was later closed due to contamination. As Black mothers, who were also renters, their story garnered less sympathy from homeowners, the government and the media.

As a result, the history of Love Canal narrative often leaves out their activism. This is their story.

Just two months after Gibbs first made headlines in June of 1978, a state of emergency declared that pregnant women and children under the age of 2 should evacuate from their homes closest to the canal. Homeowners in this area were also offered relocation assistance, and the government bought back their homes at a fair market price as part of their compensation.

But as these evacuations were unfolding, homeowners excluded from that zone and residents of Griffon Manor, a public housing complex for over 200 families, were left to worry about their health. With construction planned to remediate the site, and no plans to move renters, they worried about further exposure to toxins and felt like the officials hadn’t done enough to investigate the extent of the contamination or the health issues plaguing them.

As a result, Black women from the housing complex stepped up as leaders for the renters. This included people like Agnes Jones, Vera Starks, Elene Thorton and Sarah Herbert, who all took on various leadership roles throughout the disaster and voiced the concerns of families through the formation of the Concerned Love Canal Renters Association. They also enlisted the help of the NAACP and a religious organization called the Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara Frontier to fight alongside them.

A backyard in Love Canal in 1978 with a toy horse in the grass and homes boarded up after residents evacuated. — *The backyard of an abandoned Love Canal home in 1978. While some residents were relocated as the crisis unfolded, many, including renters living in nearby public housing, were left behind.* *(Digital Collections – University at Buffalo Libraries)*

Carol Jones, Agnes’ daughter, remembers her mother poring over a stack of newspapers and other research documents at their kitchen table, trying to parse out how the chemical contamination might be affecting her family and the other residents at Griffon Manor.

They moved to the complex when Carol was a teenager after their house burned down in a neighborhood not far away. Agnes had worked as a nurse at both the elementary school and at Dupont, a chemical plant, and like Gibbs, she began interviewing residents when she learned about the chemicals lurking in the ground. They told her about their pregnancy complications, about mysterious cancers that had developed in family members, about unexplainable skin rashes.

Agnes would take that information to news reporters she hoped would cover their story. But no matter how many interviews she gave, it never seemed to break through in the same way. She was rarely on TV or quoted in the paper.

“We’d watch the news after seeing my mother communicate with these reporters, and she wouldn’t be there, and the people wouldn’t be heard,” Carol remembers.

She chalks part of that pattern up to racism. Whereas Gibbs’ story garnered sympathy, “My mom was considered an angry Black woman that was living in a housing project,” she said.

Agnes also felt sidelined by some of the homeowners. At meetings they organized, Carol remembers her mother standing up to shout her concerns when she felt like renters weren’t being listened to. “But I also remember my mother coming home at night and putting her head on the table when she thought we were asleep, and we could hear her cry from the frustration from not being heard,” Carol said.

Historian Elizabeth Blum said that for the Black women of Love Canal, the fight wasn’t just about health, but about getting the same treatment as their peers. The environmental disaster unfolded just a decade after passage of the Civil Rights Act. Desegregation was underway, and Black leaders across the country were fighting to realize their full rights as citizens.

Lois Gibbs, president of the Love Canal Homeowners Association, speaks on the phone at a desk covered in papers and maps. — Lois Gibbs became the national face of the Love Canal fight. But just across the street, Black mothers like Agnes Jones were doing the same organizing work without access to the same media spotlight or resources.

“What they were doing was not only a fight for a cleaner and a healthier environment, but they also saw it as part of a struggle of trying to achieve more equality,” said Blum, who wrote “Love Canal Revisited,” a book examining how gender, race and class influenced how the two groups were treated.

Through this lens, Blum also credits these women as being part of a longer history of fighting for environmental justice years before the movement garnered recognition in Warren County, North Carolina. In 1982, Black activists fought against toxic chemicals being illegally dumped in their community, launching a national movement with other communities facing environmental racism.

“Black women were pivotally involved in urban environmental issues, and they were connecting it to civil rights issues during the progressive era,” she said. One group called the National Association of Colored Women was active in fighting against unhealthy housing conditions and doing neighborhood cleanups way back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. “They were talking about that all within the aspect of health. And they were also talking about it as a racial issue.”

But their activism was blunted by their gender, race and socioeconomic status. Many of the women in Griffon Manor were single mothers, which carried its own stigma. And as renters, they also garnered less sympathy about their situation from the public. As Blum said, “In the mid- to late ‘70s, you had that constant language, and still have that language, of welfare mothers and that they’re not deserving.”

Griffon Manor residents did not have the means to move out of the toxic environment where Carol remembers chemicals leaked into the basements of some of the units.

“A lot of people were barely keeping their heads above water,” she said.

When White homeowners were being evacuated, they felt trapped in Griffon Manor. As Thorton, one of the activists wrote in a letter asking for relocation assistance, “The mental anxiety caused by living in a chemically polluted area is enough reason to move those who wish to move from the area.”

A hand-painted protest sign reading “Love Canal Prisoner” sits atop demolition debris in the neighborhood in 1982. — *A protest sign discarded on a pile of debris in 1982 reflects the anger felt by residents who remained in the contaminated neighborhood.* *(Digital Collections – University at Buffalo Libraries)*

Finding information about how the chemicals might be affecting their health was another hurdle. From getting adequate testing for residents, to compensation for illnesses linked to the tragedy, the women had to fight for resources and services being offered more readily to White residents including more robust health testing.

At one point Agnes, wrote in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, decrying the lack of testing for residents in Griffon Manor, and describing a pattern of test results never being returned that made people distrust the research. “These people are confused, hurt and frustrated,” she wrote.

Other women like Thorton were looking for experts who could help them conduct health surveys at Griffon Manor. In at least one instance, she wrote to one doctor who had offered to help homeowners, asking if he could extend the same offer to the renters. Eventually, Thorton tapped another researcher, Beverly Paigen, who had been working to evaluate health claims of the homeowners, to expand her research to the housing complex.

After years of this advocacy work, in 1980, the federal government finally announced it would help relocate renters and the remaining homeowners. For the renters, in particular it was a hard-fought victory. This decision came after a proposed state plan had excluded them from relocation assistance. Once the evacuations began, homeowners received buyouts to leave long before renters were given other housing options. It’s less clear in records whether renters ever won additional compensation for associated health issues.

“It took courage,” Carol said of her mother’s activism at the time. But the end result also weighed on Agnes: “My mother always thought that there was something else that she could have done.”

Despite their years of activism at Love Canal, the Black women who fought tirelessly for their families are hard to locate in the story. Hundreds of archival images are available from that time frame, but only a handful even show Black residents were present at Love Canal. Thousands of pages of records from the homeowners’ association have been preserved on university websites, but only traces of the work done by the renters’ association, by Agnes and the other Black mothers of Griffon Manor can be found in records.

That failure to include their voices in a narrative that led to national change has ripple effects into how we understand the history of environmentalism, said Evlondo Cooper, a researcher with the climate and energy program at Media Matters, a nonprofit that analyzes media coverage.

“It matters that we revisit these stories,” he said. Because otherwise, “We lose a space where Black women are the natural leaders, or key leaders in the environmental movement.”

Residents of Love Canal march in protest, holding signs that read “Hooker: Corporate Child Abuser” and “Chemicals Are Hell.” The protest took place on Mother’s Day around 1980. — Residents march in protest on Mother’s Day, around 1980, to demand accountability. Black mothers from Griffon Manor also took part in these protests, but they rarely appear in the surviving photo archives documenting the movement. *(Digital Collections – University at Buffalo Libraries)*

There are also lessons to be learned about how the media can shape narratives today. “If you prioritize centering [marginalized] voices it makes it much harder to erase their contributions,” Cooper said. It also has material benefit to marginalized groups, because as demonstrated by the saga of Love Canal, “communities that are getting the media and attention are the communities that can get the resources to fix the problem.”

While it’s hard to find a tangible record of all the work people like Agnes did over the years, Blum said they should be remembered as strong women who fought to protect their families amid huge obstacles, not just from the toxic chemicals lurking in their backyards but from a society still hesitant to recognize them as equal citizens in the fight.

“These brave, determined women should be known on the same kind of level as Lois Gibbs,” Blum said. “They are just as much part of the story as the White women are.”

The Myth of the Cowboy and Its Enduring Influence on Public Policy

Livestock ranchers receive undue praise and tax dollars while they disregard damage to life on the planet, in a political climate that prioritizes profit.

Are we ushering in a new era of manifest destiny — and ultimately celebrating our own demise?

America was raised on the ideology of rugged individualism, grit, and the mirage of freedom on a conquered landscape.

Pop culture embodied this ideology as the gunslinging cowboy, who through more than a century’s worth of Western films, books, and TV shows — from Gunsmoke (1955) and Bonanza (1959) to Yellowstone (2018) — rode across the screen and lassoed American hearts. We’ve been primed to believe the American cowboy is a hero and a violent showdown is the best self-defense, the ultimate path to our freedom.

The only thing more American may be a cheeseburger — and not coincidentally, they’re inextricably linked.

The quick-shooting, horseback-riding lone ranger perseveres in the American imagination and symbolizes some of our deeply held values. That romance has evolved and shaped public perception of the modern-day, glorified livestock rancher.

Meanwhile cultural enchantment with the cowboy myth has lined the pockets of private interests at taxpayers’ expense, influenced policy, and proudly allowed for unfettered damage to our environment.

As we bear witness to the dismantling of significant public services in our nation and unchecked government greed directed at cashing in on public lands, is the rugged individualism of the cowboy fantasy really what we want to hold onto as Americans?

The Myth of the Self-Made Rancher

As an associate journalist interning with the Wild Narrative Project, a nonprofit outlet that explores the impacts of private interests on public lands and wildlife, I learned firsthand how powerful entities like livestock operations sway public policy and opinion in their favor.

While the cowboy myth proclaims that success on a new frontier is defined by personal grit and defiant autonomy, the reality is that ranchers depend on generous subsidies from government agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And we taxpayers largely foot the bill.

To the backdrop of growing inflation for the average American, it costs less for ranchers to graze their cattle than it did in 1981. Ranchers fatten their cows for profit on public lands for a mere $1.35 per animal unit month. This “unit month” equates to the amount of forage needed to sustain a cow and her calf — or five sheep — for an entire month. One dollar and thirty-five cents.

The cost to taxpayers, however, is exponential. A 2022 study found that between management and the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions, private livestock grazing on federal public lands costs U.S. taxpayers more than $608 million every year.

Other studies show the government spends up to $38 billion each year to subsidize meat and dairy industries. Talk about government inefficiency.

Out of our own pockets, we pay for the environmental damage caused by grazing — and then pay ranchers’ insurance for disaster relief. It’s a vicious, costly circle.

Big Agriculture reaps the benefits of meager output while taxpayers pick up the slack and pay high prices at the grocery store on top of it. The idea that prices for consumers will fall if we protect access to the small family farm is out of reach when the top players control the market.

The environmental nonprofit Western Watersheds Project calls subsidized cattle-grazing programs “welfare” — even more poignant in an era where welfare programs are villainized by a government that wants to put more money into the pockets of the wealthy and eliminate programs that contribute to the greater good.

Not coincidentally, livestock ranchers’ significant perks aren’t on the chopping block.

The Impact on Environmental Progress

The proposition that cowboys — or real-life ranchers — are stewards of the land and caretakers of animals is deeply flawed.

Wealthy ranchers have spent $523 million dollars lobbying Congress over the past five years to slant policy in their favor, in part to exempt themselves from environmental regulations.

California’s Sonoma County recently witnessed the enduring strength of cowboy myth and the power of rancher money in politics. Last year Measure J — a contentious and groundbreaking effort initiated by Direct Action Everywhere, an international network of animal-rights activists, to end factory farming in Sonoma County — received a landslide defeat at the ballot box following an extensive marketing campaign by the No on J PAC.

No on J contributions — which largely came from Western United Dairies, Petaluma Poultry Processors, Clover Sonoma, and Weber Family Farms — totaled more than $1.7 million and allowed opponents to outspend the organizers who put Measure J on the ballot by a substantial margin.

Incorporated agriculture entities were able to persuade the public that Measure J would hurt the local economy and generations of small family farmers — because they had the resources to spend on spinning that narrative.

The measure did not aim to end family farming. It sought to phase out 21 identified Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations with a long history of violating animal cruelty laws. Beyond fighting for animal welfare, the organizers also sought to improve water quality, public health, and allow smaller farmers to flourish where corporate farms had monopolized.

But instead, ‘No on J’ signs remain on some open land where cattle roam, urging the community to “protect the local farmer” more than six months after the measure lost by 85%. The ranchers are idolized, while some activists face prison time for removing animals from factory farms as part of their efforts to expose cruelty and disease.

Even as ranchers use the law against activists, one of the true features of (some) cowboys is lawlessness. Notorious rancher Cliven Bundy bullied the Bureau of Land Management and refused to play by the rules — and a standoff occurred when armed supporters stood behind him in his refusal to pay grazing fees or remove his cattle from closed allotments.

Years later his son Ammon Bundy is a wanted fugitive. Not only was Ammon Bundy an active participant in the armed standoff with his father but later he rounded up another mob of militants in an attempt to take control of federal land, demanding a national wildlife refuge be handed over to the ranchers. He led a hate-filled campaign against a hospital, and then, to evade his convictions, he went on the run.

Cattle ranchers like the Bundys aim to intimidate ecologists, wildlife biologists, and others who seek to heal the eroded land that cattle has damaged for decades.

Agriculture uses up half of the world’s habitable land and accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawals. These are lands and waters that sustain life for countless species who play vital roles in our ecosystems, not just humans and livestock.

Livestock have massively reduced biodiversity. Today farm animals like cows, sheep, goats and pigs account for 62% of mammal biomass throughout the entire world, in contrast to humans at 34% and wild mammals at a staggeringly low 4%.

The New Era of Manifest Destiny

In this new era of manifest destiny, Doug Burgum, the recently appointed secretary of the Interior, and the rest of the Trump administration see public lands as something to be conquered for profit.

The administration’s disdain for the scientific evidence of climate change and the harm done by Big Ag reflects the violent, individualist values of the cowboy in old Westerns.

At many points throughout our history, the villain has been rewritten as the hero and compassion vilified. In that kind of sociopolitical climate, mass genocide and irreparable harm to the land have been justified, accelerated, and praised. We’re witnessing another such moment now.

The removal of “red-tape” — the emergency executive orders to expand logging in our national forests, livestock grazing on public lands, and other plans to “unleash the power of American energy” while actively deregulating environmental policies — is likely to exacerbate climate change and threaten the habitats of several thousand species.

An abundance of evidence shows that cattle being raised en masse for human consumption degrade the Earth, but that reality gets buried by a public infatuation with the cowboy figure and ranchers’ heavy-handed lobby money.

But if the ranching industry continues to lobby against environmental policy, isn’t it inevitably lobbying against its own survival?

Scientists, Indigenous peoples, and activists have been sounding the alarm — it’s time for us to listen. It’s time for us all to weed through the distraction of political polarization and focus on taking care of each other and the planet. Idolizing the cowboy, however subconsciously, is hurting us more than it’s upholding the freedom for which it claims to stand.

Previously in The Revelator:

Livestock Grazing on Public Lands: The Perils of “Multiple Use”

Jaws at 50: Was the Terrifying Movie Really to Blame for Worldwide Shark Declines?

Since the film’s release, sharks have experienced the worst declines in their 450-million-year history. Can we trace that decline to their villainous portrayal in this influential movie?

Steven Spielberg’s iconic film Jaws first hit theaters on June 20, 1975 — 50 years ago this month. Based on the bestselling novel by Peter Benchley about a great white shark mauling and killing summer tourists at a Massachusetts beach community, the movie terrified viewers, many of whom blame it for a subsequent lifelong fear of sharks.

In contrast many shark scientists, educators, and conservation advocates say the movie helped inspire them to study or protect sharks — and they bemoan the way sharks were portrayed, which undeniably changed public perception on a massive scale.

Conservationists don’t claim that people thought sharks were cute and cuddly before they saw Spielberg’s great white terrorizing Amity Island beachgoers. Before Jaws, though, people didn’t really think about sharks very much at all, and now — more often than not — they’re terrified of them.

Great white shark — Bernard DuPont (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sharks have faced many conservation challenges since the film’s premier, but what’s going on, and how much of it can be blamed on Jaws?

The Current State of Sharks

Sharks and their relatives (skates, rays, and chimaeras) are not doing well. A 2021 analysis found that 37% of these animals are assessed as threatened with extinction (vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered) on the IUCN Red List, which makes them some of the most at-risk animals in the world.

Much of the worrying decline in shark populations lines up with the time frame since Jaws’ release.

A 2024 paper led by marine ecologist Nick Dulvy found that shark and ray abundance has declined by about half in the past 50 years, with very little of these population decline occurring before that. Many of the shark species now assessed by the IUCN Red List as endangered or critically endangered were doing a lot better just a few decades ago.

scalloped hammerhead shark — Scalloped hammerhead shark by Kris-Mikael Krister (CC BY 2.0)

As a shark scientist myself, I find that particularly striking: Animals who have been swimming in the oceans since before there were trees on land and have survived every mass extinction event in the Earth’s history have declined by half since my parents graduated from college.

So what’s causing these declines?

The biggest threat to sharks and their relatives, the research shows, is unsustainable overfishing. Many of the most problematic shark fisheries have arisen in this time since the release of Jaws.

And the experts say Jaws had an influence on that.

Fear Beats Concern

There’s no doubt that Jaws terrified a generation. For months after it came out, people were terrified to go swimming — even in lakes and pools.

And since that time, even the most minor interaction between a human and shark can make worldwide headlines, with the media often sensationalize the encounter as a “shark attack” — even when the shark did not physically touch the human at all.

Meanwhile just 11% of news articles about sharks mention that they’re some of the most-threatened animals on Earth, discuss their ecological importance, or how talk about how their disappearance causes declines in key ecosystem services. The rest focus on sharks biting people.

This is not harmless. A variety of psychological research has shown that exposure to fearmongering media headlines about sharks makes people less likely to support shark conservation efforts.

A movie scaring people or changing behavior is not, in or of itself, novel. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho gave many viewers a lifetime phobia about taking showers, and the first Final Destination left a generation of people afraid to drive behind logging trucks. But critically, those specific fears don’t translate into the public’s policy preferences for water conservation, forestry practices, or protecting species of trees.

With Jaws, a fictional portrayal of sharks — stalking a beach and killing people just because they’re evil, which has no basis in actual shark behavior — has affected peoples’ real-world policy preferences for how we should treat them.

There’s even a name for this: The Jaws effect, a term coined in 2014 by public policy expert Chris Peppin-Neff.

“The Jaws effect argues that politicians use familiar fictional films as the basis for public policy responses to real-life events, because the problem and solution are already commonly understood,” says Pepin-Neff, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Sydney and the author of Flaws: Shark Bites and Emotional Public Policymaking. “The public believed this fictional story so completely, it meant that every shark bite was a murder, and every shark was a murderer. The Jaws story provided justification, and weakened pushback, for all the anti-shark policies that followed, including revenge shark hunts, changes to fishery laws, and delays in enacting shark conservation policies.”

Other experts agree. “Jaws really enabled widespread persecution of sharks,” says Dulvy. “Jaws meant that there was no room for a conversation about conserving sharks. If we talked about them at all, it was about how they should be killed.”

At the same time, the movie was not directly the source of most shark species’ declines.

A Wave of Consumption

The release of Spielberg’s film coincided with the dramatic rise of the Chinese middle class. During the 1970s and 1980s, millions of people experiencing newfound wealth wanted to show they were prosperous by eating foods once reserved for the emperor and his court.

These foods included a traditional delicacy called shark fin soup (which is exactly what it sounds like).

Driven by this demand, the global trade in shark fins began to explode. By the early 2000s, the shark fin trade reached about 20,000 metric tons in volume.

Dulvy says the movie influenced some of this.

“Public perception enabled the overfishing of sharks,” Dulvy says. He notes that the 1970s and 1980s also saw a huge global expansion of many fisheries, not just those targeting sharks. But many of those fisheries had major problems with shark bycatch — the accidental catching of sharks along with intended target species. Because people feared sharks, little effort was made to reduce their deaths in fishing nets intended for other fish.

Notably, despite widespread public misunderstanding of this issue among the amateur shark enthusiast community, the shark fin soup trade has not been the biggest threat to sharks in more than a decade. A mix of environmental activism reduced public interest in shark fins and anti-corruption measures by the Chinese government have cut back on luxury consumption, so the demand for shark fins has dramatically declined. Consumption of shark fin soup in China has fallen by 80% since 2011.

Lately the biggest issue is the shark meat trade, which involves different species of sharks and different countries than the shark fin trade. The shark meat trade increased by almost half in the early 2000’s, and is a multibillion dollar industry that gets much less attention from members of the public.

Jaws’ Mixed Legacy

While Jaws made people terrified of sharks, it was also one of the first movies to feature a scientist as a hero, and many marine biologists cite the “Hooper” character played by Richard Dreyfuss as their inspiration for pursuing a career in this field.

Additionally, Peter Benchley, the author of the book that the film was based on, dedicated his post-movie life to raising awareness and funds for shark conservation. He served on the board of multiple ocean-conservation organizations and penned four nonfiction books about protecting the ocean and sharks, including one that criticized media sensationism about shark “attacks.” And after his death, his widow Wendy Benchley cofounded the Peter Benchley Ocean Award for conservation education, which was resurrected this year after a brief hiatus.

Benchley’s post-Jaws life embodies the twin legacies of the movie.

“While there’s no denying that Jaws gave countless people a negative impression of sharks, it also fueled public fascination with the species, which has also been an important driver for conservation,” says Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International. “Starting in the 1990s, the white shark, despite its fearsome image, was among the first shark species protected in many countries. These actions jump-started the global conservation movement and led to a growing number of less-iconic species gaining policy attention.”

And the effect wasn’t limited to just the one species from the book and movie.

“The public image of sharks, and the policies meant to protect them, have improved remarkably in the last few decades,” says Fordham. “The challenge is to stay the course with measures that are working, strengthen those that aren’t, and expand the approach to protect closely related, and similarly vulnerable, rays.”

The Next 50 Years and Beyond

Ocean science and conservation, including but not limited to the conservation of sharks, are at a crossroads. In the United States, NOAA — the federal agency most directly related to ocean conservation — faces devastating budget cuts, and the Trump administration has undermined key conservation laws. Globally, nations are almost certain to miss the key 30×30 deadline for fully protecting 30% of the ocean by the year 2030. Modest shark conservation gains are being threatened as fishermen’s catch gets taken by sharks, leading to calls for an expanded shark fishery or culls. CITES, one of the most powerful international tools for endangered species conservation from trade, has protected most shark species, but how (and how successfully) their policies will be implemented remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, an onslaught of T-shirts, toys, DVDs, books, and a host of other products promoting Jaws on its 50th anniversary have hit stores and online shops around the world. While some of them carry pro-shark messages, many lean into the legacy of fear and carry the tagline “50 years of terror.”

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What happens to sharks over the next 50 years may depend on which of these messages survives: Will people’s fascination with these animals — and the appreciation of the vital ecological roles they serve — overcome the public terror that started with, and is still being fueled by, Jaws?

Previously in The Revelator:

Film Fakery: Does Shark Week Harm Conservation Efforts?

What’s Being Done to Public Lands Is a Crime

The hosts of the true-crime podcast “National Park After Dark” discuss the dangers public lands face — and how people can stand up to protect them.

These are dark times for public lands in the United States, and few people know that better than the hosts of the true-crime podcast “National Park After Dark.”

Over the past four years, hosts Cassie Yahnian and Danielle LaRock have recorded hundreds of episodes about the occasionally dark histories of public lands across the United States and around the world. In the process they’ve visited dozens of parks and shared stories that illustrate what makes these sites so important — to the people who enjoy them, the communities that thrive around them, and the plants and animals who depend on them.

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While the podcast mostly focuses on crimes from years past, it has lately taken on a more urgent tone, as the Trump administration has slashed budgets, instituted mass firings, removed environmental protections, and made moves to sell out thousands of acres of public lands.

The Revelator spoke with Yahnian and LaRock about the troubles already emerging at national parks and other sites, why these public lands are so important, and what people can do to stand up for them. We also discussed why the topics of true crime and conservation work so well together. (This conversation has been lightly edited for style and brevity.)

How do you feel about this massive push toward selling or exploiting the nation’s public lands?

Danielle: It’s a gut punch. It feels heartbreaking. I think public lands bring everyone from so many different walks of life together and are just this unifying space. To see that being chipped away and sold off and privatized, it’s like the rug is being pulled out from underneath our feet.

You know, growing up, public lands felt almost like a guarantee. Over a century ago, we collectively made this decision: This is a good idea. It benefits everyone. There’s so much positive that comes with outdoor spaces and public lands, we should safeguard them. And then all of a sudden to have a century’s worth of dedication be reversed is kind of blindsiding and shocking.

[Cassie:] A lot of what they’re trying to pass right now, it’s a money grab. They’re trying to do oil and drilling and all of that. They’re ignoring the fact that people have made their livelihoods off some of these public lands for generations. There are towns that exist because of these public spaces. There are so many hardworking families who are going to be affected because their tourism runs off of these lands. Their restaurant businesses, hotels, guiding services, everything like that.

You’re jeopardizing a lot of hardworking American families’ incomes.

After four years you’ve taken the podcast to so many new places. You’ve heard from so many new people. How have your feelings about national parks evolved?

[Danielle:] I think the first word that comes to my mind is gratitude.

Through all our research and just meeting people and hearing their stories, and learning what a typical ranger’s job entails — they’re kind of this Jack of all trades — and all the responsibilities that they carry and the passion that they have… I learned about the people who fought for the protection of certain parks and why that’s so significant and why it’s so needed, and about all of the different species that are vulnerable. Those spaces might be their last holdouts and their last hope of survival.

I am so happy that national parks exist and that so many people feel passionately about them, because they aren’t just for one thing. They aren’t just so you can go and take a beautiful photo, although that remains true. They also exist for a plethora of other reasons that you may never realize as a visitor. National parks are amazing. They do so much for this country and the people in it.

[Cassie:] We’ve been really lucky to meet a lot of people within the National Park Service system, the Forest Service, and people who work in public lands. And one thing that we have really gotten to know is that the community that surrounds them is really amazing and full of hardworking, incredibly smart people who really care about not just the planet, but other people as well. And it just serves as such a special place for community, which we have been so fortunate to now be a part of, between talking to rangers, emergency responders, biologists, authors, everyone who draws inspiration and surrounds their life in these spaces.

But also, something that I think I’ve noticed in my own travels is that we’re going into these places and as you walk in you might see a huge crowd of people and think, “Oh my God, this place is so busy.” But then when you take a minute and sit back, you look around and you see everyone is here because they think that this is important. Everyone came to see this place because it’s something that’s important to them.

Let’s talk about the link between true crime and conservation. You’re drawing in audiences who are interested in different things and showing them the value of these places and telling very human stories. Can you talk about your approach and what you’ve gotten out of marrying these two seemingly disparate concepts?

[Cassie:] What we’ve found — and I think this is always the point of conservation — is that you want to get people to care about the places you’re talking about. You can say “These trees are important, this wildlife is important to the ecosystem” a thousand times, but if you’ve never been to the place or you don’t care about the place, it kind of just goes over people’s heads a lot of the time.

What we’ve found is when we can create a link to these spaces that people care about, they then are like, “Wait a minute, you just told me this incredible story about this place, but they’re trying to deforest it.” And then people suddenly care about it.

And where true crime comes in is these dark morbid curiosities. True crime is so popular for a reason, because it’s so intriguing.

We also dive into survival stories, animal attacks, dark histories, everything like that. When you can create your own personal link and say, “I want to go there” or “This place is important,” suddenly conservation is in your mind because now you care about it, too.

[Danielle:] When we were in Joshua Tree, we did a live show and told the story of an old rancher at Keys Ranch who went to prison because he shot someone. He claimed self-defense. It was basically a neighbor dispute, but as soon as he got out of prison, he went to the spot where he killed his neighbor and erected a stone that said, “This is where Worth Bagley bit the dust at the hands of me,” with the date on it.

And the Park Service decided to preserve that site and that memorial. This is also preserving old mining history. For part of our live show we said, “Go visit this place.” So now you’re on this trail that has historical importance, but you’re there for a story that you heard. And you’re standing in the same location where you heard that story. A ton of people went over and took photos and learned about the trail, where they were, and what was important there, so it all linked together.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about your podcast is that you sometimes take an international approach. You’re not just looking at American national parks. You’re going to Canada soon. You’ve been to Borneo and Africa. Are there any lessons you take from those national park experiences? Because obviously they have budgetary issues. Some parks in Africa are “paper parks” that don’t have any rangers or protection. But there’s a lot that are awesome. Are there any lessons you take from them that you bring back to your experiences here?

[Cassie:] They say that national parks are America’s best idea, which is ironic since we’re actively trying to get rid of them right now. But it’s something that the whole world followed after Yellowstone. Even though some, like you mentioned, aren’t as established as some American national parks, there is this love behind all of them. The entire globe has come together and said, “Here are some spaces that we found that deserve more protection.”

We were in Patagonia, in a national park, and I met someone who had just come to that specific location because they felt that it was important. The community that’s brought to these places isn’t just in the United States. It crosses borders and countries and oceans and it’s all around the world, which is something that’s very special.

One of my favorite parts of the podcast is the introduction. There was a great one within the past couple of episodes where you talked about wildlife encounters and said there’s a dark side to them: We might be seeing more animals because they’re being forced into smaller and smaller locations. What are your worries about wildlife in these national parks right now?

[Cassie:] When we’re seeing this defunding and we’re losing rangers and the people who would be out here mitigating problems, I worry about the wildlife who are out here just minding their own business, doing what they do, and having people who are coming and being nervous. Having less resources and not having staff there who can make sure that the people coming are respectful and safe and making good decisions makes me nervous for wildlife. Because animals pay the price for human stupidity and human error a lot of the time.

[Danielle:] For a lot of species, national parks are kind of their last hope and last stronghold, especially with animals that we have extirpated from the landscape intentionally.

We’re trying to right a wrong in a lot of cases. Wolves in Yellowstone — everyone points to that example because it is such a success story.

But there’s talk of reintroducing grizzlies into the North Cascades National Park, and if this defunding keeps its momentum programs like that are not going to be able to get off the ground or continue in the way that has been intended. And a lot of the animals that have really paid the price for decades or centuries will continue to suffer and maybe flicker out from the places that could sustain a population.

That’s really devastating, especially for conservationists and animal lovers.

Are there things you’re hearing about on the ground that are already getting worse because of these budget cuts, firings and everything else?

[Cassie:] Yeah, for sure. I think that some of the biggest things we’ve seen are these layoffs. I know a lot of employees were reinstated because of the protests and things that were going on. But something that we’ve learned is that the news, or wherever you’re getting your information, might say that “five people were let go,” but what it’s not saying is that five people were let go and there were six employees.

We’re getting to the point where it’s not just understaffed, it’s not doable. You can’t run these places with one person.

Someone that we spoke to, they have since been reinstated, but they were released from their job and they were the only one there. And they were search and rescue, the only EMT within miles.

[Danielle:] And that’s echoed throughout our conversations with park personnel and public land employees: It’s such a snowball effect. It’s like flicking over that first domino. And we’re going to see the implications, whether it be two weeks from now or two months from now, especially as we’re heading into peak park-visitation months.

It’s not just that the visitor center has limited hours, or there’s not as many people cleaning the bathrooms. It’s all of that, and cleaning up the backcountry campsites, or any campsites. That’s something that at face value people may not think about, but those people are there for a reason. With overflowing trash and an accumulation of garbage and attractants, wildlife is going to start associating people and campsites with food, which snowballs into a bigger problem.

Then here we are again, looping back to wildlife paying the price. Because now when a bear wanders up to a campsite that they’ve been habituated to, because no one is cleaning up the trash, people are going to freak out because a bear is coming into their picnic. And the park personnel who are still there are going to have to deal with that bear.

It’s not just this “X number of people were let go.” It’s the larger picture. Everyone there has a role and they’re all important.

What’s going on now… is it starting to bleed into your storytelling when you’re telling these stories from the past? Is there any resonance that you see or are actively trying to pull out to make sense of what’s going on now?

[Cassie:] Yes. And I would say, unfortunately, overwhelmingly so, because we’re finding in our research that the past is essentially repeating itself. A lot of what’s happening right now is a fight that’s already been fought.

If you go back into just the history of logging, for example — we logged so much of the country that towns were decimated because of erosion and floods. There were rockslides.

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There are places that are preserved now for a reason, and it’s because we destroyed them at some point.

We don’t see that now, because these places are coming back and look beautiful. But unfortunately, in our research, we’re seeing things unfold for a second, third, fourth time.

It has influenced how we choose our stories. We find ourselves leaning more heavily on conservation, and on some of these stories where we’re seeing histories being erased within the federal government, where some of this information is hard to even come by.

We’re starting to say: This is relevant right now. It’s an interesting story, but it’s really important because we’re back again.

I’m seeing this parallel through a lot of things. We’ve forgotten that rivers used to be on fire. We’re going to learn some hard lessons again if we’re not careful.

[Cassie:] Look at Cuyahoga National Park. It’s one of the most exciting and biggest conservation stories in the national park system. It was toxic to even be there.

Now it’s a national park and the marshes are back, birds are back. Not only is it good for wildlife, but the people who lived around there, who were literally being poisoned.

It is important to look back and realize that we are so lucky now because we’ve fought this fight before.

[Danielle:] It’s so frustrating. We’re not even talking, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Sometimes we’re talking about stories within our lifetime or our parents’ lifetimes.

It’s not that far removed and yet we’re treating it as if it’s some alternate universe.

You want to just bang your head against the wall and be like, are we the only people seeing this and why are powers that be not taking this seriously?

[Cassie:] I also think that it’s important to note that I really think — and I truly, honestly believe this — that they have picked the wrong fight. They’re underestimating the love of public lands and the National Park Service.

They can, and they might pass these things, and it’s going to be scary and it’s definitely a fight, but they picked the wrong community to mess with because they are severely underestimating the love for these places. I truly believe that people are going to show up and fight for these places, just as they have, but even more because we’re at record-breaking national park visits. Millions of people visit every single year. You look at just Great Smoky Mountains — they get over 6 million visitors a year, and that’s just one park. I don’t think people are going to stand for this.

What else gives you hope? What gives you excitement? What are you looking forward to?

[Danielle:] Well, it’s hard, because there’s a lot of scary things going on right now. We hate what’s going on and yet it’s still happening. And that can make you feel a little bit hopeless.

But on the other side of that coin, like Cassie said, people are not going to take this lying down.

This shared love of public lands and national parks is so unifying. And it’s one of the few things that almost everyone has in common.

Because people find different meaning in public spaces. Not everyone goes to hike, because not everyone is an extreme backpacker. Some people are painters and find inspiration from the landscapes. Some people are photographers. Some people find peace being alone out there. Other people like meeting people on the trails. There are so many different reasons that people go, but the point is they’re all still going.

There’s no sign of that stopping. People are going to fight for that. And the hope that I see is people’s anger fuels change.

People should be outraged. This isn’t something that’s an idea that might happen. This is stuff that really will happen, and it should make you angry because they’re taking it from all of us. And that anger is really fueling change that we’re seeing in real time.

[Cassie:] Something that gives me a lot of hope, too, is just seeing how many people are banding together. There’s protests every week at national parks right now because people care so much. People are volunteering. People are donating. Every day on social media, I see people sharing what’s going on and asking people to reach out to their congressman, to whoever their points of contact are in their state.

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I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many people come together over one thing, which is also why I say that they picked the wrong community because the Americans are the community and it’s directly targeting Americans. And I truly don’t think we’re going to stand for it.

When you really look at the numbers, how many people are benefiting from mining and oil industries? They’re minuscule in comparison, and they’re not going to bring in the amount of money and jobs as ecotourism and everything — they’re actually going to destroy those communities and a lot of people’s livelihoods. People have a lot to fight for and it’s not just that they love the parks. A lot of people rely on them.

I see the bad stuff that’s happening, but I am very hopeful that people are not going to allow it to.

Well, that’s a fantastic message to end on. Is there anything else you think is important to add?

[Cassie:] People are looking for ways that they can help, and some people can’t go out and protest, or some people aren’t near national parks. But it’s not just national parks and it’s not just these huge places. Your local places, whatever state you’re in … federal funding was cut across the board. The state park that’s a couple of miles from your house — they’re looking for volunteers. People are looking for donations. People are looking for just advocacy. Take a few minutes of your time to write a letter to your local representatives and just make your opinions known.

And if you’re going out into these parks, understand that they’re going to be understaffed and help out. Follow those “leave no trace” principles. Make sure you understand that maybe there aren’t rangers out there who can rescue you and be prepared to self-rescue. Be prepared to not take risks when you’re outdoors, because the staff might not be there.

And be kind, because these people still working in these places are really going to be struggling this summer.

It’s going to be tough in national parks this year, but that doesn’t mean to stop going to them. It means show up for them, show up for your state parks, your public lands, wherever that may be.

These legislations seem overwhelming, in that they’re trying to push people away from these places — which they are. Don’t let that deter you: Go out and enjoy them and advocate for them.

Previously in The Revelator:

Saving America’s National Parks and Forests Means Shaking Off the Rust of Inaction

Summer Reads: 10 Environmental Books for Children to Inspire and Engage Their Curiosity

Whether they’re on the beach, in the woods, near a lake, or on the front porch, these new books will inspire kids, teens, and families.

We’ve found some fantastic new books to stimulate your kids’ curiosity about nature and the environment during the upcoming summer break. Many of these books can be shared by the whole family and complement your vacation destination — or your exploration of local parks and trails.

The writers and illustrators of these books — all published in the first six months of 2025 —embrace the environment and include delightful explorations of the world, with a good dose of ecology and other science sprinkled in.

We’ve excerpted the books’ official descriptions below. As always, the links go to the publishers’ sites, but you can also find these books through your local bookstore or library.

What Makes a Bird?

Written by Megan Pomper and illustrated by Maia Hoekstra

Children 4-10

In this evocative picture book, a child wanders through nature with one question: What makes a bird a bird? Is it feathers? The beak? Could it be wings? With each possible answer, more questions arise and expand a child’s awareness. If laying eggs makes a bird a bird, what about other egg-laying creatures like turtles, snakes, or fish? With gorgeous illustrations and subtle STEM content, this thoughtful picture book invites readers to think about what makes us human and how we categorize and identify the world around us.

Animal Partnerships: Radical Relationships, Unlikely Alliances, and Other Animal Teams

Written by Ben Hoare and illustrated by Asia Orlando

Children 7-9

Get acquainted with unexpected animal teams around the world and find out how these groups thrive in the wild as they defend, feed, and plot with each other in order to survive in this fascinating and unique look at animals.

Presenting these unpredictable discoveries, Ben Hoare’s friendly, informative explanations are paired with striking photographs and colorful illustrations to make sure every page captivates the imagination.

The Urban Naturalist: How to Make the City Your Scientific Playground

By Menno Schilthuizen

Teens and Up

Thanks to the open science revolution, real biological discoveries can now be made by anyone right where they live. This book shows readers how to go about making those discoveries, introduces the tools of the trade of the urban community scientist, from the tried and tested (the field notebook, the butterfly net, and the hand lens) to the newfangled (internet resources, low-tech gadgets, and off-the-shelf gizmos). But beyond technology, his book holds the promise of reviving the lost tradition of the citizen scientist, rekindling the spirit of the Victorian naturalist for the modern world.

At a time when the only nature most people get to see is urban, The Urban Naturalist demonstrates that understanding the novel ecosystems around us is our best hope for appreciating and protecting biodiversity.

History Smashers: Earth Day and the Environment

By Kate Messner

Children 8-12

It’s true that the first Earth Day encouraged people around the globe to clean up their act when it came to the environment. But activists have been working for centuries to save the planet! Native people across the world developed sustainable farming practices, women in eighteenth-century India stood up to protect trees, and amateur scientist Eunice Foote discovered the science behind global warming all the way back in the 1850s! Join the History Smashers team to bust history’s biggest misconceptions and figure out what in the world really went down before (and after!) the first Earth Day — and how you can join the fight to protect the environment.

Far, Far Away

Written by Molly Beth Griffin and illustrated by Bau Luu

Children 2-8

Mom and Mama are taking Rowan on his first camping trip, far away from the city where they live. Rowan is excited to see all kinds of wildlife, maybe even a bear or a moose! But canoe camping is hard work. Before long, Rowan is tired and hungry, itchy from mosquito bites, and downright grumpy. In fact, he wants to go home. Mom and Mama listen to his complaints and show him something truly special that they don’t have at home, something that makes Rowan glad they worked so hard to go far, far away, where the wilderness is really wild.

Great Apes: Protecting Our Animal Cousins

By Christopher Gudgeon

Children 8-12

Get to know our charismatic chimpanzee cousins, the peaceful bonobos, three types of high-flying orangutans, and those gentle giants of the jungle, the gorillas. Discover where and how they live, their biology, what they eat and what they share in common with humans ― beyond their opposable thumbs. These giant mammals are our closest relatives in the animal world, known for their intelligence, complex social structures and communication skills. But great apes everywhere are in trouble. Their habitat is being destroyed by deforestation and the effects of climate change. Their population is dropping, and fast. In Great Apes, find out what conservationists, scientists and young people all over the world are doing to protect them.

Green Jolene and the Neighborhood Swap

Written by Wendy Mass and illustrated by Billy Yong

Children 8-12

Jolene wouldn’t have guessed that the first day of summer vacation would start with her trying to figure out if the squishy object smelling up her backpack was a half-eaten tuna sandwich or a six-month-old plum! (It was both!) While dumping old food in the trash and bringing out the recycling, Jolene sees the huge boxes of stuff her new neighbors got delivered. She realizes how many of her own belongings she doesn’t use anymore.

Horrified by the idea of contributing to overflowing landfills and trash-filled oceans, Jolene hatches a big plan to not only deal with her own stuff, but her whole neighborhood’s unwanted items as well. Clad in her favorite rain boots, Jolene is ready to save the world. Or, at least, to tackle her own neighborhood’s stuff and find some surprising new allies along the way.

How to Explain Climate Science to a Grown-Up

Written by Ruth Spiro and illustrated by Teresa Martínez

Children 8-12

The best-selling author of the Baby Loves Science series levels up with this playful STEM picture book introducing kids (and grown-ups) to climate science.

A Wolf Called Fire: A Voice of the Wilderness Novel

By Rosanne Parry

Children 8-12

Inspired by Wolf 8, a real Yellowstone wolf who was the smallest of his pack and constantly bullied by his bigger brothers. Wolf 8 survived a tumultuous first year and grew up to be a different sort of leader — one who fought many rival wolves to submission but never killed any. He had a rare talent for mentoring young wolves and became the patriarch of the largest and most successful pack in Yellowstone by choosing a more collaborative and generous leadership style.

A Hummingbird on My Balcony

Written and photographed by Isabelle Groc

Children 6-8

Noah’s family has just moved into a new apartment on the 22nd floor when an Anna’s hummingbird visits their balcony. Soon the young boy notices a fuzzy nest being built — like Noah’s family, this hummingbird is making a new home. This true story shows the hummingbird through Noah’s eyes as he discovers how these birds feed, care for, and raise their young. Alongside Noah’s story are facts explaining where Anna’s hummingbirds live, their role as pollinators and the threats they face from pollution, pesticides, urban predators and a warming climate. Readers will learn that with a few simple actions, we can all help hummingbirds survive and thrive in urban areas.

Enjoy these summer reads wherever you spend your summer days — and at whatever age.

Let us know what you think. Send your ideas, success stories, and other book recommendations to [email protected]

For hundreds of additional environmental books — including many more for kids of all ages — visit the Revelator Reads archives.

Previously in The Revelator:

Comics for Earth: Eight New Graphic Novels About Saving the Planet and Celebrating Wildlife

Summer Reads: 10 New Environmental Memoirs, Novels, and Other Energizing Books

Gather up some of these environmentally focused books for your vacation or staycation and enhance your summer break with restorative and refreshing new perspectives.

Summer’s almost upon us, and fiction and nonfiction writers alike have a wide selection of new books that embrace the environment. We’ve picked 10 new books — all of which were published in the first half of this year — that address everything from public action to personal experiences and from science to sci-fi. The list includes historical accounts, science-based mysteries, futuristic visions, and everything in the middle.

Whether you plan to relax on the beach, lounge by the pool, or recline in the woods, these terrific books will help energize you in the months ahead.

We’ve excerpted the books’ official descriptions below. As always, the links go to the publishers’ sites, but you can also find these books at your local bookstore or library.

Natural History of Silence by Jérôme Sueur, translated by Helen Morrison

In our busy, noisy world, we may find ourselves longing for silence. But what is silence exactly? Is it the total absence of sound? Or is it the absence of the sound created by humans – the kind of deep stillness you might experience in a remote mountain landscape covered in snow, far away from the bustle of human life?

When we listen closely, silence reveals a neglected reality. Neither empty nor singular, silence is instead plentiful and multiple. In this book, eco-acoustic historian Jérôme Sueur allows us to discover a vast landscape of silences which trigger the full gamut of our emotions: anxiety, awe and peace.

Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West by Kelly Ramsey

An adventure-filled memoir of one woman’s struggle to succeed as a wildland firefighter on a male-dominated crew as they battle some of the fiercest Western wildfires. As she drives over a California mountain pass to join an elite firefighting crew, she’s terrified that she won’t be able to keep up with the intense demands of the job. Not only will she be the only woman on this hotshot crew and their first in 10 years, she’ll also be among the oldest. As she trains relentlessly to overcome the crew’s skepticism and gain their respect, megafires erupt across the West, posing an increasing danger both on the job and back home. In vivid prose that evokes the majesty of Northern California’s forests, Kelly takes us on the ground to see how major wildfires are fought and to lay bare the psychological toll, the bone-deep weariness, and the unbreakable camaraderie that emerge in the face of nature’s fury. In this vivid, visceral, and intimate memoir, Kelly wrestles with the immense power of fire for both destruction and renewal, confronted with the questions: Which fires do you fight, and which do you let burn you clean? (Available June 17, 2025)

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

A thrilling book about the queerness of the natural world, challenging our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Growing up, Patricia Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. In snakes, snails, and fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected at her — and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science. Kaishian shows us the making of a scientist and the queerness of life around us. Fungi, we learn, commonly have more than two biological sexes — and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, which stumped scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized — and they have lessons for us all.

The Crazies: Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West by Amy Gamerman

A dazzling piece of narrative nonfiction about land lust and the American West, The Crazies is the story of a wind farm that triggers a 21st century range war between a struggling fifth-generation rancher and the billionaires next door.

Most locals in Big Timber, Montana learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land — and its newest precious resource, million-dollar wind. Trouble was, Jarrett’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most influential men in America, trophy ranchers who’d come West to enjoy magnificent mountain views, not stare at 500-foot wind turbines. Cue an epic showdown that would pull in an ever-widening cast of larger-than-life characters, including a Texas oil tycoon, a roguish wind prospector, a Crow activist fighting for his tribe’s rights to the mountains they hold sacred, and an Olympic athlete-turned-attorney whose path to redemption would lead to Jarrett’s wind farm. A wildly entertaining yarn, the brawl over Crazy Mountain Wind would become a fight over the values that define us as Americans — and a window into how this country actually works.

Wild Horse Effect: Awe, Well-Being, and the Transformative Power of Nature by Chad Hanson

Combining stunning imagery with insights from the new science of awe and contemplative practices, this book reminds us that stepping away from our modern lives and reconnecting with the natural world is essential to our sense of peace, purpose, and well-being. This book invites you to delve into current research of the myriad mind-body benefits of spending time in natural spaces. “Try this” sidebars throughout offer simple ways to get outside, practice mindfulness, and discover more wonder in your every day, no matter where you live. This book will appeal to animal and nature lovers, photography enthusiasts, and anyone interested in improving their well-being through time spent outdoors. Step into nature, bathe in the forest and learn to experience a sense of mental and physical health.

Arrival of the Fittest: Biology’s Imaginary Futures, 1900–1935 by Jim Endersby

In the early twentieth century, varied audiences took biology out of the hands of specialists and transformed it into mass culture, transforming our understanding of heredity in the process. Creative communities took those new theories of heredity, envisioning futuristic ideas like the largely forgotten mutation theory of Hugo de Vries. Science fiction writers, socialists, feminists, and utopians are among those who seized on the amazing possibilities of rapid and potentially controllable evolution. Writers from H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, J.B.S. Haldane, and Aldous Huxley created a new kind of imaginary future, which Jim Endersby calls the biotopia, taking the ambiguous possibilities of biology — utopian and dystopian — to reimagine them in ways that still influence the public’s understanding of the life sciences. This book recovers the fascinating, long-forgotten origins of ideas that have informed works of fiction from Brave New World to the X-Men movies, all while reflecting on the lessons — positive and negative — that this period might offer us.

Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance by Denali Sai Nalamalapu

An illustrated look at six inspiring changemakers. Denali Nalamalapu introduces readers to the ordinary people who became resisters of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project that spans approximately 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia.

These people show the difference we can make when we stand up for what we love, and stand together in community. Holler is an invitation to readers everywhere searching for their own path to activism: sending the message that no matter how small your action is, it’s impactful. The story of the Mountain Valley Pipeline is one we can all relate to, as our communities face climate crisis, and the corporations that benefit from the destruction of our natural resources. Holler is a moving and deeply accessible — and beautifully visual — story about change, hope, and humanity.

Tree Trek: A Daughter’s Walk Through Grief by Stephanie Mirocha

These intimate portraits of trees are a balm that heals grief. In this memoir, Stephanie Mirocha weaves a blend of botany, philosophy, personal reflections, and healing through nature from grief after the loss of her father. Trees provide the backdrop of friendly support she clings to as she revives her father’s educational Tree Trek. She “speaks for the trees,” bringing enthusiasm to the treks she leads. Each chapter focuses on the science of a different tree, connecting the reader with the beauty of nature, and the vitality that comes from listening to the guiding wisdom of one’s inner voice.

The Vanishing Kind: A Novel of Suspense by Alice Henderson

The eagerly anticipated and electrifying fourth book in the Alex Carter series, in which the wildlife biologist encounters anti-immigrant vigilantes, rugged terrain, and threatening intruders in search of a sleek, powerful, and furtive animal — the jaguar. As tensions mount, Alex finds herself in a fight for her life against those who would prevent her from restoring jaguars to their historical habitat.

When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership by Amanda Litman

Most leadership books treat millennials and Gen Z like nuisances, focusing on older leadership constructs. Not this one. When We’re in Charge is a no-bullshit guide for the next generation of leaders on how to show up differently, break the cycle of the existing workplace. This book is a vital resource for new leaders trying to figure out how to get stuff done without drama. Offering solutions for today’s challenges, Litman offers arguments for the four-day workweek, why transparency is a powerful tool, and why it matters for you to both provide and take family leave. A necessary read for all who occupy or aspire to leadership roles, this book is a vision for a future where leaders at work are compassionate, genuine, and effective.

For hundreds of additional environmental books — including several on staying calm in challenging times — visit the Revelator Reads archives.

Previously in The Revelator:

Comics for Earth: Eight New Graphic Novels About Saving the Planet and Celebrating Wildlife

Rangers in the Red

In the wake of Donald Trump’s executive order halting foreign aid, severely imperiled species — and the people protecting them — hang in the balance.

National parks and other protected areas around the world went from being understaffed to entirely neglected after the Trump administration abruptly froze foreign aid in January 2025. The announcement generated grim headlines from some of the world’s top news sites: “On the chopping block with USAID: Elephants, tigers, and reefs,” “Across the world, conservation projects reel after abrupt U.S. funding cuts,” and “Elephants and rhinos at increased risk of poaching due to Trump funding cuts,” to quote just a few.

For conservation biologists these stories were excruciating to read because we already knew that the survival of protected areas and the intensely persecuted species living in them depends on consistent patrolling by rangers and personnel. Funding interruptions of even a few months can open the floodgates for poachers, artisanal miners, and illegal loggers.

Ranger shortfalls, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and tropical Asia, heighten the probability and impacts of poaching, which disrupts ecosystems, erodes biocultural diversity, and diminishes wildlife tourism that benefits both local and global communities. But as the funding freezes spread into global consciousness, the media offered scant coverage on the links between at-risk species and the dearth of trained and equipped rangers in the affected regions.

As frontline defenders of imperiled ecosystems and species across the Earth, rangers are essential planetary healthcare workers. Before January 2025 U.S. government agencies recognized their importance and funded the development of ranger programs around the world. With support from USAID, the Southern African Wildlife College successfully trained hundreds of rangers to control wildlife trafficking in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A subset of the rangers received specialized training through the Braveheart Ranger Leadership Training Program, a curriculum designed to develop the necessary leadership and conflict resolution skills required to combat highly organized illegal wildlife trade. And in Asia the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund — which the U.S. Congress launched in 1994 — provided salaries for hundreds of rangers and supported the construction of several dozen ranger stations in western Thailand, laying the groundwork for some of Asia’s most spectacular tiger recoveries. Now, if you go to the Rhino Tiger Fund grant webpage, you’ll be met by a notification as solemn as upsetting: “In accordance with the Presidents Executive Order, Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid, this Notification of Funding Opportunity, F25AS00133, is currently suspended.”

Missing Protectors

These rangers — along with the programs and funding to train them — are desperately needed. A 2022 study estimated that the world’s protected areas employ about 286,000 rangers but need an estimated 1.25 million more to adequately defend wildlife.

Earlier in 2022 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which contains 23 global conservation targets nations aim to achieve by 2030. Known as the “30×30” initiative, the most ambitious of these targets aims to protect 30% of Earth’s terrestrial and marine habitats by 2030.

Conservation practitioners are nearly unanimous in their support: Expansion of protected area coverage to 30% by 2030 is essential for mitigation of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Ranger equipment photo courtesy Gayo Hijau Lestari

But scientists still disagree on 30×30’s frameworks to avoid creating more “paper parks,” protected areas established without the necessary management and enforcement to attain their conservation goals. Too many of the world’s protected areas are already “paper parks” that effectively exist on a map but not in the real world.

With the understanding that inadequate staffing already plagues nearly two-thirds of protected areas worldwide, there are legitimate concerns about protected area expansion outpacing allocations of trained rangers and staff to adequately safeguard biodiversity.

Instead of making headway toward filling in the gaps, we are now taking major steps backward.

The United States Has a Responsibility

The budget cuts are even more senseless when you consider that international companies — including those backed by American interests — have contributed to species endangerment by bulldozing, mining, and deforesting habitats in biodiversity hotspots. In 2022, for example, the United States formed agreements with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to establish a supply chain for electric vehicle batteries, paving the way toward increased mining of copper, lithium, and cobalt resources in both countries. Mining operations in the Congo have already turned large swaths of once intact rainforests into fragmented landscapes crisscrossed by dirt roads — conduits for penetrations by poachers.

Collectively we’ve shaped a global economy heavily skewed toward unbalanced natural resource extraction, where corporations export hardwoods from Myanmar, palm oil from Malaysia, and blood diamonds from Angola without any environmental protection.

Should Zambia be solely responsible for protecting its elephants and rhinos after American-backed mining companies have opened roads, facilitating access for poachers?

Is it fair to expect Bangladesh to patrol its vulnerable coastlines after sea-level rise from global climate change threatens to submerge vast tracts of tiger habitat?

Rangers Can’t Do It Alone

As a rule of thumb, some managers have called for protected areas to have one ranger on duty for every 10—50 square kilometers, depending on the species in need of protection and their value in illegal wildlife trade. The exact ranger-staffing density depends on a variety of factors, including the size, shape, and location of the area and the level of demand for the species they’re protecting.

Staffing levels are one thing, but it’s equally important, and often overlooked, to consider rangers’ experience and motivation particularly given the challenging and sometimes life-threatening situations they face. One study documented 2,351 on-duty ranger fatalities worldwide between 2006 and 2021. Homicides, accidents, illnesses, and wildlife attacks were the main causes of ranger deaths.

Global surveys have revealed dangerously low morale and high levels of burnout and loss of confidence among rangers, an unsurprising finding considering they remain among the most poorly paid, resource-strapped individuals in the environmental workforce. As we’ve seen with so many other professions, these conditions result in high turnover and the loss of institutional knowledge, putting the next generation of rangers even further behind.

The Fulbright program, another U.S. government international program at risk from Trump’s cuts, allowed me to gain some insights into the connections between rangers and ecosystem health.

The Sumatra Experience

I remember gazing out of the airplane window six years ago as the flight descended toward Banda Aceh, the city of my Fulbright assignment and Sumatra’s northernmost urban area. I felt uplifted by what I saw: a vast expanse of unbroken green stretched over rolling hills in all directions and disappearing into distant mists. After weeks of poring over maps, I knew Aceh province was cloaked in forest, but it was reassuring to see the green with my own eyes rather than as satellite imagery projected from a computer screen.

It wasn’t until landing in Aceh for the first time that I realized the enormity of the tasks ahead. Indonesian colleagues had warned me that protection measures for forests outside Aceh’s Leuser Ecosystem would be “weak,” but they were wrong: There were none at all.

I would soon learn that the 9,500 sq km area known as the Ulu Masen Ecosystem had a bare-bones patrol unit comprised of just six government rangers. Although they were supplemented, at times, by a scattered rag-tag assortment of community rangers — who were mobilized only when noble local NGOs obtained the requisite funding — the government team had no chance.

Despite intense pressures the Aceh provincial government has managed to maintain largely intact forests in Ulu Masen. But, as I observed, this impressive achievement was undermined by major limitations on the ground. The region’s patrol data was sparse to nonexistent, poaching was rampant, and the first tiger we photographed had three legs, hobbling along a snare-infested trail where we subsequently removed 28 of these malignant traps.

A three-legged tiger, victim of a snare trap, detected in Ulu Masen’s infrequently patrolled forests. Photo by Joe Figel and Hermansyah

I knew that the real scale of the slaughter extended deep in the recesses of Ulu Masen’s mountains. It chilled me to think of the untold atrocities inflicted by faceless poachers backed by overwhelming demand, largely emanating from East Asian markets.

Last year we showed how heavy offtakes from poaching can affect tiger populations in Ulu Masen where, encouragingly, the prey base remains relatively healthy. During our expedition last month, rangers found only three tiger snares in an area of the landscape previously unpatrolled by our teams. However, before making comparisons or rushing to conclusions, we cannot objectively evaluate antipoaching efforts until patrolling is more consistent, backed by multiyear data.

Today Ulu Masen remains one of thousands of forested landscapes at a crossroads, at risk of further neglect and decay due to hasty, shortsighted budget cuts. As much as Ulu Masen may differ from intact forests on other continents, there is, running through them all, a common dark thread of ranger shortfalls.

That’s where the sudden withdrawal of U.S. funding, training, and other assistance leaves us. Unless we find other ways to fortify rangers in this time of great uncertainty, we face a real risk of not protecting more land by 2030 but seeing more extinctions.

Previously in The Revelator:

By Shutting Down USAID, Trump and Musk Will Worsen the Climate and Extinction Crises

From the Archives: An Okapi Tragedy, a New Beginning

In 2012 a militia murdered two rangers, other officials, and 14 animals at the Okapi Conservation Center. This year brought an important update.

Thirteen years after a bloody tragedy, an okapi has come to live in Epulu.

The village in the Democratic Republic of Congo is also the headquarters of a nonprofit called the Okapi Conservation Project, which was established to preserve its namesake species. The organization once cared for more than a dozen okapis there, who served as “ambassadors” to showcase how important it was to protect these rarely seen, zebra-like animals.

But a militia attack in 2012 killed all the resident okapis, as well as many of the people who had dedicated their lives to protecting them.

I reported on the murders when they happened and have been watching for updates ever since. This week Mongabay finally shared some good news:

In February 2025, rangers at Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in partnership with the Okapi Conservation Project, successfully brought an okapi to Epulu, site of the reserve’s headquarters. It’s the first okapi there in more than 10 years… The endangered okapi was captured near the city of Bunia and is now under the watch of the reserve’s rangers as it roams freely in Epulu. Park visitors may be lucky enough to see it again a decade later, if security conditions permit, sources say.

My article on the attack, originally published in 2012 by Scientific American, is no longer online. To help preserve this history, we are now republishing it with a few annotations:

Okapi Conservation Center Recovering after Militia Attack

On Sunday June 24, 2012, an armed militia group opened fire on the headquarters of the Okapi Conservation Project near the village of Epulu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By the time they receded into the forest two days later, six people and 13 of the 14 “ambassador” okapi who lived at the center were dead. Among those murdered were two rangers, a government immigration official, two villagers and the wife of a third ranger — a revenge-killing by poachers who had been arrested by her husband in the past.

The rebels — who were retaliating against antipoaching operations led by the OCP and the Institute in Congo for the Conservation of Nature — also burned buildings and looted supplies, doing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage in the process. The 14th okapi died a few days after United Nations and Congolese Army forces arrived to retake the village.

Okapi (Okapia johnstoni) — horselike animals with zebralike stripes who are closely related to giraffes — are the national animal of the DRC, the only country in which they can be found. But the elusive, camouflaged animals are rarely if ever actually seen in the wild, and the 14 okapi penned in Epulu were the only ones in captivity in the country.

For most people in civil war–torn DRC, the only place to see a live okapi was at the OCP headquarters. The nongovernmental organization was founded to protect the species and its habitat and has been raising, breeding and studying the animals for 23 years, through seven occupying armies.

The okapi that lived at OCP — most of whom were born in Epulu after their progenitors were trapped in the wild — had always served as a way to educate people about forest resources. These “ambassador animals” were frequently visited by politicians, military leaders, international visitors, and Congolese people traveling through the region. For more than 20 years, they served as an important tool to raise national and international support for the reserve and its abundant wildlife.

This was the first time that any of the okapi at the Epulu center have ever been harmed. The previous armed conflicts in DRC (dating back to the mid-1990s, when it was known as Zaire) were all led by people who wanted to rule the country and therefore respected its natural resources, says OCP founder John Lukas.

“They couldn’t be seen as destroying the country’s national animal,” he says. “That would not be a sign of good leadership.”

But the militia that struck in June was a different beast altogether. Led by notorious poacher Paul Sadala, who goes by the alias Morgan, the group was motivated not by political ideology but by greed.

“This guy doesn’t care,” Lukas says. “He kills elephants every day. Killing animals is his business, so killing the okapi meant nothing to him.”

In addition to poaching, Morgan also operates illegal gold mines in the 13,700-square-kilometer Okapi Wildlife Reserve, which the OCP helped the government establish in 1992.

“ICCN guards have shut down his gold mines inside the reserve and arrested his miners,” Lukas says. “The mines are illegal and quite disruptive to the environment. Gold mines are legal outside the reserve, so that’s where they should be.” Lukas called the assault on Epulu “a statement” from Morgan that he should be allowed do whatever he wants, unimpeded.

The Congolese Army has been chasing Morgan and his crew since the attack. They got close last week when he was captured by a rival tribal militia (like Morgan’s, called a mai-mai), which offered to turn in the poacher to the army in exchange for $10,000. Morgan doubled their offer and paid them $20,000 to let him go, Lukas reports. He left behind 18 of his men while he escaped.

Although the poacher has been weakened by the encounter with the other mai-mai, he remains a threat and that affects the OCP’s ability to move forward.

“We’re not going to engage in any rebuilding until we make sure he’s caught and he’s not going to be a factor in peoples’ lives,” Lukas says.

A National and International Scandal

Not all of the looting in Epulu took place at Morgan’s hands. The army unit that responded to Morgan’s assault also raided the OCP, ICCN buildings and surrounding village.

“It’s a fact of life in the Congo,” Lukas says. “The soldiers are not paid and are very poorly disciplined. The army in some places loots buildings that are abandoned or not occupied.” He says the units now tracking Morgan are better controlled, better trained and friendlier to conservation efforts.

The army looting has become a national outrage, he says, noting that the issue has been discussed in the DRC parliament in Kinshasa, the capital. “There is a call to action from the Minister of Environment and others to punish the people who were involved,” Lukas says. The soldiers didn’t kill anyone themselves, but “they looted people’s homes; they looted our facility. It’s all replaceable, but it puts a big financial burden on the people who are trying to make sure that the reserve exists.”

UNESCO, along with Fauna and Flora International have launched an emergency fundraising campaign with a goal of raising $120,000 to support the families of those slain during the assault as well as repair the project’s buildings and replace its supplies. Nearly $40,000 has been contributed to date.

“We’re all very gracious for their support and their concern,” Lukas says. “We’re going to use the funds we’ve been raising prudently.” Right now the OCP is concentrating on the needs of the local community, helping with medicines, schools and agroforestry. “They need to know we’re going to be there for them. They shouldn’t lose hope that there’s someone that cares about them.”

The Health of the Okapi Is the Health of the People

Okapi themselves are not yet endangered — the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the species as “near threatened” — but that could change if their habitat does not remain protected. [Note: Okapi were reclassified as “endangered” in 2013, a year after this article was first published.]

The Okapi Wildlife Reserve is home to an estimated 5,000 okapi — as much as half of their total estimated population in DRC — as well as elephants, chimpanzees, bongos and a very large human population.

“There are 40,000 people living in and around the reserve,” Lukas says. These people, including indigenous Mbuti pygmies, rely on the reserve for a wide range of resources, including firewood, water and medicinal plants as well as subsistence hunting. Lukas says the goal of OCP is to engage the local people and involve them in the proper stewardship of the natural resources so they will be there for generations to come.

Outside of the reserve, things are worse for the okapi: Although the animals aren’t directly threatened by poachers — they’re too well camouflaged to be effectively hunted — the presence of too many humans encroaching on their habitat drives them away from optimal locations.

“If an area is totally saturated with subsistence hunters, then the okapi are usually driven away into other areas that are unsupportive of their biology,” Lukas says. The animals then end up dying because there isn’t enough to eat. Okapi only eat leaves and avoid all other vegetation.

Moving Forward

The OCP is still carrying on much of its work and community programs and plans to eventually rebuild its facilities, but Lukas says it is too early to know if the stock of ambassador okapi will be replenished from the wild.

“Right now we can’t ethically keep them there because we don’t want to risk their lives,” he says. “We don’t want to take the chance that they’ll be killed again. We have to wait and see how security goes.”

The DRC government will also play a role in the decision. “If the government says it’s really important for the conservation wildlife program, then we’ll have to consider it. We have to figure out how we’re going to do this in an effective and safe way in the future, and we haven’t gotten around to that discussion yet.”

Despite the security risks posed by Morgan and any other poachers who might take up his mantle, the OCP and the ICCN plan to continue their mission. Lukas praises both organizations’ staffs in Epulu.

“They’re on the front lives risking their lives,” he says. “They’re doing all they can under these adverse conditions. They’re willing to keep going, so we have to be there with them.”

Continuing operations in the wildlife reserve will also send a message, the opposite of the one that Morgan tried to send with his murderous raid.

“I feel in my heart that we just can’t let the poachers win,” Lukas says. “If we walk away from this, it sends a message not just in Congo but all across Africa that if you terrorize NGOs and the government, then you can have your way. That’s the worst message we can send.”

[Note: Morgan was killed by Congolese soldiers in 2014.]

Previously in The Revelator:

Giraffes for Peace

Armenia: A Small Nation With a Huge Biodiversity Story

The country offers six important lessons ahead of hosting next year’s United Nations Biological Diversity Convention.

Some people know Armenia — the small, landlocked country in the South Caucasus that I call home — for its ancient monasteries or its growing agricultural and wine tourism. Others recognize it for its geopolitical challenges in a turbulent part of the world. But the most important story may be its emerging commitment to conservation: Armenia will host the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in 2026.

While far from a model of environmental stewardship, Armenia’s journey to becoming host of one of the most significant gatherings of the many COPs offers timely lessons on the delicate dance between politics, development, and nature.

Lesson One: Biodiversity Is Not Enough Without Protection and Clear Targets

Packed into a territory smaller than Maryland, Armenia is one of the most biodiverse countries per square mile on Earth. With ecosystems ranging from alpine meadows to semi-desert, it’s home to more than 3,800 plant species and over 17,000 animal species, including the endangered Caucasian leopard and Armenian mouflon.

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Its extraordinary biological wealth stems from rapid elevation changes and unique ecological zones, making it a vital part of the Caucasus and Irano-Anatolian Biodiversity Hotspots — two of only 36 such hotspots worldwide recognized by Conservation International.

But biodiversity alone is not enough. Armenia’s ecological richness sits uneasily alongside a legacy of weak enforcement, an expanding extractive industry, and (until recently) underfunded environmental institutions.

The country is making progress: It has so far protected about 13% of its territory, although this will need to accelerate to meet the global “30×30” pledge (which aims to safeguard 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030). Armenia is also yet to submit its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan — a priority for 2025.

Lesson Two: Growth and Sustainability Must Be Reconciled Early

Perhaps nowhere is Armenia’s tension between development and conservation more visible than in the saga of the Amulsar gold mine.

Pitched as a boon to economic development, the mine has faced years of legal battles and mass protests. Opponents warn of irreversible environmental damage, while supporters cite jobs and foreign investment. The government has often wavered, caught between these competing pressures.

The takeaway here is not to demonize all development, but to recognize that sustainable growth requires clear frameworks, public consultations, and environmental assessments from the outset to gain public trust. Furthermore, government needs to develop a framework on how it will assess a project’s environmental impact and whether the risks outweigh legitimate corporate and economic interests in the long run. This is especially important in nations where economic needs are urgent.

Lesson Three: Legacy Systems Must Evolve

Armenia inherited a Soviet conservation infrastructure built on strict, top-down controls with minimal community input. After independence economic collapse and political instability eroded environmental enforcement, leaving many reserves vulnerable to neglect. While Armenia has enacted new environmental laws, implementation remains patchy.

The country’s evolution reflects a broader challenge: transforming legacy systems into adaptive ones. Environmental progress depends not just on new rules, but on institutions that can implement them and civil society actors who hold them accountable (here, the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans are critical in meeting targets).

Lesson Four: Local Solutions Often Work Better Than Central Ones

In recent years Armenia has begun to experiment with a different model — one that decentralizes conservation and empowers local communities. Organizations like mine, the Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets, work directly with rangers and local communities, bypassing bureaucracy to support grassroots stewardship.

By creating a privately protected area we are contributing to Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs), and we argue that these areas should be included in the government’s 30×30 target.

By managing the Caucasus Wildlife Refuge, the Foundation delivers swift, community-driven conservation in key biodiversity hotspots, which contributes to an additional 1% of the country’s protected land (115 square miles or 30,000 hectares).

This shift toward bottom-up conservation is not just pragmatic in Armenia’s context of weak state capacity — it’s increasingly relevant worldwide. In places where top-down governance struggles, durable environmental solutions often start with the people who live closest to the land and best placed to protect them. This, of course, is different from the U.S. context, with the local control idea is sometimes used to oppose eco-friendly ideas.

Lesson Five: Nature Cannot Be Separated From Conflict

Geopolitical instability adds another layer of complexity. Armenia’s borders remain tense after recent conflicts with neighboring Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

In some cases militarized zones have accidentally become wildlife refuges. But war also devastates ecosystems, displaces conservation staff, and severs the cross-border collaboration that biodiversity depends on.

This is a reminder that environmental strategy must factor in human conflict — not as a footnote, but as a central challenge. In fragile regions peacebuilding and conservation are deeply intertwined.

Lesson Six: Reframing Nature as Capital Helps Bridge the Gap

One promising direction is Armenia’s tentative move toward “natural capital” accounting — the idea that forests, wetlands, and species provide quantifiable economic value. “Natural capital” accounted for close to 11% of Armenia’s wealth in 2018, according to a report by the World Bank. By embedding this logic into national policy, Armenia can begin to reconcile conservation with development. Clean air, fertile soil, and intact ecosystems are not luxuries; they are the foundations of long-term prosperity.

This reframing is especially powerful in budget-constrained countries, where the lure of short-term extraction often dominates. If nature is an asset, protecting it becomes a rational economic decision, not just a moral one.

Along these lines, Armenia is one of the pilot countries that received funding and support through Stanford University’s People, Planet, Prosperity Pilot Projects to help develop technical and policy capacity to support water-management and security efforts for the region.

A Work in Progress — But One Worth Watching

Armenia is not poised to teach the world how to protect nature. It still struggles with enforcement, transparency, and strategic planning. But this very fact makes its progress all the more instructive. Armenia is not a finished product — it’s a case study. A country with extraordinary natural assets, limited capacity, and real political obstacles, trying to do better.

As climate change accelerates and biodiversity loss becomes irreversible, the burden of conservation cannot rest solely on large or wealthy nations. Countries like Armenia have a vital role to play — and deserve international support and scrutiny. Hosting COP17 will not solve Armenia’s environmental challenges, but it does raise the stakes. With the world watching, the country is under new pressure to act quickly, transparently, and inclusively.

Even climate-specific threats that Armenia has so far avoided — such as large-scale wildfires — may become more pressing as the planet warms. Building disaster resilience while risks are still low is a prudent and necessary step.

Armenia offers a story not of perfection, but of progress under pressure. It shows that even imperfect actors — constrained by history, geography, and geopolitics — can choose a different path. One that decentralizes power, reframes value, and dares to experiment.

That path is not guaranteed. But it is visible — and worth watching.

Previously in The Revelator:

Cranes in Ukraine: Birds of Joy in a War-Torn Land

Collateral Damage: The Environmental Cost of Cuba’s Terrorism Designation

As U.S. restrictions tighten, Cuba’s efforts to protect its ecosystems are faltering — with rising deforestation, strained conservation programs, and growing pressure on protected areas.

Music, cigars, and vintage cars — these are the most common clichés about visiting Havana, Cuba’s capital. They’re all still common sights, but now visitors may also encounter a different scene: mounting garbage in the streets, forest fires, and chemical waste dumped in residential areas.

These are all symptoms of the country’s worst economic crisis in three decades — which started during the COVID-19 pandemic and is now compounded by renewed political pressure from the United States.

On top of the decades-long U.S. embargo, the new Trump administration quickly re-added Cuba to the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The designation, announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the administration’s first few days, allows for harsh sanctions: trade restrictions, export bans, frozen assets under U.S. jurisdiction, and limited access to international financial markets.

This political label, though aimed at Cuba’s government, severely restricts the entire island’s access to international funding, technology, and scientific collaboration. It also hinders any attempt at a genuine energy transition and makes the protection of Cuba’s rich biodiversity — among the most unique in the Caribbean — increasingly difficult.

Sergio Jorge Pastrana, executive director of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, blames the “mismanagement of solid waste in Havana and other cities” on the policies of the United States government. “Fuel is so scarce that basic environmental services, once a hallmark of Cuba’s public systems, can no longer be sustained,” he says.

Trash on the streets of Havana. Photo: Vinicius Pereira

On the streets of the country, residents feel a sense of nostalgia for the era of the Obama presidency, when relations between Cuba and the United States started to normalize.

“Back then, there was hope,” says José Mendez, a resident of Havana. “The biggest problem for me is that, since Trump was elected, that hope has vanished. There was a glimmer with Biden, but he’s done very little to ease the pressure on us. Now there’s no prospect for economic or environmental improvement here.”

A Political Tool With Environmental Costs

The State Sponsors of Terrorism list is maintained by the U.S. State Department and includes governments accused of financially, logistically, or politically supporting terrorist groups. As of now, only Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and Iran remain on the list.

The designation carries not only commercial restrictions but also cuts off foreign companies and nongovernmental organizations from operating in the country, for fear of legal complications or reputational damage. It further isolates Cuba diplomatically and reinforces its pariah status on the world stage.

“This list functions more as a tool of geopolitical leverage than an effective mechanism for curbing terrorism,” says Carolina Silva Pedroso, a professor of international relations at the Federal University of São Paulo in Brazil. “It weakens regimes that don’t align with U.S. policy while overlooking allies involved in equally questionable actions.”

Cuba was originally placed on the list in the 1980s for offering medical aid and asylum to groups such as Colombia’s FARC and Spain’s ETA. The country was removed during the Obama–Raúl Castro rapprochement in 2015.

Barack Obama’s presidency tried to normalize bilateral relations between Washington and Havana by easing economic blockade measures, removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and allowing U.S. cooperation in sectors such as tourism and agronomy — steps that boosted the island’s economy.

The nation’s environment quickly benefited. Between 2015 and 2021, the Cuban government significantly increased its financial commitment to environmental conservation from 534 million pesos ($22.2 million) in 2015 to 2.3 billion pesos in 2021 ($95.8 million) — a more than 330% increase, according to Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information.

During this period Cuba’s increased investment in environmental conservation led to several tangible outcomes on the ground — including the launch of coastal wetland restoration programs, the promotion of organic and sustainable agriculture, and the implementation of national strategies to adapt to climate change.

But Trump reinstated Cuba to the terrorism list in his first term — sparking formal protests from the Cuban government.

President Joe Biden’s administration removed Cuba from the list again in the final hours before he left office. But Trump again reversed that decision, making the designation one of the first symbolic acts of his second presidency.

Triple Crisis: Economy, Energy, and Ecosystems

As Cuba struggles with soaring three-digit inflation, widespread rationing of food, fuel, and public services, and a GDP drop of 12% since 2019, its ecosystems are quietly collapsing.

In Santa Marta, a town in the province of Villa Clara where thousands of tourists flock to visit the white beaches of Cayo Santa María, the tension between economic survival and environmental conservation is palpable. According to a Cuban government report, unregulated tourism is degrading coral reefs and mangrove forests in the area.

The once-pristine sands and turquoise waters now coexist with waste and pollution. In 2019 Villa Clara collected 1.9 million cubic meters (67 million square feet) of waste, according to Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information. By 2023, the latest data available, the figure dropped to 911,000 cubic meters (32 million square feet) — not because there’s less waste, but because the system can no longer operate properly.

The lack of resources for environmental enforcement and infrastructure makes it difficult to contain deforestation, poaching, and overexploitation of natural resources.

Investment in environmental protection has grown by only 47% since 2021, but hyperinflation — estimated at around 200% over the same period — has severely undermined these efforts. As the cost of living soars, locals increasingly turn to protected areas for income, guiding tourists through fragile ecosystems and hunting during restricted seasons.

Cuba’s biodiversity includes more than 35,000 species, with more than 42% endemism, according to government data — a staggering concentration for an island of its size. According to Cuba’s Institute of Ecology and Systematics and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, numerous endemic species face increasing threats. Among the island’s native flora, 772 species are critically endangered, 512 are endangered, and 396 are classified as vulnerable.

Notably, the zunzuncito (Mellisuga helenae) — the world’s smallest bird — is threatened by habitat loss, while the almiquí (Solenodon cubanus), a rare nocturnal mammal endemic to Cuba, is critically endangered and remains under close study by the IES. Both species are particularly sensitive to habitat disruption and human encroachment.

While the government doesn’t openly admit it, locals told me that deforestation has increased as families cut trees for firewood to escape Cuba’s frequent blackouts.

Forest fires, 95% of which were caused by human activity, also surged by 97% last year, with economic losses estimated at 338 million pesos (about $14 million) according to the Ministry of Agriculture. In Villa Clara, tree planting fell from 1,220 acres in 2019 to just 444 acres in 2023.

“I know many people who clear forests just to be able to cook or start planting something,” says Héctor Muñiz, a resident of Santa Clara. “Illegal fishing and dumping waste … are also increasing. A lot of what we see is simply a result of … the economy.”

Illegal dumping of trash and chemical products near Cayo Santa María. Photo: Vinicius Pereira

Beyond biodiversity, Cuba is also struggling to finance its renewable energy transition. The country’s aging power grid relies heavily on oil-powered thermoelectric plants, which are frequently offline due to lack of fuel.

“Cuba’s goal is to generate 24% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030,” says Bernardo Pericás, a researcher and author of several books on Cuban politics and economy.

But progress is slow. The U.S. embargo and the terrorism designation make international financing nearly impossible. The amount of energy generated from renewables fell from 1.3 million tons of oil equivalent to just 624,000 over five years, around 15.1 billion kWh to 7.2 million kWh. The number of solar panels installed increased only slightly — from 4,000 per year to 6,000 in the same period, according to ONEI data.

“Paradoxically, for Cuba to become more autonomous and less dependent on external systems, it still needs outside investment,” Pedroso explains. “The current restrictions make that impossible.”

Previously in The Revelator:

What We’ve Lost: The Species Declared Extinct in 2020