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.

Park Rangers in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

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.

Ranger in the Bush

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.

Save Amulsar, stop corporate courts

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.

Armenian landscape next to Saghmosavank monastery

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

Palm Oil Continues to Plague Borneo’s Orangutans, Elephants, and Other Icons

Despite 35 years of awareness campaigns, palm oil plantations still devastate the landscape of this biodiversity hotspot and the animals who depend on native forests.

The bus from Semporna, Malaysia, to the Kinabatangan Wildlife Preserve wound through an unending expanse of palm agricultural fields. On Borneo oil palm plantations line every road, and it seemed almost no natural forest remained.

That agricultural development comes with a cost to this biodiversity hotspot: Of the more than 200 species of mammals and 600 species of birds in the state of Sabah, more than half are classified as threatened or endangered.

After three hours of driving through desolate oil palm farms, we approached the preserve and finally began to see wildlife. Gibbons, with their long muscular arms, hung from trees on the side of the road. Bornean gibbons are endangered due to habitat loss from deforestation for logging and oil palm agriculture, a recurring theme. The illegal pet trade also poses a significant threat: In addition to taking young gibbons from the wild, men kill adult mothers who try to protect their offspring from being stolen.

I was excited to see gibbons, but I was there for the orangutans.

We arrived at the Sukau Backpackers Hotel, located near the bank of the Kinabatangan River. We chose to stay near the river, since all animals need to drink and we’d have a better chance of spotting orangutans.

At the lodge curious long-tailed macaques hung out by the outdoor dining room, waiting for food. Water monitor lizards lurked in the stream beneath the wooden dining room and bridge pathways, eyeing a litter of newborn puppies. Frogs called from the stream banks and trees at night, but despite my efforts, I couldn’t find them. Frogs on this side of the island were more clandestine than the green paddy frogs I’d studied in Kota Kinabalu.

The modest private room came complete with very large black carpenter ants, scouting for scraps, keeping us company in their own way.

Our accommodations were insignificant, but we weren’t there to relax. We were there to tour the river and the jungle with our local guide, “Jon” (not his real name), a man who’d grown up in the area and was a knowledgeable member of a tour guide union. Jon is a conservationist too, taking the time to teach me about the perils facing wildlife in this area, the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, specially preserved to ensure palm oil plantations do not encroach.

I’d been dreaming of this journey for a long time and was thrilled to enjoy it as a traveler, not a researcher.

When I was a child in the 1990s, I used to buy 25-cent chocolates called EnvirOmints. They were one-inch chocolate-mint squares, and each came with a little card featuring an endangered species. The front displayed a picture of the animal, while the back provided details about their habitat, and half of the profits from chocolate sales went to protect them. I bought as many as I could, collecting and trading the cards with my best friend (now also a biologist) until we had all 48 species.

My favorite card was the orangutan with bright orange hair, big moon face, and little round eyes. For some reason, at just nine years old, it pained me to think that this great ape, living somewhere across the world in remote jungles and minding its own business, could someday be extinct.

Three decades later I wondered: Had I gotten there in time?

Jon took us out on a sunset boat tour along the river, and my hypothesis proved correct: the animals came to the water to drink. A mother pygmy elephant emerged from the tall grass with her baby. The driver cut the motor, and we stopped and stared in awe. They were everything I’d dreamed: serene, peaceful, and majestic.

Sunset on the river. Photo: Marina De León

Jon explained that as of September 2023, the species is considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 115-120 pygmy elephants remaining in this area. He’d noticed a significant reduction in their numbers since he began guiding; he used to always see elephants lining the riverbank to eat and drink. We were lucky to spot two individuals, especially since that time of year was when they tend to migrate.

In late September, he explained, fewer animals were around, but in April there were more elephants and monkeys along the river. As the forests shrink around them, Bornean pygmy elephants are forced to venture beyond their usual paths. These gentle giants wander into the sprawling oil plantations in search of food, where palm farmers have been known to kill or poison them.

Jon mentioned that in 2005, proboscis monkeys were abundant all along the river, too. Today only two family groups remain along this stretch. The population has declined by over 50%.

Proboscis monkey in the trees. Photo: Marina De León

Ironically, proboscis monkeys are still somewhat more common than other monkeys in the area because their big noses are seen as unattractive by humans, who don’t really care to keep them as pets. This quirky feature, which some might consider ugly, actually helps the monkeys avoid the greedy hands of people. Despite this advantage their numbers are still plummeting due to the persisting destruction of natural habitat for oil palm agriculture. I enjoyed watching their big families hanging out in the trees above the river, and I wished they were even more densely populated, as Jon described from his past.

Over the coming days, we would travel up and down the river in the early mornings, near dusk, and late at night. We spotted bizarre-looking and uniquely colored birds: black-and-red broadbills, stork-billed kingfishers, oriental pied hornbills, and Wallace’s hawk-eagles, all lining the riverbanks, waiting to meet and dine as if it were a town center. In the dark of the night, a buffy fish-owl hunted a painted bronzeback snake coiled in the grass, stalking frogs while they sang to their mates and feasted on mosquitoes and flies.

All these private lives were laid out for us to see, illuminated by a headlamp on that quiet riverboat.

Bornean owl. Photo: Marina De León

During the midday heat, when the animals were deep in the jungle sleeping or foraging, we set out to look for orangutans.

Wearing rubber waders, long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a hat in the persistent heat felt stifling, but they were necessary to shield us from the swarms of mosquitoes. I had never encountered such a densely populated mosquito cloud; each step we took stirred them into a thick fog that made it look like it was snowing mosquitoes.

My attention was diverted from the mosquitoes when I was attacked by terrestrial leeches. They clung to the tips of tree branches using their vibrational senses to detect our approach. As I walked by, they suctioned onto my hands and clothes. I warned myself not to touch anything. Admittedly they were beautiful, with their green and gold coloration.

We trekked through the jungle, our eyes peeled for large droppings or fruit peels, but no orangutans could be seen or heard — only a tiny forest frog hidden under a mushroom cap.

Look carefully to spot the frog. Photo: Marina De León

Back on the river, we heard a cacophony of shrill bird calls coming from inside a large birdhouse. In this area swiftlets build their nests using saliva. Jon explained that some locals exploit these birds by constructing artificial birdhouses equipped with radios that play bird calls. These houses attract the swiftlets, encouraging them to nest inside. The nests are then harvested and sold to the Chinese market for traditional medicine. This practice has decimated the swiftlet population.

Recently Jon and other guides rallied together and submitted a complaint to the local government about this issue. But the people who’d built the artificial nesting houses managed to obtain a fraudulent license, allowing them to operate.

“This is a clear case of corruption; they must have paid someone within the government for the license,” said Jon.

In China birds’-nest products are a multibillion-dollar industry, deeply rooted in perceived health benefits among the affluent. These nests, harvested from swiftlets of the Apodidae family, are prized for their high protein content and alleged medicinal properties. They’re used in soups and traditional Chinese medicine, where they are (wrongly) believed to improve skin complexion and boost the immune system.

A glossy magazine ad promoting the birds’ nests. Photo: Marina De León

It was disheartening to learn about the human-caused decline of these animals, but I felt relieved that people like Jon live there, informed and compassionate guides dedicated to protecting the wildlife they love and rely on.

We set out again on the fourth morning in search of orangutans. These remarkable “people of the forest” (as their name means) have moved from the endangered category to critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. They require mature forests to nest and find their traditional foods, but palm oil plantations have consumed up to 30% of the island’s forest land, and planting continues.

My personal mission at the Kinabatangan River was to check on orangutans in their wild and free home. Jon fueled up the boat early, and we drifted slowly down the river with the current, weaving through dense overgrowth, not stopping to photograph birds or monkeys. After hours of boating, we arrived at a large clearing where the river widened. It was hot in this shadeless stretch, and I felt uneasy about finding our way back after making so many turns down various branches of the river.

But just then Jon shouted from the front of the boat: “There!”

And there he was. The adult orangutan was as huge, calm, and majestic as I had imagined. He sat perched in the canopy of a tall tree, eating his breakfast while minding his own business. His broad, moon-shaped face looked wise, as if he had a lot to say. I simply watched him and, feeling like an intruder in his home, refrained from taking an unsolicited photo.

I needed to witness him with my own eyes, to find hope to continue the fight to protect these incredible beings in any way I can.

It took four continuous days to find a single orangutan, yet each moment spent searching reinforced that every ounce of effort we invest today is vital to ensuring that these remarkable lives do not vanish from our planet forever.

Oil palm agriculture is rampant on Borneo. The demand for palm oil has skyrocketed globally due to its versatility and low production costs. Palm oil is an ingredient in nearly all shelf-stable processed and packaged foods, snacks, chips, cookies, and candies. Governments in Borneo, seeking economic growth, have facilitated the expansion of oil palm cultivation, prioritizing short-term financial gains over long-term environmental sustainability.

The good news is that consumers can reduce demand by choosing not to purchase junk food. Opting for sustainable choices over junk food isn’t just good for our health — it’s essential for the survival of Borneo’s iconic animals and their dwindling habitat. Every small purchase decision we make contributes to the future of these animals.

I stared at the single wild orangutan Jon had found after four days of boating and trekking through the hot, parasite-ridden jungle. After nearly 35 years of wondering if these creatures were going to be okay, I found myself unsure. The one I’d seen was okay at that moment, but his entire existence hangs on a thread. A thread directly tied to our actions and the choices we make every day in faraway parts of the world.

Governments can and should be expected to conserve natural resources, but governments can also be corrupt and prioritize short-term financial gains. This is why, as global consumers, we need to take responsibility for our role in environmental conservation.

While looking directly at the old orangutan’s innocent, stoic face, I vowed never to buy anything containing palm oil again — for him, for Jon, for me, and for all of us.

Previously in The Revelator:

Save This Species: Sumatran Orangutans

Who Heals the Earth’s Healers? Ways to Avert Burnout for Environmental Advocates

You’re helping nature — but nature also has ways to help you, make you more resilient, and relieve the stress caused by environmental destruction.

Caring about the environment can feel especially daunting these days. Even before our current political challenges, environmentalists faced long, drawn-out battles that take a toll on their mental health. With the continuous churn of anti-climate and environmental attacks, it’s no surprise that many people feel worn out, beaten, overwhelmed, helpless, and overpowered.

This is burnout, a very serious psychological state that you must attend to. It is not to be ignored.

Understanding and treating burnout is especially important for the people who care for the Earth, who are compassionate, passionate, and acutely aware of the destruction of our world. This makes them more sensitive and vulnerable to the machine-driven apathy and cravenness of those powerful forces that capitalize on the destruction of the planet or who silence our efforts to uphold equity between big industry and nature.

But emerging science has revealed that the same aspects of nature you’re trying to protect can heal you, make you more resilient, relieve stress, and give you more strength for the fights to come.

Are You a Burned-Out Environmentalist?

Many people don’t know that they’re in or approaching burnout. Even the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association do not yet officially recognize burnout as a health condition. That makes it harder to diagnose — or self-diagnose.

But burnout still has several signs to look out for, including:

    • Emotional hyperreaction and aggression to small matters and triggers.
    • Inability to rest and enjoy life due to guilt that you’re “not doing enough” or feeling that your efforts are ignored or insignificant.
    • Inability to stop racing thoughts of doom, sadness, and rage.
    • Overwhelming feelings of helplessness and ennui.
    • Severe imbalance in life/work balance and creative time.
    • Depression: Trouble getting out of bed, unhealthy habits, trouble making decisions, overwhelming negativity (anger, bitterness, nihilistic rumination).
    • Loss of energy and self-purpose.
    • Physical feelings of fatigue and illness (that are unexplained by another medical diagnosis).
    • Learned helplessness, meaning that one gives up and just becomes embittered and whiny.

This isn’t strictly a psychological problem. The very environmental concerns from which we’re trying to protect people also contribute to burnout, because they also take a physical and emotional toll on us:

    • Pollution: Air and water pollution negatively affect physical health and mental wellbeing and have been linked to stress, depression, and an increased risk of dementia.
    • Extreme temperatures: Scientific studies indicate they can increase depression, anxiety, aggression and other mood disorders.
    • Noise: The World Health Organization defines noise above 65 decibels — typical to what you’d experience from traffic, airplanes, construction, and restaurants — as noise pollution. Constant exposure can cause high blood pressure, fatigue, respiratory distress, and a host of other health problems.
    • Increased allergies and asthma: Feeling sick all the time can wear us down, especially now that climate change has extended the allergy season and caused plants to produce more pollen earlier and in greater amounts.

Burnout can drag us down for a long time. Left untreated it can reduce our effectiveness at work, damage our relationships, and even harm our physical health. But it doesn’t last forever — if you take steps to address it. Here are some ideas to get back on track with your passion for helping the environment.

Solutions for the Burned-Out Environmentalist:

Self-compassion is a relatively new concept in psychology. It means developing compassion toward oneself during difficulties or feelings of inadequacy and helplessness.

Self-compassion is a powerful tool for recognizing that suffering is a shared human experience, learning to foster human connection rather than isolation, and developing awareness of one’s emotions without judgment, accepting both positive and negative inner attitudes without getting overwhelmed.

And sometimes self-compassion and compassion for the planet overlap.

New scientific studies increasingly prove that a walk in the forest or a park, the beach — any natural setting, wherever you live and work — gives you gifts for your senses from the very resources we seek to save.

Here are a few ways to let the natural world help you with compassion fatigue, defined by the Canadian Medical Association as “the cost of caring for others.” It is also known as vicarious or secondary trauma.

Forest Bathing and Indoor Forestation

Have you ever taken a walk in the woods and felt a sense of peace or calm? There’s a way to take that to an even higher level: the forest bath or Shinrin Yoku.

The name of this Japanese practice translates as “taking in the forest atmosphere,” and it involves spending time in nature, particularly forests, to promote mindful relaxation and well-being. One immerses oneself in the sensory experience of the forest to connect with nature and experience its restorative effects.

Scientifically proven benefits of forest baths include lowering high blood pressure, heart rate, cortisol, and other stress chemicals in your body, and stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system so you can feel calmer.

How this process works: Plants and trees give off aromatic compounds called phytoncides, byproducts of their immune systems. They expel phytoncide aromatic liquids, which become gaseous and disperse into the air. Humans, when near trees and greenery, breathe these gases in, and some amazing physiological events happen: All humans have natural white blood cells, part of the immune system, which battle infections. Among our white blood cells are an extra-powerful type called lymphocytes. When stimulated by the inhalation of tree and plant phytoncides, these “warrior” white blood cells activate, strengthening your immune system. And the effects can last for a month after exposure.

And you don’t need to travel to a forest to get this benefit. You can modify your indoor life- or workspaces to create the same healthy effect. Learn how to cultivate indoor plants, care and feed them, and cluster them in groups like little forests near the indoor places you spend most of your time.

Indoor Soundscaping, Sound Baths, and Music

You know that feeling when you’re sitting next to a babbling brook and your mind and body just…relax? There are scientific reasons for that, and you can duplicate the effect wherever you are.

There are many ways to adjust the soundscape your work and living spaces — from earbuds to house structuring — to reduce or enhance the sounds that calm you or activate you.

Research confirms these personal experiences with music. Music around 60 beats per minute can cause the brain to synchronize with the beat, causing alpha brainwaves, keeping us relaxed and conscious, which may be good for work. Delta brainwaves, which originate from sound/music that is 5 or so hertz, help induce sleep.

Nowadays sound apps, recordings, and new technologies for listening offer anybody access to sound as a strong stress reduction tool. By studying the sounds of the natural world, technology and science have found ways to create relaxation when you are not in a natural setting, like a busy city or airplane.

Want to go deeper? Try a sound bath, a practice that immerses you in deep sound vibrations. “The idea is that these vibrations are at specific tones and frequencies and have the ability to heal your body,” reports Washington University “sound bath” facilitator and mindfulness researcher Diana Parra Perez, Ph.D., who adds that “sound is not only perceived through the ear, but also by the body through vibrations from sound waves that travel through the air.”

Participants often lie down on a yoga mat, or sit comfortably, while the sound bath facilitator plays instruments in a range of resonant tones and vibrations. These may be singing bowls, gongs, chimes, and even the human voice. The soundscape is designed to be immersive and nonrhythmic. This experience is believed to reduce stress and anxiety, improve sleep, and increase relaxation and well-being. Researchers believe vibrations from the instruments may stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation and healing, releasing endorphins and other relaxing brain chemicals.

Of course, the best sound therapy to release those stress-relieving chemicals in your body is in nature: Sounds of soothing ocean waves, babbling brooks, lapping waves near lakes and ponds, rain on leaves, wind in the trees, birdsongs, crickets at night… Combine this natural tonic with your forest bathing and you’re on your way to reducing burnout.

Even if you live in loud, artificially lit urban areas, there are new technologies to modify your surroundings. Nature recordings are excellent now, in HD, and readily available for personal and home use. Find ways to sound-proof your living space then soundscape it.

Aromatherapy

Long scoffed at by science and academics, the use of essential oils —  compounds extracted from plants — has now been proven to stimulate the olfactory system when inhaled or applied to the body, releasing brain chemicals that significantly affect the mind and body.

Like forest-bathing, scent and taste are affected by these chemicals, which release molecules that interact with specialized olfactory receptor cells in the nasal passages, which travel into the brain. The brain reacts by signaling activation of the limbic and parasympathetic systems to the physiological body, resulting in behavioral and mood shifts.

Studies show that essential oils may help:

    • Boost mood.
    • Improve job performance through reduced stress and increased attentiveness.
    • Improve sleep.
    • Kill bacteria, funguses and viruses.
    • Reduce anxiety and pain.
    • Reduce inflammation.
    • Reduce nausea.
    • Relieve headaches.

There have been some ethical questions about the sustainability in collection of the plants that produce essential oils, but the industry is taking steps to ensure that you know where to purchase ethical, sustainably produced essential oils.

We have a wonderful support loop with nature, which can try to heal us as we try to care for the environment. It’s a two-way street, if we’re willing to stop and literally “smell the roses.”

Work/Life Balance and How Nature Can Help

There are a zillion books, articles, classes about self-care, but are we really disciplining ourselves to follow the science of sleep hygiene, reducing screen time, eating healthily, exercising, and cultivating in-person creative skills? Caring for our world requires great self-discipline and attention in our own care.

Connect with other environmentalists nationally and globally to diminish feelings of isolation. One organization, The Citizens’ Climate Lobby, exists to create community for personal and political power. “You Can’t Solve Climate Change Alone” is one of their mottos, and they have an abundance of resources to connect you with other people who are passionate about climate solutions like you.

Take this lesson to heart: If the healer can’t function, the healer can’t heal. Nature offers us so much for our efforts to protect it. Let’s make sure our engagement with nature is as strong and balanced as our dedication to protect and heal it.

Now turn off the screen and go for a walk. Nature misses you! Go!

Additional Resources:

Self-Compassion — an essential site maintained by Dr. Kristen Neff

Environmental Psychology: An Introduction 2nd Edition

The Citizens Climate Lobby Resilience Hub

“Environmental Stress”  by Evans and Cohen (Cornell and Carnegie-Mellon Universities)

“Aromatherapy: Do Essential Oils Really Work? Integrative Medicine Boosting Your Mood” (The National Institutes of Health)

“The Effects of Various Essential Oils on Epilepsy and Acute Seizure: A Systematic Review.”  Bahr TA, et al. (2019)

“Clinical aromatherapy.”  Farrar AJ, et al. (2020)

“Essential oils for clinical aromatherapy: A comprehensive review.”  Vora LK, et al. (2024)

“Increase in diastolic blood pressure induced by fragrance inhalation of grapefruit essential oil is positively correlated with muscle sympathetic nerve activity.”  Kawai E, et al. (2020)

“11 Essential Oils: Their Benefits and How to Use Them.” (The Cleveland Clinic)

“How to Soundproof an Apartment: 9 Tips for a More Peaceful Space” by Jessica Dodell-Feder and Lauren Murphy

“What Is a Sound Bath?” (The Cleveland Clinic)

“Music Can Be a Viable Alternative to Medications in Reducing Anxiety Before Anesthesia Procedures.”  (Penn Medicine)

“Releasing Stress Through the Power of Music.”  (University of Nevada, Reno)

“The Healing Power of Sound: Meditation Research Suggests Sound Can Reduce Anxiety & Pain.”  (University of Washinton, Saint Louis)

“The World’s Most Relaxing Song.”  (Jordan Passman, Forbes, 2016)

Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back by Chris Berdik, Norton Books, 2025

“A comparative study of the physiological and psychological effects of forest bathing (Shinrin-yoku) on working age people with and without depressive tendencies.” Akemi Furuyashiki, et al., (The National Institutes of Health)

Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness by Dr. Qing Li

Forest Bath  by Jen Barton and Felishia Henditirto, Magination Press — American Psychological Association. A children’s (5-9 years) picture book. Available October 7, 2025

Previously in The Revelator:

Feeling Anxiety About Climate Change and Other Environmental Threats? These Five New Books Can Help

Why The Revelator Banned AI Articles and Art

Artificial intelligence consumes too much energy and water and produces too much pollution for any ethical person or organization who cares about the planet to use it.

The Earth has a new threat: massive computer data centers.

A recent study predicted that these data centers — which already consume about 1.5% of global electricity — will double their energy usage in the next five years, to about 945 terawatt hours a year. To put that in perspective, a single terawatt hour could power all of California for a week and half.

The culprit in this massive increase in energy consumption? Generative artificial intelligence (AI).

That’s one of the reasons President Trump has pushed for more coal mining in the United States: to feed AI’s ever-consuming maw. Coal is bad enough, but many AI data centers are already powered by diesel or methane, which spew pollution into nearby communities — often poor communities of color already suffering from environmental justice issues.

And that’s the primary reason why The Revelator has banned its writers from using AI. Given AI’s enormous power and water usage — and resulting greenhouse gas emissions, noise pollution, and asthma-causing pollution — there is simply no ethical way for an environmental writer to use ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or any of the other AI “writing” services.

Similarly, we won’t be using AI to generate art for any of our stories. That requires even more power than text-based output.

Of course, AI’s energy consumption and pollution problems are just part of the story. There are plenty of other reasons to avoid it.

For one thing, there’s their accuracy — or lack thereof. I think we’ve all seen “facts” spit out by generative AI that illustrate just how little their output can be trusted. For an obvious example, just look to the Trump administration’s likely use of AI to levee tariffs on penguins. And that’s just the start: A recent report found that the more powerful AI becomes, the more it tends to fabricate answers (a process the industry worryingly calls “hallucination”).

And getting back to ethics, most of these AI language models have been “trained” using books and articles from real writers, who did not consent to having their works digitized and plugged into massive databases, let alone receive any compensation for their contributions. That’s another huge reason to avoid them.

And despite that “training,” the so-called “writing” pumped out by these AI systems flat out sucks, to put it mildly. We’ve gotten dozens of AI-penned submissions over the past few months, usually lackluster “essays,” but some people even attempt to pass off AI output as journalism. It’s immediately obvious as soon as I start reading them: The sentences in these pieces usually work, at least grammatically, but everything feels mechanical and paint-by-numbers.

So there you go, it’s settled. No AI writing at The Revelator, and any writer submitting AI-generated articles will find themselves immediately blacklisted. It’s what’s best for our readers, and it’s what’s best for the planet.

(That said, we’re always looking for real writers to contribute to our pages. Read our submission guidelines and pitch us.)

But let’s take it further: If you’re reading this and you care about the planet, I encourage you to avoid generative AI, too. No AI articles, emails, school papers, artwork, research, reports, press releases, editing assistance — nothing. Given the environmental cost, and the preponderance of inaccuracies, there’s simply no ethical way to use these tools for environmental work, or even for fun.

There is an exception, though: I think it’s fair game to use AI for science that requires the analysis of gigabytes or terabytes worth of data. Humans can’t process that amount of information, and they need help — especially given the immediate need for data-driven solutions to climate change and the extinction crisis.

And ironically, there might be one other exception: Using AI to figure out how to get AI to use less power.

That doesn’t get around the other ethical issues of generative AI, and it won’t negate the evils that have already been done — or will be done — with AI. But it’s a start.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this — but please don’t submit an AI-written comment or op-ed, OK?

Previously in The Revelator:

2025 From A to Z

A Helping Hand for Mangroves

Hurricanes and alterations to natural hydrology have hammered Florida’s mangroves, but they can be restored.

Hurricane Charley made landfall on the Florida Gulf Coast near Fort Myers on Aug. 13, 2004, driving a six-plus-foot storm surge that destroyed vegetation in 95% of mangrove forests on four-square-mile North Captiva Island.

In 2022 Hurricane Ian’s storm surge topped 10 feet on 10.5-square-mile Sanibel Island, just south of Captiva, killing most of its mangrove trees. Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida in September 2024, created a storm surge up to seven feet high around Tampa, and that October Hurricane Milton produced damaging surges along Florida’s central and southwest Gulf Coast. Both wiped out more mangrove forest.

Even though many of the mangroves died, the trees protected the coastline and communities by absorbing much of the energy of the surges and significantly reducing the energy and height of storm-driven waves.

Mangrove forests do this around the world. Research shows that without them, 15 million more people globally would experience flooding every year.

“Those mangroves did their job,” says Kealy Pfau, coastal watch director for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, a land trust founded in 1957. “They took one for the team.”

Coastal mangroves. Photo courtesy Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation

But with more frequent and severe hurricanes, it also is becoming clear that this vital front line of defense can’t rebound fast enough without help.

Fortunately multiple projects aim to help the trees — and through them, human communities.

The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation started restoring Sanibel’s historic mangrove forest after Hurricane Charley, in partnership with the city of Sanibel and MANG, a local outdoor gear store. In 2020 the organization launched restoration on nearby Hemp Key, another area destroyed by Charley. In all the effort has planted more than 20,000 mangroves, relying heavily on public participation.

“We’ve taken hundreds of people out to plant mangroves,” most of them red mangroves, says Pfau. Of southwest Florida’s three species — red, black, and white — these are the easiest to restore, as they grow right on the shoreline and have large and easy to find seedlings or propagules. The Foundation collects propagules and grows them in a nursery until they have a root system and some leaves before planting them at a restoration site.

Volunteers plant mangroves. Photo courtesy Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation

In addition to the nursery, the organization runs a mangrove adoption project that taps people to grow mangroves in their homes.

“It’s not symbolic adoption, but an actual one,” Pfau says. “We collect propagules, plant them in little pots, and give them to people we call mangrove mamas and propagule papas.”

Individuals, daycare centers, retirement communities, schools, restaurants, and resorts have adopted trees — a total of about 4,000 in the past three years. The organization collects and pots propagules from August to October and plants seedlings in restoration areas from December to June.

Volunteers also are key to a restoration project in South Florida and the Keys by the nonprofits Coastlove and Plant a Million Corals Foundation. That effort has planted about 7,100 mangrove trees since December 2022.

“We invite locals or visitors to come work with us,” says Lanier Whitton, who helps manage a nursery of about 5,000 propagules. “It is a good way to get people of all ages involved.”

Coastlove also has a Mangrove Prop Drop, a bin where people can donate legally collected propagules (meaning not taken from the ground or inside a park).

Harmful Hydrology

Hurricanes aren’t the only thing killing off mangroves. Sea-level rise caused by climate change is a major threat. Human changes to natural hydrology, or movement of water, is another.

“It takes a lot to kill a mangrove forest, but certain things are their Achilles heel. One is altered hydrology,” says Kathy Worley, director of environmental science for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

Conservancy biologists started studying an area known as Fruit Farm Creek on Marco Island, south of Naples, in the 1980s. The forest there collapsed in the mid-1990s, and scientists determined altered hydrology was to blame. Over decades development surrounded some 2,560 acres of mangrove forest there, causing it to fill with stormwater after heavy rains, sometimes for months. Most mangroves do best with their roots dry about 70% of the time, and the trees essentially drowned.

The Conservancy, with multiple partners — including Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, City of Marco, Collier County, and Coastal Ecology Group — started a pilot project in 2012 to restore the local hydrology.

“We had to hand-dig channels through the area,” Worley says. “You can’t get big equipment in because of the squishy ground, and we also didn’t want to further compact the soil.”

That project allowed trees to reestablish naturally rather than planting them.

“I’m a big proponent that mangroves know where to plant themselves as long as there is a seed source,” Worley says. “There were some trees on the edges [of the restoration area], so propagules could float in. Within five years, we had a little juvenile mangrove forest. It was amazing how fast it happened. So, we could say, OK, this will work.”

Based on that evidence, the organization began a larger scale restoration in March 2020, funded by a grant from NOAA. Construction of tidal channels and installation of culverts in two die-off areas began in December 2021 and was completed by February 2023. The organization conducted post-restoration monitoring at three-month intervals for the first year, switching to six-month intervals beginning in February 2024.

Monitoring: ‘Everything Is Research’

Monitoring is key with this or any type of habitat restoration.

“We go back to these areas on an annual basis and check survival rates, basically seeing if trees are there or not,” says Pfau of the Sanibel Island and Hemp Key projects. “It takes 10 to 15 years for a mangrove tree to mature, and that’s if conditions are ideal. We are nowhere near ideal conditions, especially with setbacks like other storms.”

Young mangroves. Photo courtesy Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation

The Foundation regularly measures elevation at the site to see whether storms have changed the shoreline topography, monitors sea-level rise, and tests the water quality.

“Where we historically have seen mangroves and they’re not recovering on their own, we try to figure out why,” Pfau adds. “It’s usually shoreline change or lack of propagules. Sometimes we can’t figure it out, so we plant some trees and see what happens, and that may show us what’s affecting them. Everything is research.”

This work so far has not been affected by federal budget cuts or staff reductions.

“It might change our way of thinking about what grants to apply for, or if grant funding isn’t available, we may have to think outside the box,” Pfau says. “We do rely on grant funding for some of these projects, but a lot of our funding comes from local donors.”

Monitoring by the Conservancy of Southwest Florida includes comparing plots throughout a stressed area with those in more healthy areas.

“Every tree is tagged, and we look at growth factors, growth rates, diameter of the tree trunk,” Worley says. “What you’d expect to see with a growing forest is a lot of seedlings growing into trees and eventually a mature forest with very few small trees. A mature mangrove forest is just trees and canopy. Canopy coverage is another indicator of whether the forest is progressing. We categorize each tree, whether stressed, healthy, or dead. If trees are going from stressed to healthy, you know you’re going in the right direction.”

The team also keeps an eye on the hydrology in restoration areas and monitors the types and concentrations of fish and terrestrial invertebrates. Lots of crab holes in the sediment are a good indicator of a healthy mangrove forest, Worley points out, as are multiple species of fish.

Should We Restore?

While these restoration efforts seem to be working, like most things these days, the work isn’t without controversy.

“We need to be very selective about what we restore,” Worley says. “For one thing, you have to restore areas that historically had mangroves. If it did not, there is probably a reason why.  We need to choose areas that make the most sense and put money in those areas.”

That includes taking sea-level rise into consideration, because unless forests can build up enough sediment to keep up with that rise, they won’t make it.

“Marshes used to march inland, but there is no room to march anymore,” Worley explains. “They run into development or a road.”

Another big issue: What do we do in areas that are suffering die-offs but have not been as severely affected by humans?

“Do we let the process evolve naturally? That’s a question that needs to be asked,” says Worley. “I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. I do think we should revitalize areas that are stressed and it is probably our fault, and where we can make a difference. But we have to set priorities in the future. There is only so much money we can throw at this.”

There is also the question of which restoration approach is the best.

“A lot of people plant trees, I think it’s a feel-good thing,” Worley adds. “But so long as there is a seed source, the mangroves know how to plant better than we do.”

If there isn’t a seed source, she adds, planting is the only way to get trees back. And she believes getting them back is a worthy goal.

“These are just magnificent forests and we need to give them every chance we can,” she says. “I don’t want to live in a world without mangroves. They provide coastline stability and prevent erosion — without them half of Florida would not be here. They’re also habitat for about 75% of all marine life and really help absorb carbon out of the atmosphere.”

Good reasons, along with hurricanes, to keep giving mangroves a helping hand.

Previously in The Revelator:

Coastal Restoration: Recycled Shells and Millions of Larvae — A Recipe for Renewed Oyster Reefs

‘Active Management’ Harms Forests — And It’s About to Get a Whole Lot Worse

Forest management approaches promoted as “resilience,” “restoration,” “fuel reduction,” and “forest health” often degrade natural systems and reduce carbon stocks.

Over the past few years, many decisionmakers and forest managers have increasingly called for “active management” of natural forests — human intervention via mechanical thinning and other forms of commercial logging and road building — in response to increasing wildfires, beetle outbreaks, and intense storms. Many activists oppose these methods, saying they do more harm than good. For instance, actions that seek to suppress naturally occurring wildfires may make those fires more intense when they happen.

But active management activities have scaled up in response to economic drivers, misinformation on natural disturbance processes, and more climate-driven extreme events that trigger large and fast-moving fires.

“Active management” via mechanical thinning and overburning has type-converted this dry pine forest in the Santa Fe watershed to a weed-infested, overventilated savannah where remaining trees are exposed to blow down (Photo: D. DellaSala)

We have published dozens of peer-reviewed articles and books on the impacts of active management on natural disturbance processes in forests. As active management begins to take on an even bigger role, conservation groups frequently call upon us to submit testimony, legal declarations, and science support. Meanwhile our key findings are often neglected by well-intended researchers who promote widespread active management but do not fully acknowledge the dramatic and often cumulative ecosystem consequences.

The active management activities we are most concerned about include:

    • Clearcut logging of live and dead patches of trees, especially over large areas.
    • Mechanical thinning of large trees via commercial removal.
    • Too-frequent burning of forest understories, especially of logging slash in dense piles that cook soil horizons and encourage weeds.
    • Post-disturbance logging that removes biological legacies (e.g., large live and dead trees) and damages natural processes and soils.
    • Construction of major road networks that alter forest-hydrological connections, some of which are supposed to act as firebreaks.

Active management impacts depend on the intensity of removals, frequency and duration of impacts, and scale (site, landscape, ecoregion, biome) that often combine with the natural disturbance background in exceeding disturbance thresholds that degrade ecological integrity. Such practices have been widely accepted on at least three continents — North America, Australia, and Europe — where our research has been exposing severe impacts.

What Are the Ecological Costs of Active Management?

As we’ve shown in our recent studies, scaling up these types of activities comes with severe costs to natural ecosystems. The impacts of active management can even approach the effects of deforestation as they ramp up in application and intensity.

In the United States, this is especially apparent in relation to the recent executive orders that President Donald Trump announced under the rubric of a national timber emergency, cloaked in wildfire prevention. Even some progressive states, like California, have taken drastic measures to log vast areas with minimal environmental reviews in response to wildfires. Canada and European nations also have been driving up the active management rhetoric.

We used a series of case studies that demonstrated substantial negative and prolonged impacts of active management on a broad suite of ecological integrity indicators (including soil integrity, species richness, forest intactness, and carbon stocks) relative to more natural areas (reference sites). Active management, we found, is particularly consequential in high conservation value forests such as old-growth forests, intact watersheds, and complex early seral forests (“snag forests”) that follow severe natural disturbances but are rich in biodiversity. Such forests collectively play a pivotal role in maintaining ecological integrity while serving as natural climate solutions.

Natural disturbances are part of the necessary cycle of renewal and aging that has occurred in forests for millennia. There are well-documented patterns of forest rejuvenation following natural disturbances, even the severe ones, although we acknowledge that climate change is interacting with logging in a way that’s altering forest dynamics in places where forests may not come back on their own.

Natural disturbances create a pulse of biological legacies that sustain forest ecosystems for decades, including dead trees, surviving shrubs, fallen logs, and other structures that are associated with complex early seral forests and are not replicated by forest management. Many species, including some rare and threatened ones, are dependent on these legacies. The post-disturbance environment places the pioneering stage following a disturbance on a trajectory to old growth and then back again to the early stage when naturally re-disturbed.

We describe this process as “circular succession.” Active management can disrupt the natural flow of forest trajectories by breaking the cycle between rejuvenation and aging of forests such that forests never become old again (as in industrially logged landscapes).

Repeated thinning operations also remove key elements of stand structure such as large trees that are important habitats for a wide range of forest-dependent species. Often the large trees are relatively fire resistant and contain important adaptations such as epicormic branching near the crowns that allow the tree to survive and post-disturbance sprouting.

Our studies in Australian and western North American forests demonstrate that activities like commercial logging of large, old trees that are intended to reduce the severity of subsequent wildfires may have the opposite effect and increase fire severity and fire spread.

Similarly, there are cases where too-frequent prescribed burns on a site can alter the ecological condition of forest ecosystems in ways that, in the event of a subsequent wildfire, lead to significantly impaired forest regeneration and ecosystem type conversions to savannahs. This ostensibly is already underway in low productivity dry forests of the southern Rockies, which face a hotter, drier, and more frequent fire environment from natural and prescribed fires that together are ostensibly retarding forest renewal in places.

Active management may also increase the risk of high-severity wildfire by creating drier conditions that shift fuel types and fuel distributions, increasing fine fuels that dry quickly, while over-ventilating forests from the unravelling of intact canopies that otherwise buffer forests from high wind speeds associated with fast moving flames (as in the photo above).

Similarly, the construction of roads and firebreaks (chronic and cumulative disturbances) fragment landscapes and wildlife populations, paving the way for invasive species, and increasing the risk of human-caused ignitions (such as arson or accidental burns).

Impacts like these highlight the importance of understanding the overall disturbance burden in an area that accumulates from the combination of large tree logging, over-burning, livestock grazing, off-road vehicles, and road building, in addition the natural disturbances running in the background. Disturbance burden is a key issue that we highlighted in our recent research paper that is often neglected in active management circles.

An additional problem with active management is that tree removal or retention based on forestry prescriptions, particularly old growth or young trees establishing after disturbance, may reduce adaptation potential that would otherwise occur via natural selection that favors surviving trees better suited to the novel disturbance regimes resulting from climate change and insect outbreaks.

Simply put, foresters do not consider the genetic adaptations that are so crucial to forest persistence over time.

When Is Active Management OK to Use?

We acknowledge there will most certainly be cases where active management is a necessary part of ecological restoration practices that seek to improve ecological integrity and follow the internationally accepted precautionary principle (do no harm to native ecosystems).

Some examples include the control of invasive species that have colonized natural forests; removal of livestock and feral animals; replanting forests with native species where there has been natural regeneration failure or ecosystem type shifts underway; obliterating roads to increase connectivity and hydrological functions; upgrading culverts to handle storm surge; and reintroducing extirpated and keystone species (such as beavers).

However, other kinds of active management — like commercial thinning in high conservation value forests — may inadvertently accelerate degradation of these critical ecosystems with perverse impacts on biodiversity and carbon stocks. And while there are certainly cases where light-touch thinning (below-canopy, noncommercial) or prescribed fire alone can reduce high severity fire effects, the efficacy of tree removal in a changing climate is dependent on many factors, including extreme fire weather that is increasingly overwhelming treatment efficacy.

What’s Needed to Avoid Degradation?

Our precautionary approach to active management also underscores the significance of completing protection efforts that set aside large, representative protected areas (such as 30×30 and 50×50 campaigns) which, at a minimum, can serve as reference areas to gauge the efficacy and impacts of active management.

As we state in our research, this can be done using standardized metrics to assess the degree of degradation in comparison to reference sites along a continuum of relative loss. However, it must be understood that a complete assessment of active management on high conservation value forests, particularly attempts to recreate the later stages of succession, may not become realized for decades, if not centuries. Importantly, in some areas, reference conditions free of industrial activities and fire suppression may no longer exist and thus semi-natural areas may have to suffice as the reference for restoration.

We suggest that decisionmakers and managers invest in research that expands the understanding of natural disturbance regimes in forests, the effects of active management on ecological integrity (ecological restoration vs degradation), and that supports adaptive management strategies that are consistent with ecological integrity and conservation biology principles.

The bottom line: Active management needs a proper cost-benefit analysis to minimize trade-offs, lest the treatments may be much worse than the problems they seek to resolve. Our research daylights the expanding active management footprint while creating science support for decision-makers to choose more prudently on behalf of maintaining or restoring integrity and for activists to push back when policy is inconsistent with conservation science principles.

 

Previously in The Revelator:

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

 

Professional Hunters Kill a Shocking Number of Animals in South Africa

Tens of thousands of wild animals, from spring hares to rhinos, died in the name of sport and entertainment in 2023.

A version of this op-ed originally appeared in The Daily Maverick.

In South Africa you can pay a mere $100 to pull the trigger on an aardvark. It’s not a particularly stealthy or aggressive animal; it simply meanders around innocently searching for termites. Yet killing one is somehow considered a sport worthy of applause.

A dead aardvark makes for interesting interior design, and at least six of these animals are now decorative trophies, according to the 2023 professional hunting statistics prepared by the Professional Hunters Association for South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment and obtained by a wildlife welfare advocate through Promotion of Access to Information Act requests.

According to this data, 6,052 international visitors to South Africa shot 34,515 animals in 2023, the most recent year for which full statistics are available.

More than half the international visitors — 3,783 hunters — hailed from the United States, while the remainder primarily visited from European countries.

Nearly half the animals trophy hunted (17,111) came from several antelope species, zebras, warthogs, and buffaloes.

But trophy hunters’ choices also included rare and timid animals. Ten meek aardwolves and an equal number of bat-eared foxes fetched $100 each to adorn hunters’ walls — a feat that is neither brave nor athletic.

And since trophy hunting is all about rarity and trophy aesthetics, a total of 722 color variants of springbuck ($1,200-1,700 each) and 459 golden wildebeest ($4,483 each) were killed — species bred specifically for their color and rarity appeal to hunters, and not their conservation value.

In addition, trophy hunters chose to bag several other puzzling species for entertainment’s sake:

No trophy hunters chose to dart a rhino (an option available for a photo op), but 78 white rhinos were killed for expensive wall art, netting $35,000 each — at a time when poaching rages through the Kruger National Park and KwaZulu-Natal’s provincial parks. Imagine, instead, if someone had invested $2.7 million into improving the functioning of fencing, anti-poaching units, and genuine community upliftment.

Hunting of Captive-Bred Lions

A total of 521 lions were shot for trophies in 2023, and the vast majority (468) of the hunts were conducted in the North West, a province renowned for its captive-bred lion hunts.

Misinformation abounds regarding the legality of captive lion hunts, which have gained euphemisms such as “ranched hunts” to hide the reality that canned or captive hunting is still occurring in some South African provinces, particularly in the North West. Regardless of the terminology used, these hunts utilize captive-bred lions who are released for short period of time (a minimum of 96 hours in the North West) in a small, fenced area for an easy and guaranteed kill.

The North West province’s hunting appeal is due to its lack of legislation, which permits hunting outfitters and their clients to kill captive-bred lions and also permits the hunting of exotic predators. No formal permits are required to bag a tiger or other exotic species in the province. A landowner’s written permission is considered sufficient, as Blood Lions researchers confirmed in a 2022 paper.

The Scale of Hunting in South Africa

To gain a clearer idea of the sheer scale of indigenous species hunted by international clients, data from 2016 to 2023 demonstrates that 260,210 animals were shot across this eight-year period. The disturbing variety of species includes the smallest cat species, the black footed cat (at five animals) to 562 servals and a staggering 2,968 lions. And that’s with a dramatic decline in 2020 and 2021 during the global pandemic.

Post-COVID-19 hunting figures suggest South Africa has not returned to its hunting glory days. But this does beg the question: Why has the government set lofty hunting targets in the National Biodiversity Economic Strategy? The Endangered Wildlife Trust released a statement questioning whether or not the strategy has determined if a market exists for the extent of the hunting quotas proposed.

Plans to Ramp Up Trophy Hunting

In excess of 1 billion rand (about $53 million) was generated from trophy hunting in 2023, primarily of indigenous species. At first glance this may appear to be significant revenue for South Africa, but game ranching and trophy hunting primarily occurs on private land and benefits a small number of wealthy landowners who are very often surrounded by communities living in poverty.

South Africa’s wildlife legislation is geared for economic development at the cost of considering more progressive ways of approaching the conservation of biodiversity and addressing the core issues affecting poaching and biodiversity loss. While the National Biodiversity Economy Strategy, gazetted for public comment in March 2024, is to be lauded for its intentions to protect biodiversity and improve economic benefits for those living in poverty, a closer examination raises concerns that it risks exploiting the natural environment to the benefit of only a privileged few.

The strategy further touts the idea that “consumptive use of game from extensive wildlife systems at scale that drive transformation and expanded sustainable conservation compatible land-use” will “increase the GDP contribution (through) consumptive use of game from extensive wildlife systems from R4.6-billion (2020) to R27.6-billion by 2036.” That’s nearly $1.5 billion.

How this will occur remains unclear, as this would only be achievable if such economic growth brings more than 16,500 hunters to South Africa to shoot almost 100,000 animals each year by 2036. To put this goal in perspective, hunters would need to kill more than 10,000 lions, 1,300 elephants, 3,000 white rhino and 30,000 buffalo from 2022 to 2036 to achieve these targets. This would require industrial-scale production of wildlife that is neither ecologically sustainable nor in line with emerging recognition of animal wellbeing.

Fierce Opposition to Animal Wellbeing

The captive predator industry is fighting tooth and nail to ensure their exploits continue, despite Dr. Dion George’s stated intentions to close the industry and all its associated activities with lions. The further inclusion of an “animal wellbeing” clause in the amended National Environmental Management Laws Amendment Act has created enormous backlash from the SA Hunters and Game Conservation Association, who have now taken DFFE to court to have this removed.

Wellbeing is defined in the legislation as “the holistic circumstances and conditions of an animal, which are conducive to its physical, physiological and mental health and quality of life, including the ability to cope with its environment.” Considering an animal’s wellbeing has many hunters bristling at the very notion.

As trophy hunting faces increasing international opprobrium, ethical tourism increases in importance and both numbers of animals hunted and international visitors decline, the continued focus of South Africa in supporting trophy hunting remains highly questionable.

Previously in The Revelator:

Trophy Hunting Propaganda Is One More Form of Greenwashing