Really, they do — they just don’t think you want to talk about it. So stop being afraid of pushback, break the “climate silence,” and start a conversation.
This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
In these divided times, it seems everyone is ready to start an argument at the drop of a hat, especially on topics that have been made so politically polarizing, like climate change.
But is that true? Are conversations about climate change really doomed before they even start?
As it turns out, they’re not — we just think they are, so we avoid having these conversations in the first place.
Here’s the reality: According to multiple surveys and scientific studies, between 80-89% of people want the world’s governments to take stronger action against climate change. At the same time, the people who want action don’t realize they’re in the majority because not enough people are talking about it — especially in the media.
One new study, published April 17 in PLOS Climate, found that this lack of media coverage contributes to a negative feedback loop that perpetuates “climate silence.”
And it isn’t just the media: The study found that “perceived social norms” — specifically, the incorrect perception that other members of society may discount climate science — are the major factor influencing whether or not we have climate conversations.
The conclusions are clear: People don’t hear enough people talking about climate change, so they don’t talk about it themselves. And that inability or unwillingness to discuss such an overwhelming issue slows or stops climate progress on both individual and societal levels.
But we can escape this feedback loop. The paper suggested several ways to break through this climate silence: describing why climate change worries you or puts you or something you care about at risk; communicating the reality that most people are concerned about climate change; sharing news articles; and even including climate messages in public entertainment.
I reached out to lead author Margaret Orr from George Mason University to discuss “climate silence,” its real-world implications, the media’s role, and what we all can do about it. Our phone and email conversations follow.
Why did you conduct this study? Had you observed this silence in action, or attempts to break through it, and was it something you wanted to quantify? (I also see you’ve studied misinformation; is that related?)
This study originated as a project for an Interpersonal Communication class at George Mason University. We knew from previous research, commentary from climate scientists and activists, and our own experiences that very few people discuss climate change despite it being credited as one of the most important climate actions. Because of our interest in using research to help drive concrete climate action, we wanted to investigate ways that climate conversations could be encouraged amongst the public.
In short, we wanted to identify barriers to climate conversation in order to work on breaking them down. This research wasn’t directly driven by my interest in misinformation but it’s tangentially related in that some of these conversations could be important for building trust and debunking misinformation.
What are the costs of this silence? Lack of political or societal action? Allowing misinformation to spread? Or does it hurt on a more individual level, by dulling the belief that we can make a difference?
All of the above! We talk about spiral of silence theory in the paper, which is a self-reinforcing cycle. If no one talks about climate change, people become less likely to talk about it because it is perceived as a taboo topic. The less people talk about climate change, the less it is thought of as a problem, which in turn leads to less action because people don’t care or don’t know what to do about the problem.
Has conducting this study affected how you communicate about climate change in any way?
It’s made me more aware of how important it is for me to talk about climate change, especially as someone who has an atmospheric science degree and some expertise in climate science itself. As my hero, Rachel Carson, once said: “Knowing what I do, there would be no peace for me if I kept silent.”
The study has also helped me to focus on discussing the topics that we found to be correlated to more climate conversations. I highlight the scientific consensus, the fact that a majority of Americans support climate actions, and ways that people’s individual lifestyles could be at risk due to climate change.
What responsibility do you feel that our community leaders should be talking about this? Another study published this month found that 90% of Christian religious leaders believe humans are driving climate change, but they don’t talk about it from the pulpit.
I think it can be tough when you expect pushback, and that’s part of the root of our studies — that people expect pushback when they talk about climate change.
If there is interest, instead of saying “I’m going to stand up here and bring this to my congregation,” it can be something more like planting seeds and letting it grow almost from the grassroots, things like that.
Other local community leaders could do very similar things. Plant those seeds in the community and then bring it up to the mayor of a town or something. Instead of coming in with a hammer and saying climate change, let it come from the grass roots.
You mentioned people being afraid that they’re to get some pushback if they bring up climate change, and obviously we’re anticipating this kind of political discord, this distance in our conversations. Do we start with things like, “Hey, I saved energy by doing this thing,” or something simple like that that kind of breaks through the barrier?
Yeah, something simple and personal. Connecting it to that personal, shared value is quite effective.
The social media landscape has changed so much in recent years, especially when it comes to news links, which many platforms actively suppress. Do you still see it as an effective way to break through the silence barrier?
Social media can be helpful for interpersonal discussion, but those discussions can often become exhausting, and you feel like you’re getting nowhere.
My answer here comes a little bit more from my misinformation research than this study itself — when using social media, think of the “lurkers.” We hear from people with opinions that lean heavily towards one side or the other of an issue, but we don’t hear from people with less strong opinions or who are more undecided on a matter. They might be reading a comment section and your effort to spread truth about climate change is likely to reach them without you ever knowing it. Social media in today’s world might be better used as a platform for personal stories and experiences rather than sharing news links.
You mention entertainment as an effective communication tool. Have you noticed any particularly effective efforts lately?
The first thing coming to mind here is the TV show “Top Chef.” I can’t cite a specific season or episode, because I like to use old seasons as background while I work and they can sometimes blur together, but there have been a few instances where chefs on the show mentioned how climate change is affecting the availability of ingredients that a given region is known for — seafood, for example. Little “sprinkles” of climate change like this always impress me because it helps connect to things that the audience cares about.
It seems to me that a lot of the stuff I read that isn’t specifically about the environment is still making some mention of climate or the environment, and that feels like a good way to enter into these conversations with people.
There’s kind of an element of catching people almost off guard, like they’re not coming in thinking about climate change, but then, now we are thinking about it. I think that’s a unique opportunity to open that dialogue and have it come through something that people care about.
One of the things that I love to do — and I think this I originally heard this from Katharine Hayhoe — is to connect with people on what they value. If someone is interested in food and cooking, that’s something they value, so we can connect on that as opposed to just kind of coming in talking about climate change more broadly. You can start with that common ground.
Now, from the flip side, is there a way to make this more active? Are there ways we can engage people a little bit more directly in conversations about climate? Something like, “Hey, have you ever seen these plants pop up this early in the season,” or something like that? Can we push these conversations a little bit?
Definitely. I’ve seen that come up in conversations that I have — you know, the crocuses are up in February, things like that, those shared experiences and personal experiences.
How do you hope people will respond to this paper or act based on what you’ve presented?
I think we’re hoping that people who are in these communication positions — whether it’s journalists, broadcast meteorologists, community leaders — would then be able to take the topics that we found, spur a conversation, and be able to think about how they can communicate using those topics.
What other advice might you offer to the media in the context of The 89 Percent Project?
I would say that it’s important for journalists to connect to local stories and communities. “A lot of Americans want climate action” is great; “A lot of people in your state/city/community want climate action” is even better.
Focusing on action is also helpful. Highlight examples of action that’s already working and is easy to adopt. Local composting efforts, easy ways to save energy, local solar panel incentive programs come to mind. Increased climate coverage was also found in our study to increase conversation, so just by publishing climate stories, the project will help break silences.
We also found that norms, or people’s perceptions of what their peers do or think, are very important in spurring conversation — so highlighting these majorities will also be super helpful!
Focusing on brightly plumaged and “familiar” birds can leave important conservation questions unanswered — and even put less attractive species at risk.
Every morning, at this time of year, a red-winged blackbird greets me as I walk down the street. He’s become a familiar sight and sound, and I watch for the flash of black and red that tells me he’s landed on a branch above my head and is about to speak up.
But how many less flashy birds do I miss while looking for those blackbirds? Chances are, quite a few — just like the scientific community, according to new research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The study, by a team of researchers from the University of Toledo and Ohio University, examined 55 years’ worth of scientific papers on North American birds and found they show a dramatic bias toward more noticeable species — those who are more aesthetically pleasing or “flashy,” have wider breeding ranges, and whose ranges overlap with nearby universities.
And yes, that includes red-winged blackbirds. Of the more than 27,000 published papers analyzed for this study, red-winged blackbirds were the second-most researched species, with an astonishing 499 publications. That’s second only to the bright blue-and-white tree swallow, the subject of 597 papers (perhaps because their adaptability to backyard nest boxes makes them so easy to study).
That leaves many species — the “drab” ones, as the study puts it, and the ones with smaller ranges — understudied, if studied at all. A rather plain but sweet-looking species called the Philadelphia vireo wasn’t studied a single time during this 55-year period, according to the analysis.
This bias can create a negative feedback loop, the paper warns, where the most-studied species keep getting studied and the “drab” species fade into the background, forgotten by both science and the public. The “lack of research on visually unremarkable and unfamiliar birds may ultimately result in their ‘societal extinction,’” researchers warn.
I reached out to lead author Silas Fischer, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toledo, to learn more about this bias, how it affects conservation, and what other researchers can do to help correct it.
The following has been edited slightly for style and brevity.
Is a possible interpretation of this paper, “In praise of boring birds?”
I suppose part of our findings could be interpreted that way, although I wouldn’t use the word “boring” to describe those species! What some of these drably plumaged species lack in color and plumage contrast, they make up for in personality.
What was the origin story for this paper? I noticed that many of your previous papers cover the gray vireo, which your new study quantifies as a “drab,” understudied bird.
I think the impetus of the paper comes from multiple observations and experiences I’ve had over the years, both as a young scientist and someone who observes birds recreationally. One part of it originated from the experiences I’ve had studying a species — the gray vireo — that most people have never heard of. Even many ornithologists and birders tend to forget about it.
A lot of my research has been on dryland birds in New Mexico, many of which have drab gray or brown plumage. They also tend to occur away from roads and people, so they’re easily overlooked — out of sight, out of mind.
I’m not implying causation here, but I’ve had papers rejected on the premise of not being interesting or novel enough — even if there is next-to-nothing known about some of these species in a Western science context. Then a few months later, the same journal publishes a paper on a similar topic but on a different, flashier species for which there is already a lot of research, conservation concerns and efforts, and sometimes even dedicated species-specific working groups.
It’s interesting to see millions of dollars spent on some species, while at the same time we lack even a basic understanding of other species’ biology. And that’s coming from someone who studies birds, which are really well studied overall compared to some other taxonomic groups.
Part of the impetus also comes from my experiences birding around others. For example, I was birding at the Magee Marsh boardwalk in Northwest Ohio, which during songbird migration is a popular birding spot. I regularly overhear other birders marveling over the flashy warblers in breeding plumage, while overlooking other comparatively less-flashy birds like vireos and sparrows. Some folks ask about whether I or a friend were “seeing anything good,” dismissing our responses if we didn’t say, for example, blackburnian warbler or golden-winged warbler.
Don’t get me wrong, I love warblers too! But I also want to observe and know other species.
Did you have any challenges conducting the study?
Mostly it was just time consuming, especially doing the manual publication filtering. That and being so excited to share our research with the world but having to wait years during the peer-review and publication process. But that’s not unique to our paper by any means.
When the results came in, were there any surprises?
We were not overly surprised that visual appeal, familiarity, and accessibility were significant predictors of the variation in publication numbers among species. But we were surprised that those three metrics combined to explain nearly half of that variation.
We were also surprised that eponymously named bird species — those whose common names refer to a human name — were studied less often than other birds in the dataset.
I think our work highlights why and how biologists can bring their human biases to all aspects of biology, which should be of concern for biologists, regardless of their study taxa, moving forward.
Could you give an example of a “flashy” species that’s potentially been overstudied or a “drab” bird that your research suggests is understudied because of this bias?
I can’t say that any one certain species was or was not studied because of these specific biases — I can’t imply causation for or against studying specific species, just that there is a trend toward focusing on visually appealing, familiar, and accessible species in our dataset — but I can tell you some of the most and least studied species. Some well-studied species were tree swallows, red-winged blackbirds, American redstarts, and white-throated sparrows. Some of the relatively understudied species were Philadelphia vireos, crissal thrashers, black-chinned sparrows, and olive warblers.
What’s the conservation cost of this bias?
Good question. One of the premises of conservation biology is that all species have value. But it’s clear that value is not equally distributed among bird species, nor among other organisms across the tree of life.
The value we attribute to species has direct implications for how much time and money we allocate to each species and can even impact a species’ designated conservation status. In conservation we rarely have all the knowledge we need to make important decisions in the face of biodiversity loss. But by selectively studying only a subset of bird species, and neglecting others, we widen the knowledge gap between them.
For the understudied birds, we often lack basic information on their ecology. And we lack fundamental data that help us understand whether a species is declining, much less what is driving those declines. Many of the conservation status designation decisions — for example, whether a species is endangered — rely on the information available. But if that information does not exist, then what? We can’t really assess a species’ threat status or implement meaningful conservation actions in those cases.
Has conducting this study and identifying this bias affected your own work in any way?
It’s hard to say at this point because this was largely a side project that I’ve been working on as I write my dissertation! But I will say I’m motivated to keep studying the dull, drab, distant birds.
How can other researchers correct this bias in their own work?
The first step is awareness. When you’re in the phase of research where you get to choose your next study topic — if it’s not already dictated by, for example, funding availability — think about whether you’re leaning towards a species because of how exciting it is visually, how familiar it might be, or how accessible it is to you.
Sure, logistics play a big part in how feasible some projects are. But I’d be willing to bet that for most folks there are a suite of species in an area that are feasible to study, and it’s important to make sure we aren’t making those decisions based on our implicit biases.
But it’s also important to point out that many funding agencies, such as state wildlife agencies, identify species of conservation concern or priority species. Then some or all of the funding available for research is earmarked for those specific species in the call for proposals. In these cases, researchers might be left with no choice but to study the priority species if they want funding, which they need to further their careers.
The bottom line is that it’s not all the fault of researchers. It’s a complex feedback cycle, which bias might influence species’ value at each link in the chain and their connections. There’s probably not one sole link in the chain that’s driving the skew in research — it’s the whole interconnected system of public attention and interest, media representation, policies, conservation practitioners’ priorities and species status designations, funding availability, etc. that feed into one another.
It’s complicated. But simple awareness, followed by conscious action, can make a difference.
Does looking at peer-reviewed science leave anything out? Citizen-science bird counts, eBird, and iNaturalist might contain more data on these “drab” species.
We didn’t analyze whether these metrics explain attention to species among citizen science efforts, so I can’t make any definitive statements about that. However, there have been some studies assessing potential bias in citizen science efforts, for example among birds and butterflies. And anecdotally, as I mentioned, I have witnessed again and again birdwatchers disregarding some birds in favor of flashier ones. I can say that there are some species whose characteristics make them less conducive to surveying through efforts like the Breeding Bird Survey.
The preprint of this paper has been out since 2023. Any response from the community to that or the new publication?
The preprint generated quite a bit of buzz on social media! I think it had nearly 60,000 views on Twitter. A lot of folks said they were not surprised about our results.
You’re also an accomplished artist. Is there any bleed-over between this science and your art?
A lot of my art I’ve made in conjunction with my scientific research. I see the two as going hand in hand — they’re both part of my research practice. I’ve been slowly building a body of work based on my research on gray vireos and some of my experiences, and this work surely bleeds into that, whether conscious on my part or not. I’m excited to see how it plays out in the future.
These new books cover challenges to our shared land, ranging from Indigenous appropriation to current corporate grabs.
In a perfect world, a book-review column focused on public lands would provide readers with exciting tips and insights about visiting national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges, and other breathtaking sites across the United States.
But it’s not a perfect world: Today America’s public lands face their greatest threats as the Trump administration expands the extractive economy, slashes agency workforces, seeks to shrink national monuments, and makes plans to sell off many of our natural assets — even as attendance at our national parks continues to soar to record levels.
That’s why several new and forthcoming books about public lands are essential reading: They put this new threat into historical context, reveal the complexities and contradictions in our public-lands policies, offer insight into their current and future protections, and remind us of their beauty and ecological importance.
Some of them also teach us how to get maximum enjoyment out of a visit to a national park.
Here are a dozen-plus new books about public lands, published in 2024 and 2025, along with their official descriptions. The links go to the publishers’ sites, but you should also be able to request these books through your local booksellers or public libraries.
We’ve also provided a list of several must-have, critical, and fundamental books about public lands for your environmental library and book collections — a list especially for new and young environmentalists and those new to environmentalism who seek core information as a foundation for their advocacy and understanding in today’s world.
Before we get to the traditionally published books, we thought it was important to mention one of the primary texts being used right now to attack public lands:
We include this one on the list to reveal the strategies of those trying to monetize and minimize America’s public lands. There’s a lot to digest and understand in this roadmap for unworking the federal government; for the primary section affecting national parks, monuments, and forests, skip to Chapter 16 on the Department of the Interior by self-styled “Sagebrush Rebel” William Perry Pendley.
Environmental historian Adam Sowards synthesizes public-lands history from the beginning of the republic to recent controversies. The U.S. federal government owns more than a quarter of the nation’s landscape, managed by four federal agencies. It intersects history with nature, politics, and economics and explores how the concept of “public” has been controversial from the start, from homesteader visions to free-enterprise ranchers to activists. Americans have a stake in these lands: They are, after all, ours.
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah has figured prominently in the long and ongoing struggle over the meaning and value of America’s public lands. In 1996 President Bill Clinton used the Antiquities Act to create the monument, with the goal of protecting scientific and historical resources. This book focuses on the perspectives of diverse groups affected by conflict over the monument. Brugger considers how conceptions of democracy have shaped and been shaped by the regional landscape and by these disputes. Through this ethnographic evidence, Brugger proposes a concept of democracy that encompasses disparate meanings and experiences, embraces conflict, and suggests a crucial role for public lands in transforming antagonism into agonism.
A comprehensive primer on state public lands and the political dynamics that underlie their management. For most Americans state lands are the most accessible type of public land; however, despite their ubiquity, they remain largely terra incognita. Offering a wide-angle overview, Davis focuses on how states prioritize competing claims related to conservation, resource development, tourism, recreation, and finances. Exploring differences and common patterns in state land management, he examines the privatization and commercialization of state parks and the tensions between recreation, revenue, and the preservation of biodiversity and natural landscapes. He also raises issues about equity, access, appropriate development, and ecological health. With current demands to transfer federal lands to the states, Davis concludes with an appraisal of whether states could handle this transfer and suggests ways to ensure adequate access in an era of increased need.
A galvanizing road trip across California’s immense public wilderness from a beloved adventurer. It all began with a camping trip. Outdoor enthusiast Josh Jackson had never heard of “BLM land” before a casual recommendation from a friend led him to a free campsite in the desert — and the revelation that over 15 million acres of land in California are owned collectively by the people. In The Enduring Wild, he takes us on a road trip spanning thousands of miles, crisscrossing the Golden State to seek out every parcel of public wilderness, from the Pacific shores of the King Range down to the Mojave Desert. Over mountains, across prairies, and through sagebrush, Jackson unravels the stories of these lands: The Indigenous peoples who have called them home to the extractives’ threats that imperil them today, and of the grassroots organizers and political champions who have rallied to their common defense to uphold the radical mandate to protect these natural treasures for generations to come.
For more than 150 years, the 23-million-acre Yellowstone region — now widely known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — has played a prominent role in the United States’ nature conservation agenda. In this book Robert B. Keiter, an award-winning public land law and policy expert, traces the evolution and application of fundamental ecological conservation concepts tied to Yellowstone. Keiter’s book highlights both the conservation successes and controversies connected with this storied region. Extending across three states and twenty counties and embracing more than sixteen million acres of federal land as well as private and tribal lands, Yellowstone is a complex, jurisdictionally fragmented landscape. The quest for common ground among federal land managers, state officials, local communities, conservationists, ranchers, Indigenous tribes, and others is a vital, enduring task. (Available July 2025)
Relationships with land are fundamental components of Indigenous worldviews, politics, and identity. The disruption of land relations is a defining feature of colonialism; colonial governments and capitalist industries have violently dispossessed Indigenous lands, undermining Indigenous political authority through the production of racialized and gendered hierarchies of difference. The collection of voices in Land Back highlight the ways Indigenous peoples and anticolonial co-resistors understand land relations for political resurgence and freedom across the Americas, examining the relationships of language, Indigenous ontologies, and land reclamation; Indigenous ecology and restoration; the interconnectivity of environmental exploitation and racial, class, and gender exploitation; Indigenous diasporic movement; community urban planning; transnational organizing and relational anti-racist place-making; and the role of storytelling and children in movements for liberation.
While outdoor industry marketing promotes an image of “the wilderness” as an unpeopled haven, this book is an analysis of the relationship between the outdoor recreation industry, U.S. public lands, and Indigenous sovereignty and representation in recreational spaces. Combining social media analysis, digital ethnography, and historical research, Whitson offers nuanced insights into more than a century of the outdoor recreation industry’s marketing strategies, unraveling its complicity in settler colonialism. Complicating the narrative of outdoor recreation as a universal good, Whitson introduces the concept of “wildernessing” to describe the physical, legal, and rhetorical production of pristine, empty lands that undergirds the outdoor recreation industry, a process that further disenfranchises Indigenous people from whom these lands were stolen. Through the lens of environmental justice activism, Marketing the Wilderness reconsiders the ethics of the deeply fraught relationship between the outdoor recreation industry and Indigenous communities. Emphasizing the power of the corporate system and its treatment of land as a commodity under capitalism, he shows how these tensions shape the American idea of “wilderness” and what it means to fight for its preservation.
The history of national parks in the United States mirrors the fraught relations between the Department of the Interior and the nation’s Indigenous peoples. But amidst the challenges are examples of success. This collection of essays proposes a reorientation of relationships between tribal nations and national parks, placing Indigenous peoples as co-stewards through strategic collaboration. More than simple consultation, strategic collaboration, as the authors define it, involves the complex process by which participants come together to find ways to engage with one another across sometimes-conflicting interests. In case studies and interviews, the authors and editors of this volume — scholars as well as National Park Service staff and Tribal historic preservation officers — explore pathways for collaboration, emphasizing emotional commitment, mutual respect, and patience, rather than focusing on “land-back” solutions, in the cocreation of a socially sensible public-lands policy.
For millennia land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. Political scientist Michael Albertus shows that who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it will safeguard or sacrifice its environment. With an overview of modern global land reallocation history, Albertus shows how the shuffle continues today as governments vie for power and prosperity by choosing who should get land. Drawing on a career’s worth of original research and on-the-ground fieldwork, Albertus shows that choices about who owns the land have locked in poverty, sexism, racism, and climate crisis — and that what we do with the land today can change our collective fate. Global in scope, Land Power argues that saving civilization must begin with the earth under our feet.
Some 170,000 wood bison, North America’s largest land animals, once roamed northern regions, while at least 30 million plains bison trekked across the rest of the continent. Almost driven to extinction in the 1800s by decades of slaughter and hunting, this ecological and cultural keystone species supports biodiversity and strengthens the ecosystems around it. Bison: Community Builders and Grassland Caretakers celebrates the traditions and teachings of Indigenous Peoples and looks at how bison lovers of all backgrounds came together to save these iconic animals. Learn about the places where bison are regaining a hoof-hold and meet some of the young people who are welcoming bison back home.
A vivid portrait of the American prairie, which rivals the rainforest in its biological diversity and, with little notice, is disappearing even faster. The North American prairie is an ecological marvel, a lush carpet of grass that stretches to the horizon, and home to some of the nation’s most iconic creatures — bison, elk, wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and bald eagles. Plants, microbes, and animals together made the grasslands one of the richest ecosystems on Earth and a massive carbon sink, but the constant expansion of agriculture threatens what remains. Exploring humanity’s relationship with this incredible land, this book offers a deep, compassionate analysis of the difficult decisions and opportunities facing agricultural and Indigenous communities. A vivid portrait of the heartland ecosystem that argues why the future of this region is essential far beyond the heartland.
Showcasing our country’s astonishing beauty, the Rand McNally Road Atlas & National Park Guide is packed with hundreds of photos, essential visitor information, and insightful travel tips for all 63 of America’s national parks. Includes a complete 2025 Rand McNally Road Atlas to make navigating a breeze, plus tourism websites and phone numbers for every U.S. state and Canadian province on map pages.
More Must-Read, Fundamental Public Lands Books for Every Environmentalist’s Collection
Literally hundreds of books about public land have crossed our desks since The Revelator started publishing eight years ago. Here’s a compendium of several must-have, critical, and fundamental books about public lands for your environmental library and book collections — a list especially relevant for new and young environmentalists who seek essential information to create a foundation for their advocacy and understanding in today’s often “anti-climate-change” world.
Briefly lays out the history and characteristics of public lands at the local, state, and federal levels while examining the numerous policy prescriptions for their privatization or, in the case of federal lands, transfer.
Quammen, historian and conservationist, documents the ongoing feud between the Bundy ranching family, the federal government, and the American public, examining the roots of the Bundys’ cowboy confrontations, and how history has shaped an often-dangerous mindset which today feeds the militia movement and threatens public lands, wild species, and American heritage.
One woman’s enlightening trek through the natural histories, cultural stories, and present perils of thirteen national monuments, from Maine to Hawaii.
A leading expert in public-lands policy, Leshy discusses the key political decisions that led to this, beginning at the very founding of the nation. He traces the emergence of a bipartisan political consensus in favor of the national government holding these vast land areas primarily for recreation, education, and conservation of biodiversity and cultural resources.
Turn back the clock to 1872, when Congress established Yellowstone National Park as an area of unspoiled beauty for the “benefit and enjoyment of the people.” Meet the visionaries, artists, and lovers of the American wilderness who fought against corruption and self-interest to carve out and protect these spaces for future generations. See for yourself how the idea of national parks began, how they’ve changed, and how they continue to define America.
Head to your public library or local bookstore for all these great books about public lands. For hundreds of additional environmental books — including several more on these and related issues — visit the Revelator Reads archives.
Bouley’s new project at Macossa-Tambara in Mozambique is part of an effort to double the African lion population by 2050.
Ecologist Paola Bouley recently spent a day with local women in central Mozambique as they whirled around in colorful skirts, dancing near ancient baobab trees as part of a community ritual. The next day she heard zebras, saw evidence that an elephant had passed by, and followed large lion pawprints down a forest path in central Mozambique.
Bouley with lion tracks. Photo courtesy Macossa.org
The day stirred up echoes of her childhood, when she first felt an innate draw to the natural world. As a 10-year-old in apartheid South Africa, she preferred climbing trees in her backyard, sitting on rock outcrops with her dogs observing the animals.
But the neighborhood around her was rapidly suburbanizing. The untouched landscape was soon paved over.
“I found refuge in nature,” she says. “So when the development happened, I had this feeling of loss.”
Today Bouley finds herself back in nature, helping lead a team of Mozambican and international conservationists and scientists rehabilitating the Macossa-Tambara region, an ecosystem the size of Yellowstone National Park. Centered around a river basin, the area supports lions, leopards, pangolins, a vast forest, and 40,000 people.
“When you’re in an area like Macossa-Tambara, you feel very whole,” says Bouley. “It’s the birthplace of humanity. We all have roots in a place like this.”
In many ways that’s a return to form. Macossa-Tambara sits to the west of Gorongosa Mountain and Gorongosa Park, where Bouley first earned international recognition for her efforts conserving lions and other endangered species.
But the journey between the two sites posed many challenges and nearly pushed her out of conservation altogether.
Gorongosa Park
Bouley found her way to Mozambique through a series of magnetic pulls.
After moving to the United States for college, Bouley studied engineering with a plan to become an astronaut, but she says she left classes feeling that she was being pushed into a soulless military-industrial complex.
A chance poetry class returned her to her interest in the natural world, and she switched majors to biology with a focus on marine conservation. In graduate school and afterward, she worked on a program that conserved a nearly extinct salmon population in the San Francisco Bay.
But missing her native continent — and grappling with persistent seasickness that made being on boats challenging — Bouley returned to Africa in 2010 to work on a large carnivore project in Zambia.
In 2011, when she was waiting to board a flight in a small airport for a holiday in Mozambique, an old park warden asked her if she was going to Gorongosa Park.
Bouley had never heard of it.
Gorongosa Park in Mozambique had once been seen as a crown jewel of Africa. Then its war of independence from Portugal and subsequent civil war — spanning the 1960s to 1990s — ravaged the ecosystem.
Gorongosa was an epicenter of resistance. During the war animals were caught in the crossfire, leaving the park barren.
But the worst part for the park came after the war, a period marked by further unrest that enabled a trophy hunting free-for-all as foreign and national wealthy hunters descended on the land to kill what they wanted, whether for ivory or food.
During this difficult transition period for the country, rural people in poverty and in desperate need of cash would set snares and steel door traps, mainly to kill animals and sell bushmeat to buyers in the city. The traps were meant for warthogs, waterbuck, and antelope, but lions frequently traversed the same trails.
By the time Bouley first heard of Gorongosa, the lion population there had fallen to just 30 big cats, many of whom bore permanent injuries from traps and snares. Common sightings included a lion without a paw or a three-legged lioness hopping around with her cubs because a snare or steel jaw trap had severed her limb. Some lions had gnawed off their own limbs to handle the pain.
But in 2007, after three years of negotiation, the Mozambican government inked a deal with an American tech entrepreneur named Greg Carr to fund the rehabilitation of Gorongosa, an effort called the Gorongosa Restoration Project. Gorongosa also received significant investments from other donors, including the governments and taxpayers of the United States, Norway, Ireland, Canada, and Portugal (according to an email from Carr, he and his contacts via outside fundraising fund the majority of the park’s efforts today). At the time many hoped the infusion of money would lead to jobs for the local community and renewed conservation of the wildlife.
Rehabilitating the Lions
In 2012 Bouley was still traveling back-and-forth between California and Africa. One of her former professors volunteered to connect her with Princeton ecologist Rob Pringle, who was on the board of Gorongosa. Pringle was working closely with Carr who, after pioneering voicemail technology and making many millions in tech, became a powerful name in conservation and human rights spaces (Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights is named after him).
That year, while still a graduate student, Bouley made her first trip to Gorongosa to meet Carr and the local team and embark on a large carnivore rehabilitation program as part of her doctorate to study the restoration of lions. Bouley remembers landing and being “whisked away” by Carr’s entourage, which included a filmmaking crew and biology and conservation legend E.O. Wilson.
By 2014 she’d begun an intended five-year fellowship program at the University of California Santa Cruz, splitting time between California and Gorongosa to focus on the lion population with an academic lens.
One day she heard about a mother lioness named Helena and her cub; a couple of months later, Helena was killed by a snare. Bouley realized then that there wasn’t much she could do in California to help, so she decided to forgo her fellowship and embark on lion recovery at Gorongosa full-time.
Helena and cub before her death. Photo courtesy Paola Bouley.
When it came to the lions, Carr recognized the potential for saving large carnivores. He put his weight behind the project and gave Bouley autonomy to implement her program.
Bouley transferred from the science department to the conservation department, which she says had completely collapsed. She found that wildlife rangers had no training and were being paid close to nothing.
Bouley took on a highly operational role, and their first conservation plan was to put satellite collars on the lion prides. Lions are surprisingly difficult to locate, especially with so few remaining in the 1,500-square-mile park, and the collars would allow Gorongosa to track where families moved — or if they stopped moving.
Snares remained a big threat to the cats at the time. Bushmeat sellers would place traps near watering holes and grazing areas where prey such as waterbucks and warthogs would dwell, but lions also seeking those prey often stumbled into the traps. They even trapped humans; Carr himself got snared one day while he was hiking.
The team needed a veterinarian to subdue the lions and put on the collars, so Carr called in a native Mozambican named Rui Branco to partner with Bouley. The lions slept by day, and at night the conservation team would use a dart gun to safely tranquilize the lions and collar them. If a collared lion’s signal went static for more than 24 hours, Bouley’s team would know whether the animal had been ensnared and could send a rescue team.
The collars worked: Branco and Bouley found themselves all-too-frequently called out to rescue snared lions and other animals. Bonded by the intimacy of treating and de-snaring maimed animals, they would go on to forge a close friendship that ultimately developed into a romantic partnership.
Branco, who saw the need to empower and manage local rangers, soon became the head of law enforcement in the park. He also felt that foreign hunting, conducted legally in certain areas, needed to be controlled to meet conservation goals.
Bouley, working alongside a team of Mozambican rangers and in partnership with Indigenous communities, launched a range of initiatives that included addressing elephant-human coexistence, first-response during the unprecedented devastation of historic Cyclone Idai, and providing support for communities during multiple severe drought and famine periods.
It paid off. They removed more than 20,000 snares and reduced lion deaths by 95%. Today, as a result of that work, the population in Gorongosa has grown to more than 200 lions.
They also eliminated the poaching of elephants over multiple years, established the nation’s first pangolin rescue and rehab center, and laid the foundations for and reintroduced populations of endangered painted wolves, leopards, and hyenas. During that time the number of large mammals in the park surged to more than 100,000 — up from fewer than 71,000 in 2014.
The efforts earned Bouley and Gorongosa international acclaim. But behind the scenes, long-brewing concerns had started to boil over.
Problems in Paradise
“Greg Carr did it,” announced CBS News anchor Scott Pelley.
In 2022 Pelley toured Gorongosa Park for 60 Minutes, a follow-up to a 2008 story about Gorongosa. The satellite collar program had been successful for years in monitoring lion families. But in the 13-minute report, Bouley and Branco were nowhere to be seen.
Bouley says they’d resigned the previous year after clashing with Carr over what she describes as his increasing centralization of power — and the organization not doing sufficient work to protect women.
According to Bouley and people with familiarity of the culture at Gorongosa over the years she was there, this was indicative of another problem: Carr maintained a team of highly paid white male foreigners as senior leaders, including two communications leads, the head of science, and the former head of finance. Locals like the Mozambican rangers were paid far less than expats, a problem that Bouley said she raised frequently with leadership.
Sources say some foreign leaders had a long leash. In 2021 an American employee — now no longer at Gorongosa — was found to be having a relationship with someone who reported to him. He was asked to leave the organization. According to an email written to Bouley by a Gorongosa employee, that employee “kept a journal” about his alleged “sex addiction,” divulging that he “has slept with many of his employees.” According to Bouley, multiple Mozambican women in mid-management positions under the supervision of this employee had suddenly resigned before he was let go.
Despite the former employee’s transgressions, tax records show that the Carr Foundation paid him a consulting fee of $136,000 in 2023 after his departure. Carr says the man’s knowledge of “carbon credits” was critical to a program that would net the park $30 million, so the payment was part of ensuring that intellectual property wouldn’t be lost.
In response to questions about Gorongosa’s sexual harassment policy, Greg Carr wrote over email: “It is a fact that we support women’s rights and we have a strong anti-harassment policy, and people are terminated immediately who violate it. There has been no exception to this.” He cites the fact that this employee is no longer with the organization is a prime example of their anti-harassment policy.
In 2021, faced with the options of reporting their concerns to Carr, human resources, or the Mozambican government or silencing themselves, Bouley and Branco decided to resign.
In an email to Branco on Sept. 3, 2021, Carr wrote about Bouley’s “anger,” writing “she is not the same person now that I met 10 years ago in Chikalango who was happy and enthusiastic about studying and protecting lions. I want that Paola back again. That Poala [sic] was my friend.”
Bouley in an email says, “I have since owned being ‘combative.’ I believe being combative and ‘not a team player’ in an org plagued with racism, abuse of women and Mozambican employees, and bullying is not only a good thing to be, but the right thing to be.”
Changes at Gorongosa
People familiar with the organization say that Carr formed a new oversight board in late 2023 and early 2024, placing Mozambicans and women prominently in leadership positions.
But Bouley remembers one time when Carr told her it was the “Machiavellian in me” that put Bouley at the top of an organizational chart to show a face of women in leadership. Bouley left the meeting disturbed by this tokenization of women.
Over email, Carr shared that “99% of our employees are Mozambican.” The current president of Gorongosa, Aurora Malene, who joined in 2021, and director of human resources Elisa Langa, who joined in 2020, are both Mozambican women. The current head of conservation and program director are Mozambican men. In Carr’s words, he spends most of his time on the “outside” fundraising, and that his giving is “unrestricted” — meaning that the money is in the hands of the leaders who are accountable to the board and the Mozambican government.
Carr shares that Malene is one of the most talented leaders he knows, and that the “Machiavellian” comment was meant ironically. “She’s the boss, and she’s amazing.” He admits that pay equity has been at the forefront of his mind after Bouley left, citing several examples of Mozambican women whose salaries have doubled or tripled since becoming employed with Gorongosa.
We spoke with several current Gorongosa employees. But almost a decade ago, during Bouley’s time there, getting people to go on the record about work at Gorongosa without explicit approval was more difficult. When journalist Stephanie Hanes embarked on a book called White Man’s Game, which showed the darker underbelly of conservation efforts at Gorongosa, several staff at Gorongosa signed ghostwritten letters to the publishers that Bouley now describes as “smearing” Hanes and her work.
Bouley sent Hanes two letters at the time that painted Gorongosa in a positive light. She tells me she “felt pressured” to sign the letters at the time to continue with her work, adding “those who refused to sign were quietly dismissed from his project.” Bouley has since apologized to Hanes for signing those letters.
Carr says in an email that Hanes last traveled to Gorongosa 18 years ago and that her reporting is not connected to practices today.
Under the new leadership, Carr and the female Mozambican leadership team say that the organization is building a hospital in Gorongosa with a hospital and women’s health center, as well as scaling an after-school program to steer at-risk girls away from child marriage. He says the organization is fully run by Mozambicans to whom he has deferred power, and that six out of seven of the people on the board are Mozambicans.
Bouley, remembering her own “Machiavellian” placement on the organizational chart, wonders if this is good marketing and a “facade,” and questions whether the changes have genuinely taken place for the purpose of prioritizing Mozambicans or women as leaders in the organization.
In a Zoom conversation, Gorongosa president Malene reiterated that “our policy is zero tolerance for women abuse but also for any kind of disrespect.” Supporting girls’ education and protecting girls is their north star, and they also reference their community ranger work to distribute food to people currently experiencing hunger.
A New Beginning: Macossa-Tambara
After leaving Gorongosa Bouley had what she calls “limiting beliefs” about what she could achieve next. She was unsure that she could build anything of value again in conservation, worried that her passion could be weaponized against her — and that there would never be anything like Gorongosa. She began working with the Malamba Coastal Collaborative, helping communities to strengthen governance of coastal and marine areas. One area of focus is the Inhambane Seascape, which according to Bouley is under severe threat from oil and gas prospecting and heavy sand mining extraction.
Then, in 2023, the Mozambique government identified a territory double the size of Gorongosa Park in need of restoration, in a region called Macossa-Tambara. There was a high level of poaching in Macossa, especially among the elephant communities and in communal grazing areas. But Macossa remained a critical habitat for pangolins, lions, elephants, and endemic species of zebra and buffalo.
Bouley and Branco, along with a coalition of local Mozambican and international conservationists and scientists, applied to manage the land. In 2024 they won a 15-year extendable agreement with the government to restore and protect a block of land called C13, an area of 1,900 square miles. They then forged an agreement with neighboring block C9, based on their belief that the environment needs to be collectively managed rather than in blocks (or coutadas), which were imposed on the people by colonial, imperial Portugal in the 1920s.
Since then the Macossa-Tambara project has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, allowing the team to hire local staff on the ground and create a fully functional camp with tents, Wi-Fi, energy, and bathrooms. Their partners include the Lion Recovery Fund, the Wildlife Conservation Network, Women Together, and the Mozambique Wildlife Alliance.
Today an estimated 30-50 lions call the greater Macossa-Tambara landscape home. The team believes that with its vast and intact Miombo woodlands, riverine and savanna habitats, and a shared boundary with corridors connecting to national parks, the landscape has enormous potential to support a robust population of lion, prey, and other wildlife.
Despite the poaching pressure, Bouley says it’s not uncommon in Macossa-Tambara to bump into a lion on foot.
“You have to turn on all of your senses, walking through lions, elephants, snakes, and warthogs,” she says “We recently walked into a lioness with cubs, with zero room to run. She roared at us — it was overwhelming and goes right through your bones and into your blood, you think this might be the last moment of life.”
Bouley says lions can be very forgiving, contrary to what mainstream media has us believe. “We usually get many signs before we are ourselves in danger. But we have to tread carefully in some of these places.”
Two greater kudu at Macossa. Photo: Paola Bouley
Associação NATURA, the nonprofit receiving the grants for Macossa, is the only Mozambican-led NGO in Mozambique to ever win a tender for such a project. Bouley, Branco, and their team work directly with local communities on youth well-being and health services, fully supporting a vision where Mozambicans lead.
“There is a high-level of eco-literacy among Indigenous people,” says Bouley. “They know the land more than any of us.”
Malene of Gorongosa says in an email that local people in Macossa are starving, and that “it is no longer considered morally correct to focus only on wildlife.” Bouley shares that one of their most critical projects now is helping communities manage elephants who move through agricultural fields that are also elephant corridors. Because endangered species can move in and out of areas where communities eat crops, the animals can fall quickly out of favor with people whose entire year of food is in those fields.
The team is working on a proactive approach here rather than “old defensive modes,” says Bouley, so conflicts between people and elephants can be prevented before they arise. This includes landscape planning and zonation, to avoid development in the middle of elephant corridors, and deterrents like beehive and chili fences — tactics that Malene and Langa at Gorongosa share.
The Macossa team’s vision is to create a living space where native Mozambicans can authentically lead as environmental leaders, health experts, and peace-building educators. Bouley says that stands in stark contrast to some other conservation efforts. “Even if you’re trained and have degrees, you’re always under an expat or foreign organization that earns 4-10 times the amount that you earn,” she says. “You never have the space to be leading.”
There are moments where Bouley feels blown away by the beauty and immensity, but she also describes a fast-paced and demanding environment where they’re responding to needs of the team and engaging in community development with the approximately 40,000 Indigenous people in the region.
Bouley says Macossa has also provided a comforting space for her and helped to fill the void of what she’d lost.
“We had been so rooted in Gorongosa, I felt like I left part of myself there,” she says. “To be back in a landscape that felt so familiar, it felt like a homecoming.”
Demand for their scales (and their habitats) has pushed these anteaters to the brink. But why aren’t more conservationists working to protect them in the wild?
Species name:
Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica), one of the eight species of pangolins.
The Sunda pangolin is a medium-sized mammal in the order Pholidota. Adults weigh 14-17 pounds and their bodies typically measure 15-26 inches in length, with a tail nearly as long.
Unique among mammals, pangolins are covered by rows of overlapping scales made of keratin. They use their long, sticky tongues while foraging for prodigious numbers of ants and termites; tens of millions of these insects are consumed by a single pangolin annually. They’re also skilled climbers; Sunda pangolins use their claws and semi-prehensile tails to navigate and rest in trees when not foraging on the ground.
Where they’re found:
Sunda pangolins are distributed across eight countries in Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. The species is found in primary and secondary forests, preferring habitats at lower elevations.
Why they’re at risk:
Habitat loss for agricultural development and poaching for illegal wildlife markets are the main contributors to the Sunda pangolin’s precarious status. In some lowland areas of our study areas in Sumatra, they’re confined to marginal scraps of habitat in areas neglected by plantation developers because the land was too swampy to bulldoze.
Pangolin meat is considered a delicacy in restaurants of Asia, particularly in China and Vietnam. Sunda pangolin scales are also used in traditional Chinese medicine, for which they fetch prices as high as $3,500/kg on the black market.
It’s unfortunate that Sunda pangolins, who were the subject of considerable debate as potential reservoirs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, do not receive more attention in their native habitats from researchers. There are still very few comprehensive conservation efforts for the species and, until our surveys in Sumatra, they were infrequently detected during camera trapping that often focuses on larger animals such as tigers and clouded leopards. By placing some of our cameras closer to ground level, we’ve been able to accumulate 65 photographic records of Sunda pangolins at our study sites in northern Sumatra. This represents one of the most robust camera-trap datasets on the species collected to date.
What do we need to do to protect this species?
We need more pangolin champions, both local and international. In particular, there’s a strong need for greater awareness and enforcement of laws that ban their trafficking. If you think you may have seen a product made from pangolin scales, you can report it.
What you can do to help:
As long as pangolins are smuggled to international markets, they will require assistance from international sources. That’s tougher now that we’re in the midst of funding freezes and budget cuts for international conservation work, but you can send letters to elected officials urging them to reinstate support. You can also sign petitions from groups such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
In 2022 Carla Crossman was analyzing the genes of southern right whales when she came across something unexpected.
Decades earlier, in 1989, researchers had used special crossbows to collect small skin samples from 10 southern right whales in their calving grounds off Argentina’s Valdés Peninsula, as part of an effort to assess the species’ genetic diversity. Crossman, a graduate student at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was working with those historical samples when she found herself stuck on the DNA results for one whale in particular: Eau10b.
Scientists studying wild animals need a few key numbers to gauge the health of a population. How many individuals are there, for instance? And, of those, how many are female versus male? This sex ratio reveals whether a population is likely to grow.
After sequencing the DNA for each whale, Crossman had quickly scanned the animals’ chromosomes to guess their sexes. With whales, humans, and other mammals — as well as some fish and even plants like ginkgos and kiwis — males have one Y sex chromosome and one X chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes. Crossman’s data showed that Eau10b had two Xs.
“I had been fairly confident [Eau10b] was a female,” she says.
But when Crossman checked her guess with a routine sex determination technique, called the SRY test, the answer didn’t make sense.
Scientists use this test to determine whether an animal is carrying the SRY (or “sex-determining region Y”) gene, which helps trigger male development. Because the SRY gene only exists on the Y chromosome, testing for its presence is an easy way to deduce an animal’s sex.
Eau10b’s test showed the SRY gene. The whale was male.
Baffled, Crossman turned to a third technique — a test for a set of genes called ZFX and ZFY that show up on the X and Y chromosomes. In Eau10b, Crossman found both genes, confirming that the animal had a Y chromosome. But the whale’s DNA also contained a double dose of ZFX, the gene carried on the X chromosome. The result revealed that Eau10b had a Y chromosome and two X chromosomes, meaning the animal was neither male nor female. Eau10b was an intersex whale — the first of its species known to scientists.
This combination of sex chromosomes occurs when a cell receives an extra copy of the X chromosome during cell division. A similar event can lead to female offspring with three X chromosomes, or males with one X chromosome and two Y chromosomes.
Crossman doesn’t know how many southern right whales with XXY sex chromosomes might be out there. Even Eau10b’s fate is unknown, since the researchers didn’t identify the whale when they took the DNA sample in 1989. But southern right whales can live up to 70 years, so Eau10b may be wintering off Valdés Peninsula to this day.
In humans the XXY chromosome configuration is called Klinefelter syndrome and occurs in less than 0.1 percent of people — most of whom identify as male and may not even realize they have unusual chromosomes.
The terminology and definitions used to talk about intersex individuals have changed over time, especially when referring to people. But according to University of Pennsylvania historian Beans Velocci, who studies the history of sex classification, scientists use the term intersex to describe bodies that, regardless of species, cannot be easily categorized as either male or female. Not all intersex individuals have XXY chromosomes — the term encompasses individuals with a range of characteristics arising from differences in genetics, hormones, and anatomy. An intersex individual may have sex organs or a physical appearance that diverges from the norm. Some individuals, for instance, have a Y chromosome and testes but their cells don’t respond to male sex hormones so their external anatomy is more feminine.
While intersex animals are often infertile and unable to produce offspring to help a population grow, Velocci says that in social species such as whales, intersex animals likely play important nonreproductive roles that benefit the population in other ways.
Studying intersex animals has helped scientists better understand how genes and hormones shape individuals as they develop. Through the process of domesticating livestock, people have known about intersex cows for thousands of years. On Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, islanders nurture a unique strain of intersex pigs prized for their delicate spiraling tusks. More recently, researchers have also documented intersex horses, dogs, moose, sheep, fish, and many different types of invertebrates. Intersex animals are rare across species, Crossman says, but they’re “more common than we historically thought.”
Intersex whales swim below the radar, in particular, because cetaceans have internal genitalia.
“You don’t often get a good look at the genitals of a whale,” Crossman says. “Everything is up inside.” Yet scientists have previously found intersex fin whales, belugas, bowhead whales, short-beaked common dolphins, and True’s beaked whales.
“Every time [researchers] are in the field or looking at specimens, they just keep finding these exceptions,” Velocci says. Scientists “have seen over, and over, and over, and over, that sex is clearly not binary.”
But, Velocci says, scientific education has not adapted.
“XX and XY are [taught as] the foundation that everything else might deviate from, rather than one possible variation among many.”
For certain well-studied species, such as the endangered North Atlantic right whale — a close relative of the southern right whale — researchers guess an individual’s sex by observing behaviors, such as swimming with a new baby, or obvious external characteristics, like the size and color of the genital slit. But for most whales, DNA tests offer the only answer.
Yet Eau10b’s story shows that even the most routine sex tests are not perfect. By reducing sex to the presence or absence of a single gene, SRY, scientists risk overlooking animals that don’t fall neatly into a male-female binary. With recent leaps in genetic research, though, it’s now easier to identify intersex animals by comparing results from different tests.
“We can just start looking,” Crossman says.
When scientists identify the next intersex animal, that information likely won’t change how its species is managed or understood. But that individual, whether a guppy or a whale, will offer another challenge to rigid definitions of sex. What society deems normal is a box carefully drawn around a wild and messy world, and each individual who can’t be contained offers a fascinating glimpse at nature’s true diversity.
Getting started can feel like an insurmountable challenge. But the more you act, the better you’ll get at it — and the more of a difference you’ll make.
As a writer whose novels of suspense often take place in wild spaces around North America, it’s my job to thrill readers while showing them the beauty of nature and importance of biodiversity and preserving habitat and imperiled species.
As a researcher collecting wildlife data to help with conservation in many of those same wild places, I’m terrified about the changes and systemic destruction coming out of the Trump administration.
The author’s latest novel focuses on jaguars, the border wall, and other environmental issues.
Today we face an unprecedented attack on our public lands and environmental protections, and we’re seeing the steps we’d taken toward tackling the climate crisis stripped away. Everyone I talk with expresses fear about what these changes will bring.
Yet many of us still feel so overwhelmed by the steady stream of attacks that we don’t know how to take meaningful action and find ourselves frozen in inaction. We wonder how we can make a difference. In anger, disillusionment, and frustration we watch our elected officials either going along with the destruction or standing by mutely like statues, ineffective against the onslaught.
But we must understand what’s at stake. We must understand what we could lose if the actions of this administration go unchecked.
Parks and Wild Places Under Attack
The onslaught has been constant since the inauguration. The National Park Service was forced to lay off 1,000 probationary employees in February. Another 700 quit after a pressuring, threatening email from Elon Musk’s DOGE claiming they’d be paid through the summer.
DOGE took advantage of the term “probationary” to imply these employees had received poor performance reviews or were “low efficiency.” But DOGE doesn’t seem to understand — or respect — that “probationary” simply means they were new to those positions. Often this doesn’t mean the employees were new to the agency, either, but rather new to that specific position at the agency. Many of the people who were fired had been at their agency for more than 10 years, recently promoted to a new position.
As DOGE removes or forces out these employees, we’re losing valuable expertise. And for the ones who were new to the agency, many were recent graduates with up-to-date knowledge on methodology and technology, so we’re losing that expertise, as well.
This reduction in personnel means that places like Arches National Park had to shut down access to the beloved and popular Fiery Furnace hike due to staffing shortages. Sequoia and Kings Canyon had to suspend all ranger-led programs like nature walks and talks. Many people only visit a park once in their lives, and with rangers unable to reach visitors, vital opportunities to teach people about conservation, the importance of biodiversity, and the value and interconnectedness of nature are being lost. People who might have been inspired to take action for an imperiled species, say, or an environmental issue might leave the park not even knowing that such a problem exists.
During the first Trump presidency, the United States experienced the longest government shutdown in its history. Anyone visiting national parks during those weeks in the winter of 2018-2019 may remember overflowing bathrooms, vandalism, limited or nonexistent rescue and emergency services, closed visitor centers, and other obstacles. Some parks had to shut down entirely. We could very well be headed for these conditions as a norm, if not an even worse situation, where parks could be permanently closed or damaged beyond the ability for tiny, reduced staffs to fix.
And it’s not just the federal workers keeping our parks safe who are getting the axe. Trump has ordered 280 million acres of our national forests to be cut down, with orders to circumvent the Endangered Species Act by using unspecified emergency powers to ignore protections. This will not only eliminate habitat for imperiled species like wolverines, grizzly bears, spotted owls, salmon, and many others, but harm people as well. Intensive deforestation, for example, can pollute the drinking water of local communities.
Congress had appropriated more than $2 billion as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for wildfire prevention and forest management, but the Trump administration’s funding freeze halted that work. With the additional layoffs of 3,400 Forest Service staff, that vital work has been severely curtailed. This affects ongoing forest-maintenance activities like prescribed burns, which must be done seasonally, at times of the year when fire spread threat is low; that window has now closed in many places.
This onslaught on our parks and forests is made worse by the administration’s desire to open more public land and waters up to mining and the fossil fuel industry, including greatly weakening a rule that protects migratory birds from unintentional killing.
Climate and Other Environmental Risks
And this upswing in the production of fossil fuels puts us in an even worse situation. The climate crisis is the greatest existential threat we face today. We’re already seeing devastating wildfires, hurricanes of unprecedented strength, disastrous flooding, swarms of tornados, sea-level rise, drought, and more. The administration wants to make all of this worse by flinging our country into even more fossil fuel production, despite the fact that we already produce more oil than any other country on the planet and are the biggest exporter of natural gas.
Additional efforts we’ve made toward combating the climate crisis are being ripped away. Trump left the Paris Climate Accord. His administration has frozen funds appropriated for clean-energy projects. It has halted leasing for wind-energy projects on public lands and in federal waters and even considered halting renewable-energy projects on private land. Trump told Congress to get rid of tax credits and subsidies for electric vehicles. Programs designed to research and combat climate change affecting marginalized communities have ended, and the very vocabulary addressing climate change has been expunged from many federal websites.
The administration even wants to interfere with state-run programs, such as California’s high speed rail project, its mandate to end the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035, and New York’s congestion pricing program.
To make matters worse, the new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, wants to roll back regulations that protect us from pollution and has moved to reject the pivotal 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to our health, referring to climate change science as a “religion.” He says that moving forward, the EPA will no longer account for the cost of resulting climate change-driven disasters such as devastating storm damage, wildfires, drought, flooding, and more.
None of this is remotely based in science. It’s not logical. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Zeldin claims that getting rid of EPA regulations will make cars less expensive and businesses cheaper to run. But that isn’t the EPA’s role: It doesn’t exist to make things cheaper. It exists because of situations like the Cuyahoga River being so polluted it caught on fire in 1969; it exists to prevent acid rain; it exists to clean up cancer-causing toxins like the Missouri dioxin contamination calamity, one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
The EPA exists to save lives and keep us healthy.
We Must Act
Some Americans believe the spin that’s being put on all these disastrous changes — that they’re somehow in our best interest. I don’t know how to get those Americans to see the truth behind the spin.
Other Americans, in fact most Americans, realize that all this is a calamity.
But many people still aren’t taking action. They aren’t writing letters or calling their representatives. They aren’t attending protests or sharing news articles.
Many aren’t reading the news at all. They’ve tuned out. They say it depresses them.
And I get that. But not reading the news and not doing anything aren’t going to make this magically go away. The only thing it’ll do is let these bad actors and bad policies win.
Think it’s depressing now? Imagine when our forests are decimated, when soot from smokestacks is choking the air, when our drinking water is polluted, when we can no longer escape to a national park because it’s been shuttered or permanently damaged, when a visit to a national forest is marred by strip mines and oil derricks that are leaching poison into the soil.
But these terrible events aren’t set in stone yet. Repealing EPA regulations, for instance, will require a period of public comment, and the time to act is now.
When I’m interviewed on podcasts and when I hear from my readers, people are always asking me what they can do to help wildlife and the environment. They say they feel hopeless and unsure of how to make a difference.
As I tell them, the key is to just start taking action.
It may seem insurmountable at first, like pushing an old, rusted car that has lain out in someone’s field for years. The first time you push against it, you hear the rusted wheels give a little squeak. It moves an inch. The next time you push it, the rust breaks free and you push it a foot. Taking just a small initial step will make you feel better. You’ll feel emboldened to do more. You’ll see that you can make a difference, and actions will come easier and more efficiently. Soon that car will be rushing down a hill— all you have to do is steer it.
We don’t have the luxury to simply tune out and turn away. Not if we’re going to protect our environment, our beautiful public lands, and the magnificent animals we share this planet with.
We’ve got to encourage individuals who care but aren’t speaking up to join us. We’ve got to impress upon them what’s at stake. So talk about what’s going on. Share easy ways people can act like 5calls.org, ResistBot, and No Voice Unheard. Encourage people to donate to nonprofits like the Center for Biological Diversity (publisher of The Revelator), who are taking legal action to block these illegal orders.
If your friends or family are overwhelmed by the news, suggest sources like WTF Just Happened Today to get an encapsulated view of what’s going on. The Substack Chop Wood, Carry Water is a great resource for camaraderie, support, and convenient, laid-out actions people can take to speak out.
Speaking out works. Public outcry has made the Trump administration back down several times during its first term and again over the past two months. These victories give us time and breathing space to keep fighting.
In the meantime, just as we did during the first Trump administration, we need to urge our local and state governments to do the right thing — to protect our state and local parks and open spaces, to fund renewable energy projects, and to keep environmental regulations in place.
In the words of writer and conservationist Wallace Stegner: “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” These are our public lands, and we need to protect them.
We need to stand together. We need to resist as never before.
The cartoonist will shine a satirical light on some of the biggest environmental problems of the day, including the extinction crisis.
Tom Toro is among the rare cartoonists whose work has become an internet meme. His most famous cartoon, which you’ve probably seen more than once, shows some raggedy survivors huddled around a post-apocalyptic fire:
Toro has tackled other environmental issues in his cartoons for The New Yorker, Yale Climate Connections, and other publications, his own syndicated comic strip, “Home Free,” as well as his children’s picture books. Some of his cartoons will be collected later this year in his new book And to Think We Started as a Book Club…
Now he’s focusing his satiric lens on the extinction crisis — and The Revelator. Exclusive Tom Toro cartoons will soon appear in our newsletter every 2-3 weeks.
“I’m enjoying this too much,” Toro says. “I finally have an outlet for my lifelong love of animals and nature.”
Amidst a comeback for the red-cockaded woodpecker — the South’s not-always-welcome neighbor — a new legal status and presidential administration create uncertainty.
For decades I observed the paradox. The landscape around the coastal North Carolina home where my parents retired was being developed at a rate that I have never seen anywhere. Yet right across a frenetic, four-lane state highway from my parents’ house sat a 63,000-acre state refuge — a little gem of native habitat supporting a longleaf pine savanna and a unique wetland called pocosin or Carolina bay.
The Holly Shelter Game Lands are home to many species, including Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) and red-cockaded woodpeckers (Leuconotopicus borealis), a bird first listed as endangered in 1970 under a precursor to the federal 1973 Endangered Species Act.
When developers wedged a Dollar General between the game lands and the highway a few years ago, I trusted the Endangered Species Act to protect the red-cockaded woodpeckers living nearby.
Then, in October 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it had “downlisted” the red-cockaded woodpecker from “endangered” to “threatened” — still at risk, but in better shape thanks to ongoing conservation efforts.
That’s typically considered good news, but when I heard it, my heart sank. I could see the vise tightening on the red-cockaded woodpeckers of the Holly Shelter Game Lands.
Each time I visited North Carolina, acres of longleaf pines (Pinus palustris) had disappeared. Some were replaced by the looming piles of dirt that would become a highway bypass, meant to ease traffic and speed commuters between two of the state’s biggest cities, Wilmington and Jacksonville. Other acres of trees gave way to massive apartment complexes that turn their bland backs to the highway.
How could the species not need more protection than ever?
An Unpopular Bird
When I first told my parents, years ago, that their neighbors included a federally endangered species, the red-cockaded woodpecker, my dad waved his hand dismissively toward the birdfeeders in their backyard.
“Those woodpeckers are everywhere,” he said.
He wasn’t alone in that sentiment. In the 1990s a lot of people in North Carolina thought there were entirely too many red-cockaded woodpeckers around. The birds were, in some peoples’ minds, preventing development and logging on private property.
“They called it the woodpecker wars,” says Jeff Walters, a biology professor at Virginia Tech and a leading expert on red-cockaded woodpeckers. Rumor had it that property owners were killing the birds to avoid having their land tied up by conservation.
Peace came in 1995 with a new federal policy, the Safe Harbor Program, which allows voluntary agreements between the Fish and Wildlife Service and private landowners. The landowner promises to improve habitat for federally endangered species, and the government promises not to increase restrictions on the land, even if the population of endangered species grows.
Today they are called Conservation Benefit Agreements, and while they were created in North Carolina for red-cockaded woodpeckers, the popular program is used for many species across the country. “Even in Guam,” a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean, Walters says.
But even with this program, the woodpeckers continued to suffer and decline.
For Want of a Tree
Longleaf pine forests once blanketed over 90 million acres in the southeastern United States, from eastern Texas to southern Virginia, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service. This was the red-cockaded woodpecker’s empire.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers depend on longleaf pines and on a specific habitat — the longleaf pine savanna. They will build cavities in other species of pine, but they strongly prefer longleaf.
The woodpecker relies on the specific biology of the longleaf pine. It’s the only woodpecker to build cavities in living trees. The longleaf pine’s susceptibility to red heart disease, a fungus that rots a tree’s inner wood, makes it easier for the birds to carve out their homes.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers also depend on the longleaf pine forest’s unique ecosystem, which relies on frequent, low-intensity fires and lacks a midstory, that layer of trees in between the shrubby ground cover and the soaring pines themselves.
With these requirements met, the woodpeckers are resilient and thrive even on military bases. “I’ve seen a bird fall off a tree in the middle of artillery training. It just flew back up, not bothered at all,” Walters says.
But European settlers started cutting down longleaf pine forests almost as soon as they landed. Cut-down forests were replanted with faster-growing pine species. Longleaf pine seeds couldn’t sprout when wildfires were suppressed. The birds declined with the forests, and by 2006 longleaf pine forests had hit a low of just 3 million acres — about a 97% decline over their historic numbers.
Today longleaf pine savannas are one of the nation’s most endangered ecosystems, but conservation efforts across the Southeast have boosted the extent of longleaf pine forests to over 5 million acres, according to the Natural Resource Conservation Service. That increase is a success story — but it represents a mere splinter of the forest’s former glory.
Meet the Neighbors
I wanted to meet my parents’ threatened neighbors, so on a warm, sunny Saturday in February, I walked down a dirt road in the Holly Shelter Game Lands looking for them.
David Allen, a wildlife biologist who spent his entire professional career working with red-cockaded woodpeckers, including 28 years with the North Carolina Wildlife Commission, had given me a complicated plan that guaranteed a sighting.
But finding a red-cockaded woodpecker proved much simpler than Allen’s plan: I just looked around when I heard a gentle tapping.
As I walked along the road, I could see where the game lands staff had painted broad, white stripes on trees with woodpecker cavities. I kept walking and heard faint tapping. I could see a black-and-white woodpecker clinging to a pine trunk. But had I found the right bird?
Red-cockaded woodpeckers look a lot like their relatives, hairy woodpeckers (L. villosus), who are common and found all over North America. Both are robin-sized, have black wings with white spots and a white belly. The red-cockaded woodpecker’s belly has black spots. Allen told me to focus in on a woodpecker’s “cheeks” to tell them apart, looking for the broad white patch on a red-cockaded woodpecker’s head, compared to the two thin white stripes on the hairy woodpecker.
Focusing my binoculars on the correct pine trunk in a forest of identical pine trunks was the most difficult part. Then I located it. This bird’s cheek had a broad white patch.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers are average-looking, but their behavior is exceptional. They raise their chicks in family groups — mostly brothers, but also sisters — helping to guard the nest, keep the eggs warm, and bring food to the chicks.
This is rare among birds. Walters says the acorn woodpecker, a western species, does something similar. Crows also raise their young in family groups.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers drill sap wells around future and current nest cavities. It can take anywhere from several months to over a decade to get the dripping pine sap just the way they like it. The sticky sap protects the chicks inside from snakes.
A marked tree with woodpecker cavity. Photo: Madeline Bodin
As I walked through Holly Shelter, I saw lots of small, round cavities in trees. The helper birds roost in those holes. Two holes were surrounded by greenish-gray sap — potential nest cavities.
“Breeding territories are a patriarchy,” Walters says. Sons hang around to inherit a good, sappy nest cavity from their fathers. Sometimes a nest cavity may be started by a grandfather and first used by a grandson.
The combination of family breeding and multigenerational construction could make for telenovela-worthy drama, but on that warm February day, the bird was just theatrically flicking a piece of bark off the tree now and then as it searched for insects.
I looked for a long time. Then, with a flash of dark wings, the woodpecker was gone.
The Downlisting
Walters, who was an academic advisor on the Species Status Assessment that provided the scientific foundation for the downlisting of the red-cockaded woodpecker from endangered to threatened, believes the downlisting is warranted.
“We found that most populations, about 75%, have increased,” he tells me.
Holly Shelter is in the smaller group of populations that haven’t grown, he adds.
Why are red-cockaded woodpecker populations thriving in some areas and struggling in others? “It comes down to forest management,” Walters says.
A healthy forest for these woodpeckers starts with prescribed fire: intentionally set, controlled burns made by trained land managers. By preventing the midstory trees from growing, managers encourage red-cockaded woodpeckers to stick around. Without fire they tend to abandon an area.
Evidence of fire. Photo: Madeline Bodin
Walters says populations also tend to increase when wildlife managers create artificial nest cavities in appropriate habitat near existing family groups.
The Holly Shelter staff does both these things, says Alexander Parker, North Carolina Wildlife Commission’s species and habitat biologist for the site.
The federal government has provided most of the funding for this work. And it’s unclear, between the downlisting and executive branch spending cuts, what will happen with this funding in the future.
While Walters remains confident about the downlisting, the data included in the status assessment acknowledges that most red-cockaded woodpecker populations are small and have not reached their recovery targets.
Even the official announcement of the downlisting in the Federal Register said, “The current status of red-cockaded woodpecker partially meets the 2003 downlisting criteria.”
Partially? I emailed the Fish and Wildlife Service’s red-cockaded woodpecker recovery coordinator, John Doresky, for clarification. But I wasn’t allowed to speak with him, and I didn’t receive specific answers to my emailed questions.
The people at the Southern Environmental Law Center have some theories about the downlisting. An investigation by SELC and Defenders of Wildlife found documentation of a regional Fish and Wildlife quota to downlist, delist or not list 30 species a year as a “wildly important goal.”
“That cast a shadow over the proposal to downlist the species,” says Elizabeth Rasheed, a North Carolina-based staff attorney at SELC.
It’s bad news for the entire region, since the Southeast is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.
When the downlisting was proposed in 2020, in the waning days of the first Trump administration, SELC wanted to make sure it didn’t go too far. Rasheed says, “SELC was most concerned about the loss of protections against killing, harassing or otherwise harming the birds — by cutting down nesting trees, for example.” At the time the Trump administration had removed that protection for species classified as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.
SELC and other conservation organizations asked for these protections in their comments to the federal agency. When the woodpecker was officially downlisted in the waning days of the Biden administration, specific protections against harm were indeed added, even though the Biden administration had also restored the protections for all species listed as threatened.
Because the protections were specifically written into the downlisting, those protections will continue to protect red-cockaded woodpeckers even if, as Rasheed and others expect, the Trump administration removes protections from threatened species yet again.
There Goes the Neighborhood
There are at least two towns in North Carolina where red-cockaded woodpeckers live among people’s homes, but my parents’ town isn’t known to be one of them. With the downlisting, federal funding woes, and the local construction boom, I wanted to believe my dad when he said that “those woodpeckers are everywhere” in his housing development. In the face of so many threats, I hoped that red-cockaded woodpeckers could survive even in a place with streets, lawns, and houses.
But I also didn’t trust my father’s birding skills; he’s limited to the species that are also baseball team mascots. So we looked at photos. He pointed to a picture of a dark, crow-sized woodpecker with a bright red mohawk — a pileated woodpecker, a common backyard bird. I wonder how many of them were killed in the woodpecker wars.
Allen told me that even for the people who live among red-cockaded woodpeckers, 90% of the small woodpeckers in their yards are the common ones — hairy and downy woodpeckers, and sapsuckers.
Still, I stick by my idea of my parents’ neighborhood as a harbinger of the birds’ fate. This busy little corner of the North Carolina coast, with its road construction and boxy apartment complexes, is not exceptional. U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the Southeast — the red-cockaded woodpecker’s former empire — is the nation’s fastest-growing region. It’s not just the Holly Shelter red-cockaded woodpeckers who are being squeezed.
I’m concerned about that squeeze because I’ve learned that the conservation success of the red-cockaded woodpecker is delicate. It relies on things that are no longer certain, such as federal funding for prescribed fires. Also, nearly half of all red-cockaded woodpeckers live in national forests. An April 4 order targets national forests for timber cutting, even overriding endangered species protections — another uncertainty.
The future is tenuous for all of us, not just woodpeckers with a unique lifestyle. A red-cockaded woodpecker once picked itself up off the ground after being shaken off a tree by artillery fire. That kind of resilience is valuable, no matter what your conservation status or your species.
Protecting civilian and military firefighters — and the communities they serve — requires a comprehensive strategy, including disclosure of the chemicals in new firefighting foams.
Every week the lawyers at my firm talk to civilian and military firefighters whose health has been threatened by the very tool they relied upon to protect other peoples’ lives: aqueous film-forming foams.
For decades aqueous film-forming foams were the gold standard in fire suppression. But like many seemingly foolproof solutions, these fire extinguishers bear a dark legacy through the carcinogenic toxic chemicals called per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Since its invention by the U.S. Navy and the 3M company in the 1960s, PFAS-based firefighting foams, especially aqueous film-forming foams AFFF, were promoted as “safe as soap” until PFAS’s hazardous nature came to light. AFFF is highly effective against flammable fuel fires, but the chemicals that make this foam a lifesaver also cause devastating health and environmental damage.
You’ve probably heard of the alarming nationwide problem of PFAS contamination of our drinking-water sources and their link to various types of cancer, including testicular and kidney, and altered immune and thyroid function.
While almost 97% of Americans are affected by the toxic chemicals, mainly through drinking water, firefighters are disproportionately affected. These hardworking, risk-taking first responders have found themselves directly exposed to PFAS chemicals for decades. The consequences are devastating. Firefighters have a 9% higher risk of developing cancer than the general population, mainly because of military and civilian fire departments’ extensive use of aqueous film-forming foam.
The ‘Forever Chemicals’ and Their Cost
PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” are a large family of human-made substances used in a variety of industries like firefighting and for the production of a wide range of household products. They do not break down naturally and can accumulate in water, soil, and even the human body.
The Environmental Protection Agency has made it clear that there is no safe level of chemical exposure — implying that even low amounts of these substances can pose significant risks over time.
The Environmental Working Group’s updated PFAS contamination map reveals that military installations and industrial facilities have the highest levels of PFAS in their groundwater. Due to the persistence of PFAS in the surroundings, contamination from these sites can easily spread to nearby water systems and endanger communities who rely on the same aquifers or water sources.
This makes PFAS a critical public health and environmental issue, especially for firefighters whose exposure is often unavoidable.
As the realization of the dangers of PFAS grows, so does the push to find safer and more sustainable alternatives. Yet the major question is whether these new formulations truly represent a breakthrough in safety or if they could merely be another regrettable substitution.
The Rise of PFAS-Free Alternatives
The market now offers a range of viable and biodegradable options that promise to reduce the environmental and health risks associated with traditional foams. Many of these formulations adhere to stringent international standards and have already been adopted globally. By April 2019 over 90 fluorine-free foams were produced and made available by 22 different manufacturers. These products vary in composition, but a notable innovation is the emergence of soy-based foams that are seen as more environmentally friendly.
Yet such promising benefits still warrant caution. AFFF was hailed not long ago as nonhazardous — a claim that has since been debunked with the discovery of severe long-term health risks. This may similarly happen with the alternatives, which are not completely guaranteed risk-free.
For instance, some solvent-laden formulations — though PFAS-free — still contain chemicals that can irritate the respiratory system, cause skin reactions, and lead to liver toxicity with prolonged exposure. Meanwhile, soy-based foams may trigger allergic reactions in some individuals, specifically those with sensitivities to the legume.
A study published in May 2023 discusses concerns about hydrocarbon surfactants and other non-fluorinated surfactants commonly found in fluorine-free foam formulations. A 2011 medical study demonstrated that long-term exposure to hydrocarbon surfactants leads to hypotension, mental deterioration, respiratory failure, acute kidney injury, and arrhythmia.
Such studies are necessary, and scientists call for more research to investigate the safety and efficiency of these alternatives.
What Should Be Done Next?
Certain states, such as Alaska, have already banned PFAS-containing firefighting foam. However, state laws do not apply to military bases. The Department of Defense planned to transition to fluorine-free firefighting foams by October 2024, but the deadline was extended. The DOD has been investing in studies to find suitable replacements that conform to its military requirements in terms of efficiency but do not pose environmental and health concerns.
A significant concern linked to the quest for a suitable fluorine-free foam alternative is that many products claim to be greener and safer for the environment and human health. But manufacturers are still not required to disclose all the chemicals they use. Without proper third-party testing, knowing what some foam products contain is hard. To address this, the Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization Clean Production Action in 2020 launched the first eco-label certification program for PFAS-free firefighting foams, the “GreenScreen Certified Standard for Firefighting Foams.” The program ensures that foams claiming to be PFAS-free are indeed free of these added chemicals and thousands of other chemicals of high concern. Several states have already turned to the GreenScreen certification program.
As thorough research and testing necessitate time and resources, we need a more comprehensive and collaborative approach involving all responsible parties, such as the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, research institutes, and firefighting foam manufacturers, to develop a suitable replacement foam that does not pose a risk to firefighter’s health and does not contaminate the environment.
Furthermore, finding a suitable replacement foam is only the first step. While there are guidelines, we need an overarching policy that fire departments can follow throughout the complex transitioning process, including training on handling the new foam, what kind of new equipment would be necessary, and how to decontaminate old equipment.
The rise of PFAS-free alternatives is a positive development, as they appear to be better and safer. But it’s crucial to remember that “safer” does not always mean “safe enough.”
As the world gets hotter and wildfires more severe and deadlier, firefighting foams — and firefighters — will become more important than ever. Let’s look out for their future — and ours.
This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
