A Few More Environmental Books From 2025 We Couldn’t Let You Miss

Before ending the year, we wanted to highlight this eclectic assortment of reading gems we couldn’t fit into our earlier book reviews.

This year most of our “Revelator Reads” columns presented new books covering themes like environmental activism, climate anxiety, wildlife, and public lands.

But not every book fits into a neat box or arrives in time to make the cut. Here’s a year-end wrap-up of terrific books — many of which showcase success stories and solutions — that we didn’t want to close out 2025 without mentioning.

We’ve adapted the books’ official descriptions below, and the link in each title goes to the publisher’s page. You should also be able to find any of these titles through your local bookseller or library.

The Owl Handbook: Investigating the Lives, Habits, and Importance of These Enigmatic Birds

by John Shewey

Charismatic, intriguing, and misunderstood: The Owl Handbook is a beautifully photographed, thoughtfully researched, and accessible guide to these enigmatic, captivating creatures. Traditions of the owl as a harbinger of doom, spirit guide, and mysterious symbol for many cultures, mythologies, and superstitions have projected our fear of the unknown onto these nocturnal birds. But these wondrous birds are so much more than shadows in the night. Lifelong birding enthusiast John Shewey leads us through an exploration of owls’ cultural impact as seen in folklore, providing in-depth profiles of 19 owls of North America and a survey of 200 more across the globe, giving advice on how to respectfully observe and protect these magnificent birds, brought to life by hundreds of full-color photographs.

Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia and China

by Jonathan C. Slaght

The forests of northeast Asia are home to a marvelous range of animals — fish owls and brown bears, musk deer and moose, wolves and raccoon dogs, leopards and tigers. But by the final years of the Cold War, only a few hundred tigers stepped quietly through the snow of the Amur River basin. Soon the Soviet Union fell, bringing catastrophe; without the careful oversight of a central authority, poaching and logging took a fast, astonishing toll on an already vulnerable species. Just as these changes arrived, scientists came together to found the Siberian Tiger Project. Led by Dale Miquelle, a moose researcher, and Zhenya Smirnov, a mouse biologist, the team captured and released more than 114 tigers over three decades. They witnessed mating rituals and fights, hunting and feeding, the ceding and taking of territory, the creation of families. Within these pages, characters — both feline and human — come fully alive as we travel with them through the quiet and changing forests of Amur.

Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate

by Susannah Fisher

How can we adapt to climate change? Let’s examine the key problems and hard choices that lie ahead for the global community in this practical approach to coping in a time of chaos. Adaptation has been incremental, with governments and institutions merely tinkering around the edges of current systems. This will not be enough, and this book explores the hard choices that lie ahead concerning how people earn a living, the way governments manage relationships between countries, and how communities accommodate the displacement of people. For example, should people be encouraged to move away from the coasts? Can global food supplies be managed when parts of the world are hit by simultaneous droughts? How can conflict be handled when there isn’t enough water for a population? Based on the latest research, interviews with experts, and practical examples from across the world, Sink or Swim discusses frankly the choices that lie ahead and how we can have a livable planet.

Roam: Wild Animals and the Race to Repair Our Fractured World

by Hillary Rosner

All over the globe, animals are stranded — by roads, fences, drainage systems, industrial farms, and cities. They simply cannot move around to access their daily needs. Yet as climate change reshapes the planet in its own ways, many creatures will, increasingly, have to move in order to survive. This book illustrates a massive and underreported problem: how a completely human-centered view of the world has impacted the ability of other species to move around. But it’s also about solutions and hope: How we can forge new links between landscapes that have become isolated pieces. How we can stitch ecosystems back together, so that the processes still work, and the systems can evolve as they need to. How we can build a world in which humans recognize their interconnectedness with the rest of the planet and view other species with empathy and compassion.

The Whispers of Rock: The Stories That Stone Tells About Our World and Our Lives

by Anjana Khatwa

Can you hear the stones speak? The question seems absurd. After all, rocks are lifeless, inert, and silent. Earth scientist Anjana Khatwa asks us to think again and listen to their stories. Alternating between modern science and ancient wisdom, Khatwa takes us on an exhilarating journey through time, from origins of the green pounamu that courses down New Zealand rivers to the wonder of the bluestone megaliths of Stonehenge, from the tuff-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, to Manhattan’s bedrock of schist. In unearthing those histories, Khatwa shows how rocks have always spoken to us, delicately intertwining Indigenous stories of Earth’s creation with our scientific understanding of its development, deftly showing how our lives are intimately connected to time’s ancient storytellers. Through planetary change, ancient wisdom, and contemporary creativity, this book offers the hope of reconnection with Earth. You won’t simply hear rocks speak, you will feel the magic of deep time seep into your bones.

We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate

By Michael Grunwald

In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often-infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done—and trying to do it.

The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit

by Priyanka Kumar

As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruits, especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree — and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild? In The Light Between Apple Trees, Kumar takes us on a dazzling and transformative journey to rediscover apples, unearthing a rich and complex history while illuminating how we can reimagine our relationship with nature.

The Girl Who Draws on Whales

Written and illustrated by Ariela Kristantina

A graphic novel for middle-level children. Set in a fantasy world, several centuries after “The Great Flood,” Sister Wangi and younger brother Banyu live in a sea-village. Wangi has a special bond with the Great Whales that visit their sea-village, and they allow Wangi to draw on their backs. Sometimes they return with new drawings on them, maybe there are other sea-villages around and they are sending her people messages. None of the elders listen to her. One day, a new whale arrives in the village alone, wounded, and dying. This whale has a new drawing on its back that doesn’t look like the previous drawings. Inspired by this mystery, Wangi vows to investigate. Although forbidden by her parents and the village elders, Wangi along with her brother embark on a wondrous journey to investigate where the drawings are coming from only to find much more than they were expecting.

A Window Into the Ocean Twilight Zone: Twenty-Four Days of Science at Sea

by Michelle Cusolito

For children and adults to share and care together and learn about our magnificent ocean biodiversity. Join scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and their international partner organizations on a research voyage to study the ocean twilight zone. Science writer Michelle Cusolito takes us along for the journey of a lifetime. From boarding the ship and unpacking equipment to facing massive storms in the middle of the Atlantic, this book details the fascinating techniques used to study the deep ocean as well as the daily details of life aboard a Spanish research vessel. Meet remarkable people, discover amazing animals, and learn more at sea than you ever imagined.

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Finally, here’s a set of companion books from Charlesbridge Publishing that parents and children can read and discuss together — a great opportunity to support our future guardians of biodiversity.

Turtles Heading Home!

by Liza Ketchum, Jacqueline Martin, and Phyllis Root

The waters around Cape Cod used to cool off gradually, signaling to sea turtles that it was time to swim south. However, with climate change, the ocean stays warm too long and cools off too quickly, making the turtles too cold to migrate. Turtles Heading Home! follows the efforts of conservationists as they rescue the turtles, nurse them back to health, and release them into warmer waters. The operation involves hundreds of people, from the volunteers patrolling the beaches to the veterinarians looking after the turtles to the pilots who fly the turtles south. All of them share the goal of helping save the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, the most endangered sea turtle in the world.

Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out!

by April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Annie Patterson

Sea turtles face many dangers as they grow, eat, travel, and breed. In this basic science dramatization of one female turtle’s challenges, acclaimed nature writer April Pulley Sayre highlights the role that humans have in helping this endangered species. Previously published, this story has been re-illustrated by the artist Annie Patterson. A great read-aloud or read-along choice for environmental awareness, this child-friendly book provides information on sea turtle conservation efforts for seven species of sea turtles and how they and grown-ups alike can help save these beautiful creatures.

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Enjoy these inspiring and informative reads as we prepare ourselves for the new year. You can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives.

And let us know what you’re reading: Drop us a line at [email protected].

Piping Plovers Inspire Volunteer Conservationists Despite New Threats From the Trump Administration

Proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act and park staffing cuts are putting the endangered coastal bird in danger.

For a piping plover, access to safe habitat means the difference between merely staying alive and preparing for the next generation.

Chris Allieri knows this dynamic all too well. He saw the federally endangered shorebirds — and the drama around protecting their breeding habitat — up close for the first time in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I saw people up on the dunes, kites, drones, off-leash dogs,” he says. No one was paying any attention to the birds’ need for a protected space. “There were no signs, there was no fencing.” He says he “couldn’t believe” the petite-sized birds were essentially left to fend for themselves.

Piping Plover

Allieri’s epiphany led to the creation of the NYC Plover Project, the first volunteer nonprofit in New York City dedicated to the birds. A communications professional by trade, he now spends most of his free time as the unpaid executive director of the nonprofit, where he has four paid employees on staff.

The heart of the program, Allieri says, lies in the hundreds of volunteers who care for the piping plovers every day of their nesting season, from March to September, after which the birds and their young head down the coast.

Similar stories unspool across the country.

Piping plovers (Charadrius melodus) have found their home across the beaches of the United States, trailing down the Atlantic coast, around the Great Lakes, into the northern Great Plains. Between nesting and migrating, piping plovers can be seen and heard across dozens of U.S. states, dashing across the sand in quick spurts of energy and sounding off with their signature bell-like peeps.

While the species remains federally endangered (they’re designated as “threatened” in the Atlantic Coast and Great Plains), the piping plovers’ population have been rebounding in some areas due to the stewardship of wildlife agencies, as well as various volunteer groups.

But even with those major conservation wins, piping plovers today face a new challenge: the Trump administration.

Cuts and ‘Harm’

Allieri points to firings at federal agencies that manage national parks and public lands as a threat to plover management.

Conservation experts in Michigan warned that piping plovers “will die” due to the administration’s cuts, as reported by MLive.

In Maine staff levels for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service partners were down in 2025, which required Maine Audubon and other nonfederal partners to do more work, according to Laura Minich Zitske, director of Maine Audubon’s coastal birds project. The organization’s funding for 2025 was set in 2023, but Minich Zitske says they are “anxiously waiting” to see how funding plays out for next season.

On top of budgetary and personnel issues, the Trump administration has also proposed a rollback of the Endangered Species Act, the foundational law that has provided a critical safety net to protecting threatened species and their habitats.

The Trump administration wants to change the way the law is interpreted, specifically the definition of the word “harm.” Historically the law has upheld harm to include any attacks on a species’ habitat. Now the administration is looking to narrow that definition to only recognize killing the protected species.

“Harming habitat is also harming endangered species,” says Jewel Tomasula, national policy director of the Endangered Species Coalition, an environmental nonprofit that helps connect conservation groups like the NYC Plover Project to the national network of conservation groups to share strategies. “Species need a safe place to live. They need places to find food, to reproduce, and that is so integral to species survival,” she says. “Habitat loss is also the driving factor for extinction for [the] majority of species, especially our terrestrial species.”

Problems for Plovers

This potential definition change is really concerning to the NYC Plover Project, says Allieri.

“A plover without habitat cannot exist. A plover doesn’t just go to another beach. It doesn’t just go to a wetland or go to a marsh. It doesn’t nest in a tree… This is a very specific species that has a very specific breeding range and it’s already been winded down to within an inch of its life to where it can survive.”

Allieri says the group already sees the birds having difficulties due to sea-level rise and narrowing beaches, which has caused competition within the species and with other beach-nesting birds.

Piping Plover

“We’re seeing purgation of nests by other birds,” he adds. “We’re having a lot of nest loss early in the season, and this will only continue.”

Wherever conservationists work to protect wild species, uncertainty now runs high.

“It’s sort of hard to wrap our heads around all these challenges to the ESA could influence how we manage endangered species demands,” says Minich Zitske. She worries about the potential that the plovers’ habitats could be damaged while the birds are away on migration, which would not count as a violation of the ESA if the “harm” rule changes. Maine Audubon has been working to monitor piping plovers since 1981 and manages most of the nesting sites across the state with some help from their partners at the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge.

General concerns are echoed by the group’s volunteer base. “I do think that there is a perception that violations of the ESA will not be prosecuted or taken seriously,” says Minich Zitske. “This is a longstanding concern, but it has increased. Volunteers feel discouraged when they are working hard to help our most vulnerable species alive when those in power are reluctant to engage or enforce laws.”

The Importance of Volunteers

Out of all Maine Audubon’s efforts, more people volunteer to work with piping plovers than any other program. Some work as general monitors, while others focus on educating beachgoers or identifying new nesting sites.

“A lot of our volunteers are especially committed currently because they do want to demonstrate the public support for the Endangered Species Act,” says Minich Zitske.

The NYC Plover Project has also seen that wave of support for the birds grow over time.

“​​That first season we were really just like, ‘we have to get some boots on the ground.’ We have to get some volunteers out there [to] just help educate and to be arms and legs for the park service,” Allieri says.

Piping plover (Charadrius melodus), Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

They started with about a dozen volunteers but escalated quickly.

In their second season, they were named volunteer group of the year by the National Park Service, beating out groups from huge West Coast national parks.

Their fifth season — which just wrapped up — had an estimated 300 to 400 volunteers patrolling the stretch of beaches along the Rockaways and looking after about 100 piping plovers whose breeding sites are protected by temporary fencing or structures put up by the NYC Parks Department.

“We’ve done nearly 18,000 hours of volunteer time,” Allieri says.

Their volunteers are positioned at each end of the enclosure, sometimes from 6 in the morning till 9 o’clock at night.

Plovers Meet the Public

In addition to directly protecting the birds, the volunteers help spread the word about the species and efforts to protect them. “We’ve connected with literally tens of thousands of people who have come to the beaches in the Rockaways,” Allieri says.

If you live around an area with piping plovers, you may have heard some hate against the small birds, sometimes through the form of “piping plovers taste like chicken” bumper stickers.

Talking to people who don’t understand the necessity of plover enclosures is part of the job for volunteers across the nation. It occasionally causes debates about people not getting enough beach access due to the fenced-off sections.

That’s less of an issue in Maine, due to the state’s strong cultural wildlife values, according to Minich Zitske.

In New York City, an area known for its attitude and abundance of tourists, these conversations can get heated, but Allieri says that’s starting to change.

“Sometimes people show up to the beach ready to fight — like they’re ready to fight about a bird — but that’s fewer and far between,” he says. “I think with each season we are seeing more and more support and more and more advocacy on the part of everyday New Yorkers who really are rooting for the plover.”

NYC Plover Project volunteers are all trained in de-escalation tactics to address these sorts of situations, which includes giving folks the benefit of the doubt. Allieri thinks the majority of people — even those who are trying to bust volunteers’ chops — are reachable by introducing them to the bird. “We’re gonna be able to point out a piping plover and maybe even a chick or a fledgling to you,” he says.

Spreading Their Wings

As the NYC Plover Project grows, it’s expanding its programs to include more enhanced coastal ecosystem management and advocacy.

“Even though our core program of our volunteer engagement will always be with us, we are moving into public schools and we have a full education program,” Allieri says. “Then we also have community engagement with our local elected officials — not just on the federal level, but also city and state level as well.”

Allieri has less patience for elected officials who act like limited beach access or ditching controversial firework shows are merely “equity” issues.

“There’s some real public safety concerns out there,” Allieri says. “Dare I say, temporary beach closures are not on the list of injustices.”

As threats to endangered species ramp up, the NYC Plover Project is looking to do more year-round programming.

“We are realizing quickly that we are no longer just a seasonal operation,” Allieri says. “We haven’t been for years now.” They start to wrap up their volunteer recruitment at the end of the year, and by Jan. 1 they’re fully in the planning stages for next year. In the offseason, they keep the public engaged with a volunteer Slack channel, webinars, mailing lists, and their popular social media pages.

Part of their latest program expansion includes making the public aware of the similar battles various endangered species face.

“The piping plover has more in common with like grizzlies and gray wolves than most people know,” Allieri says. “Don’t tell [plovers] that they’re tiny. I think that they think that they’re grizzlies.” They’re currently working on a campaign that ties these similarities together.

While federal leadership’s actions may paint a different picture, the shorebirds have found support across party lines.

“In terms of the voters in the Rockaways, it is everybody from one of the most prevalent Trump-supporting districts to the opposite end of the spectrum,” Allieri says. “We are not hearing one word on the ground about the need to remove endangered species protections. There are a lot of Republican community members who come up to us on the beach and ask, ‘How are the plovers doing?’”

Flying Forward

While volunteers’ level of commitment is up to the individual, Allieri and Minich Zitske both voice worries about potential burnout, especially with the current attacks on endangered species.

“I have concerns that if this continues, at what point will people just start to give up? I don’t know. I hope not, but it’s hard to know the future, especially the way things are going,” Minich Zitske says.

Still, even with what sometimes feels like an unsustainable dedication level, Allieri is certain that people will keep showing up for piping plovers, even if the harm definition change is enacted.

“What would the plover want us to do? The plover would want us to fight like hell. That’s what we have to do right now.”

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

Previously in The Revelator:

Studies: Extreme Weather Fueled by Climate Change Is Adding to Bird Declines

There Is No Such Thing as a Fail-Safe Nuclear Power Plant

Yet Trump and megacorporations are gambling with new nuclear reactors to supercharge artificial intelligence (and profits).

For more than three decades I was the director of grants for a science foundation that funded, in large part, environmental protection. Over that time my attention increasingly turned toward news about huge nuclear power plant disasters, numerous radioactive waste leakages here and abroad, and the lack of a permanent U.S. radioactive-waste storage facility. Through subscribing to many science publications over these decades, I recognized that much of the reporting on these nuclear issues was contradictory, misleading, or incorrect, especially in the lay press — a trend that continues today.

The U.S. currently has 54 nuclear power plants with 94 operating reactors in 28 states. Soon there could be more: President Trump plans to resuscitate the nuclear power industry by building 10 new nuclear reactors, which are scheduled to begin operation as soon as 2030. To make that happen he is speeding up the approval and construction processes while simultaneously laying off more than 2,000 Department of Energy staffers — including Nuclear Security Administration employees.

President Donald Trump signs executive orders regarding nuclear energy, Friday, May 23, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

Oh, and he’s simultaneously decapitating the green energy industry with $22 billion in clean energy projects cancelled just this year, according to an analysis at The Hill.

It all amounts to a huge gamble, not just for the country but for people’s lives — and the planet.

Companies That Profit From Nuclear Power Find Nuclear to Be Safe

Just last summer the U.S. Department of Energy published a long, congratulatory article about Trump’s four executive orders to speed along this process of licensing and launching new reactors. Similar cheerful articles come from the Nuclear Energy Institute, World Nuclear Association, International Atomic Energy Agency, and other organizations that make money from nuclear power.

Are people who do not work in the nuclear power industry similarly happy about this nuclear resurgence? Recent public-opinion surveys by organizations such as Pew Research Center, Bisconti Research, and Gallup suggest that a majority of Americans support nuclear power.

But there’s a problem if you look closer: For example, the Gallup poll asked participants “Do you favor or oppose nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity for the U.S.?” The results yielded a 61% finding that Americans favor nuclear power “strongly” or “somewhat.” What there is no sign of in Gallup’s website discussion about this poll is questioning respondents about whether they ever heard of Chernobyl, Fukushima, or Three Mile Island, or know about the many radioactive leaks from plants in numerous locations in the United States and abroad, or that there’s nowhere to safely store radioactive waste that can remain active for millennia.

In the press coverage of this Gallup poll there was no sign of reporters who actually went beyond the press release summary to the Gallop website to examine the questions asked, find out how the survey audience was selected or how many people were in the survey that claims its results apply countrywide. Nonetheless, the results were found to be worth reporting as fact at Forbes, The Hill, Grist and others, including The Motley Fool.

The Problem Is Everywhere

Today approximately 440 nuclear power reactors operate in 31 countries. An additional 70 are under construction, and more than 110 are in various planning stages around the world, according to the World Nuclear Association.

Megacompanies investing billions in partnerships with nuclear plant owners to accommodate their energy-guzzling AI ambitions include Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

As we’ve seen from the disasters at Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl, there’s no such thing as a fail-safe nuclear plant, but these profit-making companies are prepared to take the gamble.
Three Mile Island Plant Site

Around the world there have been at least 140 incidents of nuclear power plants malfunctioning in 17 countries, many of them with multiple incidents.

Each plant’s site will react in its own unpredictable way to earthquakes, floods, lightning strikes, wildfires, radioactive leaks, wartime bombs and terrorists, as well as more common human errors of construction and maintenance.

The companies building and operating these plants understand the risk, but as with all gambling, the house always wins. In the United States, reactor owners are limited to $500 million liability for damages by the Price Anderson Act. Retroactive insurance-payment increases can raise coverage, but ultimately the federal government — i.e., the taxpayer — covers damages that rise to hundreds of billions of dollars.

In Japan and Ukraine

To understand the risks, we need to keep the biggest nuclear disasters to date in mind, including the 1986 power plant explosion in Chernobyl, Ukraine, which was caused by errors in the design of the plant’s reactors, as well as errors in their maintenance.

The blast released 400 times more radiation than the Hiroshima bomb, contaminating 40,000 square miles with radioactivity. Residents’ descendants won’t be able to return to their family homes in the 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone for another 24,000 years.

The also disastrous 2011 nuclear plant meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, was caused by an earthquake’s tsunami flooding the plant. Explosions followed the four reactor meltdowns. This should not have come as a surprise: More than three dozen earthquakes have hit Japan since just the turn of the century, and the country registers tremors every day due to its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a subduction zone that causes the constant grinding of two plates in the earth’s mantle.

Estimates of Fukushima’s cleanup costs start at about $540 billion. But when you include the ripple effect throughout Japan’s lands, waters, and economy — along with the 30-40 year duration of the cleanup — costs will soar to 23.4 trillion yen or $1.6 trillion dollars, according to The Japan Times (in an article that was subsequently deleted from its site but remains accessible through Archive.org). An estimated 880 tons of radioactive fuel debris remains at the Fukushima plant and the release of treated, radioactive waters will go on for at least 30 years.

As with Chernobyl, cost estimates do not and cannot accurately include all financial losses that will drift through these economies for decades. While not much information has been published about Chernobyl-caused losses, we do know that Japan does not include indirect economic losses such as the car exports that plummeted after the meltdown, long-term tourism declines, the cost of clearing the ghost towns, years of healthcare expenditures, the cost of contaminated food-fish from untreated radioactive water that leaked into the ocean and soils, and more.

In the United States

The most radioactively polluted site in the world is right here in the United States: the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, launched in 1944 and still home to 53 million gallons of nuclear waste. Cleanup estimates range from $364 billion to $589 billion with a 2086 completion date, according to a 2025 report from the Department of Energy.

At our 94 operating reactors, the radioactive waste produced is stored right at these facilities, many of which have been known to leak this waste. In 2017 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a list of 43 leaks at 65 nuclear power plants, but it includes only tritium leaks. In 2024 the commission put out a second such list in which the number of known tritium leaks dropped to 37 without clear explanation. Since then leaks have been reported state by state, in the absence of a comprehensive list.

What we do know that there is no safe, permanent radioactive-waste storage site in the country — despite the prolonged effort to establish one at Yucca Mountain, Nevada — nor will there ever be a 100% safe way to transport this waste.

Any nuclear reactors operating today — or soon to be built — will become permanent additions to the landscape. It’s not possible to truly “shut down” nuclear reactors after an accident or after they have run their projected life spans. They remain radioactive indefinitely and will always require flawless maintenance of containment domes — assuming we design domes that can function indefinitely. For example, iodine-129 and cesium-135, both produced by nuclear plants and found in nuclear waste, have half-lives of 15.7 million years and 2.3 million years respectively.

While We Build New Nuclear Plants We Waste Energy

Proponents claim we need energy output from these new reactors, but we could achieve the same goals by using energy more efficiently — something we’re still not very good at. Here are some key sources of wasted energy:

Cars and trucks: According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, in 2022 there were a total of 278,870,463 trucks and cars — mostly occupied by a single individual — registered to drivers. Most of these vehicles are bigger and heavier than those in other parts of the world, thus consume more energy according to The Economist.

Electricity: Lights that burn all night, including in empty buildings, are a well-known phenomenon in this country and the problem is increasing at the rate of almost 10% a year. This can be traced to a number of problems: Indifference and ignorance are high on the list, as are inadequate policy and insufficient coverage in the press about the damage done.

Food: The Food and Drug Administration estimates that between 30% and 40% of our food supply becomes waste. In 2010 FDA research found that 133 billion pounds of food worth $161 billion turned into garbage.

Artificial intelligence: AI is extremely energy consuming, and our skyrocketing commitment to it will send energy demand soaring. Power consumption for AI data centers here is anticipated to amount to almost half of the growth in electricity demand by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA finds that “Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined…”

Trump Betrumps

As Trump plans to reboot the nuclear power industry, relaunching the Indian Point plant is on the agenda. It shut down in 2021 after 59 years in operation. From 1973 to 2016 there were at least 14 accidents — radioactive leaks, fire, and equipment failures — as well as numerous incidents of sending contaminated water into the Hudson River. This is the plant that’s 25 miles from New York City. If a disaster were to strike Indian Point, there is no safe way to evacuate the city’s millions of residents and the millions more that live nearby.

The Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, about 170 miles from Manhattan, is also set to reboot as early as 2027. The plant’s 1979 meltdown, caused in large part by human error, brought about the shutdown of one of its two reactors just three months after it launched. Two million people were exposed to low-level radiation — insufficient to harm them, due only to good luck. The cleanup took from 1979 to 1993 and cost $2 billion.

In his enthusiasm for nuclear power, President Trump withdrew the U.S. from participation in the United Nation’s international Paris Agreement climate accord on the first day of his second term. With this move he retracted our promised $4 billion contribution to that effort. Trump’s EPA also halted $7 billion in federal grants for solar panels allocated to low- and moderate-income families.

Meanwhile Trump makes frequent claims that climate change is a “hoax.” At the recent U.N. General Assembly convening, in a speech before 150 world leaders, he called the wind energy and solar power alternatives to nuclear a “scam” and “con job.”

His alternatives are anything but clean: Trump has issued numerous executive orders to expedite oil (which can cause spills), natural gas (well known for its explosions), and coal mining (a major cause of air pollution).

As the president aggressively abandons renewable energy, both the Ukraine and Japan calamities raise a question: Can one such calamitous nuclear power plant accident wipe out all the savings allegedly cheap nuclear power has brought to the damaged country?

In light of the decades-long — and for some elements millennia long — recuperation process, the question is unanswered.

And unanswerable.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

Previously in The Revelator:

‘A Bright Future’ Offers a Not-So-Bright Idea for Solving the Climate Crisis

Shade Equity: To Understand the Problem — and the Solutions — Look to Tucson

Heat deaths here have soared 650% in the past decade. Addressing inequality will save lives.

Residents of Tucson all know the relief of stepping into the shade on a hot desert afternoon.

In Tucson, where summer temperatures often soar above 110 degrees, shade can feel like a lifeline. Yet in too many parts of our city, especially on the Southside, shade is scarce. Concrete and gravel dominate yards, streets, and gathering places, while tree canopy coverage remains limited.

For residents who rely on walking and public transit, the absence of shade turns a simple errand into a serious health risk. In 2023 alone there were 990 heat-related deaths in the state of Arizona. Compared to a decade ago, this is a 650% increase in the number of preventable fatalities attributable to extreme heat exposure. This risk is compounded by the heat records being broken in the spring and fall, exacerbating the risk of heat exposure.

We’re a group of graduate students in the field of public health at the University of Arizona who have learned how infrastructure directly affects health outcomes. Living, working, and studying in Tucson has made us aware of how urban planning can either protect or endanger communities. Affluent neighborhoods often enjoy tree-lined streets and shaded bus stops, while historically marginalized communities endure relentless sun exposure.

This is not just an inconvenience; it’s an environmental justice problem that compounds existing health disparities.

Tucson’s Million Trees initiative has made significant strides thanks to the local leadership and a $5 million federal grant. However, recent actions by the Trump administration have halted this progress and more initiatives in the city. Cuts to diversity and equity programs have led to the cancellation of a $75 million urban forestry grant nationwide, potentially limiting future support for cities like Tucson. On top of that, efforts to boost domestic timber production and recent layoffs in the U.S. Forest Service risk undermining tree maintenance and climate resilience.

As Tucson faces increasingly severe summer heat, communities must look beyond temporary relief measures to sustainable solutions. Water stations and cooling centers have become first-line defenses, yet they operate under limited hours, require maintenance, and often go underutilized due to distance or lack of public awareness.

In contrast, expanding shade through canopy trees and permanent shade structures provides passive, continuously available cooling with minimal energy demand. Funding for these projects is already supported by the city’s Green Infrastructure Fee on monthly water bills, making the investment fiscally feasible.

Trees not only reduce ambient temperatures but also filter air pollutants, mitigate stormwater runoff, and enhance community well-being. Although the initial cost may seem significant, the long-term public health gains, reduced energy use, and environmental resilience far outweigh the expense. For Tucson’s future, shade must be recognized as critical infrastructure.

Increased community involvement is crucial for the success of shade equity initiatives. We must empower residents to shape their environment to move beyond top-down approaches.

 

This can be achieved through several avenues.

First we must educate residents about shade equity through accessible public awareness campaigns that highlight the tangible benefits of shade and the very real risks of heat exposure.

Residents must also be directly involved in the shade infrastructure projects’ planning and design. This can be accomplished through inclusive workshops, user-friendly surveys, and the establishment of representative community advisory boards.

We should create robust volunteer programs that incentivize residents to participate in tree planting, shade structure maintenance, and sustained community outreach. Genuine partnerships between government agencies, nonprofit organizations, local businesses, schools, and local artists are key to leveraging diverse resources and expertise.

Perhaps most importantly, we must equip and encourage residents to become active advocates for shade equity policies and increased funding at the local and state levels by organizing community meetings and town halls and supporting the development and implementation of comprehensive shade master plans that prioritize the equitable distribution of shade resources as a matter of fundamental justice.

Cities across Arizona — like Phoenix, Yuma, and Nogales — face similar patterns of shade inequity, and this issue extends nationwide. From Los Angeles to Atlanta, low-income neighborhoods, communities of color, and unhoused folks consistently have fewer trees and less shade infrastructure. Internationally, cities in the Global South are also grappling with rising temperatures but lack adequate cooling solutions. This puts the unhoused populations at risk of heat-related illness and increased risk of mortality, especially in cities like Tucson.

As urban areas everywhere adapt to the climate crisis, equitable shade must be part of the conversation around sustainable, healthy city design. And as climate change intensifies and heat waves grow more deadly, access to shade must be recognized as a basic public health need.

Even as the Trump administration threatens to cut funding from climate initiatives, Tucson’s commitment remains firm. Shade must be treated as essential infrastructure, not a luxury. With every tree planted creating shaded space, we take a hopeful step toward a more livable Tucson — and other overheated cities across the planet.

Previously in The Revelator:

As Heat Deaths Rise, Planting Trees Is Part of the Solution

Spandrels of the Sea: From Evolution’s Byproducts to Blueprints for Equity and Representation in Ocean Conservation

Unintended consequences can become indispensable — in architecture and in efforts to preserve life on Earth.

Conservation isn’t always about grand designs. Sometimes the most powerful tools are byproducts of other work — unintended consequences that become indispensable.

Think of the spaces that emerge between a dome and its arches. No one designs these triangles. They simply arise, an inevitable feature of the structure. Yet in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, the Alhambra in Spain, or the Taj Mahal in India, these spaces are decorated with lavish mosaics of gold and glass, or with paintings and iconography so beautiful that they become the focal point of the entire building. They’re what biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin called spandrels.

Spandrel at La Mezquita de Córdoba, Andalucía, Spain. Photo: Brent Miller (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In 1979 Gould and Lewontin borrowed this architectural term to challenge the idea that every biological trait is a perfect adaptation honed by natural selection. In their essay, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm,” they argued that some traits arise as inevitable byproducts of structure or developmental constraints. Eventually these spandrels may be repurposed with a new function.

Once you understand the idea, you can’t help but see spandrels everywhere. Not just in cathedrals, but in our own systems. Conservation, like nature, generates byproducts. Some fade into obscurity. Others, once decorated with meaning, become indispensable to our work.

The Spandrel in Evolutionary Biology: Origin and Reasoning

The mid-20th century was dominated by what Gould and Lewontin called the adaptationist programme: the assumption that every trait must be adaptive, shaped directly by natural selection. If birds had red plumage, it must confer advantage. If humans had chins, they must aid chewing or sexual display. The tiny arms of a Tyrannosaurus rex must have served a purpose.

Gould and Lewontin resisted this Panglossian optimism, named for Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, who insisted, in a jab at the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz, that all features exist in “the best of all possible worlds.” They urged scientists to consider whether traits might simply be incidental byproducts of other evolutionary processes.

When domes meet arches, the leftover triangular spandrels are unavoidable. In the same way, some traits in organisms show up simply because of limits in embryonic development, links between traits, or even random chance. Later these features may be put to use in a process known as “exaptation,” a term introduced by Gould and paleontologist Elizabeth Vrba in 1982.

Classic examples of biological spandrels abound. Male nipples, for instance, persist as a feature retained from our shared embryology with females. The famously tiny arms of T. rex may have shrunk as an unintended consequence of its skull and jaw enlarging over evolutionary time. Human cognition itself, manifested in art, religion, and music, may be a by-product of neural circuits originally evolved for language and pattern recognition. Even the panda’s so-called “thumb,” a modified wrist bone, began as a structural constraint before being coopted into a remarkably effective bamboo-stripping tool.

Together these cases reveal how traits that emerge incidentally can be repurposed — “decorated,” as Gould might say — into vital adaptations.

From Biology to Conservation: The Ocean’s Decorated Spandrels

If spandrels remind us to look for unintended byproducts in organisms, the metaphor helps us analyze our own conservation practice. Ocean conservation produces spandrels too: outcomes not deliberately designed but emerging from structural constraints, cultural forces, or institutional habits.

Some fade away. Others are decorated — infused with meaning until they become central to our storytelling, fundraising, and advocacy. Just as San Marco’s spandrels hold shimmering mosaics, conservation’s byproducts often bear the weight of public engagement.

Decorated Conservation Spandrels

    • Charismatic megafauna: Fascination with whales, dolphins, and turtles wasn’t engineered. It arose culturally through storytelling, religion, aquariums and documentaries. Conservationists later took advantage of that, making these species ambassadors for bycatch reform, fisheries policy, and climate resilience.
    • Citizen science: Born from scarcity, it began as a stopgap for limited funding and capacity. Today it empowers stewardship, ownership, and participatory democracy.
    • Conservation tourism: Shark dives and manta snorkeling began as commercial novelties. Reframed, they became conservation tools, turning spectacle into empathy and tourists into donors.
    • Ocean days and hashtags: UN “international days” were bureaucratic spandrels. Activists decorated them into rituals for fundraising, awareness, and norm-building.
    • #OceanOptimism: Emerging from burnout and doom fatigue, #oceanoptimism wasn’t a designed strategy. But once decorated, it reframed narratives, energized practitioners, and invited new communities into ocean care.

Hunting for Spandrels: A Framework for Practice

Conservation often produces unexpected side effects: some trivial, some troublesome, some surprisingly useful. Instead of ignoring or lamenting these byproducts, we can deliberately scan for them and ask: What hidden opportunities might they hold?

That’s the heart of what I call “spandrel hunting.” Here’s a practical way to do it:

    • Identify the byproducts: Notice the extra things our work generates, from viral memes to volunteer enthusiasm to funder metrics.
    • Diagnose spandrelness: Ask whether these features arose by design or simply as incidental outcomes.
    • Scan for coopt potential: Explore how unintended products can be repurposed into advocacy or engagement tools.
    • Watch for self-defeating spandrels: Stay alert to “false friends” like paper parks, plastics-only campaigns, or other distractions that undermine deeper goals.
    • Institutionalize the scan: Build spandrel-hunting into evaluations, retrospectives, and funding cycles so it becomes routine practice.

In this way conservation can reframe failure and side effects into raw material for innovation — irritants that can be polished into mosaics.

Case Study: Sharks, Spectacle, and the Spandrels of Charisma

For much of the 20th century, sharks were cultural villains. The movie Jaws and its imitators spurred fear and culls. No strategist would have proposed sharks as conservation icons.

And yet spandrels emerged. Discovery Channel’s Shark Week (1988) was a ratings ploy, not a conservation platform. Its lurid fearmongering carved sharks into public consciousness. Simultaneously, coastal fishers turned to tourism as economies shifted. Shark diving in the Bahamas, South Africa, Fiji, and Palau revealed living sharks’ economic value: millions annually, far surpassing fishing revenue.

Conservationists decorated these spandrels. NGOs injected science into Shark Week narratives. Operators partnered with researchers, blending spectacle with tagging and data collection. Even Jaws author Peter Benchley recanted, becoming a shark advocate.

But the risks remain. Sensationalist media still perpetuate myths. Some tourism practices alter shark behavior. And the megafauna focus risks neglecting less telegenic species.

The shark spandrel offers several lessons. First, visibility matters, even when it begins in a negative light, as with the fear stoked by Jaws and early Shark Week spectacles.

Second, economic pivots, such as the rise of shark tourism, can transform these unintended byproducts into powerful conservation assets.

Third, cultural narratives can be “hacked” to shift public perception, turning once-vilified predators into ambassadors for ocean health.

Finally, there’s a caution: Over-decorating a spandrel can mislead or distract, as sensationalism sometimes overshadows science or diverts attention from less charismatic but equally threatened species.

Future Spandrels: Byproducts as Pathways to Justice and Representation

The spandrels of tomorrow won’t just be about memes or metrics. They’ll also emerge in the spaces where conservation bumps into questions of justice, representation, and whose stories are told. The future spandrel landscape is rich with opportunities to elevate Indigenous stewardship, amplify BIPOC and LGBTQ voices, and redirect cultural byproducts into tools for equity as well as ecology.

    • Ocean plastic cleanups: Photogenic and headline-friendly, but often narrow and sometimes scientifically shaky. They can, however, be reframed as on-ramps into bigger justice debates about petrochemicals, environmental racism, and the frontline communities most hurt by waste and toxic industries.
    • Hashtag and meme culture: Algorithmic byproducts that can be harnessed as equity pivots, amplifying hashtags like #BlackInOceanScience, #IndigenousKnowledge, #LandBack, #BlackBirders, or #QueerInScience alongside micro-actions and entry-level engagement.
    • Funder metrics: Donor-driven and often ill-fitting, but when redirected to track inclusion (Black-led organizations, Indigenous stewardship roles, community participation), they can make funder logic itself a lever for equity.
    • Doom fatigue: Burnout as a psychological spandrel. When acknowledged and reframed, it can open the door to movements like #OceanOptimism that decorate despair with agency. Highlight how communities of color and Indigenous groups have practiced resilience under centuries of ecological and cultural stress.
    • 30×30 proliferation: Risks creating “paper parks,” but even shallow commitments can normalize the idea of large-scale protection and provide political footholds for deeper action. Coopt 30×30 momentum to emphasize Indigenous-led MPAs and community tenure rights, reframing the spandrel of empty targets into footholds for lasting sovereignty and equity.
    • Conservation tourism shifts: Once sold as selfies and thrills, now reframed as ambassador programs that foreground Native guides, local narratives, and traditional ecological knowledge ensuring visitors learn whose waters they’re in and whose stories they’re hearing.
    • Blue economy buzzword: Vague and overused, but politically potent. The “blue economy” can be hacked to prioritize equity and sovereignty, Indigenous tenure, small-scale fishers, and coastal communities too often sidelined in ocean development schemes.
    • Influencer science: Deliberately cultivate and platform Black, Brown, and Indigenous scientists as digital ambassadors on TikTok, Instagram, and beyond. Invest in training, partnerships, and amplification so that the algorithmic by-product of “influencer science” broadens whose faces and voices represent ocean knowledge.

By treating these cultural and institutional byproducts not as noise but as raw material, conservation can reroute attention and energy toward hidden representation gaps, making equity and inclusion inseparable from innovation and impact.

Final Thought: Decorating Our Own Spandrels

The genius of Gould and Lewontin’s spandrel metaphor was not to deny adaptation but to guard against easy narratives. In evolution not every trait is adaptive. In conservation not every tool was designed. But accidents can be opportunities. Side effects can become strategies. Byproducts can become mosaics.

Many of our most powerful tools (charismatic species, citizen science, Shark Week) began as spandrels, emerging as a result of cultural and economic factors and only later becoming central to the work we do to save our ocean.

The ocean’s future may depend on our ability to keep scanning for these spandrels: to notice the byproducts of our work, ask what might be coopted, and decorate them into mosaics of resilience. If we decorate tomorrow’s spandrels with justice and inclusion, the mosaics we leave will reflect not only resilience, but whose voices and visions truly belong in the ocean’s future.

Our basilica of conservation is still under construction. The dome rises. The arches stand. The spandrels are waiting.

Previously in The Revelator:

Incredible Journeys: Migratory Sharks on the Move

Conservation’s Hot Topics of 2026: From Artificial Intelligence to Mirror Molecules

Forests, soil, plastic waste, war debris, and a darker ocean also appear on the annual ‘horizon scan’ addressing conservation priorities for the years ahead.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence technologies, molecular manipulation, and literal sea changes are among the top issues a team of conservation experts anticipate will affect biodiversity in the year ahead and beyond, according to a study published this month in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

The study, the latest in a series of “horizon scan” papers written annually since 2009, brings together insights from more than two dozen experts from around the world. Led by Cambridge University ecologist William Sutherland, the team identified 15 technological advances and societal trends that conservation scientists, policymakers, and practitioners would do well to keep an eye on as they work to protect biodiversity in the months and years ahead.

Tropical Forests Forever

Incredibly rich biodiversity hot spots and unparalleled contributors to climate stability, intact tropical forests are top priorities in global conservation efforts. Protecting them, however, is a challenge, as economic pressures push for destruction. A new plan called out in the horizon scan aims to succeed where others have not. International partners led by Brazil are establishing a $125 billion Tropical Forests Forever Facility investment fund, whose income will be used to reward countries in the tropics that protect forests. Benefits over current strategies include providing more self-determination to affected nations, supporting protection efforts by local residents, and improving transparency and alignment with goals. Whether the fund will be effective, however, will depend on how the rules are set and enforced and who bears the risks and costs.

Weight Loss = Biodiversity Win?

Increased use of drugs that mimic a hormone known as GLP-1 helps people to suppress their appetites and reduce consumption of food, especially beef and highly processed items. This in turn stands to reduce demand for cropland and pastures — and with it, pressure to clear biodiversity-supporting habitat, use water for irrigation, and deploy biodiversity-harming agricultural chemicals. Though the impact is not yet measurable on a global scale, continued growth in adoption of these medications could carry positive implications for protecting intact ecosystems and even rewilding current crop and pasture lands.

Slowing the Bloom

The timing of flowering in plants is important for synchronizing pollen and egg production with the seasonal presence of pollinating insects. It also helps protect plant reproduction from adverse weather and align crop production with seasonal human needs. As climate changes, weather aberrations are disrupting the environmental signals and circumstances plants use to determine when to flower and potentially the ability to produce an abundance of seeds. Screening some 16,000 chemical compounds, scientists have discovered a few that slow the process of flowering in plants. If applied judiciously, the authors of the horizon scan write, these could help threatened species reproduce, maintain crop productivity in the face of climate disruption, and reduce weed competition with desired crops — all with potential benefits to biodiversity.

Mining Meets Marine Microbes

What will happen to ocean ecosystems if and when deep-sea mining becomes big business? No one knows for sure — but with contracts in place for exploratory work at more than 30 sites around the world, we may soon find out. Some 560 square miles, or 1.5 million square kilometers, of deep seafloor and ocean ridges have been targeted for possible extraction of minerals, posing threats to the microbes that thrive in these deep-sea ecosystems and potential trickle-up risks to other life forms above them. Scientists are recognizing the urgency of better understanding the poorly studied communities at the bottom of the sea and developing strategies to maintain their function as mining plans proceed.

Micro AI

Advances in hardware and software are making it possible to create miniature devices that can tap into artificial intelligence independent of the internet and electrical grids. These “tiny machine learning” (TinyML) technologies could benefit biodiversity by helping people monitor wildlife in remote places, assess soils, detect disease-transmitting organisms, scout for poachers, and more. On the downside, such technologies would likely be more restricted than networked systems in their ability to store data, limiting the ability to preserve information and use it for comparative purposes.

Light-Powered Chips

A much-publicized downside to artificial intelligence is the amount of energy, water, and materials it demands. New optical chip technologies, which use characteristics of light rather than electricity to transfer information, stand to enhance energy efficiency and processing speed, and optical neural network technologies can accelerate processing even more. Application of the technologies not only holds potential to reduce AI’s demand for energy and other resources, it also could facilitate conservation monitoring in remote locations. That said, the horizon scan authors caution that it’s not clear whether even substantial efficiency gains will outpace or even keep pace with increased use of AI sufficiently to mitigate its adverse environmental impacts.

Digital Twins: Friend or Foe?

Increasingly sophisticated information systems are making it possible to run highly detailed models of current and future conditions that incorporate predictions about human behavior as well as physical settings. This could bring conservation benefits by providing realistic scenarios of possible outcomes of different actions that can then be used to guide decisions. On the flip side, the computational capacity required to produce them could bring adverse environmental impacts associated with increased use of energy and land. Such realistic prognostication could also adversely alter the behavior of financial markets and other real-life systems in unpredictable ways.

Fiber Optic Drone Debris

Thousands of miles of fiber optic cables litter the ground in the Russia-Ukraine conflict zone. Deposited when jettisoned from drones or by drones that crash, the cables — which aid in communication between controllers and devices — pose threats to wildlife through entanglement and chemical and microplastic contamination. And it’s not just Ukraine: As drones become more widely deployed for both war and peaceful pursuits, the prospect for harm spreads to new venues and new biodiversity hot spots. Efforts to produce biodegradable alternatives and/or clean up cables before they accumulate could help reduce the adverse effects on birds, mammals, and other life forms.

Dry Land – Getting Drier

Recent studies cited by the horizon scan revealed that the amount of moisture in the world’s soils — particularly in southern South America and central North America, Africa, and Asia — has been declining, likely due to climate change. Because organisms who live in or grow from soil depend on moisture for life, the change stands to destabilize ecosystems. The problem could interact with land use trends in complex ways — potentially worsening as climate mitigation efforts increase vegetation and/or encouraging additional land conversion to agriculture as reduced water availability worsens conditions for crops. To date this water loss is estimated to have caused the world’s oceans to rise more than a centimeter; it’s likely to only become more severe if today’s climate change trajectory continues.

Messing With Soil Microbes

A growing trend around the world involves injecting fungi that associate with plant roots into agricultural soils to boost crop health and productivity while minimizing use of harmful pesticides and fertilizers. However, the efficacy of this approach as currently practiced is suspect, and unintended consequences are unknown. Even as the practice grows, the jury is still out regarding implications for sustainable agriculture, soils, and ecosystem health.

From Plastic Waste to Good Taste?

The ubiquitous use of plastic has produced literal mountains and oceans of plastic waste — and there’s no end in sight as the durable material builds up faster than recycling opportunities arise. But a new opportunity to use it to help mitigate another environmental challenge could hold promise for reducing the threat of plastic to wildlife and their habitats. Researchers have discovered a way to feed one type of plastic, polyethylene terephthalate, to bacteria that in turn can be processed into a nutritious food for people or livestock. Bringing this innovation to scale and expanding it to encompass other plastics could reduce both plastic waste and pressure to clear biodiversity-rich lands for food production.

Now You Seaweed, Now You Don’t

Diverse species of macroalgae, aka seaweed, are linchpin elements of marine ecosystems around the world. They also face multiple threats, including climate change, overgrazing, commercial farming, and a lack of sustainable management. As a result, their overall extent, currently covering more area than coral reefs and coastal wetlands together, is expected to decline even as their range expands poleward. Insufficient attention to understanding and managing marine macroalgae, the horizon scan warns, bodes poorly for the future of these ecosystem superstars and the biodiversity they support.

Darkness in the Depths

Earth’s oceans are getting darker, and that could spell trouble for the creatures who call them home. Satellite data recently revealed that in 2003, light penetrated 21% farther beneath the surface of the water than it did in 2022. Possible causes for the decline include increased nutrient and particulate inputs and changes in water circulation, surface temperature, and sea ice. Although the implications for ocean ecosystems are unknown, scientists are concerned that the loss of light could alter the ability of phytoplankton to capture sunlight and so to serve as the food base for zooplankton, fish, and other marine creatures.

All Eyes on the Southern Ocean

What’s up with the Southern Ocean? For decades, surface waters were becoming less saline. But about a decade ago, satellite imaging began to show an increase in salinity, and no one knows why. The surprising shift may exacerbate polar ice melting and is expected to alter circulation of water in the oceans and the trajectory of climate change in unknown ways. These changes, the horizon scan warns, are likely to affect species, ecosystems, and the ability of people — particularly those of island nations — to adapt to climate change.

Mirror Life

Some biological molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids, have “handedness” – they can exist in forms that are mirror images of each other. Life systems that have evolved to build, work with, and demolish molecules of one handedness may be unable to deal with the other, even though they are composed of the same kinds of atoms arranged in the same order. The ability to synthesize molecules — and potentially entire cells — that mirror natural ones offers both opportunity and threat. Such innovations could be exceptionally durable and help prevent adverse immune reactions. However, they could also interact with and potentially confound evolved biological processes, to the detriment of humans and ecosystems alike.

Read about last year’s horizon scan, addressing threats such as PFAS chemicals, increased wood consumption, and water shortages — as well as several conservation opportunities.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

New Wildlife Books for Children and Teens (That Adults May Find Interesting Too)

These books for young readers will delight and encourage interest in mammals, insects, octopuses, and other creatures in our shared environment.

Creating excitement about our amazing planet in young people has never been more important. A pack of new books make environmental science fun and fascinating, teaching children, teens, and even some adults just how diverse and rich our planet’s wildlife and their habitats are to behold. Reading them can encourage us all to become better guardians of the Earth.

We’ve adapted the books’ official descriptions below and provided links to the publishers’ sites, but you should also be able to find these books in a variety of formats through your local bookstore or library.

Insectopolis

By Peter Kuper

Award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper transports readers through the 400-million-year history of insects and the remarkable entomologists who have studied them. This visually immersive work of graphic non-fiction dives into a world where ants, cicadas, bees, and butterflies visit a library exhibition that displays their stories and humanity’s connection to them throughout the ages. Layering history and science, color and design, it tells the remarkable tales of dung beetles navigating by the stars, hawk-size prehistoric dragonflies hunting prey, and mosquitoes changing the course of human history.

Read our interview with Kuper.

They Work: Honey Bees, Nature’s Pollinators

By June Smalls and illustrator Yukari Mishima

The newest addition to June Smalls’s nature series, this is a gorgeous nonfiction picture book about life for a hive of honeybees, complete with factoids. Readers learn about the beehive queen, who fights to be queen from the moment she breaks out of her cell. Her job is important, but a hive is only successful if many, many bees are working together. Experience the life cycle of the honeybee up close and personal with this striking picture book. Told in a poetic style along with fun facts on each page for older readers wanting a deeper dive, this book is a beautiful exploration of life inside a beehive — as well as the dangers and predators bees face in the world, including humans.

Bison: Community Builders and Grassland Caretakers

By Frances Backhouse

Bison are North America’s largest land animals. Some 170,000 wood bison 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 species supports biodiversity and strengthens the ecosystems around it. This book 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 welcoming them back home.

Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses

by David Scheel and Laurel ‘Yoyo’ Scheel

This compelling middle-grade adaptation dives deep into the mysteries of one of our planet’s most enigmatic animals. Among all the ocean’s creatures, few are more captivating — or more elusive — than the octopus. Marine biologist David Scheel investigates these strange beings to answer long-held questions: How can we learn more about animals whose perfect camouflage and secretive habitats make them invisible to detection? How does an almost-boneless package of muscle and protein defeat sharks, eels, and other predators while also preying on the most heavily armored animals in the sea? How do octopuses’ bodies work? This fascinating book shows young readers how to embrace the wisdom of the unknown — even if it has more arms than expected.

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

By Ben Hoare and Asia Orlando

Discover partnerships from across the animal kingdom with unexpected animal teams around the world who thrive in the wild as they defend, feed, and plot with each other to survive. Friendly, informative explanations are paired with striking photographs and colorful illustrations to make every page captivate the imagination. This unique animal book for children offers impressive facts about previously unknown animal behaviors that are guaranteed to wow adults and children alike.

Conker and the Monkey Trap

By Hannah Peckham

Deep in the jungle, a chameleon named Conker finds two animals in need of his help. Though he first wants to run and hide, he remembers what his mom taught him about being kind and helpful to others. Once Conker saves Sanjeet the lost lorikeet from a puddle, the two of them come across a monkey caught in a trap. Conker and his new friend work together to save the day. This sweet rhyming story will teach young readers the value of friendship and helping those in need. There are plenty of points for discussion and those are aided by the probing questions at the back of the book and the various activities.

Mollusks

By Kaitlyn Salvatore

From the Discover More: Marine Wildlife Series. Not all marine wildlife lives completely underwater. While some mollusks do, other species live both above and below the water’s surface. As readers learn about the different classes of mollusks, they uncover how a mollusk’s body allows it to do amazing things, learning about the unique ways different mollusk species, from slugs to squid to clams, contribute to their environments. Their lifestyles, diet, and the threats to their survival come to life through vivid photographs and age-appropriate text.

Becoming an Ecologist: Career Pathways in Science

By John A. Wiens

What influences a person’s decision to pursue a career in science? And what factors determine the many possible pathways a budding scientist chooses to follow? John A. Wiens traces his journeys through several subfields of ecology — and gives readers an inside look at how science works. He shares stories from his development as an ornithologist, community ecologist, landscape ecologist, and conservation scientist, recounting the serendipities, discoveries, and joys of this branching career. Wiens explores how an individual’s background and interests, life’s contingencies, the influences of key people, and the culture of a discipline can all shape a scientist’s trajectory. This book explores why ecologists ask the questions they do, how they go about answering them, and what they do when the answers are not what they expected.

Bringing together personal narrative with practical guidance for aspiring ecologists, this book provides a window onto a dynamic scientific field — and inspiration for all readers interested in building a career by following their passion for the natural world, presented in an enticing way for young professionals and students.

Enjoy these engaging reads and get young friends and family members involved with activities that support our environment and wildlife. We hope you and your children and grandchildren will be motivated to protect and reclaim our environment through these remarkable books. And there’s more to come: We’ll cover more books for young readers in the months ahead.

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

Save This Species: Bornean Orangutan

Humans are to blame for the decline of these amazing apes — but people are also responsible for saving orphaned orangutans and helping them learn how to survive in the wild.

“Orangutan” means person of the forest. As their forest homes disappear, these great, orange apes  teeter on the brink of extinction. Despite laws protecting them, baby orangutans are still stolen from their mothers for the illegal pet trade. But rescue, rehabilitation, and reintroduction efforts offer these orphans a second chance at life in the wild.

Species name:

Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)

IUCN Red List status:

Critically endangered

Description:

An orange-haired great ape, orangutans are the largest arboreal mammals in the world. Mature males develop distinctive cheek pads that help amplify their resonant, long calls that carry across the forest. Young orangutans remain with their mothers for up to eight years, gradually learning essential survival skills before venturing off independently.

Where they’re found:

Historically, orangutans were widespread across Southeast Asia, but today they survive only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. They live in diverse tropical forest ecosystems, including peat swamp and dipterocarp forests — areas rich in biodiversity, though increasingly fragmented.

Why they’re at risk:

While habitat destruction remains a major threat, the illegal pet trade is one of the most direct dangers to Bornean orangutans. Areas where orangutans are targeted for the pet trade often overlap with areas of deforestation, as smaller fragments of forest leave them easier to be found. Poachers will kill mother orangutans and take their helpless babies to be sold as pets. Many of these captive animals die before reaching the pet trade due to lack of correct nutrition, illness, or trauma.

Who’s trying to save them:

There are numerous nongovernmental organizations and charities working in the field of orangutan conservation. While there are also some government initiatives aiming to secure lasting protection and reinforce the illegal pet trade laws, challenges often arise from conflicting interests and enforcement difficulties.

 

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There are also rescue centers across Borneo that work tirelessly to locate and confiscate illegally kept orangutans, provide medical care, and rehabilitate orphans. These programs have a “forest school” process, whereby young orangutans are taught the essential climbing, foraging, and survival skills that their mother would have taught them. Human caregivers provide semi-wild environments to mimic natural learning processes until they’re ready for reintroduction back into the wild. As orangutans would naturally stay with their mothers for eight years, this process is slow and resource-intensive, but it’s the only chance they’ll get to return to the wild.

Why I advocate for this species:

I advocate for Bornean orangutans because each individual has an extraordinary capacity for intelligence, curiosity, and resilience. To see an orphaned orangutan progress from a traumatized infant to a confident young ape ready for release is both heartbreaking and inspiring. Their suffering is entirely human-made — but so is their chance for recovery.

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

Orangutans are often called an “umbrella species,” meaning that conserving their forests also protects countless other animals and plants that share their habitat. Long-term survival depends on safeguarding large tracts of forest, while the immediate need is for rescue, rehabilitation, and reintroduction efforts. Law enforcement against wildlife crime must be strengthened, while rehabilitation programs need ongoing support to prepare orphans for release. Public education is equally vital: When people understand that an orangutan is not a pet but a wild, intelligent being, demand for the trade declines.

What you can do to help:

You can contribute by raising awareness of their plight, advocating for sustainable choices such as using only palm oil products that are certified as sustainable, and supporting conservation and rescue charities. Sharing their story, whether online or in person, helps spread understanding and inspire action.

Share your stories: Do you live in or near a threatened habitat or community, or have you worked to study or protect endangered wildlife? You’re invited to share your stories in our ongoing features, Protect This Place and Save This Species. 

Previously in The Revelator:

Save This Species: Owston’s Civet

Locusts and Landmines Threaten Ukraine’s Farmland

Ecosystems have also come under threat from toxic plants whose spread has been difficult to control during the Russian invasion.

The people of Ukraine won’t soon forget the summer of 2025, a period that saw a significant increase in Russian attacks on the country, including the largest number of drones sent to kill and terrorize Ukrainians.

This summer farmers witnessed another invasion of their lands — a locust outbreak that devastated crops across southern and eastern Ukraine.

Videos shared with The Revelator show swarms of locusts — each as wide as a human hand — ravaging fields of sunflowers and corn in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kherson, and Odesa regions, adding to the dangerous effects of war on these ecosystems.

It’s not a coincidence that the regions most affected by the outbreak are among those experiencing some of the worst fighting.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered an environmental crisis, experts say, that is manifesting in the rise of invasive species.

“The fields with proper agrotechnical tillage are not conducive to laying eggs for the locusts,” says Andriy Fedorenko, a senior researcher at the Institute of Grain Crops of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences in Ukraine, who spent several weeks this summer researching the breeding patterns of locusts in the affected regions. “But abandoned agricultural lands and dried-up ponds are ideal.”

He says the locusts have gained a foothold in vast farmlands made unusable by the Russian invasion, as well as the area affected by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.

Devastated crops in Ukraine. Photo: Andriy Fedorenko (used with permission)

The Soviet-era structure on the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine was bombed on June 6, 2023, causing flooding in several towns on its banks along with mass casualties.

Fedorenko observed that the dam’s destruction had disrupted regional ecosystems. The addition of dry weather and the increase in military activity led to a locust outbreak, he says.

In photos and videos shared from the field, Fedorenko offered evidence of how flooding created optimal conditions for an outbreak — a conclusion shared by other scientists.

“Receding floodwaters exposed large moist areas, optimal spots for egg laying and feeding,” Stanislav Viter, a researcher with the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Group, wrote in a recent report. He noted that the wetland reed beds, saturated with floodwaters, provided fodder to the pests.

“A single locust consumes vegetation equivalent to 1–1.5 times its weight every day,” Viter wrote. Crop fields “flooded and abandoned because of the war as well as on the bed of the former Kakhovka Reservoir” offered just that.

Locusts also need favorable climate conditions — very high temperatures — to breed. Climate change may have furthered their recent reproductive success.

“The temperature regime in total over two years, particularly in 2024, has also been extremely high compared to previous years,” says Fedorenko. In 2024 the temperatures across the fertile steppes were the highest in the past 10 years. “The average temperature increased by 1.1°C and 3.9°C in the past decade,” he says.

‘Ecocide’

In a statement shared with The Revelator, the Ukrainian government also provided a similar assessment, terming the phenomenon “Russian ecocide” — the destruction of the environment resulting from Russia’s invasion.

“After the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant by Russian troops, large areas that had long been at the bottom of the reservoir were freed from water,” wrote Serhii Tkachuk, head of the State Service of Ukraine on Food Security. “These moist and warm soils, with abundant reed vegetation, became an ideal reserve for the development of locusts.”

Tkachuk added that this year the government applied pesticides in several regions to address the outbreaks, most notably an 83-square-mile area in the Zaporizhzhia district.

Other local reports documented farmers who suffered crop damages ranging from 25% to a near total loss, stretching as far westward as the Zhytomyr region. In the Kherson region, local media reports noted that nearly 10.4 square miles of sunflowers were destroyed.

Locusts were also observed in 2024 in the territory of the Slobozhansky village council of the Chuhuiv district of the Kharkiv region.

“There are also large areas of uncultivated land and neglected fields due to the war, and the locust invasion can be considered one of the manifestations of ecocide caused by the actions of the Russian Federation not only against Ukraine but also against the environment as a whole,” Tkachuk wrote.

The attack on the dam had long-term consequences for agrarian communities, since nearly 90% of the irrigation canals from the dam have dried up. A 2024 report by the International Center for Ukrainian Victory estimated that the loss of irrigation caused cost the country $182 million a year in lost crop production.

As climate change triggers a rise in temperatures, Viter’s report warns, new outbreaks could occur in parts of Ukraine that have become “suitable locations” for locusts due to the war. “The same applies to the El Niño phenomenon, with high temperatures and heavy rainfall in most regions of Ukraine,” he wrote.

How Wars Can Breed Locusts

In his report Viter noted, “Where there is war, there are locusts.”

Michel Lecoq, an entomologist specializing in the ecology of locusts and grasshoppers, agrees. “Conflicts can lead to changes in ecological conditions, transforming some areas into breeding and outbreak zones where hopper bands and swarms can form,” he says. For example, he says, an outbreak of migratory locusts occurred in France after World War II and lasted until 1949.

“On 20 July 1945, a swarm stretching 20 km in length was observed,” says Lecoq. “Some individuals migrated to England, illustrating the magnitude of the breeding and multiplication that must have occurred at the time — remarkable given that the species is usually very rare in the Landes, its original outbreak area.”

Lecoq says these outbreaks developed in France following the abandonment and fallowing of large tracts of land that were no longer cultivated due to the war — much like what’s happening now in Ukraine.

“In most outbreak areas, population dynamics is intimately connected to changes of water balance in breeding areas,” he says. The destruction of the dam “exposed numerous areas — previously submerged — that have since become highly favorable for this insect’s reproduction.”

Raiding the Breadbasket

The rise of locusts and other invasive species is adding to the challenges of the agrarian community, Ukraine’s economic backbone.

Ukraine is often known as the breadbasket of the world, producing 10% of the global wheat market — shipping out 6.5 million metric tons every month before the war.

Since the Russian invasion, however, Ukraine’s agricultural sector has suffered direct losses of more than $80 billion in infrastructure and production, according to studies.

Evidence also suggests that not only has Russia deliberately targeted agricultural equipment, logistics and storage facilities, they’ve also stolen Ukrainian agricultural products.

On top of that, landmines now contaminate more than 54,000 square miles of Ukraine — 20% of the country and one of the highest concentrations of the lethal devices in the world, according to the UN.

 

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This assault on agricultural land has had a direct impact on global food security, prompting action and investment from international bodies and countries in prioritizing the demining of Ukrainian territories.

However, the scale of the problem, compounded with the continuing and increasing Russian attacks that add to the contamination, means that it could be decades or even centuries, according to one estimate, before the land is once again usable for farming.

According to a recent UN Food Insecurity report, the production estimate for 2024-25, for all grains in unoccupied areas, is 13% lower than the previous year.

Amidst this a locust outbreak adds to farmers’ woes.

Ironically, some restaurants have tried to raise awareness of the threat by addressing it from a different angle: A few chefs in Kharkiv added locusts to their menu, not only because they were widely available but also to dramatically highlight the problem.

Farmlands to Battlefields

While the worst of the locust outbreak has passed, Tkachuk wrote that the situation in frontline areas continues to be of “particular concern.”

Lecoq also advises close monitoring of the areas exposed by the destruction of the dam — “as far as the current conflict allows,” he says — since swarms could potentially invade much larger territories.

History shows how locust outbreaks can quickly travel and extend the scope of their destruction.

“During the Middle Age, locust swarms originating from the delta regions of the Danube and Volga rivers were known to migrate as far as Western Europe, reaching Germany and even France,” he points out.

The invasions in Ukraine could also spread beyond its borders. “Once invasions begin, they can spread rapidly from their original outbreak area… Swarms could potentially invade much larger territories,” Lecoq says.

Unfortunately the situation in Ukraine remains unpredictable. Constant military activities, mainly from regular Russian bombings, have prevented farmers in the region from taking preventive or curative action.

Conflicts can prevent access to key areas known to regularly host outbreaks when ecological conditions are favorable, Lecoq says. He points to examples of conflict zones in East Africa and the Near East that have hindered the detection of, and access to, the initial breeding and outbreak areas of the desert locust.

“This allowed the outbreaks to expand and develop into an upsurge — a near-invasion — which rapidly spread across much of East Africa and extended as far as Pakistan and India,” he says.

In Ukraine many of the affected areas are in active combat zones or areas that are still heavily mined, Tkachuk wrote, making it “difficult or impossible to carry out timely preventive and extermination measures.”

Paradise, Disrupted

Aside from the locusts and Putin’s army, other invasive species have also arrived unwelcome in Ukraine since the start of the war, experts have observed.

“One of the war’s delayed consequences could be an outbreak of these alien species — dangerous invasive flora and fauna, the spread of which must be controlled,” Nataliia Pashkevich, senior researcher at the geobotany and ecology department, at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, wrote in a paper for UWEC.

“The geography of the areas from which Russian military units are deployed into Ukraine is quite extensive… and an uncontrolled mass of seeds arriving together with equipment and soldiers is destructive for European ecosystems of Ukraine,” Pashkevich wrote.

She identified invasive species such as Sosnowsky’s hogweed (Heracleum sosnowskyi) and giant hogweed (H. mantegazzianum) from the Caucasus that can now be found in occupied territories as well as parts of the Carpathian Mountains. The plants are known to spread rapidly and widely and threaten local insects, birds, plants, and fungi with their peculiar physicochemical toxicity, which can even harm humans on contact.

The Revelator previously reported that destruction of the dam led to an unlikely outcome — the revival of the “Great Meadows” in Ukraine, which were lost during the rapid Soviet industrialization in the 1950s.

While some of these vegetations can serve as a band-aid for war-wounded regions, risks remain.

“As invasives spread, they transform the environment to their own advantage, changing key factors — such as humidity, lighting conditions, soil chemistry,” Pashkevich wrote. “Biological invasions recognize no borders.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

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

Strategic ‘Matchmaking’ Protects the World’s Smallest and Rarest Wild Pig

Tiny pygmy hogs almost went extinct a few decades ago, but a dedicated conservation team is helping give them a second chance.

It is around 11 a.m. when Monora Begum, 45, hurries past the grasslands carrying a large plate of sugarcane shreds to feed her children — just not the kind of youngsters you might imagine. They’re endangered pygmy hogs (Porcula salvania), the world’s tiniest wild pigs, who are growing up at a conservation breeding center in northeast India.

At a glance, these dark brown mammals, barely 10 inches (25 cm) tall and weighing about 18 pounds (8 kg), could easily be mistaken for baby wild boars. They differ, however, in their delicate, tapering head, minuscule tusks, and an almost invisible 1-inch (2.5 cm) tail — unlike the boar’s heavy jaw, large tusks, and long, tufted tail (not to mention their more dominant size).

An adult pygmy hog in its grassland habitat in Assam. Photo: Parag Jyoti Deka, used with permission.

“They are so endearing, and their delicate newborns — simply slip into my palm,” Monora gushes affectionately. She’s been nurturing and feeding these animals, among the world’s rarest mammals, for the past 28 years. With her lifetime of experience, she’s quick to notice their slightest quirks and instincts.

“The hogs recognize me instantly by my smell the moment I enter the enclosures — some even tug at my feet with their tiny tusks,” she says.

Although their eyesight is weak, their sensitive snouts quickly detect even the faintest scent, she says. No wonder, then, she makes it a point to attend to them wearing the same clothes.

Monora is part of a dedicated team of scientists and caregivers, brought together under the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme with the goal of saving the species from extinction and reviving their population in the wild. The only initiative of its kind in the world, it’s based in the Indian state of Assam, the pygmy hogs’ last remaining home.

The organization works on multiple fronts, including field surveys, captive breeding from wild-caught founders, genetic matchmaking, reintroduction, grassland habitat restoration, and long-term monitoring.

It was cofounded by the Indian-born British naturalist Gerald Durrell in 1995 through his Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, in collaboration with the IUCN, the Indian and Assam state governments, and nonprofits such as Ecosystem India and Aaranyak .

And they’ve had some great success along the way. Starting with just six wild hogs caught in Manas National Park in 1996, their captive-breeding program has to date produced 238 litters and 911 hogs, of whom 179 have been released back into their native habitats across Assam. The program’s two breeding and research centers — the first at Basistha and later at Potasali in Assam — simulate the hogs’ native grasslands and maintain a stock population of about 80-90 hogs for breeding, with a target of rewilding 12-15 hoglets each year.

A Close Call

The species was feared extinct in the wild in the 1960s but accidentally rediscovered in the 1971 when a dozen of them were found fleeing a forest fire in Bornadi. They were listed as critically endangered by the IUCN in 2008 and, thanks to breeding efforts, upgraded to endangered in 2019. Today an estimated 440 pygmy hogs live at the breeding centers and in the wild.

“The program was a significant and timely move, as those six wild-caught founders from Manas were perhaps the last viable population,” says Goutam Narayan, another cofounder, who has decades of expertise on wild pigs and other grassland species. “Otherwise, we could have lost this species forever.”

The pygmy hogs historically inhabited narrow alluvial tracts of tall, wet grasslands along the Himalayan foothills, but they disappeared from much of their former range due to indiscriminate human activities as grassland burning, livestock overgrazing, agricultural expansion, timber plantations, and flood-control schemes.

However, the tides are now turning for the species, with three decades of consistent conservation efforts — a milestone that also coincides with celebrations linked to Durrell’s birth centenary.

And these tiny pigs have been reclaiming their native habitats since 2008. Their first rewilding took place in Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary from 2008 to 2010 with 35 hogs. In the next phase, which ran from 2011 to 2015, 59 were released in Orang National Park. The program’s latest estimates show that Orang is now home to about 250 individuals — the highest known wild population globally.

Newborn hoglets suckling their mother. Photo: Parag Jyoti Deka, used with permission.

Bornadi got back 22 hogs between 2016 and 2018. From 2020 to 2024, 69 were released in Manas, which three decades earlier had provided the crucial first half-dozen founders for captive breeding. Today the program estimates that the park supports more than 100 hogs.

Matchmakers

Meanwhile the key to successful reintroduction lies in carefully matching hoglets in captivity. Pygmy hogs breed once a year (April-June), with a gestation of 4-5 months, producing 3-5 hoglets per litter.

Monora Begum, carrying a plate of sugarcane shreds to feed the pygmy hogs in the captive breeding center. Photo: Patric Kucza, used with permission.

“But it is not just about boosting numbers through random breeding; the real effort lies in pairing unrelated hogs to preserve genetic diversity,” says Parag Jyoti Deka, program director and veterinary scientist, who has been part of the team since 1997. He recalls that beginning captive breeding with just six wild hogs was challenging, as it presented the conservation team with such a limited gene pool.

However, the introduction of a rescued male in 2001, followed by a male and two females, again wild-caught from Manas in 2013, improved the genetic variation. “This way the captive stock retains the genetic traits of the original wild founders,” he explains.

In the early years tracking lineage and pairing hogs manually was relatively easy. “We would then give them fancy names, as Teresa, Diana, Gabu,” Deka says. “But as litters multiplied it became hard to keep track.” Now each hog receives a unique ID through a grain-sized microchip implanted under its skin soon after birth.

A Boost From Technology

Digital tools such as the Single Population Analysis and Record Keeping System (SPARKS) and the Population Management and Analysis (PMx) have since taken over the management of the breeding population. According to Deka, these well-established systems help maintain a small, healthy population and comprise the standard practice and essential components of conservation breeding in India — where the technologies are still not prevalent.

SPARKS compiles each individual’s life history — ID, age, sex, health, pedigree, breeding, and behavioral history, whose data exported to PMx enables demographic and genetic analyses. These include projecting population growth, calculating survival and fertility rates, tracking sex ratios and age structures, and, most importantly, assessing genetic health.

PMx also identifies optimal pairs to minimize inbreeding and maximize diversity, helping form initial social groups (typically two males and three females) based on both genetic and behavioral compatibility, ensuring healthier breeding and stable social interactions

“It’s more like maintaining profiles on matrimonial sites,” says Deka, reflecting on his decades of matchmaking success.

Learning to Be Wild

Soon about 15 select hoglets and sub-adults will leave the captive-breeding center for their new destination — the pre-release center at Potasali, near Nameri National Park, established in 2004.

Each hog gets transported in a wooden crate about 27 inches (69 cm) long, 15 inches (38 cm) high, lined with bundles of grass. They’re then release into semi-wild enclosures, where they will remain for the next 5-6 months with minimum human contact — an essential exercise to prepare the pygmy hogs for life in the wild.

A pygmy hog released into the wild after leaving the pre-release enclosure. Photo Leons M Abraham, used with permission

“It’s like a school where they learn the skills to survive in the wild,” says Debjani Borah, project veterinarian in charge of the pre-release center. The hogs are observed around the clock from concealed locations as their human-supplied food is gradually reduced. This encourages the young hogs to forage independently for roots, tubers, grasses, insects, and small vertebrates.

Once released into the wild, “monitoring these shy elusive mammals is challenging as they mostly remain hidden in tall grass,” says Dhritiman Das, field scientist of the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme. A grassland ecologist, Das recalls his fascination with the species since his student days. “They have been my best teachers — their presence or disappearance is a quick indicator of the health of grasslands and their management, before it’s too late,” he says.

Das and his team have been tracking the hogs through radio telemetry, camera traps, and sign surveys. While telemetry records movements, habitat use, and potential threats, camera traps capture their activities, behavior and dispersal. Surveys look for droppings, nests, foraging marks, and footprints to help confirm their presence, breeding, and site use.

“In Orang they have been observed to disperse 2-3 km from release sites, largely due to the improved grasslands,” says Das.

Healthy Habitats for Healthy Hogs

He admits however that maintaining healthy grasslands is not easy. Invasive creepers such as Chromolaena odorata and Mimosa diplotricha, spread across the habitat in no time, along with woody encroachment by trees like red silk-cotton (Bombax ceiba), elephant rope (Sterculia villosa), and queen’s flower (Lagerstroemia speciosa). The creepers smother native grasses, while trees and shrubs gradually overtake the grasslands through seed dispersal.

However, local communities help restore these habitats by uprooting creepers and woody saplings — which takes 3-5 consecutive years — and by girdling nonnative trees in winter. This involves cutting or peeling rings of bark to expose the inner green trunk, which blocks nutrient flow from leaves to roots. Deprived of nourishment, the trees gradually die, allowing grasses to regenerate.

PHCP members conducting sign surveys to monitor the released pygmy hogs. Photo: PHCP, used with permission

Grasslands are also kept healthy with timely and controlled burning. “They should not be burned all at once, but in sections,” to avoid destroying the habitat and harming smaller species, explains Narayan. Ideally, this should be done between December and mid-January.

“Management of grassland should not just be for the benefit of charismatic species as rhinos, elephants, [and] wild buffaloes,” Narayan says. “But as Gerald Durrell often said, it is the smaller creatures as pygmy hogs often overlooked in conservation are the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the eco system and cannot be ignored.”

A Conservation Community

Another threat to pygmy hog conservation is the African swine fever, a deadly, contagious disease that reached India in 2020. Local communities living around their habitats often rear domestic pigs in their backyards, increasing the risk of disease transmission. Cases have been reported among domestic pigs and wild boars, raising concern over its possible transmission to pygmy hogs.

Awareness campaigns help train local communities to build bio-security fences with bamboo that grows abundantly in the region.

“They not only keep the domestic pigs confined, but also prevent contacts with wild boars,” says Borah. Villagers also now practice better farm hygiene, restrict visitors, disinfect pens, and use clean clothing while tending livestock.

The experiences and challenges of pygmy hog conservation continue to multiply — even as the species’ population continues to grow. And the conservation program hopes their successes will help inspire others.

Each hog that reaches the wild “teaches us an invaluable lesson,” says Deka, “one that needs to be shared with the world at large to help revive countless other species from the brink of extinction.”

Previously in The Revelator:

To Save This Critically Endangered Bird, It Takes a Village