All the Plants We Cannot See

Our culture has moved away from a fascination with the greenery around us. Experts warn that “plant blindness” could come with a cost.

When Kathryn Parsley taught biology to undergrads, she sometimes talked about Australia’s stinging tree, which is among the world’s most venomous plants — and can cause months of excruciating pain for anyone who approaches it.

“It’s incredibly dangerous,” she says. “If you even get close, its trichomes can get on you and it feels like your skin is on fire.” The sensation has been compared to being burned with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time.

The stinging tree got her students’ attention, and that was Parsley’s aim. Many people consider plants benign and boring, if they consider them at all. Most plants don’t exist for them as distinct species; instead they compose what some botanists call “a green curtain”— a generic backdrop for more interesting creatures, namely animals, preferably vertebrates, ultimately humans.

What Is Plant Blindness?

Parsley wrote her dissertation on the subject of plant blindness, a term coined in 1999 by American botanists James Wandersee and Elisabeth Schussler, who defined it as “the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment.”

Several studies — including one Parsley conducted — have documented a difference in the visual attention people pay to animals compared to plants. When shown images in rapid succession, university students were better able to detect the animals and recalled more animal than plant names. There’s even evidence that some students didn’t perceive plants as being alive.

Flowers in meadow with urban buildings in background.
Wildflower meadow planted by roadside and housing. Photo: Tim Dennell (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Because of its reference to vision, Parsley considers the term “plant blindness” ableist and suggests the term plant awareness disparity instead. It has also been called zoochauvinism and zoocentrism.

Whatever you call it, many people find plants unworthy of their consideration. Yet in terms of sheer volume, plants dwarf the rest of life on Earth’s surface. Plant biomass is estimated to be 450 gigatons on land, while animals account for only 2 gigatons. Plant-blind humans simply discard most of the plant information their eye-brain systems take in, processing information about something else instead.

Wandersee and Schussler attributed some of that apathy to the fact that plants, unlike animals, don’t have a face. Nor can they move or threaten us in the way animals can. But while these plant traits have been fairly constant over time, experts think plant blindness is on the rise.

So if plants haven’t changed, why have we?

Plants in Culture

As it turns out, we haven’t all changed. The rate of plant blindness varies across cultures. Most of the research on it has been done in the United States and United Kingdom, whereas “Indigenous people are very plant-oriented,” Parsley points out. “Some subcultures in the U.S. and outside the U.S. are very plant-oriented.”

It wasn’t that long ago that many people in Eurocentric cultures revered plants, too. But our relationship with plants has changed. Two hundred years ago, most people lived on farms. They grew and gathered their own food, so they had to know plants. Today most of us live in cities and towns. We don’t rely on our plant-identification skills in order to eat.

Wisps of cottongrass blows in the wind
Cottongrass blows in the wind at the edge of Etivlik Lake, Alaska. The plant is a sedge with wind-dispersed seeds. Photo: Western Arctic National Parklands, (CC BY 2.0)

Kate Bergren is an associate professor of English at Trinity College in Connecticut who teaches a class called “Plants in Literature and Film.” It puts our relationship with plants front and center, something folks like William Wordsworth did in the early 19th century and we don’t do much in the 21st.

She wrote her dissertation and eventually a book, The Global Wordsworth, on the Romantic poet and his attitude toward plants.

“I got interested in how writers understood nature as being constituted by specific plants that they knew a lot about,” she says. “They had what we now think of as a scientific interest in plants themselves. In Wordsworth’s time, people had a lived practice of doing things with plants. He and his sister and his friends would go hiking and collect plants they thought were cool and plant them in their garden… They had a lived experience of doing stuff with plants.”

This, she says, reflects the values of the day: “The discipline of botany was a realm that average people, not just scientists, were really interested in, and poetry was a valid way to talk about discoveries in botany.”

Before the Romantics nature poetry was just that: a description of nature. “We read it today and it feels really boring, just line after line of description,” Bergren says. “Romanticism, in addition to its interest in nature, is also interested in the self, a recognizable contained self.”

Early in the Romantic Era, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) offered an example of this kind of writing in his 1791 book-length poem, “The Loves of the Plants.”

“The poem goes through plants one by one, describing how they reproduce, using the language and imagery of courtly romance to describe the process,” Bergren says. “Lots of swains. Hundreds of pages of this. People were super interested in that work, people talked about it, people wanted to learn about plant reproduction. So much Romantic poetry is intertwined, discovery of the self with discovery of nature.”

The poem is virtually forgotten today — and not very good, Bergen adds — which further proves to her how much the culture has changed. “We’re still living in a time when interest in the self is paramount. [But] now it’s just the interest in the self.”

And while she is fascinated by these cultural shifts, many botanists are troubled.

Why Is Plant Blindness a Problem?

Plants supply the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat, serving as the base of the food chain. Yet many of our plants are faring poorly, and climate change makes them even more vulnerable. A 2023 report from Kew Royal Botanical Gardens estimates that 100,000 plant species have yet to be scientifically identified, and says 3 in 4 of these undescribed vascular plant species are already threatened with extinction.

But is this attributable to plant blindness? Kristine Callis-Duehl thinks so. She is the executive director of Education Research and Outreach at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, and she sees plant blindness on the rise.

“First and foremost, our habitat consists of plants,” she says. “Yet the general public largely doesn’t notice plants in their environment and therefore don’t appreciate how important they are to the biosphere and society, let alone how to identify a specific plant. People are failing to prioritize conservation or protect local areas because they don’t see the plants as important.”

Mesquite tree
A bee visits a mesquite tree blossom in Arizona. (Photo by Ken Bosma, CC BY 2.0)

When humans overlook plants, they also overlook their importance to human affairs, from food security to cultural preservation to the source of most medicines we use today, says Callis-Duehl.

“If you can’t identify the role of these plants, you aren’t seeing biodiversity. You’re just seeing a sea of green and not preserving what’s crucial to safeguard our ecosystem.”

She works with a lot of students in the Midwest who can’t tell the difference between a field of corn and a field of soybeans. “Is this kind of plant knowledge fundamental to the economy? No. But it is fundamental to being an informed citizen and making good choices,” she says. “If you don’t know the different plants, you don’t know how water runoff is affecting your natural resources. I’ve seen forest areas that became a dumping ground for everything from furniture to cars to bags of trash — anything that was no longer wanted or needed and too expensive to dispose of properly. They say, ‘It’ll just degrade into the forest.’ They don’t know the forest is alive.”

Callis-Duehl wants to reverse this trend, but here too, she encounters obstacles.

“We submit an enormous amount of National Science Foundation grant applications every year. We say we want to expose kids to careers in plants. The rejections are guaranteed to ask, ‘Why is this only focused on plants? Why not animals? Why not humans?’ … These grant reviewers are faculty experts, and yet their plant awareness disparity is so high.”

Can Plant Love Be Taught?

“The best way I’ve seen to overcome plant blindness is to have somebody really passionate about plants teach you,” Parsley says. “If you have a teacher in fifth grade who makes you do a leaf collection, like I did, then you’re more likely to have more plant awareness. If you don’t get exposed to them through school at the K-12 level, you may never be exposed to them or develop much plant awareness.”

Our K-12 education system centers animals far more than plants, Parsley argues. If a biology textbook is choosing between an example of a plant or animal to illustrate a concept, it almost invariably goes for the animal.

And very few college students study plants either.

When Parsley taught biology to college students, plant blindness was pervasive. “It’s almost become a running joke in the botany community, with each new crop of undergraduates complaining, ‘I don’t know why we have to learn about plants.’ Those anecdotes are a dime a dozen.”

Yet when she told students about an extraordinary plant such as the fierce stinging tree, “they were like, ‘oh, this is so cool, I didn’t know it could do that.’”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Jane Hassing-Hassing (@girlnumber25)

Outside of the education system, there are other opportunities for people to connect with plants. Parsley thinks botanical gardens are great, if you’re lucky enough to live near one. But those often lure plant enthusiasts — in other words, they’re preaching to the choir. And while many Americans garden, many focus on a few select plants like tomatoes, which are grown in 86% of home gardens in the United States.

Still, Parsley grants that not every person who loves plants hails from a plant-oriented culture.

“We don’t know why some people get the plant bug,” she says. When doing her dissertation research, she found that people who spent a lot of time outdoors scored less on PAD. She also thinks childhood events matter, from visiting an apple farm or a forest to picking strawberries. Parsley’s grandfather had a garden, her mom had houseplants, and “I was just old enough to get kicked outside. All of those are contributing factors.”

Other factors contribute to plant blindness. The world is a far more urban place than it was in 1802 when Wordsworth wrote about daffodils in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” But as Bergren points out, plants exist in cities too, from weeds in sidewalk cracks to potted plants on a fire escape.

“I probably wouldn’t chalk it up entirely to urbanization,” she says. “I think there is an inattentiveness that certainly causes plant blindness but causes a lot of different kinds of blindness and an inability to see what’s right in front of you. The inattentiveness I’d chalk up to lots of features of modern life.”

First on that list? Our obsession with our phones — which, ironically, can also help people fight their plant blindness with apps like Leaf Snap and Plant Net.

Bergren is doing her part to combat plant blindness. This semester, for the first time, she’s asking her lit students to pick a plant on Trinity’s tree-filled campus (designated an arboretum in 2023), write about it each week, and see it.

Scroll down to find our “Republish” button

Previously in The Revelator:

The Extinction Crisis in Watercolor and Oils: Using Art to Save Plants

Haul Water, Rescue Pigs, Help Neighbors: How My Students Confronted Climate Chaos in a Horrific Hurricane Season

Collective action helps alleviate climate anxiety, as my class found following Hurricane Helene. It’s also helping our community to recover.

“We need ten people on flush crew, five to clean out the fridges in the science building, and 15 to clear trees on the roads! We’re gonna do this together!”

This wasn’t a pep rally or a community service event. It was the morning meeting called at 9:30 a.m. each day by campus leaders in front of the cafeteria at the small college where I now live without power or water, after the climate disaster of Hurricane Helene devastated our community in western North Carolina.

“We know the Swannanoa Valley has been hit especially hard,” the college president told the group of students and employees. “And we are here for this college and for the greater community. This is our work together.”

Students and faculty gather around to hear the college president speak
Photo: Courtesy of Warren Wilson College

That day I joined my neighbor Tom Lam chain-sawing his way across campus with a crew of students clearing brush along the way.

“Now gather ‘round so you can see how to sharpen this chainsaw,” Tom said in his booming Jersey voice, pulling on his suspenders after we’d cleared trees crushing a neighbor’s car.

I’ve spent 25 years teaching environmental education, raising two daughters, and living at this 1,000-acre campus where all students work in jobs in places like the farm, garden, forests, and even fiber arts. And I think this might be one model of how to live in community in a climate emergency.

I wake each morning worried and wondering about the hundreds washed away by a river I can see from my small rental duplex — and those who have died from Milton miles away as well.

I first realized the extent of “Katrina in the mountains” three days after the storm, when my youngest daughter, 18, called at midnight from her college two hours away.  Both my grown children had been trying to connect since the storm hit land and the waters changed our lives in this small town of Swannanoa, a ten-minute drive from Asheville.

“Mom, they’re pulling bodies out of the river,” she texted. “It’s all over TikTok. My friend’s aunt and uncle drowned. Bodies are in trees. They say the air smells like death.”

How do you comfort a young adult who has watched online as water raged through this mountainous region once billed as a “climate haven”? This is not the Gulf Coast of Alabama where I grew up, where my mother needlepointed a hurricane tracking chart and hung it on the bright yellow kitchen wall. During the pandemic, people from California and Florida flocked to Western North Carolina to escape the wildfires or hurricanes of their own climate realities.

Since the storm hit, I’ve worked with students and staff at Warren Wilson College who are like family, giving out water bottles, preparing meals, washing the solar-powered golf carts. One day my best friend and I cleaned out food from fridges in empty dorm rooms.

After working another day, I went down to the garden where students were harvesting sweet potatoes as well as the dead carp flung into the beds from the nearby Swannanoa River. “We have to get these sweet potatoes out or they’ll go bad,” they said. We later learned it was unsafe to eat any of the produce from the garden.

A Student Farm Leader takes care of pigs. Photo: Courtesy of Warren Wilson College

Other students on the farm crew rescued pigs who’d been carried off by the river, although they couldn’t get them all. My neighbor spotted a missing pig on an Instagram post, and students rescued it and brought the pig home to applause.

With deep heartache, we also saw rescue workers retrieve human bodies from the banks of this same river and place them in body bags.

Since August I’d spent five weeks of this semester working with my students in a course called “Everybody’s Environment: People, Place, and Planet.” We volunteered weekly in the Dr. John Wilson Community Garden that provides healthy produce for folks who need food. We studied a curriculum called Climate Wayfinding to help students find their place in the climate movement. Developed by the All We Can Save Project, these workshops provide a space to talk about climate anxiety but also commit to collective action.

“When I’m working in the garden, I don’t feel as anxious about the climate and our future,” one student wrote last month.

No one in my classes contributed to the fossil fuel pollution on a scale that escalated this long-term disaster. And we know the subsidized fossil fuel industry is making money while we’re trying to survive.

Students head out to clear fallen trees. Photo: Courtesy of Warren Wilson College

These young people have learned that real solutions exist to prevent this climate emergency. They know polluters should pay for these damages. But we are the ones paying for it now. I believe my students will be farmers, social workers, solar panel installers, health care workers and more — and help build a vibrant future. But it’s hard to cheerlead for that future when fossil fuel executives and government allies are profiting, rather than being held accountable for their harm.

It was a former student who alerted me on Instagram that an 800-square foot rental house I own a few miles away was teetering on a ravine. The post included a photo with this message: “Any Warren Wilson students! Searching for Mallory McDuff who owns this house. Someone needs to secure the house.”

On my modest salary, I don’t know how I’ll pay the mortgage and the expensive repairs without a tenant. But I’m charging my phone by running my car so I can deal with the insurance company, although no one I know has flood insurance. FEMA has helped so many, but won’t cover rentals, although it’s the only house I own. Many of the small houses on this block were submerged under water.

Even with this challenge, I know I am damn lucky to be alive, given the horrific losses.

Growing up on the Alabama coast, I remember driving through the damage wrought by Hurricane Camille, Frederick, and even Katrina. But I have few tools to comfort my own child — and my students — for the vast extent of this destruction. The only tool that works for me is working together and voting to protect the health of all in our community.

That is our collective power. As my friend and climate communications expert Anna Jane Joyner posted, “We — I — desperately need human stories that help us figure out how to be human in this world. To face this monumental unprecedented crisis.”

Each morning I wake up with my heart pounding, scared not for my small life but for life on Earth. But I will go to the next morning meeting with my students and show up for this world we cherish and call home.

Scroll down to find our “Republish” button

Previously in The Revelator:

Building a Flock: How an Unlikely Birder Found Activism — and Community — in Nature

Why Indigenous-Led Management Is Integral to Reconciliation and Restoration Efforts

Western science structures are embedded in a deeply rooted settler-colonial mindset. Indigenous traditional knowledge has the potential to overturn western systems destined for doom.

As a legislative policy fellow and anthropologist who studies women’s well-being in coastal communities of Chile and Indigenous salmon management in Alaska and Canada, I’ve witnessed how genocidal attempts to eradicate Indigenous peoples and their cultures have also damaged the environment. We see it in current management’s low returns in fish, high levels of runoff and nutrient input into ocean systems, and generally unsustainable levels of resource extraction.

I’ve also seen the opposite: I interviewed managers and biologists in Vancouver, Canada, who described the substantial improvements of Indigenous-led, bottom-up approaches to conservation. They see fish return and people fulfilling their well-being and nutrition needs. They see political and economic reform and a revitalization of social and cultural practices.

Unfortunately this is still not the norm, as we saw in a recent international agreement between the United States and Canada that placed a seven-year fishing moratorium on Chinook salmon to encourage fish populations to rebound. Most people would agree that this is a worthy goal for the conservation of both the species and the people who depend on Chinook. However, the new agreement fails to factor in Indigenous access to resources for ceremonial and subsistence harvest, which is mandated by law, nor did legislators acknowledge public comment that supported that access.

The marginalization of Indigenous peoples today, as seen in this agreement’s failures, can be traced back to colonialism.

The history of colonialism is steeped in human-rights violations such as the outlawing of Indigenous salmon-management practices that settlers later appropriated for their own economic gain. Settler wealth was achieved only through the exploitation of resources and forced relocation of Indigenous peoples out of economically advantageous spaces and acculturation into oppressive colonial ones.

“Settler governments [are] primarily concerned with economic gain,” a British Columbia-based project manager focused on salmon restoration told me during an interview. “Their mandate is to work commercial fisheries or recreational ones that generate economic value for their states, provinces, or countries…That’s the starting point; when human well-being is the starting point — like it is with Indigenous people — then it leads to a very different kind of management.”

A Broader Worldview

Indigenous traditional knowledge incorporates a worldview that recognizes humans as a part of, rather than separate from, the animal family. As the restoration manager explained: “That changes everything if you really think it through, because we’re no longer in control. We’re not in charge, nature doesn’t exist to serve us, nature isn’t there to be exploited for our own benefit.”

For example, the Nisga’a Nation — whose treaty with the government of British Columbia and Canada protects their right to manage and harvest fish species and other resources — place value on what’s left behind, not how much is extracted. Here, colonial extractive ideologies are challenged by traditional regenerative strategies that have sustained fisheries and Indigenous societies for thousands of years.
Nisga'a Museum sign

Incorporating an embedded subsistence culture and traditional knowledge into ongoing and future reconciliation and restoration efforts would benefit from a concept called transformative conservation.

Transformative conservation recognizes environmental contexts as inextricably linked to cultural, social, economic, and political ones, confront issues as they arise, and therefore operate in less limited, binding boundaries.

As the project manager explained: “Epistemologically, western science is very naïve about how the world actually functions. Indigenous people have much more sophisticated (in my view) worldviews that are quite effective in actually integrating western science outputs into their management systems. Western science is by its nature a methodology that’s reductionist. It operates most effectively when it can reduce problems to very simple systems, models, variables and then test them out. It’s a very powerful knowledge creation system but it has real limitations when it comes to then building back up again, to develop an integrated view of ecosystems and how they function.”

We can see this at work in Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans. On its website the agency says it “helps to ensure healthy and sustainable aquatic ecosystems through habitat protection and sound science. We support economic growth in the marine and fisheries sectors, and innovation in areas such as aquaculture and biotechnology.” In practice this appears to give little attention to the needs of Indigenous peoples.

My interviewee described the agency’s purpose as obsolete. “There are times when institutions are too far gone to rehabilitate, and DFO’s raison d’etre has ceased to hold true.”

For everything there is a season, and “government organization has a shelf life,” the manager said.

DFO is not alone. Structural change and institutional reform, not merely Indigenous inclusion, are necessary for true representation of Indigenous people in all forms of governance. Writing in the book Pathways of Reconciliation, scholars Melanie Zurba and John Sinclair argue “structural forms of oppression” in state-sanctioned, top-down forms of governance “inhibit meaningful First Nations participation” and wield “Indigenous people into becoming instruments of their own dispossession” — thus reproducing colonial violence and marginalization against Indigenous people while moving away from ecological resilience fulfilled only in tandem with Indigenous self-determination and agency in decision-making.

In addition to institutional reform, Indigenous self-determination requires capacity building made possible with funding and resources devoted to tangible improvements through bottom-up, grassroots co-management approaches within and between First Nations and Tribes. The Kuskokwim Intertribal Fish Commission is an example of successful co-management between Tribes and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Change Is Necessary

These approaches would serve the needs of both Chinook and people. In this case, there’s great potential for DFO and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to adopt co-management agreements similar to the Kuskokwim to reach holistic approaches to salmon management. My interviewee elaborated: “I’d suggest the best thing DFO and all those other orgs could do would be go to Indigenous scientists and managers and say: ‘You guys set up a system and tell us how we can feed into that, because we trust you.’ That’s how I do it.”

The unwillingness of settler governments to resign their power to Indigenous people has strained the potential of climate adaptation and species and habitat preservation. Complex, multiscale problems require complex solutions — discussion across geographical boundaries and multiple scales of formal and informal governance, a discourse around institutional reform, a sticky un-meshing and remeshing of knowledge systems, and an overall willingness for actors to learn, fail, re-learn, and think beyond self-imposed boundaries with enduring hope.

Current methods are simply not working. It’s time we look to those who view salmon survival through a holistic lens, those who are dependent on salmon both economically and culturally, and those Indigenous peoples who have successfully managed, protected, and cared for salmon for thousands of years. An active rather than passive representation of Indigenous voices and an incorporation of their worldviews into policy and management initiatives will not only establish a starting point to solve complex ecological problems such as climate change but also lead down a long-ignored path toward true reconciliation.

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

Previously in The Revelator:

Why Indigenous Knowledge Matters to the Future of Fisheries

Scroll down to find our “Republish” button

Darwin the Storyteller

Darwin’s writings show that stories are central to ecology — and that appreciating nature as a portfolio of wondrous, pristine places is an obstacle to ecological literacy.

Adapted from the book The Ecological Plot: How Stories Gave Rise to a Science (University of Virginia Press, Sept. 24, 2024)

There’s not much to see on a heath.

These landscapes, which once covered more than 11,000 square miles of Great Britain and northwest Europe, are all but featureless. Trees do not grow there. The only vegetation that thrives on heathland is a squat, monotonous cloak of prickly gorse and heather shrubs, occasionally interrupted by the odd holly bush or clump of ferns. Some wildlife inhabit these deserted places, but they are typically scattered widely or hidden beneath the shrubs. Heaths aren’t known for stunning cliffs, mountains, or rock formations, either. Typically their terrain ranges from relatively flat land to gently rolling hills. The effect is anything but picturesque: Heathlands leave no place for the eye to rest, no pleasing contrasts for it to explore, no sense of action at all.

Unattractive and agriculturally infertile, heaths were the original wastelands. The novelist Thomas Hardy, who was born at the edge of a heath in southwest England, understood such landscapes as deeply and essentially inhuman, emblems of primordial nature untouched by civilization. In The Return of the Native (1878), his novel about an impoverished community situated on the fictional Egdon Heath, Hardy described heathland as a relic of what the earth looked like before the rise of human agriculture — and what it would return to after our extinction. It was a “great inviolate place” that “had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead.” The attention Hardy lavished on Egdon Heath and other British terrain would help establish his reputation as a “landscape novelist,” in the words of one early admirer, a writer whose works cultivate the kind of admiration for natural landscapes that provides the foundation of ecological attachment.

A century and a half later, Hardy’s Egdon Heath has lost none of its dark, primordial power. As it turned out, however, he was utterly wrong about the ancient, enduring permanence of heathland ecosystems. Over the course of the 20th century, Britain’s lowland heaths all but vanished, dwindling in size to 14% of the acreage they covered in the 1800s. The elemental, featureless stability that entranced Hardy and his readers turned out to be an illusion. Some heaths succumbed to predictable forces of modernization, development, and urban sprawl. But others mysteriously sprouted trees and became woodlands, seemingly without human intervention whatsoever. Whatever the causes of their disappearance, the dwindling of English heathland has left the creatures that once flourished unrecognized in these eerily empty landscapes — animals like the Dartford warbler, the red-backed shrike, the sand lizard, and the slow worm — in danger of being extirpated from the country entirely.

Dartmoor

To get the full story behind English heathlands, it’s necessary to close the book on Hardy’s magnificent but misleading fictions and turn instead to the work of someone who is not widely considered a storyteller at all: Charles Darwin. Darwin wrote about his encounters with heaths in On the Origin of Species (1859), the book that famously laid out his theory of natural selection and charted the course for modern biology. But the Origin was equally vital to the rise of ecology. Darwin’s writings about heathlands highlight both his pivotal place in the history of ecology and the foundational role of storytelling to the science. What Darwin saw on these depopulated landscapes — and what Hardy could not see, for all his intimacy with them — had little to do with scientific training and everything to do with the different narrative forms these writers used to tell their stories about the natural world.

Darwin’s first impressions of heathland closely resembled Hardy’s. Rambling through a vast heath on a relative’s estate, Darwin was stunned by the overwhelming sameness of everything he saw. Like Hardy, he noted the feeling of barren endurance that seemed to characterize the landscape around him. The only relief from the land’s oppressive, featureless monotony occurred in a few fenced-in areas, where Darwin saw that the landowners had successfully planted pine trees and established thriving woodlots on the otherwise infertile heathland soil. The trees in these miniature forests had flourished, utterly transforming the communities of plants and animals around them. Darwin didn’t reflect much on the observation, however, until he found himself on another heath — and noticed a similar phenomenon beginning to unfold there.

Struck by the coincidence, Darwin took a closer look at some of the more recently created enclosures — and he saw something odd. The pines were fenced off for protection, but they were growing in chaotic clusters. This overcrowded approach to planting meant that few of the evergreens would survive to become harvestable timber. No competent forester would design a plantation in such a fashion. Suddenly it hit him: The trees in the younger enclosures must not have been planted after all. They had grown up on their own, somehow finding a foothold in a landscape that appeared incapable of sustaining plants taller than a holly bush.

Darwin had a mystery on his hands. If these trees weren’t evidence of the work of a forester, where had they come from? And how had they managed to survive in a landscape so obviously hostile to their growth?

Darwin — an avid fiction reader who once wrote “I often bless all novelists” — began to suspect that there was a story hidden in the landscape. He just had to learn how to read it. Assuming that a wider view would show him some previously unobserved nearby woodland or timber plantation that could explain the source of the seeds, the naturalist began scrambling up every local hillock and scanning the horizon. He was disappointed: “I went to several points of view, whence I could examine hundreds of acres of the unenclosed heath, and literally I could not see a single Scotch fir, except the old planted clumps.”

If the area around him was trying to tell a story, it suffered from an obvious plot hole. Trees don’t spontaneously sprout in the middle of landscapes that can’t support them. The place made no sense. Baffled by the implausibility of it all, Darwin did something remarkable: He literally pulled the place apart. Bending down, Darwin parted the thick stalks of heather and gorse that surrounded him like a shallow sea. There, beneath the superficial stasis and monotony of the landscape, he was astonished to discover a plenitude of tiny pine trees. These pines, he realized, were trying to grow all across the heathland.

As a Victorian naturalist, Darwin had none of the shyness of later scientists when it came to personifying other beings. Seeing the young pines, he recognized that they were crucial characters in the story this scenery was hiding. He treated the trees accordingly, understanding each plant as a distinct individual striving toward the goal of a flourishing life. “In one square yard,” he wrote, “I counted thirty-two little trees; and one of them, with twenty-six rings of growth, had during many years tried to raise its head above the stems of the heath, and had failed.”

Bestowing this kind of interest on each tree raised yet another question of plotting. The struggling pine’s story began when it blew over the heath as a seed, found a suitable spot to germinate, and began to sprout. Next the sapling reached up toward the sun, taking in minerals and air and water in its attempt to become a full-grown tree. There its plot halted. What happened next? Darwin wondered. Twenty-odd years went by — but the tree never got any taller. Who or what had intervened in this little tree’s once promising success story? What characters and sequences of events was Darwin missing?

This story, Darwin realized, was beyond the pale — in the original sense of the phrase. A pale or paling is simply an archaic name for a fence staked into the ground. The saplings Darwin found around his feet grew outside of any fenced-off enclosures, the first places he had been surprised to find both intentional and accidental woods springing from heathland. The fences were of simple construction; all they did was deter wandering livestock. If fences alone made the difference between heathland and pine forests, that meant livestock must be the antagonists in the sad tale of the unsuccessful sapling. Cattle were browsing on the saplings, munching them down before they could overgrow the surrounding shrubs and convert the entire heathery countryside into woodland.

HEATHLAND 3

The story was simple enough, but its implications were enormous. It suggested that the stable expanses of English heathlands — places that Darwin, like Hardy, first saw as “large and extremely barren” places “which had never been touched by the hand of man” — were as manmade as today’s parking lots. Without the constant disturbance of sheep, cattle, and pony populations maintained by domestication, the scattered heathlands that naturally sprouted up in the margins and clearings of woodlands would soon be overtaken by trees.

The endurance of English heathlands, then, was not some memento of nature’s inhuman, primordial power. It was a product of this landscape’s longstanding symbiosis with a species that had dominated the island of Great Britain for many thousands of years: human beings.

Hardy’s personal intimacy with heathland enabled him to see many features of heathland life that Darwin had missed. The Return of the Native includes enthralling descriptions of the many creatures that shared this unique habitat with humans — including the sheep and ponies whose wanderings of such common lands helped guarantee the heaths’ continued existence. Hardy’s novel also details the customs of human heath-dwellers who had learned how to satisfy their needs using what the local vegetation provided — cutting the shrubs and even harvesting the turf itself in the processes of producing food, firewood, and household implements. These activities magnified the disturbances to the landscape caused by grazing animals, all but ensuring that evergreens had no chance of overtaking the local scrub and converting the heath into forest.

For all his careful observation of heathland creatures and customs, however, Hardy could only see the heath as a setting: a dramatic backdrop for more compelling human fates. This vast, dark sweep of terrain remained a static place for him, a timeless environment essentially untouched and untouchable by human doings. He could not fathom that the grazing animals and the folkways he detailed so meticulously might actually make a difference — that heathland might be more than just an ominous setting for his novel’s plot. This untouchability added to the land’s fascination and majesty, but also to its horror. As Hardy saw it, the heath’s sublime size and durability only underscored the smallness of human life in the face of nature and geological time. These themes would percolate through all of Hardy’s later fiction, lending his best-known works their profoundly pessimistic tone.

It took the founder of ecology to see heathland differently. Darwin’s mind, like Hardy’s, had a strong narrative turn. But Darwin saw plot and characters unfolding not just among human beings, but among all the plants and animals around us, too. His hunger for stories enabled him to see incongruities in heath landscapes — incongruities that led him to pull the setting apart and discover the plots hidden within it. Heathland, he realized, was not a timeless backdrop. It was the ongoing appearance of a living, breathing community, the product of a fragile balance of power between heather, gorse, trees, and human beings. When that balance was upset — either by the obvious activity of bulldozers and asphalt or by more subtle shifts in agriculture and the change of ancient folkways — the seemingly timeless, unchanging heath could not survive.

Less than a decade after Darwin published Origin, the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel recognized that Darwin’s stories of interspecies communities constituted a subject so innovative it deserved a new name. He coined the word Oekologie to describe it. We now think of ecology as a science, a field whose rigor and objectivity separate it from the more personal, fanciful, and emotionally charged kinds of writing found in literature.

Returning to the roots of ecological science helps remind us that it, too, started as a way of reading the stories embedded throughout the world around us. The history of English heaths shows how treating nature as a collection of environments, places, or landscapes — as Hardy did — risks obscuring the complex, mutually dependent relationships of human beings to other lifeforms. The result is a misunderstanding of both the land and of our crucial role in maintaining it.

What Darwin practiced, then, was not simply an early form of ecology but an early form of ecological literacy. That literacy was not just a metaphor for a more scientific understanding of natural systems — it was an actual art of reading, interpreting, and sharing the stories nature told. Darwin’s ecological literacy involved extending aims and desires to animals and even plants, a habit that might be dismissed as unscientific anthropomorphism today. Nevertheless, it helped Darwin recognize that humans are not the main characters treading earth like an empty stage. We are part of a much larger ensemble cast. Darwin’s work refused simplistic divides between the arts and sciences. If we do the same, we can come to a clear sense of the stories nature tells us — and make better decisions about the parts we need to play to keep the tale of our time on this planet from turning into a tragedy.

Previously in The Revelator:

Why Climate Grief Is an Essential for Climate Action

Portugal’s Deadly Wildfires Are Rooted in Its Authoritarian Past

More than 50 years after the fall of Portugal’s dictatorship, the authoritarian regime still casts a long shadow over this wildfire-prone country.

Wildfires tore through central and northern Portugal this September, burning more than 350 square miles in a matter of days. Nine people were killed. As many as 11,300 were affected, according to the European Union’s Copernicus system.

While these are some of the worst blazes in recent years, wildfires sweep through Portugal every summer, burning an average of just over 1% of the country annually — more than double that of the second-most affected EU country, Greece.

Embed from Getty Images

As the climate changes, these fires are only getting worse, says doctoral researcher Tiago Ermitão from the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere, who studies how vegetation recovers after fires. He adds that hot and dry conditions, “mainly caused by anthropogenic activities,” have significantly increased fire susceptibility and risk in Portugal in recent years.

But what makes this small country on the edge of the Atlantic so vulnerable?

One factor has its roots in the authoritarian regime that ruled the country for more than four decades.

In the 1920s and 1930s, a military dictatorship and the corporatist Estado Novo (New State) that followed implemented sweeping agricultural reforms across Portugal, focused on ideas of self-sufficiency and ruralism that were popular among Europe’s authoritarian regimes at the time.

Wheat vs. Heath

The first of these policies was the Wheat Campaign (a Campanha do Trigo), which aimed to make Portugal’s food supplies self-sufficient through increased cereal production, predominantly in the central Alentejo region.

The policy had some success, with wheat production booming in just a few years. However, this was mainly due to expansion into heathlands rather than the intensification of existing farms many agronomists had envisioned. The nearly 30% increase in Alentejo wheatfield acreage between 1927 and 1933 was spearheaded by sharecroppers, driven by the high prices of a protected market, subsidies for newly cultivated land, and a lack of access to quality fields.

With the help of newly available fertilizers, they cultivated the poor soils where heathland grew.

But the wheat boom wouldn’t last for long. By the mid-1930s, overproduction removed many of the financial motives, and the intensive use of thin soils led to severe erosion and significantly decreased productivity by the 1940s and 1950s.

Only a couple of decades after the wheat campaign began, there was “an official realization that soil degradation had reached serious proportions,” agriculture started to decline, and people began abandoning these newly cultivated lands, according to the Desertification Indicator System for Mediterranean Europe project.

Foresting the Commons

Meanwhile, in the north of the country, another of Estado Novo’s agricultural campaigns was getting underway: the Afforestation Plan. In the mid-1930s, the Forestry Service identified some 1,600 square miles of mountainous common land called baldios, which the regime interpreted literally as “barren” or “waste” lands, to be forested over three decades.

This policy would convert common property to state forests, which could then, according to justifications at the time, supply new industries and energy generation.

By 1968 the Forestry Service had planted about 1,000 square miles, and industries such as furniture making and paper pulp had started operating, some of which still exist. The Navigator Company, for example, is a multibillion-dollar pulp and paper company originating in 1950s northern Portugal.

The baldios that were planted during this time were certainly degraded before Estado Novo took power, with only 7% of Portugal covered by forest at the turn of the century, according to Iryna Skulska, a researcher at the Centro de Ecologia Aplicada Prof. Baeta Neves (named after the late forestry professor) who has studied the environmental impacts of the regime.

“[The baldios] were very, very exploited — overly exploited — by local communities,” because the “Portuguese rural community in the 19th [and] 20th century were very, very poor,” she says.

Embed from Getty Images

However, rather than reviving mixed forests, the regime established pine monocultures. “They implemented the forest monoculture stands … which in terms of biodiversity, is not a good idea,” Skulska says. “They wanted to use… species that adapt very quickly to the poor condition of the soil, [and] at the same time produce [wood] very quickly.”

What’s more, these “wastelands” were only considered as such because they were uncultivated, not because they were unused.

“One hundred years ago, before the Second World War, you had a lot of pastoralists who used to drive their flocks of sheep, goats, cows, etc, through the landscape,” explains Pedro Prata, executive director of Rewilding Portugal. “This landscape was much more used in terms of the collection of vegetal matter. Everything was used, from creating the sleeping beds of the animals, to compost for manure, to fire, and as energy.”

These policies in the north were not only driven by the desire for self-sufficiency but also by the social structures of the region. A survey in the 1930s found that 14% of households were managed by single women, which the state chalked up to the “improper” sexual conduct of male and female shepherds, completely out of line with the authoritarian Estado Novo’s conservative ideals.

The Internal Colonization Board, which implemented parts of the agricultural plans, thus looked to draft in settlers from more densely populated areas and, as historian Tiago Saraiva puts it in a paper on the subject, “convert local people to the moralizing activity of agriculture.”

But while the landscapes were converted, the people were not, and the destruction of the common lands brought an end to many of the pastoral communities that relied on it. Once again, far from creating the rural idylls that authoritarian regimes of the time idolized, this policy led to a massive migration away from rural areas.

Fragmented Landscapes, Fragmented Communities

These two campaigns had immediate and profound effects on ecosystems and biodiversity. From the uprooting of heathland in the Alentejo to the pine monocultures in the north, the changes contributed to the destruction and fragmentation of native landscapes and the decimation of indigenous species such as wolves, Iberian lynx, and imperial eagles, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a multicountry project that examined the impact of ecosystem change on human well-being in the early 2000s.

This environmental destruction echoes today, with many species still missing from the landscape.

More concerningly, these policies also contributed to the depopulation of rural areas and the “consequent abandonment of agricultural activity” that continues to this day, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Along with monocultures of “high fire risk” species like pine and eucalyptus, this abandonment is among the main causes of fires in Portugal, which result in fresh ecological damage almost every year, the assessment notes.

Abandoned Land

The increased risk of fire from rural abandonment is largely due to the unmanaged accumulation of vegetation that can fuel the flames, explains Ermitão.

The pastoralists who were once “responsible for managing the land through grazing” have gone, and in their place, unmanaged shrubland and nonnative forests have sprung up, he says.

“When you have abandonment of these lands, it drives the growth of other plants and disorganization of the forests, so if you have a fire, you have more fuel accumulated that is not managed,” Ermitão says.

What’s more, the few domestic grazing animals that remain are managed in a significantly different way.

“They’re not driven,” Prata says, meaning they stay in one place all year long. “You can have paddocks that are completely overgrazed next door to areas with full accumulation of fuel for decades.”

And this fuel accumulation can be significant. A study focusing on the very north of Portugal between 1958 and 1995 found that the decline in agricultural areas and low shrublands and an increase in tall shrublands and forests represented a 20% to 40% increase in fuel accumulation, which, according to the study, suggests “that the abandonment of farming activities is a major driving force of increasing fire occurrence in the region.”

At the same time, human-driven climate change is leading to extreme heat waves that form “the perfect environment for larger, more frequent forest fires,” according to the World Resources Institute.

This creates the perfect storm, where land abandonment and fire-prone species provide the fuel and climate change the catalyst.

The effects of these wildfires can be devastating. Severe burns can result in biodiversity destruction, forest damage, carbon and nutrient cycling disruption, and potential post-fire effects such as soil erosion and debris flows, according to a recent paper co-authored by Ermitão.

They also pose a significant threat to human life and take a serious economic toll on the regions where they occur.  The full impact of this year’s fires is not yet known, but last year’s fires, which were a fraction of the size, cost an estimated $420 million, according to a report from the World Bank.

Fire Portugal

Managed Lands as Adaptation

When it comes to preventing these wildfires, the biggest challenge is land management, says Ermitão.

In an attempt to address this, the Portuguese government has implemented policies that require people to care for their land, protect villages, and manage excess vegetation that could otherwise become fuel for wildfires.

Meanwhile, the few baldios that were re-established following the fall of the Estado Novo are moving towards “mosaic landscapes,” which combine agriculture, pastoralism and forestry in a way that helps control wildfires, according to Skulska. This, she continues, also supports “incomes and more diversity [of] activities,” which could entice people back to these rural areas.

However, not everyone agrees that people should be the ones to manage these landscapes. Human intervention tends to be “systematic and very predictable,” and therefore lacks the nuance needed for healthy ecosystems, says Sara Casado Aliácar, head of conservation at Rewilding Portugal.

Instead, Aliácar explains, we should reintroduce wild grazers to manage these fire-prone ecosystems in a more holistic way.

“[Wild grazers] are reducing biomass while respecting biodiversity” through seed dispersal and the creation of habitats for other creatures like invertebrates and insects, says Aliácar, and “if [wild] grazers are reducing biomass, there are less things to burn.”

What’s more, wild grazers such as European bison and wild horses could also maintain permanent pastures, which are “accumulating organic matter and carbon continuously,” she explains. This helps address the immediate causes of fires by reducing fuel accumulation as well as the underlying catalyst of climate change by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.

Almost a century since Estado Novo implemented its agricultural campaigns, and more than 50 years since the regime fell, Portugal is still grappling with the consequences of rural abandonment and forest monocultures.

Whether through legislation, community management, or rewilding, the path to recovery is slow and complex — but as the climate crisis drives increasingly severe and frequent fires, it’s more important than ever to confront these underlying vulnerabilities.

Scroll down to find our “Republish” button

Previously in The Revelator:

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

Climate Disasters Are Coming. Are You Ready?

From creating a plan to packing a go bag, here’s how you can prepare for the next wildfire, hurricane, or other natural disaster.

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

No matter where you live, extreme weather can hit your area, causing damage to homes, power outages, and dangerous or deadly conditions. If you’re on the coast, it may be a hurricane; in the Midwest or South, a tornado; in the West, wildfires; and as we’ve seen in recent years, anywhere can experience heat waves or flash flooding.

Living through a disaster and its aftermath can be both traumatic and chaotic, from the immediate losses of life and belongings to conflicting information around where to access aid. The weeks and months after may be even more difficult, as the attention on your community is gone but civic services and events have stalled or changed drastically.

Grist compiled this resource guide to help you stay prepared and informed. It looks at everything from how to find the most accurate forecasts to signing up for emergency alerts to the roles that different agencies play in disaster aid.

Where to Find the Facts on Disasters

These days, many people find out about disasters in their area via social media. But it’s important to make sure the information you’re receiving is accurate. Here’s where to find the facts on extreme weather and the most reliable places to check for emergency alerts and updates.

Your local emergency manager:  Your city or county will have an emergency management department, which is part of the local government. In larger cities, it’s often a separate agency; in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts. Emergency managers are responsible for communicating with the public about disasters, managing rescue and response efforts, and coordinating between different agencies. They usually have an SMS-based emergency alert system, so sign up for those via your local website (Note: Some cities have multiple languages available, but most emergency alerts are only in English.) Many emergency management agencies are active on Facebook, so check there for updates as well.

Local news: The local television news and social media accounts from verified news sources will have live updates during and after a storm. Follow your local newspaper and television station on Facebook or other social media, or check their websites regularly.

Weather stations and apps: The Weather Channel, Apple Weather, and Google will have information on major storms, but that may not be the case for smaller-scale weather events, and you shouldn’t rely on these apps to tell you if you need to evacuate or move to higher ground.

National Weather Service: This agency, also known as NWS, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your zip code on weather.gov and customize your homepage. The NWS also has regional and local branches where you can sign up for SMS alerts. If you’re in a rural area or somewhere that isn’t highlighted on its maps, keep an eye out for local alerts and evacuation orders, as NWS may not have as much information ahead of time.

How to Pack an Emergency Kit

As you prepare for a storm, it’s important to have an emergency kit ready in case you lose power or need to leave your home. Review this checklist from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, for what to pack so you can stay safe, hydrated, and healthy.

These can often be expensive to create, so contact your local disaster aid organizations, houses of worship, or charities to see if there are free or affordable kits available. Try to gather as much as you can ahead of time in case shelves are empty when a storm is on the way.

Some of the most important things to have:

    • Water (one gallon per person per day for several days)
    • Food (at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food) and a can opener
    • Medicines and documentation of your medical needs
    • Identification and proof of residency documents (see a more detailed list below)
    • Battery-powered or hand crank radio, batteries, flashlight
    • First aid kit
    • Masks, hand sanitizer, and trash bags
    • Wrench or pliers
    • Cell phone with chargers and a backup battery
    • Diapers, wipes, and food or formula for babies and children
    • Food and medicines for any household pets

Don’t forget: Documents

One of the most important things to have in your emergency kit is documents you may need to prove your residence, demonstrate extent of damage, and vote. FEMA often requires you to provide these documents in order to receive financial assistance after a disaster.

    • Government issued ID, such as a drivers’ license for for each member of your household
    • Proof of citizenship or legal residency for each member of your household (passport, green card, etc.)
    • Social Security card for each member of your household
    • Documentation of your medical needs, such as medications or special equipment including oxygen tanks, wheelchairs, etc.
    • Health insurance card
    • Car title and registration documents
    • Pre-disaster photos of the inside and outside of your house and belongings
    • Copy of your homeowners’ or renters’ insurance policy
    • For homeowners: copies of your deed, mortgage information, and flood insurance policy, if applicable
    • For renters: a copy of your lease
    • Financial documents such as a checkbook or voided check

You can find more details about why you may need these documents here.

Disaster Aid 101

It can be hard to know who to lean on or trust when it comes to natural disasters. Where do official evacuation orders come from, for example, or who do you call if you need to be rescued? And where can you get money to help pay for emergency housing or to rebuild your home or community. Here’s a breakdown of the government officials and agencies in charge of delivering aid before, during, and after a disaster:

Emergency management agencies: Almost all cities and counties have local emergency management departments, which are part of the local government. Sometimes they’re agencies all their own, but in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts. These departments are the first line of defense during a weather disaster. They’re responsible for communicating with the public about incoming disasters, managing rescue and response efforts during an extreme weather event, and coordinating between different agencies. Many emergency management agencies, however, have a small staff and are under-resourced.

Much of the work that emergency managers do happens before a disaster: They develop response plans that lay out evacuation routes and communication procedures, and they also delegate responsibility to different government agencies like the police, fire, and public health departments. Most counties and cities publish these plans online.

In most cases, they are the most trustworthy resource in the days just before and just after a hurricane or other big weather event. They’ll send out alerts and warnings, coordinate evacuation efforts, and direct survivors and victims to resources and shelter.

You can find your state emergency management agency here. There isn’t a comprehensive list by county or city, but if you search your location online you’ll likely find a website, a page on the county or city website, or a Facebook page that posts updates.

Law enforcement: County sheriffs and city police departments are often the largest and best-staffed agencies in a given community, so they play a key role during disasters. Sheriff’s departments often enforce mandatory evacuation orders, going door-to-door to ensure that people vacate an area. They manage traffic flow during evacuations and help conduct search and rescue operations.

Law enforcement agencies may restrict access to disaster areas for the first few days after a flood or fire. In most states, city and county governments also have the power to issue curfew orders, and law enforcement officers can enforce these curfews with fines or even arrests. In some rural counties, the sheriff’s department may serve as the emergency management department.

Governor: State governors control several key aspects of disaster response. They have the power to declare a state of emergency, which allows them to deploy rescue and repair workers, distribute financial assistance to local governments, and activate the state National Guard. The governor has a key role in the immediate response to a disaster, but a smaller role in distributing aid and assistance to individual disaster victims.

In almost all U.S. states, and all hurricane-prone states along the Gulf of Mexico, the governor also has the power to announce mandatory evacuation orders. The penalty for not following these orders differs, but is most often a cash fine. (Though states seldom enforce these penalties.) The state government also decides whether to implement other transportation procedures such as contraflow, where officials reverse traffic flow on one side of a highway to allow larger amounts of people to evacuate.

HUD: The Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, also spends billions of dollars to help communities recover after disasters, building new housing and public buildings such as schools — but this money takes much longer to arrive. Unlike FEMA, HUD must wait for Congress to approve its post-disaster work, and then it must dole out grants to states for specific projects. In some cases, such as the aftermaths of Hurricane Laura in Louisiana or Hurricane Florence in North Carolina, it took years for projects to get off the ground. States and local governments, not individual people, apply for money from HUD, but the agency can direct you to FEMA or housing counselors.

FEMA

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is the federal government’s main disaster response agency. It provides assistance to states and local governments during large events like hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

FEMA is almost never the first resource on the ground after a disaster strikes. In order for the agency to send resources to a disaster area, the state’s governor must first request a disaster declaration from the president, and the president must approve it. For large disasters such as Category 4 or 5 hurricanes, this typically happens fast. For smaller disasters, like severe rain or flooding events, it can take weeks or even months for the president to grant a declaration and activate the agency. FEMA has historically not responded to heat waves.

FEMA is broken into regional offices and offers specific contacts and information for each of those, as well as for tribal nations. You can find your FEMA region here.

FEMA has two primary roles after a federally declared disaster:

Contributing to community rebuilding costs: The agency helps states and local governments pay for the cost of removing debris and rebuilding public infrastructure. During only the most extreme events, the agency also deploys its own teams of firefighters and rescue workers to help locate missing people, clear roadways, and restore public services. For the most part, states and local law enforcement conduct on-the-ground recovery work. (Read more about FEMA’s responsibilities and programs here.)

Individual financial assistance: FEMA gives out financial assistance to individual people who have lost their homes and belongings. This assistance can take several forms. FEMA gives out pre-loaded debit cards to help people buy food and fuel in the first days after a disaster, and may also provide cash payments for home repairs that your insurance doesn’t cover. The agency also provides up to 18 months of housing assistance for people who lose their homes in a disaster, and sometimes houses disaster survivors in its own manufactured housing units or “FEMA trailers.” FEMA also sometimes covers funeral and grieving expenses as well as medical and dental treatment.

In the aftermath of a disaster, FEMA offers survivors:

    • A one-time payment of $750 for emergency needs
    • Temporary housing assistance equivalent to 14 nights’ stay in a hotel in your area
    • Up to 18 months of rental assistance
    • Payments for lost property that isn’t covered by your homeowner’s insurance
    • And other forms of assistance, depending on your needs and losses

If you are a U.S. citizen or meet certain qualifications as a non-citizen and live in a federal disaster declaration area, you are eligible for financial assistance. Regardless of citizenship or immigration status, if you are affected by a disaster you may be eligible for crisis counseling, disaster legal services, disaster case management, medical care, shelter, food, and water.

FEMA also runs the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides insurance coverage of up to $350,000 for home flood damage. The agency recommends that everyone who lives in a flood zone purchase this coverage — and most mortgage lenders require it for borrowers in flood zones — though many homes outside the zones are also vulnerable. You must begin paying for flood insurance at least 30 days before a disaster in order to be eligible for a payout. You can check if your home is in a flood zone by using this FEMA website.

How to get FEMA aid: The easiest way to apply for individual assistance from FEMA is to fill out the application form on disasterassistance.gov. This is easiest to do from a personal computer over Wi-Fi, but you can do it from a smartphone with cellular data if necessary. This website does not become active until the president issues a disaster declaration.

Some important things to know:

    • FEMA will require you to create an account on the secure website Login.gov. Use this account to submit your aid application.
    • You can track the status of your aid application and receive notifications if FEMA needs more documents from you.
    • If FEMA denies your application for aid, you can appeal, but the process is lengthy.

Visiting a FEMA site in your area after a disaster: FEMA disaster recovery centers are facilities and mobile units where you can find information about the agency’s programs as well as other state and local resources. FEMA representatives can help you navigate the aid application process or direct you to nonprofits, shelters, or state and local resources. Visit this website to locate a recovery center in your area or text DRC and a ZIP Code to 43362. Example: DRC 01234.

What to Expect After a Disaster

Disasters affect people in many different ways, and it’s normal to grieve your losses — personal, professional, community — in your own time. Here are a few resources if you need mental health support after experiencing an extreme weather event.

    • The National Center for PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, on what to expect after experiencing a disaster.
    • The American Red Cross has disaster mental health volunteers they often dispatch to areas hit by a disaster.
    • The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, has a fact sheet on managing stress after a disaster. The agency has a Disaster Distress Helpline that provides 24/7 crisis counseling and support. Call or text: 1-800-985-5990

After a disaster is an especially vulnerable time. Beware of scams and make sure to know your rights. 

    • Be wary of solicitors who arrive at your home after a disaster claiming to represent FEMA or another agency. FEMA will never ask you for money. The safest way to apply for aid is through FEMA’s official website: disasterassistance.gov.
    • Be cautious about hiring contractors or construction workers in the days after a disaster. Many cities require permits for rebuilding work, and it’s common for scammers to pose as contractors after a disaster.
    • Renters can often face evictions after a disaster, so familiarize yourself with tenant rights in your state.

What to Keep in Mind Before, During, and After a Disaster

The most important thing to consider during a disaster is your own, your family’s, and your community’s safety. The National Weather Service has a guide for hurricanes and floods; FEMA has a guide for wildfires; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a guide for extreme heat safety.

A few potentially life-saving things to remember:

    • Never wade in floodwaters. They often contain harmful runoff from sewer systems and can cause serious illness and health issues.
    • If it’s safe to do so, turn off electricity at the main breaker or fuse box in your home or business before a hurricane to prevent electric shock.
    • If you lose power, never operate a generator inside your home. Generators emit carbon monoxide, a colorless and odorless gas that can be fatal if inhaled.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/extreme-weather/extreme-weather-101-your-guide-to-staying-prepared-and-informed/.

Wildfire Data Is Flawed — Here’s How to Fix It

The U.S. Forest Service includes fire it intentionally sets as part of its acreage count of the nation’s “wildfires.” That presents an inaccurate picture.

A version of this essay was originally published at Counterpunch. Fire moves rapidly, so this version has been updated and expanded.

Both Congress and the U.S. Forest Service have told us that our forests and communities are experiencing a “wildfire crisis” — that an increasing amount of wildfire is burning on our landscapes and fire severity is increasing. The primary “solution” they’re currently planning and implementing, embodied in the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, is a substantial increase in logging, thinning and burning treatments in our forests, for which Congress has provided billions of dollars of funding, along with the mandate to get it done.

So that begs the question — to what extent are we actually in a wildfire crisis? Certainly the aggressive and environmentally damaging logging and over-burning being carried out in some forests, with much more to come, should be based on solid data and science.

As someone who’s worked to protect western forests for over 15 years as an advocate and journalist, including as the cofounder and director of The Forest Advocate, I’m searching for answers to fundamental questions underlying prevailing forest-management paradigms and strategies.

The basic premise of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy is that wildfire is greatly increasing on our western landscapes. The facts on that shouldn’t be difficult to obtain, as the Forest Service and other land-management agencies maintain records and maps of wildfire perimeters. This data goes into national wildfire databases, such as one called Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity. MTBS is “an interagency program to map the location, extent and associated burn severity of all large fires (including wildfire, wildland fire use and prescribed fire) in the United States across all ownerships from 1984 to present.” This program is largely run by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Forest Service, and datasets include state and federal fire history records.

However, Forest Service wildfire perimeter data is vastly compromised: A large proportion of acres burned within the officially designated wildfire perimeters are actually ignited for supposed “resource benefit objectives”  by the Forest Service itself, most often by aerial ignitions via drones and helicopters. In many cases the majority of a fire that is called a “wildfire” on national forest lands is actually Forest Service intentional burning. This strategy for managing fire has increased to the point that numerous fires are substantially expanded by intentional burning.

The recent Tanques Fire in the Santa Fe National Forest was originally ignited by a lightning strike and then greatly expanded through aerial and ground firing operations under command of the Forest Service. According to a Forest Service news release, the fire was first reported on July 18 and by July 25 had grown to only 13 acres.

Tanques Fire, i.e. Tanques intentional burn. Photo: U.S. Forest Service.

But by that date, the Forest Service had made the decision to expand the fire up to a “planned perimeter” of 7,000 acres with firing operations. That means the Service intended to expand it up to 538 times its size. The fire may have continued to slowly expand naturally, but relatively high vegetation moisture from recent rains made it unlikely that the fire would spread much on its own. By Aug. 1, when the fire had been expanded to 6,500 acres, enough rain came that it was apparently too difficult to expand the fire any further. It’s hard to say exactly which part of the 6,500-acre “wildfire” was due to intentional burning and which was “natural” wildfire, but it is clear the vast majority of the acres burned were due to the Forest Service’s own ignitions. Nonetheless the agency calls the Tanques Fire a wildfire.

Map of Tanques Fire 7,000-acre focal area and planning area. U.S. Forest Service.

Recently the Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy (an organization closely aligned with the Forest Service), along with a university professor, authored the “Tamm review: A meta-analysis of thinning, prescribed fire, and wildfire effects on subsequent wildfire severity in conifer dominated forests of the Western US.” This review is a consideration of the efficacy of forest “thinning” and prescribed fire in moderating the incidence and severity of wildfire. It begins with citing a 2022 research article to support their contention that “In the western United States, area burned [by wildfire] has doubled in recent decades.”

That 2022 study, conducted by Virginia Iglesias and other researchers at the University of Colorado, found that “U.S. fires became larger, more frequent, and more widespread in the 2000s.” Their conclusion is based on data from over 28,000 fires in the MTBS dataset. However, since this dataset is derived largely from Forest Service wildfire data, it includes the large proportion of fire intentionally set by the Forest Service during wildfire-management operations. The agency does not differentiate in its published wildfire data between fire ignited during wildfire-management operations and fire that burned due to the original wildfire ignition. The study concludes that there have been more fires and larger fires in the West since 1999 — yet we have no way of knowing to what extent this is true, given that the Forest Service has, over the past 20-25 years, been igniting more and more fire under the umbrella of wildfire management and calling it all wildfire.

The first publicized example of such wildfire expansion was the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Timothy Ingalsbee of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology estimated that a large proportion of the Biscuit Fire was ignited by Forest Service firing operations. Inglasbee stated in a 2006 report largely focused on the Biscuit Fire that “burnout operations can sometimes take place several miles away from the edge of a wildfire, or alternately, miles away from the fire containment line.” Wildfire expansions have greatly increased since 2002, and wildfire starts, such as lightning strike ignitions, are often simply the “match that lit the fire,” leading to numerous firing operation ignitions to implement intentional burns that the agency calls wildfires.

The Tamm Review “found overwhelming evidence that mechanical thinning with prescribed burning, mechanical thinning with pile burning, and prescribed burning only, are effective at reducing subsequent wildfire severity.” These conclusions are controversial and do not consider research from independent scientists. In 2022 independent conservation scientists published a paper summarizing a growing conservation perspective and strategy, “Have western USA fire suppression and megafire active management approaches become a contemporary Sisyphus?” Based on their collective research, the authors “urge land managers and decision makers to address the root cause of recent fire increases by reducing greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors, reforming industrial forestry and fire suppression practices, protecting carbon stores in large trees and recently burned forests, working with wildfire for ecosystem benefits using minimum suppression tactics when fire is not threatening towns, and surgical application of thinning and prescribed fire nearest homes.”

However, an even more fundamental issue with the Tamm Review is that the purpose and need for such aggressive forest treatments are at least partially predicated on flawed data that indicates wildfire has doubled on our landscapes in recent decades. The acreage burned by wildfire is likely increasing given the warming and drying climate and the abundance of fuels, but who knows to what extent, since the wildfire data is so skewed by the inclusion of the Forest Service intentional burns. This data issue also affects considerations of trends in fire severity, and that should be investigated.

A significant proportion of wildfire research depends on wildfire perimeter data, including the University of Colorado research referenced as support for the premise of the Tamm Review. It is clear we have little knowledge of how much fire that was not ignited by the Forest Service has burned on our landscape in recent decades. It’s a major flaw in “wildfire” data. No forest management actions should be contemplated or initiated based on such data.

Yet Congress and the Forest Service are going forward with a strategy for addressing the “wildfire crisis” without having determined with reasonable data and responsible science to what extent the crisis exists. That’s unacceptable — especially considering that the remedy often involves severely damaging impacts to our forests and communities. Clear parameters need to be developed for how to support appropriate amounts of fire on our landscapes, based on accurate data and a range of scientific research. Any resulting plan should be analyzed with an environmental impact statement.

There is understandable concern about wildfires increasingly impacting wildland/urban interface communities, and this issue requires serious consideration and action. However, evidence clearly shows that burning of homes and communities by wildfire is not significantly impacted by logging, thinning, and intentional burning treatments out in the forest, and that only the 100 feet surrounding homes and other structures is relevant to structure ignitions.

The best response to the home ignition problem is home hardening and treating the landscape immediately surrounding homes and other values. This takes a coordinated effort between governmental bodies, land-management agencies, and the public. Such coordination would more likely occur with increased transparency on the part of the Forest Service and affiliated scientists, which could build trust with the public.

The accurate collection and categorization of wildfire data, which underlies research concerning wildfire, are a fundamental basis for transparency and trust — and good science.

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

Previously in The Revelator:

How Do We Solve Our Wildfire Challenges?

‘Three Rivers of Woe’ — David Quammen on Climate Change, Extinction, and Epidemics

Journalists and activists should focus on these three linked problems, says the acclaimed author, who also encourages us to talk about hope.

[Editor’s note: This article is a joint publication of SEJournal and The Revelator.]

This past May, as the world started to emerge from the restraints of the COVID-19 epidemic, a paper in the journal Nature warned that future pandemics were coming, due to climate change, chemical pollution, invasive species and other factors.

The most likely cause of future outbreaks, the researchers found, could come from a threat we don’t talk about enough: biodiversity loss.

The threat of emerging pandemics will be even greater, according to the paper, when these factors combine. “For example,” the authors wrote, “climate change and chemical pollution can cause habitat loss and change, which in turn can cause biodiversity loss and facilitate species introductions.”

It’s a warning that science writer David Quammen, author of the award-winning 2012 book Spillover, has been sounding for years.

As he said on a panel at the 2023 Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Boise, Idaho, the threats of extinction, climate change and emerging diseases are “three big, brown, churning, murky rivers of woe, with some channels interconnecting now, but flowing parallel, independently to a great degree, but coming from the same source, … the human footprint.”

Connecting the Dots

Quammen has been writing about the extinction crisis since 1981, initially as a columnist for Outside magazine.

Since then his work for National Geographic and other publications, as well as his many books, has taken him all over the world. He’s written about emerging diseases, including HIV and COVID-19, as well as climate change and other threats.

And he encourages other journalists and people working in environmental fields to do a better job connecting the dots.

“When many journalists and activists talk about climate change, they tend to think that this is the big, all-encompassing problem and everything else is a subcategory,” he told me by Zoom from his book-lined home office in Bozeman, Montana.

“It’s important for people to understand: We do not have one huge problem called climate change, in which all other problems are subsets. We have three coequal problems that need to be understood fully in their severity and in their independence as well as their interconnectedness. Those are climate change, loss of biological diversity, and emerging pandemic threats.”

For journalists, as well as the public, that means we need to look a little deeper.

“Climate change is a problem that comes to us, right? It comes home to us. It comes to everybody,” Quammen said. “Loss of biological diversity can be happening at a distance.”

That might make the changes hard to see, especially if your vantage point doesn’t change much.

“If you go out and about, if you’re a traveling journalist as I’ve been, then you have seen with heartbreaking concreteness the loss of biological diversity over the decades. For instance, the decline in insect populations around the world, the decline in migrating songbird populations, the decline in populations of a lot of other creatures that perhaps need a particular high altitude or cold habitat, ranging from bumblebees to polar bears.”

Seeing these species, seeing these places, offers journalists an opportunity to illustrate to readers how these major environmental issues connect and to bring them to life — and hopefully help readers feel connected to them in return.

“Connectivity is just one of the very great truths,” Quammen said. “It’s the essence of ecology and the essence of human history, which I think of as a subcategory of ecology rather than the other way around.”

Making It Real

Illustrating that connectivity is especially important when we’re writing about far-flung wildlife that people won’t encounter in Bozeman or Boise or New York City.

“Most people were never going to see a pangolin, polar bear or lowland gorilla except maybe in a zoo. My particular career and route through life have given me the opportunity to see those creatures and a lot of others in the wild. And I’ve felt that it was part of my duty, as well as my opportunity, to try and make those creatures real, at least at one remove, in the minds and the hearts of readers who will never have the same opportunity.”

pangolin
Photo: Adam Tusk (CC BY 2.0) www.tuskphoto.com

That could help, for example, to provide some emotional understanding of the wildlife trade threatening all eight species of pangolin (a trade that’s been linked to the COVID-19 pandemic), or the loss of sea ice threatening polar bears.

“My job and my opportunity are to go out there as a proxy for other people,” Quammen said.

“I get to say, ‘Hey guys and gals, this is happening. Look at this creature through my eyes. This is a magnificent, appealing, complex, amazing creature. And yet look at this situation that this creature is in. It’s outrageous, it’s heartbreaking, it’s dangerous, but it’s reversible.’”

‘Golden Thread of Hope’

Despite the dangers he’s chronicled, Quammen brings a lot of humor to his work.

“I am one of those people who believes that almost nothing is too sacred for a joke to somehow enrich the contemplation of it,” he told me. “I really believe that when you write a rich piece of nonfiction, a piece of journalism about the environment, about the living world, if you can make your audience laugh and cry and think and maybe see the world in a slightly different way, that’s the goal. Because those moments are best when they come unexpectedly, and they knock the reader a little bit off balance.”

He also brings another H- word to his work, as he discussed in a recent interview with Orion, where he said hope is a duty when writing about the extinction crisis.

Sure, there’s a lot of gloom in the extinction crisis, but Quammen told me we should always be looking for solutions, or at least small bits of progress.

“I think we should all do that,” he said. “I do that in my most recent book, The Heartbeat of the Wild, where I write about some situations, some efforts, some conservation models around the world that are working pretty well, and therefore they give me hope.”

That hope, he admitted, “is sandwiched between a lot of concern and doom and pessimism.”

And, he cautioned, writing about it “should never be programmatic.”

Too many gloomy articles contain “a hopeful ski jump at the end,” Quammen said. “It’s autopilot, it’s predictable. There are other ways to lace a golden thread of hope through the narrative tapestry that you’re creating. And I think it’s important to do that.”

Previously in The Revelator:

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

Tree Cutting in Egypt: The Desertification of Governance

Egyptians face worsening threats from heat and pollution. So why is the country cutting down thousands of healthy trees?

In 2022 the Egyptian government announced its 100 Million Trees initiative, a plan in part intended to improve air quality in the capital city of Cairo and surrounding communities. So why, then, is Egypt still cutting down thousands of healthy trees?

According to information published by Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, the country needs approximately 58 million square meters of parks and green spaces to keep its air clean, yet currently only about 5.4 million square meters are available. Egypt lost 75% of its tree cover between 2010 and 2023, according to a recent study from the American University in Cairo.

And the problem keeps getting worse: Egypt has expanded construction of roads and buildings, and despite ongoing protests the government has destroyed many of its last green spaces to accomplish this. The loss of vital trees has made Cairo feel even hotter as climate change worsens. Citizens have been documenting the events with before-and-after photos to raise awareness of this environmental crime.

Authoritarians Versus Trees

The tree-cutting phenomenon illustrates the authoritarian traits of Egypt’s political system: a lack of public participation in decision-making, weak oversight mechanisms, failed planning and governance, and the prevalence of class discrimination. The phenomenon signals a growing injustice and cruelly affects people, cities, and nature alike.

Authoritarian policies exacerbate social inequalities, favoring bureaucratic and capitalist interests, particularly as the construction and real estate sectors grow at the expense of the environment and green spaces. Rampant tree-cutting has become a recurring phenomenon, often on the pretext of road development, bridge construction, and waterway maintenance. But trees are even being cut down in areas not undergoing development, with no justification in terms of the public interest.

The assaults extend even to public parks, some of which hold historical significance, where portions are leased out for commercial purposes such as shops and kiosks. Local administrative bodies collect rental income by deeming unused land as ripe for “redevelopment.”

This behavior reflects a shortsighted and inadequate approach, aiming to fund government budgets, particularly in local districts. The conversion of green spaces is seen as an investment, treating trees as fertilizer, wood, or raw materials to be sold to manufacturers.

A Crisis of the Environment and Employment

Tree-cutting affects everyone but is especially hard on the poorest Egyptians. Every day Cairo receives an influx of people adding to its population of 10 million, driven by migration from nearby regions and governorates in search of work. The influx is exacerbated by high unemployment rates in rural areas of southern Egypt and the Delta, where the poorest populations reside. An estimated 29.7% of Egypt’s population of over 112 million lives below the poverty line.

Internal migration is on the rise as people flee dire social conditions and a lack of job opportunities, increasing population density in major cities. In Cairo car emissions rise and industrial activity expands unchecked, without consideration for sustainability or environmental regulations. Following the state’s abandonment of a planned economy and adoption of economic liberalization without a developed private sector capable of driving growth, a low-capital private sector, often the most polluting and employing the most exploited workers, has expanded.

Smog

Data indicates that Cairo’s air-pollution levels are extremely high. In Yale University’s 2024 Environmental Performance Index, Egypt ranked 122nd in the world for air quality. Some residents feel as though they’re struggling just to walk through the crowded streets during peak hours. A migrant worker who lost his job in agriculture and now commutes daily to the capital told me how he can smell Cairo both upon arriving and leaving during his daily 50-kilometer journey. The commute is considered preferable to unemployment, as his village has lost much of its greenery due to the shrinking agricultural sector, which once employed about a third of the population.

How We Got Here

During the 1950s President Abdel Nasser redistributed land owned by feudal landlords to the peasants. However, in the early 1990s, the land returned to large landowners through a law passed by President Hosni Mubarak. The descendants of these feudal landlords invested in land and abandoned agriculture in favor of real estate, contributing to the expansion of the construction sector in both villages and cities. Many viewed housing as a store of value, particularly with the depreciation of the Egyptian pound and the liberalization of exchange rates.

As a result of a complex set of historical stages, green spaces have dwindled, and tree-cutting has become a topic of debate over the past five years with Egypt facing unprecedented warming, rising pollution levels, and increased population density. I recently had a discussion with sociologist Hoda Badran, who was born in 1929 and has witnessed Egypt’s political shifts and urban transformation since the 1950s. She remarked: “I spent my childhood in the countryside of Qalyubia, a city close to the capital, surrounded by greenery. After graduating from university, I worked as a social worker in factories, where I saw development as being closely tied to environmental, social, and psychological elements that form an interconnected whole.”

Badran recalled that workers’ housing built by Nasser’s government included green spaces that have since vanished.

A Social Solution

Through Badran’s leadership roles in United Nations organizations, she came to understand the integral nature of development elements. “Greenery, a clean environment, and environmental awareness are developmental necessities and human rights,” she told me.

Reflecting on the 1990s, she remembered cofounding the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood in Egypt with Suzanne Mubarak, where environmental education was made a central component of its programs. The council worked on tree-planting initiatives with international and regional organizations, especially targeting children.

“Today there’s an awareness of climate change and the crime of cutting trees, but it’s not enough,” she tells me. “Environmental concerns must be at the heart of every policy and priority. Just as childhood issues are a priority within every priority, the environment must be a priority in every step and policy implemented in Egypt.”

Majesty of Egypt

She offers an example. “How can we ensure children’s health when they are exposed to respiratory diseases and poisoning due to pollution? Here the voices of the social sciences and environmental experts must be heard. Sociology connects the dots; it is a social medicine that diagnoses problems and influences policies. I believe that tree-cutting is a crime.”

An Investment Horizon

In December 2014 the Sadat City Authority announced the sale of 300 acres of forested land. According to Egypt’s Ministry of Environment, the country contains 8,000 acres of forest spread over 34 tree plantations in 17 governorates, all irrigated with wastewater. Therefore, tree-cutting cannot be justified under the pretext of water conservation, particularly in light of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam crisis, which threatens to reduce Egypt’s share of Nile River water.

Despite the dam crisis, green spaces, especially forests, could be expanded, which would mitigate the effects of severe climate change in Egypt. These forests could also provide jobs in the timber industry, where wood prices have skyrocketed. This has motivated corrupt forces to illegally harvest trees in a desperate bid for profit, as if they’re living in their final days. These groups are active in tree-harvesting, with occasional support from official voices.

In September 2022 Egypt’s Grand Mufti (a high religious office) justified tree-cutting as permissible “in the public interest.” Meanwhile other government officials admitted that mistakes had been made, claiming that the cutting was merely pruning — a term used as deception, similar to how prisons are called rehabilitation centers, power outages are termed load reduction, and floating the Egyptian pound and selling public assets are called economic reforms. Yet these so-called reforms often involve selling off national assets to pay down loans and debts, which have ballooned from $46.1 billion to $164 billion over the past decade.

Urban development plans fail to account for people’s rights to green spaces, with most official data (including government reports) showing that per capita green space has shrunk to less than one square meter, which is unevenly distributed. In contrast, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme recommend that green spaces should not fall below nine square meters per person. Yet the authorities continue to ignore the importance of green spaces in reducing both noise and air pollution, the latter exacerbated by rising fossil fuel consumption, which contributes to health problems, especially respiratory diseases. And cities suffering from overcrowding and pollution, as Egypt’s are, are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly heatwaves.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Yvonne Buchheim (@yvonne_buchheim)

Neither the environment nor the people seem to matter to a government obsessed with accumulating wealth through geographic redevelopment and economic exploitation. Bureaucracy and state policies view everything — people, land, and natural resources — as opportunities for profit, without regard for long-term consequences.

The current trajectory of urban development benefits certain classes who profit from desertification and the ongoing tree-cutting phenomenon. In some cases plastic trees replace real ones, adding a touch of irony and sadness. Large amounts of artificial turf (landscape) are supplied directly to government agencies, where economic interests intersect with cruelty and deception, forming a triangle of power.

A Heartless City

Poet Abdel-Moati Hegazy described Cairo as a “city without a heart” in his 1959 collection, and again in his 1989 book Trees of Cement, in which he lamented, “This cement tree stretches everywhere / Writhing like devils / Catching birds that fall like stones / Into radar devices.”

At the time Hegazy wrote these lines, Cairo was far less environmentally and architecturally degraded than it is now, with a smaller population and a more visible role for the state in maintaining greenery. Class disparities in urbanization and access to green spaces were also less pronounced, and tree-cutting crimes were not as pervasive or heavily justified by state propaganda, as they are today, where reasons range from facilitating security surveillance to bridge construction, most of which involve steel structures that lack aesthetic value and feel more like wartime fortifications.

A System That Cuts Trees and Claims to Fight Climate Change

While the government cuts down trees, it simultaneously engages in a publicity campaign about combating climate change, aiming to secure $100 billion in funding by 2030. Part of this money has already been secured through green investments and grants for large-scale, important projects — though some have stalled.

In May 2023 the government offered for sale shares in three large electricity production plants, including clean energy facilities, at a time when the country was grappling with an energy crisis. It has also constructed some areas that meet international housing standards, in collaboration with international partners (with plans to build 14 smart cities). But these remain limited, expensive, and largely accessible to foreigners and the wealthy.

Many climate-related projects have an air of showmanship. The Ministry of Environment launched the “ECO EGYPT” campaign to promote tourism, as part of the presidential initiative “Prepare for Green.” The project was initially designed by Egyptian graphic designer Ghada Wali and funded by the UN Development Programme and the Global Environment Facility. However, the project’s official website collapsed, along with Wali’s promotional materials, after she was accused of plagiarizing artwork for another project — the metro beautification initiative. This scandal reflects corruption under the guise of climate action.

The scandal illustrates the level of propaganda surrounding climate issues and highlights how profiteering circles extend beyond the government to other sectors, proving that the rhetoric about addressing climate change is superficial.

A Crisis of Green Space — and of Government

Egypt is facing a multifaceted crisis that stems from the nature of its authoritarian regime, which considers neither sustainable urban planning nor the rights of its citizens. Lacking an active parliament or local councils (which haven’t been elected since 2008), the government remains disconnected from its people, rendering environmental justice and social equity unattainable.

Ultimately authoritarian regimes often use environmental issues for propaganda purposes while failing to address them effectively. Their policies on reducing green spaces worsen environmental destruction, much as colonial and military regimes prioritize private interests over the well-being of indigenous populations.

Scroll down to find our “Republish” button

Previously in The Revelator:

Warming Cities, Dying Trees: Can We Keep Our Cities’ Tree-lined Streets?

Coastal Restoration: Shifting Sand — for Better or Worse

Taking sand from one place to save another often creates more problems — but there are ways to fix that.

Coastal beaches are dynamic systems. Wind, waves, and currents constantly move sand around, enlarging a beach here, narrowing one there. Storms make more drastic changes, sometimes washing away or depositing entire beaches.

When humans build houses, roads, hotels, and other structures on or near beaches, they put themselves in conflict with this dynamic nature. Communities trying to protect such infrastructure often employ a variety of methods to hold sand in place, including hard structures such as jetties and seawalls.

These don’t actually stop sand from moving, though. They just change where and how it does move, and they often enhance local erosion. Increasingly severe storms and sea-level rise caused by climate change are only making the problem worse.

Officials in many towns and cities have turned to another method: beach renourishment. This involves bringing in sand from elsewhere and adding it to eroded beaches. Beach nourishment only accounts for about 5% of the more than 55 billion tons of sand mined worldwide every year — a level of removal that threatens coastal ecosystems worldwide — but experts say its benefits are questionable and its potential for harm perhaps underestimated.

A Complex Issue

Since the first beach renourishment in New York in 1923, projects in 470 U.S. communities have used almost 1.7 billion cubic yards of sand, according to the National Beach Nourishment Database published by the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association.

The practice is also common in Europe, with a 2021 study reporting that the Netherlands uses an average of 12 million cubic meters of sand for nourishment annually (a cubic meter is roughly the size of a pickup truck bed, slightly larger than a cubic yard). Germany uses 1.9 million cubic meters annually, Spain about 10 million cubic meters, and Denmark 2.5 million, compared to about 16 million in the United States.

Ocean City Beach Renourishment

Some experts point out that beach nourishment projects help protect coastal infrastructure and restore beaches for tourism and can replace or create wildlife habitat. The city of Galveston, Texas, for example, credits a 1985 project with a tourism revival there. Another project on the island resulted in buildup of dunes along the seawall that provided additional protection and wildlife habitat.

But experts also warn that collecting and depositing sand for beach renourishment can damage complex ecosystems. Underwater sand is habitat for seagrass and marine animals such as sea stars, sea cucumbers, and conchs, and feeding grounds for rays, fish such as flounders, and sharks.

Many U.S. renourishment projects use sediment collected during regular dredging of ports and ship channels. The city of Galveston, for example, reports that many of its of 19 renourishment projects, representing more than 4.6 million cubic yards, used sediment from maintenance dredging of a ship channel at the island’s east end. Since this dredging is already happening, at least this practice avoids disturbing additional sites.

But dredging can significantly degrade water quality over large areas and for long periods of time, and the quality of dredged sand often differs substantially from that naturally on the beach. Changing the size and type of grains on a beach can affect the flora and fauna living in sand, and multiple studies have shown that changing sand characteristics affects nesting by sea turtles and birds.

For example, a long-term study by the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation in Florida found annual sea turtle hatching success on nourished beaches fell by about 20% on average compared to non-nourished ones. Another study, conducted by the Sea Turtle Conservancy, reported significant reduction in successful nesting by sea turtles following a renourishment project in Martin County, Florida, and noted that the width and flatness of the new beach left a higher percentage of nests prone to inundation during high tides. (Three years following the renourishment, nesting had returned to normal.)

Rather than bringing in sand from elsewhere, some projects use bulldozing to restructure beaches. Three months after a project in North Carolina bulldozed sand from the lower beach to build up dunes at the back beach, researchers recorded dramatically lower numbers of saltwater clams and sand and ghost crabs on the bulldozed segments. Sand crabs had failed to recover by midsummer, when they serve as the primary food for important surf fishes and some shorebirds. The study authors blame this failure on poor match in sand-grain size, high shell content in the sand, and extension of the project too far into the warm season.

170217-A-OI229-003

According to a North Carolina Coastal Federation report, monitors have documented sea turtles prevented from nesting or even killed by bulldozing, and renourishment pipelines preventing hatchlings from reaching the sea. Nests can be buried as well, adds Kerri Allen, the organization’s coastal management director, and the noise and lights from a project can deter nesting females.

In addition, sand placed on a beach is eventually lost to the same forces that removed sand in the first place. That means renourishment must be constantly repeated — generally every three or four years. In an unfortunate coincidence, that’s about the time it takes natural systems on a renourished beach to recover, according to a study in the Journal of Coastal Research.

Most sand used for renourishment in the United States is mined legally, so at least here the practice doesn’t contribute to the worldwide problem of illegal sand mining. But that’s not true in other parts of the world. Stephen Leatherman, a professor at Florida International University — known as  Dr. Beach and famous for his annual list of the world’s top 10 beaches — tells me armed guards once blocked him from a beach in Morrocco. Illegal miners were removing its white sand, which he says ended up on a formerly black sand beach in the Canary Islands.

Making It Better

The four authors of the 2022 book Vanishing Sands, all researchers and experts in geology and coastal sciences, suggest the need to rethink beachside development, which drives much renourishment.

“If no buildings crowded the shoreline, there would be no need for shoreline armoring, beach nourishment, or beach scraping,” the book stated. “The threats to the beach fauna and flora or the recreational quality of the beach would not exist. And there would be no erosion problem requiring mined replenishment sand. No buildings, no erosion problem.”

Extensive beachside development already exists on most of the world’s coastlines, of course, and preservation of sandy beaches is essential to protect this development and for tourism, a major contributor to coastal economies. Add in rising sea levels, and efforts to hold shorelines in place and protect infrastructure will likely intensify.

Rockaway Beach Renourishment Work

To many, beach renourishment seems less harmful than hardened structures such as seawalls and bulwarks. But that may not be the case. While beach monitoring studies are routinely required for U.S. beach nourishment projects, a 2005 review published in the journal BioScience reported that, at the time, 73% of them misinterpreted at least some of their results and more than half lacked rigorous support from evidence and analysis for their conclusions, often due to poor study design.

“The review was motivated by our observation that despite years of mandated monitoring of beach nourishment projects, our knowledge of the biological impacts remained poor,” says co-author Melanie J. Bishop, now at Macquarie University in Australia. “Sadly, our finding of major deficiencies in the majority of studies was what we suspected — that ecological monitoring was essentially a box ticking exercise, done to fulfill permitting obligations, but with little scientific rigor.”

She and co-author Charles H. Peterson (now deceased) suggested addressing these problems by improving permitting, monitoring, and mitigation for renourishment projects. Monitoring, for example, needs to be driven by clear goals, conducted by independent research organizations, and subject to peer review.

“Monitoring in and of itself does not make beach nourishment more or less harmful,” Bishop says. “Instead of requiring monitoring of each and every project as a box-ticking exercise, funds otherwise dedicated to monitoring may be better placed into a central pool used strategically to fund basic research that improves our understanding of how sandy beach ecosystems operate and respond to change.”  The paper also recommended that state and federal permitting ensure compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, which has yet to happen.

In North Carolina Allen says she’s seen improvement in the management of nourishment projects, partly due to stronger regulations at both the federal and state level, she says, and partly due to increased awareness, education, and oversight.

“Coastal residents are highly educated when it comes to issues like these, and they are the first to call when they see something that is out of place,” she says. “These residents will call an advocacy group, like the Coastal Federation, and we will call the regulatory agency and local government reps to make sure that all the rules are being followed. We also review permit applications when they are sent out for public notice to ensure regulations are being followed and to remind the agencies that someone is watching.”

The North Carolina organization also has recommended that permits require projects to avoid operations during certain months and that nourishment sand closely match the beach’s original grain size, color, and shell and silt content.

“Conducting these projects well outside of nesting season is key,” Allen says, “as is detailed analysis looking at the composition of the placement material to make sure it is compatible. If both the size and composition don’t match what is on the beach, it can exacerbate erosion and also disrupt imprinting for sea turtle hatchlings. It’s well-documented that sea turtle hatchlings return to the beach where they hatched to lay a nest, and a fairly mainstream understanding for how that works is that hatchlings imprint on sand while making their way to the water.”

Allen adds that it is important to note that, without nourishment projects, sea turtles in some places would not have a beach to nest on. “And beaches with hardened seawalls, groins, jetties, sandbags, and such are far worse for sea turtle nesting than nourished ones,” she says. “Like most coastal management issues, there is no cut and dry ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ solution.”

The United Nations Environment Programme’s 2022 report “Sand and Sustainability,” which addressed the larger issues of global sand use, also recommended using sand that is as similar as possible to the original, as well as from a location that keeps the sand in the larger ecosystem.

UNEP further urged using nature-based (green) engineering over built or gray engineering (seawalls, bulwarks, and the like):

“Sand has key functions in nature and drives important natural processes,” the report stated. “Nature-based solutions make intentional use of these natural processes to strengthen engineering performance and preserve certain ecosystem services linked to sand. Replacing grey engineering with green engineering is the ‘no regrets’ option. It is natural and environmentally friendly, reduces the use of concrete, can be done in collaboration with local communities, requires low (if any) maintenance, has aesthetic value, stores carbon, supports biodiversity and usually is cost effective.”

(Making concrete itself requires significant amounts of sand.)

With climate change increasing the natural forces that continually move sand around on the world’s coasts and oceans, beach renourishment is unlikely to go away anytime soon. But at the very least, we can start doing it better.

“It’s easy to assert that there shouldn’t be development on barrier islands and that managed retreat is the only responsible option long-term,” Allen says. “But the reality is, these homes and businesses and infrastructure exist in these dynamic habitats, and municipalities have a responsibility to serve their residents as best they can. We work hard to get coastal leaders and residents thinking about long-term solutions, but in the meantime, we’re all just trying to do the best we can with the information we have.”

That said, Allen admits beach nourishment is probably not the best solution. “But do I wholeheartedly believe it’s the far better alternative to hardened structures? Yes. So we have to continue to weigh the pros and cons of all of these methods and continue to support and fund research that may yield an even better alternative.”

Scroll down to find our “Republish” button

Previously in The Revelator:

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