In 2023, Marlena Arjo adopted a one-eyed kitten with a penchant for destruction. She named him Otto, and over the next eight months, Otto grew into his own little chaotic personality. “ He’s laying on houseplants, he’s tearing books out of the bookshelves, ripping the calendar off the wall…I wasn’t prepared for having a criminal in my home,” Arjo joked. Within months, Otto got sick and stopped eating. Arjo rushed him to a vet and learned he had feline infectious peritonitis, better known as FIP, a disease that kills nearly all cats that contract it.  Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. The vet said there was nothing the clinic could do. But there was something Arjo could do. “I shouldn’t tell you this,” Arjo recalled the vet telling her. “But by the way, you can get drugs for this if you go to this Facebook group.” This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Hyperfixed podcast, we tell the story of the cat drug black market, why it was even necessary, and how cat lovers fought for big changes to make the black market obsolete.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers, in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between rising temperatures and changing DNA in a wild mammal species. Climate breakdown is threatening the survival of polar bears. Two-thirds of them are expected to have disappeared by 2050 as their icy habitat melts and the weather becomes hotter. Now scientists at the University of East Anglia have found that some genes related to heat stress, ageing, and metabolism are behaving differently in polar bears living in southeast Greenland, suggesting they may be adjusting to warmer conditions. The researchers analysed blood samples taken from polar bears in two regions of Greenland and compared “jumping genes”: small, mobile pieces of the genome that can influence how other genes work. Scientists looked at the genes in relation to temperatures in the two regions and at the associated changes in gene expression. > “We cannot be complacent, this offers some hope but does not mean that polar > bears are at any less risk of extinction.” “DNA is the instruction book inside every cell, guiding how an organism grows and develops,” said the lead researcher, Dr Alice Godden. “By comparing these bears’ active genes to local climate data, we found that rising temperatures appear to be driving a dramatic increase in the activity of jumping genes within the south-east Greenland bears’ DNA.” As local climates and diets evolve as a result of changes in habitat and prey forced by global heating, the genetics of the bears appear to be adapting, with the group of bears in the warmest part of the country showing more changes than the communities farther north. The authors of the study have said these changes could help us understand how polar bears might survive in a warming world, inform understanding of which populations are most at risk and guide future conservation efforts. This is because the findings, published on Friday in the journal Mobile DNA, suggest the genes that are changing play a crucial role in how different polar bear populations are evolving. Godden said: “This finding is important because it shows, for the first time, that a unique group of polar bears in the warmest part of Greenland are using ‘jumping genes’ to rapidly rewrite their own DNA, which might be a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice.” Temperatures in northeast Greenland are colder and less variable, while in the south-east there is a much warmer and less icy environment, with steep temperature fluctuations. DNA sequences in animals change over time, but this process can be accelerated by environmental stress such as a rapidly heating climate. There were some interesting DNA changes, such as in areas linked to fat processing, that could help polar bears survive when food is scarce. Bears in warmer regions had more rough, plant-based diets compared with the fatty, seal-based diets of northern bears, and the DNA of southeastern bears seemed to be adapting to this. Godden said: “We identified several genetic hotspots where these jumping genes were highly active, with some located in the protein-coding regions of the genome, suggesting that the bears are undergoing rapid, fundamental genetic changes as they adapt to their disappearing sea ice habitat.” The next step will be to look at other polar bear populations, of which there are 20 around the world, to see if similar changes are happening to their DNA. This research could help protect the bears from extinction. But the scientists said it was crucial to stop temperature rises accelerating by reducing the burning of fossil fuels. Godden said: “We cannot be complacent, this offers some hope but does not mean that polar bears are at any less risk of extinction. We still need to be doing everything we can to reduce global carbon emissions and slow temperature increases.”

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Shoppers have long sought ways to make more sustainable choices at the supermarket—and for good reason: Our food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of emissions from agriculture come from raising cows on industrial farms in order to sell burgers, steak, and other beef products. Beef production results in two and a half times as many greenhouse gases as lamb, and almost nine times as many as chicken or fish; its carbon footprint relative to other sources of protein, like cheese, eggs, and tofu, is even higher.  If you want to have a lighter impact on the planet, you could try eating less beef. (Just try it!) Otherwise, a series of recent lawsuits intends make it easier for consumers to discern what’s sustainable and what’s greenwashing by challenging the world’s largest meat processors on their climate messaging. Tyson, which produces 20 percent of beef, chicken, and pork in the United States, has agreed to drop claims that the company has a plan to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050 and to stop referring to beef products as “climate smart” unless verified by an independent expert.  > “Even if you were to reduce [beef’s] emissions by 30 percent, it’s still not > gonna be a climate-smart choice.” Tyson was sued in 2024 by the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a nonprofit dedicated to public health and environmental issues. The group alleged that Tyson’s claims were false and misleading to consumers. (Nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice represented EWG in the case.) Tyson denied the allegations and agreed to settle the suit.  “We landed in a place that feels satisfying in terms of what we were able to get from the settlement,” said Carrie Apfel, deputy managing attorney of Earthjustice’s Sustainable Food and Farming program. Apfel was the lead attorney on the case. According to the settlement provided by Earthjustice, over the next five years Tyson cannot repeat previous claims that the company has a plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 or make new ones unless they are verified by a third-party source. Similarly, Tyson also cannot market or sell any beef products labeled as “climate smart” or “climate friendly” in the United States. “We think that this provides the consumer protections we were seeking from the lawsuit,” said Apfel.  The settlement is “a critical win for the fight against climate greenwashing by industrial agriculture,” according to Leila Yow, climate program associate at the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy, a nonprofit research group focused on sustainable food systems.  In the original complaint, filed in DC Superior Court, EWG alleged that Tyson had never even defined “climate-smart beef,” despite using the term in various marketing materials. Now Tyson and EWG must meet to agree on a third-party expert that would independently verify any of the meat processor’s future “net zero” or “climate smart” claims.  Following the settlement, Apfel went a step further in a conversation with Grist, arguing that the term “climate smart” has no business describing beef that comes from an industrial food system.  “In the context of industrial beef production, it’s an oxymoron,” said the attorney. “You just can’t have climate-smart beef. Beef is the highest-emitting major food type that there is. Even if you were to reduce its emissions by 10 percent or even 30 percent, it’s still not gonna be a climate-smart choice.” A Tyson spokesperson said the company “has a long-held core value to serve as stewards of the land, animals, and resources entrusted to our care” and identifies “opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain.” The spokesperson added: “The decision to settle was made solely to avoid the expense and distraction of ongoing litigation and does not represent any admission of wrongdoing by Tyson Foods.”  The Tyson settlement follows another recent greenwashing complaint—this one against JBS Foods, the world’s largest meat processor. In 2024, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued JBS, alleging the company was misleading consumers with claims it would achieve net-zero emissions by 2040.  > Industrial animal agriculture “has built its business model on secrecy.” James reached a $1.1 million settlement with the beef behemoth earlier this month. As a result of the settlement, JBS is required to update its messaging to describe reaching net-zero emissions by 2040 as more of an idea or a goal than a concrete plan or commitment from the company. The two settlements underscore just how difficult it is to hold meat and dairy companies accountable for their climate and environmental impacts.  “Historically, meat and dairy companies have largely been able to fly under the radar of reporting requirements of any kind,” said Yow of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. When these agri-food companies do share their emissions, these disclosures are often voluntary and the processes for measuring and reporting impact are not standardized.  That leads to emissions data that is often “incomplete or incorrect,” said Yow. She recently authored a report ranking 14 of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies in terms of their sustainability commitments—including efforts to report methane and other greenhouse gas emissions. Tyson and JBS tied for the lowest score out of all 14 companies. Industrial animal agriculture “has built its business model on secrecy,” said Valerie Baron, a national policy director and senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in response to the Tyson settlement. Baron emphasized that increased transparency from meat and dairy companies is a critical first step to holding them accountable.  Yow agreed. She argued upcoming climate disclosure rules in California and the European Union have the potential to lead the way on policy efforts to measure and rein in emissions in the food system. More and better data can lead to “better collective decision making with policymakers,” she said.  But, she added: “We need to actually know what we’re talking about before we can tackle some of those things.”

This story was originally published by Vox and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On a sunny morning two years ago, a group of state officials stood in the mountains of northwestern Colorado in front of a handful of large metal crates. With a small crowd watching them, the officials began to unlatch the crate doors one by one. Out of each came a gray wolf—arguably the nation’s most controversial endangered species. This was a massive moment for conservation. While gray wolves once ranged throughout much of the Lower 48, a government-backed extermination campaign wiped most of them out in the 19th and 20th centuries. By the 1940s, Colorado had lost all of its resident wolves. But, in the fall of 2020, Colorado voters did something unprecedented: They passed a ballot measure to reintroduce gray wolves to the state. This wasn’t just about having wolves on the landscape to admire, but about restoring the ecosystems that we’ve broken and the biodiversity we’ve lost. As apex predators, wolves help keep an entire ecosystem in balance, in part by limiting populations of deer and elk that can damage vegetation, spread disease, and cause car accidents. > “This was not ever going to be easy.” In the winter of 2023, state officials released 10 gray wolves flown in from Oregon onto public land in northwestern Colorado. And in January of this year, they introduced another 15 that were brought in from Canada. Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW)—the state wildlife agency leading the reintroduction program—plans to release 30 to 50 wolves over three to five years to establish a permanent breeding population that can eventually survive without intervention. “Today, history was made in Colorado,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said following the release. “For the first time since the 1940s, the howl of wolves will officially return to western Colorado.” Fast forward to today, and that program seems, at least on the surface, like a mess. Ten of the transplanted wolves are already dead, as is one of their offspring. And now, the state is struggling to find new wolves to ship to Colorado for the next phase of reintroduction. Meanwhile, the program has cost millions of dollars more than expected. The takeaway is not that releasing wolves in Colorado was, or is now, a bad idea. Rather, the challenges facing this first-of-its-kind reintroduction just show how extraordinarily difficult it is to restore top predators to a landscape dominated by humans. That’s true in the Western US and everywhere—especially when the animal in question has been vilified for generations. One harsh reality is that a lot of wolves die naturally, such as from disease, killing each other over territory, and other predators, said Joanna Lambert, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. Of Colorado’s new population, one of the released wolves was killed by another wolf, whereas two were likely killed by mountain lions, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The changes that humans have made to the landscape only make it harder for these animals to survive. One of the animals, a male found dead in May, was likely killed by a car, state officials said. Another died after stepping into a coyote foothold trap. Two other wolves, meanwhile, were killed, ironically, by officials. Officials from CPW shot and killed one wolf—the offspring of a released individual—in Colorado, and the US Department of Agriculture killed another that traveled into Wyoming, after linking the wolves to livestock attacks. (An obscure USDA division called Wildlife Services kills hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of wild animals a year that it deems dangerous to humans or industry, as my colleague Kenny Torella has reported.) Yet, another wolf was killed after trekking into Wyoming, a state where it’s largely legal to kill them. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has, to its credit, tried hard to stop wolves from harming farm animals. The agency has hired livestock patrols called “range riders,” for example, to protect herds. But these solutions are imperfect, especially when the landscape is blanketed in ranchland. Wolves still kill sheep and cattle. This same conflict—or the perception of it—is what has complicated other attempts to bring back predators, such as jaguars in Arizona and grizzly bears in Washington. And wolves are arguably even more contentious. “This was not ever going to be easy,” Lambert, who’s also the science adviser to the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, an advocacy organization focused on returning wolves to Colorado, said of the reintroduction program. There’s another problem: Colorado doesn’t have access to more wolves. The state is planning to release another 10 to 15 animals early next year. And initially, those wolves were going to come from Canada. But in October, the Trump administration told CPW that it can only import wolves from certain regions of the United States. Brian Nesvik, director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal agency that oversees endangered species, said that a federal regulation governing Colorado’s gray wolf population doesn’t explicitly allow CPW to source wolves from Canada. (Environmental legal groups disagree with his claim). So Colorado turned to Washington state for wolves instead. > View this post on Instagram But that didn’t work either. Earlier this month, Washington state wildlife officials voted against exporting some of their wolves to Colorado. Washington has more than 200 gray wolves, but the most recent count showed a population decline. That’s one reason why officials were hesitant to support a plan that would further shrink the state’s wolf numbers, especially because there’s a chance they may die in Colorado. Some other states home to gray wolves, such as Montana and Wyoming, have previously said they won’t give Colorado any of their animals for reasons that are not entirely clear. Nonetheless, Colorado is still preparing to release wolves this winter as it looks for alternative sources, according to CPW spokesperson Luke Perkins. Ultimately, Lambert said, it’s going to take years to be able to say with any kind of certainty whether or not the reintroduction program was successful. “This is a long game,” she said. And despite the program’s challenges, there’s at least one reason to suspect it’s working: puppies. Over the summer, CPW shared footage from a trail camera of three wolf puppies stumbling over their giant paws, itching, and play-biting each other. CPW says there are now four litters in Colorado, a sign that the predators are settling in and making a home for themselves. “This reproduction is really key,” Eric Odell, wolf conservation program manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, said in a public meeting in July. “Despite some things that you may hear, not all aspects of wolf management have been a failure. We’re working towards success.”

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Porcupines are easy to recognize but hard to find—so elusive, in fact, that few people have ever seen one in the wild. Emilio Tripp, a wildlife manager and citizen of the Karuk Tribe in Northern California, might have been one of the lucky ones. On a nighttime drive with his father in the late 1990s, a ghostly silhouette flashed by the window. “That was my only time I’ve even thought I’ve seen one,” he recalled decades later. Tripp still can’t say for sure whether it was a kaschiip, the Karuk word for porcupine, but he holds on to the memory like a talisman. The 43-year-old hasn’t seen another porcupine since. Porcupine encounters are rare among his tribe, and the few witnesses seem to fit a pattern: Almost all of them are elders, and they fondly remember an abundance of porcupines until the turn of this century. Now, each new sighting rings like an echo from the past: a carcass on the road; a midnight run-in. The tribe can’t help wondering: Where did all the porcupines go? > “It’s important for (porcupines) to be a part of our landscape. That’s part of > why they’re chosen to be part of this ceremonial item.” “Everyone’s concerned,” Tripp said. “If there were more (observations), we’d hear about it.” The decline isn’t just in Northern California: Across the West, porcupines are vanishing. Wildlife scientists are racing to find where porcupines are still living, and why they’re disappearing. Others, including the Karuk Tribe, are already thinking ahead, charting ambitious plans to restore porcupines to their forests. Porcupines are walking pincushions. Their permanently unkempt hairdo is actually a protective fortress of some 30,000 quills. But their body armor can be a liability, too—porcupines are known to accidentally quill themselves. “They’re big and dopey and slow,” said Tim Bean, an ecologist at California Polytechnic State University who has collared porcupines as part of his research. They waddle from tree to tree, usually at night, to snack on foliage or the nutrient-rich inner layer of bark. But these large rodents are far from universally beloved. Their tree-gnawing habits damage lumber, and the timber industry has long regarded them as pests. Widespread poisoning and hunting campaigns took place throughout the 1900s in the US Between 1957 and 1959, Vermont alone massacred over 10,800 porcupines. Forest Service officials in California declared open season on porcupines in 1950, claiming that the species would ultimately destroy pine forests. Though state bounty programs had ended by 1979, porcupine numbers have not rebounded. Recent surveys by researchers in British Columbia, Arizona, western Montana and Northern California show that porcupines remain scarce in those regions today. Historically, porcupine populations haven’t been well-monitored, so scientists can’t say for sure whether they are still declining or simply haven’t recovered after decades of persecution. > “We still don’t understand (why) they’re not reproducing and filling back in.” But anecdotal evidence from those who recall when sightings were common is enough to ring alarm bells. Similar patterns appear to be playing out across the West: Veterinarians are treating fewer quilled pets, for example, and longtime rural homeowners have noticed fewer porcupines lurking in their backyards. Hikers’ accounts note that porcupines are harder to find than ever before. Some forest ecosystems are already showing the effects of losing an entire species from the food chain: In the Sierra Nevada, an endangered member of the weasel family called the fisher is suffering from lack of the protein porcupines once provided. As a result, the fishers are scrawnier and birth smaller litters in the Sierras than they do elsewhere.   Porcupines are culturally important to the Karuk Tribe, whose members weave quills into cultural and ceremonial items, such as baskets. But these days, the tribe imports quills more often than it harvests them. That’s more than just an inconvenience: Not being able to gather quills locally constitutes a form of lost connection between tribal members and their homelands. “It’s important for (porcupines) to be a part of our landscape. That’s part of why they’re chosen to be part of this ceremonial item,” Tripp said. Erik Beever, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey, worries that the great porcupine vanishing act points to a broader trend. Across the country, biodiversity is declining faster than scientists can track it. The porcupine might just be one example of what Beever calls “this silent erosion of animal abundance.” But no one really knows what’s going on. Beever said, “We’re wondering whether the species is either increasing or declining without anybody even knowing.” Scientists are racing to fill this knowledge gap. Bean and his team combed through a century’s worth of public records to map porcupine distribution patterns in the Pacific Northwest. Roadkill databases, wildlife agency reports and citizen science hits revealed that porcupines are dwindling in conifer forests but popping up in nontraditional habitats, such as deserts and grasslands. Beever is now leading a similar study across the entire Western United States.   Concerned scientists have several theories about why porcupines have not returned to their former stomping grounds. Illegal marijuana farms, which are often tucked away in forests, use rodenticides that kill many animals, including porcupines, while increased protections for apex predators like mountain lions may have inadvertently increased the decline of porcupines. On top of all this, porcupines have low reproduction rates, birthing only a single offspring at a time. > “Things don’t seem to be getting better in over the course of my lifetime.” Understanding porcupine distribution isn’t easy. Porcupines are generalists, inhabiting a wide variety of forest types, so it’s challenging for researchers to know where to look. As herbivores, porcupines aren’t that easy to bait, either. Scientists have experimented with using brine-soaked wood blocks, peanut butter and even porcupine urine to coax the cautious critters toward cameras, but with only mixed success. In 34 years of both baited and unbaited camera surveys by the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center in the Sierra Nevada, porcupines have only shown up three times. “It’s a mystery,” said John Buckley, the center’s executive director. “We still don’t understand (why) they’re not reproducing and filling back in where there’s very little disturbance of their habitat, like Yosemite National Park.” The Karuk tribe is eager to bring porcupines back. But first, the tribe needs to figure out where healthy populations may already exist. Years of camera trap surveys have turned up scant evidence of the creature’s presence; one area that Tripp considers a “hotspot” had photographed a single porcupine. “That’s how rare they are,” Tripp said. So Karuk biologists are considering other methods, including using trained dogs to conduct scat surveys. Reintroducing the species would require a delicate balancing act. Porcupines are already scarce, and it’s unclear whether already-small source populations could afford to lose a few members to be reintroduced elsewhere. Still, Tripp feels like it’s time to act, since the ecosystem doesn’t appear to be healing on its own. “Things don’t seem to be getting better in over the course of my lifetime,” Tripp said. Yet his actions betray some lingering optimism. Tripp, his wife and daughter still regularly attend basket-weaving events involving quills, doing their part to uphold the Karuk’s age-old traditions that honor the porcupine. It’s a small act of stubborn hope—that, perhaps in a few years, the tribe will be able to welcome the porcupine home.

This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s a known problem that onshore wind turbines kill bats. But it’s unclear whether the same issue applies to offshore wind installations—and the Trump administration just canceled groundbreaking research into the question. Earlier this month, the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) received a letter from the Department of Energy abruptly canceling its $1.6 million grant to study bat behavior in California waters earmarked for offshore wind development. Christian Newman, EPRI’s program manager for the grant, described it as a major hindrance to the research and said that the organization is actively looking for other funding sources. The researchers had been two years into a study of bats in the territory California plans to dot with floating offshore wind turbines over the coming decades. There’s so little information about how North American bats use the ocean environment that, in 2021, Newman and his colleagues determined in a peer-reviewed study that predicting the number of bats potentially killed by US offshore wind development was  “impossible”—at least until more data rolled in. The bat project is one of 351 individual Energy Department awards, totalling nearly $16 billion in funding, that in early October appeared on a leaked list of potential grant terminations. News reports have since verified the cancellations of some awards on that list, including more than $700 million for batteries and manufacturing, according to Politico’s E&E News. The cancellation of EPRI’s bat research grant has not previously been reported. The news comes as the Trump administration defunds other research investigating offshore wind’s impact on wildlife. In recent weeks, the Interior Department scuttled two programs, totalling over $5 million, that were actively monitoring the movement of whales in East Coast waters where five commercial-scale wind projects are currently being built. The West Coast bat study, awarded federal funding in 2022, supported researchers from multiple organizations, including Bat Conservation International. The US-based conservation group has been at the forefront of bat and wind-energy research for over two decades. Until recently, almost all of that work was devoted to onshore wind turbines. “Wind energy is a really important component of our global energy transition. Unfortunately, wind turbines kill millions of bats globally every year,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International. She contributed to a study last year that estimated onshore wind farms killed nearly 800,000 bats every year in just four countries that took annual tallies—Canada, Germany, the UK, and the United States It’s logical to expect fewer bat deaths might result from wind turbines spinning out in the ocean compared to ones operating on land. After all, according to Frick, even scientists like herself assumed that most species simply do not spend much time at sea. But, at least on the West Coast, researchers had never scientifically checked. In fact, EPRI was collecting first-of-its-kind information on how the Mexican free-tailed bat interacts with the ocean, deepening scientists’ understanding of the species overall. The EPRI team detected the bats vocalizing while flying over a dozen miles off the coast of Southern California last year, thanks to an acoustic listening device attached to a small sailing drone they launched. Before this study, no one knew that this common and widespread species spent any time at sea. “One of the things that we’re learning is that there are more bats flying out in the [ocean] environment than we might have otherwise expected,” said Frick. And that means more bat species are potentially threatened by California’s future offshore turbines than previously thought. Frick added that a greater understanding of which species spend time at sea and when can inform the design of solutions that better minimize fatalities from wind farms. One solution is called curtailment. Frick described this approach as changing the  “cut-in speed,” which is the minimum wind speed at which operators allow turbine blades to begin spinning at certain times of day or year. The modification does not typically lead to significant changes in energy generation for onshore wind farms but can make a big difference for bats, she said. For example, preventing turbine blades from spinning until the wind reaches 5 meters per second can reduce fatalities among many species by 62 percent on average, according to a study released last year by Frick and her colleagues. Determining the best curtailment solutions for offshore wind turbines and North American bat species is still a work in progress. Energy Department-funded studies, like the EPRI effort, were seen as critical to determining which bat-saving modifications would work best for California’s unique vision to build floating turbines. Frick called the grant’s termination  “devastating” because the team may not get to finish the study. In the meantime, researchers are retrieving bat listening devices from spots along the West Coast. Bat Conservation International continues its efforts to minimize bat deaths from turbines on land. It received a $2.4 million grant from the Energy Department last year to assess how new technology might help. That award also appeared on the leaked list of 351 DOE projects seemingly slated for cancellation. But, according to Frick, the federal government has yet to cut that research— “it’s not officially terminated”—and she remains optimistic that it might endure. 

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Ruby Williams’s pink kayak pierced the fog shrouding the mouth of the Klamath River, and she paddled harder. She was flanked on both sides by fellow Indigenous youth from across the basin, and their line of brightly colored boats would make history when they reached the Pacific Ocean on the other side of the sandy dunes—they were going to do it together. The final of four hydroelectric dams was removed last year from the Klamath River, in the largest project of its kind in US history. The following July, 28 teenage tribal representatives completed a 30-day journey that spanned roughly 310 miles from the headwaters in the Cascades to the Pacific. They were the very first to kayak the entirety of the mighty river in more than a century. It marked a new beginning for the once-imperiled river and its sprawling basin that straddles the California-Oregon border, an important biodiversity hotspot and a region that has been at the heart of local Indigenous culture for millennia. It also served as a bridge, bringing together river advocates from around the world eager to replicate the restoration happening on the Klamath. > “The river seemed to come alive right after dam removal.” It’s been only a year without the dams and the reservoirs created by them, and already there are successes to share. Just days after the dams were demolished, threatened coho salmon made it farther upriver than they had in the previous 60 years. Shortly after the one-year mark, Chinook salmon were spotted in headwaters for the first time in more than a century. Native seeds strewn across the riverbanks and their adjoining hillsides began to bloom. Scores of birds and animals—from bald eagles, to beavers, to bears—returned to the waterway. Insects, algae, and microscopic features of the flourishing systems that feed this ecosystem were sprouting. “These kids will be the first generation who get to grow up alongside a clean Klamath River,” said Ren Brownell, the former spokesperson for the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a nonprofit created to oversee and implement the removal. “They can now carry this momentum to other watersheds.” That sentiment fueled the idea to have tribal youth be the first to navigate the river. The “Paddle Tribal Waters” program is part of Ríos to Rivers, an advocacy organization that fosters environmental stewardship by connecting thousands of Indigenous students across seven countries. For the finish, people traveled from China and the Bolivian Amazon. There were Māori people from New Zealand there and members of the Mapuche-Pehuenche tribe who live along the Biobío river in Chile. Representatives from the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) Tribe in the Snake River Basin in the western US also joined. While the Klamath youth cultivated a deeper connection to their wild river being reborn, they also inspired Indigenous-led movements working to protect or restore other rivers around the world. “It is a great David-and-Goliath story,” Brownell added. “It turns out that you can win.” A project of this scale had never been attempted before Klamath’s dams came down, and even with an abundance of hope and extensive modeling, there was uncertainty about how the river would rebound. Even with years of work left to do, the speed of recovery has surprised everyone. Without the large reservoirs that kept waters stagnant and warm during the summers, toxic markers that used to consistently spike outside healthy ranges have stayed at safe levels through the seasons. Water temperatures too have returned to their natural regimes, providing the coolness fish need to migrate. “The river seemed to come alive right after dam removal,” said Damon Goodman, the Mount Shasta-Klamath regional director for CalTrout during a meeting on the one-year anniversary. “There’s just fish jumping all over the place, bald eagles, all sorts of wildlife.” > “The river needed those kids—they are part of the solution.” The unprecedented project required an equally unprecedented fish-monitoring effort that relied on a range of tools, including sonar, boat surveys, netting and tagging, and video—to observe adaptation, migration, spawning and habitat. “The data is coming out so fast it is hard to keep up with the findings,” Goodman said. Barry McCovey Jr. is the senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe and has warned local communities and the public about the challenges that still lie ahead. Two dams remain on the river and it will take decades to heal “the massive scars” left by the dams that were removed, McCovey Jr. said, adding that what might seem like a happy ending is just the beginning. Ríos to Rivers is an advocacy organization that fosters environmental stewardship by connecting thousands of Indigenous students across seven countries.Erik Boomer/River Roots Productions That doesn’t mean he isn’t celebrating. “We called them footballs, they were so robust and healthy,” he said, referring to the fish now completing long journeys they haven’t been able to for more than a hundred years. One year in, “the big-picture update is the river is continuing to heal,” McCovey Jr. said. “It has a different feel to it now—and it is only going to get better.” For McCovey Jr., the wins go beyond the fish getting a renewed chance to thrive, along with the ecosystems that support them. After working to restore this basin for most of his life, his son, who completed the first descent, is now connecting with the river as it rebounds. “The river needed those kids—they are part of the solution,” he said. They will play an important role to lead restoration work needed into the future. But they are also helping to spread an important message. “It’s always been part of the goal to show people around the world that something like this is possible,” McCovey Jr. said. “You just have to look to the Klamath to see that crazy things can happen.” The removal of the four dams was still an abstract idea when Williams first began training for the adventure of a lifetime. She was one of about a dozen in the Klamath inaugural class, launched in 2022, when she was a sophomore in high school. Williams mastered the kayaking skills required to traverse challenging and unknown rapids that would emerge from under the reservoirs—including the harrowing and awe-inspiring K’íka·c’é·ki Canyon run, more than 2.5 miles of class IV rapids that winds through an ancient and steep basalt chasm, held sacred to the Shasta Indian Nation. It’s a run that sparked fear even among the most experienced guides. She turned 18 early on in the journey, her birthday falling on a grueling day spent battling strong headwinds and sharp sunlight that left her eyes and skin burning. But the memories of exhaustion are outweighed by those of camaraderie. Williams said she still talks to the friends she made during the program nearly every day. Weston Boyles, founder and director of Ríos to Rivers, said the program forged links among youth from across the Klamath basin: “Everyone within a basin is connected to that river. Through the love of a common sport like kayaking, you can connect communities.” Boyles and others on his team hatched the plan to help Indigenous youth lead the first descent in 2021 along with Rush Sturges, a professional kayaker and film-maker who cut his teeth on a Klamath tributary, the Salmon River. The curriculum they designed not only gave kids the skills needed to paddle the river but also helped them engage with what they were studying. Kayakers on the Klamath.Erik Boomer/River Roots Productions Students, including Williams, were also taken on trips around the world to meet other youth dedicated to fighting for their rivers. Among them were youth from the Bolivian Amazon, where dams being proposed would displace more than 5,000 Indigenous people and flood a portion of biodiverse Madidi national park. “Our work in these rivers is allowing [people] to jump in a time machine and go to the future to see what could happen—what their basins would look like if the dams were built,” Boyles said. “We have all the information and we know all the answers here. There are actually solutions that are obtainable.” A group of the students are heading to Cop30 in Brazil, petitioning the United Nations to stop recognizing dams as clean energy eligible to receive carbon offset funding. They were also the first to sign the so-called Klamath River Accord, an agreement made to protect rivers around the world that “recognizes that the removal of these dams should serve as a model for future climate resilience efforts and a testament to the power of collective action.” For Williams, who is a Quartz Valley tribal member and a Karuk person, paddling the entirety of this river was a protest in itself. She recalled the tears that filled her eyes as she reached the ocean and pulled her boat on to the shore, taking in the sound of beating drums and the generations of Native people smiling as they reached the sand on that cool July morning. “For a split second we stood there, like what do we do now?” she said. “And then all at the same moment we looked at each other and sprinted up this hill as fast as we could and full-on jumped into the ocean.” Williams, who started college this year majoring in environmental conservation and land management, is eager to lead the charge. Along with lifelong friendships she found on the Klamath’s first descent, she’s gained a calling to fight for her river, and others around the world. “All rivers should be free,” she said.

This story was originally published by Vox and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.  The coral reef itself was exquisite. Growing about 3 miles offshore in 50 feet of water, it was a rugged terrain of pinks, blues, and oranges, set against a backdrop of deep blue. The coral pieces, each a colony of living animals, took on a range of unusual forms, from cake platters and pencil shavings to antlers and brains. But there was one obvious thing missing: fish. Like a city without people, the reef was mostly empty—not only of fish, but also of crabs, eels, and other typical marine life on a coral reef. It was a sunny morning in September, and I was diving on a coral reef in southwest Madagascar, an island nation that sits east of continental Africa. And like many reefs in the region and across much of the world, it’s on the verge of collapse. Overfishing has emptied the ocean here of fish, which over time will allow algae to take over and outcompete the corals. The increasing intensity of marine heat waves and cyclones, along with inland deforestation, also threatens the country’s reefs, which are among the most biologically diverse in the world. Corals on the barrier reef in the Bay of Ranobe. Overfishing has emptied the ocean of fish. Garth Cripps/Vox This is a major problem for people along the coast of southwest Madagascar. Their livelihood depends on fishing—catching marine critters is an essential, and often the only, source of food and income—yet as the reef collapses, so does the fishery. The reef is where fish sleep, eat, and hide from predators, and without it, they struggle to survive. It’s a complicated situation: The health and well-being of people along the coast depends on fishing, yet too much fishing is a key reason why the reef, and the fishery it supports, is in decline. This tension between human and wildlife survival is not unique to the coasts of southwest Madagascar. The island, home to about 33 million people, is among the poorest of poor nations, with some 80 percent of its population living on less than the equivalent of $2.15 a day. People often have no choice but to depend directly on ecosystems to meet their basic needs. The government, meanwhile, has failed to provide even the most basic services like reliable electricity and water, let alone a pathway out of poverty and dependency on exploitation. That failure fueled weeks of youth-led protests this fall in Madagascar, where the median age is around 20. In response, Parliament impeached the president on October 14 and the military seized control of the government. What that power shift means for Madagascar, and for a generation demanding change, remains unclear. An aerial view of Ambolimailaky.Garth Cripps/Vox Under the sheer weight of human need, it’s no surprise, then, that many of the country’s iconic ecosystems are failing, too. Research suggests that since the turn of the century the country has lost as much as half of its live coral cover, and a similar extent of native forest. Nearly every species of lemur, a type of animal that you can only find in Madagascar, is now threatened with extinction. The government and nonprofit groups have spent decades—and hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid—trying to address these challenges, often relying on traditional environmental approaches, like setting up reserves that restrict fishing. But what Madagascar shows is that conservation projects don’t usually work when they make it harder for desperately poor people to make a living. That may seem obvious, but it’s one reason why many environmental projects have failed in the world’s biodiversity hotspots, which are commonly found in poor nations. Places like Madagascar underscore the need for a different conservation approach—one that truly centers people, and what they need to live healthy and fulfilling lives. That’s what ultimately brought me to the Bay of Ranobe, where I spent a week in September. Guided by fishers and a team of international researchers, a small organization is trying to restore the fishery and the food it provides, without actually restricting fishing. The goal of the project is to help people. Conservation is just a byproduct. The ocean was calm and flecked with sails when I arrived one morning at the beach in Ambolimailaky, a fishing village in the Bay of Ranobe. The sails—often made of discarded rice bags stitched together—propelled fishermen to shore in wooden canoes known as pirogues. As the fishermen neared the beach, I saw jumbles of mosquito nets in some of their boats. In Madagascar and elsewhere in Africa, it’s not uncommon for fishermen to repurpose mosquito nets—which are often donated by aid organizations to protect against malaria—to catch fish. Fishermen sail to shore in Ambolimailaky. The fishermen showed me what they caught. Some of them had buckets of small anchovies that moved like liquid silver. Others had a bin filled up halfway with reef fish like triggerfish, lionfish, parrotfish, and baby barracudas. A group of young kids put a few that were still alive, including a clownfish, into a metal bowl to play with. A pair of school-age boys showed me a plastic bucket with a dozen juvenile octopuses they caught. The tentacles were tangled together and partially submerged in ink. As someone from the US who doesn’t fish, I felt unsettled in the face of so many dead and dying creatures. I normally encounter reef fish and octopuses in aquariums, on snorkel trips, or in the marketing materials for conservation groups. But fishermen here have a different relationship with them—and for a very good reason. In the Bay of Ranobe, fishing is the primary source of income and a vital source of nutrition in coastal villages, according to Aroniaina “Aro” Manampitahiana Falinirina, a doctoral researcher who studies fisheries at the University of Toliara’s marine research institute, IHSM. It’s how people pay for food, school supplies, and transportation. And among certain communities—namely, the Vezo, an ethnic group with deep ancestral ties to the sea—fishing has been a way of life for generations. Nambokely, a farmer-turned-fisherman in Ambolimailaky, migrated to the coast roughly 20 years ago when changing weather conditions made farming untenable.Garth Cripps/Vox Speaking through an interpreter, Nambokely, one of the fishermen I met on the beach, told me that if he doesn’t fish, he doesn’t eat. Fishermen in the Bay of Ranobe work around the clock to support their families. One evening, just after the sun had slipped below the horizon, I boated out on the water with a few researchers who study coral reefs and fisheries. The ocean’s surface was full of bioluminescent microorganisms that lit up as the bow of our skiff cut through the waves. It was as if we were riding on fairy dust. But the main light show was underwater. Once we were farther offshore, beams of light appeared below the waves, moving erratically in all directions—night fishermen. The fishermen spot their prey using waterproof torches, sometimes made by wrapping ordinary flashlights in a few condoms. After surfacing with an eel on his spear, one fisherman, a Vezo man named Jean Batiste, told me he fishes at night because he can catch more compared to during the day. Sitting on the edge of our boat, Jean Batiste shows us the eel he just caught. Yet as Batiste said—and as every fisher I spoke to in the Bay of Ranobe repeated—it’s becoming harder and harder to catch anything, and thus harder and harder to earn a living. “I’m worried,” Batiste told me that night on the water. The fishery in the Bay of Ranobe, and across much of southwest Madagascar, is in decline, and perhaps even collapsing. A number of studies from the region show that fishermen are catching fewer fish, and fewer fish species, compared to three or four decades ago. Some species—including certain kinds of parrotfish, which can help limit the growth of coral-harming algae—have disappeared altogether from some areas. “It’s decreasing at a rate that has never been seen before,” said Gildas Todinanahary, a marine researcher and the director of IHSM. The fish people are catching are also smaller, indicating that fishermen may be netting more juveniles—a clear sign of overfishing. If the adults and the juveniles are fished out, there’s nothing left to spawn the next generation. A plastic bucket full of juvenile fish caught by beach seining, an indiscriminate fishing technique that involves dragging a net through the shallows. A single fisherman was once able to earn, on a good day, around $10 or $15 in one outing, Nambokely told me. But today, groups of four or five fishermen will spend several hours on the water and might only catch enough to fill half a plastic wash basin with fish. That’s worth about $5 to $10, they told me, which they then have to split among themselves. A dozen small octopuses, meanwhile, are worth only around $2. “People can’t get enough food in one day,” said Marcel Sebastian, an elderly fisherman I met in the village. He’s been fishing in southwest Madagascar for more than 50 years. “They used to have lunch and dinner. But now they only have dinner due to the scarcity of fish.” The problem isn’t fishing. It’s overfishing—the forces that ramp up fishing to such an extreme that the reef and the life it supports have no time to recover. That’s what’s happening now in southwest Madagascar. There are simply too many people fishing for the same fish. One reason for that is climate change. Rising temperatures are contributing to prolonged droughts that make it harder to grow crops in southern Madagascar. Meanwhile, widespread deforestation—which removes trees that stabilize the soil and help water seep underground—means that when it does rain, flooding can bury farmland under sediment. Faced with failing crops inland, farmers in southern Madagascar are increasingly migrating to the coasts in search of income from fishing instead. (Inland deforestation is also sending dirt into the ocean, which can smother coral reefs.) This climate-driven migration is causing the coastal population to swell, putting pressure on the fishery. It’s hard to find reliable population estimates for the Bay of Ranobe, but a dissertation from 2019 estimated that villages here were growing at an average rate of about 4.5 percent per year, meaning the local population would roughly double in 15 years. The global average population growth rate is around 1 percent. “A lot of the time, people who are coming from inland don’t want to be here,” said Quinn Mitsuko Parker, a doctoral researcher at Stanford who studies fishing communities in the Bay of Ranobe. “They don’t want to be fishing. They’d rather be farming.” Fishermen pull a net into their pirogue. But people have no choice but to fish. Even though it’s no longer providing enough. Even though it’s hastening the decline of the reef and the source of income it provides. One morning, around the new moon, I went out on the water with a few fishermen at low tide. The water got deeper at first, but as we motored farther out, it became shallow again—until it was so shallow we could walk. We were on top of the barrier reef. It was a bizarre image: Here we were, in what felt like the middle of the ocean, standing in just a few inches of water. During especially low tides, part of the reef here is exposed, and fishers—in this case, mainly women—take advantage of these conditions. They search the reef by foot for octopuses, urchins, and other critters to eat or sell, an approach known as gleaning. At least a dozen women were gleaning when we arrived, their eyes fixed downward as they paced around. Some of them wielded spears, to stab octopuses, or large conch-like snail shells, which they use to crack open urchins. I approached a woman named Doseline, who wore mismatched sneakers and a wide-brimmed hat. As we talked, she poked a spear under rocks in search of octopuses, occasionally pausing to grab a snail and put it in her bag. Doseline searches for octopuses on the reef in the Bay of Ranobe on September 22. Around the full and new moons, part of the reef is exposed, even though it’s a few miles offshore. Doseline told me she’s catching half as many octopuses as she did 10 or 20 years ago. And while she knows gleaning can damage the coral—most of the exposed reef is already dead, in part because fishers sometimes crush corals under their feet or break them to grab hiding octopuses—she doesn’t have a choice, she said. Doseline is the sole provider for her son, who’s in school, she said. “My income [from fishing] is not enough,” she told me. For more than an hour, I watched Doseline search the reef. We stepped over spiny red sea stars and a colorful slug called a nudibranch. I found discarded shells occupied by crabs that looked like creatures from another world. Doseline, who wore her hair in pigtails, didn’t have much luck. “I’m sad because I didn’t catch any octopuses, so I’ll go back home,” she told me. Over the last three decades, Madagascar has attracted an enormous amount of attention from international environmental groups and foreign donors. The island’s wildlife is not only charismatic—lemurs! chameleons! coral reefs!—but also unique. Because Madagascar has been isolated from other land masses for millions of years, animals there have had plenty of time to evolve into new species. Today, around 90 percent of the country’s plants and animals are found nowhere else on Earth. That means if you lose them in Madagascar, you lose them everywhere. With so much to lose, major international environmental groups ranging from Conservation International to WWF have been working for years on the island to try to curb forest loss, overfishing, and other kinds of environmental harm. And aid organizations have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into Madagascar to help. Yet those threats are still getting worse, not better. The main problem is poverty—the sheer demand put on the environment—which is closely linked to political unrest. But there are also serious problems with the traditional approach to conservation in Madagascar and other developing nations. Historically, environmental groups, foreign scientists, and the government in Madagascar bet big on protected areas as a means to safeguard nature, such as parks, marine protected areas, and nature reserves. The Bay of Ranobe is, for example, technically part of an official marine protected area. But as research shows, those protection schemes have done little to stop environmental harm. Emma Gibbons, executive director of the Malagasy NGO Reef Doctor. “The conservation of our biodiversity through Madagascar protected areas’ system for 30 years was a failure,” Madagascar’s former environmental minister, Baomiavotse Vahinala Raharinirina, said in 2020. According to several environmental and development researchers I spoke to, that’s because parks often don’t address the reasons why people exploit nature in the first place. In some cases, they also disproportionately burden women fishers by restricting access to areas for gleaning, as Merrill Baker-Médard wrote in her book, Feminist Conservation: Politics and Power in Madagascar’s Marine Commons. Another challenge is that NGOs in Madagascar, and to an extent worldwide, are often more accountable to their donors than they are to the local community, according to Emma Gibbons, who runs Reef Doctor, a small nonprofit in the Bay of Ranobe. Donors tend to fund short-term projects and they face few consequences if projects don’t actually help people or ecosystems, Gibbons said. These issues are especially pronounced in southern Madagascar, nicknamed the “cemetery of projects,” because so many of those projects—from establishing solar water pumps to beekeeping—have failed. If there’s a chance of conservation working, it has to be owned or guided by the community, rooted in a deep understanding of the local culture, and aligned with what people want, said Gibbons, a British national who’s lived in Madagascar for two decades. Fishermen here certainly want to safeguard the fishery—it’s their livelihood, their survival—but they can’t afford to lose their fishing grounds in the process. Food security takes priority. “You can’t tell people not to eat,” Gibbons said. It’s this perspective that’s informed the approach Gibbons is taking now. Instead of attempting to limit fishing as some traditional conservation has tried to do, she—along with members of the community and a team of local and foreign researchers—are trying to create more places to fish. And to do that, they’re essentially building new coral reefs from scratch in the Bay of Ranobe. “Our hope is that we can increase the area that’s available to fish,” Gibbons said. Building artificial reefs is simpler than it sounds: She and her collaborators sink massive chunks of limestone offshore, forming long underwater rows of rocks that are each about 57 meters. That’s roughly the length of a commercial airplane. They then “seed” those rocks with life using smaller constructions called autonomous reef monitoring structures (ARMS) that have spent several months accumulating corals, sponges, and other marine organisms on a natural reef. Those structures, made of stacked stone plates, are basically coral reef starter packs. A young colony of branching coral growing from one of the ARMS on the artificial reef. So far, Reef Doctor has finished building two artificial reefs that cover about half an acre. Each of them has four rows of rocks, known as spurs, seeded with ARMS. The sea was calm and more green than blue when I arrived by boat above one of the artificial reefs, about a mile from shore, with marine biologist Mark Little. He’s studying microbes on the reef. The water was cloudy, so we could barely see the rocks below—not the most inviting conditions. But we strapped on tanks and plunged in. As I sank down, the rows of rocks appeared dramatically through my foggy mask, as if I was descending on ruins of a lost city. I swam up to a group of ARMS, from which fist-sized bits of coral sprouted like branches of a bonsai tree. Box fish, lionfish, and even young parrotfish—named for their bird-like beaks—crowded around them. At one point, a stingray appeared out of the murky beyond and passed right in front of me, before vanishing again. I was struck at that moment by the realization that we’ve damaged our environment so badly that we literally have to rebuild ecosystems we depend on from scratch. At least in this case, that approach seems to be working. Layered, limestone structures called ARMS, shown here, are used to seed the artificial reefs with life from a natural reef. Garth Cripps/Vox “It’s doing its job,” said Little, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University and Scripps Institute of Oceanography, when we were back in the boat. “There’s a lot of life.” Early surveys of the artificial reef have detected hundreds of animals across tens of species, including giant clams and cone snails, according to Aaron Hartmann, an ecologist at the US-based Perry Institute for Marine Science, who’s closely involved in the project. Over the next several years, a team of local and foreign researchers will study the impact of the artificial reefs on marine life and the fishery here—and how that, in turn, affects the physical and mental health of people in nearby villages. The study is among the largest in the world to link ecosystem health to human health, according to Chris Golden, a nutrition and global health researcher at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, who’s closely involved in the project. The purpose of this study is “to understand whether or not stewarding natural resources in this way can simultaneously benefit the ecosystem and benefit human nutrition and food security and human health,” Golden said. “We want to quantify the way that interventions like this—an environmental intervention—could be viewed as a public health intervention.” I can’t help but feel like it’s just nowhere near enough. If the scale of fishing continues—or increases, as the coastal population swells—a few artificial reefs won’t be able to rescue the fishery. Even scientists involved in the project understand the limitations. “Within the broader situation, it’s not going to work,” said Todinanahary, who works closely with Gibbons. Truly sustaining the reef and the fishery means providing coastal communities with other sources of income, Todinanahary told me. That means investing in education so people can learn new skills, like climate-resilient farming, and building out other non-exploitative industries. The country needs enormous, systemic change for conservation to really work. That requires good governance, and right now Madagascar hardly has a government. Gildas Todinanahary, director of the University of Toliara’s marine research institute, IHSM. But as Todinanahary points out, NGOs and aid groups have poured millions of dollars into Madagascar for environmental projects. What if those groups had, instead, put all of that money toward education or health care? Sometimes, effective conservation doesn’t look like conservation at all. Ultimately, what I saw in the Bay of Ranobe was more bleak than I had imagined. At times, it felt like watching an environmental and human crisis unfold in real time. Nonetheless, people like Gibbons, Todinanahary, and a growing number of smart Malagasy scientists are still determined to restore the fishery—because the stakes are just so high. When you’re actually a part of these communities, you’re accountable to them. That makes the consequences of doing nothing hard to stomach. And it’s far from futile. The reef, and the fishery it supports, could still recover. There’s still life. After diving on the artificial reef, Little and I boated to a natural reef nearby, called Vatosoa. Several years ago, Reef Doctor built a smaller artificial reef close to Vatosoa for people to fish on, and in exchange, local fishermen agreed to avoid this one, Gibbons told me. Vatosoa has rose-like coral colonies that form an underwater bouquet.Garth Cripps/Vox My expectations were still low, especially after diving reefs here that had no fish. But it was spectacular. The reef was formed by a species that grows thin, curved sheets of coral in layers around each other, like petals of a rose. And there were dozens of these living structures packed in together, so it felt like we were swimming over a bouquet. My mask kept fogging up, a deeply irritating problem that can ruin a dive. I flooded it with seawater and cleared it with bubbles a handful of times. When I could finally see clearly again, I noticed something floating in front of my face. It looked like a piece of seaweed, though it was attached to the unmistakable body of a cuttlefish, a cephalopod with eight arms and two tentacles. Famous for its camouflage, the animal seemed to be using its arms to mimic a piece of debris. As I swam toward it, the cuttlefish reversed slowly. Moments later, perhaps after realizing it was not fooling me, it changed colors and sped off. “The potential for recovery is still there,” Gibbons told me one evening, as we walked the beach at sunset, careful to avoid stepping on discarded spiny shells. “There’s huge biodiversity within the fishery. It’s not going to be there forever, but it’s still, at this moment, there.”

This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Trump administration has repeatedly blamed offshore wind farms for whale deaths, contrary to scientific evidence. Now the administration is quietly abandoning key research programs meant to protect marine mammals living in an increasingly busy ocean. The New England Aquarium and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, both in Boston, received word from Interior Department officials last month stating that the department was terminating funds for research to help protect whale populations, effective immediately. The cut halted a 14-year-old whale survey program that the aquarium staff had been carrying out from small airplanes piloted over a swath of ocean where three wind farms—Vineyard Wind 1, Sunrise Wind, and Revolution Wind—are now being built. Federal officials did not publicly announce the cancellation of funds. In a statement to Canary Media, a spokesperson for the New England Aquarium confirmed the clawback, saying that a letter from Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management dated September 10 had  “terminated the remaining funds on a multi-year $1,497,453 grant, which totaled $489,068.” > “If you’re into whales…you don’t want windmills,” Trump said moments after > signing an order that froze permitting and leasing for offshore wind. The aquarium is currently hosting the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, a network of scientists that study one of the many large whale species that reside in New England’s waters. News of the cut to the aquarium’s research project has dampened the mood there. And rumors have been circulating among attendees about rollbacks to an even larger research program, a public-private partnership led by BOEM that tracks whales near wind farm sites from New England to Virginia. Government emails obtained by Canary Media indicate that BOEM is indeed shutting down the Partnership for an Offshore Wind Energy Regional Observation Network (POWERON). Launched last year, the program expanded on a $5.8 million effort made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, deploying a network of underwater listening devices along the East Coast  “to study the potential impacts of offshore wind facility operations on baleen whales,” referring to the large marine mammals that feed on small krill. POWERON is a $4.7 million collaboration, still in its infancy, in which wind farm developers pay BOEM to manage the long-term acoustic monitoring for whales that’s required under project permits. One completed wind farm, South Fork Wind, and two in-progress projects, Revolution Wind and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, currently rely on POWERON to fulfill their whale-protecting obligations. With POWERON poised to end, wind developers must quickly find third parties to do the work. Otherwise, they risk being out of compliance with multiple US laws, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. Dominion Energy, one of the wind developers participating in POWERON, did not respond to a request for comment. BOEM officials made no public announcement of POWERON’s cancellation and, according to internal emails, encouraged staffers not to put the news in writing. “It essentially ended,” said a career employee at the Interior Department who was granted anonymity to speak freely for fear of retribution. The staffer described the government’s multimillion-dollar whale-monitoring partnership as  “a body without a pulse.” The grim news of cuts coincided with the release of some good news. On Tuesday, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium published a new population estimate for the North Atlantic right whale, an endangered species pushed to the brink of extinction by 18th-century whaling. After dropping to an all-time low of just 358 whales in 2020, the species, scientists believe, has now grown to 384 individuals. Concern for the whale’s plight has been weaponized in recent years by anti–offshore wind groups, members of Congress, and even President Donald Trump in an effort to undermine the wind farms in federal court as well as in the court of public opinion. “If you’re into whales…you don’t want windmills,” said Trump, moments after signing an executive order in January that froze federal permitting and new leasing for offshore wind farms. This view stands in stark contrast with conclusions made by the federal agency tasked with investigating the causes of recent whale groundings. A statement posted on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website reads:  “At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths. There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.”

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. More than 2,000 employees could be cut from the Department of Interior during the ongoing federal government shutdown if the Trump administration gets its way.  In a court filing on Monday, the administration listed plans that would target roles in research, conservation, national park management, water policy, grant and budget planning, communication staff, and wildlife management. The biggest hits would come to the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and US Geological Survey.  The filing does not include any plans that outline a total clearing of any agency or bureau. It also does not show any plans for cuts at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a possibly emerging pattern of relief for Indigenous nations under this administration. > “The administration’s move to fire thousands of federal employees who are > already going without pay…is not only cruel but unlawful.” Last week, US District Court Judge Susan Illston issued a temporary restraining order to stop the termination plans, and ordered the US Office of Management and Budget to provide an account of positions it wants to eliminate from the federal government through a process called reduction in force. Rachel Barra, chief human capital officer at the Interior Department, filed the plans and stated that Ilston’s order has stopped reduction in force at the Interior, “absent an order from a higher court providing relief.” Unions representing affected federal workers have pushed back against the plans to reduce the federal workforce, including the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “The administration’s move to fire thousands of federal employees who are already going without pay during the government shutdown is not only cruel but unlawful,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a press release. The court filing offers insight into the administration’s priorities for slashing the federal government; the cuts are in line with what President Donald Trump has advocated since taking office in January. Still, Interior’s plans don’t give a total view of all federal agencies or programs, and it may not even be a complete picture of Interior Department cuts, whether planned, or already executed. Barra stated that the roles in the disclosure were targeted before the government shutdown on October 1, although she only started working in the human resources role at Interior just two days before the shutdown. In the filing, Barra outlines 89 “competitive areas” in the Interior Department that put 14,212 employees up for termination review. The five unions in the case represent 4,833 of those workers, according to the court filing. Out of the 2,050 positions proposed for elimination at Interior, 474 in total are at the Bureau of Land Management. That includes the following cuts at Bureau of Land Management state offices: 76 in California, 33 in Colorado, 48 in Idaho, 41 in Arizona, 95 in Oregon and 93 in Utah. The federal government has plans to abolish 87 of the 177 employee positions at the BLM’s National Operation Center in Denver. At the US Fish and Wildlife Service, planned cuts include 35 positions out of the 269 that operate research and conservation at the Migratory Bird Program, an area Trump has criticized in the past.  The National Park Service could see at least 272 roles cut. That includes 57 in the Pacific Northwest and 122 in the Intermountain region. Right now, more than 9,000 out of the 14,500 parks employees are furloughed under the government shutdown. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, at least 24 percent of staff were already cut at the National Park Service since Trump took office in January. The US Geological Survey, which had previously suffered large-scale layoffs, would also see drastic cuts nationwide to services in science research if the reduction-in-force orders go forward.  Over half the employees of the Fort Collins Science Center in Colorado—39 of 69—are targeted to be cut by the federal government. Similar or more drastic cuts are proposed at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota, the Columbia Environmental Research Center in Missouri and the Great Lakes Science Center in Ohio.