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The Supreme Court once billed the Endangered Species Act as “the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species ever enacted by any nation.” Federal protections have been key to saving nearly 300 U.S. species — including the bald eagle, American alligator, and grizzly bear — from permanent extinction. 

Each year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is primarily responsible for implementing the law, evaluates species and lists them as “endangered” or “threatened.” When federal activity or private development has the potential to harm a listed species or its habitat, project developers are required to consult with the Service or obtain a permit prior to construction.

For the last several decades, the interpretation of two words in particular — “take” and “harm” — have formed the backbone of the Nixon-era law. Its prohibition of “taking” an animal criminalized any attempts to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” at-risk species. And the provision on “harm” ensured that degrading a listed species’ habitat could be penalized. These definitions have been key to the success of the law. 

But that all changed last month when the Trump administration determined that razing the habitat where endangered or threatened species breed, feed, and shelter would no longer face federal penalties. In a separate internal memo, the administration also reinterpreted the definition of “take,” limiting it to instances of intentional killing of an endangered species. (Nearly two dozen attorneys general have sued over some of these changes.)

“These rule changes, when you zoom out, are an assault on threatened and endangered species unlike we’ve ever seen before,” said Elizabeth Forsyth, a senior attorney in the biodiversity defense program with Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization. “It’s an effort to eliminate habitat protections, eliminate automatic protections for threatened species, and give industry power.”

Climate change is making matters worse, as species struggle to adapt to warming temperatures and changing ecosystems. Below, Grist reporters look at how 10 species — from lovable sea otters to a misunderstood snake — might fare as the regulatory framework that has kept them afloat is weakened. 

A North Atlantic right whale and calf swim about 19 nautical miles off Little St. Simons Island, Georgia, in 2025. Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute / NOAA permit 26919 North Atlantic right whale

North Atlantic right whales got their name perversely. Because they stick close to shore and to the surface, and float when killed, they were the “right whale” to hunt. So right that humans hunted them nearly to extinction before the practice was banned in the 1930s.

That’s not why right whales are dying today.

“Nobody goes out and says, ‘I’m gonna hit a right whale with my ship,’” said Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. But it happens anyway.

Though it’s not always possible to determine the cause of death for a whale, research shows that the leading cause is human activity: Ships strike the whales and fishing gear ensnares them, leading to injury and death. It happens often enough that North Atlantic right whales have been experiencing an unusual mortality event since 2017, in which 43 have died and 133 have been spotted injured or in poor health. About 380 whales remain, only 70 of whom are breeding females.

A dead 1-year-old female North Atlantic right whale calf rests on a beach in Savannah, Georgia. Experts found evidence of blunt force trauma consistent with a vessel strike. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation / NOAA permit 24359

Well before the latest changes to the Endangered Species Act, the Trump administration had already begun rolling back protections for right whales. In March, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced plans to rescind ocean speed restrictions designed to reduce the risk of vessel strikes. The agency later declined to expand the whales’ designated critical habitat to include their migratory route.

The administration will likely use its new definition of “take” to bolster those actions, Winders said. “Now they can point to this and say, ‘Look, we can’t have speed limits under the law because it only applies to intentional direct activities.’”

Right whales are “particularly vulnerable” to the changes, Winders said, both because of their critically low population figures and because their primary causes of death are incidental takes. 

“Right whales don’t have two years or four years” to wait for a new president or Congress to restore their protections, Winders said. “This is going to impact them immediately.”

— Emily Jones

An eastern massasauga rattlesnake crawls over moss and grass. Nathan Rathbun / USFWS Eastern massasauga rattlesnake

Admirers of the only venomous snake species in Michigan call the creature misunderstood. The eastern massasauga rattlesnake — which grows up to 3 feet long, with a rattle at the end of its sandy, brown-speckled body — is often vilified in rare accounts of snake bites and has been the subject of state advisories to stop harassing the animal.

These snakes are actually “very shy, pretty calm,” said Adam Austin, a wildlife biologist who leads the conservation nonprofit Midwest Friends of Wildlife. They prefer to hide in the wetlands that they call home, and their name is a nod to their swampy abodes; massasauga means “great river mouth” in Anishinaabemowin, the Indigenous language spoken across the Great Lakes.

In recent years, as wetland acreage has shrunk across the Midwest — due to development, drainage, and climate change — the massasauga’s habitats have become fragmented. The resulting isolation makes it difficult for them to breed with other populations, diminishing genetic diversity and leaving them less resistant to new diseases. More than a third of the roughly 260 sites where the snake has been surveyed across the Midwest are at risk of habitat loss, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

As a result, federal officials listed the snake as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2016. The move has helped conserve millions of acres of wetlands in the region, Austin said, but recent changes to federal protections are likely to spell trouble for the rattlesnake. 

Signs mark the location for oil pipeline construction in Howell, Michigan, part of the documented territory for the eastern massasauga rattlesnake. Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Snake advocates worry that under the Trump administration, razing wetlands the massasauga roam in or accidentally killing them during construction may not be a violation of federal law. While Michigan has its own endangered species laws — eastern massasaugas are considered state-threatened — protections are narrower than the federal Endangered Species Act. The state also has strong legal protections for wetlands, but the loss of a federal backstop could shift more responsibility to the state to fill regulatory gaps, said Tara Zuardo, a senior advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. 

“Michigan’s law and the federal Endangered Species Act would suddenly be operating under the same words, but radically different legal meanings,” Zuardo said.

— Vivian La

A bull trout swims over an antler in a stream in northwest Montana. Jim Mogen / USFWS Bull trout

Bull trout, native to Montana and recognizable by their large heads and white-tipped fins, are the alpine equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. They rely on cold, clean water, and as warmer temperatures, invasive species, and sediment runoff have degraded their habitat, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the state’s wildlife management agency, has documented significant declines across half of the population. Road construction, particularly for industrial logging, poses one of the greatest threats to bull trout spawning habitat. The fish are particularly sensitive to sediment buildup, which can coat the gravelly bottom of a river and smother their eggs. 

“I could list off 10 streams right now that 15, 20 years ago had bull trout in them, and they don’t anymore,” said Brian Riggers, a retired fisheries biologist with the U.S. Forest Service who spent decades documenting bull trout in streams across western Montana. “That’s a sad thing.”

Bull trout are listed as “threatened” by the Fish and Wildlife Service in recognition that they’re likely to become endangered and at risk of extinction without protection. The listing ensures that anglers are not allowed to catch and release them like other species of trout, and it’s not legal to fish for them in most of their habitat.

Biologists measure a bull trout as part of a species survey. Shannon Downey / USFWS

The Trump administration’s proposed policy changes to weaken the Endangered Species Act, as well as rescind protections for roadless areas in national forests and allow more motorized recreation, are the latest blows to these imperiled fish.

Riggers said that without protections for their remaining habitat, bull trout will continue to face steep declines. The need to preserve their habitat has been a key component of legal challenges against large-scale logging projects in the state. Without the explicit federal protections to prevent harm to a listed species’ habitat, it could become nearly impossible to stop development projects that degrade spawning streams and block the bull trout’s ability to move through rivers. 

— Ellis Juhlin

A Florida panther, captured by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Larry W. Richardson / USFWS Florida panther

Florida panthers once roamed much of the American Southeast. But then settlers arrived and hunted them until just a few dozen remained. Their range dwindled to a small area in southern Florida — a state that, until 1950, paid a $5 bounty to any hunter who turned in a panther scalp. Today, the panthers, among the first species protected by the Endangered Species Act, are recovering, with an estimated 200 thought to live in the state. 

“It’s been a tremendous effort over the years,” said Elizabeth Fleming, a career expert on the species at Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation nonprofit that helps protect panthers. Because most Floridians haven’t lived with panthers for more than a century, recovery depends on helping people coexist with them as they spread, often through educational programs or compensating ranchers who lose livestock to panthers. Without public acceptance, “we can kiss panthers goodbye,” she said. 

But now, nearly 60 years after panthers were first federally protected, the Trump administration’s new interpretation of the law could undermine this progress.

Florida panther kittens as seen in their den. David Shindle / Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

This is particularly worrisome for Florida panthers, which were listed in the law’s early days and don’t have the additional habitat protections that became mandatory later on. Florida’s population is also booming faster than nearly any other state. That means more housing developments and highways that fragment panther habitat, and more traffic that can kill them. Vehicle collisions are the leading cause of panther deaths, Fleming said. One of the most quickly developing parts of the state directly abuts its only panther refuge. Under the new federal rules, developers may no longer need to contend with how their projects could harm panthers. 

“People don’t understand that these animals need so much more,” Fleming said. “They need a connected system in which to travel and live their lives, and with every single instance of weakened laws, regulations, and protections, it’s just another thing going against them.”

— Sachi Mulkey

Southern sea otters play and groom at Moss Landing, Monterey, California. Lilian Carswell / USFWS California sea otter

Thousands of sea otters spend their lives weaving through the towering emerald ribbons of kelp forest found around California’s central coast. Lucky kayakers might spot one taking a moment to float belly-up, perhaps cracking open a tasty sea urchin with its favorite rock. They also rest this way when they sleep, sometimes holding hands to stay together while trusting their ultra-buoyant and water-resistant fur to keep them above the waves.

These lovable marine mammals were once thought to be extinct in California, after intensive pelt hunting in the 19th and 18th centuries culled their population down from some 16,000 individuals. But a small number of otters survived and repopulated. Today, some 3,000 otters live in the Big Sur region, just south of San Francisco.

That recovery was largely possible through Endangered Species Act protections that the Trump administration has repeatedly weakened. The latest changes, which gut habitat protections, could leave sea otters especially at risk. Much like the Florida panther, they also do not have a “critical habitat designation,” an additional safeguard that only became mandatory after sea otters were already added to the list. 

When it comes to protecting otters, habitat is everything, said Sean Bothwell, the executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance. In the past, conservationists rallied to fight against oil spills in otter habitat. Today, they’re turning their attention to fertilizers used for farming, which can cause algae blooms and make the shellfish that otters eat toxic. “We’re so concerned about otters because they live in the tidal zone; they are directly impacted by anything that runs off of the land,” he said. 

A raft of sea otters feeds near Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz, California, in 2023. Nic Coury / AFP via Getty Images

The Trump administration’s changes to habitat protections will make it much harder to hold companies accountable for this kind of pollution, Bothwell said. His organization recently decided to pause a lawsuit against a dam that was threatening a number of endangered species, like fish and toads, because the case partly rested on the legal definition of “harming” an animal that the administration rescinded this summer.

Without these safeguards, he said, lawsuits that focus on habitat protections could lose their teeth. “We are worried there will be some kind of backsliding,” Bothwell said. 

— Sachi Mulkey

The rusty patched bumble bee was listed as an endangered species in 2017, making it the first bumble bee to receive federal protection. Native wildflowers are the best sources of pollen and nectar, like this bergamot flower. Mara Koenig / USFWS Rusty patched bumble bee

Like the nearly 50 other bumble bees native to North America, the rusty patched bumble bee is a fuzzy, mostly yellow-and-black insect that buzzes between plants gathering nectar and pollen. Unlike its cousins, and as its name suggests, the rare bee sports a distinctive amber spot near the middle of its back. 

When Libby Shafer, now an urban ecologist and PhD Candidate in plant biology at Northwestern University, was a biological technician with the United States Geological Survey and tried to track down the bee over the course of a three-month search that spanned Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, she had very little luck. “I personally only saw one,” she said. 

The bee, once common in 28 states including Illinois and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, has declined by nearly 90 percent over the past 30 years. Today, it occupies just 0.1 percent of its historic range.

The pollinator was listed as federally endangered in 2017, becoming the first bee species listed under the Endangered Species Act. Experts have pointed to a number of stressors that explain the bees’ dramatic decline, including habitat loss, pesticide use, disease, and climate change. For example, warmer temperatures can set off a mismatch between when bees emerge from hibernation and when native plants bloom and provide food.  

This past summer, conservationists celebrated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s designation of approximately 1.5 million acres of occupied critical habitat for the rusty patched bumble bee, which protects it from projects funded or permitted by federal agencies but not from private landowners — approximately 83 percent of the bees’ critical habitat is privately held.  

“The rusty patched bumble bee is better positioned than many listed species since critical habitat has finally been designated,” said Delcianna Winders, of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. But she added that the Trump administration’s rescission of the regulatory definition of “harm” to exclude habitat destruction and reinterpretation of “take” pose serious threats to the species. Bumblebees are small, can easily go unnoticed, and spend about half the year in the soil, making them difficult to spot for an expert, let alone a developer building a service road over a prairie. 

“This is bad news for the rusty patched bumble bee,” Schafer said. 

— Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco

A biologist holds an Eastern hellbender, which can grow up to two and a half feet. USFWS Eastern hellbender

Wildlife advocates with the Center for Biological Diversity and other organizations have been trying to get the eastern hellbender listed for more than a decade. In 2024, they came close. After Hurricane Helene felled trees and kicked up sediment, disturbing the sensitive salamander’s habitat, the Fish and Wildlife Service finally proposed the hellbender for protection, with a decision expected at the end of 2025. But the decision never came. In fact, not a single endangered species has been listed since Trump took office. 

The eastern hellbender has enjoyed state protection in places like New York and North Carolina. However, unlike other species that have been federally designated as “endangered” or “threatened,” the hellbender has had no federal protection, even as its population has dwindled dramatically. The salamander is a homebody — once it finds a place it likes to live, it often stays there its entire life. An ancient remnant of the Ice Age, it has lived in the same streams and rivers for just about 160 million years and has been called a living fossil.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, its roughly 600 known historical populations have endured narrowing margins over the past few decades. More than 40 percent of those populations have vanished, and another 36 percent are in active decline. The hellbender breathes through its skin, meaning water pollution and sedimentation can cause disease and death. It thrives best in the cold, clear streams of the higher mountains in the Appalachian region, and shade cover is vital.  

Read Next Appalachia’s iconic salamander was slated for federal protection. It’s still in limbo. Katie Myers

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in February, demanding the Fish and Wildlife Service complete its decisionmaking process. Since then, though, there’s been no movement, with the next regulatory step listed as “to be determined,” along with hundreds of other endangered species whose protections have been similarly delayed.

According to Michael Gangloff, who studies freshwater life at Appalachian State University, human development is the biggest threat to hellbenders. But, he said, they’re also fighters. 

“These things are tough, and the fact that they’re still here attests to their toughness,” he said. “They’re an ancient, ancient group of salamanders.”

— Katie Myers

A red-cockaded woodpecker feasts on a bug. USFWS Red-cockaded woodpecker

The southeastern United States used to be a red-cockaded woodpecker’s paradise, with longleaf pine forest stretching across much of the region. Unlike many other woodpeckers that hollow out dead trees to nest, these black-and-white-spotted birds live exclusively in the trunks of living pine trees. They spend months or years hollowing out a suitable cavity, and they prefer to do it in mature trees. 

But finding suitable trees has become much harder than it was a century ago. Much of the South’s longleaf pine forest was clear-cut for timber and replaced by faster-growing species of pine. Management practices vary, but commercial timber operations often cut and replant pines before the trees are mature enough for a red-cockaded woodpecker’s liking, according to Joe Burnham, a wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. 

“They have pretty specific habitat requirements,” Burnham said. “There are a whole suite of species, both plant and animal, that evolved with this ecosystem over time that really have a hard time surviving elsewhere.”

Development is booming in Georgia, with much of the state’s forested land at risk of conversion to housing or more profitable forms of agriculture. The Trump administration’s policy changes, particularly its new definition of “harm,” could put red-cockaded woodpeckers at greater risk by removing protections for their habitat. As a result, more forests could become vulnerable to conversion, further shrinking the mature pine forests they rely on. 

Still, red-cockaded woodpeckers have made substantial strides since their 1973 Endangered Species Act listing, thanks in large part to efforts to restore longleaf pine habitat and transplant birds to suitable forests so they can reestablish themselves. In 2024, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service downlisted them from endangered to threatened. Despite the change, state- and region-level restoration efforts continue, Burnham said, because the woodpeckers need them — as do the long list of other endangered and threatened species that rely on the same habitat, including gopher tortoises and indigo snakes.

“We’re managing these stands for a multitude of species,” he said. “We’ve invested a lot of conservation effort into these species.”

— Emily Jones

The palila, seen here at the Maui Bird Recovery Project, is endangered and endemic to Hawaiʻi, found only in the wild on the slopes of the Mauna Kea volcano. Eric J. Franke / The Washington Post via Getty Images Palila

Hawaiʻi is losing its lush and unique biodiversity at a rate seen hardly anywhere else, earning it the depressing distinction of being known as the “extinction capital of the world.” It may be no surprise, then, that the palila — a small, yellow-capped parrot native to the Big Island — is a poster child of the Endangered Species Act. 

The palila was on the very first list of animals that the federal law protected. But conservationists soon discovered that protecting the bird itself was not enough; goats and sheep released on the island were denuding the high-elevation māmane forest that the parrot lives in. When they took the issue to court in 1979, federal courts agreed that allowing the palila’s habitat to be damaged was a violation of the Endangered Species Act and ordered the state to protect the forest from sheep and goats. The decision set a historic precedent and led to habitat protections for listed animals from industries — like mining, logging, and farming — across the United States. (The Supreme Court later cemented these protections.)

A biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service conducts a palila survey on Mauna Kea, Hawaiʻi. Emily Long / Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project / USFWS

But the Trump administration is now upending the legal precedent that the palila once set. The court decisions meant that the Hawaiʻi government had an obligation to continually remove the feral sheep and goats that still roam in palila habitat. When a company or the state wants to build through these areas, it is often required to help offset that lost habitat by reforesting old ranch land with māmane trees. Under the Trump administration’s interpretations, however, damaging an animal’s habitat no longer counts as harming it. And killing an animal no longer counts as violating the law unless it was done on purpose. 

That means, in the administration’s view, it may now be legal to build a road through māmane forest without considering how it affects palilas. And the state may no longer be required to continue eradicating the remaining feral sheep and goats, which would hasten the bird’s demise. 

Only 600 palila still remain on the island. For a bird on the brink, the latest policy changes may accelerate its decline.

— Sachi Mulkey

A Chinook salmon migrates up Alaska’s Ship Creek in the company of pink, chum and silver salmon. Katrina Mueller / USFWS Chinook salmon

Every year, across Washington’s rivers and tributaries, hundreds of thousands of Chinook salmon sacrifice their lives for the next generation. They swim upstream for weeks, battling currents, starvation, and a flood of hormones that wreck their organs. Then they spawn — often in the river where they were born — and die. 

The completion of this journey is critical for tribal communities, commercial fisheries, and the wildlife of the Pacific Northwest that depend on salmon. But in the last century, salmon populations have plummeted. Humans have built dams and developed the land, degrading river ecosystems and blocking salmon from migrating. And recently, Washington has become the epicenter of another threat: 6PPD, a chemical used in vehicle tires that washes off roads into waterways and harms several fish species, including Chinook salmon.

The Endangered Species Act protects several area-specific populations of salmon found in Washington’s rivers, like Chinook, coho, sockeye, and chum. Environmental advocates have had success leveraging the law to protect these habitats. Dozens of dams in Washington and other Pacific Northwest states have recently been removed, and salmon populations seem to be bouncing back quickly as a result.  

But this recovery is still nascent and, as the Trump administration upends federal protections, it may be cut short. The government recently rescinded the law’s “harm” rule, which previously said modifying a habitat could be considered harming a species. Now, it only prohibits activities that kill salmon on purpose.

Read Next Salmon are vanishing from the Yukon River — and so is a way of life Max Graham

The change could devastate efforts to protect salmon, said Sean Bothwell, the executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance. His organization recently began tackling 6PPD contamination in Northern California, but has had to pause these efforts because their legal strategy relied on the rescinded “harm” rule. The change may also mean dam operators can no longer be pressured to maintain adequate flows for salmon, a particular concern as climate change makes downstream areas too warm for spawning. 

“People aren’t going out there and stabbing salmon, but they are putting a chemical into the habitat that is directly killing them” or modifying their habitat by blocking the flow of rivers, Bothwell said. “That’s why this rule was so important.” 

— Sachi Mulkey

Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump is gutting the Endangered Species Act. These 10 species show what’s at stake. on Oct 8, 2026.

Federal agencies have long been required to seek public comment when writing new regulations or approving large projects, from highways to data centers. The Trump administration is systematically undercutting that process, stifling public input while skirting federal laws.

Read more on E360 →

Like many big cities, New York teems with delivery workers who bring takeout, groceries, and any number of other things to anyone with a cellphone. They work at all hours and in all conditions, often without job security, health insurance, or even access to safe restrooms. They are often hit by cars, assaulted, or robbed. Many of them are Indigenous people from Guatemala and Mexico who left home to escape violence and the impacts of climate change.

The worst impacts of that global crisis add to the risks those workers face.

“When the city is hit with with massive snowstorms, floodings, or the recent smoke fires, many deliveristas are the ones who are on the front lines doing this work and responding to the climate crisis in order to take care of New Yorkers,” said Ligia Guallpa, who is Kichwa and the co-founder and executive director of the Worker’s Justice Project and Los Deliveristas Unidos. The organization organizes app-based delivery workers and advocates on their behalf. “But the reality is that often they cannot even take care of themselves.”

A report released Monday says that exploitation is deeply embedded in the global food system, leaving many of the 1.4 billion people who produce, process, distribute, and deliver food poorly paid, inadequately protected, and vulnerable to abuse. Climate change and a global affordability crisis are intensifying those pressures, according to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, or IPES-Food, an international food policy research organization.

Although the document does not specifically focus on Indigenous peoples, it finds that many of the forces driving that exploitation have roots in the colonialism, land dispossession, forced labor, and racialized labor systems that have long harmed Indigenous communities worldwide. 

“Here we are in the United States, a country that’s founded on stealing land and the import of enslaved people to be able to make agriculture and agricultural labor possible and cheap,” said Raj Patel, an IPES-Food expert and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “And the legacy of that is still with us.”

The report notes that Indigenous peoples remain particularly vulnerable to displacement, and pressures from industrial agriculture and climate change that can undermine traditional livelihoods. For people who have been forced off their land and are disconnected from those livelihoods, exploitative, low-paying work is often the only option. 

“If you put yourself in a situation of a woman who needs to feed her children, they can go to any extreme,” said Teresa Chemosop, who is Ogiek from Mount Elgon, Kenya, and the coordinator for the East Africa Indigenous Women-Led Assembly, which advocates for Indigenous women across the region. 

Read Next The people who feed America are going hungry Ayurella Horn-Muller

Chemosop said that Indigenous workers face severe discrimination and abuse, such as being compared to baboons and not being given utensils to eat with while working. That’s on top of low wages and long, difficult hours. 

Indigenous and intergenerational agricultural knowledge is routinely minimized or dismissed as “unskilled,” the report notes, obscuring valuable expertise and helping to justify lower wages. That knowledge, which often goes back millenia, includes skills like cultivating plant medicines and drought-resistant crops. The authors call for formally recognizing that expertise alongside broader efforts to strengthen worker rights and protections.

The people who keep the global food system running do far more than grow and harvest food. They distribute it to markets and restaurants, deliver it to homes and offices, and provide care work like cooking and feeding families, often in seasonal or subcontracted jobs. Between 60 and 80 percent of food workers are informally employed — a higher share than in any other industry — and they earn about half as much as those with conventional employment. About 30 percent of food system workers, or more than 400 million people, earn less than a living wage.

An estimated 2.1 million people in agriculture work under forced-labor conditions, the report estimates. Migrants, who account for about a quarter of all farmworkers worldwide, are three times as likely to experience such conditions and are more likely than their peers to die on the job.

Despite their importance in feeding the world, these workers do not receive the respect or protection other essential workers enjoy. Guallpa pointed to the pandemic, when nurses and doctors were widely praised even as food service workers remained largely anonymous. “Immigrant workers, who do some of the most dangerous, dirtiest jobs, often go unseen and often are invisibilized,” she said.

The report argues that valuing food work in all its forms, from the field to the table, is just one part of building a more just system. It also calls for building worker power, establishing and sustaining workplace protections, ensuring equal rights for migrant workers, and reining in corporate power. And it makes clear that there is a false choice between affordability and worker rights, arguing that better working conditions do not have to mean higher food prices.

“We can manage all of this, and we will have to manage all of this because climate change isn’t getting better,” Patel said. “But we have choices about protecting workers, and we’re choosing not to do any of those things.”

In New York, Los Deliveristas Unidos’ organizing provides a glimpse of what workers can accomplish. It has established mutual aid chat groups and helped win minimum wages and other protections. “It is possible to give gig workers or independent contractors the ability to earn better pay, to ensure that workers have better working conditions. It is possible to regulate multi-billion-dollar corporations,” Guallpa said. “There’s a lot more to do, but I think it can be applied in every city.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline From the farm to your door: How our global food system exploits workers on Oct 8, 2026.

The messages and body of work that Richard leaves behind encourage us all to keep striving, creating, and living well within our planet’s limits.

So, it’s time we Make America Go Away from the Deep Ocean. Yes, the MAGADO movement.

Marcos Rupérez Cerqueda spent years as an engineer on green hydrogen projects in Spain, installing electrolysers and fuel cells, before the numbers made him stop believing in a technical fix. In this Q&A, he discusses this journey and his new book.

'We poison our soils for efficiency' Channel Comment brendan 8th October 2026 Teaser Media

Toronto — KEVIN LOCKHART, director of the Buildings program at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement in response to the federal government’s announcement to retrofit one million homes:“Today’s announcement is a welcome investment in...

• Transportation used to be a relatively nonpartisan issue — see President Obama’s appointment of Republican Ray LaHood as his first transportation secretary, or George W. Bush tapping Democrat Norm Mineta — but not anymore. Sean Duffy and the rest of MAGA revel in revving V8 engines while attacking “DEI bike lanes,” suing over congestion pricing, and withholding funding for transit and pedestrian projects. (Bloomberg CityLab)
• It’s not just in the U.S. Worldwide, the far right is railing against sustainable transportation, according to Christian Wolmar. (Transport News)
• A recent poll shows that a Bay Area transit tax referendum only has 48 percent support. A majority are at least willing to consider decimating the region’s transit system. (SFGate)
• Michigan police are arresting immigrants on minor traffic and jaywalking charges, then turning them over to ICE. (Michigan Public)
• The Washington, D.C. city council approved $300 million for Metro improvements around the new RFK football stadium (Post). However, neighborhood residents are unhappy with a planned nine-story parking deck (The Cool Down).
• An Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributor argues that the city is obligated to build light rail along the Beltline because over 70 percent of voters approved it.
• Suburban Minneapolis communities are asking the Trump administration to help them get more local road funding. (Star Tribune)
• Can Boston’s electric trains replace overhead wires? (Grist; Streetsblog MASS)
• With 10 million riders as of late September, Seattle’s scooter- and bikeshare ridership is on pace to shatter last year’s record. (PubliCola)
• There’s a lot of tension in Minneapolis between drivers who are rudely blocking walkways and homeowners who are putting up homemade, nonenforceable no-parking signs. (Axios)
• Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is a big Minecraft fan. (The Ringer)

Every year, the Week Without Driving floods social media with stories of how punishing life without a car can be in America. And every year, I wonder whether that gives motorists the wrong message about how good life can be without driving at its center.

Don’t get me wrong: since advocates in Washington state first challenged their neighbors to hang up their keys in 2021, the Seattle-born event has become one of my favorite national advocacy campaigns. I love the way it pushes motorists to undertake a radical act of empathy that’s far harder to ignore than a policy brief — and when those motorists are also public officials, the initiative can be even more transformative. If I had my way, every mayor, councilperson and transportation leader in the country would have to do it, ideally for at least seven days out of every month. 

Now that this year’s Week Without Driving is coming to a close, though, I’ve found myself reflecting on what should come next — and what it will take for the Week Without Driving to become a celebration of the benefits of car-free transportation, rather than the challenges, and a call to action to demand more of them. Because as important as it is to condemn the conditions that put those advantages out of reach, our advocacy cannot stop there.

Recommended How the ‘Week Without Driving’ Helped CHI Elected Officials Understand The Challenges of Being Car-Free Cameron Bolton October 12, 2023

Here’s the thing: most U.S. residents have been undertaking an involuntary “week without active or shared transportation” challenge every week for their entire adult lives, give or take the walk to and from the parking lot. And while a recent study found that 53 percent of them want more mobility options than policymakers are delivering, a staggering 47 percent are apparently happy with the status quo.

To understand why, just look at the more negative entries from the Week Without Driving challenge. Missing sidewalks, near-miss bike crashes, buses that never come; it can all make getting around without a car look like nothing more than a gauntlet of dangers and indignities that only a masochist would willingly undertake.

Without an understanding of the universe of solvable, structural reasons why non-automotive transportation in America can suck so much — a universe that doesn’t fit neatly into a social media post — the campaign isn’t a particularly good advertisement for car-free living, or even skipping a single trip behind the wheel.

But it can be.

Recommended Transportation Reform Has an Imagination Problem Kea Wilson September 28, 2026

Invariably, my favorite Week Without Driving posts are those that name what’s wonderful about walking, biking and transit — and those that demand policymakers give us even more of the good stuff.

The specific amount of money saved on gas in just seven days. The extra chapters of the novel read on the train, instead of dodging road-raging drivers in the rush hour crawl. The precious memories made biking a kid to a neighborhood school, instead of plunking them in the back seat with an iPad. The subtle health benefits that start to accumulate with just a week of walking to work, but can snowball until they literally add years to your life.

These are the kind of stories that I love seeing during this campaign, and I wish I saw more of them.

Recommended Opinion: Slow Transportation Should Be a Human Right Kea Wilson August 12, 2022

What if next year, a whole flank of the Week Without Driving effort focused exclusively on places where forgoing driving isn’t a challenge, or on people who have happily done it for years? How can we reach people who are skeptical that joyful, car-free living is possible — and not just in the Netherlands or New York City, but in Tempe, Arizona, suburban Houston and other neighborhoods across America? How can we reach people for whom skipping short trips in a car would authentically make life better, if they only thought to try it?

And if it’s truly not possible to enjoy life without driving in your specific town, how can we give you a glimmer of how wonderful things could be — after a few achievable policy and infrastructure shifts that give you other options?

Recommended Bill McKibben Talks How Walking Can Help End the Climate Crisis — And Make Americans Happier Streetsblog October 31, 2023

Look, I won’t pretend that this type of positive framing would work for everyone, and the research on this stuff is incredibly mixed. If we’d prefer to go negative, though, why not aim that negativity at the mode of transportation that’s killing our neighbors, our budgets, our natural environment, and so much more?

After all, as soon as the Week Without Driving challenge ends, many US residents will begin the “51 Weeks of Forced Driving” challenge that’s functionally become our national default. That means an average of $1,025 month just to own, insure, and maintain a vehicle, plus the long list of other financial, social, emotional, planetary, and public health costs of near-compulsory mass car dependency.

It would not be hard to log a social media post every day documenting the downsides of constant driving that so many of us have no choice but to experience every day — and to start doing the hard work of denormalizing them.

The Week Without Driving should expose not just the injustices endured by people outside cars, but the joys they experience, too. But the real challenge is to help our neighbors imagine what else is possible for our transportation system – and to build the collective power necessary to bring it to life.

Imagine you’re a worker on the late shift, and you just finished your job for the day. Your car has been at the shop for two weeks; you still have to pay the repair bill, and the estimate the mechanic gave you was a staggering amount you just don’t have right now. There is a bus stop across from your apartment complex ,and the route even runs near your job. On paper, you have transit access — but your shift ended at 11 p.m., and the last bus left at 7 p.m.

So you stand in the parking lot and do the math. What an Uber costs at this hour. How much of tonight’s pay that will leave you to buy groceries and pay rent. Whether to text someone for a ride again, and how many times you’ve already asked this week.

There is a bus. It just won’t get you home.  

It takes very little to put someone in this position. Only 63 percent of U.S. adults said they could cover a $400 emergency expense entirely with cash or an equivalent. When your car goes, the bus is usually what’s left — even if it leaves you stranded. 

Legally, transit agencies that receive federal funding a Title VI equity analysis before implementing major service changes. This analysis compares how a proposed change will hit minority and low-income neighborhoods compared to everyone else. If the gap stays under a certain threshold, the change is allowed. If it doesn’t, the change can’t be made.

But Title VI requires agencies to measure whether the pain is shared evenly — not whether the bus runs at all. If everyone is equally stranded, the analysis comes back clean, the service cut goes into effect, and you and every other late-shift worker still be stranded in the parking lot at 11 p.m.

Recommended Advocates Warn Short-Term Transit Cuts Could Foreshadow Deeper Long-Term Slashing Kea Wilson September 29, 2026

To better understand “transit desserts” — or neighborhoods where the demand for transit exceeds the service provided — and what that label hides, I and my fellow researchers at Syracuse University recently conducted a study where we mapped transit access in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Nashville and Dallas. 

Our comparison flagged neighborhood after neighborhood in Philadelphia, specifically, as starved for shared mobility options, and many were far worse off than the rest of the cities. That is exactly what an equity analysis like Title VI is built to catch — at least in theory. 

But then we ran a basic service screen. We asked five basic questions about each neighborhood: Is there a transit route you can walk to? Is enough of the neighborhood within a walk of a stop? Does a bus come every 30 minutes at rush hour? Does service run at least 12 hours a day? Can you reach a decent number of jobs in 45 minutes? Fail three of those five tests, and the neighborhood is not being “served,” whatever the equity analysis says.

According to the results of this test, Philadelphia’s “transit deserts” disappeared. None of its flagged neighborhoods failed the screen. In Dallas, about four in ten did; in Nashville, more than half. 

Title VI, by contrast, asks whether a given service cut falls harder on some riders than others. It doesn’t ask whether what’s left is enough to get anyone to work. A cut can clear a Title VI test and still take away the last bus someone needed. And when you make enough of those cuts, eventually no one has a bus they can rely on.

Recommended Myth-Buster: Uber and Lyft Aren’t Addressing Transit Deserts John Greenfield November 24, 2020

In a car-dependent city, the logic behind a Title VI analysis can do something even worse: it can make the places with the worst transit service look the fairest on paper. 

In car-dependent regions, anyone who can find a way to buy, borrow, finance or keep a car has usually done it. Standard measures count neighborhoods with a high concentration of households that drive every day as “not needing transit.” Once almost everyone has been pushed into a car, the gap between neighborhoods’ relative “transit need” shrinks. 

What the numbers leave out is why: the people who could leave transit behind already did. 

The same cut lands differently depending on money and flexibility, too. Some riders call an Uber when the bus doesn’t come. Others wait longer, miss work, or don’t make the trip at all. A traditional equity analysis might miss that while transit deserts often look similar on paper, some of their riders might be hit harder by service cuts: a senior who no longer drives, a teenager getting to class, anyone whose car is stuck at the dealer.

Recommended Workers Remind Philadelphia Pols That Transit Cuts Kill Kea Wilson September 2, 2025

This isn’t a hypothetical. Just last month, TriMet in Portland eliminated or reworked 33 bus lines against an originally projected $300 million shortfall. Cleveland slashed its own service in August. 

Each cut is judged on its own. Nobody adds up how these cuts collectively impact low-income riders: a route gone here, a line cut short there, one defensible decision at a time.

Agencies will say late-night service costs too much for too few riders, and offer on-demand rides instead. Fine. But the van has to actually show up at 11 p.m. — and when it doesn’t, that has to impact how an agency grades itself. 

Fortunately, there is something any advocate can do right now. Every agency that receives federal funding files a Title VI Program, usually on its website. Look yours up. Does it promise when the buses will run, or just draw lines where the routes go? If it is only lines, tell your agency’s board to screen for basic service before the next service cut. 

A neighborhood should not count as “served” by transit just because a route exists on a map. The pipeline behind this analysis is open and runs on public data. Push them to run it for your city.

A city should not be able to pass its equity analysis while someone is still standing in that parking lot at 11 p.m.. A system that looks fair on paper only because it pushed everyone else into a car is not equitable.

Just a few decades ago, the Great Lakes Piping Plover population had dwindled to just a dozen breeding pairs, all confined to northern Michigan. Today, this tiny shorebird is writing a different...

Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin previewed the Agency’s imminent proposal to weaken critical protections from oil and gas pollution.  

The 2024 Methane Rule is a landmark EPA regulation designed to sharply curb methane and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from oil and fracked gas operations. Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is a leading contributor to climate change.

The rule, which was developed with significant input from advocates, the oil and gas industry, investors, health experts, and elected officials, provided commonsense measures to protect public health and reduce methane waste. These measures include standards to monitor and repair leaks, the phase-out of routine flaring, and the replacement of process controllers with non-emitting alternatives.  

President Trump and Administrator Zeldin’s unlawful delay of the implementation and enforcement of the Methane Rule, and now their proposal to roll it back, is a continued attack on the well-being of all Americans. Pennsylvanians in particular will be harmed by the reconsideration of the Methane Rule.  

The Commonwealth is the second-largest producer of gas, and over 1.5 million Pennsylvanians live within just half a mile of active oil and gas infrastructure. It is more important now than ever that states act. Governor Shapiro’s recent announcement to develop state rules that reduce methane emissions is a key step to protecting residents. 

“EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment, yet it continues to stray further from that goal,” said Alice Lu, policy analyst with Clean Air Council. “The latest proposal to roll back methane standards is an affront to the health of Pennsylvanians. This rule was the result of years of advocacy and, for impacted residents and advocates, is more than just another regulatory action. It is a way of holding oil and gas operators accountable for their wasteful practices and ensuring residents are protected from the industry’s dangerous pollution.” 

NC WARN today launched a statewide petition drive calling on Gov. Josh Stein to use his authority and political power to implement a 2-year moratorium on data centers. This move reflects the accelerating public backlash against the surge of A.I. data centers now notorious for air, water and noise pollution.

Stein has helped fuel the data center frenzy even as the public has learned about a host of harms when their communities are targeted for the sometimes massive projects, and even as A.I. has become a national pariah.

Now, it’s on the Governor to begin making amends. He must freeze current data center development, halt the secret scheming by data center proponents and establish a first-ever, transparent and fair decision-making process that prioritizes the interests and voices of targeted communities.

In June NC WARN began calling on Stein to stop Duke Energy and state officials from quietly strategizing to recruit the noxious plants. And NC WARN’s attorney has begun the steps necessary to require the Governor and Commerce department to release all public records showing their involvement in this burgeoning statewide scandal.

We and allies will use the petition to further press Gov. Stein to side with the public instead of A.I. developers and Duke Energy.

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Now in its 38th year, NC WARN is building people power in the climate and energy justice movement to persuade or require Charlotte-based Duke Energy – one of the world’s largest climate polluters – to make a quick transition to renewable, affordable power generation and energy efficiency in order to avert climate tipping points and ongoing rate hikes.

The post Statewide Pressure on Governor for 2-Year Freeze on Data Centers — NC WARN News Release appeared first on NC WARN.

With the help of RAFI’s Beginning Farmer Stipend, Aronson will purchase a small 4x6 enclosed trailer to hitch it to the farm’s SUV in order to transport more product to markets, which will make farmers market participation much more financially viable.

The post Ida Aronson appeared first on RAFI.

Cameron and his wife Terris now operate Brownstone Family Farms in Scranton, South Carolina, growing produce for their local farmers market.

The post Jason Cameron appeared first on RAFI.

Class’s Beginning Farmer Stipend will be used to rehabilitate and convert a stall in the property’s 60-year-old pole barn into a drying area for seed saving.

The post Deena Class appeared first on RAFI.

With the help of RAFI’s Beginning Farmer Stipend, Hunt will invest in improving housing for the homestead’s animals to support healthier living conditions and increase productivity.

The post LaShauna Hunt appeared first on RAFI.

With the help of the Beginning Farmer Stipend, Johnson is building a new cold storage room to help store more produce and keep it fresher for longer.

The post Lindsay Johnson appeared first on RAFI.