The Revelator

By Toni Lyn Morelli and Diana Stralberg

The idea began in California’s Sierra Nevada, a towering spine of rock and ice where rising temperatures and the decline of snowpack are transforming ecosystems, sometimes with catastrophic consequences for wildlife.

The prairie-doglike Belding’s ground squirrel (Urocitellus beldingi) had been struggling there as the mountain meadows it relies on dry out in years with less snowmelt and more unpredictable weather. At lower elevations, the foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii) was also being hit hard by rising temperatures, because it needs cool, shaded streams to breed and survive.

A Belding’s ground squirrel in the Sierra Nevada. Toni Lyn Morelli

As we studied these and other species in the Sierra Nevada, we discovered a ray of hope: The effects of warming weren’t uniform.

We were able to locate meadows that are less vulnerable to climate change, where the squirrels would have a better chance of thriving. We also identified streams that would stay cool for the frogs even as the climate heats up. Some are shaded by tree canopy. Others are in valleys with cool air or near deep lakes or springs.

These special areas are what we call climate change refugia.

Identifying these pockets of resilient habitat — a field of research that was inspired by our work with natural resource managers in the Sierra Nevada — is now helping national parks and other public and private land managers to take action to protect these refugia from other threats, including fighting invasive species and pollution and connecting landscapes, giving threatened species their best chance for survival in a changing climate.

Examples of climate change refugia. Toni Lyn Morelli, et al., 2016, PLoS ONE, CC BY

Across the world, from the increasingly fire-prone landscapes of Australia to the glacial ecosystems at the southern tip of Chile, researchers, managers and local communities are working together to find and protect similar climate change refugia that can provide pockets of stability for local species as the planet warms.

A new collection of scientific papers examines some of the most promising examples of climate change refugia conservation. In that collection, over 100 scientists from four continents explain how frogs, trees, ducks and lions stand to benefit when refugia in their habitats are identified and safeguarded.

Saving Songbirds in New England

The study of climate change refugia — places that are buffered from the worst effects of global warming — has grown rapidly in recent years.

In New England, managers at national parks and other protected areas were worried about how species are being affected by changes in climate and habitat. For example, the grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum), a little grassland songbird that nests in the open fields in the eastern U.S. and southern Canada, appears to be in trouble.

We studied its habitats and projected that less than 6% of its summer northeastern U.S. range will have the right temperature and precipitation conditions by 2080.

The loss of songbirds is not only a loss of beauty and music. These birds eat insects and are important to the balance of the ecosystem.

The sand plain grasslands that the grasshopper sparrow relies on in the northeastern U.S. are under threat not only from changes in climate but also changes in how people use the land. Public land managers in Montague, Massachusetts, have used burning and mowing to maintain habitat for nesting grasshopper sparrows. That effort also brought back the rare frosted elfin butterfly for the first time in decades.

Protecting Canada’s Vast Forest Ecosystems

In Canada, the climate is warming at about twice the global average, posing a threat to its vast forested landscapes, which face intensifying drought, insect outbreaks and destructive wildfires.

We have been actively mapping refugia in British Columbia, looking for shadier, wetter or more sheltered places that naturally resist the worst effects of climate change.

The mapping project will help to identify important habitat for wildlife such as moose and caribou. Knowing where these climate change refugia are allows land-use planners and Indigenous communities to protect the most promising habitats from development, resource extraction and other stressors.

British Columbia is undertaking major changes to forest landscape planning in partnership with First Nations and communities.

Lions, Giraffes and Elephants (Oh, My!)

On the sweeping vistas of East Africa, dozens of species interact in hot spots of global biodiversity. Unfortunately, rising temperatures, prolonged drought and shifting seasons are threatening their very existence.

In Tanzania, working with government agencies and conservation groups through past USAID funding, we mapped potential refugia for iconic savanna species including lions, giraffes and elephants. These areas include places that will hold water in drought and remain cooler during heat waves. The iconic Serengeti National Park, home to some of the world’s most famous wildlife, emerged as a key location for climate change refugia.

In East Africa, climate change refugia remain cooler and hold water during droughts. Protecting them can help protect the region’s iconic wildlife. Toni Lyn Morelli

Combining local knowledge with spatial analysis is helping prioritize areas where big cats, antelope, elephants and the other great beasts of the Serengeti ecosystem can continue to thrive — provided other, nonclimate threats such as habitat loss and overharvesting are kept at bay.

The Tanzanian government has already been working with U.S.-funded partners to identify corridors that can help connect biodiversity hot spots.

Hope for the Future

By identifying and protecting the places where species can survive the longest, we can buy crucial decades for ecosystems while conservation efforts are underway and the world takes steps to slow climate change.

Across continents and climates, the message is the same: Amid our rapidly warming world, pockets of resilience remain for now. With careful science and strong partnerships, we can find climate change refugia, protect them and help the wild things continue to thrive.

Toni Lyn Morelli, Adjunct Full Professor of Environmental Conservation, UMass Amherst; U.S. Geological Survey and Diana Stralberg, Adjunct professor, Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Finding (and Saving) Where the Wild Things Thrive appeared first on The Revelator.

The Trump administration has a clear communication objective: Flood the zone with bad news to overwhelm us, keep us off-balance, and make us feel like we can’t stop their regressive and oppressive policies.

But even amidst this constant barrage, other patterns emerge.

They aren’t always easy to see — especially when the authoritarian objective is to convince you to close your eyes and ears. But when you do finally recognize these patterns, a hidden truth can begin to make itself clear.

For example, a few weeks ago I started to see a particular phrase in news headlines. And because I read hundreds of headlines and articles every day — the curse of working in the news business — I saw a pattern: The phrase “despite Trump.”

It appeared in The New York Times, which reported “Renewable Energy Is Booming Despite Trump’s Efforts to Slow It.”

It also showed up the Los Angeles Times, which carried the news that “Green Energy Stocks Surge Despite Trump’s Policies.”

Reuters, meanwhile, reported that “Europe Commits to Wind Energy Expansion Despite Trump Criticism.”

And that was just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg. Other headlines crossed my desk in rapid succession:

• • EV Charging Keeps Expanding Despite Trump (Canary Media)
  • Despite Trump, Renewable Energy Keeps Surging (Yale Climate Connections)
  • “Why Companies Are Phasing Out These Super-Pollutants Despite Trump”(The Washington Post)
  • States Will Keep Pushing AI Laws Despite Trump’s Efforts to Stop Them (Stateline)
  • Clean Energy Is Still Booming in the U.S. Despite Trump’s Best Efforts(Fast Company)
  • Chart: Clean Energy Remains Dominant in the U.S. — Despite Trump(Canary Media)
  • Despite Trump, 2025 Saw Deeper Engagement With Climate Crisis (The Indian Express)
  • Solar Power and Battery Storage Are Booming Despite Trump Policy Whiplash Amid Data Center Demand(Fortune)
  • Despite Trump Admin’s Efforts, Coal Mining in Utah and the West Falls Flat(The Salt Lake Tribune)
  • Climate Action in 2026: Progress Despite Trump Rollbacks (Capital News Service)
  • Towns Built on Coal Pivot to New Businesses Despite Trump’s Coal Agenda (Associated Press)
  • Global Investment in Renewable Energy Up 10% on 2024 Despite Trump Rollback (The Guardian)
  • S. Cities Drive Energy Transition Despite Trump Resistance (Context)

Most of those had to do with renewable energy, which … despite Trump … continues to grow because it just makes business, economic, and ethical sense.

A few of the headlines, although not enough, pointed out progress in other areas:

• • Despite Trump Funding Freeze, Milwaukee Church Planted Oasis of Trees(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
  • Despite Trump Chaos, NSF Avoided Feared Dip in Research Financing(Science)
  • Seven Environmental Wins Across the U.S. in 2025 Despite Trump-Era Reversals (The Guardian)

That feels a little less dramatic than the pattern of good news about renewables, but the core message remains: People and businesses continue to stand up against the Trump administration and succeed in many other ways, often by working together and demanding change — because change is inevitable.

Once you see the “despite Trump” pattern, you see it even when news sites don’t use the phrase: The protests in Minneapolis and other cities; the rapid growth of mutual aid networks; the handful of Republican legislators stepping across the aisle to vote their consciences; the journalists standing up for the first amendment; the election officials refusing to back down as the Trump administration tries to throw monkey wrenches into the midterm elections; the governments teaming up to rebalance international power dynamics; the millions of tiny actions taking place every day, around the country, around the world, to protect people, systems, the environment, human rights, and so much more.

That’s not enough, of course. It can never be in enough in an era where masked enforcers shoot people down in the streets, where the system systematically covers up the crimes of rich abusers, where anti-regulation extremism has crippled the federal government’s climate programs, and where the president constantly seeks revenge on his perceived enemies, fantasizes about nonexistent voter fraud, and threatens to take over elections.

Still, it shows that we’re making progress despite all of that (and more). And maybe the fact that the president can’t destroy renewable energy — no matter how hard he tries — tells us there are other things he can’t destroy and other progress we can keep making.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I understand the impulse to wrap yourself in a warm blanket and shield your eyes and ears and soul from the constant painful input.

But I encourage you: Let some of that information in. Process it. Look for patterns. Look for growth. Look for opportunities. Look for the signal hiding in the noise that can help you move forward — and maybe help us all move forward in the process.

And do all of that despite Trump.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

12 Environmental Commentaries That Defined Our Year in 2025

The post The Two Words Giving Me Hope — Even As the Trump Administration Dismantles More Climate Regulations appeared first on The Revelator.

The global annual production of plastics rose to 400 million metric tons in 2022 and is projected to double by 2050 (a metric ton, or Mt, is 1,000 kilograms or about 2,200 pounds). As of 2015 some 6,300 metric tons (roughly 13.8 million pounds) of plastic had become waste. About 9% of it was recycled, 12% incinerated, and 79% ended up in landfills or the natural environment — rates that haven’t gotten much better in the ensuing decade. Current trends suggest that by 2050, we will put roughly 12,000 Mt of plastic waste in landfills or the environment.

Clearly the problem of plastic pollution in land and marine environments isn’t going away. This series looks at some approaches to dealing with it, such as efforts to replace disposable plastic items with reusables.

Order take-out and most likely your meal comes in plastic containers inside plastic bags with a set of plastic utensils — each item designed to be used just once. That beer you grab at a concert or basketball game is served in a plastic cup meant to be thrown away when empty. And at most stores, your purchases are tossed into a single-use plastic bag.

Replacing these disposable items with reusable ones could help address plastic pollution by reducing the amount of waste generated.

But what are the best ways to accomplish that? Should the responsibility — or the opportunity — to use less plastic come from individuals, large suppliers, or the government?

To help settle these questions, we looked at some organizations and businesses working to cut back on our addiction to disposable plastic.

Retooling Large and Small Systems

Events like concerts, festivals, football games, and conventions use tens of millions of disposable cups. An average-sized stadium will go through 5.4 million of them every year, according to Upstream, a nongovernmental organization supporting reuse efforts.

To break this endless chain of disposability, venues and events could turn to companies that deliver, pick up, wash, and return reusables. Most of these are made from polypropylene, a nontoxic plastic polymer that is tough, lightweight, heat-resistant, and does not absorb water.

Trial runs of reusable cups at major venues have been promising. A four-day After two 2024 concerts at the Los Angeles Crypto.com Arena kept 23,000 single-use cups out of the trash, the venue made the switch for good, r.World reports. As of Dec. 31, 2025, the company’s reusable service had diverted more than 23 million single-use items from landfills.

Photo courtesy r.World

Other sports venues, events, and teams currently working to switch to reuseable cups include the Los Angeles Coliseum, Red Rocks Amphitheater, Kansas City Chiefs and Arrowhead Stadium, Portland Trail Blazers, and Charlotte Hornets.

Another recent initiative — Protect Where We Play, launched by the Ocean Conservancy and Green Operations & Advanced Leadership — has provided reusables for several events, including two June 2025 Coldplay concerts in Las Vegas; a September Lumineers performance in Savannah, Georgia; and two October Billie Eilish concerts in Belmont Park, New York. The program plans new 2026 tour stops and hopes to replace a total of 1 million single-use cups with reusables managed by Bold Reuse.

Jenna DiPaolo, chief brand and communications officer for Ocean Conservancy, says the effort was inspired by data showing that the easiest initial action people can take is one related to the ocean (where much plastic waste ends up), plus evidence that many people don’t take action because no one they trust has asked them to do something specific.

A volunteer with Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup removes a plastic bag from Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Val Vega for Ocean Conservancy

“Protect Where We Play leverages the people that Americans trust most — athletes and entertainers — and shows them how easy it can be to take an action,” she says. A key to the effort is showing venues the value of switching to reusables.

“We’re banking on folks to make the right decision when we provide the data,” DiPaolo says.

Bold Reuse is analyzing how many times the products can be reused, says marketing manager Mya Manibusan (existing assessments suggest 300). She said the company had kept 6 million single-use items out of landfills before the end of 2025.

Cups are just part of the issue, though. Every year people in the United States use 1 trillion disposable food service products, Upstream reports, including cups, containers, bags, and utensils. The organization estimates that 840 billion of these items could be replaced by reuse services.

A reusable dishware program called Re:Dish — which serves public school and company cafeterias and events across communities in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia — has kept about 7 million products out of landfills to date.

“Fundamentally, we are an industrial washing operation that also has a line of reusable dishware,” says CEO and founder Caroline Vanderlip. “At the institutional level, most companies, schools, and other operations don’t have the labor, resources, or space to make reusable work. We’re an outsourced solution that provides the full gamut or just whatever pieces you need.”

At end of life, items are taken to a materials recovery facility to be packaged and resold.

“Our mantra is ‘never landfill’, which is really important to us,” Vanderlip says. “We don’t have enough landfill space in this country — and more importantly, plastic takes centuries to deteriorate.”

Switching to reusables at a more local level can make a difference, too. Brothers Kevin and Harrison Kay founded containers for food delivery services in the Washington, DC area.

During the COVID pandemic, they ordered take out a lot (as a lot of us did) and became frustrated with the volume of single-use containers.

“We started brainstorming a solution that would not only work in our lives but be scalable and help solve the problem for other people,” Kevin says. The idea of a shared network of reusable containers was born.

Restaurants that buy the reusable containers are listed on To Go Green’s online ordering platform. When individuals order through the platform, the restaurant places the order in those reusable containers, which customers return for washing along with the restaurant’s in-house dishes.

“We’ve been in business about a year and have 17 restaurant partners and around 700 reusable container uses so far,” Kevin says. “The biggest challenge now is visibility and customer awareness, since we are relatively new. We’ve had tremendous positive feedback from customers, but a lot of people don’t know about us yet.”

Increasing awareness is their biggest challenge.

“Ordering takeout and delivery has become very popular but spreading the word that reusable containers are an option is a hurdle,” Kevin says. The brothers are working on integrating with a third-party delivery app and other ordering channels to increase their reach.

Returning the containers can be cumbersome, Harrison says, so they offer an at-home return service integrated with Uber Direct.

“On a broader note, there are a lot of challenges to scaling up, but if big players in the food delivery field buy into these kinds of services, they can become much more mainstream. We think reuse has to be the future. The current culture of throwing things away is not sustainable.”

Making Reuse the Law

Globally people use 5 trillion plastic bags a year, or 160,000 per second. Americans use on average 365 per person per year. Most marine litter is plastic bags (an estimated 300 million end up in the Atlantic Ocean alone annually) and they cause a lot of damage, killing marine life through ingestion or entanglement, releasing toxic chemicals into the water, and negatively affecting tourism.

Cities, states, and countries have started to regulate their way out of the single-use plastic bag problem. Complete bans prohibit any sort of single-use plastic bag at store checkouts, while partial bans limit bags under a certain millimeter in thickness but allow thicker bags that hold up for multiple uses. Fee policies require customers to pay some amount for a bag, typically 5 to 25 cents.

Research shows that bans work. One study analyzed crowdsourced data from more than 45,067 U.S. shoreline cleanups and 611 local and state-level plastic bag regulations enacted between 2017 and 2023, finding that regulations reduced the proportion of plastic bags by 25 to 47%.

“What we see in places with policies is a decrease in plastic bags as a share of total items collected,” says Anna Papp, co-author and post-doctoral associate at MIT.  “It’s important to emphasize that it is a relative decrease. Overall, bags are increasing in all areas. The policies are just slowing down the problem, not eliminating it. And we don’t find that these policies lead to reduction in other plastic items.”

Future laws and regulations could help address other single-use items.

Taking Individual Action

Each of us individually can help reduce single-use plastic waste. For example, we can advocate for adoption of reusable services in the places we work and play and take advantage of services like To Go Green where available.

“If you live in a city with a reuse provider, you can encourage more stadiums, venues, festivals to make the switch,” Manibusan says.

Individuals can join Protect Where We Play’s Team Ocean and receive information about scientifically vetted actions to take.

In addition, with research showing that people underestimate how much plastic they throw away, everyone can simply pay more attention to how much single-use plastic waste we generate.

One study found that households in the UK on average tossed 23 plastic items per person per week, considerably more than 45% of participants expected. The researchers found a direct link between how often people shopped online and how surprised they were at their waste levels. They suggest that online retailers clearly show packaging impacts at the point of purchase and provide reuse or refill alternatives.

Taking an action is not as hard as people think, says Manibusan, and every reuse prevents waste.

“Single use was built for convenience,” she says. “Reuse is built for the future.”

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Biodegradable Plastics: Help or Hype?

The post Reducing Plastic Waste: Three Ways to Replace Disposable with Reusable appeared first on The Revelator.

30×30 — the global commitment to conserve at least 30% of the planet by 2030 through protected areas and other effective conservation measures — is arguably the most successful conservation slogan in history. Measured by global policy adoption, financial mobilization, and brand portability, the target has achieved unprecedented traction: It was formally codified by nearly 200 nations in 2022, has helped unlock some of the largest private philanthropic investments in conservation, and has translated a complex ecological threshold into a universal political “North Star.”

But has it done enough — especially for the ocean?

As an ocean conservationist, I’ve spent nearly four decades working alongside local communities, NGOs, and governments — from locally managed marine areas to seascape-scale conservation, and from species-specific safeguards to ecosystem-level planning — trying to turn conservation from an idea into something that holds up in the real world. I’ve helped advise, plan, and implement the unglamorous but essential machinery that makes protected areas durable: listening, building social license, strengthening governance that people will actually comply with, funding enforcement and monitoring, and ensuring conservation delivers tangible benefits to the communities asked to live with it.

So what follows isn’t a drive-by critique: It’s a practitioner’s look at what 30×30 was meant to deliver, why it’s falling short in the ocean, and how we move beyond 2030 without sacrificing credibility.

We have a great opportunity right now: January’s enactment of the High Seas Treaty (formally known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement). The treaty doesn’t magically solve 30×30, but it does remove one of the oldest excuses in ocean conservation: that the high seas are simply too complex to protect. If we’re serious about meeting the ocean side of 30×30 without resorting to accounting tricks, this treaty may be our clearest chance to implement protections more concertedly, at the scale the ocean actually demands.

The Promise Beneath the Slogan

The 30×30 premise sounds self-evident (“surely we should protect a big chunk of the planet”), and in its best form it has always meant more than drawing lines on a map. It implies networks that are ecologically representative, connected, and managed well — in plain terms: enough land and ocean, protected strongly enough, in the right places, for long enough to matter. But the slogan is a mash-up of science, negotiation, and politics. That matters, because slogans don’t protect ecosystems. Outcomes do.

But we also need to start saying the quiet part out loud: At the pace we’re moving, we’re likely to miss 30×30, especially for the ocean. Not because the ocean isn’t worth protecting — but because “30% protected” has become a deceptively simple headline standing in for hard questions about what counts, what works, and what endures.

If 2030 arrives with the dashboards still flashing red, the task won’t be to declare failure or pad the numbers. It’ll be to get strategic about what comes next: what the “30” was meant to achieve, why spatial targets keep underdelivering, and how we build an after-2030 playbook that prioritizes real protection over paper coverage.

And in a strange way, the High Seas Treaty only sharpened that urgency — it gives us occasion to look hard at 30×30 and sit with the uncomfortable truth that, on current trajectories, the world may be celebrating the tools of protection faster than we’re actually delivering protection itself.

It also offers something 30×30 has always lacked: a way to move the needle on ocean coverage without gaming the numbers — because for the first time, meaningful protection on the high seas can be legally built, not just rhetorically wished for.

How We Got to ‘30%’ and Why That Number Stuck

The immediate predecessor to 30×30 was the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 11, which set a goal of 10% ocean protection (and 17% of terrestrial areas) by 2020. In practice, it wasn’t met in a way that delivered consistent outcomes, and it fell far short of what science increasingly suggested was necessary to slow extinction and preserve ecosystem function.

The “30” gained momentum because multiple lines of evidence kept converging on a roughly one-third threshold for meaningful biodiversity persistence and spillover benefits — provided that protection is strong (not just nominal) and well-placed (not just convenient).

Following the IUCN’s 2016 push and the influence of papers like the Global Deal for Nature, the target was ultimately locked in at COP15 (2022) within the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It is not a magic ecological constant. It is a “big enough to matter” milestone that became politically portable and, at least on paper, measurable.

The Integrity Gap: Which Dashboard Are You Reading?

This is where things get spicy, because “percent protected” is currently a math problem with two different answers. If you count any area reported as an Marine Protected Area — including weakly regulated multiple-use areas — global tracking lands around 9.6%. If you ask how much of the ocean is fully or highly protected — the level required to reliably deliver biodiversity outcomes — the number drops to roughly 3.2%.

That isn’t a methodological quibble. It’s an integrity gap. One version tracks lines on a map; the other tracks durable reductions in extractive pressure.

There’s another constraint baked into the geometry: National waters only cover 39% of the ocean. The remaining 61% is the high seas, where creating MPAs has historically been legally difficult.

That’s why the High Seas Treaty matters so much.  It doesn’t guarantee we’ll hit 30×30, but it finally makes large-scale protection beyond national waters achievable without diluting definitions or padding the accounting. If 30×30 is ever going to be ecologically meaningful (rather than a coastal accounting exercise), the high seas cannot remain governance-lite.

Why Spatial Targets Produce ‘Paper Parks’

Spatial targets are a vital forcing function. They give governments a concrete benchmark, mobilize finance, and make inaction harder to justify.

But they also predictably invite shortcut behavior. The incentive is to designate what is large, remote, and politically cheap — especially if the protection can be labeled “multi-use” while still counting toward the target.

That’s how we end up protecting space rather than safeguarding function. Connectivity gets traded away for convenience. Equity becomes an afterthought, with top-down designations that ignore Indigenous governance or repackage dispossession as environmental progress. And the substitution myth takes hold: the idea that an MPA can stand in for the hard work of climate mitigation, pollution control, and fisheries reform.

Most of all, capacity lags behind ambition. Area is easy to announce. Management budgets, monitoring, surveillance, and enforcement are hard to build — and even harder to sustain.

The Post-2030 Roadmap: How to Fix the Target Without Faking the Math

If 2030 arrives and we’re short of the target, the worst move is to declare the idea dead. The better move is to treat 30×30 as the floor, not the ceiling, and shift the center of gravity from coverage to integrity.

This is the part where audience matters. For the general public, the ask is simple: Don’t settle for “protected” on paper. Demand protection that actually works in the water.

For practitioners and decision-makers, the challenge is equally clear: Build systems that can withstand politics, budgets, and time.

Here’s what “honest protection” can look like after 2030:

A) Track what matters: “How much is protected” and “how well it’s protected”

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are the ocean equivalent of parks and preserves: places where rules limit damaging activity to safeguard wildlife and habitats. The problem is that not all MPAs are created equal. Future reporting should lead with two numbers: Total MPA coverage (the political umbrella) and Highly Protected coverage (the ecological reality). This ends the incentive for “paper parks.”

B) Protect the right places, not just the easiest ones

Instead of asking “what percent of the ocean is inside polygons,” we should be asking whether we’re protecting the places that keep the ocean alive: nurseries, migration corridors, climate-safe havens, and biodiversity hotspots. This turns treaty poetry into operational science.

C) Make protection hard to undo

If a protection can be undone in one election cycle, it isn’t conservation — it’s a temporary zoning experiment. Post-2030 success should be measured by durability: legal stability, long-term funding, monitoring, and enforcement that can survive leadership changes.

D) Make the high seas count — because now it can

The High Seas Treaty has entered into force — but that’s the starting gun, not the finish line. The real constraint now is implementation: rapidly identifying and designating high-seas MPAs, funding monitoring and enforcement, and closing the participation gap of major ocean powers that still haven’t ratified (including the United States). Without that follow-through, 30×30 remains stranded in national waters by inertia, not math.

E) Stop treating protected areas as a substitute for everything else

Post-2030 success will come from the bundle: fisheries reform, ending destructive gear, shipping noise controls, and — nonnegotiably — climate mitigation. The MPA is one tool in a larger risk-reduction portfolio.

F) Confront the drivers — and rebuild trust

We can’t fence our way out of this. If we don’t deal with what’s driving the damage — climate change, relentless extraction, and policy that swings wildly every election — then even the best protected places won’t hold. In the U.S., that means owning the time we’ve lost, rebuilding trust with the rest of the world, and making sure climate and conservation work can’t be undone every four years. Protecting nature and cutting emissions aren’t either/or choices anymore. They’re both essential, and they need to happen together.

G) Treat equity as non-negotiable

“Equitably governed” must move from a buzzword to a pass/fail metric. If local communities and Indigenous peoples do not have a seat at the table and a share of the benefits, the protection will eventually fail.

The Post-2030 Workhorse

And there’s one more reality we need to admit: A lot of effective ocean conservation already exists outside the boundaries of formal MPAs. If we want post-2030 progress without creative accounting, we have to recognize and strengthen the protections that are already working in the real ocean.

MPAs aren’t the only way to protect the ocean. If 30×30 gets shaky after 2030, we need to lean harder on OECMs — “Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures.” In plain terms: places where rules already protect nature, even if they aren’t officially labeled a marine protected area.

The risk is that OECMs become the next loophole — an easy way to pad the numbers. But done right, they’re one of the most practical ways to lock in real protection in busy, contested waters where a formal MPA may be politically difficult. Good OECMs are simple to recognize: they reduce harm, they last, and they’re enforced. They also help us escape the false binary of “MPA or nothing.” Some places need full no-take protection. Others can still deliver real conservation outcomes through targeted rules that work.

Take Canada’s “marine refuges,” like the Eastern Canyons. They aren’t formal parks; they are fisheries closures designed to keep heavy bottom-trawls off fragile, cold-water corals. By protecting the seafloor for the sake of the fishery, they effectively safeguard the entire ecosystem.

That’s the OECM idea in real life: practical rules that stick and concretely reduce harm.

In practice OECMs can include seasonal closures that protect spawning, permanent bans on destructive gear in sensitive habitats, anchoring exclusions over seagrass and reefs, shipping measures that reduce strikes and noise, or Indigenous- and community-governed waters where stewardship is already strong.

These aren’t consolation prizes. They’re functional protection — often in precisely the places where it’s hardest, and most urgent, to get it right.

A Note for 2031: The Maturity of a Movement

We still have four years left in this decade. There’s time to surprise ourselves — and I genuinely hope I’m wrong about the current trajectory of protection. I hope enforcement tightens, quality accelerates, and the high seas finally starts counting in a way that matters.

And while this essay has focused on the ocean, the broader lesson isn’t uniquely marine. 30×30 was always a global commitment — land and sea — and the same integrity questions apply everywhere: what counts, what works, what lasts, and who benefits. If we get the post-2030 course correction right in the ocean, the framework can serve terrestrial practitioners too — not as a new set of loopholes, but as a shared standard for honest protection.

So what do we say out loud in 2031 if the dashboard isn’t green?

Something like this: “30×30 was the minimum milestone that got the world moving. We didn’t hit the deadline, but we finally stopped pretending that ‘protected’ means ‘safe.’ From here on, our benchmark is no longer the size of the map, but the health of the life within it.”

Missing a conservation deadline is a gut punch, especially with everything at stake right now. But hollowing out the definition of protection is a catastrophe. By refusing to settle for accounting tricks, we ensure that 30×30 isn’t just a failed slogan. It becomes the beginning of a more honest, more mature, and more durable relationship with the living planet.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

We’re Protecting the Ocean Wrong

The post How to Transform 30×30 From a Political Slogan Into an Ecological Reality appeared first on The Revelator.

For centuries the Elwha River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula supported some of the West Coast’s most impressive salmon runs. The river’s cold waters, fed by alpine glaciers on the surrounding mountains, flowed 45 miles from the heart of what is now Olympic National Park to the Salish Sea.

Ten distinct runs of salmon and oceangoing trout, including all five North American Pacific salmon species, spawned in the Elwha watershed — until a pair of dams built in the early twentieth century blocked salmon from 90% of the river.

More than a century later, advocacy by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and conservation groups led to the dams’ removal. With the Elwha flowing free again and other habitat restoration in progress, the Olympic Peninsula is regaining its status as a salmon hotspot. Olympic National Park lies at the center.

“Olympic is probably the greatest salmon sanctuary in the national park system outside of Alaska,” says Colin Deverell, acting Northwest regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “We’re talking over 3,000 miles of rivers and streams in an area bigger than Rhode Island — most of it wilderness.”

 

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The future of salmon in this vast region is far from assured, however. In fact staff and funding cuts at the National Park Service have jeopardized habitat restoration work in the Elwha and other park watersheds at a crucial time. Olympic Park’s fisheries team has dropped from five staff at the beginning of the second Trump administration to one intern by the start of this year.

“There’s no way one person could possibly fulfill all the responsibilities the national park has toward its fish and communities who rely on healthy fisheries,” says Deverell.

This hollowing out of staff has meant salmon returning to the Elwha go uncounted, hindering work to establish sustainable fisheries. Efforts to end illegal fishing in the Quillayute River are languishing, while a restoration project on the park’s Ozette Lake is in danger of being put on hold. Tribal nations and nonprofits who partner with the Park Service are struggling to fill the gaps.

“The near obliteration of Olympic Park’s fisheries program means it’s all but impossible to do the science that supports restoration work,” Deverell says. “It makes managing fish for people and communities that much harder.”

Staffing Exodus

When Congress passed the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act in 1992, it set in motion a long process meant to restore Elwha salmon to something like their former glory. The law authorized the Department of the Interior to acquire and decommission the river’s Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, a project completed in 2014. This was only the beginning for salmon recovery, however.

 

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The newly freed Elwha transported sediment that had been trapped behind the dams for a century downstream, where it replenished the river delta. Restored river and estuary habitat supported not just returning salmon, but other species from Dungeness crabs to lampreys.

In 2023, for the first time since the dams came down, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe held a ceremonial and subsistence fishery for coho salmon on the Elwha. Supporting treaty-protected Tribal fishing rights is a major objective for salmon recovery. However, setting science-based parameters for fishing requires reliable data about salmon numbers — data the Park Service is best equipped to provide.

“There are now almost no fisheries staff left to do this work,” Deverell says.

The federal hiring freeze of 2025 put seasonal additions to Olympic Park’s fisheries staff on hold. Though the freeze expired in fall, uncertainty over possible future hiring directives from the administration continues to pose challenges. Budget cuts compound the problem.

“The freeze may be technically over, but there’s still very little hiring going on,” Deverell says. “Writ large, the reason comes down to budget issues and personnel directives from the Trump administration.”

Last year Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” cancelled $267 million in funding for staff at the already chronically underfunded Park Service. The departure of all Olympic National Park’s permanent fisheries biologists follows a larger pattern of staff exoduses caused by lack of funding and untenable conditions.

“These are experienced biologists we’re losing,” says Tim McNulty, a board member of Olympic Park Advocates, one of the organizations that pushed for removal of the Elwha dams. “They’re people who have spent years working with the park’s many important salmon streams.”

The void left behind may not be visible to most visitors, but it puts Tribal nations and others who collaborate with the Park Service on fisheries in a difficult situation.

“It’s a predicament, because we share the load of conducting certain salmon and steelhead surveys with the Park Service and Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife,” says Frank Geyer, natural resources director for the Quileute Tribe.

For centuries the Quileute have fished in the Olympic Peninsula’s Quillayute watershed, which includes the Sol Duc, Calawah, and Bogachiel Rivers. The watershed is one of the few places that supports year-round salmon and steelhead fishing, thanks to the Tribe’s sustainable stewardship.

“Going into last fall, we were trying to figure out how to cover work the park would normally do,” Geyer says. “Soon we’ll be starting winter steelhead surveys. If the park doesn’t have staff to help, it’ll be up to the comanagers — Quileute Tribe and WDFW — to cover the gap.”

With basic monitoring of salmon runs barely getting done, many habitat restoration efforts have fallen by the wayside. Most of these projects are far less visible than removal of the Elwha River dams. However, they are part of the same legacy of restoration — one that’s now in danger of faltering.

Struggling Restoration

For the past few summers, Liz Allyn has worked to restore the edges of Olympic National Park’s Ozette Lake, home to a population of Endangered Species Act-listed, genetically distinct sockeye salmon.

Logging near the lake in the 20th century caused erosion that led to sediment building up in the shallows, burying gravel beds where sockeye once made their spawning nests, called redds. Plants took root, further changing the environment in ways that made life harder for salmon.

“Huge areas that used be spawning sites are now covered in native vegetation,” Allyn says. “It’s not an invasive species situation, but it’s a human-caused impact that negatively affects salmon.”

 

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Removing the vegetation would allow sediment to wash away, restoring spawning opportunities. It’s a relatively simple project with big payoffs that is currently being spearheaded by the Makah Tribe with support from the Coast Salmon Partnership, where Allyn works. However, with almost no park resources going toward it, the effort is in danger of collapsing.

“The park has been underfunded for a long time, so their engagement was always limited,” Allyn says. “But in the past, park staff were there to handle permits and certain logistics. Last summer we didn’t even have that.”

Throughout the park similar examples of restoration falling through the cracks amid short staffing abound. In a tributary of the Quinault River, efforts to remove a pile of rubble from a dilapidated bridge that impedes salmon swimming upstream have been delayed. Along the Sol Duc River, Tribal elders can’t access traditional fishing grounds because of a washed-out road.

Even more worrying, there’s often no one on hand when a crisis hits.

Disaster Response

On July 18 a petroleum tanker truck ran off U.S. Highway 101 on the northern Olympic Peninsula, overturning and spilling 3,000 gallons of diesel into a tributary of the Elwha. While the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Washington’s Department of Ecology rushed to respond, the ability of the Park Service to assist was hamstrung by lack of staff.

Thousands of salmon fingerlings died in the disaster. A more robust initial Park Service response wouldn’t have prevented this, but it could have helped provide vital information as multiple agencies struggled to assess the damage and calculate penalties for the company involved. It’s yet another example of how Trump administration cuts are impeding continued salmon recovery in a dynamic landscape.

At more than 922,600 acres, Olympic National Park is a big place. Ninety-five percent is Congressionally designated wilderness, much of it consisting of steep mountains and valleys. Keeping tabs on salmon throughout such a vast area, let alone outside the park boundaries, is an enormous undertaking that requires deep understanding of the watersheds involved.

When long-time fisheries staff depart, they take years of valuable experience and institutional knowledge with them. This means any new hires will have a lot of catching up to do before they can fill the same roles.

“The decisions we’re making today are built on decades of science that’s given us a picture of how salmon populations are succeeding or failing over time,” Deverell says. “All of that is informed by data from the park. But now we’re at a point where the Park Service can no longer fill that function.”

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The Monumental Effort to Replant the Klamath River Dam Reservoirs

 

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“Who the f*ck wants to kill penguins?” asks MI5 supervisor Jackson Lamb in the spy thriller Slow Horses.

It seems we do. Humans.

Over 60,000 penguins off the coast of South Africa, to be more specific.

Through a combination of human-induced climate change and overfishing, we caused sardine populations to collapse. Sardines who are vital for African penguins’ survival.

These penguins normally prepare for a brutal 21-day fasting period, during which they must stay on land to shed and replace their feathers by munching on sardines to build up fat reserves that allow them to survive the fast.

Instead we took their food, and then they starved. More than 60,000 in just eight years.

We’ve pushed them entre la espada y la pared — between a sword and a wall. On one side, a changing climate. On the other, an empty ocean.

And it’s not just penguins.

Late last year a study found that the November floods in Sumatra may have pushed the world’s rarest great apes, Tapanuli orangutans, even closer to extinction. Before the floods fewer than 800 remained in the wild, living in habitats already threatened by industrial activity and growing conflict with humans. According to reporting from Inside Climate News, those floods were “likely exacerbated by widespread deforestation, which stripped the land of its capacity to absorb rainfall and retain soil.” Much of this deforestation was caused by infrastructure development, mining, and palm oil expansion in and around the orangutan’s habitat.

The Tapanuli orangutan. Photo: Tim Laman (CC 4.0)

Between causing extreme heat events and making drastic changes to wild habitats, we’re narrowing the safe zone for animals, leaving them with nowhere to go. We may effectively be pushing nearly 80,000 animal species toward extinction in under 80 years.

And yet those same wild animals have a role to play in stabilizing the climate. If we give them a hand.

Wild Animals Are Our Allies

Late last year in Brazil, governments from countries that are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change met for the 30th time to negotiate a response to the climate crisis — a meeting called COP30.

In the midst of it, at an official event, scientist Dr, Ana Cristina Mendes-Oliveira talked about agoutis, small rodents who live in the Amazon and are responsible for the evolution of Brazil nut trees.

Agoutis, with their sharp teeth and strong jaws, are among the few animals able to crack the nut open. Because one nut can hold up to a couple of dozen seeds, more than a hungry agouti can eat at once, the animals have the habit of burying some of them to snack on another time. They also have the habit of forgetting where they buried them. And so many of those forgotten seeds survive and sprout into impressive trees that can reach heights of up to 160 feet and live for hundreds of years.

Through their hunger and forgetfulness, agoutis enhance carbon sequestration and storage in the Amazon.

Like agoutis, many other wild animals disperse seeds, pollinate, and help cycle nutrients in ecosystems, contributing substantially to the maintenance and restoration of key natural environments.

For example, take the tapir, another forest maker in the Amazon:

1. 1. They swallow whole fruits and release thousands of seeds in their dung. Many of these seeds belong to species that grow into large, carbon-rich trees.
   2. Because they travel and drop their waste more often in degraded parts of the forests, they often deliver seeds in spots where regeneration is most needed.
   3. Since their movements can span miles, they’re long-distance seed dispersers who help connect fragmented habitats.

Beyond these two cases, there are many more, including the American alligator. Studies show that ecosystems with more diverse animal communities are often associated with higher levels of carbon storage and sequestration.

The loss of wild animals in their natural habitats is a problem — not only for them but for our climate, sustainability, and wellbeing.

Animal-Washing No More

At UNFCCC COP30 in Brazil, governments spent two weeks talking about how to confront climate change, including in food systems, in relation to biodiversity loss and desertification, and through adaptation efforts. These issues are inseparable.

And one way or another, animal wellbeing sits at the center of them all.

And yet, despite the walls at the venue being draped with beautiful images of Amazon wildlife, animals themselves barely featured in the negotiations. Mitigation discussions largely sidelined food systems, even though they are responsible for at least a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. And when food systems were discussed, they were discussed without meaningfully addressing the climate, land-use, and biodiversity impacts of industrial animal agriculture or fishing, or what those systems mean for the animals trapped inside of them. Adaptation was debated without recognizing wildlife’s active role in stabilizing ecosystems.

That is animal-washing: celebrating animals in imagery while sidelining them in policy.

This matters not only because animals are on the frontline of the climate crisis, but also because they are ecosystem engineers, essential for effective climate action. Ignoring their contributions in climate policy is a missed opportunity.

Encouragingly, that logic is starting to reach policymakers.

At COP30, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Environment announced that African leaders had agreed to back a Wildlife for Climate Action Agenda, paving the way for a Global Wildlife for Climate Action Declaration to be launched at COP31. This political commitment was formally endorsed weeks earlier at the African Union Biodiversity Summit in Botswana, where heads of state adopted the Gaborone Declaration on Biodiversity, including a pledge to promote wildlife as part of Africa’s climate response.

In a world that’s pushing penguins, orangutans, and thousands of other species between a sword and a wall, that shift matters.

Because if we stop treating animals as background scenery and start recognizing and protecting them as climate allies, we may yet give both them and ourselves a fighting chance.

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Could Baird’s Tapirs Be a New Conservation Ambassador?

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The Floridian I would one day marry went to college in Gainesville, where the University of Florida’s sports teams are known as the Gators. That nickname fits. This is Gator Country, as the song goes — home to countless American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis).

In Gainesville the reptiles cluster in places like Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park, but they don’t stay confined there. They make use of the sewer system and sometimes stroll through the city streets.

For my future wife, alligators were simply part of the landscape. For me, with roots in a different part of the world, they were foreign. I’d never seen an alligator up close until adulthood, when I began visiting her in Florida.

Photo: Emil Siekkinen (used with permission)

The experience was awe-inspiring — and not just because of the reptiles themselves. In Florida I witnessed approaches to large carnivore conservation that reached beyond wilderness and protected areas into shared human landscapes, sustaining populations that remained both demographically and genetically viable.

Alligators teetered on the brink of extinction in the 1950s but recovered thanks to conservation work that took a broad approach: a federal ban on hunting, protection under the Endangered Species Act, wetland preservation, and an innovative management model that combined science, legislation, and local economies.

In Florida today there are about 1.3 million alligators, and altogether in the United States there are about 5 million — from smaller individuals in southern North Carolina to massive beasts in Florida, Louisiana, and eastern Texas.

Millions of people now live close to these big predators, who can weigh around 600 pounds. Around the southeastern U.S. they attract tourists to swamps, so they’re important to the local economy.

One autumn, when my wife and I visited Louisiana, we found ourselves in lush wetlands where heavy Spanish moss hung from cypresses that cast shade over some of the region’s momentarily sleepy alligators. A herd of wild pigs also moved through the swamp.

Wild pigs in the bayou. Photo: Emil Siekkinen (used with permission)

That surprised us, but what shocked us was seeing wetlands near the bayou drained to make room for suburban housing, asphalt, and concrete. That was hard to understand since Hurricane Katrina had visited the region in 2005 and showed how indispensable wetlands were when the waters rose.

These landscapes are certainly scenic, but they’re also a vital protective infrastructure.

Alligators belong to that infrastructure. Their presence, I learned, shapes wetlands in ways that extend far beyond what meets the eye — including how much carbon these places can keep out of the atmosphere.

Wetlands are among Earth’s richest — and most endangered — ecosystems. Between 60 and 70% of the wetlands that existed in preindustrial times have been wiped out. The wetlands that remain, however, store large amounts of carbon in oxygen-poor soils. When these ecosystems are drained, carbon dioxide is released. Today drained wetlands account for up to 10% of the world’s land-use emissions.

The draining and building we witnessed in Louisiana’s swamps were thus driving human-caused climate change.

But the United States can play an important role regarding wetlands’ significance for climate mitigation: North America harbors 42% of the world’s tidal-influenced wetlands.

Researchers speak of “blue carbon,” the carbon stored in marine biomes and coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, and swamps. These environments are particularly effective carbon sinks because they combine rich vegetation with slow decomposition.

For a long time, science mainly focused on the roles of plants and microorganisms in the carbon cycle. But researchers at Southeastern Louisiana University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium wanted to find out what role predators — in this case, alligators — might play. One of the researchers, Christopher Murray, who has worked with alligators for more than two decades, told me in an email, “I believe the value of a single animal can be quantified in terms of carbon stock.”

To test that idea, the researchers analyzed 649 soil samples from wetlands along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, drawing from the Smithsonian’s Coastal Carbon Network. They compared carbon levels in surface soils with maps of alligator distribution and density, focusing on samples collected over recent decades.

The pattern was consistent. Across alligators’ native range, wetlands stored about 0.16 grams more carbon per square centimeter in surface soils when alligators were present. In mangrove forests, the difference rose to roughly 0.20 grams per square centimeter — a trivial amount in a handful of mud, but a substantial gain when multiplied across thousands of square miles of coastline.

Louisiana offered even clearer insight. There, researchers had precise data on nesting patterns and population density. They found that carbon storage increased every time alligator numbers increased. More gators meant more carbon locked into the soil.

How does this work? The answer lies in chain reactions in the ecosystem — the ecological domino effects that occur when top predators influence whole habitats.

Alligators feed, among other things, on herbivorous mammals such as nutria (Myocastor coypus), as well as crabs, fish, and sometimes various kinds of wild pigs. By keeping these populations in check, alligators protect vegetation that would otherwise be trampled or devoured. More plants mean more photosynthesis — and therefore more carbon bound in biomass and soil.

Alligators also function as ecosystem engineers. When they dig dens, move through the muck, or create small pools, sediments and nutrients are redistributed. These processes can create pockets where organic material is preserved for longer.

And the animals can live for 35 to 50 years (or even longer). Their impact accumulates slowly but persistently.

Alligators affect both what is eaten and what the landscape looks like. In short, these enormous reptiles are living regulators of carbon flows, and the predator’s presence enhances nature’s own climate solutions.

The relationship between alligators and carbon storage is strongest in mangrove forests — tropical wetlands where tree roots stretch like braids into the tidal zone.

Mangrove forests are already recognized as outstanding carbon sinks. They store up to 10 times more carbon per acre than an average forest. That alligators can amplify that effect shows how a predator’s presence can improve nature’s own climate solutions.

Researchers have previously found similar patterns in the ocean. Where sea otters (Enhydra lutris) live, kelp forests flourish. But in areas without these predators, kelp forests are decimated by sea urchins (class Echinoidea), and much of the carbon-sequestration capacity is lost.

When top predators return, ecosystems’ structure and function change — including how they store carbon. A British study estimates that reintroducing wolves (Canis lupus) to Scotland — where they could prey upon vegetation-eating deer and other animals and allow woodland to expand — could lead to an additional 1 million tons of CO2 stored per year. Each individual gray wolf is estimated, through its ecological impact, to contribute to the absorption of 6,080 tons of CO2 per year. Each wolf is therefore worth about £154,000 ($202,763), using accepted current valuations of carbon.

In boreal Canada scientists estimate that recovering wolf populations to historical levels could allow forests to store 46 to 99 million additional tons of CO₂ every year — equivalent to the annual emissions of up to 71 million cars.

This new understanding also reveals that predator-control policies have a hidden climate cost. In many regions — from Scandinavia to the U.S. West — large predators are deliberately kept at densities far below what ecosystems can naturally sustain. These decisions are typically justified through concerns about livestock, hunting interests, or culturally ingrained fear. But the climate consequences are rarely counted.

In Sweden undersized predator populations have led to oversized populations of ungulates who consume enormous quantities of young trees, slowing natural forest growth. Forest ecologists estimate that this overgrazing reduces Sweden’s carbon sink potential by about 12 million tons of CO₂ per year. Allowing predator populations to recover to ecologically functional levels could restore roughly half of that capacity — a natural climate gain of about 6 million tons of CO₂ annually.

There are not yet precise figures for alligators’ influence, but the research already suggests that each individual, through its lifelong presence, contributes to increased carbon storage in wetlands.

That biodiversity and climate wins often go hand in hand is an established reality. Protecting top predators is therefore not just about saving species but about preserving an entire ecosystem’s ability to help stabilize the climate.

Conservation should therefore not only be about counting species and their populations, but also about measuring how much CO2 their presence helps to sequester. Nature itself, with its ancient networks and its interplay of life and death and life, shows that everything is intertwined. When balance is found here, it is also found in the atmosphere.

In parts of the Southeast, they have managed to combine climate work with industry. Alligator-related commerce, which partly relies on limited hunting and farming, requires viable wild populations. That means that, on a practical level, the economy favors the conservation of both predators and wetlands.

Generally speaking Americans accept alligators because people feel it’s possible to live with them, control the risks, and even benefit from their presence.

For my wife it was natural to grow up with alligators almost on her doorstep. She knows the folklore and believes that Floridians take pride in them as a natural part of both regional identity and environment. In the primordial creature that is the alligator, culture and nature are united.

Alligators may not care much about this as they go about their lives in the swamps. But these ancient beasts nevertheless do great good, and benefit life on our shared living planet.

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Saving Okefenokee

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Did climate change wipe out the Galápagos damselfish (Azurina eupalama)?

This once-common, reef-dwelling fish — described by the Galápagos Conservancy as a “shimmering jewel” — hasn’t been seen since the 1982-1983 El Niño Southern Oscillation, which devastated the ecology around the Galápagos. Fueled by climate change, the weather event brought months of warm water to the normally cooler areas where the fish lived and decreased supplies of the plankton they depended on for food.

By the time weather conditions returned to normal, the damselfish was nowhere to be found.

Engraving of the Galápagos damselfish, originally published by Heller & Snodgrass (1903).

Divers have spent the past 40 years looking for the fish, to no avail. A 2025 paper published in the Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation concluded that the species should now be considered “likely extinct,” although it encourages ongoing environmental DNA sampling just in case the animal persists.

In a press release about this research, the Conservancy wrote that simply mourning this species is not enough. “Every species lost is a page torn from the book of life. But there’s still time to write a different ending. Let this story move us. Let it motivate us. Because we can still make a difference — if we choose to act.”

Sadly the Galápagos damselfish is not an isolated story. This past year scientists announced many other species we appear to have lost. Their stories are often haunting, but they can motivate us to learn from our mistakes, take advantage of conservation opportunities, and act to prevent further erosions of the natural world.

Here are the stories of the past year, drawn from scientific papers, media reports, and the IUCN Red List.

Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura)

This tiny but loud species — “its distinctive shrill squeaks could be heard all around as one stood quietly in the rainforest,” according to a 2004 species recovery plan — was last seen in 1985, although its final days really began in the first decade of the 20th century, when humans carried rats (and the rats carried diseases) to Christmas Island. That was just the first blow, though. After that came nonnative yellow crazy ants, cats, and other predators. Then came roads, habitat loss, and — finally — the arrival of yet one more nonnative predator, common wolf snakes, in the 1980s. The last two known shrews were found mid-decade; they died soon after, and the species has long been feared extinct. Last year the IUCN calculated the slim possibility of their continued survival and made it official.

The 52-square-mile Christmas Island — a territory of Australia — may not be very big, but it looms large in the extinction crisis. Isolated from other land masses by hundreds of miles of ocean, dozens of unique species had the opportunity to evolve there. That worked just fine until humans arrived and knocked the delicate system out of whack. This shrew is at least the fourth extinction of the island’s unique species. Let’s hope it’s the last.

 

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Mimo jiaoyue

A paper published in February 2025 described this freshwater mussel for the first time … and declared its possible extinction. The authors based its name on “an ancient Chinese term for the moon, used to describe the shell’s shape as being as round as the bright moon in the night sky.” The species was native to Lake Fuxian in China, but the paper points out that the lake is highly polluted, with low levels of dissolved oxygen, and the shoreline has been destroyed by development. The paper reports that no living specimens have been found and pollution levels suggest it’s “highly unlikely that any surviving populations remain.” (A 2021 paper identified a host of threats to this lake, including “rural domestic pollution, farmland runoff pollution, urban domestic pollution, phosphorous chemical pollution, and tourism pollution.”)

And this species may not have been the only one to disappear from the lake: Freshwater mussels rely on specific fish species to host their larvae, and the authors suggest that M. jiaoyue’s unidentified host species may have also gone extinct.

Dryadobates erythropus

Sometimes we find evidence of extinction not in the wild but in museums or other scientific collections. That’s the case with this 14-millimeter (.55 inches) frog, described by researchers as a new species based on a “badly desiccated and extremely fragile” specimen that had been collected by pioneering herpetologist Doris Cochran in Brazil in 1963 (and stored at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, ever since).

Photo: Taran Grant

The authors noted that the site where the original specimen was collected “has been transformed into a highly developed residential and commercial area lacking suitable habitat,” so it seems unlikely the frog persists in the wild.

Like other so-called “rocket frogs,” this species had a thin, streamlined body, a pointed face, and probably the ability to leap many times its body length. Too bad they couldn’t jump out of the way of humanity.

Ngutu kākā (Clianthus puniceus)

This shrub with delightful red flower clusters hails from New Zealand’s North Island, where it hasn’t been seen in the wild since 2015, although it still exists in a handful of herbariums. The reasons for its disappearance remain unclear, but it seems likely to have fallen prey to nonnative herbivores such as feral goats, red deer, and snails. Extensive surveys have failed to turn up any free-growing populations, so the IUCN this year assessed the plant as “extinct in the wild.”

A related species, C. maximus, persists in the wild — barely — with about 150 known plants (a number New Zealand’s Department of Conservation is actively working to increase). Both species are collectively known as “Kākābeak” because their flowers are shaped like the beak of the kākā parrot (Nestor meridionalis).

 

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Slender-billed curlew (Numenius tenuirostris)

This once-wide-ranging bird led our annual extinction list in 2024 after a scientific paper declared it lost due to overhunting and habitat loss. This year the IUCN used the paper as the basis for wider scientific consensus and similarly listed the species as extinct.

1905 illustration of slender-billed curlews, courtesy Biodiversity Heritage Library

Eugenia acutissima

This Cuban plant hasn’t been seen since 1952 and probably fell victim to agricultural development; it was only observed by scientists once. In 2025 the IUCN declared it extinct.

Delissea sinuata

Native to the Waianae Mountains of Oʻahu, this plant hasn’t been seen since 1937. Nonnative species have heavily degraded its former habitat — another example of why Hawai‘i is often referred to as the “extinction capital of the world.” It would be easy to spot if it still existed, because it grew up to four feet high and bore striking purple berries.

Diospyros angulata

Proof that science takes its time: This plant from the island of Mauritius (home of the infamously extinct dodo) was last seen in 1851. The IUCN finally published an assessment identifying the species as extinct in 2025. The likely causes of its extinction include logging, grazing, soil erosion, and competition from nonnative plants and animals.

Syzygium ampliflorum

This tree grew on an active volcano — Mount Galunggung in Java, Indonesia — which last erupted over a nine-month period beginning Oct. 8, 1982. The eruption killed 2,000 people, wiped out 88 villages, and presumably caused this plant’s extinction — that is, if it hadn’t already been killed off during earlier eruptions in 1894 and 1918. An expedition in January 2025 failed to turn up signs of this plant’s existence, and a paper published in September suggested it should now be considered possibly extinct. If so, that would make it one of the few extinctions on this list not directly linked to human activity.

Brunoniella neocaledonica

This small, flowering herb from New Caledonia was only documented twice, in 1967 and 1968. Its only habitat has suffered from frequent fires and grazing from nonnative Rusa deer. The IUCN assessed it as extinct in 2022 but only published that in 2025.

Another rarely documented New Caledonian herb — Pytinicarpa tonitrui — faced the same threats and has also been declared extinct.

Kākāpō parasites

New Zealand’s critically endangered kākāpō parrots (one of our species to watch in 2026) nearly went extinct a few decades ago. Conservationists saved the species by moving the last of these flightless birds to safe, predator-free islands. They’ve been doing fairly well ever since and may experience a baby boom in the year ahead, but they’ve lost something else along the way: their parasites. A study published this past July found more than 80% of the parasite species previously associated with kākāpō prior to the 1990s have disappeared. Of the 16 parasites the researchers identified, only three remain on the birds.

Sirocco, the famous kakapo, pokes out of the brush in 2012. Photo: New Zealand Department of Conservation

The paper suggests that four of these parasites were associated exclusively with kākāpō and, with no other species to host them, have gone extinct.

This might seem like a “no big whoop” deal, but parasites rarely deserve their bad reputation. They often play important ecological roles — research suggests they can help keep our immune systems healthy and may even protect us from any new, potentially more destructive parasites that arrive.

Their disappearance, meanwhile, is a sign that natural systems are deeply disturbed — and if a habitat can’t support a parasite, what does that mean for the fate of the host species?

A press release about this research gives us further food for thought. It reminds us that parasites live on a small proportion of the population of their host species, so when the bigger species become endangered, the parasites are likely to go extinct faster than the hosts (a process called secondary extinction or coextinction). This means parasite declines could be considered an early warning system and tip us off to problems in the hosts.

At the same time, the paper warns that we may have underestimated the rate of parasite extinction worldwide and failed to account for them in our documentation of disappearing species. Case in point: What if every extinction announced this year also involved the extinction of one or two parasite species?

So let’s spare a moment to think about these lost species — and maybe give those that remain a little extra attention and appreciation.

Madeiran large white (Pieris wollastoni)

This striking, 2-inch butterfly once flew in Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal, but hasn’t been seen since 1986. The IUCN SSC Butterfly Specialist Group assessed it as extinct in 2023, but that wasn’t published to the IUCN Red List until last year. The cause of its extinction remains unclear, but possible factors include pesticides, a virus, or the decline of the plants the butterflies’ larvae depended on.

Conus lugubris

This poor little cone snail was once abundant on the Cape Verde Islands, which have since become a tourist mecca. Rapid coastal development since the late 1980s has destroyed the snails’ habitat and the species is now presumed extinct.

Leptaxis vetusta

This Portuguese land snail was scientifically described in 1857 based on a fossil shell and has never been observed alive. The IUCN this past year assessed it as extinct.

Mastigodiaptomus galapagoensis

This small copepod (a type of crustacean) lived until recently in El Junco, a high-elevation freshwater crater lake on San Cristóbal island in the Galápagos that has no naturally occurring fish. An illegal attempt to establish a tilapia fishery there in 2005 or 2006 devastated the lake’s ecology. By the time efforts to eradicate the nonnative fish began in 2008, the lake held an estimated 40,000 tilapia. Native invertebrates didn’t stand a chance. A paper published in 2021 suggested this had caused an extinction; the IUCN this year gave broader consensus to that sad reality.

Snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus) in Sweden

Sometimes species disappear on the regional level, which is known as extirpation rather than extinction. This year the conservation organization BirdLife declared snowy owls regionally extinct in Sweden, a decade after the last sign of the birds breeding in that country.

BirdLife says this should serve as a warning for all northern countries in which snowy owls still roam, where climate change is rapidly altering ecosystems and making them less hospitable to these iconic birds (and so many other species in the process).

Thaumastus teixeirensis

Another land snail, this time from Brazil. Scientists have previously identified dozens of other species in this genus, but this one slipped by until a paper published this past year. Evidence of the species emerged from sambaquis — shell mounds left as monuments by prehistoric people. Researchers found the shells for this new species in these mounds and wrote that “efforts to find similar living specimens, or even empty shells, in that region were fruitless, strongly suggesting that the species is currently extinct.”

Acropora corals

Not an extinction, and not an extirpation, but about as close as you can get: A paper published this past October warned that an “acute heating event” along the Florida Keys in 2023 killed between 97.8% and 100% of elkhorn (Acropora palmata) and staghorn (A. cervicornis) coral colonies. So many corals died that further reproduction remains unlikely, leaving the species in this area “functionally extinct.” This is climate change in a nutshell, folks.

Elkhorn coral spawning. Photo: Brett Seymore/National Park Service

Several Italian plant species

A massive study of the vascular plants of Italy (i.e., most plants other than mosses and the like) reassessed 628 species, resulting in conservation status updates for 44% of them. The 100-plus authors fanned out across the country and found that the fate of 57 species has improved. But they also found that 176 species fared worse than their previous assessments, and the researchers confirmed several regional and national extinctions, mostly in aquatic habitats.

Among the losses:

• • Atriplex mollis in Sardegna
  • Coleanthus subtilis in Trentino-Alto Adige
  • Taraxacum pauckertianum in Toscana
  • Aldrovanda vesiculosa all over Italy
  • Mentha cervina in Abruzzo
  • Nuphar lutea and Nymphaea alba in Sicilia
  • Utricularia minor and vulgaris in Toscana
  • Potamogeton gramineus and Sonchus palustris in Veneto
  • Crucianella maritima in Calabria
  • Juniperus sabina in the Marche

Other countries would do well to follow the lead of these Italian botanists. As they write in the paper, “This research also underscores the importance of botanical collections and historical records to reconstruct the history, dynamics, and current distribution of plant species, and addresses challenges such as limited access to the collections. This study is not only a milestone in Italian floristics but also provides a replicable methodology for updating national floras globally.”

Six bandicoots

These long-unseen (and in some cases newly identified) Australian marsupials got their first — and last —entries on the IUCN Red List this past year when all were listed as extinct species:

• • Northern pig-footed bandicoot or Yirratji (Chaeropus yirratji) and southern pig-footed bandicoot (C. ecaudatus) — Previously considered one species, they were reassessed as two species in 2019 using a combination of fossil records, Aboriginal oral accounts, bones, and taxidermied specimens. Unseen since the 1950s and 1930s, respectively, the two bandicoots probably disappeared due to introduced predators (like cats and foxes), changes in fire regimes instituted by European settlers, and habitat degradation by livestock. The rest of the bandicoots on this list faced similar stories.
  • Nullarbor barred or butterfly bandicoot (Perameles papillon) — Last seen alive in 1928 and identified as their own species in 2018 based on museum specimens. The only known photos of this species were rediscovered in 2025.
  • South-eastern striped or southern barred bandicoot (Perameles notina) — Last seen in the mid-19th century.
  • Liverpool Plains striped bandicoot (Perameles fasciata) and southwestern barred bandicoot or Marl (P. myosuros) — Previously considered subspecies, these bandicoots were elevated to full species status in research published in 2018. They were last seen in 1846 and 1907, respectively, and cats once again get the blame for most of their declines.

Three Caribbean lizards

A recent study took a deep dive into the DNA of forest lizards from the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and Hispaniola and shook things up quite a bit, ultimately defining 35 new species — including one that lives near Goldeneye, Jamaica, where author Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond novels (they of course named the species Celestus jamesbondi). In the process they declared the Altagracia giant forest lizard (Caribicus anelpistus) and yellow giant forest lizard (Celestus occiduus) “critically endangered (possibly extinct)” (assessments already made by the IUCN Red List under different common names) and added a newly identified species, the black giant forest lizard (Celestus macrolepis), to the list of lost species.

Armeria maritima

An odd case to wrap up this list: Botanists considered this species “extinct in the wild,” with the last living samples growing at Utrecht University Botanic Gardens in the Netherlands. But recent DNA tests of the living plant and 19th-century specimens showed that the gardens actually held a hybrid of two different Armeria species. That allowed them to declare that Armeria arcuate is truly extinct — but at the same time it illustrated the value of botanical gardens and herbarium collections, which can still provide critical scientific evidence even if the samples are decades or centuries old. Many herbarium collections themselves face extinction in an age of scientific budget cuts, so that’s an important message we’d do well to take to heart.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

The Curlew, the Cactus, and the Obliterated Whitefish: The Species We Lost in 2024

The post Rocket Frog, Damselfish, and Bandicoots: The Species Declared Extinct in 2025 appeared first on The Revelator.