The Revelator

On Sept. 16, 2025, an estimated 100,000 people flooded the streets of Cuenca, Ecuador’s third-most populous city, in one of the largest environmental mobilizations in the country’s recent history. Protesters marched under a simple slogan: “We are water.”

The demonstration was aimed at stopping mining projects in Quimsacocha, a fragile, high-altitude ecosystem that supplies water to hundreds of thousands of people across southern Ecuador. But beneath the immediate conflict over mining lies a deeper struggle over how people understand their relationship with the natural world.

For decades Ecuador has been at the center of a global experiment. In 2008 it became the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its Constitution, transforming ideas rooted in Indigenous cosmologies into enforceable legal principles. Yet translating those ideas into political reality has proven far more difficult than writing them into law.

To understand how environmental movements bridge radically different worldviews — from Indigenous understandings of territory to the language of constitutional law, science, and public policy — I spoke with David Fajardo Torres, an environmental activist, lawyer, and member of Yasunidos, a movement defending Ecuador’s ecosystems from extractive industries.

Our conversation explored how narratives shape environmental conflicts, why metaphors such as “We are water” can mobilize entire communities, and what Ecuador’s experience reveals about the challenges of communicating across competing visions of nature, development, and progress.

This interview was conducted during a research visit in Ecuador in November 2025, carried out as part of the research field work for a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy and social communication.

Environmental movements often struggle to turn complex ecological issues into stories that people can relate to. Yet in Cuenca the slogan “We are water” helped mobilize more than 100,000 people. What makes that metaphor so powerful?

In Cuenca one of our most powerful narratives connects the city — not merely as an urban center, but as a territory shaped by a long and ancient history — to water. We are water people. That idea has become the central metaphor that unites communities and guides our resistance to mining projects.

These projects threaten the páramos, the high-altitude Andean ecosystems that serve as natural water reservoirs. The páramos regulate water flows, sustain extraordinary biodiversity, and supply freshwater not only to Cuenca, but also to the Amazon basin and Ecuador’s Pacific coast.

El Cajas National Park is a high-altitude wetland area with many lakes, streams, and páramo ecosystems that store and filter water. Photo by Alice Deliau.

For us the phrase “We are water” is both symbolic and literal. Human beings are made largely of water, but the expression goes beyond biology. It reflects how we understand ourselves: as part of rivers, lakes, forests, and páramos rather than separate from them. It allows us to connect three dimensions of Cuenca at once — Cuenca as a city, Cuenca as a territory, and Cuenca as an ecosystem.

This narrative has proven remarkably effective. During the mass mobilization in September, many people referred to the protest as Cuenca’s Fifth River, a reference to the city’s historic nickname, Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos — the City of Four Rivers. The metaphor captured something deeper than political opposition to mining. It expressed a biocultural identity in which water is not merely a resource but a defining part of who we are. Without its rivers, Cuenca would not exist.

On Sept. 16, 2025, an estimated 100,000 people flooded the streets of Cuenca with the message “Kimsa cocha no se toca” (“Quimsacocha Is Not to Be Touched”), uniting communities to protect one of Ecuador’s most important water sources from pollution from mining activities. Photo by Alice Deliau.

Cuenca’s identity is rooted in conflict between nature and industry?

Cuenca was founded three times: first by the Cañari people, then by the Incas, and later by the Spanish colonizers. Despite these very different civilizations, all three settlements shared one essential foundation: water.

The valley is crossed by four rivers and countless smaller waterways known as quebradas, which remain just as important to the region’s ecological health. Water has shaped every chapter of Cuenca’s history and every layer of its identity.

This is not a new conflict. As early as the colonial period, local authorities faced a choice between gold and water. Extracting mineral wealth often threatened the water sources on which communities depended. Time and again, Cuenca chose water.

That choice continues today. For more than three decades, local communities have defended water sources in areas such as Quimsacocha and Río Blanco against mining projects, gradually building support far beyond rural communities and into the city itself.

In 2021 nearly 80% of voters in a local referendum supported a ban on mining in the páramos that supply water to the region. Four years later, tens of thousands of people returned to the streets to reaffirm that decision. For us this is not simply an environmental debate. Water remains the foundation of our identity, and defending it means defending the future of Cuenca itself.

Cuenca, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. During the mass mobilization in September 2025, many people referred to the protest as Cuenca’s Fifth River, a reference to the city’s historic, colonial nickname, Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos — the City of Four Rivers. Photo by Alice Deliau.

One of the recurring tensions in environmental politics is whether nature should be protected because it serves human needs (anthropocentric view), or because it possesses intrinsic value and rights of its own (biocentric). Is this a real conflict, or are we dealing with different ways of understanding the same relationship between humans and nature?

That’s a very good question. In Ecuador we are increasingly realizing that it is impossible to fulfill human rights without also respecting the rights of nature. Most human rights ultimately depend on healthy ecosystems.

If we destroy the ecosystems on which we depend, we undermine the very conditions that make a dignified life possible. For us, that is the central horizon: living with dignity.

This idea is deeply connected to the philosophy of Sumak Kawsay. It is often translated as “good living,” but that translation is incomplete. A better interpretation would be vivir en plenitud — living in fullness or living in harmony. At its core, Sumak Kawsay is about flourishing alongside nature, not apart from it.

From this perspective, there is no fundamental separation between humanity and nature. We are one species within a much larger web of life. Ecology, after all, is the sum of the relationships that sustain life on this planet. Every species, every ecosystem, plays a role within that network.

The problem is that modern capitalist societies have encouraged us to see not only a distinction between humans and nature, but a hierarchy. Humans are placed at the top, while nature is reduced to an object that exists to serve our needs.

You mentioned anthropocentrism and biocentrism. In Ecuador, however, we increasingly speak about ecocentrism. Ecocentrism shifts the focus away from individual actors — whether humans or nature — and toward the relationships that connect them. It is not about separating humanity from nature, but about understanding the complex web of relationships that makes life possible.

Scientific concepts such as ecology increasingly emphasize relationships, ideas that seem to resonate with many Indigenous worldviews. Can scientific language serve as a bridge between Indigenous knowledge and the modern industrial world?

It can, and I think it is one of the keys — but not the only one. In many cases Western science is only now beginning to understand ideas that Indigenous peoples have lived with for centuries: the importance of relationships, diversity, and interdependence. The difference is that modern science often seeks universal explanations, a single framework capable of describing the world as a whole.

Indigenous worldviews tend to operate differently. They do not necessarily aspire to explain everything through one universal lens. Even among Indigenous peoples, there is enormous diversity. The Shuar and the Amazonian Kichwa, for example, have distinct ways of understanding the world.

For the Shuar, the forest is not an external environment but a community to which they belong. The Amazon is so rich and biodiverse that it provides everything necessary for life. Because they see themselves as part of that living system, the goal is not endless accumulation or growth but maintaining the relationships that sustain life.

Mining companies often argue that modern science allows them to extract resources responsibly. They present environmental studies and technical expertise as evidence that mining can coexist with ecological protection. How persuasive is that narrative?

One of the biggest mistakes is to focus only on what can be measured. Statistics and technical reports are important, but they never tell the whole story.

In Ecuador we work with a concept known as the dialogue of knowledges — a conversation between different ways of understanding the world. This idea is reflected in our Constitution, particularly in the articles recognizing the Rights of Nature.

Take the concept of Pachamama. It is often translated as “Mother Earth,” but that translation is incomplete. Pacha refers not only to the Earth, but to the space-time in which life unfolds — the Earth, the stars, the sun, the moon, and the cycles that connect them. Mama means mother. In that sense, Pachamama is closer to a living cosmos than to a simple environmental concept.

Nature, by contrast, is a concept that emphasizes relationships. Those relationships are not confined to the planet itself. Life on Earth depends on the sun, the moon, and countless natural cycles that can be observed scientifically — from the tides to seasonal rhythms. In Ecuador’s Constitution, Pachamama and nature are treated as equivalent concepts, allowing us to defend the Rights of Nature through both scientific and Indigenous knowledge.

As a lawyer specializing in the Rights of Nature, I build cases using multiple forms of knowledge. We rely on science, Indigenous knowledge, and the knowledge of rural and peasant communities, all of which are essential for understanding and defending ecosystems.

The problem is that many mining companies rely on a very narrow understanding of science. Their science is designed primarily to facilitate extraction and economic growth. It leaves little room for dialogue between different ways of knowing.

I am not criticizing science itself. There is a science that seeks to understand nature, question its own assumptions, and engage with other forms of knowledge. That kind of science is indispensable. But there is also a science that serves capital, markets, and extractive industries. The challenge is to distinguish between the two.

For us, the Rights of Nature are possible only through a genuine dialogue between scientific and Indigenous knowledge. Otherwise we risk reducing Pachamama to a slogan or falling into simplistic narratives about nature that fail to address the complexity of the living world.

Rivers Puyo and Pastaza, November 2025. Puyo and Pastaza rivers support Amazonian aquatic ecosystems: provide habitats for fish, amphibians, insects, and riverside plants. They also help maintain rainforest biodiversity, but are sensitive to pollution, deforestation, and urban growth. Photo by Alice Deliau.

What do you mean by the narrow narrative of Pachamamismo?

For us, Pachamamismo can become a shallow narrative when it reduces complex realities to slogans. Much of the contemporary discourse around Pachamama risks becoming symbolic rather than transformative.

To challenge the narratives of mining companies and extractive industries, we need something deeper: a genuine dialogue between different forms of knowledge. And when I speak of science, I do not mean only biology or physics. I also mean anthropology, sociology, law, and other disciplines. Indigenous peoples, too, possess their own systems of knowledge, law, and social organization. What matters is the conversation between them.

This is important because knowledge itself is never fixed. What a society considers rational, scientific, or legitimate changes over time. The challenge is not to replace one worldview with another, but to create a dialogue between them.

At the heart of the conflict over mining and extractivism lies a struggle between two competing visions of development. One assumes that development follows a universal path, with nature treated primarily as a resource and humans placed above it. The other begins from a different premise: that humans are part of nature and that development should strengthen, rather than undermine, the ecological relationships on which life depends.

For us the key question is not whether development should occur, but what role human societies should play within the ecosystems they inhabit. The answer will be different in every territory. The ecological realities of Cuenca are not the same as those of Poland, just as their histories and relationships with nature are different.

In Cuenca our responsibility is to protect water sources, páramos, rivers, and lakes. That requires adapting our institutions and planning systems to ecological realities rather than forcing ecosystems to adapt to economic demands.

Today, we have powerful tools that help us think this way. The Ecosystem Approach developed by the IUCN and the concept of planetary boundaries developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre both remind us that human societies operate within ecological limits. Those limits are not obstacles to development; they are the conditions that make life possible.

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How does a young wolf learn how to be a wolf?

Genetics certainly plays a role, but so do the knowledge and techniques passed on by the previous generation of wolves, who teach their young how to hunt, what areas to avoid, and how and when to howl (and what each variation in those howls means).

And much like human dialects and accents, wolf howls vary depending on where a wolf grows up. Research published a few years ago found that wolves around the world have at least 21 different types of regional howls.

In other words, wolves — and many other species — have unique regional cultures, just like people.

Should preserving those nonhuman cultures be a more important element of wildlife conservation?

A new short communication in the journal Oryx argues just that — and suggests how to make it happen.

Written by David Jennings, Heather Harl, and Andrew Carter of Defenders of Wildlife’s Center for Conservation Innovation, the paper does a deep dive into how behavior is reflected in decision-making for the Endangered Species Act and other conservation laws in the United States.

Behavior, they write, is one factor in a list of five that can be used to designate a distinct population segment of a vertebrate species as a discrete and significant group worthy of conservation (rather than or in addition to protecting a species as a whole). It can’t be the only factor, but in theory it could be a major one. (Other factors include physical, genetic, or ecological differences and international boundaries.)

Distinct population segments don’t receive Endangered Species Act protection very often — Atlantic salmon in the Gulf of Maine are a noteworthy example — and the authors didn’t find many examples where behavior played a deciding role to date. “[N]on-human animal culture was considered in distinct population segment listing determinations only twice,” they write, “both of which were for discreteness findings; once for the orca Orcinus orca in 2005, and once for the false killer whale Pseudorca crassidens in 2012.”

They found more evidence of nonhuman culture being used in the recovery plans required to be written for each species protected under the Endangered Species Act — but again, those were all restricted to whales.

The authors argue that it may be time to change that and start using nonhuman culture more often as a component of the best-available science required by the Endangered Species Act, because preserving culture may make animals more likely to survive. “Recognizing and conserving these cultures is important because socially transmitted behaviors can contribute to fitness, as well as indicate the extent to which groups may be able to adapt to changing environmental conditions,” they write.

On the other hand, they say using culture to establish a distinct population segment should “be used sparingly and not solely to divide a species and delist a specific population.”

Either way, it wouldn’t be easy. And as a strategy, it’s not immediately ready for widespread adoption because there aren’t many guidelines for using animal culture in this way — and because culture evolves rapidly. “Implementing the ESA for a distinct population segment based on distinctive cultures would potentially be challenging, given, for example, that cultures can be dynamic, and that conserving them may not always be as straightforward as simply protecting habitat,” they write.

Still, they provide several recommendations on how to start rolling it out, including integrating nonhuman culture into broader concepts of biodiversity protection in the Endangered Species Act and other laws and policies.

That seems unlikely to happen quickly given the Trump administration’s ambivalence, apathy, and antipathy toward wildlife conservation and the Endangered Species Act. But the paper serves as an important reminder that culture is worth preserving — whether it’s in our cities, our neighborhoods, or in the wild.

Here’s some additional recent research about nonhuman culture:

Patricia Izar, Erica van de Waal, Martha M. Robbins; Integrating culture into primate conservation. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 1 May 2025; 380 (1925): 20240135. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0135

Greggor, Alison L., ‘Animal Culture in Biodiversity Conservation’, in Jamshid J. Tehrani, Rachel L. Kendal, and Jeremy Kendal (eds), Applications, in Jamshid J. Tehrani, Jeremy Kendal, and Rachel L. Kendal (eds), Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution, Oxford Library of Psychology (2025; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Feb. 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869252.013.74

Whiten, Andrew, et al. “Collective Knowledge and the Dynamics of Culture in Chimpanzees.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, vol. 377, no. 1843, 2022, pp. 1–9. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27096992

Nöbel, S., Jacquet, A., Isabel, G., Pocheville, A., Seabright, P. and Danchin, E. (2023), Conformity in mate choice, the overlooked social component of animal and human culture. Biol Rev, 98: 132-149. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12899

Fredriksen, A. (2025). Re-sounding spring: listening to planetary crisis and survival in recombinant birdsong. Cultural Geographies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474025138686

Pilar Roncero, Olivia de Mendonça-Furtado, Patrícia Izar, Human-induced rapid environmental change: A case study showing negative impact on animal culture, Journal for Nature Conservation, Volume 74, 2023, 126424, ISSN 1617-1381, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2023.126424

Fitzpatrick, S., Andrews, K. Animal cultures matter for conservation, but also to animals. Learn Behav 54, 163–179 (2026). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-025-00700-4 

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

Species Spotlight: The Straw-Headed Bulbul Sings About Extinction

 

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Originally published at the “Earth Chxrch” page of Neil Young’s Times-Contrarian. Talen is the religion editor at the Contrarian.  

The distance between our realization and actualization has changed — and it is a tragic dangerous thing that you and I share. Realizing can come in many forms. With the environmental movement the realization was the reading of Silent Spring. (For others among us, it was Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.) That book by Rachel Carson made the danger from toxic chemicals in the air, water and soil — and our bodies — very real. We saw the danger. We could imagine and fear it. We were motivated to act.

We need to study the distance between realization and actualization, between oppression and revolution, between information and fight-or-flight. That distance, the billionaires and captains of the investor class have discovered, is the key to their control.

The old belief in journalism, and in the courts, and in the common sense of democracy is “If we have the facts, we can act.” In the United States the distance between realization and actualization has become an impassable distance. Our sensory experience of a thing has been blown up and filled with light, with attention-manipulating vibrating light, a bubble of signals the size of Grand Central Station, and we float around inside its delicious weightlessness — and we can’t kill the screen and get out of our chair.

If we become aware of the global heatwave that flared into fires and droughts in the summer of 2023 and is still overheating us, then we have before us endless pages of pixels, featuring the agony and suffering of the innocent of the world. We struggle to walk thousands of miles with climate refugees. We cry with parents of a child overcome by heat. We listen to wise biologists, as systems of natural life die and extinction looms.

So far all this reality on the screen amounts to one big human hesitation. We keep wondering why there is no uprising against the current increasingly silent spring. We are lost in the over-developed realization of danger. Ironically, the realization is increasingly unreal. We are growing a vivid and very convincing realization of a mass mortality event, but we can’t kill the screen and rise from our chair.

The strongmen and the billionaires are aware that AI will gives us as never before the sensation of democracy while pushing any action off the horizon. All-information, all-the-time will leave us overloaded and listless. Big money learned long ago to handle the irony of that in the age of AI. The ordinary computer users would know much more about the truth of their toxins and bullets, union-busting, and tax-evading. But the masters of the universe are secure in the knowledge that we will stay put in our dopamine drop.

Meanwhile the revolution against the Earth killers cannot be put off another day. The disappearance of life of all kinds is only accelerating. The climate change may be irreversible now, but if we don’t try, if we continue to put our hopes in the COP parlays with big oil, if we go on believing that our radical standing up cannot happen — then consumerism, the products and the screens and nonsense wars must prevail. Realize a dead planet with the occasional billionaire bunker…

Now is a moment in our history we cannot get wrong. And there is a battle that can set things right. The data centers multiplying now like an international rash are plundering energy and water, buying off local politicians, and daring us to cross from our realization to our action. The all-partisan uprising against the ugly super-warehouses is heartening. But the State of Virginia already hosts over 600 data centers. This battle may go on for years against the might of Silicon Valley, but in the struggle we will dramatize a clear message… and escape from that cathedral size bubble of pixels.

Will we escape that AI mind-prison? Will we take what we realize over into what we actually do? It’s like remembering how to love.

Remembering How to Love

There would be a moment in the realization-actualization cycle where we could be independent, kill the screen and stand up and walk into media-free reality…. and let’s call that moment The Decision. As the realization becomes the actualization there is a border, a moment when all the information is gathered and we stop, we make the decision to act. We commit.

We shut down the information which favors inactivity, sluggish consideration, endless assessment (although with AI maybe it’s more like a happy druggy sort of drifting… ). When we are finally free of all that, we say “Got It! Let’s Do It! Let’s Go!”

We are simplifying, aren’t we. We are consciously sharpening that learn-decide-act sequence. Why is this important. It’s that this preventable mass mortality event that is taking place — we’re sitting in a chair watching a screen. We could be organizing a drama at the door of Gaza-financing and AI-financing JPMorgan Chase, or we could be singing at a data center-resisting rally, or we could be screaming through the cyclone fence at an ICE concentration camp.

But the screen addiction takes our body far away from the global emergency. In our consumer society nowadays, with the screen the main product, consumerism is in a battle with the crisis of the physical environment. This is a battle for the attention of the consumer.

If the product wins, we lose our lives.

That is the message we tell ourselves at the moment of The Decision, at the start of action. So far for most of us, The Decision and the start of action continue to be a watching-only experience. Even if The Decision is consciously a turning away from this strong medium; even if we know we won’t be able to do our work for the Earth unless we turn away from the screen — chances are we are still watching. Oh yes, lots of the most powerful condemnation of the computer is done at the very computer that is being condemned.

The Revolution Will Not Be Computerized. In the end, we need to sober up. And for most of us, The Decision can’t be vague and shaky. We must make the decision to act with computers or iPhones not in the room.

Let’s practice. Demonstrate to ourselves that we can do it. Practice ending the incoming information. Practice stopping and making the decision. Practice obeying the decision, moving into the action.

Go to the wild Earth every day, walk in the woods, float in the lake. The infinite mystery of the Earth saves us if we let it. That’s the way that the Earth will save herself, taking the humans off-line. Letting us remember how to love.

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Nestled in the misty, snow-capped Himalayas in northeast India, the city of Darjeeling — the famed “Queen of the Hills” — has long been synonymous with its legendary tea gardens.

But tea isn’t the only thing you’ll find on these rolling mountains. A “living fossil” also inhabits this landscape: the endemic Himalayan salamander (Tylototriton himalayanus), whose ancestors roamed the Earth with dinosaurs about 160 million years ago.

At first glance these ancient amphibian survivors, all of 6-7 inches (16–18 cm) in length, look like lizards with elongated bodies and long tails. Their broad, blunt-snouted heads, raised ridges across their bodies, and heavily textured brownish-black skin give them the armored appearance of miniature crocodiles.

Locally called the pani kukur — meaning “water dog” in Nepali — the salamander neither barks nor bites.

“In fact, the creature is so harmless that when you pick it up, it gently slips into your palm without a fuss,” says 80-year-old Nar Bahadur Rai from Basti Gaon in Darjeeling’s historic Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate. What fascinates the smiling village elder most of all, though, is that a species with a “Jurassic legacy” exists near his village.

Dwindling Numbers

The octogenarian recalls that as a child, he would find salamanders in abundance across the hilly wetlands or slowly waddling on moist soil, particularly during monsoons.

The nearly 160-year-old Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate in Darjeeling is home to one of the largest breeding habitats of the Himalayan Salamander. Photo: Prasant Kumar Allay, used with permission.

But today they’re far less common. According to the IUCN, which has assessed the species as vulnerable to extinction, many of the salamanders’ wetland habitats have been drained for agriculture or irrigation, or encroached upon by roads and other infrastructure. The introduction of exotic fish into some of these wetlands and unregulated tourism add to the pressure.

An estimated 5,000 individuals may survive in the wild, based on the latest survey conducted across Darjeeling hills in 2025. The species is also distributed in parts of Bhutan and Nepal in the eastern Himalayas, but hasn’t received as much study in those areas yet.

Protecting this species will require protecting more of its habitat — efforts that experts say may depend on recognizing the salamanders as the flagship species of these biodiverse wetland ecosystems.

A Valuable Burrower

Also called the crocodile newt or Himalayan newt, these amphibians inhabit cool, shaded wetlands and forest ponds along the Himalayan slopes, where they breed from late April through the monsoon. Their straight, muscular tails help them swim, while the knob-like granular glands lining their backs deter predators by releasing a milky toxin. In the nonbreeding season, they hibernate on land, burrowing into the damp forest floor beneath leaf litter, rocks, and tea bushes until the first monsoon showers return.

The “lizard-looking” amphibian hibernates beneath leaf litter, rocks, and tea bushes after breeding, before returning to wetlands to mate with the first rains. Photo: Barkha Subba, used with permission.

“These tiny creatures are exceptional bio indicators; their very presence in a wetland is enough to indicate that the ecosystem around is alive,” explains Devesh Pandey, divisional forest officer, Kurseong (an important salamander area). On land, their burrowing through damp earth, leaf litter, and mud makes the soil porous, allowing rainwater to seep through and recharge groundwater, improving water availability in these hilly areas, he says.

Community Stewardship

Although the species remains little studied, Barkha Subba, scientist at Federation of Societies for Environmental Protection, has been spearheading their protection and habitat restoration for the past few years. Her work brings together government agencies, including the forest divisions in Darjeeling and the West Bengal tourism department, nonprofits such as the World Wildlife Fund-India, tea estates, and local communities.

The efforts earned international attention earlier this year as one of the 2026 winners of the prestigious Whitley Award. Often referred to as the “Green Oscars,” the awards honor grassroots conservation programs across the global south and come with £50,000 ($67,000) in project funding.

Standing knee-deep in a wetland, Whitley Award winner Barkha Subba is delighted to gently hold a Himalayan Salamander between her palms. Photo: Deoashis Thapa, used with permission.

The award will enhance Subba’s multipronged approach toward community awareness and stewardship, which will include salamander protection committees across villages to identify and document new salamander sightings while improving degraded habitats.

And since Darjeeling is a global tourist destination that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from India and abroad, she’s also training local youths to educate tourists on keeping salamander habitats free of plastic and garbage.

Habitat Restoration

Unlike many declining species, Himalayan salamanders are neither hunted for food nor sought for traditional medicine. According to Subba, the biggest challenge in conserving the species lies not in protecting the amphibian itself, but its habitat. The animals requires pristine, unpolluted waters to thrive, as they tend to return year after year to breed in the same wetlands where they were born.

“But with most of its traditional habitats getting disturbed, fragmented, or disappearing, its viable population is also gradually vanishing,” she says.

Of the 37 to 40 documented salamander breeding sites studied across Darjeeling hills, Subba notes that nearly 80% lie outside protected areas, within tea estates, village commons, and private lands.

“Conserving the species thus cannot solely rely on protected areas,” she says. “Rather its future depends on trust, cooperation, and long-term commitment of the communities who live around these habitats.”

Salamander’s Hope

One of Darjeeling’s largest salamander ponds lies within the historic Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate, established in 1864. Flanked by gently sloping terraced tea gardens and pine trees, this 39,000 square foot (3,654 square meters) swampy wetland holds water throughout the year, fed by local streams and rain.

“The pond, which was once a large lake and is almost as old as the tea garden itself, has been retained in its natural state, with its natural vegetation intact, and is thus a traditional habitat of Himalayan salamanders,” says Prasant Kumar Allay, manager of the tea estate.

The water of the pond is revered by local communities. However, some people have released exotic fish such as carp and guppies into it — an act believed to wash away one’s sins.

“This has made salamander eggs and larvae vulnerable, as they are eaten by the fish,” says Ramesh Rai, the estate supervisor, who stirred up community awareness of this enigmatic species through an article in a local magazine way back in 2005.

Helping Hands

Today Rai has become an adept at “parenting” the salamander eggs, and he leads his team in their protection.

During the peak breeding season between May and July, when females lay gelatinous clusters of eggs on submerged vegetation in the pond, the salamander team from the tea estate carefully collects them before water levels plunge after the rain,s exposing the eggs to direct sunlight.

“This would otherwise dry up the protective jelly around the eggs and they would die,” says Rai.

Close-up of gelatinous Himalayan Salamander eggs attached to native vegetation in the breeding wetlands. Photo: Barkha Subba, used with permission.

The eggs are then transferred to a temporary pond of 55 square feet (about 5 square meters), with an island of vegetation in the middle. The water levels are maintained to keep the gelatinous coating submerged, where it absorbs water and enlarges, keeping the eggs safe until they hatch, explains Rai. After about 12-14 days of careful monitoring, the hatchlings emerge. Rai and his team initially feed them mosquito larvae cultivated by the estate, and later small earthworms as they grow.

A miniature lake dug to protect salamander eggs relocated from the main breeding site at Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate, with a small, vegetated island at the centre to anchor the eggs. Photo: Prasant Kumar Allay, used with permission. Tea Partnerships

Meanwhile, the species is also found in the tea gardens of Tung and Mirik, besides Nakhapani in Gopaldhara Tea Estate.

“We plan to work as a team with the managers for the protection of salamanders and other biodiversity in the tea gardens,” says Subba. She explains that these efforts will also add value to the gardens’ annual reporting for the global Rainforest Alliance Certification, which verifies compliance with environmental and sustainability standards required for tea exports.

Across these tea gardens, protected areas, private land holdings, and community-managed forests, she and her team are restoring critical salamander breeding sites with different stakeholders.

“We have identified the ones that need immediate attention, having dried up, become silted, or been taken over by invasive plants as reeds or exotic fish,” says Subba.

She emphasizes that the key to increasing the number of salamanders in the wild is bringing back their habitats along with the native vegetation. Invasive species like phragmites and other kinds of reeds are uprooted and replaced with salamander-friendly plants such as sweet flag, knotweed, and watercress. Females attach their delicate jelly-coated egg clutches to the broad, semi-submerged leaves of watercress or the stems of knotweed. These native plants anchor the eggs in the stagnant water above the floor of the pond and protect them from predators until they hatch.

Forest Initiative

Meanwhile the Kurseong Forest Division is also working toward declaring the potential salamander habitats of Namthing Pokhari (a biodiversity heritage site), Panchpokhri, and Pokhritar wetlands as India’s dedicated salamander sanctuaries. According to Devesh Pandey, divisional forest officer, these wetlands have been assessed in collaboration with the Zoological Survey of India for pH balance, toxicity, dissolved oxygen levels, surrounding vegetation, and other habitat parameters.

A few artificial wetlands have also been created, with native species to enhance habitat suitability.

Pandey confirms that while the conservation of the Himalayan salamander is being carried out under Subba’s guidance. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has also sanctioned funds for the proposed sanctuary, with Subba as the project’s principal advisor.

Undisturbed Habitats

Some naturally occurring salamander habitats across the hills have acquired cultural and religious significance over generations. Surrounded by vibrant prayer flags and fed by the pure waters of hilly springs, these wetlands are worshipped by local communities as the abode of deities. Subba hopes reviving this heritage will also help protect these habitats.

“This tends to keep such places undisturbed, clean and peaceful where salamander thrives best,” she says. Three such sacred wetlands — Namthing Pokhari, Tiffin Dara in Pokhriabong, and another within the Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate — are also among the sites selected for restoration with the funding from the Whitley Award.

“The joy of seeing these gentle, slow-moving salamanders is when we leave their habitat completely undisturbed and let them do their own thing; after all they have held onto this Earth for centuries,” says 73-year-old Rajendra Prasad Gurung from Mirik, in southwest of Darjeeling. Gurung owns about 3.5 acres of land that appear unkempt, with verdant native foliage such as sweet flags fringing 4-5 marshlands that have been traditional breeding sites for decades.

In winter when they come to land for hibernation, three or four salamanders even come close to his home, “slipping underneath some of the flowerpots,” says Gurung.

From its undisturbed habitat on Rajendra Prasad Gurung’s land, the rare Himalayan Salamander ventures near his house. Photo: Rajendra Prasad Gurung, used with permission.

That said, there are still challenges. With climate change shifting patterns of rainfall and intensity, sudden deluges sometimes can wash away the eggs. Invasive reeds are taking over parts of his land, which need to be removed for native species to thrive.

Getting Tourists to Help

Spillover of plastic pollution from nearby tourist areas also clogs the marshlands.

Making tourists aware of responsible behavior around the fragile habitats of the species is one of the objectives of the Salamander Initiatives of Sukhia, a local collective formed in 2023, about 75 kilometers from Mirik in western Darjeeling.

Members of the Salamander Initiative Sukhia remove plastic and other waste from a tourist site to keep Himalayan Salamander habitats clean. Photo courtesy: Salamander Initiative Sukhia.

“Many of the salamander’s natural habitats are also places of tourist interest in Darjeeling,” says Furba Tshering Sherpa, who has been working on salamander conservation for 15 years and leads the initiative there.

Located about 6,500 feet above sea level, Sukhia Pokhri is surrounded by the majestic Himalayas, draped in tall pine forests interspersed with lakes and wetlands. One such destination, Majhidhura, which holds 7-8 natural habitats of Himalayan salamander, draws flocks of tourists.

“They tend to spend hours here, making videos or taking photographs amid this scenic landscape,” says Sherpa.

In the process, they often end up littering the area with plastic bottles and food wrappers or brushing away the salt that estate managers use to protect plants from the leeches that abound in the region. Sherpa and his fellow members are often seen explaining the species to tourists through life-cycle charts, videos, and still photographs. They point out how such indiscriminate behavior disturbs the ecosystem and makes the water salty, which may eventually destroy the salamander habitats.

The recently formed Majhidhura Salamander Protection Committee, which works with the Forest Department’s Joint Forest Management Committee, is a step ahead in engaging village heads, local vendors, and taxi drivers catering to the tourists, community members, nonprofits to protect the species and its habitats in the region. The vendors and drivers are being trained to act as tourist guides and regulate the entry of visitors, especially during the three months of breeding season.

Meanwhile the first Himalayan Salamander Festival was held on May 30. The event brought together government agencies, researchers, scientists, conservation organizations, local communities and other stakeholders from across the region to learn of the latest state of conservation and exchange ideas for the future. Organized by FOSEP, the festival aimed to draw up a practical and inclusive conservation action plan, ensuring no one is left out of the deliberations.

“We all thus become the guardians of our salamanders and ensure they continue their ancient legacy,” says Sherpa.

This year’s “Green Oscar” winner, Barkha Subba, could not have been happier.

“The transformation from ‘your’ salamander to ‘our’ salamander today has made my work with the local communities all the more fulfilling and meaningful,” she says with a smile.

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

‘Tortoise Guardians’ Protect Rare Giants

The post Tea and Salamanders appeared first on The Revelator.

Revelator readers enjoy a love of wildlife and wild places around the world.  Our new Revelator Gallery showcases readers’ wildlife and landscape photos, artwork, and other projects and creative efforts.

Here is an American bumblebee foraging in my yard! I was walking around early one morning taking pictures of insects and snapped this one with my phone not knowing who it was!” — Tierra Curry, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity (Kentucky)

“A little coyote friend on a nearby island. Coyotes started swimming to the island from the mainland a decade ago and now they’re helping keep the deer and rodent populations in balance.” — Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity (California)

“My recent bobcat visitation at my home in Danville, California. She held safe in my fenced backyard with her two kittens for about 10 days in May, 2026!” — Brian Uitti

“This black racer was enjoying the sunshine in our grass. Being very quiet, I approached it and watched it decide which way to go. Glad to have him around!” — Elizabeth Massie (Virginia)

Artist are welcome, too. Here are some samples for inspiration: 

Sample of Wildlife Art Sample of Wildlife Textile Art Example of Wildlife Art, Painting Guidelines to get your masterpiece into the Revelator Gallery:

• • Original photos and art from you
  • No AI-generated or enhanced images
  • Images can be horizontal, square, or vertical
  • We accept only .jpgs and .png files
  • No limit on submissions
  • No people in the images, just wildlife and landscapes (animals, plants and trees, insects, sea life…look below for examples)

Send your submissions to ccrary@biologicaldiversity.org with the following information:

• • Your name
  • Title of image (if applicable)
  • Species of wildlife
  • The location (where it was created)
  • A brief description of what inspired you to capture or create this image
  • Medium: Photography (many types, be specific), painting, drawing, pottery, sculpture, textiles/fabric art, mixed media, glass, etc.
  • Let us know if you want us to include a specific copyright notice “©”

All submissions are considered intended for publication; submission does not guarantee publication. Monthly galleries will be distributed to our partner publications under a Creative Commons license, but you retain the copyright for your individual images. There’s no prize or payment, just  bragging rights.

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In 2008 Ecuador became the first country in history to grant constitutional rights to nature. Rivers, forests, and ecosystems were no longer treated solely as resources to be managed, but as living entities with rights of their own.

For some it was a legal innovation. For others it was the return of a worldview that had survived for centuries outside the institutions of the modern state.

The question is how an Indigenous understanding of the world was translated into the language of courts, laws, and public policy — and what that experiment might teach policy makers and lawyers?

To explore these questions, I spoke with Julio Prieto, an Ecuadorian environmental lawyer who helped shape some of the country’s most influential debates on the Rights of Nature. Our conversation ranged from Indigenous cosmologies and constitutional law to climate governance, development, and the limits of universal solutions in a world of radically different ways of seeing nature.

This interview was conducted during a research visit in Ecuador in November 2025, carried out as part of the research field work for a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy and social communication.

Ecuador became the first country in the world to grant constitutional rights to nature. But before that could happen, very different ideas about nature had to find a common language. Who were the main voices in that conversation?

The debate over the Rights of Nature in Ecuador brought together three very different ways of understanding the world.

First, there are Indigenous peoples, who see themselves not as owners of nature but as part of it. Nature is not separate from society; it is the larger living system to which humans belong. Caring for nature, in this view, means caring for the community itself.

Second, there are environmentalists, many of them based in Ecuador’s cities. Their perspective is shaped by climate change and modern ecological science. They see the environment as something that must be protected through conservation, regulation, and public policy.

And finally, there is the dominant Western worldview, which tends to see nature primarily as a resource. Nature can be used, managed, and even protected — but ultimately for human purposes.

When Ecuador drafted its Constitution in 2008, these different perspectives collided in a rare national conversation. Indigenous organizations played a decisive role, but what ultimately made the Rights of Nature possible was an alliance between Indigenous movements and environmentalists.

I see the constitutional recognition of the Rights of Nature as an act of translation.

These rights already existed in practice within Indigenous communities, even if they were never expressed in legal language. The legal system itself is a Western invention, built on written norms, categories, and definitions. Indigenous peoples do not experience nature as a legal object that needs to be named or administered — it is simply the way life is lived.

What Ecuador achieved was not the translation of a word, but the translation of a worldview.

The Constitution transformed a lived relationship with nature into a language that courts, governments, and legal institutions could understand. In doing so, it recognized something revolutionary: that humans are part of nature, and that nature itself possesses the right to exist, regenerate, and maintain its vital cycles.

How can one worldview be translated into another? How can deeply Amazonian abstract concepts be articulated into the literal language of law?

This process is known in legal studies as vernacularization. But in Ecuador, it happened in reverse. Traditionally, universal human rights are formulated in global, Western contexts and then imposed on countries through a top-down process, forcing each society to adapt them locally. In Ecuador, the knowledge moved in the opposite direction. It came from below — from the Global South, from ancestral practices, from diverse worldviews rooted in the past. We can call this process criollización.

It may sound highly theoretical, but it helps explain how ancient knowledge was transformed into constitutional law. Ecuador did not invent the rights of nature. It translated a lived reality into a language that the Western legal world could understand.

Puyo lies at the edge of the Amazon rainforest, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Photo by Alice Deliau.

Do you see the Ecuadorian case as an example of setting a new agenda of introducing local perspectives into global debates?

There is an ancient Amazonian prophecy known as the story of the Eagle and the Condor, shared in different versions across Indigenous cultures of the Americas.

Long ago the eagle and the condor were friends. They flew together in the same sky. Over time, however, their paths diverged. The eagle came to symbolize the industrial world: masculine, dominant, rational, and driven by control. The condor, by contrast, represents nature: feminine, intuitive, relational, and deeply connected to life itself. Eventually, the eagle broke away from the condor. They fought, and they separated.

According to the prophecy, this split coincided with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas in the late 15th century. For the next 500 years, the path of the eagle dominated the world, nearly pushing the condor — and the worldview it represents — into extinction. But the prophecy does not end there. It says that after those 500 years, beginning around 1990, the eagle and the condor would have the chance to meet again, to fly together once more. If they were able to reconcile, to recognize each other, humanity could enter a new era of consciousness. The prophecy speaks only of potential; it is up to people to make that reconciliation possible.

I believe the Rights of Nature represent that meeting point. Rights of Nature are the common ground where the Occidental, anthropocentric worldview of the eagle could encounter the biocentric (or even ecocentric) Indigenous worldview of the condor. In that sense, Ecuador’s constitution is not just a legal innovation but a prophecy manifestation: an opportunity to allow both birds to share the same sky again.

What makes it possible to translate Indigenous worldviews into the modern legal language of the constitution? Is it possible to translate concepts that are not present in another language?

Western legal systems, universities, and international institutions are accustomed to translating other societies into their own language. Human rights, for example, emerged in a particular historical and cultural context, yet they have been adapted and interpreted across the world. What happened in Ecuador was the reverse.

For centuries, we learned to think about nature through Western concepts and translated those ideas into environmental law. But environmental law and the Rights of Nature are not the same thing. Environmental law is ultimately anthropocentric. It protects air, water, and ecosystems because they are necessary for human well-being. Air quality, water quality, land use — all these standards are designed primarily around human needs.

The Rights of Nature begin from a different premise. Nature is not simply something that serves humanity; it possesses value and rights of its own.

Translating that worldview into constitutional law required building bridges between Indigenous knowledge, environmental law, ecology, and biology. We needed a language that courts and policymakers could understand. That is why the Constitution speaks of vital cycles, regeneration, and ecological processes. Much of that language comes from biology and ecology.

In a sense, the Rights of Nature are an exercise in translation. They express an Indigenous understanding of the world through concepts that can operate within a modern legal system.

I believe this helps explain why humanity has struggled to respond effectively to climate change. We continue trying to solve a planetary crisis using legal and political tools designed for a very different relationship with nature.

Imagine a mining company wants to destroy a hill. No one lives nearby. There are no rivers, no immediate impacts on human health. Under conventional environmental law, there may be no violation. But what if that hill is the only habitat of a species found nowhere else on Earth?

Under the Rights of Nature, that species — and the ecosystem that sustains it — has a right to exist. The question is no longer whether nature is useful to humans. The question is whether it has a right to continue being itself.

Deforestation and forest fragmentation reduce monkey habitats, making conservation of the Amazon rainforest essential – by eating fruit and spreading seeds, helping the rainforest regenerate. Puyo, Amazonia. Nov. 2025. Photo by Alice Deliau.

In the Ecuadorian constitution, there is a procedure for public debate and consultation with Indigenous peoples before land is used for mining.

Yes, that procedure is called consulta previa, libre e informada — free, prior, and informed consultation. And that is not an invention of Ecuador. It comes from ILO [International Labour Organisation] Convention 169. This is a legal obligation for all countries: They must consult Indigenous peoples.

Consultation is supposed to be free and informed. That means you have to explain to people what the project is, what it will do, and what its impacts will be, in a way they can understand.

But the process is often abused. Authorities create the appearance that consultation has taken place, but if you go back to the communities afterward and ask them, they say they did not understand anything. There is a lack of translation from scientific, western perspective into local realities.

Sometimes Indigenous people do not even speak Spanish, they ask them to alone understand maps, numbers, chemical data, or technical language.

Local Indigenous guides share unique, non-Western ecological knowledge passed down through generations, offering a deeper understanding of rainforest plants, animals, and the balance of Amazon ecosystems. Puyo, Amazonia, Nov. 2025. Photo by Alice Deliau.

What’s the role of international organizations when it comes to translating these concepts and worldviews? How do you assess efficiency of United Nations agencies in this matter? Are external facilitators really needed in this debate?

I don’t think the main challenge is a lack of goodwill. The challenge is translation.

Many international organizations, including United Nations agencies, still approach environmental issues through concepts that remain fundamentally anthropocentric. They speak about natural resources, sustainable management, and development. Indigenous communities often begin from a different premise altogether: that humans are part of nature rather than its managers.

As a result, both sides may use similar words while meaning very different things.

This is why I often say that cooperation itself needs to be decolonized. Too often, international institutions arrive with predefined priorities, predefined solutions, and predefined indicators of success. The conversation begins with the assumption that expertise already exists elsewhere and simply needs to be transferred.

But meaningful cooperation should work in the opposite direction. It should begin with local realities, local knowledge, and local priorities. The role of international organizations should not be to prescribe solutions, but to create the conditions for genuine dialogue.

When that happens, cooperation can be extremely valuable. When it does not, consultation risks becoming a formality rather than a conversation.

Some European cooperation agencies have become more sensitive to this challenge. The most productive partnerships are usually those that allow communities to define their own objectives and then provide support for achieving them, rather than imposing external models of development.

Ultimately, the question is not whether international organizations are needed. The question is whether they are willing to listen before they speak.

We’ve discussed translation, competing worldviews, and the power of narratives. How are mining companies trying to shape that conversation today?

They are trying to convince people that mining is progress — and that progress is impossible without mining.

We have heard this story before. Decades ago, the same promises were made about oil. Today, mining has become the new development narrative. For the past several years, companies have invested heavily in campaigns designed to persuade Ecuadorians that mining is the country’s only path out of poverty.

One of their most effective arguments concerns illegal mining. Illegal mining is a serious problem in Ecuador. It is linked to criminal organizations, violence, labor exploitation, and environmental destruction. Mining companies present themselves as the solution, arguing that large-scale industrial mining can replace illegal operations with something safer, more transparent, and more regulated.

But this is also a narrative strategy. They use the fear generated by illegal mining to legitimize a broader expansion of extractive industries.

Ultimately, the debate is not only about mining. It is about the meaning of development itself.

Every day, people are told that prosperity, modernization, and economic progress depend on extracting more resources. Those messages dominate television, advertising, and political discourse because they are backed by enormous financial power.

The challenge for environmental movements is not simply to oppose mining projects. It is to offer a different story about what development means and what kind of future we want to build.

That, in the end, is the real struggle.

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Hugh Safford was hiking at 12,657 feet in California’s Sequoia National Park two years ago when he spotted something strange. It was a young Jeffrey pine, a tree that usually occurs farther downhill.

Photo: Hugh Safford. Used with permission.

Safford was hiking at treeline, the forest threshold where trees still grow, but fewer and farther between. Only the toughest species can survive the strong winds, heavy snowpack, and freezing temperatures found there.

Safford is a forest and fire ecologist with the University of California Davis Environmental Science and Policy department. He knows subalpine forests are on the leading edges of climate change — and that this Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi) didn’t belong.

So how had it gotten there? Were there others? And if so, what did that mean?

The answers could portend unexpected competition at California’s treeline — and a rising threat from wildfire.

Types of Trees

For people who know their pines, Jeffreys are easy to spot. Each fascicle — that’s a bundle or cluster — has three needles, whereas California’s high elevations are still dominated by trees with bundles of five.

These high five pines can survive in cold, harsh, windy places where few other trees can. In California they include whitebark pine (P. albicaulis) and limber pine (P. flexilis), along with foxtail pines (P. balfouriana), which are endemic to the state.

Farther south, high in California’s more arid White Mountains, grows the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, home to a Great Basin bristlecone pine (P. longaeva) that’s the oldest individual tree on Earth. At nearly 5,000 years of age, it’s nicknamed “Methuselah” after the longest-lived person in the Bible (at age 969, a mere lad by comparison).

A trail sign in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Photo: Karen Mockler

Bristlecone pines mature very slowly. They can take 100 years to reach just a few feet in height. The resulting dense wood is part of their survival strategy. They bend to mighty winds and over time often grow into fantastically twisted — some would say tortured — shapes.

But how do these old souls respond to climate change?

They already live at timberline, generally between 9,800 and 11,000 feet. Bristlecone pines traditionally do well where most other plants do not. As a result, they’re usually a first-succession species, tending to occupy new open ground after fire or other habitat-transforming events. Over the past 50 years, in response to warming temps, they have nudged up into higher elevations. Meanwhile, the low end of the bristlecone range has contracted, where seedlings often find it too hot and dry now to survive.

The snow on California’s highest peaks is melting earlier. Temperatures are hotter. Until Safford’s discovery, scientists thought climate change would cause one of two things to happen in California’s upper reaches: Either the old men of the mountain would hold hands and march uphill together like the Von Trapp family at the end of The Sound of Music, or they’d duke it out for survival.

Bristlecones have encountered some faster-moving limber pines (no spring chickens themselves, reaching up to 2,000 years in age). Until recently it seemed like that’s where the bristlecone’s main competition would come from, as limber pines began to occupy valuable leading-edge real estate, potentially stopping new and future bristlecones from establishing there.

Trees in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Photo: Mike Stark

In 2017 Brian Smithers co-authored a study about this leapfrogging effect of limber pines. Smithers, who did his doctoral work at UC-Davis and is an assistant research professor in Montana State University’s Department of Ecology, says limber pines seem to be winning the race to migrate to higher, cooler elevations. But at least they’re close kin to bristlecones.

The Jeffrey pine situation, though, was completely unexpected.

The New Kid and the Nutcracker

Safford found the Jeffrey pine upstart growing well above its normal range. For now it holds the highest-altitude record for that species — nearly 2,000 feet above previous records.

When he returned with a team last summer to search other peaks for more Jeffrey pines, they found hundreds. Some were as old as 30 and even 40 years, growing younger as they moved uphill.

“Jeffrey was appearing thousands of feet above where it should be,” Safford said. “Now everything is moving uphill, but Jeffrey pines are jumping, and that’s our mystery. We’re looking at the result, without having looked much at causes.”

He has a hypothesis, however.

Climate models predicted that the highest-altitude trees would continue to migrate up mountainsides, climbing — slowly — until they couldn’t climb anymore. And that’s happening. Last summer Safford and his team found three trees above 4,000 meters (13,124 feet), the first trees ever found at that altitude in the U.S. and Canada, outside of the southern Rockies.

But Safford says those models haven’t accounted for the role of seed dispersal by birds and other species. His number one suspects are Clark’s nutcrackers (named for explorer William Clark but slated to be renamed), clever corvids who use their strong beaks to extract pinecone seeds. They often bury them to eat later, serving as accidental gardeners in the process.

“The Clark’s nutcracker is a huge part of the story,” Safford says.

Clark’s nutcracker on a Jeffrey pine. Photo: Hugh Safford. Used with permission.

In California these busy birds have a mutualistic relationship with many subalpine trees, whose seeds are a major food source. The birds can remember up to 1,000 caching spots, where they’ve stored away up to 10,000 seeds. Of course, when one bird stows 100 whitebark seeds under their tongue, flies off and buries 10 caches, “they do it in the hope that they can return at some point to consume them,” Safford says. “Germination is a fail for those birds, because they wanna eat those things.”

If a nutcracker buries 10 whitebark pine seeds and the cache is left to sprout, the germination rate is high. By contrast, seedlings from a Jeffrey pine cache germinate in ones or twos. While Safford assumes these caches contain roughly 10 seeds as well, nobody knows for sure.

“No one has ever dug up a [Jeffrey pine] cache because no one has ever tried to follow a Clark’s nutcracker from the Jeffrey pine to the cache.” Not yet, at least.

And if they did, the birds have strategies to thwart potential thieves. “The birds are in a constant battle with rodents, which are always watching to see where the nutcrackers cache food. These birds are so damn smart…” Safford laughs. “Nutcrackers will fake caching. That’s happened to us multiple times, where we ran out to see the cache, and they faked it.”

Still, he assumes the birds are probably caching Jeffrey pine seeds at the same rates as whitebark. “If only one is coming up, it’s probably because germination cues aren’t right for them to germinate,” he says, but adds that those cues — drought, warmer temperatures, less snowpack — are changing.

“What’s astounding,” Safford says, is not that the species is appearing so high up, “but now it’s starting to survive.”

Granted, these novices are growing notably slower at treeline than at lower elevations. Safford breaks off to laugh again, this time at the Jeffrey pines’ predicament.

“They don’t wanna be there. They would much rather be on the shores of (lower elevation) Lake Tahoe. But they can’t control all those cues. Or where they are dispersed!”

He doesn’t think the Jeffrey pines are a threat to their elders — yet. So far none of the high-elevation ones have any cones on them, so they’re not ready to start reproducing on their own in their new home. As it gets warmer, though, that will change.

A Jeffrey pine cone grown under normal conditions. Photo: Karen Mockler

“Maybe they’ll start making cones in my lifetime,” speculates Safford, who just turned 63. “Then you might see threshold dynamics. Not just the bird moving them upstream, but a sudden explosion. Jeffrey pine will become much more common and make more offspring, then if it’s growing faster, the other trees won’t be able to keep up.”

But that potential explosion is not the one that concerns Safford so much. It’s the explosive relationship between Jeffrey pine and fire.

Forests in Flames

In recent decades California has suffered more destructive wildfires than any other U.S. state. Safford was senior author on a study published this April that assessed the state’s rate of deforestation from wildfire between 1991 and 2023. The findings weren’t pretty. During those years, the Golden State lost roughly 8-9% of its conifer forests to wildfire.

Recent megafires have turned large expanses once covered in forest into fields of shrubs or grass. The blazes were simply too hot for conifers to regenerate, and Safford’s study found that efforts to replant California’s forests aren’t keeping pace with their losses.

“For lower-elevation forests, there’s a strong but linear increase of forest being lost to fire,” Safford says. “For high-elevation forests, the rate of increase has been strongly exponential. It’s just brutal.”

Jeffrey is a fire survivor. Like ponderosa pines (collectively “yellow pines”), its thicker bark protects young trees from fire damage, its thick cone scales insulate seeds against heat, and it self-prunes over time. By dropping its lower branches, a Jeffrey pine protects its canopy (where photosynthesis happens) from surface fuels. By contrast, the high-fives and other subalpine trees aren’t nearly as well protected for fire. Up until now, they haven’t needed to be.

“Lightning hits a bristlecone pine and it’s almost impossible for a real fire to start,” Safford explains. “They’re very scattered, there’s no connection of fuels on the ground. Bristlecones and other subalpine trees are slow-growing, with short needles, widely spaced, not a whole lot of litter, [and] compact litter beds that hold moisture and are hard to burn.”

The Jeffreys’ new neighbors “support highly flammable foliage,” Safford says, “which promotes fast, low intensity burning along the ground surface. This type of burning is much more likely to kill the less fire-tolerant competitors of the yellow pines than the yellow pines themselves.”

It’s not that these old men of the mountain will disappear tomorrow. For one thing, the southern Sierra “is so darn high,” Safford says, some peaks can still accommodate upward movement. So although the climate’s warming and changing quickly, it’ll be “multiple lifetimes of humans before a lot of this stuff transpires.”

Not so with fire. California has seen huge impacts from it already, and the Jeffrey pine is both fire-adapted and drought tolerant.

“It’s gonna be the survivor when you filter all these species out,” Safford says. And now, Jeffrey pines are being distributed “all over the landscape. They’re moving all over because the climate is permitting it, creating fuel beds and dense forests that didn’t exist before.”

In other words, Jeffrey pines are not only fire survivors, but fire purveyors.

Future Forests

The pairing of Clark’s nutcrackers with Jeffrey pines isn’t one that climate models foresaw or remote sensing detected. No satellite or artificial intelligence identified these facts. Instead it was quite literally “shoe leather” science: Safford stumbled on his first prophetic Jeffrey pine while out on a hike.

And this summer Safford and his team will be back, climbing more California peaks to do more on-the-ground fieldwork. Thanks to Smithers’ own shoe-leather observations, they know there’s a population of Jeffrey pines in the White Mountains, so they plan to spend a week in that high range where the bristlecones grow.

While Smithers agrees that fire is a concern, he thinks it’s a short-term one.

“I think in any time of transition, as these trees are [moving] farther upslope, a change in habitat occurs and fire is one of those changes.” He’s a big fan of letting fires back into the system naturally — counteracting a century of fire suppression — but he also thinks we need to be OK with our forests changing.

“I have a more long-term philosophical bent on this,” Smithers says. “We humans really don’t have an amazing track record with trying to figure this stuff out anyway. Nature’s gonna have to figure it out.”

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

Cemeteries: How the Dead Protect the Wild

The post A Gnarly Situation: High-Elevation Discovery Raises New Questions About Which California Trees Will Survive Climate Change appeared first on The Revelator.

What whale are we talking about this month?

Thanks for asking. Last month we talked about Rice’s whales, one of the rarest whale species. This time I wanted to talk about the more commonly seen minke whale — in fact, that’s their official name, common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata).

NOAA Fisheries

So … they’re common?

Yeah, kind of. No whale species are exactly common these days, but minkes have a population of around 180,000. Their extinction risk has been assessed as “least concern.”

Something tells me you’re actually kind of concerned.

Sigh…that’s true. Iceland has started whaling again, despite global anti-whaling sentiment, and could start catching minke whales this summer. (They’ve already caught a couple of fin whales for the first time in years, which is incredibly disappointing.)

Hmph. Excuse me while I go cancel my tour of Reykjavík nightclubs.

Good call. Iceland is only expected to hunt a few hundred whales this year, so it won’t pose an immediate and massive threat to these species, but — as they say — slippery slopes…

Are there other reasons — perhaps happier ones — that you wanted to talk about minkes?

Yes, absolutely. Minke whales are among the most widely distributed whales. They’re the only marine mammal species I’ve observed on both coasts of the United States, and to me that’s amazing. I’ve seen them a couple of times on trips to Monterey, California, but I used to see minke whales most often in the decade we lived in Maine.

Money was tight back then, but I always made sure to take a whale-watching trip early in the summer, before tourist season cranked up. Minke whales show up fairly frequently off the Maine coast — and many other places in the northern hemisphere and as far south as South Africa — but they’re kind of invisible in the media. No one ever seems to talk about them. I thought it was time to change that.

Cool. So hit me up with some cool minke facts.

You got it.

First up, there’s a reason I never got a good photo of a minke on those whale-watching tours: They’re fast. They’ve been clocked at 20 miles per hour or more, which makes them pretty good at avoiding predators (and shutterbugs).

You were probably just afraid of dropping your camera into the ocean.

You’re not wrong.

Anyway, their size helps keep them both fast and difficult to spot: Your average minke weighs about 20,000 pounds, which seems like a lot, but that actually makes them one of the smaller whales, with the biggest reaching lengths of about 35 feet.

But some are quite a bit smaller. There’s a group of dwarf minke whales who top out at about 26 feet and 14,000 pounds. Interestingly, dwarf minkes don’t appear to be a separate species or subspecies, just a variation.

Another interesting detail: Minkes are usually solitary whales. Although mass feedings have been documented, these animals usually swim by themselves or in groups of two or three.

So what’s the deal with their name? I don’t suppose they’re secretly related to minks or other weasels?

Like a lot of species, they’re named after a person — but in this case, I don’t think it’s much of an honor. According to NOAA, minke whales “received their common name from a Norwegian novice whaling spotter named Meincke, who supposedly mistook a minke whale for a blue whale.”

How…? Blue whales are so much bigger!

Well, they did say Meincke was a novice.

So what’s your favorite thing about minkes?

One thing I love is the variation in their vocalizations. They click, they grunt, they emit pulses and ratchets, and some of them make “boing” sounds — a noise that mystified scientists who kept hearing it underwater for 50 years until it was finally attributed to minkes in 2005.

The evidence of regional differences in their calls keeps stacking up. Some make a vocalization called “star wars,” while others make a “bio duck” quacking.

The most recent research I found described a minke whale who was emitting “pulse trains” off the coast of Florida — sounds the whale altered when they realized researchers were nearby.

Well, nobody likes eavesdroppers.

True.

Meanwhile, there’s another mystery…

I don’t like where this is going.

Yeah, me either. For the past decade, NOAA has tracked elevated minke mortalities along the Atlantic coast, stretching from Georgia up through Maine. As of this writing, they’ve documented 209 dead minkes — although numbers dropped in 2025 and only one dead whale has been found so far this year. According to the agency, “Preliminary findings in several of the whales have shown evidence of human interactions or infectious diseases. These findings are not consistent across all of the whales examined, so more research is needed.”

Despite the inconclusive causes of death, Donald Trump, RFK, Jr., and others on the extreme right wing have used some of these deaths as an excuse to attack offshore wind power, though there’s absolutely no evidence that turbine noise harms whales.

On the other hand, as we talked about last month, noise from offshore oil development — which the Trump admin keeps championing — really does harm some species, like Rice’s whales.

So what whale are we talking about next month?

We’re heading to the Arctic to uncover one of the world’s most mysterious whale species: the narwhal.

Cool! Good thing I got my passport renewed before a certain someone stamped his mugshot all over it!

Good call.

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Our previous column addressed a reader’s questions about the psychological benefits of green spaces. This time we examine their follow-up question:

I guess my secondary question is, can sharing this science help persuade these anti-tax activists?

Yes, but it depends on how you present the pro-green space science.

You want to win hearts and minds, so tell a story about how beautiful your town will be when it has green spaces in which folks can meet their neighbors, exercise, observe holidays and celebrations, give kids a place to play that isn’t concrete or asphalt, and relax in the shade of hot summer days. Try not to present overly academic or dry facts in boring charts and graphs; just talk about how research has shown the benefits of green spaces for human use.

Stay positive and pleasant while you make a strong case for more green spaces in your town. If you know someone who’s an illustrator or artist, maybe they can draw some of the town’s landmarks and green them up so people can visualize how nice places can be when they’re enhanced with greenery.

Stay away from “I, me, my” statements. Actively listen to the opposition without interrupting. Watch and listen to great speakers from the past and present — they’re succinct and confident in debates. Journalist Medhi Hassan has written an excellent book on debating, persuading, and public speaking that you can study to help make your case in town council meetings and other community venues.

Above all remain calm, matter of fact, and cool-headed — especially if the opponents to your ideas take a more aggressive approach. Don’t allow the opposition to goad you into reducing your presentation or discussion to yelling or name-calling.

The Social Contract: A Lost Art in the Modern Age

We’ve probably all seen the divisiveness between community members on display at town council meetings, where fights over town resources and policies take an ugly turn. Sociologically and psychologically each community has been influenced long before we got to those town meetings. Powerful forces aim to break our sense of cohesion, making us hostile and rude to anyone who doesn’t agree with our suggestions to improve our common public spaces.

In part the current epidemic of loneliness has been caused by those forces; ruling elites have long understood that they could secure their wealth and power by using a divide-and-conquer strategy against the less powerful, particularly by “othering” them.

Divisive rhetorical tactics have been planned, curated, and disseminated by ruling-class proxies and media since ancient times, and new social platforms have helped to keep people in their silos and sow seeds of discontent  — including about things that should be uncontroversial, like spending a few tax dollars to make our communities better places to live.

Green spaces are actually a great way to break that cycle of alienation and reestablish the social contract. Historically the concept of the “town green” emerged from a central area that served as a communal hub for civic, social, and recreational life. The answer to reuniting the common people today is to listen and learn from each other to find the common ground or town green beliefs we share.

So how do we start listening and talking without friction?

One way is by re-embracing a simple and classic idea: the Social Contract sociopolitical model developed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the mid-1700s. It makes the case for a community government based on the good of the people, creating a society where laws are created for the common good, holding above all personal liberty and equality. It was the defining belief system behind the French Revolution and contemporary democratic philosophy.

The concepts in the Social Contract can help guide your presentation by framing mutual respect for maximum efficacy. Psychological skills to develop include:

• Active listening — Listen without interrupting, maintain eye contact, and turn your cell phone off; give each other undivided attention, ask follow-up questions, and try to respect what the other person is saying without dominating the conversation.
• Emotional intelligence — Keeping everyone’s ego intact. If you must offer corrections or difficult truths, do so gently and privately to protect the other person’s dignity.
• Reading the Room — Assess the mood and temperament of the people around you before diving into a heavy or highly energetic topic.
• Boundaries — Social harmony comes from respecting the social scripts and boundaries others set.
• Manners — Traditional, universal practices that keep a civil society together and are effective in not “othering.” These are often reflected in the golden rules, which include treating others as you wish to be treated; showing respect for boundaries; saying “please,” “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” and “excuse me”; and avoiding talking politics or religion until you’re sure of the social landscape around you.

Image by Roy from Pixabay

Approaching oppositional individuals using manners, active listening, emotional intelligence, and boundaries can help us easily find common ground and agreement — about green spaces or other equally important topics.

Get back to us on how it goes and if meeting oppositional neighbors halfway with kind and positive persuasion has helped green up your community.

Cheers,

Dr. Green

What are you struggling with as a dedicated environmentalist and global citizen? Use the form below to send your questions and success stories.

All participants are anonymous. Even Dr. Green has no idea who you are.

Send Dr. Green your questions and stories below:

 

All questions are anonymous and considered intended for publication. Individual replies are not possible.

Disclaimer: This column is not a replacement for therapy, and the advice given is educational in nature, not a replacement for professional psychological or psychiatric therapy. This is a peer-driven support effort by The Revelator to inform and build community with environmental and wildlife defenders.

If you are feeling critically depressed and suicidal, it’s time to immediately find professional help. Go to your closest emergency room or call the following numbers to get immediate help in your area:

SUICIDE HOTLINES

Worldwide: http://www.befrienders.org/support/

United Kingdom: http://www.samaritans.org

USA: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

1-800-273-TALK

Resources

Dr. Green: Why Some People and Groups Become Resistant to Science

The Social Contract and Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is FREE online

7 Active Listening Techniques for Better Communication by Arlin Cuncic, MA (2026)

Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking by Mehdi Hasan

How Othering Contributes to Discrimination and Prejudice: The psychology behind us vs. them by Kendra Cherry, MSEd

Lisa’s Top 25 Etiquette Tips | Golden Rules Gal

Active Listening Techniques: Best Practices for Leaders, based on research by Diane Bergeron, PhD and Andy Loignon, PhD

Revising the Golden Rule for Lasting Social Harmony: Successful social living requires treating people as they want to be treated by Dr. Timothy A Carey Ph.D.

The post Dr. Green: Can Embracing Green Spaces Help Reunite Communities? appeared first on The Revelator.

By the time Virginia Casper reached her 75th birthday, she’d almost given up trying to move her retirement savings out of fossil fuels. She had been shocked to learn that TIAA (the Teachers Retirement and Annuity Association), which she had always considered a socially responsible company, had at least $78 billion in coal, oil, and gas. Even their “Social Choice” and “ESG” funds were funneling her money into fossil fuel giants like ConocoPhillips and Halliburton.

TIAA is not alone. Although 75% of workers want sustainable retirement options, all of the major retirement providers — including Vanguard, Blackrock, and Fidelity — are still shoveling our money into fossil fuels.

Even from a purely financial perspective, this doesn’t make sense. Big Oil stocks are highly volatile. And apart from a couple of big spikes caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. attacks on Iran — thanks, unnecessary wars! — the fossil fuel companies have in fact underperformed the market for over a decade. As global demand for cheap renewable energy surges, the long-term outlook for the industry is gloomy.

Richard Butz, a retired college instructor in Vermont, thought that moving his money from TIAA to fossil-free investments would be costly, but he and his wife were surprised to find they kept getting better returns than their peers.

“Not only have our accounts done well, during several recessions since beginning this path, we did not lose significant value as was the experience of many of our friends,” he said. “We’ve found that socially responsible accounts are much safer than others during financial shocks.”

Butz is not alone. Researchers have repeatedly concluded that fossil-free funds are doing just fine.

Both Virginia and Richard explained their frustrations to TIAA-Divest, a nonprofit group I volunteer with that has been pressuring the company to get clients’ savings out of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Founded in 2020, TIAA-Divest has gathered support from thousands of employees and retirees who want more sustainable investment options. In 2022 TIAA-Divest — along with the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) — filed a formal complaint with the United Nations-backed Principles of Responsible Investment, laying out the evidence that TIAA was deceiving its participants and violating all of the PRI’s core principles. The only result was that the company removed some of its worst greenwashing claims, but to date, it hasn’t budged on fossil fuels.

TIAA-Divest is not the only organization pressuring retirement companies toward greener investments. Never Vanguard and Blackrock’s Big Problem have also been mobilizing groups of angry clients.

So why are all the major retirement plans still piling our money into a dangerous and dying industry? Surprisingly, the devil is in one specific detail.

To manage risk, every retirement plan has a legal obligation to diversify your portfolio. That is, your savings must be spread across different kinds of investments: high risk stocks, low risk bonds, large and small companies, geographical spread, and different sectors of the economy.

In principle, this makes perfect sense. If the AI bubble bursts, you’ll be glad your retirement isn’t all in tech stocks.

But when it comes to diversification, Big Oil gets a quiet helping hand. Most financial companies rely on the GICS, or Global Industry Classification Standard. This system categorizes every stock in the world according to the primary business activity of the company. Providing a universal nomenclature allows investors to track trends and compare the performance of millions of stocks around the world.

Like the taxonomy you learned in biology class, where large kingdoms contain smaller groups like families and species, the GICS assigns a company to one of 11 large sectors, which are then further subdivided into industry groups, industries, and subindustries. The 11 large sectors are Consumer Staples, Consumer Discretionary, Information Technology, Financials, Health Care, Communication Services, Industrials, Utilities, Materials, Real Estate, and Energy.

If you look up Vanguard’s Employee Benefit Index Fund, you’ll see the careful breakdown of its investments across all 11 sectors. That’s how Vanguard proves that your retirement portfolio is successfully diversified.

But if you look closely, you’ll discover that the GICS stacks the deck in favor of fossil fuels. The “energy” category comprises “oil and gas and coal and consumable fuels” and “companies that offer oil and gas equipment and services.”

In other words, “energy” means fossil fuels (with a few biofuels thrown in). You won’t find renewable energy here. It’s scattered across GICS sectors. Wind turbine companies usually get classified under “industrials,” and solar under “utilities.”

On the surface, your retirement provider seems to be protecting your future by ensuring that you don’t miss out on the energy market. But what it’s really doing is forcing you to sink your savings into climate catastrophe.

Happily, there are fossil-free alternatives. After years of pressuring TIAA to get its clients out of oil, gas, and coal to little result, TIAA-Divest has decided to help people to express their rage by moving their money to more responsible investors.

Knowing that, however, is only the first step. Virginia says, “It feels daunting to think about moving your life savings. And there weren’t supports in place to help me think about the what and the how of doing it.” She was overwhelmed by all the technical terminology, and she worried that she might lose most of her savings.

Eventually, doing research alongside TIAA-Divest volunteers, Virginia found she didn’t need to become an authority on the stock market to move her money. And while it’s true that she won’t be profiting from the latest war, she’s no longer worried about losing her shirt.

Here’s what ordinary people like Virginia need to know.

If you’re already retired, you can shift your retirement savings to a more responsible alternative right now. There’s no penalty for moving the money, and a direct transfer to another retirement account keeps the entire process tax-free. The only exceptions are annuities, which you may not be able to move. (Each annuity contract is specific, and it’s best to ask an investment advisor to make sense of your options.)

If you’re still working and locked into an employer-sponsored plan, it’s complicated — but not impossible — to move your money. Here are three ways to do it:

• • You may roll over money from any retirement account you have from a previous employer into a new fund.
  • Your employer may match your monthly retirement contribution up to a certain amount, and that’s great. But lots of people make additional contributions every month — beyond the match rate. That money is yours, and you can decide to invest it in fossil-free funds.
  • About half of all retirement plans include a self-directed brokerage option, often called a brokerage window, which offers a wide range of investments. If your plan offers one, you can usually move your existing balances to fossil-free funds within that window, while staying within your employer’s plan.

Finding the right investment mix for your specific goals and values is the next hurdle. If you want to retire early and you don’t want any of your savings in nuclear power, you’ll have a different set of priorities from your neighbor, who wants to keep working and doesn’t have strong feelings about nuclear energy.

The best option if you already have a decent nest egg is to hire a financial advisor knowledgeable about socially responsible investing. These experts will help you to articulate your priorities, make financial projections, and help you with the nuts and bolts of moving your accounts. Most financial advisors set minimums — $100,000 or $500,000 for a household, for example — though there are some that will invest as little as $5,000 in fossil-free options for you. Advisors typically charge you a percentage of your savings annually. There are a few advisors who charge a flat fee by the hour, no matter how much money you have to invest. Harry Moran, founder of Sustainable Wealth Advisors, who recently spoke with TIAA-Divest, urges prospective clients to choose an advisor who is a fiduciary — that is, legally obligated to avoid conflicts of interest. That means they won’t earn commissions on the funds they recommend to you.

If hiring a financial advisor is out of your reach, you can still make informed choices. Start by opening up Fossil Free Funds, a free and well-respected resource regularly updated by the nonprofit organization As You Sow that grades mutual funds and ETFs by their exposure to fossil fuels. The front page allows you to click on “top-rated funds” to see a list of carefully vetted alternatives. Here you can learn how much each fund invests not only in fossil fuels but also in deforestation, guns, weapons, prisons, and gender equality.

To make sure that your portfolio is diversified enough to protect you against big shocks to the market, search for “balanced” funds, which combine stocks and bonds. (Bonds won’t offer you huge returns, but they will protect you from major market downturns. The standard combination is 60% stocks and 40% bonds.) Once you’ve found a few options you like, you can compare their rates of return by typing the fund names into Fidelity’s “Mutual Funds Research” page or Vanguard’s “Compare ETFS and Mutual Funds” page, which can tell you how well each fund has performed over one, five, and 10 years. The past is no guarantee of future returns, but comparing the fossil-fuel options to your existing accounts will give you a rough sense of how much you stand to lose — or gain — by making the switch.

Virginia successfully moved her retirement savings, except her annuities, to fossil-free investments this year. She’s relieved to have moved her own money, but she still worries about not only her own children and grandchildren, but “all generations to come, especially the most vulnerable among us.” She hopes more people will join the growing chorus of people raising their voices against fossil fuels in retirement portfolios.

Moving our money is one way to show that we really mean it.

And if enough of us do that, the system might also move — for example, by updating the GISC codes, which were last revised in 2023 to reflect major changes in the real estate, retail, and transportation industries.

After all, the energy industry is changing with the times. It’s time for the investment field to catch up.

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The post Why It’s Hard to Invest Your Retirement Sustainably — and How You Can Overcome the Obstacles appeared first on The Revelator.

Liz Slooten couldn’t believe how many dead dolphins she was seeing. It was 1984, and the New Zealand-based zoology student was just beginning to study the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world. Now corpses were washing ashore in alarming numbers. Most were found entangled in fishing nets. For others, the cause of death was a mystery.

“We started asking the question, what the hell’s going on here?” Slooten remembers.

More than 40 years later, she’s still asking uncomfortable questions.

Recently retired from the University of Otago, Slooten is a leading expert on the endangered Hector’s dolphin (Cephalorhynchus hectori). As of 2024, there are only 15,000 of these miniature dolphins left. A closely related subspecies, Māui’s dolphin (C. h. maui), teeters on the brink of extinction with fewer than 50 remaining.

An endangered male Hector’s dolphin, around five feet long, jumps out of the water off the coast of South Island in New Zealand. Credit: Steve Dawson, New Zealand Whale and Dolphin Trust

There has long been debate whether Māui and Hector are separate species, but a 2002 study presented genetic analysis confirming that Māui is a subspecies of Hector’s with a bigger skull.

Māui live in the shallow water along the northwest coast of New Zealand’s North Island, at least 100 miles away from the home waters of Hector’s dolphins, in the shallows off South Island.

Both mammals still face the threat of entanglement from set nets and trawling, as fishing has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry in New Zealand, according to a recent report from the International Whaling Commission.

Established in 1946, the International Whaling Commission recommends conservation measures for both whale and dolphin populations. Its scientific committee also conducts population estimates on animals, including Māui dolphins, who are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Just this March a dead juvenile Māui dolphin appeared along the shore of Port Waikato, a rural coastal town on the North Island of New Zealand just over 90 kilometers (56 miles) from Auckland. The remains were so decomposed that officials were unable to determine a cause of death and were initially unclear on whether it was a Hector or, as DNA later confirmed, a Māui.

“It was heartbreaking and really concerning,” says Christine Rose, the founder and chair of Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting both the country’s endemic dolphins. “We feel it in a visceral sense every time we get a report of a dolphin dying or being killed. Those small populations, with Māui in particular, it’s particularly tragic.”

Both dolphin subspecies, known for their fins shaped like Mickey Mouse ears, are protected under the Marine Mammals Protection Act passed in 1978. This New Zealand law works to preserve all animals in the country’s waters, prohibiting people from harming or killing them without a permit.

On-Board Monitoring

In October 2023, as Māui and Hector’s populations reached dire levels, New Zealand turned to alternative conservation methods by introducing electronic monitoring or cameras on board to watch for dolphins caught in nets.

That bycatch appears to be increasing. In the first year, fishermen reported 12 Hector’s dolphins found dead in trawling nets, later confirmed through camera footage. This is a stark increase: In the 30 years before cameras were put on board, onboard observers reported only two Hector’s dolphins in trawling nets and a single Māui caught in 2012.

The new figure may even be an undercount. Officials often rely on reports from fishermen before reviewing camera footage, and many fishermen do not report when a dolphin is caught, so bycatch numbers may be a conservative estimate, according to the International Whaling Commission report.

While fishermen are required to report when they find a dolphin in their net, they are exempt from “accidental capture.” They only face penalties if they are caught lying to officials in their report. Last March officials charged one South Island fisherman $5,000 after camera footage documented him cutting his nets and allowing a dead Hector’s dolphin to sink to the ocean floor. Initially, he told officials he had not caught any protected species.

This occurred years after the government declined to follow repeated advice from the IUCN and a request from the IWC to expand the no-net zone as far as 20 miles offshore and ban trawling in all dolphin habitats.

Despite calls to ban trawling in dolphin habitat, another former commercial fisherman, Nathan Hines, says, “As a fisherman, there’s never really any hate towards the dolphins themselves.” Hines started his fishing career by working on a wide range of fishing trawlers. During the past 10 years, he owned his own fishing vessel, where he was fishing the “heart of Hector dolphins’ habitat.”

“They’re always a highlight of my day,” Hines says. Lately, he’s been using dolphin acoustic deterrent devices, which are attached to fishing gear, releasing sounds and alerting marine mammals in hopes of reducing bycatch.

There are no requirements to use these devices in New Zealand, though.

Preserving the Subspecies

To try and push the government for stricter conservation efforts, a new generation of researchers is turning to genetic analysis, seeking better strategies for both dolphins. In a 2025 study, an Otago-based team reported it had sequenced the genomes of both dolphins and found no evidence they are interbreeding — an alarming conclusion for the much smaller Māui population.

“We’ve known that the Māui’s dolphin [has] been in trouble for many years,” says study co-author Sebastián Alvarez-Costes, a doctoral student at Otago. “Now we have evidence that they are completely separated. The authorities need the most evidence that you can give them about the populations to then act and protect them.”

 

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Māui’s dolphins split from Hector’s as global sea levels began to rise after the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago, when the passage between New Zealand’s two main islands became too deep for the dolphins to comfortably traverse, according to the study.

Despite the extensive genetic evidence that Māui’s and Hectors are separate subspecies, Shane Jones, a member of parliament and the New Zealand Fisheries Minister, continues to deny Māui’s existence, a claim he first stated in 2020.

“There is no Māui’s dolphins,” Jones reiterated on NewstalkZB, a New Zealand-based radio network in September 2025.

That same month Jones implemented an overnight three-month blanket ban on set-net fishing along the Otago coastline on the Southern half of the South Island to reduce the amount of bycatch of another endangered species also endemic to the country, the yellow-eyed penguin, known as hoiho. He then extended the ban an additional nine months.

On the radio show, Jones said the issue of Māui’s conservation is different, because “there is no such thing,” despite evidence showing otherwise. Jones did not respond to The Revelator’s request to comment.

Māui’s dolphins are slightly larger than Hectors and 40% less genetically diverse due to their isolation and small numbers, the study found. This makes them highly susceptible to the risks of inbreeding, including reproductive failure and diseases like toxoplasmosis. The International Whaling Commission report did find that the threat of toxoplasmosis, which killed two Māui’s dolphins in 2013, is declining.

The population is now so small, though, that “every single dolphin mortality is significant,” says Chris Parsons, an independent dolphin researcher who was not involved in the study.

The tragedies go beyond the dolphins themselves. They are regarded by the Indigenous Māori people as Taonga, a word meaning “treasure” that the Māori apply to anything that carries cultural significance.

“The Tribes have responsibilities of looking after the dolphins,” says Alana Alexander, a dolphin researcher and study author who has Tribal lineage and says this influences her work. “It heightens my sense of obligations to making sure that what I do is both useful for the dolphins but also for the Tribes.”

To try and push for better efforts beyond the conservation efforts that got their start in 1986 — largely based on research by Slooten, who was just starting her doctoral studies at the time — Rose’s group is now taking matters internationally. This January Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade to push the U.S. government to enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act and ban the importation of seafood from any foreign fishery that harms or kills marine mammals in excess of U.S. standards.

Protecting these dolphins is a multigenerational effort. Back when Slooten first started her studies, her team autopsied 61 dolphins between 1984 and 1986. Ten were found on beaches with no known cause of death, and 51 dolphins were caught in fishing nets. Interviews with fishers confirmed the problem.

“It became immediately clear: There was no way that that was sustainable,” Slooten says.

The rules that Slooten originally helped instill have helped somewhat, slowing population decline, and the remaining Māui dolphins are younger, a median age of eight years old as of 2021, a hopeful sign of population recovery, according to Rochelle Constantine, another study author. But overall population levels haven’t rebounded.

Part of the problem is that these dolphins, which researchers thought primarily stayed within seven miles of the coast, now stray as far as 20 miles offshore in some areas — beyond the government-determined protected areas — where they are threatened by all sorts of fishing-related activities, including gill, set and trawling nets, as well as seismic testing, mining, and tourism.

Future of Conservation

For Māui’s dolphins the situation has never been more dire. Even standard efforts like captive breeding may be too risky to implement, as the stress of capturing the animals can sometimes kill them, as it did during a tragic incident with critically endangered vaquita dolphins, according to Slooten.

Researchers say we need to stop using fishing nets in Hector’s and Māui’s habitat. If we do not, the ultimate risk is extinction, which could have cascading effects on food webs in coastal waters.

“You [are] basically removing one of the most important predators,” Alvarez-Costes says. “You are losing history and a species that is sacred for the local community.”

Hines says he thinks we could develop better deterrent devices. “I believe with the right research and the right money put into it, it wouldn’t be hard to get that interactions with Hector’s dolphins down to zero, and then everyone wins.”

It’s unclear if the government will move forward with these recommendations. A few months ago, Slooten and other researchers met and discussed the dolphins’ risk assessment. With their findings, they could implement new conservation efforts, but the next International Whaling Commission meeting isn’t until 2028, two years from now.

Māui dolphins do not have time to wait.

“They could go extinct at any time. They’re just treading water,” Constantine says.

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

The Te Awa Tupua Act: An Inspiration for Communities to Take Responsibility for Their Ecosystems

The post Another Māui Dolphin Dies as Scientists Search Their DNA for a Path to Survival appeared first on The Revelator.

This story was originally reported by Jenae Barnes, Climate Reporter of The 19th. Meet Jenae and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. Scientists say there’s no evidence it harms the environment or people.

While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans’ water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.

“What if I were to tell you that every time you fill up a glass of water at your kitchen sink from the tap, you were actually *drinking* someone else’s abortion,” influencer Isabel Brown wrote in an Instagram post in May. In the accompanying video, the Gen Z conservative content creator, who has more than 1 million followers on her platform, talks to Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, a national anti-abortion organization, and contends that anti-abortion medication is “poisoning” the water.

The claim isn’t new. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have argued that abortion medications, primarily mifepristone, pollute the environment and put pregnant people’s health at risk. But the argument has now become part of a widespread and often coordinated effort to create federal and state policy that further suppresses abortion access.

On June 5, 14 Republican state attorneys general and 19 GOP lawmakers in Congress urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to classify and regulate mifepristone as a water contaminant. In two concurrent letters, officials argued that the abortion medication, part of a safe and effective two-drug regimen to terminate pregnancies, is “a growing threat to the country’s waterways” and violates the Safe Drinking Water Act.

One letter was signed by attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. The other letter, led by Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, made similar claims and was signed by 18 other GOP lawmakers.

Environmental health experts have consistently said there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication causes harm to the environment — or to humans. Both reproductive rights advocates and environmental scientists have said that the argument co-opts environmental policy as a pathway to weaponize and stigmatize health care.

“This is really part of a broader effort to restrict access to medication abortion,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports reproductive rights. She said anti-abortion activists are increasingly turning to “every lever they can” as medication abortion has become the largest share of abortion care nationwide. Medication abortion accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the United States in 2023, according to Guttmacher Institute data.

Does Oral Abortion Medication Really End Up in Drinking Water?

Anti-abortion advocates contend that over 50 tons of medical waste “including blood, placental tissue, and human remains” are flushed into water systems each year as a result of these drugs. They argue high concentration of the elements of mifepristone in water, specifically a hormone called progesterone, disrupts and reduces fertility in women. They also say that previous results of federal testing of mifepristone’s environmental impact are outdated.

Environmental health experts dismiss these claims. These experts consistently point out that there is no scientific basis for treating mifepristone or other abortion medication as a water contaminant. Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out that mifepristone is used by a small fraction of the population and is typically taken as a one-time dose. By comparison, many pharmaceuticals taken daily by tens of millions of Americans enter wastewater systems in far greater quantities. He also noted that mifepristone was not included among nearly 700 pharmaceutical compounds the EPA previously screened for potential water contamination concerns.

Instead, Donley described the effort as an attempt to use environmental concerns as a pretext for limiting reproductive rights. He noted that while proponents are seeking to add mifepristone to the EPA’s 6th Contaminant Candidate List (CCL6), a preliminary list of substances that could potentially be considered for future drinking water regulation, placement on the list would not itself regulate the drug but could begin a lengthy review process.

Donley added that focusing on mifepristone distracts from well-documented water quality threats, including PFAS — known as forever chemicals — pesticides, lead and nitrate contamination.

“There are legitimate water quality threats that we need to attack and rectify in a regulatory manner. And then there are things that are out in the left field that just distract people,” Donley said.

Where Did This Argument Come From and Why Is It Gaining Traction Again Now?

In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tested for the environmental effects of mifepristone and found “no significant impact.” In the June letter, lawmakers cite the FDA study, and urge “reconsideration” of potential harm to the environment.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion, opponents have increasingly focused on limiting access to abortion medication and prescribing it through telehealth, which has become a critical pathway for people living in states with abortion bans.

But anti-abortion groups have ramped up efforts during the second Trump administration to advocate for the official classification of mifepristone as a water contaminant.

Last November, Students for Life of America (SFLA), a national anti-abortion group, met with the EPA to advocate for adding mifepristone to the CCL6 as the agency carried out a routine update to a separate list of health benchmarks for pharmaceuticals that must be tracked in drinking water.

The coordinated letters in June were timed toward the EPA’s 60-day comment period, which began in April and allowed members of the public to submit their thoughts on draft proposals to be reviewed by the agency.

“SFLA asks that mifepristone be tracked, given the reasonable cause for concern that regular and ongoing exposure to a progesterone blocker is impacting public health, endangered species, and the environment,” the anti-abortion group said in a statement on their website, adding that the group plans to take on the issue in every state. “You don’t have to be pro-life to want clean drinking water. You don’t have to be pro-life to be concerned that we are being ‘microdosed’ by progesterone blockers, which are a factor in rising infertility.”

The SFLA said it collected over 1,700 public comments to send to the EPA, and helped spearhead the 14-state campaign of letters from attorneys general to the EPA ahead of its public comment period for the CCL6.

The draft for the CCL6 received nearly 22,000 public comments before closing on June 5, public records show.

How Are Lawmakers Trying to Change Environmental Abortion Policies?

In 2025, anti-abortion policymakers introduced nine bills in seven states tying medication abortion to water pollution, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That same year, 25 members of Congress sent a similar letter asking the EPA to monitor for environmental harms of mifepristone. This March, U.S. Rep Mary Miller, a Republican from Illinois, introduced a Clean Water for All Life Act, citing similar claims of environmental degradation from abortion medication.

According to Bernstein and Guttmacher state policy adviser Kimya Forouzan, some proposals would require state agencies to test wastewater for abortion medications. Others would require patients to use so-called “catch kits” and medical waste bags to collect and return pregnancy tissue after taking abortion medication. Some bills would create liability for drug manufacturers if abortion medications were detected in wastewater.

While the bills vary, abortion rights advocates say they share a common goal: creating additional barriers to medication abortion access.

“The CCL is one part of a broad regulatory process. This draft list is then used to inform another list, which determines which contaminants are monitored and regulated, but the surveillance really does happen at a municipality and then state level,” Bernstein said, adding: “So this would be setting federal benchmarks for localities to monitor in their wastewater.”

To date, neither President Donald Trump nor EPA chief Lee Zeldin have explicitly spoken to any health risks of mifepristone in water. But the president and leading administration officials’ decision to stay silent on the issue may increase pressure from anti-abortion advocates, according to Bernstein.

“We anticipate that disinformation campaigns surrounding mifepristone, including these false claims on the environmental impact, will continue to escalate — particularly as abortion opponents are frustrated at a perceived lack of action by the Trump administration,” Bernstein told The 19th. “We know, however, that restricting access to abortion is politically unfavorable, and candidates may be hesitant to focus on these efforts before the midterm elections.

What Are the Stakes for Pregnant People?

As abortion rights and access have shrunk, Forouzan said that medication abortion has become a “lifeline” for many people seeking care after Dobbs, particularly through telehealth providers operating under shield laws, which are state-by-state legal protections to safeguard practitioners from being sued by states with abortion bans. As a result, anti-abortion officials at the state and federal level have increasingly focused on restricting the remaining ways people can access abortion care.

Forouzan said the push to monitor abortion medication in wastewater contributes to a broader “culture of surveillance” surrounding abortion. She said proposals to test wastewater for mifepristone raise concerns about how such monitoring data could eventually be used and whether it could increase scrutiny of people who obtain medication abortions.

Do These Claims Have the Potential to Affect Federal Policy?

The potential of environmental harms continues to shape policy for abortion and anti-abortion advocates. On the anniversary of Dobbs, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat from Colorado, submitted a resolution to address the disinformation campaign, saying that water systems should “not be weaponized for the purposes of surveilling, tracking, or detecting use of, stigmatizing, and further restricting access to medication abortion care.”

Advocates also point to what they see as a contradiction in the campaign. Many of the same advocates and elected officials who support mifepristone monitoring have opposed other environmental hazard regulations. For example, in Indiana, where the state’s attorney general co-signed the letter, state lawmakers recently passed legislation to deregulate the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, an agency in charge of limiting pollution in the state’s air, water and soil.

The EPA has already taken action to recommend states begin testing drinking water for abortion medications. In April, the agency released a list of 374 drugs that states should monitor. While it does not include mifepristone, it does include other medications used in abortions such as misoprostol and methotrexate, commonly used in daily birth control and the NuvaRing contraceptive. It’s the first time the agency has designated pharmaceuticals as a contaminant group, according to an April press release.

The EPA did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment.

The EPA’s comment period allowed 60 days for the public to weigh in on the list before agency staff began reviewing the feedback and finalizing. Now that the June comment period has closed, whether the agency will ultimately add the medication to the list remains uncertain. However, when federal regulators previously reviewed environmental concerns related to mifepristone, they found no evidence warranting restrictions, according to Bernstein.

Bernstein and Forouzan said that anti-abortion states and lawmakers often learn from each other in order to pass bills in their respective states. Forouzan added these efforts work “parallel” to federal bill proposals, both with the same goal: to restrict further access.

“Its really just to restrict access to mifepristone and specifically to roll back requirements to force in-person dispensation, which would really limit access to a lot of folks.”

Four years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, reproductive advocates say the evolution of anti-abortion campaigns continue to “severely restrict” access to care across the country. Thirteen states currently enforce total bans, and 6 explicitly prohibit telehealth use to provide abortion pills, according to Guttmacher Institute.

“It’s contributing to this culture of surveillance around medication abortion at a time when that is already increasing, and folks, especially in banned states, are facing increasing fear of criminalization,” Bernstein said. “There are concerns whether it will be eventually used for the criminalization of patients, in addition to creating a broader restriction of mifepristone and perpetuating these myths.”

The post No, Drinking Water Isn’t Contaminated By Abortion Pills appeared first on The Revelator.

The past 30-40 years have been hard on people and their relationships with neighbors and communities. Powerful interests have driven a wedge between people and divided us by promoting self-centeredness and antisocial beliefs. But there are many smart ways we can push this anti-community thinking with grace and empowerment — including the promotion of green spaces.

Dear Dr. Green,

My town has been pretty good about preserving green spaces, but lately the more MAGA-influenced people in town object (strongly!) to spending any tax dollars on things that don’t benefit them directly. Isn’t there evidence that green space psychologically benefits a community? Lower crime, less stress, better health, etc.?

 

Hello Friend,

If only more people would be as caring about their communities. Many people reading this might feel the same frustration and puzzlement over community members who don’t seem to care about community resources.

Yes, there’s strong evidence that green spaces and environmentally sound civil engineering in towns and cities create more wholesome places to live for everyone.

Sadly, cash-strapped municipal governments often see funding for green spaces as the easiest thing to cut from annual budgets. That’s why so many local parks (not to mention national public lands) are in disrepair or unsafe. But an analysis published this May by the Trust for Public Land found every dollar invested in local parks and recreation generates at least $3 in economic benefits, including several ways they help people psychologically.

Let’s look at some science-based arguments for green spaces as a community benefit and help make a case for spending community resources.

The evidence that green space psychologically benefits communities — and the scientific evidence that supports community funding:

Green spaces  can be defined as public places where open areas are dedicated to community benefit. These can include parks, designated trails, playgrounds, shade trees, dog parks, and outdoor seating. Productive green spaces improve air and water quality and support local pollinators and other wildlife.

Image by Christel from Pixabay

 

 

A widely cited study published in 2018 detailed the community benefits of green spaces on mental and physical health. Further scientific studies clearly show that daily exposure to green spaces has been linked to improved physical and mental well-being, reduced levels of stress, enhanced brain function, and increased physical activity. Green spaces also reduce violent crime, anxieties, and fears by creating a place for communities to get together and feel safe while outdoors. The effect has been documented worldwide. See our resource list below for more information.

Parks and forests get the most attention when it comes to green spaces, but here are some other ideas for green spaces to offer to your town or city council support, some of which may not even require funding from local governments:

• Community Gardens are shared parcels of land cultivated by a group of people rather than a single individual. These spaces allow participants to grow fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers, while promoting food security, social interaction, and environmental sustainability.

Image by Tharushi Jayawardana from Pixabay

• Individual Plots are parcels of land subdivided into smaller sections and each gardener or a family is responsible for managing their own plot and keeps the harvest it yields.
• Collective/Cooperative Gardens are land parcels that are tended by a community group. All participants share the labor, and the harvest belongs to everyone.
• Youth Gardens can provide education for youth and are maintained by schools, universities, or nonprofits specifically to teach children about nature, nutrition, and agriculture in a social setting.

Image by Fabien from Pixabay

 

• Green Roofs and Walls involves planting vegetation on top of buildings or vertically on facades and lining streets with trees to encourage walking and cool down summer heat that rises at night from cement and asphalt.

Image by Fabien from Pixabay

• Protected Nature Preserves can be designed to conserve native and local flora and fauna plus provide education about them.

These kinds of green spaces are important for creating a pleasant living space for the whole community and improving the environment in your locale. Green spaces also provide community connection by gathering people together, reducing isolation, and fostering a sense of shared civic pride. The health and well-being of entire communities is boosted through promotion of outdoor physical activity, stress reduction, education, and enhanced mental health.

Coming up:

Shortly after submitting their original question, this week’s reader followed up and asked:

I guess my secondary question is, can sharing this science help persuade these anti-tax activists?

We’ll address that question in our next column, where we’ll learn about how to make a strong case for the mutually beneficial science behind local green spaces (and just about any other environmental initiative). We’ll explore how to win hearts and minds of anti-tax opposition through engaging, positive public speaking, and presentations at town council meetings to justify the need for community green spaces.

Looking forward to it,

Dr. Green

What are you struggling with as a dedicated environmentalist? Use the form below to send your questions and success stories.

All participants are anonymous. Even Dr. Green has no idea who you are.

Send Dr. Green your questions and stories below:

All questions are anonymous and considered intended for publication. Individual replies are not possible.

Disclaimer: This column is not a replacement for therapy, and the advice given is educational in nature, not a replacement for professional psychological or psychiatric therapy. This is a peer-driven support effort by The Revelator to inform and build community with environmental and wildlife defenders.

If you are feeling critically depressed and suicidal, it’s time to immediately find professional help. Go to your closest emergency room or call the following numbers to get immediate help in your area:

SUICIDE HOTLINES

Worldwide: http://www.befrienders.org/support/

United Kingdom: http://www.samaritans.org

USA: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

1-800-273-TALK

Resources:

“The Importance of Greenspace for Mental Health.” Barton J, Rogerson M. The importance of greenspace for mental health. BJPsych Int. 2017 Nov 1;14(4):79-81. doi: 10.1192/s2056474000002051. PMID: 29093955; PMCID: PMC5663018.

“Who Heals the Earth’s Healers? Ways to Avert Burnout for Environmental Advocates,” The Revelator, May 2025

“Dr. Green: Why Some People and Groups Become Resistant to Science”

“A comparative study of the physiological and psychological effects of forest bathing (Shinrin-yoku) on working age people with and without depressive tendencies.” Akemi Furuyashiki, et al., Environmental Health and Preventative Medicine, The Japanese Society for Hygiene.2019 Jun 22

Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness by Dr. Qing Li

Forest Bath  by Jen Barton and Felishia Henditirto, Magination Press — American Psychological Association. A children’s (5-9 years) picture book.

Environmental Psychology: An Introduction 2nd Edition

“The Effects of Forest Therapy on Immune Function” by Youngran Chae, Sunhee Lee, Youngmi Jo, Soyean Kang, Suyoun Park, and Hyoyoung Kang

“The Case for Green Space: A Cost-Effective Mental Health Resource” by Elizabeth Hoge, M.D. and Charlotte Wulf

 

The post Dr. Green: The Psychological and Social Benefits of Green Community Spaces appeared first on The Revelator.

Drive into the Samburu lands of northern Kenya and you’ll see a semiarid region dotted with high-end safari lodges and sprawling community conservancies. The nearby Samburu National Reserve attracts visitors from across the world and garners international recognition. Reports from nongovernmental organizations highlight millions of dollars invested throughout the region in wildlife protection, tourism enterprises, carbon markets, peacebuilding, and community initiatives.

But on these lands, the reality is far more complicated: Despite global acclaim and revenue flows, ordinary pastoralist households often remain cut off from the wealth generated by conservation.

Globally the question of who benefits from conservation has persisted for decades. In northern Kenya that question isn’t theoretical; it’s immediate and unresolved.

Under initiatives such as the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project, participating community conservancies — locally governed areas of community-owned land set aside for wildlife conservation alongside pastoral livelihoods — have generated substantial revenues though “carbon credits” sales. Since 2013 the project has generated millions of dollars in revenue from carbon credits verified under the Verra standard. In 2022 14 conservancies each reportedly received disbursements of approximately $324,000. According to publicly available project materials, these funds were intended to support rangeland management and community projects in education, water, and health.

Yet these financial flows sit uneasily alongside everyday realities. Many pastoralist households remain economically vulnerable, shaped by recurrent drought, livestock loss, and limited livelihood diversification. Women and children still walk long distances for water. Young people depend on precarious wage labor in landscapes marketed globally as models of sustainability.

This tension points to a deeper structural problem: While conservancies generate significant conservation revenue, the mechanisms through which that value reaches ordinary households remain weak, uneven, and difficult to trace.

Tourism revenues illustrate this imbalance clearly. High-end lodges within conservancies charge between $490 and $2,000 per person per night, while even lower-end lodges charge patrons hundreds of dollars. Entry fees for foreign tourists visiting national reserves range from $70-85 per 24 hours, paid to the county government of Samburu. Conservancies also generate income through concession agreements, lease payments, bed-night fees, and landing fees at airstrips on community land.

Despite these revenue streams, broad-based household benefit remains limited. Research across Kenya’s rangelands indicates that a minority of households earn income from conservancy employment, and those earnings typically constitute a modest share of overall livelihoods. Publicly accessible information on how revenue is distributed is scarce. Without transparency, even educated observers struggle to reconcile marketed benefits with lived realities.

Ownership structures further shape these outcomes. Many lodges operating on community land are owned or managed by foreign hospitality companies, often in partnership with international investors. Communities participate primarily through lease agreements negotiated by conservancy institutions. In exchange they receive fixed payments, employment opportunities, and funding for community projects. However, they rarely hold equity or control over profit distribution.

This pattern mirrors a common dynamic across the Global South: Economic value generated from local land often leaks outward, leaving communities with a small fraction of the wealth produced on their ancestral lands.

And the issue extends beyond conservancies. Samburu National Reserve generates substantial revenue through tourism, yet the funds flow into county government accounts. Decades of conservation investment have not fundamentally altered structural poverty among communities living closest to protected areas.

Despite progressive frameworks meant to protect community land and its people, the promise often remains unrealized. In many conservancies questions around membership remain unresolved, with some community members unclear about their recognition within conservancy structures despite their birthrights on the ancestral land. This uncertainty raises deeper questions about governance, legitimacy, and who truly has a voice in decisions affecting land and community livelihoods, even as formal frameworks exist to safeguard these rights.

Research across rangeland regions in Kenya shows that benefits frequently accrue disproportionately to board members, politically connected actors, and institutional intermediaries. Women, youth, casual laborers, and land-poor households — despite bearing the costs of wildlife predation, grazing restrictions, and mobility constraints — often receive modest or irregular returns. Conservation success is routinely measured in amount of land protected, wildlife populations stabilized, and dollars mobilized, but rarely in terms of household-level well-being, despite global frameworks (such as the Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) that advocate for doing exactly that.

Recent developments have brought these tensions into sharper focus. Legal challenges to conservancy governance, the withdrawal of key donors from conservation programs, and the suspension of major carbon credit certification in northern Kenya have exposed underlying concerns around consent, transparency, and benefit sharing. Meetings are held and “benefits announced,” but financial flows from tourism, “carbon markets,” and donors rarely reach households in meaningful ways.

Without transparency, benefit-sharing risks being symbolic rather than substantive.

Equity in benefit distribution is central to conservation legitimacy. Without clearer accountability, conservation risks reproducing extractive dynamics it claims to replace, where land and wildlife generate global value while local communities remain marginalized.

Debates over equity in conservation are not new; for decades scholars and practitioners have questioned whether community-based models genuinely redistribute benefits or just reproduce inequality. Recent global commitments at the IUCN World Conservation Congress 2025 have reinforced this principle, but implementation continues to lag.

Rethinking equity does not mean abandoning community conservancies. In the face of accelerating biodiversity loss, climate change, and constrained public funding, they remain one of the most viable conservation models. But their long-term legitimacy depends on whether they deliver not only ecological outcomes, but fair and measurable social benefits.

A more equitable approach requires concrete shifts. Conservancies and associated partners must adopt transparent, publicly accessible financial reporting that tracks how revenues translate into household-level benefits. Benefit-sharing mechanisms should extend beyond land ownership alone to include broader community members, particularly women and youth. Governance structures must ensure meaningful participation, not just formal representation. Finally, conservation planning must explicitly account for opportunity costs, including restriction on grazing and land use.

Encouragingly, emerging models in parts of Kenya have begun experimenting with more direct household payments, stronger community ownership structures, and transparent financial accountability. While still evolving, these examples demonstrate that alternative approaches are possible.

Pastoralist landscapes have sustained wildlife and cultural systems for generations. Their communities should not remain economically marginalized within conservation’s globally celebrated success stories.

Samburu pastoralists sing and dance at the base of Mount Ololokwe in Northern Kenya. Photo by Isaya Lemerketo.

A personal note: I grew up in a village of 25 households and around 150 people, located less than a mile from the main entry to Samburu National Reserve. By now I would expect to see even a single anecdote of someone’s life improving directly from conservancies. I have not. Most of these households still live in insecure housing, struggle to pay for their children’s schools fees, and endure degraded rangelands for their livestock.

If Kenya’s conservancy model is to endure, it must move beyond measuring success in amounts of land protected or dollars generated and confront the more difficult but necessary question: Who truly benefits?

 

The post Who Really Benefits from Community Conservancies? Rethinking Equity in Kenya’s Conservation Model appeared first on The Revelator.

From the edge of a cliff in southern Peru, I watched as three Humboldt penguins made their way from their nests down a steep rocky slope, slipping at times, stopping and then starting again, tentatively navigating around sunbathing sea lions until they arrived, an hour later, on a precipice overlooking crashing waves, where they finally belly flopped into the water.

Penguins skirting sea lions. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission.

That hour was more exciting than any hour of television, their successful dive into the ocean better than any Hollywood ending.

I could see why so many people love penguins. They exhibit qualities we often see in ourselves: Penguins are social, vocal, occasionally clumsy, and organized around parental units. Penguins, like us, try to mate for life. When they young they practice co-parenting; one penguin stays at home with the chicks while the other forages. They switch roles, a child-rearing tag team, until the chicks leave home.

That’s why this journey into the sea — and back again — is so dramatic and so critical. Should one penguin fail to forage and return in time to relieve their partner, the other parent is forced to abandon the nest, leaving chicks to fend for themselves, often to die, a generation lost.

And it is here, on the desert cliffs of Punta San Juan, that penguins who were once part of the largest Humboldt colony on the planet take a valiant stand against extinction.

Punta San Juan is a small, jagged peninsula along the Peruvian coast, 320 miles south of Lima. I traveled here in May to spend time with penguin researchers at the Punta San Juan research station, which is funded by a consortium of zoos in the United States in collaboration with Cayetano Heredia University in Lima. I spent three days shadowing Kevin Farfán as he and his small team of interns monitored penguins across more than a dozen locations.

Along the way I became vividly aware of the many threats these penguins face.

A pair of Humboldts. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission. The Humble Humboldt

Unlike the remote Antarctic penguins of Happy Feet and March of the Penguins, most of the 18 penguin species on this planet live uncomfortably close to humans, along the southern coastlines of South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti) is one of the four “banded” penguins, known for distinctive black patterns that curve across their chests like upside-down horseshoes. The other banded species are African, Galápagos, and Magellanic penguins. Years ago I visited the Patagonian coast of Argentina where a tourist trail winds through a colony of tens of thousands of Magellanic penguins — but among Humboldts, colonies typically number fewer than 500, scattered across 20 or so islands along the coasts of Peru and Chile.

What surprised me most about Humboldts was how skittish they were around humans, as if they were trying to escape prying eyes or just terribly modest. While Magellanics are mostly unfazed by human researchers and paparazzi, Humboldts will make themselves scarce the moment they spot a human, even from a safe distance.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this was less instinct than learned behavior. Humboldts were once killed in great numbers by nearby guano harvesters in need of an easy meal. It was guano — bird excrement — that brought humans to bird colonies for hundreds of years, and this mission continues even today.

Walking on Guano

The Punta San Juan research station sits next to a mile-long, decaying wall that divides the peninsula from the mainland. It was constructed back in the 1940s to keep predators away from the hundreds of thousands of seabirds that blanketed the peninsula, primarily the guanay cormorant, named after the “white gold” the birds left behind in great quantities.

This was not an act of conservation as much a business decision. Bird guano is the one of the planet’s best fertilizers, high in both nitrogen and phosphorous. Peru has harvested guano for export around the world since the 1800s, and it was once the country’s most valuable commodity.

Even today the number of researchers at Punta San Juan is dwarfed by the number of guano harvesters. While harvesting is now strictly regulated — the central plateau where penguins cross from nests to sea remains off limits — AGRORURAL, the government agency that manages harvesting, has pushed to ease restrictions. Since avian flu decimated the seabird population in 2023, there are no more guanay cormorants on the plateau, and pelicans are only just beginning to return. This void has heightened the call for more aggressive harvesting.

While I was there, I spoke with one of the employees of AGRORURAL; when I lamented the loss of the cormorants, she said, “This is good news. Because now we can harvest more guano.”

Bags of guano ready to ship. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission.

Today most of the guano is used domestically to supply the growing international demand for organic food. While synthetic fertilizers may be far less expensive, it is the demand for organic food in wealthier countries that fuels demand for guano. The organic Peruvian coffee we enjoy — as well as table grapes, asparagus, quinoa, and more — may well have been fertilized by birds that once lived on Punta San Juan.

Counting Penguins

Every morning the penguin researchers are up before dawn to make their separate treks to more than a dozen cliffside overlooks. Each location is given a label, such as S2, for the second beach on the southern side of the peninsula. At each stop they count penguins at every nest (via binoculars or spotting scope) and, while I visited during May’s breeding season, try to count eggs within the nests. When food is abundant, a Humboldt penguin couple will raise two chicks.

Walking with Kevin across the plateau felt like exploring another planet. First there was the smell, an acrid odor of guano that stung my eyes and clung to my clothing (we were required to change out of our field clothes after every outing). Then there was the landscape, bleached white and mostly flat, the layers of dried guano spongy under my shoes. Strong persistent winds whipped dust into my face. I realized on that first morning why so many of the guano harvesters wore masks.

We stopped at the edge of a cliff, where a small wooden hut functioned as a viewing blind. Inside, intern Sandra Alcantara was doing her morning counts. Using a handmade map for reference, she zoomed in on each nest and noted what she saw on a clipboard: which nests were occupied, whether there were one or two penguins, and any signs of eggs.

A viewing blind at Punta San Juan. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission.

The scene was alive with activity and noise. Down on the beach, hundreds of sea lions were play-fighting, swimming, or snoozing. Above them darted flocks of Inca terns, while pelicans glided above me. Turkey vultures perched along the cliff edges, on alert for any dying animal below.

On the opposing cliffs we could see penguin nests carved into the guano. Nearby more than 100 artificial nests created by researchers dotted the horizon like miniature cabanas. These nests were created to make up for the harvested guano, the loss of which prevents the penguins from nesting in the ground.

View from the blind. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission.

That morning Kevin brought a drone, which he used to photograph nests from above, the penguins unbothered by the buzzing bird over their heads. He was on the lookout for the numbers on metal tags they had banded onto a small number of birds. Each number unlocks a life story: the age of the penguin, the number of chicks raised, the preferred nesting spot. But not every number returns safely to shore.

While walking back to the station, I was jolted by an explosion in the distance. Kevin pointed to a large expanse of sand-colored mounds beyond the wall, created by the largest open-pit iron ore mine in Peru. Owned by China’s Shougang Group, the mine rattles the peninsula with daily explosions that, on occasion, send the penguins scurrying to sea.

Walking on the bones of pelicans and cormorants, hearing detonations in the distance, felt like living in a dystopian future.

That made it all the more remarkable that penguins continue to nest here. Yet the reason why they have nested here for thousands of years has less to do with the land itself, but what lies just off the coast — the richest marine ecosystem on the planet.

Abandoned cormorant nests. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission. Humboldt Feast (and Famine)

The Humboldt penguin shares its name with the Humboldt current, an ocean phenomenon that runs along the coastline of Chile and Peru, pushing up cold water from the deep. The process, known as upwelling, brings rich nutrients to the surface that feed anchovies and sardines and squid, who in turn provide an easy-to-reach buffet for penguins, seals, and countless other birds. On land the current is invisible except for the ever-present wind that powers it while keeping clouds and rain at bay.

The land may be desert, but the ocean is an oasis of life.

Humboldt penguin headed out sea at sunset. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission.

Humboldt penguins are endemic to this area due to its current; however, if there’s no current, there are no penguins.

That’s why periodic El Niño weather events can be so devastating. El Niños effectively shut down the airstream and, with it, the upwelling. Sardines and anchovies are forced to move deeper into the ocean in search of nutrients, and they swim out of reach for the penguins. In 1972, a major El Niño and overfishing crashed both the anchovy and seabird populations to such an extent the government got involved, regulating fishing and making the Humboldt penguins a protected species.

But these changes were too little too late; since then, climate change has resulted in more acute El Niño events, and the fishing industry (legal and illegal) continues to take its toll.

Remains of pelicans and cormorants on the plateau. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission.

The year 2023 was particularly grim for Punta San Juan. Not only did avian flu wipe out vast numbers of birds but an El Niño left the peninsula devoid of penguins for the first time in recorded history.

Penguins began to return a year later, albeit in diminished numbers. Twenty years ago, Punta San Juan was home to more than 5,000 penguins. When I visited in May just 300 remained.

It’s not just the ups and downs of the food supply that puts penguins in further danger. It’s the humans who compete with them for that same source of food.

Of Fishing Nets and Penguins

In my brief time at Punta San Juan, I noticed several small fishing boats just offshore, despite the protected status of the waters that surround the peninsula.

Yet the larger danger lurks even farther offshore, in unprotected waters, where industrial trawlers cast nets a mile long that sweep up hundreds of tons of anchovies and mackerel — the penguins’ main source of food.

The nets also catch the penguins themselves.

As Kevin’s team knows well, penguins don’t see the borders between protected and unprotected waters; they (like the boats) go where the fish are. When a team of marine researchers surveyed about 800 small-scale fishing operators in Peru and Chile during the 2023 fishing season, they found that more than 3,000 penguins were caught up in nets. And these numbers were conservative, not just because they did not include the larger fishing trawlers, but because many operators intentionally underreport bycatch.

Peru boasts one of the most highly regulated fishing industries on the planet, which allows these fisheries to label their catches as “sustainable” — a label that makes it onto the fish oil products we see on the shelves at Costco and Walmart.

Millions of Americans take fish oil supplements including, including 1 in 5 Americans over the age of 60, according to Harvard Medical School. And more than 20% of the world’s fish oil originates from waters shared by penguins along the coast of Peru. The fisheries based in a port just a mile from Punta San Juan reported 31 dead penguins in January 2023 — a month when penguins are most actively feeding chicks.

The penguins who elude fishing nets don’t have it any easier, as they compete with the trawlers for a declining food supply. Over the past year, approximately 5 million tons of fish, mostly anchovies, were pulled from Peruvian waters, most of it to supply the growing demand for supplements.

Yet human health need not come at the expense of animal health, because we don’t need fish oil to get our allotment of Omega-3s. Alternative sources such as flax seed oil, nuts, and other plant-based foods are even better: Many experts say that fish oil supplements offer dubious health benefits because the process of extracting mercury and other toxins from fish oils renders them minimally effective. The most potent alternative is lab-grown algae, which is free of contaminants and “statistically non-inferior compared to fish oil supplements,” according to recent research published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

Humboldts returning to the sea. Photo: John Yunker, used with permission. A Species on Edge

Two weeks after returning to the United States, I emailed Kevin and learned that the colony of 300 penguins had since fallen in half, primarily due to the acute El Niño now enveloping the region.

A drop such as this naturally leads to the question: How many Humboldt penguins are there across all of Peru and Chile? The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates 23,800 globally, labeling it a “vulnerable” species; yet given how quickly penguin populations can fluctuate, this label may be more optimistic than realistic.

The truth is we don’t know exactly how many Humboldt penguins there are. There aren’t enough researchers like Kevin and his team working across all the colonies to know with confidence how stable this species is.

Humboldt penguins live on the edge — of a continent and of a species. Every year their entire world can rise or fall based on factors outside of their control — fishing vessels, warmer waters, and humans taking the guano they use for nests.

On my last day there, we visited several cliffside nests, most of them empty. Kevin remained optimistic. He found several occupied nests with eggs, a sign that this colony may rebound yet again.

The researchers themselves remind me of the penguins — tenacious and tireless. Kevin and other researchers can protect these birds on land, he told me, but “We cannot protect them out there.”

We who live half a world away do have the power to protect the penguins out there — through the choices we make. The demand for seafood and fish oil supplements ensures that some penguins will die in nets. Remove the demand and more penguins stand a chance at making it home to their nests. And we can help protect penguins on land by seeking out imported organic food that doesn’t rely on guano.

We all have a role to play in protecting penguins on land and at sea; as with all animals, for penguins, peace begins on our plates.

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

Speak of the Devils: The Animals We Fear the Most Are Fading Away

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