The Revelator

At first glance, it looks almost like an embrace.

One coral fragment is pale, its branching form pressed against a smaller, richly colored counterpart. Nine weeks later, the pale fragment has regained its color. Seen against the black background, the transformation is unmistakable. Something living has made contact with something struggling, and the struggle has changed course.

I keep returning to the place where they meet.

There is a scientific explanation for what happens there. There is also an emotional response that arrives before the explanation, before the species’ name, before any understanding of the experiment. We recognize vulnerability. We recognize proximity. We see what looks like help.

Giving Recovery a Shape

The research behind this remarkable coral moment, led by Stanford doctoral student Danny Collins and captured in a series of photographs, concerns a particular kind of recovery. Bleached coral fragments placed in contact with healthy, genetically identical fragments fused tissues, allowing beneficial algae to move into the depleted coral. Recovery followed within weeks.

Photos © Danny Collins. Used with permission.

“We thought that some transfer could take place, but we never would have expected it to be so fast, clear, and beautiful,” Collins wrote in an email.

The paired photographs released with the study give that discovery a shape, a before and after. We can locate it, follow it, see where it begins. The point of contact becomes the center of the story.

For someone unfamiliar with coral biology, it also offers a way into science. Collins, whose background includes visual and media studies alongside marine science, was thinking about that invitation from the start.

Collins holding coral fragments. © Dan Griffin GG Films, used with permission

“I had a broad audience of all ages and backgrounds in my mind throughout this entire study,” he said. “I wanted everyone to be able to understand our study in just one image and have them say, ‘Wow, I get it.’”

The close view brings the coral into an intimate scale. Its textured surface becomes visible. The contrast between the fragments gives the eye somewhere to begin. The second photograph rewards the attention paid to the first.

When the Sequence Changes

For those accustomed to environmental before-and-after photographs, this sequence can feel almost disorienting. We know the usual direction. The forest becomes a clearing. The glacier retreats. The reef loses its color. “Before” holds abundance; “after” records what has been taken away.

Here, “after” means recovery.

The reversal does not diminish the importance of documenting destruction. Such photographs provide evidence, preserve memory, and make damage harder to deny. I would never want conservation to surrender that work. But I worry about what happens when loss becomes the only future our images teach us to anticipate.

If every sequence ends with less life, where do we learn to picture the work of repair?

An image of recovery makes room for a different question. Instead of stopping at what happened to the coral, we begin to wonder what helped it. Attention moves toward a process, toward the conditions that made a different outcome possible. There is still damage in the frame, but there is also something to investigate.

The Beauty Survives Explanation

And then there is the metaphor, which is difficult to resist.

Healthy coral comes to the rescue. It melds with its bleached counterpart. Life appears to pass across a boundary. Anyone who has ever needed another person during illness, grief, or exhaustion may find something familiar in that arrangement. The photographs seem to offer a small, wordless account of being helped.

The fragments are genetically identical, and their fusion is no evidence of compassion. The embrace is something I see.

The healthy coral extends its polyps underwater. © Danny Collins, used with permission

But Collins also finds meaning beyond the mechanism. “I find this represents the power and importance of contact, an idea that can be extended well beyond corals,” he said.

The apparent gesture has physical substance: Tissue connects, and beneficial algae move through it. The beauty survives explanation.

What One Coral Can Promise

A powerful photograph travels easily — and these generated headlines around the world. The qualifications attached to a scientific paper travel less reliably. These two panels offer a satisfying ending that the research itself cannot yet promise.

“I want people to recognize that these experiments were just done in the lab and we have not solved coral bleaching, the ocean is still getting warmer, but that this research opens a door to new possibilities for recovering corals that have already bleached,” Collins said.

Supplying a healthy genetic match for every bleached coral is not feasible at the scale that reefs require. The finding opens a research direction; making it useful in the ocean remains work ahead.

This coral does not owe us reassurance about the whole ocean. Its recovery is worth understanding without asking it to settle the fate of reefs.

Between Damaged and Lost

The photographs also ask us to reconsider the boundary between damaged and lost. To an unfamiliar eye, the pale fragment may already look finished. Its recovery exposes the risk in that assumption. A living thing can be in profound trouble while still retaining capacities we have not learned how to support.

What can still be done, by whom, under what conditions, and with what prospect of success? Those questions remain worth asking after the dramatic injury, when the headlines have moved on.

There is human labor beyond the edges of the photographs, too. Someone maintained the experiment, observed the changes, made the images, examined the evidence, and worked with colleagues to understand it. The apparent simplicity of the two panels compresses a process that requires time, skill, and resources.

Tissues bridge between the two coral fragments. © Danny Collins, used with permission

A useful public response would follow that work outward. Who supports it? What would the next experiment need? How can people help sustain the institutions, environmental protections, and communities on which conservation depends? The photograph opens those questions; communication needs to carry them further.

Otherwise, even the most moving image risks becoming another brief encounter in an endless scroll.

An “After” Worth Working Toward

There is something else missing from these photographs: a picture of the coral before it bleached.

The sequence begins with injury already present. We never see an original, undamaged condition against which to measure everything that follows. We enter the story at a moment when something has gone wrong, and the question is what happens next.

That feels familiar. Much of conservation begins in places already altered, with populations already diminished and relationships already disrupted. People arrive with concern, skills, and resources long after the opportunity to prevent all harm has passed. They must decide what remains possible from here.

Collins’ own description of the research begins in that uncertain territory. “This all started from a simple experiment that has blossomed into a fascinating deep dive with surprises at every corner,” he told me.

The finished photograph can conceal that uncertainty. Placing two moments beside each other makes the passage between them look almost inevitable. But the researchers did not begin with the second image in hand. They had to ask a question whose answer they could not yet see.

Anyone considering whether to support conservation faces some version of that problem. The outcome is unavailable when commitment is needed. A restored habitat cannot be photographed in advance. The work asks people to invest attention, money, and effort in a future that remains contingent.

Here, at least, we can see that an intervention was followed by recovery. That does not tell us how the next experiment will end. It gives the next question a basis.

It also makes me think about what we demand of restoration. An imagined return to an untouched world can be a powerful aspiration, but it can leave every achievable improvement looking inadequate. Historical conditions matter: they help us understand what has been lost and resist accepting impoverishment as normal. Yet the distance from those conditions cannot be the only measure of whether work is worth doing.

A damaged place may have a future worth protecting even when its past cannot be fully recovered. Deciding what that future could support requires evidence, local knowledge, and difficult choices about priorities. There is no photograph that can make those choices for us.

But this one offers a useful starting position. The injury has already happened. Something remains alive. Someone decides it is worth finding out what might help.

The second panel exists because that question was pursued.

A Reason to Stay

As an ocean conservationist, I want images like this to do more than provide a moment of relief. I want them to make people curious enough to stay, to learn the limits, to discover where their own abilities might be useful. Feeling something can be the beginning of participation if we make the next step visible and possible.

I return to the two panels and find the injury still there in the first. Nothing has been erased from the record. The second panel simply prevents the first from having the final word.

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

Ghost Reefs of 2083: The Paleontology of Color (A Speculative ‘Fiction’)

The post When ‘After’ Means Alive appeared first on The Revelator.

By Natasha Lindstaedt, University of Essex

Authoritarian regimes have a history of keeping information about escalating disasters secret, even when it could harm their own citizens.

With more weather-related disasters caused by climate change predicted, the issue of whether governments are willing to act faster to share information with neighboring nations is an increasing concern.

The signs are not positive. After the recent massive floods on the Nepal-Tibet border, Chinese state media tightly controlled reporting with a focus on rescue attempts, rather than devastation. It also heavily censored unofficial accounts.

Handheld and security camera footage that showed the destruction at the border appears to have vanished from Chinese media platforms.

On this occasion and in the past, Nepal has accused China of not sharing information quickly about escalating dangers. But Beijing denied there was any disinformation, and said information was released in a “timely” way in this recent incident.

A new report says the Himalayas are approaching a tipping point in terms of the speed and risks of glacier melting and lack of monitoring – with millions of lives and livelihoods at risk. So this issue could not be more urgent.

The recent behavior of another world power, Russia, cast doubt on its willingness to be transparent during a disaster. When floods caused Siberia’s Ishim River to overflow in 2025, local officials hid much of the damage.

The severe consequences of such secrecy is apparent throughout recent history. In 1984, Ethiopian military dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam concealed and downplayed the catastrophic drought which led to a famine, in order to protect the country’s image. A strict media blackout was enforced, as Mengistu’s government refused to share data regarding the scale of the crisis or even acknowledge there was one.

Instead, he prioritized spending over US$100 million (£87 million) on celebrations to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Ethiopia’s Marxist revolution.

Mengistu ignored the ongoing mass starvation crisis in speeches. He also blocked international aid workers and journalists from entering the starving regions. An estimated one million people died due to this lack of action.

Another potential issue is the impact on shared water sources. If autocracies hide prolonged droughts, they may secretly over-extract shared resources, potentially drying out neighboring territories.

Chernobyl’s Coverup

History shows that lack of warnings about escalating dangers caused by a disaster can have devastating effects in nearby countries.

The nuclear power plant disaster in Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986 was also covered up. KGB archives revealed that classified information on the extent of the radiation and contamination were kept secret.

Critical information was not released to the Ukrainian people and inhabitants of western Europe until months, and even years, later. Advocacy group Greenpeace estimated that there were potentially between 100,000 and 250,000 additional deaths – mostly due to radiation in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia – because of this lack of transparency.

Myanmar’s quasi-military government has regularly hidden valuable information from journalists, aid workers and other countries after each disaster in that country.

A 7.7-magnitude earthquake that hit central Myanmar in April 2025 killed thousands of people, causing bodies to pile up. Rather than facilitate the support of aid workers, supplies were blocked and confiscated by the military.

Not allowing humanitarian aid to come through in a timely fashion can also accelerate a refugee crisis, as desperate populations may flee in search of help.

Censorship and Repression

Autocracies are more likely to censor and monitor media platforms than democracies. For instance, China recently stopped non-official content being shared about the August 2026 floods.

Some autocracies also restrict access for international aid workers, independent scientists and observers.

There’s another example from 2019. When Zimbabwe was hit by tropical cyclone Idai, its government restricted the involvement of international aid workers, which reduced recovery efforts.

Research has also shown that authoritarian regimes can escalate repression against their own citizens during disasters.

Greater levels of secrecy has implications for disease. Natural disasters frequently lead to infectious disease outbreaks. A government’s refusal to report a climate-driven outbreak could prevent neighbouring states from taking protective measures.

Authoritarian regimes also frequently suppress or delay data regarding extreme weather, glacial melts or industrial accidents to protect the regime’s image. This can compromise the safety, stability and economy of their own citizens and, potentially, neighbouring countries too.

Ecosystems and disasters do not respect political borders. Information censorship and the suppression of data will make us all more vulnerable as climate change-driven incidents escalate.

Natasha Lindstaedt is a professor in the Department of Government at theUniversity of Essex

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

The post The Hidden Climate Danger of Authoritarian Neighbors appeared first on The Revelator.

In the pantheon of coral reef creatures, few fish look as if they’ve been painted by an ecstatic artist with an unlimited palette more than the mandarinfish.

Synchiropus splendidus, a tiny dragonet no longer than your thumb, is a riot of color — electric blues swirling into molten oranges while psychedelic greens trace intricate patterns across its body. Yet these flamboyant little fish spend much of their lives in a place we might easily overlook.

Rubble. Broken coral branches. Collapsed skeletons. The fractured architecture of reefs continually being built, broken, and built again.

I first encountered a mandarinfish during fieldwork in Palau, Micronesia, in 2000. The late-afternoon light filtered down through warm water, the reef slipping into that golden hour when diurnal fish slow down and the nocturnal world prepares to wake.

My dive buddy motioned for patience and pointed toward what looked like nothing more than a pile of broken coral fingers. At first I saw only debris. Then something moved. A flicker of turquoise. Then orange. Then the unmistakable hovering glide of a mandarinfish weaving through the labyrinth of coral fragments.

It looked like a living jewel dropped into a shattered mosaic.

The moment stayed with me, although for years I think I misunderstood what it was telling me.

Palau, like reefs across the tropics, had endured the global coral bleaching event of 1998 — the most severe mass bleaching the world had recorded at the time. Reefs that had once been towering cities of living coral became fields of pale skeletons. Algae colonized newly exposed surfaces while erosion and storm damage slowly broke carbonate structures apart.

Floating there only two years later, I couldn’t escape the juxtaposition: extraordinary beauty moving through the physical evidence of loss.

For years I remembered that fish as a small testament to resilience. But more than a quarter-century later, I began wondering whether science supported the story I had attached to it.

So I started asking people who study reef fish a seemingly straightforward question: How are mandarinfish actually doing?

The first thing I learned was that the rubble wasn’t necessarily a problem.

“Mandarinfishes hide within the dead bases of branching coral or deep coral rubble and prey upon tiny invertebrates,” says Keoki Stender, a Hawai‘i-based fish expert and underwater photographer. The places where he finds them include “murky harbors and lagoons” with corals resistant to bleaching — places that can resemble reefs altered by both natural and human disturbances.

Stender told me he isn’t particularly concerned about mandarinfish. Other reef fishes are much more directly vulnerable to coral mortality: species that eat living coral or shelter within living colonies, including some butterflyfishes, filefishes, damselfishes, gobies, and blennies.

Mandarinfish are different.

They are small, slow, and conspicuously colorful. In open water that combination would make for a very short life. Broken coral gives them a maze of crevices and hiding places, while tiny invertebrates living among the fragments provide food.

To us rubble may look like devastation. To a mandarinfish it can be a neighborhood.

The Trouble With Rubble

Coral reefs have always broken. Storms shatter colonies. Urchins and worms bore into reef frameworks. Parrotfish grind coral into sand. New corals settle among the remains and begin building upward again.

A reef is architecture and archaeology at once.

And rubble isn’t simply what remains when that architecture collapses. It is itself habitat. That makes the mandarinfish an awkward species through which to tell a simple story about coral decline.

Bart Shepherd, senior director of the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences, told me he isn’t particularly worried about the species either.

Mandarinfish are classified as “Least Concern” on the IUCN Red List, something Shepherd attributes in part to their broad geographic range across the Indo-Pacific and relatively limited collection for the aquarium trade.

That puts them in a different position from fishes with narrow distributions, such as the Banggai cardinalfish, or species heavily harvested across large portions of their range, including sharks and food fishes.

Dr. Emma Kennedy, a coral reef scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, pointed to the same IUCN assessment. Although declines have been reported in the Philippines, she said there isn’t enough published information to determine whether they represent a broader global trend.

In some places the more immediate concern may not even be climate change.

Although the IUCN describes the aquarium trade as “limited” overall, collection — particularly in Indonesia and the Philippines — may still pose a significant direct threat to some local mandarinfish populations, Kennedy says.

That wasn’t the answer I expected when I began asking about a fish I had come to associate with coral loss. But then the story became more complicated.

A Fish That’s Hard to Count

“We really have very little data on mandarinfish, globally,” says Dr. Daniela Ceccarelli, who leads fish monitoring work on the Great Barrier Reef for the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

That means scientists can’t confidently say whether populations are declining.

Part of the problem is the very behavior that makes mandarinfish so captivating also makes them cryptic.

Mandarinfish spend much of their lives tucked into the reef matrix, emerging most conspicuously around dusk. Dr. Christopher Fulton, a principal research scientist at AIMS, says conventional visual surveys don’t work particularly well for fishes like these. Obtaining reliable abundance estimates can require anesthetic or ichthyocide within small sampling stations.

In other words, the rubble that protects mandarinfish from predators also protects them from scientists trying to count them. Their population trend remains unknown.

That distinction matters. “Least Concern” doesn’t mean scientists have established that mandarinfish populations are stable everywhere. It means the evidence currently available does not place the species in one of the IUCN’s threatened categories.

So perhaps the most scientifically defensible answer to my question — How are mandarinfish doing? — is also the least satisfying.

We don’t really know.

Where the Living Reef Comes Back In

There was another complication. Even a fish who lives among dead coral ultimately depends on living coral.

As Fulton told me, “Mandarinfish and other dragonets in the family Callionymidae do tend to occupy rubble patches in and around coral reefs,” but rubble doesn’t last forever.

Waves move it. Animals bore into it. Physical and biological erosion gradually grind it down. The process repeats infinitely. “We do need live coral to produce a constant supply of coral-supported habitats,” Fulton says.

That includes rubble.

Dr. Shaun Wilson, a senior research scientist at AIMS, cautioned that there are no studies he knows of explicitly examining the relationship between coral cover and mandarinfish. Direct effects from changing coral communities therefore shouldn’t be assumed.

But ecological dependence can be indirect. “There may be long-term consequences for these fish if production of coral rubble declines,” he told me.

That sentence changed how I thought about the fish I had seen in Palau.

Rubble can provide perfectly good habitat today while simultaneously carrying the history of the ecosystem that created it. Every broken branch was once built by living coral polyps pulling calcium carbonate from seawater. Without continued coral growth, the supply of that architecture eventually stops.

The mandarinfish’s labyrinth may look self-contained. It isn’t.

Ceccarelli put the distinction succinctly: Mandarinfish like sediment-rich and rubble habitats, “but they still rely on tropical coral reef ecosystems as habitat.”

Kennedy makes a similar distinction. Mandarinfish aren’t as directly dependent upon living coral as butterflyfishes that feed on coral polyps. Their diet — including copepods, worms and other small organisms — allows them to forage among dead coral. That may buffer them from the immediate effects of coral mortality. It does not make them independent of reefs.

With the scale of coral loss expected under continued warming, Kennedy told me, “Ultimately everything reef-related will be affected to some extent.”

Persistence Is Not Permanence

That brought me back to Palau. The fish I saw in 2000 was real. So was the habitat it occupied. There was nothing ecologically contradictory about a mandarinfish weaving through broken coral two years after a devastating bleaching event.

Perhaps the mistake was mine. I had interpreted its persistence as a promise. Nature finds a way. Life persists. Beauty emerges from broken places. There is truth in those tropes, but the mandarinfish exposes their limits.

A reef damaged by a storm can generate rubble while living corals elsewhere on the reef continue to grow. New colonies can settle among the fragments. Over time the architecture is rebuilt.

A reef subjected to repeated marine heat waves, declining water quality, disease and algal overgrowth faces a different trajectory. If coral growth and recruitment fail to keep pace with erosion, today’s rubble habitat can become tomorrow’s sand.

The difference is difficult to see in a snapshot. It emerges through time. And we don’t yet know where the mandarinfish sits along that timeline.

How quickly would continued coral loss begin affecting populations? Years? Decades? Would some populations adapt while others disappear?

The scientists I contacted couldn’t answer those questions because the data don’t yet exist. That uncertainty is not a footnote to the story. It may be the story.

What Persists

When I return in memory to that dive in Palau, I still see the scene first as I saw it then. Broken coral fingers. Empty spaces. Debris. And then color. Turquoise. Orange. Green. A tiny fish slipping between fragments, disappearing and reappearing as though the rubble itself were flashing.

Twenty-six years later, I understand something about that scene that I couldn’t have known while hovering above it. The mandarinfish wasn’t evidence that the reef was fine. But neither was its home among the rubble some ecological contradiction. It was simply a fish making use of the habitat available to it — habitat created by corals that had lived before it and dependent, ultimately, upon corals continuing to live after it.

I no longer need the mandarinfish to tell me that nature will always find a way. That asks too much of a fish — and lets the rest of us off too easily.

The water still needs to be clean enough. The heat needs to relent long enough. Corals still need to grow, reproduce and build the structures that future generations of creatures will inhabit.

More than a quarter-century after that dive, I can still picture that mandarinfish moving through the labyrinth — a living brushstroke against the broken bones of a reef. I once saw in it a simple promise: Life finds a way. The scientists I asked gave me something more useful than a promise.

They gave me uncertainty.

The mandarinfish is still considered secure. It is widespread. It may tolerate reef disturbance better than many of its neighbors. And yet the habitat beneath it is connected to living coral by a chain of dependencies we are only beginning to understand.

Maybe that’s what resilience actually looks like — not invulnerability, but dependence stretched across time.

Life will try. Our task is to make sure there is still something living to build from.

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

I Will Love You to Death: A Divemaster’s View on Coral Tourism

The post What a Reef Fish Taught Me About Life in the Rubble appeared first on The Revelator.

In 2015 the Chinese government announced an ambitious plan to build the world’s largest national park system. China started with Sanjiangyuan, a massive park 13,000 square miles larger than Germany and 14 times the size of Yellowstone National Park in the United States, located in what the government called the Qinghai-Tibet plateau. State media recently described the region as containing “vast, unspoiled alpine ecosystems” and “pristine rivers and mountains.”

To many environmentalists, this was big news. Over the next few years, groups like Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, WWF, and others eagerly signed up to play a role in helping China build this system. Reports and articles from then focused on how this would protect wildlife like snow leopards, giant pandas, yaks, Tibetan antelopes, and provide opportunities for China to learn from America’s long experience with conservation and national parks management.

But for Tibetans like Kyinzom Dhongdue, there was a big problem. Of the 10 initially planned parks, four — including Sanjiangyuan — were in areas that had been part of the then-independent nation of Tibet prior to the 1950 invasion by China’s People’s Liberation Army.

By Quigley – Own work, CC0, Link

“In Tibet, you have an authoritarian colonial power presenting to be some kind of a green hero,” says Dhongdue, former member of the Tibetan Parliament in exile who is now an Australia-based human rights activist. “The environmental movement is in danger of normalizing what China is doing and without really looking at the darker side of these programs.”

She and others fear that history is repeating in Tibet and other regions under Chinese control, such as Xinjiang, homeland of Turkic Uyghurs and Kazakhs, and Inner Mongolia.

In each of these locations, the designation of new national park and land protections systems and increased efforts to promote ecotourism have resulted in the ongoing displacement of locals from the land they’ve lived on for generations. In their place, Chinese park officials or tourism interests have taken control.

“These parks are displacing the very same people who have lived on and looked after those lands for generations,” Dhongdue says. “A colonial, foreign government is coming in and protecting a landscape by removing the traditional custodians. And that is a huge problem.”

Nonprofit conservation groups, meanwhile, have mostly remained silent, their messaging focusing more on snow leopards, argali, and other endemic and endangered species over the communities who have lived alongside them for generations.

Environmental Colonialism

According to the East West Center at the University of Hawai‘i, The Nature Conservancy introduced the idea of national parks to the Chinese government as early as 1997 and has played an active role in knowledge sharing and exchanges between the U.S. and China. Conservation International claims to have helped conserve 4.9 million acres of land in China, and one of their first projects was in Southeastern Tibet. To them China’s 2015 national parks announcement was a major achievement.

While the imagery of parks like Sanjiangyuan evokes an empty landscape untouched by humans, the reality is quite different. According to an article in National Geographic, there were an estimated 652,600 people living inside the boundaries of China’s initial 10 parks.

While comprehensive data is lacking, so far these national parks have resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands Tibetan nomads and villagers from their land — and likely many Uyghurs and Mongols, too — often to newly constructed urban villages in less desirable locations.

It’s a similar story to what happened with America’s Yosemite National Park, often glorified as the origin of the global conservation movement. There the park’s formation led to the expulsion of the Miwok and Ahwahneechee peoples and eventually their erasure from the landscape, which was promoted to wealthy tourists as an unspoiled wilderness, not a longtime home of thriving cultures.

The same happened to at least 26 Indigenous groups at other well-known national parks or monuments in the United States — including Glacier, Yellowstone, and Shenandoah. For decades this history was erased and nearly forgotten.

Today it’s recognized that in the push to protect landscapes and forests in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, environmentalists turned a blind eye to the sometimes-violent displacement of native peoples. In recent years groups like the Sierra Club, the National Parks Conservation Organization, and even — at least prior to January 2025 — the National Park Service have begun to reckon with their role in erasing native peoples from landscapes.

The Nature Conservancy also acknowledges the harms of colonialism and the need to involve including local communities and Indigenous peoples in land conservation, as do Conservation International and WWF.

In the United States, it was mostly white settlers who displaced Natives from their land — and it was mostly white rangers and officials who managed national parks. Positions of power, and often voting rights, were withheld from native peoples. At the time millions of Native Americans and other oppressed groups lacked voting rights or representation.

For many nonprofits, understanding this harmful past didn’t stop them from actively working with China, despite its ranking as one of the world’s most repressive countries. China’s authoritarian single-party government has criminalized most protests, especially for so-called ethnic minorities like Tibetans and Uyghurs, who face collective punishment and far more surveillance and censorship than the Han Chinese majority.

“Protest has become a very sparse and dangerous thing in Tibet and Xinjiang,” says Dawa Lokyitsang, a Tibetan anthropologist currently doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies in the Netherlands.

The Environmental Cost of Displacement

Removing communities from landscapes isn’t just bad for people. It can be bad for the landscapes themselves.

In the same ways that European colonialism and America’s westward expansion were disastrous for iconic species like bison and passenger pigeons, many point to the invasion of Tibet as when deforestation, mining, and river damming began to transform landscapes.

“Extraction has been happening for a long time, [starting] right after Tibet’s invasion,” says Lokyitsang. “Deforestation and mining, since the 1950s, it’s been classic industrial, colonial, resource development, and extraction.”

Today science is finally starting to recognize the many ways that Native Americans molded the ecological landscape of much of North America. Other published science has found that in seemingly wild places like the Amazon rainforest, humans are often part of the ecosystem and removing them can have adverse impacts.

In Tibet, too, the role of traditional nomads and other communities should be valued, not displaced, by national parks, says Dhongdue.

“It’s also very important to understand that Tibetans are environmental actors,” Dhongdue says. “We have lived on and conserved this land for generations, and that traditional knowledge is not being taken into account by China.”

A report published last year by the Institute for Security & Development Policy presented evidence that removing Tibetans from these seemingly harsh landscapes has led to increased erosion, biodiversity loss, and land degradation.

Silence, Again

Not too long ago, global conversation groups were happy to speak about their work in China, which was highlighted in annual reports. Journalists were welcomed on tours of parks like Sanjiangyuan or Giant Panda National Park, where, sometimes, they saw showcase projects where some Tibetans had been provided housing or low-level jobs at parks.

But critics say these organizations failed to see past propaganda or ask difficult questions about what was really happening.

“The danger is if you’re not addressing both the environmental aspect and people’s rights, these organizations risk legitimizing a colonial system that is in place,” Dhongdue says.

WWF China, The Nature Conservancy, and Conservation International all declined to be interviewed for this story, while Snow Leopard Trust, the Paulson Institute (a sustainability think tank), and Chinese nonprofits like Shan Shui didn’t respond to interview requests. This echoes Dhongdue’s experience when she was working on a report about Tibetan nomads and land displacement in 2019.

“I’m not surprised, but, yes, quite saddened by that,” she says. “I had the same response: people not willing to engage on issues relating to Tibet.”

Gabriel Lafitte, an independent researcher focused on Tibet, fears that these organizations have self-censored due to policies that limit their space to operate in China.

“They have to operate within Beijing’s constraints,” says Lafitte. “Beijing has learned how to co-opt, control, and manage international nonprofit engagement across the entire spectrum of environmental issues.”

An NGO law passed in 2016 requires anyone operating in China to have their yearly plans approved by a branch of Chinese government, limiting direct criticism. Even actions taken by overseas offices staff are risky, as statements that anger or upset China could lead to Chinese staff being threatened or even arrested or detained. It’s one reason that human rights and labor nonprofits like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Transparency International have no presence in China.

Worryingly, some of this is now repeating in the United States, where Donald Trump has also backtracked on quite recent efforts to recognize the erasure of the Miwok, Ahwahneechee, and others from national parks, returning the government, after a brief window, back to silence about the treatment of Native Americans.

The good news? So far U.S. conservationists are mostly fighting back against these changes and refusing to forget the dark history. But Lafitte doubts they’ll be willing to speak about the same injustices happening today in China.

“At this particular moment, it’s hard to imagine who might speak up for Tibetans or Uyghurs.”

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

Tear Down the Walls: The Racist Roots of ‘Fortress Conservation’

The post China’s National Parks: Green Goals Through Authoritarian Measures? appeared first on The Revelator.

Washington has a gift for cloaking unpopular ideas in appealing names. One recent example is the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, or BAAJA, a sweeping “permitting reform” measure introduced this September by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Lee, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Martin Heinrich. Once stripped of its deceptive branding, the bill is an out-and-out assault on the National Environmental Policy Act, the bedrock environmental law that has for more than 50 years required the federal government to look before it leaps.

NEPA’s genius is its modesty. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly noted, it’s a purely procedural statute. It dictates no outcomes but requires agencies to stop and think — to generate, consider, and disclose the potential environmental consequences of their actions before shovels hit the ground. Often called the “Magna Carta” of environmental law, NEPA has been emulated worldwide.

BAAJA keeps NEPA’s title while hollowing out nearly everything that makes it work: detailed review of environmental risks, rigorous analysis of available alternatives with less harmful effects, meaningful public input before agencies commit to harmful actions, and — most dangerously — the ability of courts to enforce any of it.

The bill has a minor positive or two; it would restore some of the authority of the Council on Environmental Quality that two courts in 2024 appeared to strip away, allowing the Council to standardize federal agencies’ NEPA procedures. The deal, however, is terribly lopsided and devalues NEPA’s essential purposes.

BAAJA dramatically expands NEPA’s “categorical exclusions,” removing scrutiny and shutting the public out of commenting on excluded projects. It expands the categories of proposals that aren’t “major Federal actions,” reducing agencies’ responsibility to prepare in-depth environmental impact statements. The newly excluded categories could cause significant harm, including projects such as electric transmission facilities, methane gas pipelines, and water resources and geothermal energy development programs.

When review does occur, the bill guts its substance. It instructs agencies to eliminate alternatives that don’t “meet the goals of an applicable non-Federal project sponsor.” The comparison of alternatives is the heart of an EIS, but the bill would let developers define that heart out of existence. The bill then freezes the science: Agencies could ignore research that becomes available after it publishes a project’s notice of intent to prepare a NEPA document.

The bill also imposes rigid deadlines that trace back to a report the Congressional Research Service thoroughly debunked. The real culprits delaying infrastructure projects are inadequate financing, local opposition, and under-resourced agencies. Arbitrary clocks will pressure agencies to cut corners, inviting project-slowing litigation while doing little or nothing to address the most important causes of delay.

Congress passed NEPA because development-minded agencies often treated environmental concerns as obstacles. This bill hands those agencies — and the developers they serve — the keys to making the go or no-go decisions. A project sponsor could force an agency to veto deadline extensions and dictate which alternatives get studied. This is the essence of agency capture, transforming a public safeguard into a private convenience.

The most alarming provisions concern courts. Building on the Supreme Court’s vilification of NEPA in its Seven County Infrastructure Coalition decision, BAAJA forces judges to give “substantial deference” to agency determinations in NEPA documents. This ignores an important impetus for NEPA’s adoption: the incentives of development-oriented agencies to sweep adverse effects under the rug if they threaten project implementation.

Even when a plaintiff wins, courts generally could not halt projects pending preparation of NEPA-compliant documents. By the time they’re completed, the projects may already have caused irreparable environmental harm. These measures go well beyond the already restrictive judicial limits in recent permitting legislation and the Seven County decision and remove agency incentives to conscientiously apply NEPA’s requirements.

The bill also penalizes agencies for protecting the public. If an agency suspends or revokes a permit, it would need to prove that doing so “is necessary to prevent specific, urgent, substantial, and proximate harm or damage to life, property, national security, or defense” — but not, perversely, to the environment!

A defeat for a NEPA plaintiff would enable private project proponents to recover a significant percentage of all project costs they incurred. Faced with that exposure, no rational agency would ever correct a mistaken approval. A law meant to improve decisions would instead make them irreversible.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Real reform would fund agencies properly, reserve any streamlined track for projects that genuinely benefit the environment, make mitigation binding and monitored, and preserve the public’s access to courts to redress statutory violations.

We should build clean energy and critical infrastructure faster, but not bulldoze the one law that makes sure we know what we’re building before it’s too late to change course. Before Congress votes on whether to “reform” NEPA — which is scheduled to happen immediately after the midterms — its members need to heed the statute’s original vision and look before they leap.

Further reading:

• • Hundreds of Organizations Oppose Endangered Species Attacks in Permitting Legislation

Our publisher, the Center for Biological Diversity, offers an opportunity to take action against this bill.

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

NEPA: The Accepted Lies and Mistakes About This Critical Environmental Law

 

The post A ‘Bipartisan’ Bill to Dismantle the Nation’s Bedrock Environmental Law appeared first on The Revelator.

We could all use a little extra environmental inspiration these days, so here are 15 new books for readers of all ages.

We’ve adapted the books’ official descriptions below, and the link in each title goes to the publisher’s page. You can also find any of these titles through your local bookseller and library.

Spooky Rivers: 25 Strange and Mysterious Rivers That Snake Across Our Planet

By Geo Rutherford

A thrilling nonfiction book that follows the winding histories of 25 mysterious rivers around the world. Explore natural phenomena, scientific oddities, historical events, and environmental disasters, as well as the myths and legends tied to these waterways, which are increasingly threatened by climate change.

Rivers are the Earth’s restless travelers — carving landscapes, shaping history, and holding secrets. Some are forces of destruction, sweeping away everything in their path, while others are lifelines, sustaining civilizations for millennia. And some are both, bringing prosperity and devastation in equal measure. From deadly whirlpools to lost cities submerged beneath their waves, these rivers challenge everything we think we know about the natural world. There are rivers that catch fire, rivers that boil, and rivers so deep they seem bottomless. Some slither beneath the ground you stand on, while others vanish without a trace.

Who knew rivers could be so … spooky?

Big Cats

By Steve Winter and Sharon Guynup

National Geographic photographer Steve Winter has spent his career photographing big cats around the world, from the graceful jaguars of Brazil’s Pantanal to elusive Himalayan snow leopards. His photographs astound; his stories, even more so. Winter and environmental journalist Sharon Guynup share experiences behind the lens.

In chapters on every key species — cougar, jaguar, leopard, snow leopard, tiger, and lion — readers will witness the power of Winter’s work, including uplifting stories of how his photographs have made a difference and powered important conservation efforts on behalf of these mighty creatures.

Winter and Guynup’s work has changed the world — and it continues to awe and inspire us. But you don’t have to be a serious-minded conservationist to be pulled into their new book. All animal lovers, especially those who love cats, big and small, are invited to look deeply into the eyes and lives of these iconic species.

Wild Work: Adventures of Women Field Biologists

By Sophie A. H. Osborn and Susan B. Adams

More than 40 real-life adventure stories by 37 women field biologists take readers behind the scenes with wolves, condors, bats, bears, and other wild animals, highlighting the important work of women in field science and wildlife conservation. This is an inspiring and entertaining anthology that brings to light the often-untold stories of women in wildlife science, featuring first-person accounts by dozens of adventurous field biologists, immersing readers in the thrilling and compelling reality of studying and conserving fish and wildlife across the globe.

From playing tag with wolves or cuddling wild foxes to wading through rivers filled with venomous snakes or evading poachers, these women share stories of courage, curiosity, and resilience. And they share the delicate balancing act of juggling demanding fieldwork with family life, the lifelong friendships they forge in the wild, and the transformative power of connecting deeply with the natural world. They also bear witness to the fact that while women have been integral to fish and wildlife research for decades, their stories have rarely been represented in literature.

The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

By Gil Durán

When Silicon Valley says it’s ‘‘moving fast and breaking things,” the world is bullied into perceiving the chaos as a “necessary cost” of innovation. Gil Durán reveals something far more sinister: a decades-long campaign to replace elected governments with corporate rule. The Nerd Reich explains the origins, strategies, and ambitions of Silicon Valley’s war on democracy for the first time. From San Francisco’s weaponized elections and secret billionaire projects to the White House, Durán exposes how the world’s richest men are building a new political order.

Using insider political experience and new investigations, Durán traces this ideology from its philosophical roots in The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. He introduces its modern “messiahs” — Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, and Elon Musk — and shows how the promise of technological liberation has become a global movement for digital feudalism, powered by cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and the algorithmic propaganda of social media.

More than a hidden history, this book is an urgent warning: Democracy is being dismantled by code, capital, and the illusion of innovation. Durán insists there is still time to fight back — if we act now.

Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era

By Jacob Weisberg

History will be particularly harsh to Trump enablers who share and covet money and power. They represent intuitions that are central in determining whether America remains a free, functioning democracy or not — and they know very well they are committing crimes. In this bitterly humorous book, Weisberg has written a defining book of the Trump era — how this pitch-black political moment happened, why so few resisted, and what it reveals about the character of American leadership.

Big Tech, Wall Street, mega-corporations and the U.S. Congress are encapsulated in eight individuals who together form an entwined network of power in America, giving us a new way to understand how authoritarianism can take root in an open society — not by overthrowing institutions, but by bending and bullying them into submission.

We’ve Been Here the Whole Time! A Not So Sacred Guide to All Things Native America

By Joey Clift

Foreword by Shane Hawk / Illustrated by Julie Fiveash

Comedian Joey Clift (Cowlitz nation) takes you on a hilarious journey to discover the largest population you don’t know in this sharp debut for fans of Michael Harriot and Phoebe Robinson. Put away the construction paper: This contraband book contains everything your high school refused to teach you about Native American history, people, and culture — illustrated in an irreverent textbook-meets-notebook style by Diné artist Julie Fiveash.

Clift walks you through a wide range of misconceptions, weird questions, and even weirder assumptions, covering everything from Pocahontas and sports mascots to ancestry claims and the Land Back movement. This hilarious, NDN-approved guide to Native America is a great gift for history buffs, teachers, and comedy fans.

Brought to You By: How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy

By Amy Westervelt

A gripping account of the corporate propaganda that has invaded our media, our democracy, and now the very nature of truth itself from investigative reporter and Drilled podcast host Amy Westervelt.

Whether it’s the tobacco industry lying about the health dangers of cigarettes, Big Pharma burying studies that make its products less marketable, or Big Oil misleading the public on the dangers of the climate crisis, we all know corporations use doubt and science denial to avoid responsibility. So why do we continue to let them get away with it?

Westervelt exposes the plot hidden within the familiar story of science denial. Over the last century, Big Industry has built a vast apparatus of think tanks, lobbyists, sponsored university labs, and obliging news networks to con the public and fool decision-makers, poisoning the informational ecosystem and warping the nature of truth along the way.

Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp

By David Helvarg

A spectacular cold-water paradise 30 million years in the making is succumbing to warming oceans. Kelp forests are largely out of sight, hidden under the ocean’s surface, yet they are one of Earth’s most wonderous and underappreciated marine habitats. It’s an ethereal light-infused realm of sharks, otters, eels, sea stars, crabs, rockfish, and myriad other species vital to a functioning ocean and the countless coastal communities that make their living from the sea. Unlike coral reefs, whose similar plight plays out in tropical waters highly visible to vacationing tourists, kelp forests thrive along cold-water coastlines far from tourist centers. What will it take to stop the decline before these underwater playgrounds bursting with colorful life become vast fields of lifeless urchin barrens?

The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive Our Memories and Restore the Planet

By Jason Dove Mark

A rallying cry and resistance manual from one of the leaders breathing new life into the environmental movement. As the climate emergency worsens and biodiversity shrinks, we somehow get used to it. We struggle to remember what summers were like before the unrelenting heat, in those years before wildfires became an annual routine. We adapt, we normalize. Scientists call this “shifting baseline syndrome,” and they warn that it’s why we are increasingly sleepwalking toward disaster.

Read an excerpt.

Great Reads for Young People (and some adults too!)

Beatrix Potter’s Botanical: The Art of Flowers and Fungi

By Marta McDowell

A rare collection of Beatrix Potter’s own botanical art, and an exploration of the role these plants played in her personal and literary life. This beautiful book showcases 65 plants and fungi that Potter made special study of in her often-overlooked career as a botanical artist. For each species we see Potter’s original pencil and watercolor renderings, learn about the specimen’s role in her various beloved gardens, and hear the stories of how it inspired or appeared in her literary work. The result is a new look at the celebrated illustrator as a pioneering botanical artist and budding scientist.

Liars, Cheats, and Copycats: Trickery and Deception in Nature

By James O’Hanlon

Meet some of the world’s most dastardly creatures, who lie, cheat, and deceive for a living. There’s the deadly praying mantis that looks like an innocent pink flower. The assassin bug that strums spider webs to lure in a tasty snack. The cuttlefish that changes color to hide its romantic intentions.

To understand how these creatures swindle their way to survival, this book reveals the science behind camouflage, mimicry, and masquerade, taking readers on a journey from tropical rainforests to the darkness of deep ocean trenches to examine how animals and plants use deception to avoid predators, lure in prey, and even reproduce.

Let’s Explore Foxes: An Urban Wildlife Explorers Book

By Siski Kalla

Perfect for home or school, the new book for children in the acclaimed Urban Wildlife Explorer series takes a close look at foxes, one of the most common but least understood wild urban animals. Ideal for curious young minds, they’re bursting with laugh-out-loud moments, fascinating science, and beautiful watercolor illustrations. The series is also packed with tips on how kids can help protect and interact safely with local wildlife. Whether you’re a budding naturalist or just want to find out more, these are the perfect guides for young urban explorers.

A Raven of the Rainforest

By Rosanne Parry

A stand-alone addition to the New York Times and Indie bestselling Voice of the Wilderness novels by Rosanne Parry, which include A Wolf Called Wander, A Whale of the Wild, A Horse Named Sky, and A Wolf Called Fire.

On Westerly’s otherwise ink-black tail, one bright white feather stands out. Westerly stands out, too. She isn’t like her brother and sister — she’s different. Everyone knows it, including the roost’s story keeper, who proclaims that Westerly alone is destined to save her fellow ravens from a terrible fate. Questioning her destiny, isolated from her family, and full of doubt, Westerly takes to the sky, vowing never to return. But when a once-in-a-lifetime volcanic eruption finds her, she has no choice but to flee in the direction of home.

The Butterfly Season: What 64 Butterflies Taught Me About Nature’s Great Mysteries and the Meaning of Life

By Lea Korsgaard

Combining nature writing, philosophy, myth, science, and 64 beautiful hand-drawn illustrations, The Butterfly Season is a luminous account of one woman’s quest to see all 64 species of butterflies native to Denmark in a single year. Part field diary, part mythological tapestry, part existential reflection, Lea Korsgaard’s journey unfolds across seasons and geographies, through meadows, marshes, and ancient coastal lands as she discovers the mysteries and miracles of the natural world.

The Science of History: Ingenious Inventions From the Ancient Romans to Pirates, Vikings, Cowboys, Samurai, and More

By Mark Brake and Benjamin Bryant

We may think of ancient cultures as rudimentary — but in reality, the humans living hundreds and even thousands of years ago were remarkably savvy, establishing the foundations of the science we rely on today. From early Mesopotamia to the Stone Age, through Ancient Greece and Rome, the pirates of medieval England, and the seafaring Vikings of Scandinavia, the time of the Samurai, Chinese dynasties, and cowboy cultures from the American West to South American ranches and the Mongolian tundra, This fascinating book showcases how different peoples at different times have observed nature, reached rational conclusions, developed scientific techniques, invented revolutionary tools, and devised shockingly creative ways not only to explain the world about them, but to thrive in it.

Within the Earth humans found medicine; within the Air, navigation; within Fire, warfare; and within Water, the ability to manipulate their environment. Discover the origins of surprisingly sophisticated ancient science in this fascinating look at human ingenuity, such as: Terraced Farming (Ancient Andes, China), Samurai Land Stewardship (c. C16th), Roman Concrete (c. 3rd century BC), Stonehenge (c. 3100 BC, England), Samurai Armor Crafting (c. C16th), Viking Battlefield Herbalism (793–1066 AD, Scandinavia), The Pirate Compass (C17th–18th, England) and so many more clever stories and fun facts, textboxes, lists, and features, readers can open any page of The Science of History and learn something new.

 

You can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives.

And let us know what you’re reading: Drop us a line at comments@therevelator.org

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

The post New Environmental Books to Inspire Your Autumn appeared first on The Revelator.

Adapted from Chapter 5 of The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth From the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction (Princeton University Press).

Blame the word wizardry of Charles Dickens. In 1852 the great Victorian novelist described a long-forgotten naval admiral with the coinage “as dead as the Dodo.” The phrase was catchy. It appeared just a few years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which stoked almost as much interest in the ends of species as in their beginnings. The poor dodo then appeared, as a clownish figure, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The bird’s reputation was sealed, and the dodo became not just an emblem of extinction but a byword for doomed obsolescence. To go the way of the dodo meant to succumb to inevitable oblivion.

In truth, the dodo’s fame is out of proportion to its significance. And yet the bird, rightly understood, is the perfect allegory for the fate of island biota in modern times. That is to say, if we understand its story correctly in place and time, the precise way that its evolutionary history intersects our own, the dodo can help us understand the true depth of human impact — and why the conventional ways we measure that impact threaten to understate the damage we have done.

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) lived on the island of Mauritius in the Mascarene archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The species was a flightless member of the pigeon/dove family (Columbidae). Dodos boasted long and colorful beaks. They ate fruit and perhaps small crabs. The portrayal of the dodo as ridiculous or clumsy is absurdly unfair. Mauritius lacked native mammals (with the exception of one bat, now endangered), so the niches normally occupied by mammals were infilled by birds, reptiles, and even crabs. The dodo, far from a defective product of evolution, was a stroke of creative genius, executed under the severest constraints — a plump pigeon playing the part of a mammal. Until we showed up, they thrived.

The Mascarenes make a rich case study in the annals of extinction history because, as Anthony Cheke and Julian Hume have observed, “Their despoilers took good notes.” This is no accident. The Mascarenes were ground zero for some of the first environmental thinking — and activism — in recognizably modern form. Deforestation and defaunation startled European observers. Mauritius, in the words of the historian Richard Grove, acquired “a disproportionate significance in the history of European colonial environmental policy.” The phrase “dead as a dodo” was not only catchy — it had been primed for success by two centuries of awareness and angst about European impact on this exotic landscape.

Even so, the exact date of the most famous extinction is still fuzzy: The dodo was last securely observed in the 1630s, but they may have survived for a few more decades. The precise cause of their demise is also obscure — in large part because the bird suffered all the usual forces of ecological upheaval at once. Their habitat was destroyed by farms. Their eggs were eaten by invasive species. And, certainly, we hunted the dodos.

The dodo symbolizes the total biotic chaos instigated when Europeans showed up on these islands. At some point or another, more than seventeen mammals, roughly three dozen birds, over a dozen reptiles, a handful of frogs, and numerous invertebrates (among them the nasty predator known as the rosy wolf snail) were introduced. The archipelago’s new residents made their presence felt: Pigs ran rampant, rats gorged on birds and their eggs, and the crab-eating macaque, a monkey native to Southeast Asia, feasted on unwary endemic animals. The effects rippled. Since the first caravel cast its shadow on these shores, more than fifty species have vanished from the Mascarenes.

Human arrival unthreaded a unique fabric woven over incomprehensible reaches of geological time. Islands confront us with the active role of geology in evolution. Islands broadly fall into two types, oceanic and continental, with distinctive evolutionary dynamics. Oceanic islands are usually volcanic in origin (e.g., Palmyra, Hawaii, the Mascarenes), though sometimes they are created by uplift (e.g., Cyprus). Continental islands are bits of landmasses that have become stranded (e.g., the British Isles). Unlike oceanic islands, continental islands start with life, a random sample drawn from continental flora and fauna, like a handful of trail mix grabbed in the dark.

Evolution will work with whatever it is given, and since the constraints are heavy, island biogeography is, in the words of David Quammen, “a catalogue of quirks and superlatives.” Physical barriers drive evolutionary divergence; island populations, separated from the continents, follow unique evolutionary paths. With predators absent and competition sparse, natural selection tilts in unexpected directions. Traits that make no sense on continents — like flightlessness in birds — flourish. Entire systems of interdependence evolve around these peculiarities. And the result is that a staggering share of the world’s species diversity has been hatched on islands.

With great distinctness comes great fragility. Small populations on islands are always vulnerable to shocks, and island species often lack defenses that continental animals must acquire in constant competition against predators, parasites, and even disease. In sum, it is exactly that which makes islands different that leaves them especially vulnerable to us. Their essence is isolation; ours is connectivity. Their tempo is Earth time; our schedules are manic. And when the two collide, the result is often catastrophic.

The Portuguese first set foot on Mauritius around 1507 CE. This timing is of enormous consequence. The year 1500 has come to denote a stark boundary in the literature on the Sixth Extinction (in essence, because the IUCN started noting known extinctions since that date in its Red List). In order to compare past and present rates of extinction, it is commonplace to start tallying species that have disappeared since that time. Round numbers are always suspect, but this one is unusually complicated. Scientists, with a solemn duty to measure things precisely, must start somewhere. Historians, whose tapestry is woven of countless threads, prefer to linger over complexity, to insist on a mix of continuity and change in all human affairs. As a scholar of divided loyalties, I can sympathize with, and become frustrated by, both sides.

Even if the year 1500 is asked to bear an unrealistic amount of weight, the choice is not arbitrary. Around this time, Europeans started crossing oceans with some regularity. The pace of change accelerated. The human impact on biodiversity not only became more pronounced in the Age of Discovery, but the record of our impact also became much richer. No one denies that something dramatically changes around the year 1500, but as the ecologist Robert Whittaker put it, “Using a baseline of AD 1500 is to begin in the middle of the movie.” Whittaker describes our impact on islands in terms of “successive waves of transformation, a form of anthropogenic ratchet effect.”

Human impact on island fauna goes back to the original Ice Age dispersal of humans. Since the Pleistocene, colonization has often meant the onset of hunting and the beginning of the end for large animals, like the pygmy hippos and dwarf elephants on Cyprus. In general, the bigger the animal and the higher up the food web, the more likely it was to vanish. Flightless birds and big reptiles bore the brunt. The giant ground birds of New Zealand, the moas, are a striking case. Geology destined it to be a land of birds. With no mammals (apart from a few bats), the avian fauna of New Zealand gives us a sense of what evolution might have done if the asteroid had wiped out the mammals. The Polynesians who arrived found an Edenic landscape: nine moa species, some towering up to 12 feet tall and weighing hundreds of pounds. Tens to hundreds of thousands of these birds roamed the islands. Within two or three centuries, every species of moa was extinct.

European colonization in the Age of Discovery marked a new era within this much longer story. What makes this period stand out is that the fate of island biodiversity became entangled with novel power dynamics between human societies. Virgin islands like Mauritius were long since rare by 1500 CE, so in most cases, Europeans arrived on already-inhabited islands, disrupting socioecological balances of long standing. The Caribbean offers a quintessential case. Even before European contact, human impact unfolded in distinct waves, but the arrival of Columbus brought a cascade of new pressures: invasive animals, unfamiliar pathogens, and extractive technologies. Indigenous societies and island ecosystems were thrown into turmoil.

The result is measured in rapid faunal turnover. In the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico), there were 116 species of mammals at the beginning of the Holocene. Around 60 of them are gone. If bats are excluded, more than 4 out of every 5 mammals have gone extinct. Cuba, which includes the largest island in the Caribbean plus an archipelago of more than three thousand small islands, has seen approximately 24 of its 59 native mammals go extinct. Deforestation and direct exploitation were important drivers, but the role of invasive species was primary: Over 40 nonnative mammals have been introduced. To the east, on Hispaniola, virtually all the nonflying mammals are gone. On Puerto Rico, all seven are gone.

Mammals were not the only victims. Caribbean birds were threatened by new predators like rats and cats, and they were evicted from their shrinking forests. More than 60 species of birds have certainly gone extinct, and most that remain are threatened or endangered. Over half of the endemic parrots of the Caribbean have been snuffed out. Reptiles have suffered a similar fate. Although modern research has skewed away from our cold-blooded cousins, reptiles are integral to Caribbean ecosystems. Yet since European arrival, turtles, snakes, and lizards have been in freefall. On Guadeloupe, for instance, half to two-thirds of snakes and lizards have gone extinct. Many of the ecological jobs undertaken by reptiles go unreplaced, making the loss of functional diversity even greater.

The story of island biodiversity will thread through future chapters too. As steam replaced sail, the problem of invasive species only became more acute. In the last century, pollution and climate change have become new threats. There was a long pre-history to human impact before 1500 CE; European colonization marks not a beginning but a distinct new phase, a speeding up; and now the Anthropocene is somehow accelerating human impact again.

All in all, the human-dominated planet leaves less life on islands. What endures is quieter, more uniform, less exuberant than before. The raw numbers are revealing. Consider that since the beginning of the late Pleistocene — roughly 126,000 years ago — about 600 bird species are known to have gone extinct, and the real number is probably twice as high. Around 80% of the extinct species were island endemics. Even more generally, around three out of every four anthropogenic extinctions to date have involved island species. If global biodiversity is a great library, written over tens of millions of years, then we have erased an inordinate portion of its rare books collection — the most archaic, most colorful, and most singular volumes.

The year 1500 always saw a speeding up of human impact on ocean life, but the contrast between oceans and islands puts the proposition of the Sixth Extinction, its limits and its strengths, in a distinct light. Oceans are vast and resilient. Islands are small and fragile. If we measure human impact by counting extinctions alone, we will underestimate what we have done to life in the oceans. At the same time, extinction is a reasonable measure of our impact on islands, at least so far, even if we rarely count or even consider the losses before 1500 CE. And counting extinctions is only one crude measure of what we care about. Conceivably, the rate of island extinction could slow down, only because we have already done so much damage to the most vulnerable ecosystems. This is hardly cause for complacency. In fact, just the opposite: Because we have already lost so much diversity on islands, we might strain all the more to protect what remains.

Previously in The Revelator:

For Bald Eagles, the Descendants of the Destroyers Became the Restorers

The post The Way of the Dodo: Thinking Historically About Extinction appeared first on The Revelator.

Indonesia is a young country — in more ways than one.

Its current democratic government dates back under three decades to 1998, after the fall of Soeharto, the military dictator who led the country for 32 years.

It’s also demographically young, with a median age of just 31. That means fewer and fewer people in Indonesia remember the time they were under Soeharto’s ‘New Order’ rule.

But despite the fading memory of Soeharto’s reign, one of the decisions he made in the later years — selecting a National Precious Bird — is outlasting his regime.

Ten days into January 1993, President Soeharto signed his fourth Presidential Decree of that year. The first three dealt with setting the domestic retail sale prices of petroleum and tariffs for electricity and public transportation. The fourth declared an until-then largely unknown bird, the Javan hawk-eagle (Nisaetus bartelsi), as Indonesia’s national bird. The United States had its bald eagle, China had its giant panda, and now Indonesia had its hawk-eagle.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Three reasons favored giving the Javan hawk-eagle this title.

First, their appearance and prominent crest mirrors the mythical bird Garuda, which is central to Indonesia’s national coat of arms, the Garuda Pancasila.

Second, the loss of rainforest on Java — Indonesia’s most densely populated and least forested island — meant very few hawk-eagles remained, and increased attention could be beneficial to their conservation.

Third, a national bird had to be found exclusively within Indonesia, and Soeharto’s regime heavily favored Java, leading to a “Javanization” of Indonesian politics, culture, and economic development. The Javan hawk-eagle fit like a glove.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Ornithologist Bas van Balen, one of the first people to study the species, recalls that the decree established three national “mascots” — a popular animal, a charming one, and a rare one. The animals were selected “during a workshop in 1993, attended by representatives of various governmental bodies, such as the Forest and Environmental departments, the parliament, the scientific authority, local universities, media mass, NGOs and various experts. Worries that the eagle would undergo the same fate as for instance the black-naped oriole — provincial faunal symbol of Central Java, which was much sought after for the bird trade in the years after its nomination — were discounted, as its protection was believed by the committee to be the authorities’ responsibility.”

In 1993 I was a young biologist, eager to study birds in the rainforest. The announcement of the Javan hawk-eagle as Indonesia’s national bird, and the observation by French naturalists of a juvenile on a mountain in central Java, spurred me on to make the move to Indonesia.

At the time there were no photographs of the bird — either in the wild or in captivity — and I had to rely on some 30 preserved skins in Dutch museums to get a good idea what the bird looked like. I also had the fortune to become acquainted with the then 87-year-old ornithologist Hans Bartels, the middle of the Bartels family (Max Sr, Max Jr, Hans, and Ernst) after which Javan hawk-eagles received their taxonomic name.

Javan hawk-eagles were already legally protected — all birds of prey in Indonesia were put on the county’s protected species list in 1970, signed by Soeharto’s long-trusted Minister of Agriculture, Toyib Hadiwinata — and none lived in zoos or private collections. After the national bird declaration, any individuals or institutions that wanted to keep a Javan hawk-eagle had to receive presidential permission. Only one person was granted this: Ibu Tien, Soeharto’s wife. Her Javan hawk-eagle, a juvenile bird almost certainly illegally taken from its nest, was displayed at a Jakarta zoo run and managed by one of many Soeharto family foundations.

In those first years during many of my visits, more zoo directors expressed the desire to display Javan hawk-eagles and even breed them. Of course zoos were not allowed to obtain them, but “gifts by anonymous donors” created a loophole. Two years after the declaration, three zoos on Java displayed or had displayed a total of 14 Javan hawk-eagles, six of whom died within one year.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Zoos were not the only ones eager to own a national bird. In an Indonesian context, owning and displaying legally protected species was, and perhaps still is, seen as a sign of status, of “being untouchable” or above the law. Ibu Tien’s display of a Javan hawk-eagle could be interpreted in this context, as was the decision by a national celebrity to have himself photographed in traditional dress next to his pet Javan hawk-eagle for the women’s magazine Femina.

It was, and still is, challenging to keep a rainforest eagle in captivity, as attested by the high mortality rates in Indonesian zoos. Most of the Javan hawk-eagles I saw in zoos in the 1990s and 2000s were first-year birds — easily recognizable as such because young birds have blueish eyes that turn yellow as they get older.  This was not evidence of captive breeding but attested to them being poached from their nests.

Looking back, the decision to declare such a rare bird as a national symbol, without first putting proper protection and management in place, may not have been wise. When I started my research on Java, every large eagle regardless of species was described as a “Javan eagle,” but this changed rapidly and the Javan hawk-eagle quickly became recognized as something special. Enforcement of protected species legislation in Indonesia was and continues to be weak, and under Soeharto’s rule corruption and nepotism allowed for exceptions to be made.

Today numerous people and zoos keep Javan hawk-eagles, and young birds are frequently offered for sale. In the early years one could find them in the dark corners of one of the many bird markets that are present throughout Indonesia, but increasingly they are offered for sale on e-commerce platforms and social media sites.

But all is not negative.

At time of the declaration, very little was known about Javan hawk-eagles. Based on very limited surveys — including ones done by Bas van Balen — they were considered among the rarest birds in the world, with fewer than 60 pairs confined to five or six widely separated forest fragments and millions of people living in the areas in between. The first people who recorded the species and commented on their conservation were non-Indonesian birders, either living in Indonesia or visiting.

This has now changed. Today Javan hawk-eagles are arguably Indonesia’s most frequently studied birds, with university students’ conducting projects year after year on the eagles themselves, their habitat, and their distribution.

Meanwhile a solid group of dedicated raptor enthusiasts works to study, monitor, and protect the species. We now know more about Javan hawk-eagles than ever before, and the earlier population estimates were off by an order of magnitude.

And it turned out that the birds were not confined to the island of Java: They’ve been observed flying on neighboring Bali as well.

Trade and continuing habitat loss remain the main threats to the species, but guard nest protection programs have been very successful.

Zaini Rakhman, chairman of Raptor Indonesia, says that “between 2001 and 2021, 40 confiscated or surrendered Javan hawk-eagles were released and 27 of them survived in their new habitats.”

In 2023 two Javan hawk-eagles, captive born in an Indonesian zoo, were released into a national park in western Java — an area that might not have been protected if not for the birds.

“The presence of Javan hawk-eagles was one of the reasons why the forests on Mt. Murio in central Java were declared as a Grand Forest Park,” says Rakhman. “Increased protection of additional forest areas are currently under review.”

In the early 1990s Hans Bartels was of the opinion that the survival of the Javan hawk-eagle and its forest was fully dependent on Indonesia’s younger generation. They have taken this to heart. The eagle is now the pride of many Indonesians — and rightly so — and December 2025 saw the opening of the Bartels Javan Hawk-Eagle Conservation Museum, in a historic building that had originally been the private residence of the Bartels family.

Even President Soeharto could not have imagined this would be the cumulation of his single-handed declaration of Indonesia’s national bird.

References:

Nijman, V. 2020. Illegal trade in Indonesia’s National Rare Animal has moved online. Oryx 54(1), 12.

Nijman, V., Shepherd, C.R., Van Balen, S. 2009. Declaration of the Javan hawk eagle Spizaetus bartelsi as Indonesia’s National Rare Animal impedes conservation of the species. Oryx 43(1), 122-128.

Thiollay, J.M., Meyburg, B.U. 1988. Forest fragmentation and the conservation of raptors: a survey on the island of Java. Biological Conservation 44(4),229-250.

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The post Authoritarianism and Conservation: How a Dictator Shaped the Future of an Endangered Bird appeared first on The Revelator.

Marcia Ciro
Pause
Charles River, Dover, Massachusetts
Infrared photography
© copyright Marcia Ciro

“I’m not sure of the species, just got ‘ray-finned fishes’ on apps. I’ve been exploring local underwater environments in nearby rivers and lakes. I am fascinated by the complexity that lurks just below the surface.” Image taken with a digital camera modified to shoot infrared images.

 

 

 

 

Marcia Ciro
Untitled
Ipswich River, Ipswich, Massachusetts
Infrared photography
© copyright Marcia Ciro Both photos were taken with a digital camera modified to shoot infrared images. Marcia Ciro’s website is papertracestudio.com if you want to see more of her work, including more landscapes in color and infrared.

 

 

 

 

Barri Hitchin
Alien Visitor
Somerset Levels, United Kingdom
Inspiration: Surreal Wetland
Photograph
© copyright Barri Hitchin

 

 

 

 

Karl J. Findling
Hell’s Canyon, Oregon
Oregon Pack Works
Bend, Oregon
© copyright Karl J. Findling

 

 

 

 

 

María Isabel Dabrowski
SSSSlithering Through the Jungle
Bocaracá
Eyelash palm pitviper/Bothriechis schlegelii
La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica
© María Isabel Dabrowski

“While at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica for a training, I met a lovely wildlife biologist who is studying this species at La Selva to learn more about what, if anything, impacts the color variation of the Bocaracá. While we were admiring this bright yellow danger noodle from a respectful distance, the snake began moving along the tree branch; as this species mostly moves at night, the wildlife biologist we were with was super excited to watch the Bocaracá’s tongue-flicking and branch-wending in daylight.”

 

 

 

 

 

Lizann Michaud
Black-Tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalu molossus)
Mule Mountains of southeastern Arizona
© 2026 Lizann Michaud

“We knew this small black-tailed rattlesnake was there only when it began to move (and we of course hopped back a safe distance in reply). It didn’t rattle, and appeared remarkably relaxed, so I took a golden sunset-lit photo of this curious beauty.”

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Reed
Colorado Columbine and Greenback Trout
Rocky Mountain National Park
© copyright Stephen Reed

“Here’s an unintentional double exposure from Rocky Mountain National Park. It shows the state flower (blue columbine) and the state fish (greenback trout) in a tribute to the 150th anniversary of the state of Colorado.”

 

 

 

 

Stephen Reed
Bison Profile
©copyright Stephen Reed

“Here’s a bison profile taken with a 300mm telephoto lens near Soda Butte Creek in Yellowstone. What caught MY eye was the knot of fur near the nose (shaped like a false eye) that makes that nose look like a monkey face within the image. I cannot un-see it…”

 

 

 

 

Kate Chabarek
European Black Bee on Teasle
Basque Country, Spain
Photography, edited with Adobe Lightroom Classic (manual tools only)
© copyright Kate Chabarek

“My three-year-old son and I saw the European Black Bee by the Urumea River, near the town of Hernani, where we live. He warned me quite strenuously about the “erlea” (bee) and how it would “mina eman” (give pain), in the Basque language. I want to encourage him to be interested in nature, and I enjoy talking with him about plants and animals in English, so he can talk to his grandmother in the United States about them.”

 

 

 

 

Puffball
The Adirondacks in Northern NY
© copyright Kate Chabarek

 

 

 

 

 

Red Eft or eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens)
© copyright Kate Chabarek

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Ross
Wildlife Observing the Wildlife Photographer
Red foxes
Dean Hill Road, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania
Canon Powershot SX70 HS
© copyright Robert Ross Robert Ross
Wildlife Observing the Wildlife Photographer
Red foxes
Dean Hill Road, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania
Canon Powershot SX70 HS
© copyright Robert Ross

“While trying to get good photographic evidence (for the 3rd Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas) of a mother Bobolink feeding its young in a hayfield, I noticed a family of red foxes watching me the whole time from their upscale home nearby. These moments are what makes the project well worth the time spent.”

 

 

 

 

Candace Galen
Complementary Colors
Little blue butterfly (Icarica) on a purple aster
Hoosier Ridge — part of the Continental Divide just north of Hoosier Pass in central Colorado.
Photography, using a Sony Alpha II camera with telephoto lens and a continuous shoot setting so as not to disturb the butterfly.
© copyright Candace Galen

“Though tiny, these are truly the smallest of butterflies, their luminescent blue color is a showstopper. This one, flitting from flower to flower in an alpine meadow was irresistible.

An interesting fact: this species was given its scientific name by the Russian writer, Vladimir Nabokov, better known for his literary contributions (for example, Lolita). Exiled from Russia in the 1940s, he hired on as Curator of Lepidoptera at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.”

 

 

 

 

Linda Carroll
Moth Feasts on Sunflower
© copyright Linda Carroll

“I confess I don’t know the moth species. The photo was taken in Spokane, Washington. I went out to water the plants one summer morning and was taken by the beauty of the moth and the grouping of bright colors. I took a number of photos, moving closer each time but trying to do so without the moth noticing me. It wasn’t easy because the sun was behind me and I didn’t want to create a shadow, which would have disturbed the moth and spoiled the photo. This was the closest I got and the best shot. Shortly thereafter, the moth became annoyed with me and flew away.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I enjoyed talking about narwhals last month. What whale are we talking about this time?

This time we’re diving into one of my personal favorites: the humpback.

Wait, we usually talk about more obscure whales. Aren’t humpbacks kind of mainstream?

That’s true, but mainstream doesn’t mean boring. Humpbacks embody cetacean charisma. In addition to their good looks, they’re champion swimmers — they’re constantly observed leaping almost entirely out of the water in giant, thunderous breaches.

They’re also icons of conservation efforts; pop-culture superstars; and the subjects of amazing new science. Humpbacks are constantly in the news, too. One was recently spotted in a California river miles away from the ocean. Another made worldwide headlines for a very emotional display of grief after the loss of her calf.

Oh, that’s sad.

Yeah, but seeing that grief helps humans understand humpbacks even better — and maybe love them even more.

So where do they get the name “humpback”? I’ve seen photos — their backs don’t look all that humpy.

That’s true. But the name comes from those famous breaches and a distinct hump that forms on their backs when they arch to dive deep into the water.

Photo by Chinh Le Duc on Unsplash

That dive is a great opportunity to see one of humpbacks’ most beloved features: their tail flukes, which display unique black-and-white patterns on the underside. Photo-identification databases of these tail patterns allow scientists to track individual humpbacks across thousands of miles and throughout their decades-long lifespans. (Writer and whale fan Christopher Moore based an entire novel on those patterns.)

Getting back to their nomenclature, their scientific name, Megaptera novaeangliae, means “big-winged New Englander” and refers to their gigantic, wing-like pectoral flippers, which can grow up to 16 feet long — about a third of their total body length.

That must help them swim. Don’t they hold some kind of record for migrating?

You’ve been doing some reading in between these discussions! Good for you. Yes, humpback whales complete some of the longest migrations of any mammal on Earth. Each population has a different migratory path, but generally speaking they spend their summers in chilly, nutrient-rich polar waters where they gorge on krill and tiny fish — often using air bubbles to condense their prey into one location for easy pickings. Once suitably fattened up, they head north — a journey of several thousand miles to warm tropical waters near the equator, where they mate and give birth. They barely eat anything during the migration or their winter breeding season and live off their thick blubber stores.

That sounds like an intense diet plan. What else makes them famous?

Their music. Male humpbacks are known for their complex underwater “songs” — elaborate arrangements of moans, howls, and cries arranged in patterns that can last for hours. The songs evolve over time, with new “remixes” spreading across entire whale populations.

WhaleTrustMaui · Humpback Whale Song Recorded off the Coast of Maui in 2004

Those vocalizations are arguably one of the reasons we still have humpbacks. The 1970 album Songs of the Humpback Whale, recorded by bio-acoustician Roger Payne, sold more than 100,000 copies (about the same as David Bowie’s The Man Who Saved the World the same year) and helped kick off the global “Save the Whales” movement — not to mention my own fascination with whales. I heard part of the album for the first time in 1979 when an issue of National Geographic magazine included an excerpt on flexi-disc — a record printed on flexible plastic instead of pressed on vinyl. I must have listened to it a thousand times over the next couple of years.

Cool. I’ll have to look for a copy of that issue on eBay. How are humpbacks doing these days? They were heavily hunted, right?

Extremely heavily. Commercial whaling reduced global humpback populations by an estimated 90% before the international whaling moratorium took effect in 1986.

But 40 years later, humpbacks are often celebrated as one of conservation’s greatest success stories and the species overall is classified as “least concern” by the IUCN, with an estimated adult population of 84,000 and rising.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

It all depends on where humpbacks live, of course, but many populations have rebounded dramatically thanks to international protections (and U.S. protections under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act). One of the most exciting population recoveries is taking place off the coast of Brazil, where they’d all but disappeared four decades ago. Another unexpected site is the waters off the coast of New York City, where the nonprofit Gotham Whale recently documented 500 humpbacks, up from just 10-30 in the area a decade ago.

There’s a “but” coming, isn’t there?

You know me (and the world) too well. Not all populations have recovered equally. Specific distinct population segments — like the Arabian Sea and Oceania populations — remain endangered. (Newly published research also suggests the Arabian humpbacks may be a unique subspecies with low genetic diversity.)

Even for recovering populations, modern ocean life is a minefield. Humpbacks face constant threats from entanglements in commercial fishing gear and vessel strikes. On top of that, climate change is altering marine food webs, shifting krill distributions, and forcing whales to feed in new areas — where they become even more vulnerable to ship traffic. It’s a nasty circle.

Krill, climate, and humpbacks are intricately linked. A recent study found that a marine heatwave in the northeastern Pacific Ocean from 2013-2016 caused krill and small fish populations to crash — which then caused a decline in humpback populations in Hawaiʻi.

More recently a few starved and emaciated whales have washed ashore in places like Maine and Oregon. Is that a portent of things to come? I’m a bit worried.

So what can people do to help ensure humpbacks keep swimming, feeding, and breaching?

A few key things: If you’re ever out on a boat or taking a whale-watching tour (which I encourage you to do), make sure the operator follows responsible viewing guidelines and keeps a safe distance.

We can also support policy efforts that demand modifications in fisheries gear, such as ropeless fishing technology to eliminate dangerous entanglements like one that mangled a humpback’s jaw this summer. We also need to advocate for reducing boat noise in key migration corridors. A recent study found that engine noise reduced scientists’ ability to record humpback calls by 40-45%. If we can’t hear them, it’s a safe bet to assume they can’t hear themselves.

And, as with other species, supporting broader marine habitat protection and climate action helps safeguard the food and ocean ecosystems humpbacks rely on.

Got it. So what whale are we tackling next month?

That’s the toughest question you ask me each month. There are so many to choose from, including some species that are in the news. I have a few ideas, but anyone reading this can send their own favorites to me at jplatt@therevelator.org.

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

Songs Whales Sing: The Peculiar History of Commercial Whaling

The post Whale of the Month: Humpback Whales appeared first on The Revelator.

This story is part of a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization in Washington, D.C.

Global trade is remarkably efficient at moving things. It carries copper, cars, cameras, and crude oil across oceans and borders with astonishing speed. It takes the product of one country’s labor and ecology and delivers it to warehouses and supermarkets in another with so little friction that consumers barely register the distance.

But some things, intentionally, do not travel down the supply chain. One of them is stench.

Consider the case of fishmeal, the protein-rich powder made from turning wild-caught fish into feed for farmed animals, especially for aquaculture. The foul air produced by fishmeal factories stays in the poorer coastal communities where the fish is unloaded, cooked, pressed, dried, and ground — far from the dinner plates where the seafood gets eaten. Wealthy markets import the benefits of this globally essential commodity, but only after it has been cleaned of certain dirty truths.

In August 2022 at least 50 protesters spilled into the streets of Kayar, a fishing town on Senegal’s Atlantic coast, demanding the closure of a nearby fishmeal plant, Touba Protein Marine. Marching from the fishing wharf to the factory, they carried signs reading “Kayar is sick.” In a video that spread on Facebook, demonstrators chanted, “Time to respect our Kayar.”

The factory, they said, had been built less than a third of a mile from residential neighborhoods, triggering health problems and violating local zoning laws.

Smoke rises from a fishmeal factory in 2025 near a residential community in Callao, Peru. Emissions from fishmeal factories include ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, and methane, impacting more than 9.5 million people who live within a mile of the nearly 1,800 fishmeal plants operating in more than 50 countries. Credit: Ministry of Production of Peru

That same year in Vietnam, hundreds of residents on the country’s northeastern coast surrounded another plant and, for days, blasted loudspeakers at it in protest. In India, in 2024, the odor from fishmeal factories spurred protests that lasted more than 100 days, ending in a boycott of local elections and in villagers convening parallel meetings to pass resolutions against the plants.

These uprisings were not set off by the kind of industrial disaster that usually commands global attention. What brought people onto the streets was fishmeal’s foul smell.

My organization, The Ocean Outlaw Project, recently completed a global investigation of this product’s hidden costs. It reveals that the industry’s rancid odor was among the least tracked, most personally intimate, and widely suffered impacts of this growing market. Half of the seafood eaten globally comes from fish farms, most of them powered by fishmeal and fish oil. More than 9.5 million people worldwide, including nearly 1.7 million under the age of 15, live within a mile of fishmeal plants, according to Bait to Plate, an online tool that tracks the fishing and seafood industries.

This satellite image shows a fishmeal factory under construction near densely populated neighborhoods in Senegal in 2020, with thousands of residents living within a half mile of the plant. The country’s zoning rules forbid fishmeal companies from building plants within 500 meters, or about 550 yards, of a residential area.
The Outlaw Ocean Project/Google Maps

The industry plays a major role in global inequity. Despite claims that fish farming offers an ecological and ethical way to sustain a growing global population, accounting for feed reveals a different dynamic — one that resembles a form of food colonialism. Much of global aquaculture produces high-value seafood for wealthier markets by diverting food-grade fish from poorer regions that depend on those species as affordable sources of protein. Roughly 90% of the catch used to produce fishmeal is edible for humans. Most fishmeal plants rely on whole fish rather than processing waste or inedible byproducts, further intensifying local food insecurity in the communities where these fish are taken.

The industry is also unsustainable. At least half of the species landed by the 2,400 fishmeal ships assessed by the investigation were classified by scientific studies as “overexploited” or worse. Most of the vessels in this fleet are purse seiners or trawlers, which deploy vast nets to capture dense schools of fish. Both gear types are associated with high levels of waste, routinely hauling in large volumes of bycatch and nontarget species. At least 165 of the ships in the global fishmeal fleet were bottom trawlers, a particularly destructive form of fishing that uses weighted nets that scrape the ocean floor, destroying virtually everything in their paths.

The investigation involved more than two dozen journalists in as many countries. In our global discussions, neighbors living near fishmeal plants described to reporters experiencing nausea, headaches, eye irritation, dizziness, coughing fits, and loss of appetite. They recounted laundry brought in early to keep the smell from settling into fabric, doors kept shut in coastal heat, sleep broken at night, and a low-grade sense of agitation that comes from never being able to trust the next gust of wind.

“We don’t invite family or friends here because we are embarrassed that we live in a place that smells like it’s rotting,” a man in Songkla, Thailand explained.

The investigation documented more than 70 cases of neighbors complaining about stench from at least 60 plants in 15 countries. In Mar del Plata, Argentina, the smell from fishmeal plants was so bad that tourists visiting a local hotel sometimes had to step into the courtyard to vomit. In Ecuador the odor emitted by fishmeal plants overwhelmed nearby residents and paralyzed the tourism sector. In the southern town of Huaquillas, which shares a border with Peru, residents told a daily newspaper in 2021 that the smell from fishmeal processing was “unbearable” and “impossible to be around.” In Salango, a rural parish on Ecuador’s coast more than 270 miles north of Huaquillas, researchers who sought to attract beach visitors in 2022 acknowledged that it would be an uphill battle because the smell from an industrial fishmeal factory there “generates unpleasant odors that deter tourists and cause them to choose other destinations.”

The foul smell from these plants was more than just a nuisance. The stink corrodes the local economy by undercutting tourism and scaring away restaurant patrons and beach visitors.

The stench is also an indicator of the release of noxious chemicals like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, and methane, which have been known to cause serious health problems, including pulmonary edema. The worst part of the odor is from trimethylamine, or TMA, a colorless gas characterized by a “fishy” smell. In 2021 the Society of Chemical Industry identified TMA as “strongly toxic and carcinogenic.”

Humans’ sensitivity to foul odors is a defense mechanism borne of evolution. As part of a basic survival instinct developed over millions of years, people are repulsed by smells like that of feces, rotting food, decaying flesh, or acrid chemicals. This visceral reaction also brings intense feelings of disgust and anxiety that lead to negative health consequences when these exposures last longer than several minutes, according to a 2016 study from the journal Brain Sciences.

In many countries chemical waste is closely regulated, particularly if it makes people sick or harms the environment. But emitting bad smells is typically seen as more of an inconvenience than an actual environmental or health hazard.

Bad smells are also difficult to measure or regulate. “The technology for detecting and characterizing complex odors has not developed to the level of a reliable surveillance method, which has hindered regulatory frameworks,” stated a 2021 piece in a waste-management magazine written by a group of environmental engineers at Florida Atlantic University.

Though there are many studies focused on the health and environmental impact of specific chemicals emitted by sewage plants, livestock operations, composting facilities, landfills, paper mills, or petrochemical industries, little research has concentrated on the “impact of olfactory nuisance,” according to a 2021 study published in the journal Environmental Health.

Stinky industries like chemical refineries, fertilizer factories, incinerators, and landfills are typically limited by zoning laws to prevent them from being too close to residential homes. In the United States, neighbors near businesses that emit foul odors have sometimes successfully filed complaints under federal nuisance laws, which are designed to protect residents from unreasonable interference with the enjoyment of their property. Between 2018 and 2019, juries in five trials awarded 36 plaintiffs a total of $550 million in lawsuits filed against Murphy-Brown/Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producers in the world. The amount was later reduced due to a state cap on punitive damages. For decades neighbors of the farms in North Carolina, the majority of whom were Black, endured “the piercing, acrid odor of hog manure, reminiscent of rotten eggs and ammonia,” according to one report referenced in the lawsuits.

In 2020 the company asked for a retrial, but the 4th District Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s verdict. The conditions at the farms, which included “spraying untreated hog waste high into the air — where it then drifts toward nearby homes,” wrote Justice J. Harvie Wilkinson in a concurring opinion, “violated homeowners’ rights to the healthful enjoyment of their property.”

These types of regulations tend to be applied more in wealthier countries, and the vast majority of fishmeal plants are in poorer nations. In Senegal, where there are at least nine fishmeal plants, the investigation found that zoning rules forbid fishmeal companies from building plants within 500 meters, or about 550 yards, of a residential area. But a review of satellite imagery of the country’s plants vis-a-vis homes indicated that companies routinely violated this rule, the investigation found.

Methods for measuring airborne TMA have been around since at least the 1970s. Over the past few decades, however, the more standard approach has involved collecting air samples with what are known as “solid-phase extraction” tubes and then analyzing those samples at a lab using techniques called “liquid chromatography” and “mass spectrometry.” These techniques are precise but pricey, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2009 a Peruvian scientist named Josué Padilla Lauriano set out to find a cheaper option for testing TMA levels. He focused his research on Chimbote, a city along Peru’s western coast that was not only the world’s largest producer of fishmeal but also ranked as one of the most polluted places on Earth. Using simple air bubblers and a spectrophotometer — standard tools found in nearly every chemistry lab — and adapting a technique originally developed to detect TMA in dead fish, not air, Lauriano and his team spent 20 months collecting samples. Lauriano’s device only cost a few hundred dollars to take measurements. Under local regulations plants were supposed to stay under 12 parts per million (ppm), but Lauriano found nighttime emissions averaging above 17 ppm when the plants cook the most and a maximum reading from a plant that topped 32 ppm.

Even when testing was feasible, many countries did not have emissions standards that included thresholds for foul odors, according to a 2025 paper published in Applied Sciences. “The mechanism of human odor detection is still not fully understood,” which, the paper said, is one reason stench is so difficult to measure and regulate objectively.

The countries that set standards for how much TMA could be released were usually not based on stench or quality-of-life concerns, but instead on the level at which this chemical began to negatively affect human health. In the United States health regulators typically use guidelines between 5-10 ppm as long-term exposure limits. These limits are substantially higher than what a typical person’s nose can detect. TMA can be detected at concentrations as low as 0.0002 ppm, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Fishmeal stench is not an unsolvable problem. When factory owners have tried to reduce it, they have usually succeeded. In 2008 in the United States, in 2021 in South Africa, and in 2022 in Yemen, plant owners installed various types of devices, some of them called scrubbers, that researchers later concluded had drastically reduced the foulest-smelling chemicals. Scrubbers are not more common partly because they can cost upwards of US$1 million.

Costs notwithstanding, there are deeper reasons stench stays far away from consumers. In wealthier nations, plant neighbors more often successfully pressure their governments to require odor controls. In poorer nations, people living in the industrial areas where these plants are built usually lack political clout. Their governments are also more desperate for revenue and more reluctant to put up regulatory burdens that may scare away foreign investment. As a result there’s little incentive or pressure for foreign fishmeal producers to fix a problem that does not directly affect their bottom line.

The price being paid by the oceans writ large, and the coastal countries whose resources are being sapped, rarely appear in the balance sheets of the feed and aquaculture companies that profit from this type of extraction. Nor will they appear on the seafood menu. Over a fifth of all marine life pulled from the sea is converted into fishmeal, which is a major factor in why over a third of the world’s stocks are overfished and worsening every year. Despite decades of warnings, this remains a problem that is out of sight and out of mind for the average consumer.

Modern life tends to rank injuries by how neatly they can be photographed, measured, litigated, or charted. Faraway, slow-moving, and intangible harms like stench are the very ones that globalized economies have become especially efficient at disappearing for the customers at the wealthier and tail end of long supply chains.

Or, as the novelist John Berger once asked in another context: “What is the social value of a pain eased?”

(The reporting for this story was part of a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project.)

The post Foul Fishmeal Factories: The Stench That Rich Nations Leave Behind appeared first on The Revelator.