The Revelator

The global annual production of plastics rose to 400 million metric tons in 2022 and is projected to double by 2050. Many items produced are used once and then thrown away, including more than 30 billion plastic water bottles sold each year in the United States alone. Less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled.

Clearly the problem of plastic pollution in land and marine environments isn’t going away. This series looks at some approaches to dealing with it, including this examination of the increasing demand for water in disposable bottles.

A whopping 88% of Americans say they consume bottled water, according to an industry survey released in 2024. In fact that year we drank an estimated 16.4 billion gallons of it — 47.1 gallons and a shocking average of about 340 individual bottles per person. The retail cost of all those bottles reached $50.6 billion.

But there’s another cost to this practice: serious effects on our health.

Recent research from Concordia University in Canada shows that people who drink bottled water ingest up to 90,000 more microparticles of plastic a year than those who drink tap water. Microplastic particles range in size from 1 micron (a thousandth of a millimeter) to 5 millimeters. For perspective, a credit card is about 1 millimeter thick.

More concerning is another study that found higher amounts of nanoparticles in water bottles than previously reported. Nanoparticles are smaller than 1 micron.

An ever-growing body of research suggests that exposure to these particles, particularly the nano-sized ones, affects our immune systems, causes reproductive issues, impairs cognitive function, and increases cancer risk.

Why We Drink Bottled Water

Why do we drink so much water from plastic bottles in the first place?

In one survey reported by Statista, reasons given by consumers included convenience, better taste, mistrust of household water quality, unsuitability of tap water, preference for sparkling or flavored water, and the fact that some of the bottled stuff has more minerals.

Researchers at Canada’s University of Waterloo suggest that the choice also taps into something deeper: our fear of death. Their 2018 paper argued that this fear makes us want to avoid risks — and many people see bottled water as safer, purer, or more controlled.

The industry promotes those perceptions with marketing campaigns using celebrities and feel-good imaging. Some even directly play on fears about the safety of tap water and mistrust in government entities (think Flint, Michigan), according to Peter H. Gleick, president emeritus and chief scientist at the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security and author of the 2010 book Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession With Bottled Water.

But is bottled water truly safer than tap?

Image by Wilson Blanco from Pixabay Bottled Versus Tap

In the United States, tap water is significantly more regulated than the bottled stuff. The Environmental Protection Agency oversees municipal tap water systems, which must meet safety standards and are regularly inspected.

The water itself is treated to remove particles, chemicals, bacteria, and other contaminants and must be frequently tested. Water suppliers are required to provide testing results to customers every year in the form of Consumer Confidence Reports, also published online.

Not that there haven’t been problems with tap water systems. A 1986 EPA report, Reducing Lead in Drinking Water, showed that 36 million Americans were using tap water with high levels of lead. Much of that exposure came from lead pipes in homes. Congressional investigations and updates to the Safe Drinking Water Act followed and most of the problems were fixed, but not all (again, Flint).

More recently per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as “forever chemicals,” have been found in water sources around the world. These chemicals break down very slowly and have turned up in the blood of people and animals and at low levels in a variety of food products and soil. Studies have linked exposure to some PFAS to harmful health effects.

In 2024 the EPA adopted national standards for acceptable levels of PFAs in tap water, requiring water utilities to test for it until 2027. Testing results will be used to determine future regulations for regular PFAS sampling and reporting, and after 2029 utilities must use treatment processes to remove PFAS from drinking water. Researchers are studying the effectiveness of various removal technologies.

Contaminants or pathogens sometimes end up in municipal water supplies due to issues such as flooding or equipment malfunctions. Thankfully we know about these incidents because of the required testing. But hearing about them can sow doubt, causing people to switch to bottled water even if their water source is safe.

The Food and Drug Administration regulates bottled water, but only if it’s sold across state lines. Water that is both packaged and sold within the state of origin represents most of the bottled water market, according to Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Individual states are responsible for these products, but 1 in 5 states have no regulations covering them, he adds.

And while the PFAS standards are supposed to apply to bottled water as well, Olson says: “As far as we know they haven’t been. Most bottled water probably doesn’t have PFAS, but how do we know?”

A study led by New York University researchers found that plastics — including but not limited to water bottles — are responsible for 93% of the exposure to PFOA, one of the most widely studied PFAS.

NRDC also found that about 22% of bottled water brands they tested contained chemicals at levels above state health limits or industry recommendations in at least one sample.

Ironically, an estimated 25 to 45% of bottled water is simply municipal tap water, repackaged and marked up in price, sometimes further treated, sometimes not. PepsiCo’s Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani, for example, are filtered tap water. Some brands, like Smartwater, promote that they use distillation to purify their water, but that process uses a lot of energy. Spring water typically requires minimal treatment but may come from stressed natural springs. The process of bottling water can be wasteful; for example, it takes 1.63 liters of water to make every liter of Dasani.

Olson points out that making and shipping plastic bottles uses a lot of fossil fuel, too. “It’s incredibly wasteful. Consuming tap water is more energy efficient and has a lower carbon footprint.”

Then there are those particles.

On April 2 the EPA announced plans to study microplastics and added microplastics as a priority contaminant group on a draft list under consideration for regulation in drinking water (along with pharmaceuticals as a group, 75 individual chemicals, and nine microbes). However, the agency has had significant layoffs and attrition under the second Trump administration. It is dispersing staff in its defunct Office of Research and Development to other programs and faces a proposed 52% cut to its budget. Food and Water Watch, a safe food, water, and climate advocate, warned that the announcement falls short of what we really need, which is a comprehensive nationwide monitoring program.

On top of that, the effort will address microplastics but not nanoplastics.

Sarah Sajedi, Ph.D., coauthor of the previously mentioned particle studies, has done experiments that found as many as 10 million nanoparticles in a liter water bottle. A major concern, she says, is that these particles accumulate in human tissues. Nanoparticles can enter the bloodstream and reach vital organs, causing chronic inflammation, oxidative stress on cells, hormonal disruption, impaired reproduction, neurological damage, and various kinds of cancer.

“We’ve only had technology in the past three to five years to detect the nanosized particles,” Sajedi says. “First you have to prove there is exposure, and now we have shown that it exists with bottled water.”

In another ironic twist, when companies started using thinner plastic in water bottles to help reduce plastic pollution, it made the particle problem worse.

Bottled water containers now typically use almost a third less PET plastic on average than other packaged beverages like soft drinks, which need thicker containers due to carbonation. But these thinner bottles shed more particles. Movement, such as from being carried around, and exposure to sunlight both increase release of particles.

“Shaking the bottle or UV exposure from leaving it in your car increases tenfold the shedding of the plastic,” says Sajedi.

Improving the quality of material used in bottles would reduce particle exposure but exacerbate the problem of plastic waste. Gleick’s book noted that people in the United States throw away 30 billion plastic water bottles each year. Only a small percent of those are recycled; many end up in the environment, often the ocean. The harms caused by this plastic pollution are well documented, with the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimating its environmental damages at about $75 billion per year back in 2018 and a 2025 study blaming it for over $1.5 trillion in health-related economic losses per year.

Image by Hans from Pixabay So What’s a Thirsty Person to Do?

In general the safest thing to do is drink tap water — absent any specific problems in your area — and drink bottled water only on (rare) occasions.

“Say you’re at a baseball game and there’s no drinking fountains,” Olson says. “You’re not evil for consuming it once in a while. We just encourage people to think about it.”

If you’re concerned about your tap water, he suggests using a home filter system, which costs much less overall than bottles. One example shows that a family of four could save $2,878 a year using a pitcher-style filter system instead of bottled water.

“Another thing is, don’t be fooled by the names and pictures on the label that imply the water is from a mountain stream or pristine spring,” Olson says. “If the label says it is from a municipal source, it probably is just untreated tap water because that’s what rules require they say.”

When you need to buy bottled water, Sajedi suggests buying larger containers. “The quality of plastic is better with the jugs, which cuts down on your exposure to particles.”

Water is an essential human need. In places without reliable, safe water sources, many of these issues are moot, although experts argue the solution is to provide or improve infrastructure rather than relying on bottled water. But for the rest of us, it may be time to rethink our drinking habits.

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The post Dangerous Drinking: Is Bottled Water Really Safer Than Tap Water? appeared first on The Revelator.

I used to walk through Copley Square in Boston’s Back Bay and catch it by accident — the way Trinity Church appeared twice. Once in stone, anchored and unmoved, and again, improbably, in the mirrored skin of the John Hancock Tower.

Completed in 1877, Trinity rises from a very different era than the Hancock, finished nearly a century later in 1976. And yet, depending on the light and angle, the two seem to occupy the same moment.

Trinity Church reflected in the mirrored glass of the John Hancock Tower, Boston. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The old isn’t erased by the new. It’s carried forward, reflected back at the city.

That distinction — between replacement and reflection — matters more than we often admit, especially now, as so many institutions, from environmental governance to technology itself, are being rebuilt at speed.

Henry Cobb, the lead architect of John Hancock Tower, described wanting the building to be deliberately quiet — a modern structure that responded to Copley Square rather than dominating it. The mirrored glass was meant to dissolve the tower’s presence, allowing the city — and especially Trinity Church — to remain visually central.

Whatever Cobb intended, the outcome became something larger than design logic alone. The tower doesn’t merely recede; it carries the past into view. Meaning emerged not just from intention, but from how the structure settled into its surroundings over time. Nearly a century of distance collapses into a single frame, not by imitation or nostalgia but by restraint.

That choice — to build something new that reflects rather than replaces — is not a silver bullet. Reflection alone does not guarantee success. But its absence almost guarantees failure.

This is the lesson conservation continues to relearn: The durability of a system matters more than the brilliance of its design. Protection that only works under ideal conditions isn’t protection — it’s aspiration.

Nowhere is this tension more visible than in the ocean, the world’s largest and most vulnerable mirror.

Ocean conservation is often driven by urgency. New frameworks, tools, and technologies are deployed to address collapse at scale. The focus is speed, efficiency, and ambition. The pressure is always forward.

And yet, again and again, the efforts that endure are not the most novel. They’re the ones that manage — sometimes deliberately, sometimes imperfectly — to carry older lessons forward: restraint, relationship, and place-based memory. The understanding that ecosystems are lived with, not simply managed.

The problem is not innovation itself. It’s innovation that looks impressive but reveals very little beyond its design.

Consider Mexico’s Cabo Pulmo, often cited as one of the most successful marine protected areas in the world. The headlines focus on dramatic increases in fish populations and the power of no-take regulations.

But those tools came later. Long before formal protection, local families understood the reef as relational rather than extractive. Fishing practices were shaped by limits, seasons, and the knowledge that abundance depended on patience. When modern conservation arrived — laws, enforcement, scientific monitoring — it did not overwrite that ethic. It reflected it, giving durable form to values already in place.

What mattered was not simply that protection arrived, but how it arrived.

The new rules did not ask the community to abandon identity in exchange for compliance. They extended a relationship people already understood. Because restraint was familiar, limits felt legible rather than imposed. Continuity made patience possible — and patience made recovery visible.

Cabo Pulmo’s success was ecological and also cultural. Protection worked because it felt continuous rather than disruptive.

In places like Kaʻūpūlehu on Hawaiʻi island, a different but complementary pathway was revealed. There, continuity was not merely recognized by outside institutions after the fact; it was actively reclaimed and relegitimized by the community itself. The revival of ahupuaʻa-based management blends contemporary science with customary practice — seasonal closures, species-specific rules, and governance grounded in community responsibility rather than distant authority.

To understand the ahupuaʻa is to understand connectivity as a physical and social mandate. These wedge-shaped land divisions traditionally ran from the mountain peaks down through valleys to the reef. If you fouled the stream in the uplands, you starved the taro patches and the fishponds below. Responsibility wasn’t an abstract environmental ethic; it was a literal downstream consequence.

Ahupuaʻa systems were never static codes handed down unchanged through time. They were adaptive frameworks, responding to shifts in abundance, climate variability, and social need through observation and restraint. They endured not because they resisted change, but because they embedded flexibility within .

When modern conservation engages these systems as living frameworks rather than cultural artifacts, authority becomes relational. Compliance becomes collective. Resilience begins to scale — driven less by tighter rules than by deeper meaning.

Still, reflection is not immunity.

The field has learned this through a category of failure so common it has a name: “paper parks.” These are protected areas that were intensively planned, legally designated, internationally celebrated — and then quietly failed in practice: protections that looked complete from a distance but proved too thin to hold under pressure.

A particularly instructive case is the Phoenix Islands Protected Area. On paper it was a triumph of ocean policy design: years of consultation, sophisticated ecological science, international financing mechanisms, and UNESCO World Heritage status. It was widely hailed as a model for large-scale ocean protection in the high-seas era.

And then it faltered.

This was not a story of hypocrisy or neglect. It was a structural mismatch between design and reality.

Despite its careful planning, the reserve struggled with enforcement, financing, and political durability. Kiribati faced real economic pressures from fishing access fees, climate impacts, and national debt. The conservation model assumed that long-term international support and compliance would hold.

They didn’t.

At points, commercial fishing resumed or enforcement weakened, as the governance design failed to account for sovereignty, economic vulnerability, and political gravity.

The surface held global conservation values clearly, but it did not reflect the weight the system would be asked to carry. Ecology was remembered; history was not. Like a building designed to photograph well but not weather a storm, the reserve reflected the ideals of its designers more clearly than the conditions it would have to survive.

That fragility is not theoretical. It is being actively stress-tested.

In the United States, recent policy direction under the Trump administration has moved to accelerate deep-sea mining exploration in U.S. territories, fast-tracking permits and weakening environmental review in places where baseline knowledge is still profoundly incomplete.

At the same time, longstanding marine monuments and sanctuaries — areas once framed as durable commitments to restraint — have been reopened or proposed for reopening to commercial extraction, including fishing access once explicitly limited.

These are not isolated policy shifts; they are a demonstration of how protections built by executive decree can be unbuilt by the same mechanism. The legal architecture remains thin, contingent on political alignment rather than ecological necessity. What was presented as permanence reveals itself as provisional — protection that reflects intention in one moment, but cannot withstand the next.

You see this pattern elsewhere: marine protected areas mapped with exquisite precision but no budget for enforcement; fisheries reforms negotiated over years that collapse when leadership changes; international ocean treaties whose necessity is uncontested, but whose buy-in remains elusive.

In each case the failure wasn’t a lack of rigor. It was the assumption that process equals permanence.

Conservation was designed to be impressive at birth, not resilient across political seasons.

Durability is the real design challenge. Ocean policy fails when it isn’t built to survive pressure, fatigue, turnover, and bad years.

Technology has only intensified this tension. Satellites, autonomous vehicles, and AI-driven analytics now extend our perception, revealing patterns in the water that were once invisible.

Used well, they act as clarifying filters. But a technocentric mindset has taken hold — the belief that future tools will spare us from the harder work of changing ourselves. This is the blank glass of our era: a surface so smooth it stops the eye, obscuring the downstream consequences of our choices.

We see it in autonomous ocean cleanup systems that promise to vacuum plastic from the high seas while leaving the industrial tap wide open on land. We see it in carbon removal schemes that treat the atmosphere as a ledger rather than a life support. And we see it in deep-sea mining proposals that promise “smart robots” to manage extraction — outsourcing moral weight to machines operating in the dark.

In this framing conservation begins to resemble the tech industry itself: forever iterating and increasingly uncomfortable with limits. When a tool is designed only to look forward, it behaves like a screen rather than a mirror. Demand disappears from view; efficiency becomes the sole metric of virtue.

The ocean has never been short on clever tools. What it has lacked is the willingness to say enough. A satellite can track a vessel with surgical precision, but it cannot decide when fishing should stop. No algorithm can negotiate the social courage required to leave resources unextracted. Those decisions require memory — of places, of relationships, of limits already tested. Technology works best when it remains reflective — when it amplifies accountability rather than automating it.

Some conservation structures are built to last. Others are built to be seen. The difference becomes clear over time. Enduring systems allow people to plan, to invest, and to commit attention without constantly checking the political weather. Fragile ones, even when ambitious, remain provisional — less like stone and more like a projection, subject to being switched off.

When authority is provisional, stewardship becomes reactive. Budgets hesitate. Careers stall. The long view collapses into crisis management. Conservation becomes a flickering screen rather than a structure capable of holding meaning.

Older stewardship traditions rarely operated this way. Continuity wasn’t a political achievement; it was the point. They were designed to absorb change without constantly redefining their own existence. There is a difference between adaptation — the breathing of a living system — and instability, which is simply erosion by another name.

This does not mean protections should be frozen in time. Healthy systems require reassessment. But endurance resists the constant resetting of goals before ecosystems and communities have time to respond.

What lasts is often quiet. It does not announce itself with sweeping designations or polished dashboards. Like all structures that truly hold, its value becomes visible only when stress arrives — and the system does not collapse.

The ocean responds to steadiness: to protection held long enough for complexity to return, to rules applied consistently enough for trust to form, to care practiced across generations. Conservation falters when it confuses motion with progress. The future worth building is not one that erases the past, nor one that freezes it in place. It is one that remains readable — where earlier lessons about limits, restraint, and relationship are still visible as new structures rise.

What endures is not the shine of what’s new, but the care taken to ensure it can still hold and reflect something older in view.

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

The Work Behind the Win: The Long, Collective Effort Behind the Moments Conservation Celebrates

The post Reflections on What Endures in Conservation appeared first on The Revelator.

Saving the planet is serious business — but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun along the way.

Twice a month cartoonist Tom Toro contributes single-panel environmental cartoons to The Revelator’s weekly newsletter. These exclusive cartoons use Toro’s uniquely odd way of looking at the world to skewer some of the issues threatening life on Earth — from climate change to pollution to the extinction crisis.

You can sign up to get these cartoons (and the rest of our newsletter) here:

Subscribe to our newsletter

But the published cartoon is just part of the story. After the finished cartoons are released into the wild, Toro also shares process videos detailing how he created them. The videos, posted to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube (and perhaps some other social networks that haven’t descended into chaos), offer unique insight into how each cartoon is composed.

 

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A post shared by Tom Toro (@tbtoro)

“I make these process videos as a way to invite people into my studio and to enjoy the creative process,” Toro says. “But I also make them to celebrate the art of cartooning at its most fundamental, and fun, level.”

Sometimes making the videos even provides Toro with a few other opportunities to be creative. Or just to make silly voices.

 

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One great aspect of these videos is seeing the art build — from initial sketch to hand-drawn black-and-white line art, and then through the addition of incredibly detailed, painted gray tones.

 

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A post shared by Tom Toro (@tbtoro)

It’s all a welcome reminder of the power and effectiveness of physical art — and cartooning — in our digital age.

“Over the years I’ve made concessions to technology in my artistic process, sketching on digital tablets and making edits in Photoshop,” says Toro. “But I always draw my final cartoons with pen and paper. Nothing beats the tactile feel of creating something by hand. The way the ink soaks into the vellum; the momentary sheen before it dries, as if the lines are winking at me; the unpredictable bloom of watercolor across a wet patch. It’s incredibly fun. I feel as if I’m in conversation with the cartoon, as if we’re co-conspirators trying to figure things out on the fly.”

Sometimes the videos show things change as Toro layers on the details.

“Whenever mistakes happen — and they happen all the time — there’s no quick fix, no Control-Z undo,” he says. “I need to find a way to cope with the accidental mark, the sloppy daub, the errant splash. Or maybe I don’t try to correct it? Maybe I let it guide me in a new, unexpected direction? Maybe the mistake isn’t a mistake at all, but a discovery? One that I never would have stumbled upon in the digital realm.”

Watch more of Tom Toro’s process videos below — and seriously, sign up for the newsletter, which links to our latest articles and commentaries each week. We put a lot of heart (and humor) into every issue, and it always contains exclusives only available to subscribers.

 

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The post Tom Toro’s Environmental Cartoons: Process Videos appeared first on The Revelator.

We’ve all been stuck in jobs we’ve hated for one reason or another —  for example, when a workplace doesn’t share our values. It’s a tough job market right now, but we can still take back our agency. Let’s explore how to move past feelings of bitterness and alienation and find the vocational niche that supports our beliefs and sense of morality.

Dr. Green,

In my workplace, an alien from outer space would fit in better than I do. My soul is hurt every day by the wanton waste and disregard for natural resources I see. For example, despite having a full galley with sinks for dishwashing, the company springs for disposable plates, cups, plastic cutlery, and even those godawful plastic coffee stirrer straws! Toilet paper rolls are tossed way before they’re empty. The same goes for detergent bottles, soap containers, and more. Good, usable products end up in the trash for no discernible reason and don’t get me started about food waste. I try to set an example by never using the disposables and practicing efficiency, but nobody has ever followed suit. I’m sure I’m also the only vegetarian within a 15-mile radius of our home port.

I’m desperately looking for another job, gritting my teeth (dentist told me I have bruxism), communicating as little as possible (They’ll never listen. They already think I’m a freak. Guess which news channel they watch?), using the “un-empty” items myself, invoking the “environmentalist curse” (May you live next to a landfill.) silently on them and trying my best to not explode in eco-rage. Anything else I can do for myself?

Breathing exercises and meditation are not going to cut it. After nearly a year of trying, they’re not helping. I’m just too high-energy. Any research vessels or companies involved in trying to REPAIR the environment rather than destroy it need to hire a great mariner?

Hello Friend,

I certainly understand your frustration — it’s clear you’re unhappy and want to find a position that’s a better cultural fit. This can be difficult in a soft job market. On the other hand, if you expend too much energy on eco-rage, you’ll have little left over to seek a better-fit position and workplace with clarity.

Musicians go where there are other musicians and musical opportunities, engineers go where there’s engineering, and environmentalists gravitate toward where environmentalism is cultivated and upheld in practice and deed. Let’s see if we can help make that happen for you.

What Is Eco-Rage?

You may not have realized it when you used the phrase, but “eco-rage” is a very real and common feeling — though not always productive.

Eco-rage is an intensely negative emotional response to the lack of other people’s concerns for the environment — an overwhelming feeling of helplessness when others around you don’t seem to share your urgent concern. That can elevate antisocial aggression and even result in you lashing out at coworkers, family and friends, or strangers. You become isolated because you can’t control your emotions or actions, and an increasing fatalism can cause you to lash out further or shut down in depression. This is related to climate doomism.

At the same time, because you’re overwhelmed with negativity, your brain begins to release chemicals that physically and mentally further degrade your system.

Rage can be a destructive force, but it can also be a powerful catalyst for positive change. A desire for a better world and an anger over natural destruction lie at the heart of environmentalism. Try to refocus of your rage into finding a new job, career, or avocation; cultivate intelligent control over runaway emotions. Get out of your own way.

Here are some suggestions for working with your eco-rage to develop skills in self-possession and inner strength so that you can more fruitfully explore new opportunities and feel validated and supported. (And see the resource guide below for more information.)

Talk to a Therapist

To identify and organize your overwhelming feelings, it’s a great idea to seek the help of an objective person trained in one-on-one sessions where you can slow your feelings down a bit and separate each bad feeling into an item for exploration on how to cope.

Psychologists and psychiatrists are trained in this and bound by law and The Ethics Code (the equivalent of The Hippocratic Oath for medical professionals) to maintain confidentiality. Make sure only to work with psych professionals who are legally licensed and certified. Most health insurance plans cover therapy (at least, in network and in your home state). And some remote or distance psychological services will accept health insurance, too. See The Revelator’s “Dr. Green: The Therapist-Patient Relationship” for more resources on finding help.

I highly recommend engaging a psych professional to make sense of your current state of mind and learn coping skills. While you search for that new job, the one you feel stuck at job may be a good place to challenge yourself by practicing your newfound self-regulation techniques.

Cultivate Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify and manage your own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. This skill requires awareness, an ability to identify your own feelings, and an effort to redirect those emotions toward strategic and creative thinking to solve problems.

Stop cleaning up after your coworkers or “educating” them. When people perceive that they’re being scolded or preached at — especially in a pervasive culture like the one you describe — they get defensive and dig in. Simply let it go, stop monitoring them, and work on yourself instead. Set an example through your silent deeds (which can be more effective than we think, since people who respond to them also often do so silently). In the workplace, address your own feelings and behaviors. Rage is wasted energy that will be best used in strategic planning for future employment.

Consider Stoicism

Stoicism is a philosophy focused on developing emotional regulation and inner fortitude, regardless of external circumstances. It emphasizes distinguishing what is within our control from what is not in our control, exercising self-discipline, and accepting what comes. It’s excellent for gaining and projecting inner strength, focus, and resilience.

All philosophies are imperfect, but taking a bit of wisdom from each can help you define yourself clearly in self-empowerment. My personal mix of humanism, nihilism, and stoicism has been invaluable in both my personal and professional life.

Here are a few ideas from stoicism:

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.” — Epictetus

 “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” — Epictetus

“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” — Marcus Aurelius

“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius

A Few Words of Advice on Job-Hunting

If you’re applying for jobs now, make sure that your resume and cover letter are objective and dispassionate. Remove any editorial comments that may reflect negative feelings you have about your current job. If you land an interview, don’t say even one negative thing about your current or previous employers and coworkers. Simply say you’re seeking a new position because you’re ready for new challenges and leave it at that.

I tell you this because I once got the best job of my life by not complaining about my previous employers. The hiring manager didn’t know that I was being brutally bullied by two managers at the job I held while HR did nothing and coworkers looked the other way so they wouldn’t get bullied too.  I focused on my strengths and what I could bring to the new job — not what was holding me back.

Now stop wasting your energy on the actions of others and get to work on finding a job where you feel appreciated for the values you hold dear.

Cheers,

Dr. Green

What are you struggling with in your job as a dedicated environmentalist?  Let us know by sending your questions and success stories in the text box below.

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

Send Dr. Green your questions and stories below:

All questions are intended for publication; published questions will be kept anonymous. Individual replies are not possible.

See you next time!

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

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

SUICIDE HOTLINES

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

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

USA: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

1-800-273-TALK

Resources:

Jobs in environmental mariner fields (though I don’t know what type of mariner you are):

Search engine term: environmental mariner jobs

Conservation Job Board – https://www.conservationjobboard.com

Environmental Jobs – https://environmentaljobs.com

Green Jobs Network – https://greenjobs.net

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) – https://www.unep.org/work-with-us

EcoJobs – https://ecojobs.com

Conservation International – https://www.conservation.org/conservation-international-jobs

Environmental Career Center – https://environmentalcareer.com

EnableGreen – https://enable.green

(These should get you started!)

Emotional Intelligence – a good resource to start with: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-intelligence

Eco-Grief and Psychotherapy Support Resources: Many of these groups are donation-based or free, or will take your insurance, offering a crucial outlet for those feeling isolated in their climate anxieties.

BetterHelp

Talkspace

Climate Grief Groups

Good Grief Network

GreenFaith

Stoicism Resources

The Daily Stoic

How to Be a Stoic: 9 Stoic Exercises to Get You Started

The post Dr. Green: What If Your Job Doesn’t Align with Your Eco-Values? appeared first on The Revelator.

For well over a year now, the Save the Gibbons Alliance, a group of small-ape conservationists and media professionals focused on protecting these long-armed primates from illegal trade, has been tracking a worrying problem. They’ve documented at least one gibbon-smuggling incident per month, either at a southeast Asian airport or an Indian one, each involving multiple gibbon babies or juveniles. News reports of these seizures in the local media are often accompanied by heartbreaking images of distressed or dead gibbon babies, stuffed into check-in or carry-on baggage.

“The level of complexity and organization that needs to be involved in this is just huge,” says Dr. Susan Cheyne, senior lecturer in primate conservation at the Oxford Brookes University and a member of the Save the Gibbon Alliance.

Some months the number of seizure incidents has gone up to three or four. These confiscations have happened either during departure from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia or from Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, or upon arrival at various Indian airports.

This frequency of gibbon confiscations “is not something we’ve seen commonly in the past,” says Kanitha Krishnasamy, Southeast Asia director for TRAFFIC, a nongovernmental organization monitoring the illegal wildlife trade.

A  recent report by TRAFFIC sheds light on the scale of the trade in the past decade (2016 – 2025). According to data they provided, some of which was collected after the report, 93 trafficked gibbons were confiscated across south and southeast Asia in 2025 alone.

“It’s the highest number of gibbons we’ve seen confiscated in the last 10 years,” says Krishnasamy. This number — which includes gibbons kept as pets as well as those being smuggled across international borders via air, sea, and land — amounts to a third of the gibbons seized in the previous nine years (2016-2024).

In the past decade, Indonesia has had the highest number gibbon-confiscation incidents and individuals seized, partly due to the robust domestic trade and in part due to increased attention by authorities. But more recently India and Malaysia have emerged at the heart of international gibbon-smuggling attempts.

According to TRAFFIC 33 gibbon-smuggling incidents were recorded in the past 10 years, most of which involved multiple animals at a time. Of these India was involved in 26 attempts as the destination (or possible mid-transit) country, while Malaysia was involved in 20 incidents as the source or transit point for gibbons trafficked from Indonesia and other southeast Asian range countries.

“In the past we’ve seen countless species from India being trafficked into the southeast Asian market,” says Krishnasamy. “We seem to be seeing something different now — gibbons and other mammals sourced from southeast Asia headed to the Indian market.

The Singing Apes

Gibbons are small, agile apes, found in 11 countries across Asia, from northeast India to the western islands of Indonesia. They are known for their loud, melodious calls known as “songs” that reverberate through forests. Of the 20 recognized gibbon species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists five as critically endangered, 14 as endangered, and one as vulnerable due to severe habitat loss and poaching for the illegal pet trade.

 

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The two subspecies of siamang — the largest gibbons (in size) — are the most trafficked. “Over 30% of confiscations involve siamangs,” says Krishnasamy.

Other gibbon species that appear often in international trade include agile gibbons (Hylobates agilis), lar gibbons (H. lar), and Javan gibbons (H. moloch). “The majority of gibbons that turn up in trade are most likely to have come from Indonesia or Malaysia,” confirms Cheyne.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species lists all gibbon species under what’s known as Appendix I, which offers them the highest level of protection and prohibits their commercial trade internationally. The apes are also protected under national law in their respective countries, making it illegal to hunt, capture, own, or trade them. If people are arrested and prosecuted for violating these statutes, punishment can include fines and years of imprisonment. Yet according to experts, enforcement remains woefully weak.

“There is a lack of capacity to take these cases to prosecution and to effectively investigate the trade networks,” says Cheyne.

What Is Driving the Demand?

Krishnasamy posits two reasons for the skyrocketing demand for gibbons from India.

“Either there is some sort of a fad of people wanting to keep gibbons as pets in India, or they are heading to facilities like zoos, safaris, or potentially even breeding facilities,” she says. “Which of the two is actually happening requires deeper investigation in India.”

She shares the example of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, which influenced the turtle trade, or the Harry Potter series, which has led to an increase in the illegal trade in owls. “It’s hard to say what is driving this particular trend where gibbons are concerned,” she says.

Indian lawyer Pawan Sharma is the founder of Resqink Association for Wildlife Welfare, a rescue and rehabilitation facility located on the outskirts of Mumbai that provides medical care to the gibbons and other wildlife confiscated at the city’s airport. “We have seen more than 300 species intercepted at the airport, from anacondas to Komodo dragons,” says Sharma, adding that some Indians have a voracious appetite for exotic pets.

Online marketplaces provide a major platform for wildlife trade. Social media giant Meta recently shut down nine Indonesian Facebook groups — consisting of thousands of members — which were involved in the trade of endangered wildlife, including gibbons.

However, with criminals always staying one step ahead of the law, some traffickers have moved to more discreet modes of communication. Sharma cites the example of Google Pay being used by traffickers to talk to prospective buyers.

“A large part of the illegal wildlife trade is ultimately driven by human behavior,” says Cheyne. “It is, unfortunately, just another manifestation of the human desire for something different.”

Sourcing the Gibbons

Krishnasamy elaborates on the complexity of the trafficking process.

“It takes time, effort and connections to locate the gibbons in the forest, track them, capture them, transport them to middlemen — one or several — pack them and move them across international borders,” she says. “Not just at the point of exit from Malaysia or Thailand, but also identifying the people carrying and receiving them at the other end, and how to ensure safe passage,” she adds. “All this points to organized criminality.”

Female gibbons reproduce slowly and have a single baby once every two or three years. In most cases, mothers are killed to obtain infants. “If the group is without an adult female, it may allow an opportunity for a new adult female to come in or the group may break down,” says Cheyne.

Indiscriminate shooting could also result in the death of other individuals in the group. Rescued gibbon babies have often been found with pellets lodged in them.

“Ultimately there’s a knock-on consequence for gibbons in the wild,” adds Cheyne.

With a high death rate during the smuggling process, traffickers capture multiple gibbon babies from the wild for the transaction to remain profitable.

“They calculate that 90% of the gibbon babies will die,” says Sinan Serhadli, who is affiliated with two gibbon conservation projects in Asia. Even with this high mortality rate, the trade remains profitable for the traffickers, he adds.

Modes of Trafficking

In addition to trafficking by air, smuggling across international borders also happens by land and sea, which is harder to monitor.

“We’ve seen many cases of wildlife smuggling through land borders,” says Krishnasamy, who points to the Mekong region (which includes Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia) and the Malay Peninsula (which includes southern Thailand and peninsular Malaysia).

The borders between India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh are also porous. Serhadli says about five western hoolock gibbons (Hoolock hoolock) are currently being rehabilitated at a facility in Bangladesh. They were confiscated from commuter buses and appeared to be heading to India.

The Strait of Malacca, a narrow stretch of water separating the island of Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is emerging as another hotspot for wildlife trade, with Medan, a city in northeast Sumatra, becoming a key transit hub.

“A lot of wildlife from Sumatra is being brought to Medan,” says Serhadli. “It then goes over the Strait of Malacca either to Thailand or to Malaysia, and then via plane to India.”

In 2025 16 gibbon babies, along with dozens of other wild animals, were confiscated from a boat in the Strait of Malacca.

“This [seizure] is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Serhadli. Only three gibbons survived the ordeal and are currently undergoing rehabilitation at a facility run by the Orangutan Information Centre in northwest Sumatra.

Panut Hadisiswoyo, founder of OIC, says that he has spoken to Malaysian authorities about the urgent need to monitor the Strait of Malacca. “We need to work together to watch the Malacca Strait and prevent the wildlife trade,” he says.

The Next Steps

Krishnasamy wants people to realize that gibbon trafficking is a crime.

“It’s a well-planned illegal operation that harms not just threatened species, but also the carriers who are caught,” she says. These carriers are often low-income people, not those who profit most from the crimes. She hopes there will be increased cooperation between the countries involved, particularly on in-depth investigations.

In an effort to curb the increasing wildlife trafficking at Malaysian airports, TRAFFIC recently conducted a training session for nearly 200 frontline airport personnel to help them identify and respond to wildlife trafficking.

Reacting to the rise in wildlife trafficking via Indian airports, the Directorate of Civil Aviation issued a directive in July 2025 placing the full responsibility — including costs — of repatriating trafficked wildlife on the airline that carries the animals into the country. This has created additional pressure on inbound airlines to improve monitoring and checks. Lawyer Sharma confirms that the repatriations are already being done.

Still, many questions remain unanswered. What happens to the gibbons once they are sent back? Do they survive the repatriation process? Do they reach a rehabilitation facility, or do they end up getting trafficked again?

“Ultimately, we have to tackle demand,” says Cheyne. “There are people that take gibbons from the wild, there are those that sell them, there are those that buy them, there are those who live next to a forest and have them — it’s important to identify the different groups because they need to be targeted differently,” she adds. “If there’s no market for these animals, people will stop taking them out of the wild.”

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The Exotic Pet Trade Harms Animals and Humans. The European Union Is Studying a Potential Solution

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Editor’s note: This edition of our ‘Protect This Place’ column is produced in collaboration with the Climate Listening Project, whose short film appears below.

The Place:

We’re in West Marion, North Carolina, in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, pronounced Appa-latch-an, and known locally as the Blue Ridge Mountains — a biodiversity hotspot where communities are still recovering from Hurricane Helene and coming together to build a Resilience Hub.

Why it matters:

This area is home to the greatest diversity of salamanders on Earth, including the giant eastern hellbender. Varying elevations throughout the mountains create unique ecosystems for more tree species than anywhere in North America, and the region serves as an important migration corridor for species from the North and South.

The Appalachian Mountains are known as the oldest mountains in the world, and Marion is famous for its annual Bigfoot Festival. West Marion is a historically Black community, which lost its school after desegregation and community connectivity after the new interstate was built right through the middle.

West Marion community / Photo by Dayna Reggero The threat:

Hurricane Helene was a traumatic event that carried endless rain that widened little streams, creating thundering rivers that pulled down trees and everything else in their path and tore apart communities.

West Marion Inc has already been listening to the communities’ needs for years and were ready to help. Now they’re planning a Resilience Hub. My new film, “Climate Change And…” tells their story, where the hurricane is just one chapter and enduring struggle is not new, yet climate change and hope coexist.

This community is building solutions and taking care of each other and this place that they love. The Resilience Hub is being built in an old school that has been donated back to the community. There are also plans to build a bridge over the interstate, reconnecting the town. A capital campaign is underway, with big plans for the Resilience Hub to be able to help the community in times of climate impacts, as well as serve as a local health center, technology hub, food incubator, and community center.

My place in this place:

I lived in the Appalachian foothills for many years. I began my Climate Listening Project after 2013 became the wettest, rainiest year on record in western North Carolina. My first listening project was called “Asheville Rain,” in which I listened to a scientist who discussed the importance of preserving Appalachian bogs. I saw record after record broken as hurricanes traveled from the coasts to our mountains, dropping so much rain and causing mudslides.

Dayna Reggero / Photo by Zachary Kanzler

I attended my first West Marion Community Forum meeting almost 10 years ago and met inspiring women, including director Paula Swepson. Shortly afterward I was invited to host a climate forum where people from across the community came together to listen and plan for adaptation from floods or fires, connecting solutions around food security, transportation, and community health. We’ve continued to collaborate and share the messages from their book, Shift Happens in Community. Then Hurricane Helene hit the mountains, and I was invited to listen. The women of West Marion Inc. are inspiring to me because of their work to listen and adapt.

Paula Swepson / Photo by Dayna Reggero Who’s protecting it now:

West Marion Inc. is listening in Southern Appalachia with the Old Fort and West Marion Community Forums and planning for the Resilience Hub.

What this place needs:

“The best thing about the forum is that it allows you to dream,” says Paula Swepson, founder and director of West Marion Inc.

See more:

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

Protect This Place: Connected Communities on the U.S. Gulf Coast and the Philippines

The post Protect This Place: Southern Appalachia appeared first on The Revelator.

Why don’t more people talk about chameleons?

These amazing reptiles come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors, and are known for their color-shifting abilities and unique eyes, which can look in two different directions at once.

But not enough human eyes are paying attention to chameleons, and they now represent one of the world’s most at-risk species groups. According to experts as many as 50% of the 200-plus recognized chameleon species are endangered, critically endangered, or vulnerable to extinction.

On the eve of the third annual International Chameleon Day on May 9 — an occasion to call attention to these animals’ amazing abilities and underrecognized plight — I sat down with Dr. Christopher Anderson, chair of the IUCN/SSC Chameleon Specialist Group, to talk about what’s threatening these diverse reptiles, what we need to do to help them, and why they’ve eluded media and scientific attention over the past few years.

Let’s start with an observation: The word “chameleon” is part of our culture — I mean, everyone understands the word, everyone thinks they know what it means — but I have found almost zero news coverage about chameleons over the past two years. There’s been a little bit of coverage of research about their eyes or their tongues, but almost nothing about their conservation.

That is exactly true. And I think it’s one of the biggest shortcomings that we have as far as awareness about chameleons.

Like you mentioned, chameleons have fascinated naturalists, the public, and researchers for centuries. Aristotle wrote about chameleons and a lot of their unique behaviors. If you ask somebody on the street about a chameleon, they have a picture of what a chameleon is in their head because of a lot of those unique features.

Oftentimes people are a little bit squeamish or have some concerns or fear of reptiles — snakes in particular. But generally, when people hear about chameleons, they’re like, “Oh yeah, chameleons are great.”

The question there is, why have chameleons not fostered some of that attention that we see with turtles and tortoises, various snakes, and other groups? If you look at zoological institutions, most zoos will have a chameleon or a couple of chameleons on display, because they are fascinating and they really are important to most collections to be able to display. But most zoological institutions have not really focused on any type of major or large-scale projects with chameleons, in large part because they are difficult to capture, and delicate and difficult to display.

 

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So while a lot of zoos have many different turtle and tortoise species, or boas, or iguanas, or crocodilians, and so forth, and are very engaged with conservation efforts in those groups, chameleons have never really benefited from a lot of that attention. If you look at species survival plans or programs that zoological institutions have within reptiles, you see a number of iguana species, numerous turtle and tortoise species, crocodilian species, and so forth. There’s not a single chameleon species that has gotten that focus or attention.

The other thing is, if you look at the number of researchers that are working with crocodilians or turtles and tortoises, and iguanas — not to keep pointing the finger at a few different groups — there are lots of people that study those, even though there’s a lot fewer crocodilians or iguanas than there are chameleons.

But there are actually very few people that specialize in chameleons. I think that that has really been a disservice to even our understanding of where chameleons are as far as their conservation is concerned.

It’s not that they’re not threatened, or that there aren’t numerous species that should be covered, or even that there’s no interest. It’s just that there’s just not enough work that’s being done to really highlight it.

Right. So is that the goal of International Chameleon Day? What do you hope this species awareness day will accomplish?

Yeah, that’s a huge part of one of the goals that we’re hoping to get across with International Chameleon Day. There’s a huge potential, I think, to engage the public, educate them about the conservation status of chameleons, encourage awareness, as well as broader benefits that that could have for different animal groups that live in similar types of environments.

And who knows, maybe in the long run we can actually encourage other people to start focusing on chameleon conservation and increase the number of people that are working with them.

So what’s threatening them? You mentioned that they’re very sensitive animals, and it seems that a lot of them have evolved in particular microclimates or microhabitats. Can you tell us how they’re threatened by climate change or other factors?

We all kind of have an inherent image in our mind of what a chameleon is. But one of the things that fascinates me about chameleons is how diverse they are. There are 236 species that are described in science. And those 236 species are extremely diverse in their biology, ecology, natural history, anatomy, and so forth. They range in size from very small animals that are less than an inch in total length to species that, in total length, are well over two feet. We have species that give live birth, species that lay eggs. We have species that live upwards of 20 years and species that live outside of the eggs for a matter of three or four months.

 

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They’re hugely variable, and a lot of that variation and that species diversity is highly specialized to local microhabitats and very small areas. We have a lot of local endemism with chameleons where there’s a species that lives in a certain elevational band on a single mountain, or a single type of vegetation, or habitat in a very small area. That’s where lot of that diversity occurs, in very small, limited-range habitats.

When you have species that have that limited range, they can be very prone to local disturbances potentially wiping out a population or a significant portion of their distribution.

Most of the major threats that we have for chameleons relate to habitat alteration. That can be from clearing of the habitat for subsistence farming, timber harvesting, charcoal production — particularly in Madagascar, that’s a major issue. We see a lot of local effects from surrounding communities altering the habitat that these species live in.

But there’s other threats that we see with chameleons as well. One of those is harvesting for the pet trade, both illegal and legal. Chameleons for the last 30-40 years have been heavily traded in the international exotic pet trade. Some of that is legal and some of that is sustainable, but much of it is not sustainable or even illegal for some species and some regions.

We also see there’s some looming effects of climate change that are impacting chameleons, making the conditions at local habitats potentially unsuitable. Climate change is also doing things like accelerating dangers from fire and increasing the duration of the dry season, which increases the amount of vegetation that fires can consume if they get started.

And similarly, as habitats become smaller and smaller, you have these boundary effects around the edge of habitats where those boundary areas can be more prone to fire and so on.

Changing of a lot of the durations of the wet seasons and dry seasons, increases in temperature and aridity — all of that is going to play into some of these fire issues and so forth. That could affect a lot of these populations, even in protected areas.

Have you seen some of this in the wild? I found a paper you wrote about the Chapman’s pygmy chameleon in Malawi that seems to be suffering specifically from some of these problems.

Exactly. So, you know, I first traveled to Madagascar many years ago. I have not been back professionally recently, but I traveled there for ecotourism. And one of the things that I was shocked with was the amount of erosion and clear-cut forests and habitat alteration that I was seeing. And that’s not slowed down. If anything that’s accelerated in recent years.

That’s a huge issue. I’ve seen it in Cameroon. I’ve seen it in Kenya. I’ve seen it in Tanzania. I’ve seen it in South Africa. Anywhere you go where there are chameleons, we see a lot of those types of issues.

 

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I also have noticed over the years that there seem to be shifts in the wet season. When I was in Madagascar almost 25 years ago now, the beginning of the wet season was starting at the end of December, beginning of January. Now that period has shifted. People are now going in February or March to be there when the rain has started and when you can see a lot of that biodiversity.

We’re seeing a lot of shifts. Madagascar over the last few years in particular has gotten a lot of attention for some of the massive fires that they’ve had, particularly in the southern portion of the country, in the central highlands, and the southwestern regions. And those are going to have massive effects on local populations.

There’s a lot of concern that as these fires extend into protected areas, areas that we thought were safeguarding these animals may not actually be safe havens for them.

I don’t want to generalize with a couple hundred species, but what do chameleons need to ensure their continued survival? What can people in the conservation community do to help?

Yeah, like you said, there’s a lot of diversity within chameleons. And some chameleons are doing quite well. They’re habitat generalists, they’re widespread. And those species aren’t really ones that are under a high probability of extinction.

But of chameleon species that we know of, a large proportion are threatened — about 78 species based on our IUCN Red List assessments are considered either critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable. That’s about a third of the species that we have described.

But we also have a lot of species that are not evaluated yet. They’re relatively newly described species or we don’t have enough data yet. If we figure in these species that are not evaluated, or that we haven’t actually got enough information to evaluate them, we could actually have as much as 50% of the diversity of chameleons threatened with extinction. That’s huge. We’re talking about 120 species that just from what we know right now may be threatened.

Education, I think, is one of the huge things as far as what we can do right now to advance the awareness of the conservation status with chameleons. We need people to be aware of the threat status of these species. If they’re engaged with the pet trade, [we need to teach them] to make educated and sound conservation decisions and make sure that if they’re involved with keeping chameleons as pets or anything, they’re doing so sustainably and ethically and legally.

 

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But in addition to that, we really need to reach out to local communities about the status of the environment around them, the species that live there, the importance of those species, and try and encourage sustainable practices in safeguarding of those animals.

That’s super challenging because a lot of the areas where these animals live are surrounded by communities that are struggling. Life in Madagascar and life in a lot of these places is not easy. They’re not generally doing mass agriculture that’s wiping out huge tracts of land. Most of it is subsistence agriculture that they depend on for their day-to-day survival.

So helping to provide resources and development that’s sustainable and helps these populations in a lot of these areas is potentially hugely beneficial to the conservation of lot of these animals as well.

This is kind of related to that, but do chameleons have any cultural value to the people who live near them?

This is actually an additional challenge that we face with chameleons and their conservation. What I mean by that is across most of the range of chameleons, there are a lot of local superstitions or taboos or what they call fady in Madagascar about chameleons. They have a longstanding, oftentimes negative connotation to local communities.

Across their range, people tend to think that they’re venomous, that if you touch them, you’ll die. They tend to think things like, if you have a chameleon in a tree in your village, it’s a bad omen. There are stories in northeast Africa saying if a camel steps on a chameleon, the vibrations will kill the camel. There are all kinds of variants on this common theme of not trusting chameleons or thinking that they’re dangerous that they’re bringing bad omens or so forth. So a lot of the time, the local communities don’t view chameleons in a particularly positive manner. When we’re talking about engaging these communities, just convincing them that they need to protect the chameleons is sometimes a little bit of a hard sell.

What we really also need to communicate to them is that they’re not dangerous, that they are harmless animals, that they’re interesting, and that they have value in their local community and in the environment around them. And that can be challenging because we’re trying to challenge and change generations of stories and stuff that have been passed on.

Wow. Are there any memorable encounters you’ve had in the wild with these animals, and can conveying those stories help influence other people?

You know, any time I’m in the field working with chameleons, it’s memorable for me. I am absolutely fascinated with them.

There’s a lot of different species that are very pretty, a lot of beautiful colors that they will express, and there’s some morphologies that are just incredibly intricate and impressive. Finding those species for the first time is always fascinating for me. There are so many species. I’ve never seen all of them in the wild, of course. Every time that I get out into the field and I can find a new species, it’s really exciting. Learning about the environment that each of those species lives in and seeing them in the field and kind of getting a little bit of a better understanding of them is always incredibly rewarding.

My wife and I teach a field course every other year. We bring students from South Dakota, where we’re based, to Kenya. We take them around to different habitats and we teach them about the local environments and so on. One of the things that we do is teach them how to find chameleons, and I teach them about the different species.

The students absolutely love this process of going out and looking for the chameleons. We’re in habitats where we’re looking at lions and elephants and rhinos — these megafauna that they’ve grown up idolizing, wanting to see in the wild. But then we go out and look for chameleons and they love it. The number of students that list that as among the most fun things that they did on these trips is really surprising.

That’s one of the things I really love about teaching that course, taking these students out and showing them these animals and giving them a chance to learn about chameleons firsthand — and appreciate that it doesn’t need to be one of these charismatic megafauna for them to get excited.

So what’s your favorite chameleon species — if you can even answer that?

There are so many species that I think are just fascinating, but I could give a couple that I think are just incredible — and I think some of those actually might surprise people, because they’re maybe not the most colorful species, for instance.

One of those species is the armored leaf chameleon. It’s a species from a drier area in Madagascar, the Tsingy de Bemaraha. It’s an endangered species, and it’s the largest species of the genus Brookesia, which are these miniaturized chameleons — you’ll often see pictures of them on a matchstick. But this is a species that has incredible ornamentation. They’re the only chameleon species that’s known to have osteoderms, these bones in the skin. They have these ornate projections off of their vertebral column that project out of their skins to create spines along their back. Overall coloration-wise, they’re just basically brown with a little bit of different hues of these drab colors, but they’re just incredibly intricate and interesting to me.

There’s a species in Tanzania, Trioceros laterispinis — one of its common names is the spiny-flanked chameleon. It looks kind of like those tree lichens that grow on branches. And it’s incredibly cryptic. You can just look at it and you can tell this is living in an environment that has a lot of those lichens and mosses. It’s beautifully evolved to live in that habitat.

Spiny-flanked chameleon. © Otto Bylén Claesson via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC)

In both cases these aren’t species that are exhibiting bright pinks and blues and reds and greens or flashy colors, but there’s just something about them that I just find fascinating, because you could just see the way that they’re trying to conceal themselves and the way that they’re living in this environment and how they’re adapted to that place, that specific location. I just find that fascinating.

So what can we do to maintain the energy and interest of International Chameleon Day throughout the year?

Chameleons are exciting to the public. They’re interesting. People are intrigued by them. And I think that we really should try to harness that. I think, like you said, if we could see an increase in the coverage of chameleons — just generally, not only on International Chameleon Day, but across different times of the year — that that would go a long way to promoting our understanding and encouraging others to work with these animals in the future. Education about these animals and their local habitats doesn’t need to just be isolated to a single day. We can take advantage of opportunities as they come to educate local communities about the wildlife that they have around them and the value of some of these animals. That would be huge.

Trying to break down some of these longstanding prejudices toward these animals — that doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen if we’re just isolating that to one day a year. I think that International Chameleon Day is a huge benefit for trying to start those conversations and start those education programs and start those efforts.

But we really do need to continue those across the year at different times and try and promote those messages and get that information and that word out there more generally.

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This Month in Conservation Science: Trojan Seahorses and ‘Vampire’ Birds

The post Even Chameleons Can’t Hide From Climate Change appeared first on The Revelator.

Seventy-two-year-old Namgaukum, from India’s northeastern state of Nagaland, cherishes rare childhood memories of riding an Asian giant tortoise (Manouria emys phayrei) through the forests near his Old Jalukie village.

For the then five-year-old, the nearly two-foot-long carapace of the animals — the largest living tortoise in mainland Asia — often resembled a greyish-brown boulder in the forest about a foot above the mushy leaf litter and undergrowth.

“I would sit on it in the jungle, and after some time suddenly sense stirrings below,” he recalls. First a dark-brown head would cautiously pop out of the “boulder,” followed by a thick, muscular neck and sturdy, scaly legs pressing into the forest floor. “Then we would slowly amble forward, its beak nibbling grass and tender shoots,” he laughs, reminiscing his childhood thrill of riding the giant forest reptile.

At the release event of the critically endangered Asian Giant Tortoises in the Old Jalukie Community Reserve last August. Photo: Newme Shamma, used with permission.

The village elder remembers the tortoises were still abundant in the forests those days, and laments that they had almost disappeared by the time he was 13 or 14.

However, six decades later, a younger resident beams at the “homecoming” of this critically endangered species to the same Old Jalukie forests near his village — now a community reserve. “They are like our children now,” says 22-year-old Haileulungbe, proud to be acknowledged as a “Tortoise Guardian.” Other youths and members of the Zeliang tribe are equally overjoyed at the revival of the species in the wild.

This recovery follows a landmark initiative under the India Turtle Conservation Programme. Last August 10 captive-bred juvenile Asian giant tortoises (each 5–6 years old) were reintroduced into a community-owned and managed reserve rather than the usual state-run protected areas.

The program — implemented by the Nagaland Forest Department in collaboration with the Turtle Survival Alliance Foundation India at Old Jalukie Community Reserve in Peren district — aims to “rewild the growing number of captive-bred individuals and save them from extinction through community stewardship,” says its director, Shailendra Singh.

From Pets and Meat to Freedom

The effort began in 2018 with a captive-breeding facility under the ITCP at Nagaland Zoological Park. It was founded with 13 individuals of wild origin — seven females and six males — recovered from Tribal households, where they were kept as pets, and from local markets, sold for meat. Today the facility hosts the world’s largest assurance colony of Asian giant tortoises, with 114 individuals.

“The program reached its turning point when some villagers voluntarily donated tortoises they had kept as pets in their homes for captive breeding, and the community that once exploited them was sensitized to restore and nurture the species back in the wild from the brink,” says Singh.

Seven to eight months post-release, all the radio-tagged tortoises are reported to be healthy and surviving. Initially kept within a 10,000-square-foot bamboo enclosure in the Community Reserve for acclimatization, they were released into the wild on Feb. 20 this year.

Left to right: A female Asian Giant Tortoise guards her nest made of leaf litter and plant material. They are among the few tortoises in the world with the unique habit of building nests above the ground. Photo: Shailendra Singh, used with permission; A sensitization workshop with local communities conducted by program leaders and the heads of the forest department. Photo: Sushmita Kar, used with permission: Ten radio tagged juveniles of Asian Giant Tortoise prior to their release in the Conservation Reserve. Photo: Shailendra Singh, used with permission.

They now roam free in the wilderness of the Old Jalukie Reserve’s 370-hectare stretch of hilly semi-evergreen forests, with dense vegetation comprising native trees such as Indian chestnut, Nepalese alder, Karoi tree, and various oak species. The biodiverse landscape has been owned and managed by local tribes since the 1980s from 15 surrounding villages, with elders at the helm.

Vanishing Giants

The species faced a grim situation even two decades ago. Over the past 135 years, the tortoises have lost nearly 80% of their historic range across South and Southeast Asia due to habitat loss, hunting, and the pet trade.

Only about 250 mature individuals of the Asian giant tortoise may survive in the wild globally, according to Shailendra Singh, director of TSAFI. Of the two recognized subspecies, Manouria emys emys is extant in parts of Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo, while the larger, darker M. e. phayrei ranges across parts of Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Northeast India.

Singh says that between 2012 and 2026, only 20 adult individuals have been reported from the northeastern states of Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, Meghalaya, and Mizoram, although inaccessible hilly terrains and social conditions may have limited surveys and detectability. He estimates that around 100–150 adults may survive in the region.

Building Support

Villages in the region traditionally hunted the tortoises for generations, so securing the support of local communities was crucial if the reintroduction program was to succeed, points out Sushmita Kar, turtle biologist and Project Coordinator, ITCP for Northeast India.

“The Forest Department helped bring local communities on board, keep them motivated, and take them along on this conservation journey,” says Chisayi, divisional forest officer, Peren (from the Indian Forest Service). He explains that the department works with communities at the grassroots through capacity building and livelihood opportunities, envisioning a future where Old Jalukie can be projected as a “tortoise village” in the state.

“As major stakeholders, local communities become more responsible and accountable for conserving the species and the habitat as a whole,” he adds.

Left to right: Successful artificial incubation of the eggs of the Asian Giant Tortoise at the captive breeding centre in Nagaland Zoological Park. Photo: Lalit Budhani, used with permission. Photo: Lalit Budhani, used with permission; Tiny hatchlings of Asian Giant tortoise emerge after artificial incubation. Photo: Sushmita Kar, used with permission; Asian Giant Tortoises on the damp forest floor after their release at the Old Jalukie Community Reserve. Photo: Shailendra Singh, used with permission.

Releasing the tortoises in a community reserve rather than a conventional protected area was a conscientious decision, admits Kar. The approach also followed lessons learned from the first phase of giant tortoise reintroduction at Intanki National Park in December 2022. Of the 10 captive-bred juveniles released then, only one was later found at the forest periphery; two were trampled by elephants, while the fate of the rest remains unknown.

Unlike national parks, community reserves do not restrict access for local villagers. To help make villages aware of the importance of the species, youths are given hands-on field training for regular monitoring of the tortoises. “For a species where every individual counts, these youths, with their almost ‘one-to-one involvement’ with each, develop familiarity and a sense of belonging, ensuring their long-term survival,” she says.

Besides, during the monsoon, when forests become difficult to access, these grassroots conservationists can still move through the terrain and remain vigilant, guided by their lived experience and traditional knowledge.

Meanwhile, unlike most Indian states where forests are largely under government control, nearly 88% of Nagaland’s forests are governed and managed by local communities, clans, and individuals through village councils and traditional institutions. According to official reports, the state has 407 community-conserved areas  safeguarded by traditional laws, as well as 148 formally notified community reserves — the highest in the country and accounting for more than 50% of all such reserves nationally.

Such programs as the ITCP offer good examples of how community reserves can be effectively used for the revival of such critically endangered species, according to Kenlumtatei, Range Officer, Jalukie Range. “It is also bringing about an attitudinal change among community youths, who are gradually moving away from traditional hunting to protect forests and wildlife,” he adds.

Tortoise Guardians

For youths like Haileulungbe and Iteichube from the Old Jalukie Conservation Reserve, it means their enhanced role and commitment as its custodians.

Donning olive-green T-shirts printed with “Tortoise Guardian,” Haileulungbe sets off for the forest at 8 a.m., when the reptiles are most active. He carries a radio receiver, while the project field researcher Victor carries the antenna connected to it. The duo scans for signals from their radio-tagged “giant children” to pinpoint their locations. “Two of the tortoises have already moved about 300–500 meters from the enclosure site,” he says excitedly as they walk me through the forest.

They have been trained to maintain daily records of each individual tortoise’s GPS location, along with observations of their movements and behavior.

Apart from following signals on the radio receiver, they also look for nibble marks on leaves, their favorite bamboo shoots, or mushrooms on the forest floor, or shallow depressions in wet grasslands and puddles, explains 33-year-old Iteichube, another tortoise guardian. “All such signs enable us to identify their basking, foraging, and resting sites,” he adds.

A community awareness event with local villagers, forest department officials and scientists. Photo: Haileulungbe, used with permission.

With adults weighing about 36–37 kilograms (79–82 pounds), they are often described as the “small elephants of the forest” because of their thick, scaly legs that push through dense vegetation, a process that also aids seed dispersal and forest regeneration.

They are among the few tortoises in the world with a unique nesting habit: building nests 2-3 feet above the ground with leaf litter and plant material to lay about 25–70 eggs per clutch. Most tortoises, by contrast, nest by digging holes in the ground.

Seeing their behavior further inspires the guardians. “We started by simply tracking them, but today we realize how important they are in keeping our forest vibrant and alive with their unique ways,” says Iteichube.

The Next Generation

Inspired by the rewilding success of Asian giant tortoises in Nagaland, similar efforts are now underway in neighboring Manipur. Early results are already emerging: A captive-breeding facility set up at the Manipur Zoological Garden successfully produced 28 hatchlings through artificial incubation in August 2025.

As the hatchlings grow, scientists are also carrying out site assessments and searching for Asian giant tortoises in the wild to identify potential release sites of captive-bred individuals. “We aim to repopulate Manipur’s forests with giant tortoises, as in Nagaland, and eventually across its historic range in the Northeast India, through community participatory approach,” says Kar.

An adult male Asian Giant Tortoise pops its greyish-brown head and forelimbs out of its carapace. Photo: Shailendra Singh, used with permission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The village elder Namgaukum could not be happier with the return of the tortoises to their native forests.

“Earlier we would hang its large, beautiful shells outside our homes to ward off evil and as a symbol of pride, but today we consider it a good omen and blessing for our community to see it flourish in the wild,” he says.

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

 

Strategic ‘Matchmaking’ Protects the World’s Smallest and Rarest Wild Pig

The post ‘Tortoise Guardians’ Protect Rare Giants appeared first on The Revelator.

A few weeks ago I replied to a reader who wanted to stay active in environmentalism despite growing older and feeling put out by “ageism.” After the column came out, I received several delightful responses, one from a trio of environmentalist compadres defying the age gap and another from a Brit who wants some advice on enticing a younger generation to engage in environmentalism. Let’s explore these topics.

Hi Dr. Green!

Thank you for your answer on aging. I’m one of a trio of “old fogeys” who have had to cut back our conservation work due to various and sundry health issues, but we lift each other up and keep finding new avenues to work within our limitations. Having this group is essential! We’ve found opportunities for each other, teamed up for lectures, done some writing, pursued new observations, and are digitizing decades of our data, which is helping new research today. We haven’t formally mentored yet, though, so thanks for that advice.

Hello my friends!

Well, this is a fresh and much-needed perspective for environmentalists who have been around awhile and are opening the vaults of their considerable experience and wisdom to others — especially the next generations.

There’s power in a group, and it sounds like you’ve collectively found a solution that solves issues on several fronts: Ageism, reinventing yourselves at this time in your lives, and sharing your knowledge, hard-earned through years of experience and active commitment.

As Kate Ireland, director of youth engagement at The Nature Conservancy, has written:

“Any conservation action, any policy measure, any partnership built today must be stewarded tomorrow. The transfer of care is a continuous cycle.”

“Formal” mentoring is not always necessary, but there are programs organized by The Nature Conservancy Youth Engagement Program and the National Geographic Society Externship Program, among others, specifically for mentoring — and a lot of this can be done virtually through Zoom and other technology platforms to reach an international audience of young people eager to learn from you. If you three want to start a mentoring program of your own, you might study how these environmental giants do it, then do something modelled like that in your field, town, or city.

“To solve our biggest environmental challenges, we need leaders who are prepared to use their talents for nature,” Ireland wrote. With online mentoring and training, “each participant determines their own schedules, research topics and action steps.”

When you guys are at an event, presentation, or lecture, spend some time during breaks or meet-and-greets to scan the room for younger folks. Introduce yourselves and ask what brought them to this event. Once they’ve gone to the trouble of attending, it’s likely they’re open to making new contacts and willing to ask questions, learn, and get tips on how and where to spend their energy. You’ll make an impression.

Here’s the thing: Many of the young feel lost, lonely, and rudderless. They tell me they’re angry with older people for leaving them with a big mess to clean up, but older people don’t always let them in to step up and be heard. We older folks still have time to right that wrong. And really, it’s our obligation.

Your experience may help them to have hope, ignite their passion, or guide the way toward real solutions.

Bravo and applause for these amazing Green Amigos! Exciting work from seasoned environmentalists. Keep taking names and kicking ass!

Cheering you on,

Dr. Green

Dr. Green,

Thank you for this! I’ve already learned a lot. My story: After decades of (toots own horn: successful) activism here in the UK, I feel a disconnect with my sons’ friends. They seem to have given up on trying to make a difference. I try to engage them with stories of our wins, but I can’t seem to break through.

 They act like they have lost the battle. Any advice?

 Incidentally, we call these advice columns “agony aunties” in the UK. Not sure if that carries over in the States!

Signed, Agonized in Bath

Hello, Agonized in Bath,

Please say hello to Bath for me. It’s a beautiful town. I’ve lived in England and was actually inspired by the British “agony aunties” to create this column for environmentalists. (Tips her hat and bows to the UK agony aunties).

I understand your feelings of disconnection to your son’s friends — as I explained to the Three Green Amigos, younger generations are quite disgruntled with us older folks for leaving the planet in its current state. As much as we tried our best for the environment, we weren’t entirely successful. Young peoples’ minds have also been annexed by “social” technology that overwhelms their minds (which are still developing) with addictive tech-use habits, misinformation and often nonsensical and nihilistic content (Kops, Schittenhelm, and Wachs, 2025; Anvarovna, 2025).

Let’s take a look at some ways we can communicate with the young and meet them where they live in their hearts and minds:

My colleagues who specialize in youth psychology find that creating and facilitating intergenerational conversation should be based on mutual learning, shared values, and focusing on hope rather than anxiety or fear. Be an active and present listener, without interrupting or correcting young people (see resources below).

Pay attention to their concerns, mutually share feelings about environmental change, and plan local, practical projects to collaborate on.

Intergenerational Conversations on Climate and the Extinction Crisis Are Effective When Older People:

• • • Listen and validate their rightful concern about the future and their fears.
    • Share personal stories (after they have shared their concerns — don’t act like the expert just because you’re older). For example, talk about how much local seasons or rivers have changed over the decades.
    • Focus on action and solutions, avoiding doom-and-gloom wallowing to actionable, positive steps. Are there local green efforts you can do with them to make feel empowered? If they can make even one small, visible, local change in their community, they can brag to all their friends and get them involved. For example, creating a planting of some sort in a park, cleaning an empty lot, or arranging an information booth at local events.
    • Pinpoint shared values in protecting family, community, health, and nature.
    • Avoid intergenerational blame and steer the focus on working together to tackle climate change and the destruction of the wild.
    • Acknowledge young people’s existing knowledge and motivation to make a change in the status quo.
    • Use creative, fun and active engagement like community gardening, cleanups or other local events that bring folks together.

Never give up on the young; we owe it to them to meet them halfway.

I hope these suggestions help — and let me know how it’s going.

Cheers!

Dr. Green (who secretly hopes she’s your new favorite “agony auntie”)

Are you having trouble communicating the importance of environmental issues with younger people? What are your challenges and concerns? Do you have some success stories to share with our readers?  We want to know! Maybe together we can come up with solutions for bridging the age gap.

See you next time!

Share your challenges and success stories by sending Dr. Green your questions using the form below:

Resources:

Dr. Green: How to Stay Environmentally Active at Any Age

The National Geographic Society Externship Program

The Nature Conservancy Youth Engagement Program

Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever (CNN series, April 2026): Inspired by her own experiences with mortality, award-winning journalist Kara Swisher embarks on a deeply personal and sharp-witted journey into the science, culture, and business of longevity.

Young people and false information: A scoping review of responses, influential factors, consequences, and prevention programs. Kops, M., Schittenhelm, C., & Wachs, S. (2025). Computers in Human Behavior, 169, 108650.

Psychological characteristics of difficulties in communication in adolescence. SHOKH LIBRARY, 1(11). Anvarovna, A. S. (2025).

Engaging Teens with Story : How to Inspire and Educate Youth with Storytelling by Janice M. Del Negro and Melanie A. Kimball

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

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Dr. Green: Can Wildlife Get PTSD?

The post Dr. Green: The 3 Green Amigos and Agony in Bath! appeared first on The Revelator.

Editor’s note: This article is a joint publication of SEJournal and The Revelator.

Like a lot of journalists, I love writing underdog stories.

For me, though, covering an underdog story might mean reporting about red wolves — or wolf spiders or wolfsnails.

For more than 20 years, I’ve been on the extinction beat, writing stories about rare or endangered species, the people trying to understand what’s threatening them or how to save them, and the plants and animals it’s now too late to save.

Along the way I’ve written more species “obituaries” than I ever imagined I might.

Most recently I collected the stories of more than 30 species declared extinct in 2025. Many of these disappearances were caused by the same factors that threaten people around the world: climate change, pollution, development, income inequality, and introduced diseases.

But at the same time, I’ve written about species recoveries, rediscoveries, conservation victories (big and small), scientific breakthroughs, and the very human efforts behind them all.

That’s one of the secrets of the extinction beat: You’re writing about animals and plants, but at the same time you’re really writing about people — at their worst and at their best.

Yes, it’s a difficult beat, one with more bad news than good. But looking back at the past couple of decades, I can see several reasons why I’ve stuck with it.

Writing About Extinction Is (Believe It or Not) Hopeful

I’ve said this several times over the past few years: Writing about extinction is an inherently hopeful act.

That might seem like a disconnect, but here’s the truth: Although I’ve covered hundreds of extinctions, I’ve written or edited thousands of articles about species surviving, often with the help of scientists and conservationists, sometimes through their own tenacity.

Even the negative stories — the tales of population declines or disappearances, the new threats that emerge, the projections of climate change — only happen because people are looking into those problems. And the discovery of a problem is the first step toward a solution.

That’s another secret of the extinction beat: While the word “extinction” implies a finality, the journalism surrounding it is rarely about “the end.” Instead, it’s often about preventing that end.

We write about what has been lost, what’s being lost, to ensure we have the knowledge and the collective will to prevent further declines or the next extinction.

Every story is potentially a lesson in what to protect and a road map for how to do it better.

Extinction Is About People

Behind every endangered species is a spider’s web of scientists, activists, and local communities whose lives are intertwined with that animal or plant.

Telling their stories and describing their passions or dramas brings a relatability to stories about species who can’t speak on their own — which might otherwise be more challenging when writing about unfairly maligned creatures like snakes, insects or parasites.

When we write about a species on the brink, we’re often also writing about the people who refuse to let it go — the ones who spend their lives in remote habitats, in labs or in the halls of government, fighting for creatures who will never know their names or who few people will ever see.

And that’s another secret about the extinction beat: These people can also be the underdogs of your story. They’re the ones fighting the system, often against seemingly impossible odds.

Extinction Is About Culture

Our societies are built upon observations of the natural world. When that world unravels, so does human culture.

Take sports, for example. How many teams are named after rapidly disappearing species? Or employ animals as their anthropomorphic mascots? What would the Detroit Tigers be without actual tigers?

Or go deeper, into our religions, fables, creation stories, idioms, slang, pop culture. They’re all deeply rooted in the natural world and in the ecosystems that we inhabit.

When a species goes extinct, it isn’t just a biological loss; it’s a cultural one. We lose a piece of the world that informed our ancestors’ stories and our children’s imaginations.

Writing about extinction is, in many ways, an act of cultural preservation. We’re helping to prevent the “extinction of experience” — where we even forget the way things once were.

Plants and Animals Can’t Tell Their Own Stories

One major reason why endangered species are underdogs is that they can’t tell their own stories — at least, not directly. They can’t explain to indifferent humans how their habitats are changing or advocate for their right to exist.

As journalists we act as their translators, bringing the dangers they face into the light for a world that might otherwise overlook them — and in the process, perhaps, we provide a new lens to help our readers understand the threats we all face.

Plastic pollution is an obvious example. The photos of sea turtles with plastic straws up their noses helped change behavior for many people.

More broadly, can describing the threats a species faces from climate change, PFAS pollution, or wildfires help readers understand that those threats are coming for them, too?

Every Species Is Amazing

Let’s step back from the doom and gloom and remember that just about every species has something amazing about it. A certain biological function, unique vocalizations, mating habits, feeding behaviors, migratory feats …

A recent paper found that conveying the awe about nature can inspire pro-environmental behaviors, such as helping and supporting conservation efforts. Even extinct species had unique qualities that we can recognize and mourn.

Think of chimpanzees. How much more endangered would they be today if Jane Goodall hadn’t spent years studying their behavior and bringing that story to the world (with the help of many journalists)?

As an aside, one of the most frustrating things about covering extinct and endangered species is the dearth of good photos for many of them. But when you finally find the right image? That can often sell your story as well as your words.

If Not Me, Who Else?

I often ask myself: If I don’t cover these stories, who else will?

Despite the stakes, extinction stories remain chronically underrepresented in environmental journalism and in the broader media landscape. We’re saturated with political commentary, influencer videos and sports analysis, but the literal disappearance of life on Earth often struggles to find space on the front page — let alone manage to reach eyeballs through social media algorithms.

But I’m always surprised. My stories do find readers, and they make a difference. They’ve inspired fundraisers, petitions, podcasts, and even a death-metal album. They’ve been cited in lawsuits and the Federal Register. They’ve brought “thank you” emails from readers around the world, many of whom have found ways to explore their grief for a disappearing world, or who have found their own ways to participate in conservation.

And so, as I do whenever I talk about this subject, I’ll now turn my question around: Why not you?

Joining the extinction beat is not just a professional choice. It can be a deeply rewarding and emotional journey, a chance to stand out from the pack, an opportunity to tell unique stories and a way to make a difference.

Reporting stories about species teetering on the brink of extinction allows you to tap into local expertise, explore your own regional culture and highlight species who exist in your own backyard. Or you can focus on faraway animals who rank high in our popular culture, or even species who few people realize even exist.

From a practical standpoint, you won’t be competing with 1,000 other climate journalists for the same headline. Instead, you may find new, vital angles that resonate with readers on their own emotional levels — and keep them coming back for more.

And in a world where journalism itself is an endangered species, that may be one of the best reasons of all.

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

Why Don’t We Hear About More Species Going Extinct?

The post Why I Write About Extinction appeared first on The Revelator.

Editor’s note: This edition of our “Protect This Place” column is produced in collaboration with the Climate Listening Project, whose short film about this place appears below.

The Place:

We’re traveling the waters of the world, where communities are coming together as gas export development threatens places along the U.S. Gulf Coast — like Lake Charles, Louisiana — and gas import development threatens places in Asia like small islands along the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines.

Why it matters:

The Verde Island Passage is known as the Center of the Center of Marine Shore Fish Biodiversity in the world. It’s the heart of the Coral Triangle and home to a unique concentration of more than 1,700 shore fish species, more than anywhere else on Earth.

Photo by Zachary Kanzler

In Louisiana each year, Mardi Gras brings people together throughout the state for community celebrations unlike any others in the United States. The seafood from Gulf waters is a big part of the culture — from crabs to shrimp and dishes like gumbo — and many of the people along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana are fisherfolk, just like those along the coast of Philippines.

I have been invited to both places, to listen to and film the stories of fisherfolk who are affected by pollution. A recent oil spill in the Verde Island Passage had ripples of impacts on water, wildlife, and communities in this beautiful place, and I touched the oily residue left behind.

When I was last in Lake Charles, Louisiana, I could see and smell the smoke from the fossil fuel refineries and read signs warning that pollution was inside the crabs.

The threat:

Gas from Lake Charles travels by ship, sometimes from the Gulf into the Caribbean Sea through the Panama Canal from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean, then on to the Coral Triangle, where the Verde Island Passage connects the South China Sea to the Sibuyan Sea.

My place in this place:

Five years ago I attended a community listening meeting hosted by Roishetta Ozane in Lake Charles. Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, is working with communities in southwest Louisiana on environmental education and justice and bringing people together around the world — from Louisiana to Texas to Japan, the Philippines, Canada, and other connected places. I listened with Roishetta for my film effort “Gulf Coast Love Story,” traveling from the borderlands of Texas to New Orleans, listening to people talking about the impacts of liquified natural gas while envisioning a healthy future with clean energy, clean air, clean water, and healthy communities.

Roishetta Ozane / Photo by Dayna Reggero

Since attending Roishetta’s first community meeting, I’ve listened on her journey to Washington, D.C. to join Jane Fonda for Fire Drill Friday, and Jane has joined us over the past couple years, filming Roishetta and frontline heroes for the new film “Gaslit.” I’ve listened as Roishetta has helped and provided aid, and I’ve listened as she’s shared voices from the frontlines calling on the big banks financing fossil fuels with her Gulf South Fossil Finance Hub. I am grateful to listen all the way to the Philippines to meet smiling faces and beautiful communities working together as part of the Protect VIP campaign. We honored the moment when President Biden paused all LNG exports.

Who’s protecting it now:

The Vessel Project of Louisiana, a grassroots mutual aid, disaster relief, and environmental justice organization in Southwest Louisiana. Connect with Vessel Project of Louisiana: VesselProjectofLouisiana.org.

The Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development is a think-do institution aimed at providing relevant data and information on issues pertaining to energy, integrity of ecosystems, and general development pursued by the Philippines. CEED envisions a people-oriented, accessible and sustainable energy that respects the integrity and preservation of the environment and ecology while promoting social progress with social justice. Connect with CEED: ceedphilippines.com.

What this place needs:

Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, believes that “The best way to help people is by asking them what will help.”

 See more:

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This week we look at the relationship between humans and wildlife. Are we working together? PTSD is the result of climate degradation and affects all living beings in our world. Let’s explore this further.

Dear Dr. Green,

Can animals get PTSD? I think about all those animals constantly fleeing wildfires here in California and I worry. Tanya K.

Thank you for your question, Tanya.

Yes. Sadly, science has shown, wild animals can experience PTSD, a.k.a. post-traumatic stress disorder.

These studies, started in the 1990s, coined the term ecology of fear. This concept describes the ripple or domino effect that occurs when the destruction of one species negatively affects an entire biological community, animal and plant life alike.

To a degree, the ecology of fear is normal in the wild: Prey species must maintain constant vigilance for predators to stay alive. However, the introduction of new predators — or new threats — can create a state of hypervigilance, one of the most common symptoms of PTSD.

In this case we might see humans as apex predators, sometimes referred to as superpredators, although that term remains under a fair amount of debate (and it’s worth noting that it’s not related to the harmful criminal justice trope used in the 1990s). Humans are causing the decline of populations, and extinction of wildlife species, at a rate and speed that far outpaces natural wildlife predation rates, due to our technological capabilities and tendency to overexploit and undervalue the natural world.

People all too often view nature as “other,” a place outside us, “a place to go” to spend vacations and weekends — often failing to understand that we’re active, integral beings intertwined in nature.

A Brief Look at How PTSD Works in Both Humans and Animals

Brain imaging shows that humans with PTSD have remarkably altered brain structures. Trauma causes startling physical and chemical changes in the hippocampus, amygdala, telomeres, and Broca’s center that compromise the growth of new neurons (neurogenesis). The mind is unable to put traumatic memories in sequential order. PTSD patients get “stuck” in memory loops of the trauma (the past) and find it difficult to resolve the trauma; they often struggle to move forward, never have children or leave the ones they have, and separate themselves from society (the herd) by moving around restlessly.

This is a very simplistic explanation of post-trauma for the purpose of demonstrating how our trauma responses correlate to those of wildlife and can illustrate how trauma affects wildlife living in threatened natural settings and unrealistic artificial habitats.

Scientific research is increasingly showing the same neurogenesis in wildlife: Trauma stemming from the destruction of habitat, torture, threat of death, and other human-causes hardships results in permanent fear, startle effect, hypervigilance, and anxiety. The brains of animals, though differently structured from humans, react similarly to trauma (depending upon the particular species, of course).

Wild creatures can likewise experience depression, lack of interest or cessation of reproduction, or loss of direction in migratory patterns or loss of their traditional seasonal homing locations due to habitat destruction and have greatly reduced survival rates during or after anthropogenic disasters associated with climate change, such as forest fires, drought, floods, and other crises.

We’ve included some examples of scientific studies of PTSD in wildlife in the resources list below. To outline all of the studies over the past century here would be impossible but take a look for proof that PTSD between humans and wildlife is strongly correlated.

Some other examples of direct infliction of trauma on wildlife by humans include overproduction of agriculture to meet increasing human populations, overfishing, overhunting, habitat destruction, placing value on animal parts (poaching, illegal wildlife trade), hunting for social status (“trophies”, or “aphrodisiac medicines”), and keeping wild animals as “pets,” symbols of wealth and human superiority.

So, Tanya K. and other readers, what will calm your worry about wildlife and your concern they have PTSD? For starters, participation in the environmental movement — a mightily empowering endeavor. Do some research on where your current skills and talents in other fields could help prevent disasters like wildfires and protect wildlife.

We hurt ourselves, as well as the rest of the living, by “othering” wildlife. The best cure for our worry and discomfort is to get off the observation deck and into the fray.

Let me know how it goes — Dr. Green always welcomes life stories when it comes to saving the planet.

Cheers!

Dr. Green

What are you struggling with emotionally when it comes to your relationship with our planet? What are your challenges and concerns? Do you have some success stories to share with our readers?  I want to know! Maybe together we can come up with strategies that will enrich your inner—and outer life! 

See you next time!

Share your challenges and success stories by sending Dr. Green your questions using the form below:

Resources:

Ecology of Fear  (Zanette LY, Clinchy M. Ecology of fear. Curr Biol. 2019 May 6;29(9):R309-R313. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.02.042. PMID: 31063718).

Ecology and Neurobiology of Fear in Free-Living Wildlife (Liana Y. Zanette, Michael Clinchy. 2020. Ecology and Neurobiology of Fear in Free-Living Wildlife. Annual Review Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. 51:297-318. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-011720-124613).

Wolves and their prey all fear the human “super predator” (Kasper, Katharina et al. “Wolves and their prey all fear the human “super predator”.” Current biology: CB vol. 35,20 (2025): 5111-5117.e3. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2025.09.018).

 “Predator-induced fear causes PTSD-like changes in the brains and behaviour of wild animals”. (Zanette, Liana Y.; Hobbs, Emma C.; Witterick, Lauren E.; MacDougall-Shackleton, Scott A.; Clinchy, Michael (2019-08-07). “Predator-induced fear causes PTSD-like changes in the brains and behaviour of wild animals”. Scientific Reports. 9 (1): 11474. Bibcode:2019NatSR…911474Z. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-47684-6)

Check out the Journal for Ecopsychology, a peer-reviewed journal founded in 2009 that “places psychology and mental health in an ecological context to recognize the links between human health, culture, and the health of the planet.”

Reporting on PTSD in Wildlife (just a few examples):

• • • Do Wild Animals Get PTSD? Many creatures show lasting changes in behavior and physiology after a traumatic experience
    • Humans are ‘unique super-predators’
    • The Challenges of Studying (and Treating) PTSD in Chimpanzees: Apes used in animal testing often display symptoms of psychological trauma. Wildlife sanctuaries are helping them recover. (The Revelator, April 22, 2024 – by Tim Brinkhof)
    • New research shows that elephants and other animals can suffer from PTSD
    • Do Wild Animals Suffer from PTSD and Other Psychological Disorders?

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