Today I’m covering:

• Globe-trotting dragonfly migrates farther than any other insect.

• Forest fires are getting hotter, transforming forests.

• Prescribed fires can help save giant sequoias from climate change-fueled forest fires.

• Proximity to humans supercharges evolution for some animals.

• Should we consider animals’ culture in conservation decisions?

• 1,000 wild penguins get bird flu vaccines in Australia.

• What else I’m reading.

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Globe-trotting dragonfly migrates farther than any other insect

The wandering glider dragonfly, also called globe skimmer (Pantala flavescens), accomplishes amazing feats of endurance, traveling across oceans to complete the longest known migration of any insect, reports Patrick Barkham for the Guardian. The insect is known to travel up to 18,000 km (more than 11,000 miles) across multiple generations, with some individuals crossing 3,500 km (around 2,000 miles) of open water, carried along by high-altitude monsoon winds.

While absent from most of mainland Europe, the ubiquitous insect occurs almost everywhere else in the world (except Antarctica) and has been found as high as 6,000 meters (nearly 20,000 feet) in the Himalayas. Yet the dragonfly’s stunning feat of endurance was unknown until about 15 years ago, when Charles Anderson, a marine biologist, observed dragonflies arriving in the Maldives with the October monsoons.

Dragonflies as a group have been successful by evolutionary standards – their ancestors have been around since before the dinosaurs, and the two modern suborders of dragonflies – “true” dragonflies (Anisoptera) and damselflies (Zygoptera) – are thought to have evolved around 200 million years ago, during the late Triassic. At that time, Earth’s continents were still assembled in one big “supercontinent,” Pangea – which might help explain the wandering glider’s presence on most modern continents!

Whatever the reason, the insects’ astonishing migration and widespread range is a testament to their success as a species. Even more surprising, a 2016 genetic analysis indicated that wandering gliders are likely one global population that interbreeds over long distances, including indications of gene flow between the Americas and other continents, via as-yet-unknown migration routes. There’s a lot we don’t know about this dragonfly! Barkham writes:

Ben Price, principal curator of entomology at the Natural History Museum in London, said: “That a common, familiar insect could hide the greatest [insect] migration on the planet until our own century is a perfect reminder that the natural world is still full of discoveries. Ubiquitous, fearless, and quietly astonishing.”

Forest fires are getting hotter, transforming forests

Throughout the western United States, climate change is causing bigger and hotter forest fires, transforming ecosystems that are overwhelmed by the conditions brought on by warming temperatures, reports Eric Niiler for the New York Times:

It’s part of a wider transformation that’s taking place across the Western United States, from Oregon to New Mexico, as bigger and hotter wildfires sweep through forests that have not evolved to survive such high-intensity blazes and a warmer climate. Recent studies estimate that as much as 40 percent of Western conifer forests will turn into shrubland by 2100 as a result.

Niiler followed ecologists from the University of California, Berkeley as they studied the effects of recent forest fires on the area’s vegetation and soils. The new combination of hotter fires and drier conditions is upending the delicate balance that has evolved over thousands of years in western forests, which are no longer regenerating as they did in the past. Experts estimate that around one-fifth of conifers are not well adapted to these new conditions.

“Forests do have innate resilience and under normal circumstances, they can take a hit or two and bounce back,” [said Jonathan Coop, a fire ecologist at Western Colorado University]. “But circumstances just aren’t normal anymore.”

Prescribed fires can help save giant sequoias from climate change-fueled forest fires

To counteract the devastating effects of intense forest fires fueled by climate change, forest managers are bringing back an old tool: prescribed burns, reports Warren Cornwall for Anthropocene Magazine:

Prescribed fires have long been considered a critical—if underutilized—strategy for turning down the temperature in today’s era of megafires. The aim is to return fire-adapted forests to something closer to the conditions in which many of them evolved, when fires often acted more like cleansers than destroyers.

Although giant sequoias have evolved to coexist with fire – equipped with thick bark and serotinous cones that release their seeds only when heat from a fire melts the resin that keeps them shut – recent fires have become hotter than even these behemoths can withstand. In 2020 and 2021, wildfires killed thousands of trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

After these devastating fires, scientists studied the blazes’ aftereffects, comparing the death toll of sequoias in stands that had previously been treated with prescribed burns to unburned areas. They found trees in stands with prescribed fires during the past decade had a 77% lower chance of dying. It turns out that these intentionally set low-intensity fires reduce underbrush enough to lower the heat of forest fires to a survivable level for these long-lived giants.

Proximity to humans supercharges evolution for some animals

Many animals – from lizards to birds to foxes and raccoons – are evolving over surprisingly short timeframes to adapt to humans’ effects on the natural world, reports Lucy Sherriff for BBC:

Cities have become the planet’s newest ecosystem, and many of the animals residing in them have been forced to adapt to survive. At the extremes, these changes – either behavioral or genetic – happen over very short timeframes, sometimes just a few generations.

Human environments differ from natural habitats in many ways, including different predators and food sources, more noise, excess light, warmer temperatures and pollution.

Changes observed in numerous studies include longer limbs in lizards, raccoons that show signs of domestication – including being less aggressive and having shorter snouts – and birds that change their songs to be heard over traffic. Many of these changes can be seen in city environments, but not exclusively. For example, more elephants are born without tusks nowadays, which makes them less desirable for poachers.

Many traits that were advantageous and resulted in more offspring before people dominated the landscape may no longer benefit animals that live close to us. But species that can’t adapt so quickly are at a disadvantage, said Andrew Sih, who studies the evolution of animal behavior at the University of California at Davis:

“Other animals – often in the same species – simply ‘don’t get it’, and do not respond well behaviourally to these new challenges,” says Sih. “If anything, I note that for many animals, they don’t really have time to evolve, as things have changed too much too quickly,” Sherriff writes.

Should we consider animals’ culture in conservation decisions?

Many animals have unique regional cultures that are instrumental in teaching their young how to survive and communicate with other members of their species. Should these cultures be considered when making conservation decisions, including for the U.S. Endangered Species Act, asks John R. Platt in the Revelator:

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

Wolf howls vary depending on where a wolf grew up, he writes, similar to human dialects and accents. Other animals – whales, for example – are also known to have distinct cultures.

Platt writes about a recent paper that dissected how the U.S. Endangered Species Act and other conservation laws reflect animal behavior, finding that behavior does not seem to be a factor in most listing decisions. But given our limited knowledge of animal culture, changing that may be challenging:

“Implementing the ESA for a distinct population segment based on distinctive cultures would potentially be challenging, given, for example, that cultures can be dynamic, and that conserving them may not always be as straightforward as simply protecting habitat,” [the paper’s authors] write.

Still, it’s an intriguing idea that could expand our understanding of biodiversity beyond genetic and ecological factors, providing a more robust framework for conserving the full array of characteristics that define wildlife populations.

1,000 wild penguins get bird flu vaccines in Australia

More than 1,000 little penguins (Eudyptula minor) were recently vaccinated against bird flu in Victoria, Australia, reports Petra Stock for the Guardian. It’s part of a larger initiative that aims to vaccinate around 5,000 birds and is “believed to be the largest vaccination program involving wild birds,” Stock writes.

Little penguins are the world’s smallest species of penguin – about a ruler’s length in height – and found only in southern Australia and New Zealand. The birds, which are not listed as threatened under federal environment laws, are considered at “very high risk” from the deadly bird flu, according to a national risk assessment.

The program started after bird flu was detected in birds on Phillip Island near Melbourne and in other areas of southern Australia, including in little penguins. That created a sense of urgency, especially since little penguins nest together in large colonies, which could lead to up to 16,000 little penguin deaths in a recent report’s worst-case scenario.

The tiny penguins – they measure around 40-45 cm tall, around 15-17 inches – are already threatened by severe storms, sea level rise caused by climate change and pollution. They’re a significant tourist attraction in Australia.

What else I’m reading

There are always more fascinating stories that don’t fit in this weekly update but are also worth a read! Instead of ignoring them, I’m starting a new section so you can check out these articles as you have time (in no particular order):

• Inside Climate News, 8/2/2026, by Jake Bolster: Can new ranching practices help cattle, cowboys and wolves coexist?

• The New York Times, 8/2/2026, by Hilary Howard: When the fireflies come out to play.

• The New York Times, 8/4/2026, by Sopan Deb: Dolphin carries dead calf in what experts call grieving.

• The Conversation, 7/17/2026, by Laura Russo: Bees of many species contain tiny magnetic particles – suggesting they may have an innate magnetic compass for navigation.

• AP, 8/5/2026, by Annika Hammerschlag: British Columbia is logging its last old growth. Protesters are sleeping in the road to stop it.

• Smithsonian magazine, 8/12/2026, by Sarah Kuta: Pumas might be making your drive home safer. When the predators are around, deer tend to avoid roads, preventing some collisions.

• Anthropocene Magazine, 8/4/2026, by Sarah DeWeerdt: A majority of Americans don’t actually fit either climate camp.

• Grist, 8/19/2026, by Matt Simon: Why Egyptian farmers are growing crops under solar panels.

• UNEP, 6/29/2026 – The hidden environmental cost of your jeans – and what’s being done about it.

• Chicago Tribune, 8/19/2026, by Michael Hawthorne: Great waste in the Great Lakes: How plastic pollution is clogging our waters.

• Anthropocene Magazine, 8/21/2026, by Emma Bryce: Recycling food waste has a huge climate upside and a surprising downside.

• The Revelator, 8/11/2025, by Nicole Williams: Meet the activist fighting PFAS pollution – and winning.

And that’s it for this week’s updates.

Drop a note in the comments if any article resonated with you, or if you have any ideas on what else you’d like me to cover – I love to hear from readers!

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Links to articles and other resources:

• The Guardian, 8/8/2026, by Patrick Barkham: “Fearless and quietly astonishing’: the dragonfly that migrates further than any other insect.

• Mongabay, 11/10/2021, by Neha Jain: High-flying dragons: how the globe skimmer migrates across the Indian Ocean.

• Troast et al., 2016: A global population genetic study of Pantala flavescens. PLoS One, 11(3): e0148949.

• The New York Times, 8/23/2026, by Eric Niiler: Bigger, hotter fires are slowly erasing America’s great forests.

• Kodero, Felzer and Shi, 2024: Future transition from forests to shrublands and grasslands in the western United States is expected to reduce carbon storage. Communications Earth and the Environment, 5(78).

• Anthropocene Magazine, 7/29/2026, by Warren Cornwall: How to save giant sequoias: burn the forest around it first.

• Dixon et al., 2026: Previous prescribed burns saved thousands of ancient sequoias during historically unprecedented wildfires. Nature Communications, 17: 8558.

• BBC, 8/6/2026, by Lucy Sherriff: Extreme evolution: The animals evolving at super speed to survive

• The Revelator, 8/12/2026, by John R. Platt: Conserving Culture in Endangered Species.

• Jennings, Harl and Carter, 2026: Implications of non-human animal culture for laws and policies affecting wildlife conservation in the USA. Oryx, 2026: 1-4.

• The Guardian, 8/24/2026, by Petra Stock: How do you vaccinate 1,000 tiny penguins against bird flu in the wild? It’s ‘really tricky’ but there is a way.

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I try to live in a way that is friendly to Earth – when I see options that are recycled or certified to come from sustainably managed forests, I usually grab them, even when they’re a little more expensive.

But are these products really better? Or am I rewarding companies for greenwashing?

When I saw a recent study about how animals are affected in forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) - generally regarded as the most rigorous forest certification label – I decided it was a great opportunity to learn more about the topic and separate the hype from facts.

I ended up going down a rabbit hole, reading various studies, reviews and critiques of the FSC. I discovered there are lots of strong opinions on both sides and that getting a solid scientific answer is incredibly complex and difficult.

Not surprising, really, if you consider that more than 430 million acres (around 175 million ha, about the size of Libya) of forest are certified under FSC in more than 80 countries as of 2026. In North America alone nearly 150 million acres are certified. That’s a lot of area to manage, inspect and certify with many local cultures and laws to navigate!

(Incidentally, that is down from more than 570 million acres (around 230 million ha - an area larger than Argentina) in 2022. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, FSC eventually withdrew from Russia, which had accounted for a large share of its European certified area.)

I feel like I just started scratching the surface, so I’ll be revisiting this topic again in the future. For now, I did come away with a decision on whether I’m willing to pay more for FSC-certified products. And I hope to bring you the information so you can do the same.

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What is FSC-certified wood?

First – what does it mean to be FSC certified?

FSC is an international nonprofit organization that manages a voluntary forest certification standard. It was founded in 1994 for “sustainable forestry, promoting environmentally sound, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests,” according to their website.

To be certified, forestry operators must adhere to 10 principles, also called standards, each of which is defined by several criteria. These range from social aspects, like maintaining and improving the well-being of workers and local communities and upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples, to legal, financial and environmental criteria.

Two principles are directly related to environmental conditions:

• Maintain, conserve and/or restore the ecosystem services and environmental values of managed forests; and avoid, repair or mitigate negative impacts.

• Maintain or improve high conservation values.

As part of these criteria, forestry companies are typically required to set aside at least 10% of the area in conservation zones. They also need to establish protected areas and natural connectivity for rare species.

Each forest management unit – the area under one management plan – is certified for 5 years. Forest companies are audited by third-party assessors annually to verify compliance.

But do these standards translate to on-the-ground benefits for local biodiversity?

Wildlife in a Portuguese FSC-certified forest

Researchers in Portugal used “camera traps” – trail cams attached to trees in a grid pattern – to study differences in mammal populations in three eucalyptus plantations that have been FSC-certified since 2006.

The study appeared in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.

It surprised me that Portugal had so many eucalyptus plantations. Turns out that eucalyptus trees – native to Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, Indonesia and nearby islands – are popular with logging companies because they grow quickly and are used for the pulp and paper industry.

They are now grown in many areas globally, including California and the Mediterranean. Portugal has nearly 2 million acres of eucalyptus plantations – nearly 10% of the country’s area.

These trees, however, are controversial since they’re not native. Environmental experts are concerned about the trees’ high water demands and flammability, contributing to the destructive wildfires that have rampaged through southern Europe in recent years as a result of climate change.

The scientists counted the number of sightings of mammals in relation to six variables that measure how the animals responded to specific FSC standards: two measures of plant health and density, native vegetation cover, distance to a conservation zone, distance to a timbered area and vegetation edges (i.e., a change from forest to a grassland or harvested area, for example).

About one-fifth of the forests were harvested during the study periods, which ran from Nov. 2022 to Feb. 2023 and from May to Aug. 2023/2024.

The cameras picked up 10 species of mammals - a mix of herbivores like red and roe deer, wild boars and hares, and carnivores such as badgers, martens and red foxes.

The results showed that the mammals, as expected, sought out areas with higher plant productivity and generally avoided harvested sites and areas with a lot of vegetation edges.

Different species showed different patterns – red deer, for example, seemed to avoid areas with more productive vegetation, and wild boars weren’t as picky as the other animals about the health of the vegetation.

Not all conservation zones are equal

The biggest surprise, however, was the overall lack of preference for the conservation zones.

The researchers had expected all species to show a pronounced preference for areas in or near the designated conservation zones, but only red foxes did so. The other mammals didn’t, and some of the predators were actually found in greater numbers farther away from them.

One potential reason for this, the authors guessed, could be that the conservation zones may not have been set up ideally – for example, they could have been too long and narrow to provide the animals with the home range configuration they need to thrive.

To maximize their value to animals, the authors recommend changing how conservation zones are implemented under FSC to ensure they are larger, more connected to each other and strategically placed.

That most species responded positively to healthier and denser vegetation and avoided harvested areas and vegetation edges means that the FSC safeguards appear to be working.

Is it problematic that non-native eucalyptus plantations get FSC certification at all?

Perhaps. However, the reality is that nearly one-tenth of Portugal is covered with this forest type. Arguably, FSC certification should at least maximize the benefits these forests provide to animals, although, as the authors found, the standards could be improved to provide more benefits to mammals.

I should also note that this study did not compare FSC-certified stands to non-certified ones, so it’s impossible to tell from its results whether FSC certification itself is beneficial to animals.

What’s the consensus?

A single scientific study should never be taken as the last word on any subject. So what does the consensus say?

As I alluded to earlier, opinions abound about how effective FSC is at ensuring the forests it certifies benefit local ecosystems and the human communities around them.

Some environmental advocates aren’t happy about concessions FSC is making to logging companies. Greenpeace International, one of the original founder organizations, ended its membership in 2018 due to concerns about FSC not meeting its environmental and social goals.

National Greenpeace offices in countries with stronger forest governance are continuing with the FSC, however.

Some founding and long-term supporters of FSC were concerned about the erosion of rigor within the organization and started the website FSC-Watch to investigate what they see as shoddy certification practices.

Meanwhile, some foresters say the costly environmental provisions and complex certification requirements aren’t paying off financially through higher prices.

As for scientific studies, there are surprisingly few on the effects of forest certification, and those have shown mixed results.

A 2016 meta-analysis in the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology concluded that “certification has substantial environmental benefits, typically achieved at a cost of reduced short-term financial profit, and accompanied by some improvement to the welfare of neighboring communities.”

That study also found that “the social impacts are controversial, with both positive and negative changes reported.”

A 2024 study in the journal Nature on mammals in Africa found more large mammals in FSC-certified forests than in non-certified forests, especially elephants, primates and even-toed ungulates (a group that includes giraffes, antelopes, gazelles and hippos).

A 2019 study in the journal Ecological Indicators, however, found no significant ecological improvements in forest management between FSC and non-FSC forests in Russia.

So should you buy FSC-certified wood products?

It’s complicated.

There’s no clear consensus in the scientific or environmental communities.

Given that FSC operates in more than 80 countries and covers vast and varied types of forest – including tropical, temperate and boreal forests - it’s not surprising that there would be regional and political differences in ecosystem benefits.

Mongabay’s Hans Nicholas Jong interviewed Kim Carstensen, FSC’s director-general, in 2022, who told the outlet that “some of the complaints have a basis, and that while the FSC will never be the perfect system in everyone’s view, it’s still ‘the best that can be done’ and ‘provides the basis for a lot of opportunities to be created.’”

The Guardian’s Tom Perkins summarized the various wood certification programs available and concluded that the FSC label is the best of the green labels, and “its good far outweighs its shortcomings. You can generally trust it.”

Likewise, Sierra Club supports FSC “as the highest available standard for forest certification. FSC certified forestry goes farthest in protecting forest biodiversity, ancient old-growth forests, water quality and the well-being of workers and forest-dependent peoples.”

I think that sums things up quite well and agrees with my research. Is it perfect? No. But it’s still far better than free-for-all logging without it and better than its competitors.

For my purchases, I’ll focus on the FSC label. As for other forest certifications – I’m not convinced they provide a measurable conservation benefit.

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Links to resources:

• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)

• FSC: Monitoring FSC’s reach

• Sierra Club: Forest certification and green building

• The Guardian, 11/1/2025: Can wood be good? Green forestry standards demystified, from SFC to SFI

• European Data Journalism Network: Portugal: wildfires and the eucalyptus curse

• FSC - Watch

• Matias et al., 2025: Mammalian response to FSC forest certification in production plantations. Forest Ecology and Management, 601:123360.

• George, Kizha and Daigneault, 2022: Is forest certification working on the ground? Forest managers’ perspectives from the northeast U.S. Trees, Forests and People, 7: 100197.

• Burivalova et al., 2016: A critical comparison of conventional, certified, and community management of tropical forests for timber in terms of environmental, economic, and social variables. Conservation Letters, 10: 4-14.

• Zwerts et al., 2024: FSC-certified forest management benefits large mammals compared to non-FSC. Nature, 628: 563-568.

• Blumroeder et al., 2019: Ecological effects of clearcutting practices in a boreal forest (Arkhangelsk Region, Russian Federation) both with and without FSC certification. Ecological Indicators, 106: 105461.

• Tysiachniouk and Vorbrugg, 2025: The transformation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification scheme in Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Forest Policy and Economics, 178: 103559.

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Those of you who have been following my newsletter know I love to write about the amazing variety of life on Earth – animals, plants, fungi, microorganisms and ecosystems. It seems every week brings new and exciting insights about nature and how it functions that I report in this blog.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the media coverage of biodiversity – or, rather, the lack thereof – and the repercussions of this neglect. The little environmental coverage we do get is often dedicated to climate change, not the biodiversity crisis.

Don’t get me wrong, educating the public about climate change is essential if we want to prevent the worst effects of warming temperatures. But many scientists argue that biodiversity loss is at least as big a threat as climate change.

So why don’t we hear more about it?

We hardly hear about the conservation successes

I dug into this question in a commentary in Bridge Michigan and thought my Substack readers would appreciate an updated and expanded version that focuses not only on the reasons for the neglect but also starts a conversation about solutions.

Especially since the drastic loss of biodiversity is only part of the story, and unfortunately the one we usually hear about in the media. It seems it’s all doom and gloom – no wonder people tune out!

But I don’t think that’s quite right. There have been amazing conservation successes in recent decades – bald eagles, California condors, humpback whales, mountain gorillas and more nearly went extinct but are now recovering. Many rivers are cleaner now than they were decades ago.

The tiny Poweshiek skipperling, a butterfly that once flourished across the northern prairies in the U.S. and Canada, almost went extinct before dedicated efforts by a coalition of zoos, nonprofits and state and federal agencies stopped the decline. Now numbers are increasing again in Michigan.

To learn more about the amazing journey of this charismatic little butterfly, check out this post:

These successes show we know how to stop – or at least slow down – biodiversity loss. We just need the will to do something about it.

Nature needs our help

Despite the wins, the situation is still dire – according to a 2019 United Nations report, 75% of the global land surface has been changed and 85% of wetland area has been lost. Around a quarter of assessed species are threatened with extinction, including 26% of mammals, 41% of amphibians, 12% of birds and 34% of conifers. Of the world’s largest carnivores, 59% are threatened, as are 60% of the largest herbivores.

This is not a remote issue that only affects rainforests and coral reefs in faraway places. For example, where I live in Michigan, biodiversity is also at risk: we have lost over 99% of our prairies and savannas, about 50% of our forests and nearly 40% of our wetlands. More than 400 animals and plants are on the state’s endangered and threatened species list.

While Michigan has joined former President Biden’s “America the Beautiful” initiative – also called “30 by 30” – which seeks to protect at least 30% of our lands and oceans by 2030, so far, less than 20% of Michigan’s land is protected. The State has no clear plan how we will meet our own ambitious “Michigan the Beautiful” goal.

The situation is similar across the U.S., in Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and Central and South America: a 2024 United Nations report estimates that only around 18% of land and inland waters and 8% of the ocean and coastal areas are protected.

It’s clear that global leadership does not value biodiversity. Why is that?

Neglect by the media

Part of the reason is probably that the biodiversity crisis has been largely ignored by mainstream media. It has not been covered nearly as much as climate change – not a high bar to say the least.

A 2018 study found that media coverage of climate change was up to eight times higher than that of biodiversity. A 2010 assessment of coverage in the Guardian found more than 20 times more articles on climate change than biodiversity. And even when biodiversity is covered, it’s not always reported accurately or comprehensively.

However, not only scientists are concerned about biodiversity loss. The World Economic Forum surveyed over 1,300 experts from academia, business, government, the international community and civil society in their 2026 Global Risks Report. The top three global risks over a 10-year period identified in the survey were all environmental factors: extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and critical changes to earth systems. Two more environmental factors were in the top 10 global risks: natural resource shortages and pollution.

In Britain, a recent national security report concluded that “global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK’s national security and prosperity,” risking “geopolitical instability, economic insecurity, conflict, migration and increased inter-state competition for resources.”

Again, then, why aren’t we seeing more attention and actions to protect the world’s biodiversity?

Climate change vs. biodiversity loss?

Has the relatively scarce climate change coverage diverted the public’s limited attention from other environmental problems? Could it be that the public has only so much attention it can spare for environmental problems?

Or, is the concept of biodiversity simply too complex? After all, it can refer to genes, species and even entire ecosystems. Biodiversity loss has many causes – land use change, overexploitation, pollution, invasive species, among others. That makes not only measuring what is lost difficult and confusing, but also how to solve it.

As with climate change, the biodiversity crisis is also hobbled by extinction denial from corporations and individuals with a stake in exploiting natural resources.

Biodiversity loss is also hard to measure. How does one quantify the diversity of all life on earth, from genes to bacteria to elephants to rainforests, in simple terms? It’s an almost overwhelming concept.

To counteract these forces and clearly communicate the uncertainties and nuances of biodiversity loss – we don’t even know such basic facts as how many species exist in the world – requires experienced journalists. At a time when science journalism is facing an “identity crisis” and environmental coverage is cut from many newsrooms, it’s difficult for reporters to spend the time to get the science right and convey nuanced information to the lay public in a comprehensible way.

The consistent lack of attention by mainstream media has consequences. A survey by the European Commission found that while 71% of people had heard of the term ‘biodiversity,’ only 41% know what it means.

The public generally values nature

Yet the public is clearly interested in nature. Live streams of wildlife and natural scenes attract millions of viewers. I was recently at a Chinese restaurant that showed soothing videos of sea turtles in a serene blue ocean on large screens in the dining area. How cool is that!

How can we translate this interest in nature into not only awareness of biodiversity but also meaningful conservation action?

I don’t have all the answers, but I think part of the solution is to use storytelling to communicate the beauty, fragility and interrelatedness of nature in a way that resonates with people. Audiences are more engaged and take action when stories are emotionally relatable.

It may be time to revisit some methods from the early days of environmental reporting, when outdoor writers combined personal narrative with conservation coverage.

That’s also, incidentally, why I started this newsletter. And there are plenty of other excellent writers here on Substack doing the same thing.

How to deliver the message

How the message is delivered also matters. Many scientists and conservationists try to persuade people to protect nature by explaining how useful it is – the “ecosystem services” argument. But studies have shown that can backfire, as many people value wildlife for its intrinsic value – because nature is beautiful and amazing.

I don’t think everyone – particularly the “powerful,” politicians and corporations – is persuaded by arguments of beauty and intrinsic value, however. Too many are interested in their profits (especially short-term profits) or their ability to be elected. And nature does not operate on a quarterly basis.

We also need to realize that for many people, caring about nature for its own sake is a luxury. Many people around the globe live day by day and they have to make hard, financial decisions to make sure their families are fed, warm and safe. For them, those concerns come first, and I don’t blame them.

The sad fact, however, is that what harms biodiversity also often harms us. Water and air pollution does not only target animals, we are also hurt. The causes of biodiversity loss are complex and differ by species, but many of these causes also have direct negative impacts on our own health and well-being. Chronic diseases and cancer are on the rise. In some ways, protecting biodiversity is a selfish act.

However, if all people hear about is the dire state of nature, they’ll just tune out. That’s why it’s so important to cover the conservation successes and celebrate every species brought back from the brink of extinction, and every river and wetland cleaned up.

We also shouldn’t sugar-coat the challenges – after all, if all people hear is the good news, why would they want to get involved and try to do something about it?

The trick is getting the balance right, and I don’t think we’ve been very good at that.

What do you think? What can be done to raise awareness without causing hopelessness?

Related articles:

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Links to resources:

• United Nations, 5/6/2019: UN report: Nature’s dangerous decline ‘unprecedented;’ species extinction rates ‘accelerating.‘

• International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.

• ScienceDaily, 1/20/2012: Biodiversity crisis is worse than climate change, experts say.

• Legagneux et al., 2018: Our house is burning: Discrepancy in climate change vs. biodiversity coverage in the media as compared to scientific literature.

• Zaccai and Adams, 2012: How far are biodiversity loss and climate change similar as policy issues?

• Lees, Attwood and Phalan, 2020: Biodiversity scientists must fight the creeping rise of extinction denial.

• United Nations, 2024: World must act faster to protect 30% of the planet by 2030.

• The Guardian, 9/16/2010: Public awareness of the biodiversity crisis is virtually non-existent.

• World Economic Forum, 2026: Global Risks Report 2026.

• UK Government, 2026: Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security. A national security assessment.

• Center for Biological Diversity: The elements of biodiversity.

• The Nature Conservancy, 2022: America the Beautiful.

• The Conversation, 4/28/2019, by Tanya Latty and Timothy Lee: How many species on Earth? Why that’s a simple question but hard to answer.

• Michigan Natural Features Inventory, 2008: Biodiversity assessment of Michigan technical report.

• Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, 2014: Status and trends of Michigan’s wetlands: Pre-European settlement to 2005.

Now a recent study found that insect declines began even earlier than previously documented in Switzerland, revealing a decline in butterflies and beetles that goes back nearly 100 years.

The new insights could dramatically change scientists’ interpretation of research on insect diversity and abundance by demonstrating that short-term studies covering only a few decades may start from populations that have already been significantly depleted.

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Analyzing butterfly and beetle occurrences over the last century

The researchers pored through a long-term data archive of insects observed in Switzerland since 1930 to analyze any changes in the diversity – or the number of species, aka the ‘species richness’ – of butterflies and so-called ‘deadwood’ beetles, or beetles that depend on dead or rotting wood, such as the impressive stag beetle or bark beetles.

They chose the two groups to represent overall insect diversity because people tend to pay more attention to them than many other insects, as they’re often easier to identify.

“People have always been fascinated by large insects such as butterflies and beetles. Consequently, there are numerous historical specimens, as well as reports in modern observation apps,” said Felix Neff, the lead author and a researcher at the Swiss agricultural research center Agroscope, in a statement.

The study was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. A dozen scientists from several universities and institutes contributed, including the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, the University of Zurich and the University of Basel.

Identifying population trends

The researchers were interested in identifying trends in changes in insect diversity over time in response to changing environmental conditions like habitat loss, logging, agriculture and climate change.

To do that, they divided Switzerland into six zones according to their natural characteristics and human uses over the past century. Some regions experienced high human population, agricultural or logging pressures and others less so.

The researchers then searched Switzerland’s impressive long-term database of wildlife and invertebrate species, info fauna, for observations that would allow them to track individual species throughout the survey period of 1930 through 2021. They ended up with 1.2 million records from 595 beetle species (out of around 1,000 species that occur in Switzerland) and 216 butterfly species (out of about 230 species) that fit the bill.

Because of the nature of the data, the authors examined only whether a species was present or absent in a particular location, not how many individuals were observed. They divided the country into a grid of 5-kilometer by 5-kilometer squares (about 3 miles by 3 miles), recording the number of species found in each square and how human, environmental and climate conditions changed over time.

What they found was surprising.

Widespread declines in butterflies and beetles through the 1950s

On average across Switzerland, both insect groups steadily lost species starting in 1930. Deadwood beetle species richness stabilized in the 1960s and then increased again until it reached 1930 levels about 15 years ago.

The number of butterfly species, on the other hand, decreased until the 1980s, when it stabilized. Butterflies did not, however, recover like beetles, instead remaining less diverse through the end of the study period.

The results differed sharply among regions, with the two zones that are the most densely populated and with the most intensive agriculture also experiencing the largest butterfly declines. The Lowland Plateau, where two-thirds of the Swiss population lives, experienced a loss of nearly one-third of butterfly species.

“The sharpest declines, particularly in butterfly species, occurred during the period of agricultural mechanization and intensification (1950-1980), accompanied by structural homogenization of the landscape and increased use of fertilizers and pesticides,” the authors wrote.

Butterfly and beetle declines had different drivers

The beetles, on the other hand, were predictably affected by changes in forests, with increased timbering and the mechanization of logging leading to the loss of deadwood beetle species.

“Wood harvest intensity – an indicator of forest management intensity and deadwood removal – was particularly high during World War II,” the authors wrote. In some regions, however, the logging intensity increased slightly throughout the 20^th century.

Large beetles were especially hard hit.

“Larger deadwood beetle species, such as the hermit beetle, declined more sharply than smaller ones, because large deadwood trunks remain in short supply even today,” the researchers wrote.

But some deadwood beetles recovered after the initial decline.

Conservation measures likely stopped the decline

The study team credited increasing environmental protection efforts with stopping the downward spiral of both insect groups and leading to the recovery of some of the deadwood beetles.

Starting in the 1970s, a growing environmental movement led to the adoption of biodiversity-friendly management practices, including leaving more deadwood on the ground during logging. That provides much-needed habitat for many wildlife and insect species.

Another reason for the increase in some deadwood beetles could be climate change.

Warmer temperatures benefit heat-loving species

Other studies have documented an increase in the number of deadwood beetle species in warmer climates, and Switzerland has warmed by 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last 100 years, the researchers wrote.

Climate change also causes more severe storms, which often damage forests and create deadwood, providing habitat for beetles that live in and feed on downed trees.

“The partial recovery in species numbers suggests that conservation measures are having an effect, particularly in forests, and that climate change is having a positive impact on some species,” said Kurt Bollman, one of the study’s authors and a senior scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute WSL, in a statement.

“However, more intensive efforts are still needed for numerous specialized species, like many butterflies,” he added.

Climate change effects on animals and plants are complicated

A warming climate not only makes the world hotter on average but also affects the timing and intensity of storms, causing unpredictable rain and snow events, flooding, droughts and changes to habitats.

Aspects that benefit one species often come at the detriment of others. Species that specialize in one particular plant or habitat may be the most vulnerable to the effects of both habitat loss and climate change, causing shifts in species assemblages that scientists don’t fully understand and can’t reliably predict.

Shifting baselines may hold back conservation efforts

The long-term nature of this research sets it apart from other studies that only have access to limited data. Few countries have kept a comprehensive and long-term record of animals like the Swiss National Fauna Databank, with some observations starting at the beginning of the 16^th century.

That means that for most areas of the world it’s impossible to know how species may have been affected by humans before widespread recordkeeping began. Similarly, even for this set of insect groups, species declines may have begun before 1930. We just don’t know.

This is known as the ‘shifting baseline syndrome,’ where changing conditions become the new normal for each generation, even though the ecosystems they inherit may be degraded and not fully functioning ecologically.

Jeremy Kerr, a biology professor at the University of Ottawa who assisted with the peer review of the study, wrote, “This study is timely and vital… The shifting baseline problem is profoundly important and has led to serious problems in present understanding of how urgent the biodiversity crisis actually has become.”

But recognizing the limitations of our knowledge and adjusting conservation priorities accordingly will enable us to adjust conservation actions to benefit native species and help prevent further biodiversity loss.

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Links to more information:

• Neff et al., 2026. Ninety-year trends reveal sharpest insect declines in the mid-twentieth century. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 10:1103-1113.

• Zhou et al., 2023. Long-term insect censuses capture progressive loss of ecosystem functioning in East Asia. Science Advances, 9(5):eade9341.

• Goulson, 2019. The insect apocalypse, and why it matters. Current Biology, 29(19):R967-R971.

• Soga and Gaston, 2018. Shifting baseline syndrome: causes, consequences and implications. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 16(4): 222-230.

• Hallmann et al., 2017. More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. PLoS ONE, 12:e0185809.

• info fauna, Swiss National Fauna Databank.

Today I’m covering:

• India’s tigers are increasing, but protecting and connecting their habitats is the next struggle.

• Elusive Sunda clouded leopards, ‘ghosts of the forests,’ caught on camera, providing new insights.

• Female chickadees cheat on their mates with smarter males.

• Half of migratory bird species are declining, but comprehensive conservation actions could reverse the trend.

• Personal pro-environmental actions don’t hurt larger climate engagement or policy support after all.

  ---

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India’s tigers are increasing, but protecting and connecting their habitats is the next struggle

The number of tigers in India has doubled in recent decades, from a rough estimate of around 1,800 in 1972 to more than 3,600 today, reports Nirmal Ghosh for Mongabay.

But the expanded tiger population needs room to roam, and development and road projects are threatening the progress the country has made in protecting its wildlife habitat, Ghosh writes:

This jungle has survived, and even been revived, in a country of 1.4 billion people — in an economy that has grown at 6-7% per year over the last decade. As it strives to graduate to new-generation infrastructure, India is now building large highways at precisely the time that wild tigers have rebounded to the point that the existing network of protected habitats is no longer sufficient.

Roads act as barriers for many wildlife species, even large animals like tigers and elephants, preventing them from dispersing to new areas or completing their migrations. Wildlife crossings can help mitigate these isolating effects – they are structures such as bridges or culverts, often planted with native vegetation that allow animals to go under or over a road.

According to the Wildlife Institute of India, India “has created the world’s 10 largest wildlife underpasses and overpasses,” Ghosh writes. But it may not be enough.

Tigers are classified as one species with several subspecies – though experts disagree on exactly how many subspecies exist, with some recognizing two subspecies, others nine. In either case, the species is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, with an overall decreasing population trend.

But while things aren’t looking good for most tigers across Asia, they are increasing in India and Nepal, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. India now has 58 tiger reserves, up from only nine 50 years ago, Ghosh writes:

But tiger density is uneven. Some reserves are overflowing, while a few may not have any tigers at all. The big cats roam across landscapes: Experts estimate that around 35% of India’s wild tigers live outside its protected area network.

And that can threaten their long-term survival since human-wildlife conflicts and poaching rise as the animals come into more contact with humans, especially with urban sprawl popping up around tiger reserves. Reserves and connecting corridors are also sometimes threatened by development and mines.

Tigers are notorious for moving long distances, and both males and females have large territories, making wildlife-friendly wildlife crossings that both facilitate the large cats’ movements and separate them from humans essential for their long-term survival.

But that won’t work unless their core habitat continues to be protected.

Elusive Sunda clouded leopards, ‘ghosts of the forests,’ are caught on camera, providing new insights

Staying with the large cat theme, a new 15-year study provides a tantalizing view into the mysterious Sunda clouded leopards that roam the dense rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, reports Douglas Main for Scientific American:

Much remains unknown about these elusive big cats, sometimes called “ghosts of the forest,” including how long they live and how they spend their time.

The study, led by Katharina Kasper, a biologist with the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, analyzed photos taken with camera trap surveys set out in the Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah between 2007 and 2023.

The research team captured images of 52 adult Sunda clouded leopards. More than half of the individuals, 30, were male – not because the sex ratio is skewed, the researchers believe, but likely because females spend more time in the trees, aided by their slenderer forms and fluffier tails compared to males.

Males, on the other hand, spend more time on the ground, marking their territories, and are therefore detected more often by the camera traps.

The biologists were able to identify individuals through their unique fur spot patterns, which also allowed them to age animals that appeared in multiple photos. One female was observed over 6.5 years. Since she was an adult at least two years old in the first photo, the team discovered that the age expectancy for the species in the wild is at least 8.5 years.

That tracks well with data from their close relative, clouded leopards, which occur in mainland Southeast Asia and are known to live up to 20 years in zoos. In general, wild large cats tend to live about half as long as their captive counterparts. Main writes:

Kasper says the study has already helped the group tweak its research efforts to look at what factors influence the disturbance and survival of Sunda clouded leopards. In turn, this will help guide conservation efforts for this species, which is classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature—one step up from endangered.

Female chickadees cheat on their mates with smarter males

Turning now to fascinating insights into the behavior of our small feathered friends - while chickadees are known for being monogamous and forming pair bonds that last for several breeding seasons or even for life, it turns out that female mountain chickadees will stray to mate with more intelligent males, reports Annie Roth for the New York Times:

While it’s true that mountain chickadees breed and raise their young with the same mate year after year, scientists have found that nests are often full of half-siblings, suggesting that both males and females may be stepping outside of their pairs.

Carrie Branch, an assistant professor at Western University in Ontario, was the lead author of a study that examined if female mountain chickadees were drawn to affairs with smart males.

She did that to follow up on a hunch she had while in grad school, when she noticed that males from higher altitudes seemed to be particularly attractive to females. And because of the harsher conditions high up in the mountains, chickadees that live there need to be extra smart to remember where they hid their summer food caches.

Roth wrote about Dr. Branch’s experiment using several “smart” feeders that would only open for birds that wear certain colored bands that she had attached to male mountain chickadees in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. That meant that the birds had to remember which feeder would respond to their individual leg band, demonstrating how smart they were.

Her team also took genetic samples of the males and chicks. They found that nearly three-quarters of nests had at least one chick with a different father from its siblings, and smarter males had fathered more young. Roth writes:

The males who performed best in the researcher’s cognition tests sired between six and seven chicks outside of the matings each year, while those who scored low sired only between one and two.

The researchers don’t know how the females judge a male’s intelligence, but since chickadees overwinter together in groups of up to a dozen birds, they may have the opportunity to assess the smarts of individual males during that time. So it could be that if a male does particularly well during that harsh time, females notice and remember when it’s time to find a father for their chicks.

Half of migratory bird species are declining, but comprehensive conservation actions could reverse the trend

Many birds accomplish amazing feats of endurance and orientation every year during their annual migrations. But a recent study found that 51% of migratory birds are declining, write two of the study’s authors, Peter Marra with Georgetown University and Nathan Cooper with the Smithsonian Institution, for the Conversation.

Birds face many risks at home and during their travels, including habitat loss, collisions with buildings, the pet trade and toxic pesticides. While the results of their research are alarming, Marra and Cooper argue there is reason for optimism:

Our study offers a second conclusion with more hope. The science around migratory birds has changed dramatically over the past two decades, and conservation can help save these incredible species – if governments act before they become endangered.

New technologies have enabled scientists to track individual birds, making it possible to pinpoint exactly where conservation efforts would have the greatest impact. And each migratory species is different, meaning that one-size-fits-all strategies won’t work.

Marra and Cooper cite three birds - the grassland bird bobolink, the seabird Newell’s shearwater and the shorebird spoon-billed sandpiper - as examples to highlight the different approaches that will be necessary to halt the decline of migratory birds. All three are declining but face different threats.

The authors contend that refocusing conservation efforts to protect not only birds’ breeding grounds but also their wintering areas and migratory routes is necessary and would yield powerful results. That, however, would require international cooperation among governments and partnerships with scientists and conservation organizations.

Everyone can help to support migratory birds, the authors write:

Governments cannot do it alone. Landowners, businesses, conservation organizations and individuals all have roles to play. They can help protect and restore habitat and reduce threats, such as free-ranging cats and collisions with buildings. They can support bird-friendly policies and participate in citizen-science programs that help track migratory bird populations.

Personal pro-environmental actions don’t hurt larger climate engagement or policy support after all

I’ve often heard the argument that encouraging people to adopt individual eco-friendly behaviors could backfire and cause them to be less engaged in supporting larger, systemic efforts to alleviate climate change that could arguably have greater long-term benefits.

Now a research team put the theory to the test, reports Sarah DeWeerdt for Anthropocene Magazine. Omid Ghasemi, a climate psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, led a study that surveyed nearly 2,800 Australians over at least two years about their environmental and climate attitudes and actions.

Survey participants were asked about both personal environmentally friendly behaviors, such as carrying their own drink container or using public transportation, their engagement in collective eco-friendly actions, including attending pro-environmental rallies or signing petitions, and their support for climate-related policies, such as setting national zero-carbon emission targets.

The results showed that those who were more active personally were also more likely to participate in collective actions and support climate policies, DeWeerdt writes:

Crucially, when a person’s personal climate actions increased in one year, this did not make them more—or less—likely to take collective action or support climate policies the next year. Nor was there any evidence of a gradual, cumulative effect of individual action over multiple years on broader climate engagement.

However, the researchers caution, putting too much emphasis on individual solutions can backfire as well, by “reducing the perceived necessity or effectiveness of systemic change.” If we want to prevent the most dire climate change scenarios and further biodiversity loss, it will take all hands on deck – public support of climate policies and conservation actions and also personal actions to reduce our carbon footprints. But at least, as DeWeerdt writes:

This means that governments and environmental advocates don’t need to worry that encouraging everyday climate actions will “crowd out” other forms of climate engagement—as long as those small, individual efforts aren’t presented as the whole solution.

And that’s it for this week’s updates.

Drop a note in the comments if any article resonated with you. Or, if you’re getting this post in an email, hit ‘reply’ and let me know what you think – I read every email! (And if you’re not getting my posts by email yet, hit the subscribe button below to get all new stories delivered directly to your inbox! 😄)

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Links to articles and resources:

• Mongabay, 7/28/2026, by Nirmal Ghosh: India’s tiger numbers are rising. Protecting their pathways is next.

• Wildlife Institute of India

• International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List: Tiger (Panthera tigris)

• Science, 6/26/2015, by Kai Kupferschmidt: Controversial study claims there are only two types of tiger.

• World Wide Fund for Nature: Tigers

• Scientific American, 7/17/2026, by Douglas Main: Exclusive: See unprecedented images of Sunda clouded leopards, the ‘ghosts of the forest.’

• Kasper et al., 2026: Estimating Sunda clouded leopard lifespans from minimum residence times via long-term photo-tracking. Biotropica 58(2): e70169.

• International Union for Conservation of Nature: Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi)

• The New York Times, 7/2/2026, by Annie Roth: Cheating chickadees are seduced by smarts.

• Branch et al., 2026: Male chickadees with better spatial cognition sire more extra-pair young. eLife 15:RP110905.

• The Conversation, 7/22/2026, by Peter Marra and Nathan W. Cooper: More than half of Earth’s migratory bird species are declining - here’s how we can still save them.

• Marra et al., 2026. Status, threats and conservation of Earth’s migratory birds. Nature Reviews Biodiversity (2026).

• Road to Recovery - Saving our Shared Birds, an initiative focused on the recovery of declining birds in the U.S. and Canada.

• Anthropocene Magazine, 7/28/2026, by Sarah DeWeerdt: Do small climate habits help or hurt the bigger cause? What a 4-year study found.

• Ghasemi et al., 2026: Personal climate actions do not crowd out collective action and policy support: longitudinal evidence. NPJ Climate Action 5:62.

I hope you enjoy the story! Honestly, it was one of my favorite ones to research, sea otters are so incredibly cute (it’s a scientific fact!) while also being extremely important animals in their environment by helping to shape the amazing kelp forests along the Pacific coast.

And be sure to check out the YouTube videos at the end, as well as links to studies and information about PFAS.

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I was disheartened to read about a recent study that found that every sea otter examined by biologists along the coast of British Columbia was contaminated by toxic PFAS chemicals. The closer the otters were to urban areas, the higher their PFAS levels.

Losing this charismatic species would have cascading effects throughout the coastal ecosystem, causing economic losses to nearby communities due to damaging effects on fisheries, carbon sequestration and ecotourism.

That’s because sea otters, while cute and charismatic, are also key “ecosystem engineers” that help sustain kelp forests along the Pacific Coast.

The contamination by PFAS – also called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or “forever chemicals” – could further weaken the already struggling otters. PFAS have been shown to cause numerous health issues in people and wildlife, including cancer, insulin resistance, high cholesterol and decreased vaccine response.

Why should we care about sea otters?

Besides being what biologists call a “keystone species” - that is, a species that plays an especially important role in an ecosystem - sea otters are incredibly charismatic.

It’s hard to resist their charms – otters are adorable and cuddly-looking, and they’re very social, holding hands as they float in rafts with sometimes dozens of other otters.

They also use tools - as they float along the Pacific coast, anchored by long strands of kelp so they don’t drift away in the current, otters hold rocks on their stomachs while lying on their backs, whacking snacks of shellfish against the rocks to get at the juicy meat.

Otters are important to the ecosystem - making them ‘keystone species’ - because they eat sea urchins and crabs that would otherwise decimate the kelp forests and seagrass areas near the shore. The kelp forests and seagrasses, in turn, have many ecological benefits for animals and anchor sediment, preventing erosion and degradation of coastal marshes.

Sea otters eat a lot of food – to help keep themselves warm in the frigid ocean waters, they eat 25% or more of their body weight daily, primarily from urchins, mussels, crabs and other high-protein snacks.

But this idyllic life is not without dangers.

Near-extinction of sea otters in the early 1900s

Sea otters nearly went extinct in the early 1900s, causing changes in coastal ecosystems that researchers didn’t fully understand until their numbers started rebounding again in the 1970s.

Biologists estimate that up to 300,000 sea otters once flourished along the Pacific coast from Mexico north to California, British Columbia, Alaska, west to Russia and south to Japan.

Then, in the 1700s and 1800s, they were nearly hunted to extinction because of their extremely dense fur. With up to nearly 1 million hairs per square inch, they have the thickest fur of any mammal (compare that with up to 1,300 hairs per square inch of humans!).

Otters need this lush coat to stay warm. They’re the smallest marine mammal of the northern hemisphere, but instead of relying on a thick layer of blubber like other marine mammals (think whales or seals), they have their thick, water-resistant fur.

That made their pelt a highly prized possession, fetching up to $1,500 per skin by the early 1900s (equivalent to about $44,000 in today’s U.S. dollars).

Partial recovery following legal protections

By 1911, only a tiny fraction of otters were left when they were protected under the Northern Pacific Fur Seal Treaty. In the 1970s, they gained additional protections through the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. Some populations were listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973.

In Canada, they’re listed as Special Concern under the Species at Risk Act, and they’re endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

Because of these legal protections, their numbers have now recovered to some extent, aided by reintroductions to areas from which they disappeared. However, even now they only occupy a tiny portion of their original range, and the population isn’t secure.

Pollution has replaced hunting as one of the main threats

While they’re not hunted by humans anymore, threats now include oil spills (oil decreases the insulating effect of their fur, causing them to die of hypothermia), entanglement in fishing gear and being hunted by killer whales and white sharks.

Another threat is pollution. A 2006 study found that California sea otters that died of disease had higher PFAS concentrations than those that died from other causes.

“Forever chemicals” in sea otters

That brings us back to the study’s findings of high PFAS levels in British Columbia sea otters.

The study, which appeared in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, was the first to investigate PFAS in sea otters near Vancouver Island. Some of the study sites were near cities and shipping lanes; others were more remote.

Because sea otters are protected in Canada, Dana Price with the University of British Columbia and the other authors could only examine the remains of 11 otters found dead along the coast.

What they found was alarming.

Of the 40 PFAS chemicals they tested for, the researchers found eight in the sampled otters. All of the livers contained at least two of the chemicals, and two of the flesh samples contained them.

Contamination levels in otters found close to urban centers or shipping lanes were more than three times higher on average than those in remote areas.

Health impacts of PFAS on sea otters

With such a small sample size, it’s difficult to determine any correlation between the cause of death and PFAS levels, but other studies have associated health problems like organ damage, reproductive impairment, insulin resistance, impaired liver function and decreased metabolic rates in wildlife like sea otters with high PFAS levels.

Metabolic effects could have particularly negative impacts on sea otters because they need a lot of food to keep warm. And their high-protein foods are susceptible to PFAS contamination from runoff from landfills, factories, airports and pesticides.

PFAS are a huge group of chemicals – it’s estimated there are around 15,000 of them. They have been manufactured since the 1940s, are used in multitudes of consumer and industrial products and are extremely persistent in the environment.

Much is unknown about the effects of the vast majority of PFAS on the environment and the health of humans and wildlife (only two of the chemicals are well-studied), but researchers are concerned they could cause disease in sea otters.

However, there is hope. Some countries are starting to regulate the use of at least some of them and consumers are increasingly becoming aware of their dangers, demanding products that are PFAS-free.

We have prevented the extinction of sea otters once already by stopping the indiscriminate hunting and reintroducing them to areas from where they had disappeared. Now it’s time to clean up the pollution that is once again endangering their health.

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If you can’t get enough of sea otters, check out these videos:

Links to more information:

• Price et al., 2025. Concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in Canadian sea otters (Enhydra lutris) are higher near urban centers. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 45(1): 80-91.

• Gregr et al., 2020. Cascading social-ecological costs and benefits triggered by a recovering keystone predator. Science, 368(6496): 1243-1247.

• Kannan, Perrotta and Thomas, 2006: Association between perfluorinated compounds and pathological conditions in southern sea otters. Environmental Science & Technology, 40(16):4943-4948.

• Shukla et al., 2023. The diversity of animals identified as keystone species. Ecology and Evolution, 13(10):e10561.

• PFAS - Environmental Working Group info

• PFAS - European Commission info

• PFAS - U.S. EPA info

But those beautiful flowers are not always innocuous in their new homes. They sometimes escape into natural areas and, with no natural enemies to control their spread, aggressive species can overwhelm native habitats, crowding out native species and upsetting the natural balance that has evolved over eons with local wildlife and other plants.

Now a new study shows that escaped plants can have even more insidious impacts than previously realized, disrupting the mating success of local butterflies in unexpected ways that biologists are just now beginning to understand.

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Non-native plants can have sneaky effects on local insects.

The groundbreaking study, published in the journal Basic and Applied Ecology, demonstrated that non-native plants escaped from cultivation in Japan can have sneaky effects on a rare butterfly’s attractiveness to potential mates, quietly disrupting its mating behavior and, potentially, its ability to produce enough young to survive over the long term.

“These findings can serve as a model case that highlights the indirect threats posed by invasive plants to herbivorous insects,” said Norio Hirai, the senior author of the study and a professor at Osaka Metropolitan University, in a statement.

This creates an unexpected threat to the butterfly’s ability to reproduce successfully that was previously unknown and could prove particularly devastating to rare insects already threatened by habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change.

Fischer’s blue (Tongeia fischeri) is a yellowish butterfly with a series of black and black-orange dots on its wings. It ranges from the Ural Mountains in Russia east to China, Korea and into Japan but is declining, listed as “near threatened” in Japan.

The caterpillars of the small butterfly – it has a wingspan of around 2.5 cm, about an inch – mainly feed on the plant Japanese dunce cap (Orostachys japonica), a native succulent plant that occurs in rocky habitats in mountains, riverbanks and coasts. The plant’s habitat is declining, however, and it’s listed as near threatened in Japan.

Butterflies are feeding on invasives as their native host plants decline.

The Fischer’s blue is nothing if not adaptable. With the decline of its favorite host plant, the insect has branched out to lay its eggs on other succulents, such as stonecrops in the Sedum genus.

These plants, however, are not native to Japan, especially the stringy stonecrop (Sedum sarmentosum), an aggressive Chinese succulent that is cultivated and naturalized in Japan, North America and Europe. It’s considered an invasive in many countries, actively displacing native plants.

So, while the butterfly’s ability to feed on plants other than its preferred but declining host plant could be interpreted as a welcome sign that it’s expanding its diet in response to the changing plant diversity around it, there are signs that all is not well.

Biologists had noticed that the undersides of the wings of Fischer’s blue butterflies whose caterpillars had fed on the invasive stringy stonecrop looked different from those raised on the native plant, appearing grayer.

But no official studies had been done to confirm the difference or what, if any, consequences there might be.

Analyzing potential effects when caterpillars change host plants.

That’s when Hirai’s team decided to investigate the relationship between the caterpillars’ host plant, the resultant wing colors of adult butterflies and how potential mates might react.

In butterflies, the attractiveness to potential mates depends on several factors, including its wing colors – what scientists measure as “spectral reflectance,” meaning the exact light wavelengths that are bounced back by a butterfly’s wings – and the sex pheromones released by the insect.

The researchers analyzed several factors that could be affected by changes to the caterpillars’ host plant. They examined whether wild-caught females deposited more eggs on either the native Japanese dunce cap or the invasive stringy stonecrop, any changes in caterpillar growth, how the wing colors of adult butterflies reared on each plant differed and how other butterflies reacted to individuals raised on each of the two plants.

The results were subtle but concerning.

The biologists detected no preference in the females’ choice of plant to deposit their eggs on, or in the resultant caterpillars’ weight or growth.

However, in human-visible light, the wings of native plant-reared butterflies appeared more yellowish than their counterparts raised on the non-natives, which were grayer.

Since butterflies see more wavelengths than humans do, the research team also examined the wings’ reflectance in the ultraviolet light range.

And those results showed that the ultraviolet reflectance was significantly lower in butterflies raised on the invasive plant, meaning that to other butterflies, individuals raised on the invasive plant would look very different from those raised on the natives.

The scientists then tested how wild male butterflies responded to the differences.

Male Fischer’s blue butterflies prefer native-plant-reared females.

These results were the most surprising – male butterflies contacted females raised on native plants significantly more often than females raised on invasives, indicating a clear preference for native-plant-raised females.

Karen Hisai, the study’s first author, said in a statement, “This study provides a rare example in Japan demonstrating that even when invasive plants can be used as food, they may indirectly influence the reproductive process.”

The results are concerning for butterflies that are dependent on native plants that are declining, even if the insects can adapt to feed on non-natives. The switch in caterpillar food could lead to subtle differences in the adult butterflies that are obvious to other butterflies but not to us.

What does it mean for conservation?

We often don’t understand enough about the ecology of insects to be able to predict the repercussions of an unfamiliar diet on a species’ mating behaviors and how that might affect the resulting reproduction success.

But the potential consequences on rare species are alarming.

Hisai said, “as the number of invasive species continues to increase, similar effects may potentially occur in other butterfly species and insects.”

And that could ultimately make all the difference to a butterfly already stressed by other human-caused changes to its world.

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Related stories:

Links to resources:

• Hisai et al., 2026, Effects of alien host plant on wing coloration and mating behavior of an endangered butterfly. Basic and Applied Ecology, 92:13-19.

• Shackleton et al., 2022. Consensus and controversy in the discipline of invasion science. In Conservation Biology, 36(5):e13931.

• Jeratthitikul et al., 2013. Phylogeography of Fischer’s blue, Tongeia fischeri, in Japan: Evidence for introgressive hybridization. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 66(1):316-26.

Today I’m covering:

• The struggle to save Ukraine’s bison amid the war.

• Unlocking nature’s secrets through ‘environmental DNA.’

• Ancient ground squirrel poop uncovered an astonishing diet of mammoths, bison, and even large cats.

• Controversial roundup of 450 wild horses proceeds in California.

• Wireless radiation disrupts bats’ flight patterns in new study.

• Wildlife crossings gain legislative support in four U.S. states.

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The struggle to save Ukraine’s bison amid the war

The war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, has not only been rough on the country’s people, but also its wildlife. Dustin Patar reports for BioGraphic about the heart-wrenching struggle to save one of Ukraine’s remaining herds of European bison amid the destruction wreaked by Russian drones and land mines.

Environmental damage because of the war has been pervasive, reports Patar:

In 2024, Ukraine’s environment minister claimed that the Russian military had committed 6,500 crimes against the environment since the invasion, such as damage to forests, contamination of ecosystems by mines and other unexploded ordnance, water pollution, and air pollution. Some 30 percent of protected areas had been impacted by the war as of 2023, and several remain under Russian occupation.

The story is a gripping account of perseverance of staff at Zalissia National Nature Park near Kyiv and their attempts to revitalize its bison herd after one-third of it perished in the war. That included all but one male bison, named Muscat, who was thought to be sterile after some failed breeding attempts.

European bison have had a tough time. They’re taller but lighter than their North American counterparts and once roamed Europe’s forests and woodlands. They went extinct in the wild 100 years ago, and all European bison alive now - estimated at more than 9,000 wild individuals scattered throughout Europe - descend from just 12 captive-bred animals. While rewilding efforts have been successful in many areas, the low genetic diversity makes the animals fragile and highly susceptible to stress.

Unfortunately, when biologists tried to bolster Zalissia’s bison herd by relocating another male from a forest in central Ukraine, that fragility resulted in the animal’s death through a stress-induced heart attack during the day-long transport.

One of the biologists who helped in the efforts to relocate the bison was Ihor Dykyy, who works at World Wide Fund for Nature-Ukraine and is a professor of zoology at a Lviv university. Shortly after the war began, he enlisted in the territorial defense forces to help defend his country. But even while at the front lines, Dykyy “spent whatever downtime he could manage trying to document the ecological effects of the war, imagining that one day he could return to the classroom and share them with students,” Patar writes.

Fortunately, it turned out that Muscat was not sterile after all, and Zalissia’s bison herd welcomed three calves into the world. The war, however, continues to endanger the animals – last November, Muscat also died of acute heart failure after a massive Russian attack on the greater Kyiv area.

But biologists are nothing if not resilient and are attempting to learn more about the impacts of war on the environment even as bombs fall around them. Patar writes:

Dykyy has now returned to his university and is teaching a new course on how combat influences wildlife habitats, based on his front-line observations.

One can only hope that the insights gleaned through the efforts by Dykyy and others will one day help repair some of the damage inflicted by human conflicts.

Unlocking nature’s secrets through ‘environmental DNA’

Biodiversity research is often costly and time-intensive, and limited funds means that even basic information about ecosystems and which animals, plants, or pathogens are present is frequently missing. This makes it difficult for biologists to assess the health of a habitat or make decisions about what restoration actions would be best.

But exciting technological advances are helping biologists speed up the pace of surveys. Jenny Whilde, an adjunct research scientist at the University of Florida, reports in the Conversation about using so-called ‘environmental DNA’ – or ‘eDNA’ – to assess a broad range of species in an area, completing biological surveys that would otherwise by exceedingly difficult and cost-prohibitive. Whilde writes:

[This] eDNA can come from cells shed from skin, spores and pollen blowing on the wind, or even just a cough or sneeze. It can provide huge amounts of information. Researchers can use it to assess biodiversity, monitor the spread of invasive species and detect pathogens.

Whilde’s team is using a new technique she calls ‘long-read shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing.’ Compared to another method, known as ‘metabarcoding,’ the shotgun approach allows the researchers to quickly assess not only animals, plants, and fungi in an area, but also tiny microbes by simply taking a water sample. She writes:

The DNA we filtered from the water samples came from many organisms living in or near the water, including otters and oysters, foxes and fish, badgers and bacteria. Some of the species we detected were common and easily visible along the river (cows, sheep, dogs and humans), while some were more difficult to see (leatherback turtles and octopi).

The benefits of the new technology could be transformative. Not only can it be effective in evaluating the success of biodiversity restoration efforts, but it could help find the source of invasive species, making it easier to prevent further invasions.

It’ll be exciting to see how the technology could be used to guide conservation actions and ultimately help protect biodiversity!

Ancient ground squirrel poop uncovered an astonishing diet of mammoths, bison, and even large cats.

We may think of present-day ground squirrels as innocuous herbivores, eating a diet of mostly nuts, seeds, and plants. But they can eat a surprising variety of small animals as well – enjoying the odd unlucky insect or lizard when the opportunity presents itself, or even scavenging carcasses.

Ground squirrels deep in the Pleistocene – what is often called the ‘Ice Age’ and lasted from about 2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago – ate a varied diet of large dead animals, reports Ewen Callaway for Nature News:

Ground squirrels spend many months in a winter slumber, and then awake ravenous and eat anything and everything in sight. A study of 700,000-year-old DNA from coprolites — fossilized poo — has now revealed that when ancient relatives of ground squirrels (Urocitellus sp.) woke up, they ate a diverse diet of plants, insects and carcasses of megafauna, including woolly mammoths, bison and big cats.

The ancient ground squirrel poop was dated to up to around 700,000 years ago using volcanic-ash deposits that were directly on top of it. If those datings are confirmed, the DNA sequences would be among the oldest known.

The lead author of the study in Nature Communications, Tyler Murchie, a biomolecular archaeologist at the Hakai Institute in Heriot Bay, Canada, said he “hopes other ancient-DNA researchers will see ground-squirrel poo as an untapped palaeo-archive that can be used alongside more conventional resources such as bones and sediment,” Callaway writes.

Controversial roundup of 450 wild horses proceeds in California.

A proposed roundup of hundreds of wild horses is proceeding in California, highlighting the frequent tension between conservationists and animal rights activists, Lila Seidman reports for the Los Angeles Times:

Federal officials have set a date to round up and relocate 450 wild horses they say are damaging Mono Lake’s famed limestone tufas and posing a threat to drivers. The move is hailed by environmentalists but heartbreaking for tribes and horse lovers who have fought to stop it.

The horses will be herded by helicopters and vehicles into a large catch pen and transported in trailers to another location, where they will be readied for adoption.

It’s a controversial operation, to say the least. Many environmental groups support the measure to protect the local vegetation and habitats. Seidman writes:

On the remote east side of Mono Lake, [said Steve Heimlich, who had spent around 40 years working at a California Department of Fish and Wildlife hatchery and is now retired], the animals gobbled down grass, roots and all, depriving certain birds of the worms that live in the vegetation — their sustenance. He said they displace antelope and other species too. “It’s upsetting the biological balance,” he said.

Other biologists also report significant damage by the growing horse herd to the pristine wetlands. Some local tribes and animal rights groups, however, oppose the roundup. Seidman writes:

Representatives from two local tribes draw a parallel between the gather and past efforts to expel their people from their ancestral lands, and say the horses are intertwined with their culture.

Wireless radiation disrupts bats’ flight patterns in a new study

Even brief exposure to wireless radiofrequency (RF) radiation can severely impact the flight patterns of bats, reports Environmental Health News according to a new study published in Science.

The study tested frequencies that are emitted by sources including AM radio, shortwave radio, and aviation communications, and found that bats “consistently flew in random directions, rather than the normal directional behavior of the nonexposed controls.”

Environmental Health News reports:

This study adds to a growing body of research reporting that non-ionizing EMF [short for electromagnetic field] - which is emitted by power lines, electrical substations, cell towers, and other forms of wireless infrastructure - can impact wildlife.

The impacts, besides disrupting animals’ orientation, can also affect their metabolism, reproduction, and foraging behavior. The amount of radiation and electromagnetic fields in the environment keeps increasing, however:

Numerous experts caution that EMF limits are outdated and focused solely on humans, failing to account for the growing body of research on wildlife impacts and leaving animals and ecosystems largely unprotected.

Wildlife crossings gain legislative support in four U.S. states.

So far in 2026, four states – Utah, Virginia, Idaho, and Oregon - have advanced legislation to support wildlife crossings, reports Carol Kaufman for the Pew Research Center:

These overpasses and underpasses and strategically placed fencing allow animals to safely traverse busy highways and roads along their natural corridors in search of food, shelter, and mates.

It’s estimated that more than one million wildlife-vehicle collisions occur every year in the U.S., causing about 26,000 injuries, more than 200 human deaths, and costing more than $10 billion in repairs, Kaufman writes. These figures are almost certainly underreported. Additionally, road mortality takes a significant toll on many wildlife species.

A recent analysis estimated that installing wildlife crossings could reduce collisions by more than 90%.

According to Kaufman, legislations introduced include establishing a designated wildlife crossing fund that will receive $2 million per year in Utah; a permanent fund for wildlife corridors funded by private grants, federal matching funds, and voluntary contributions in Virginia; a resolution supporting investment in wildlife crossing infrastructure and addressing habitat fragmentation in Idaho; and an increased lodging tax that will help fund several conservation programs including improving wildlife infrastructure in Oregon.

While not all of these initiatives received dedicated funding, many succeeded because of bipartisan support, which is nice to see in these polarized times.

And that’s it for this week’s updates.

Drop a note in the comments if any article resonated with you. Or, if you’re getting this post in an email, hit ‘reply’ and let me know what you think – I read every email.

And let us know if there’s another biodiversity-related story you’d like to share with us!

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Links to articles and resources:

• BioGraphic, 6/2/2026, by Dustin Patar: Saving bison as bombs fall

• IUCN Red List: European bison (Bison bonasus)

• World Wide Fund for Nature in Ukraine: WWF-Ukraine

• The Conversation, 7/7/2026, by Jenny Whilde: Fishing for DNA - how a cup of river water can reveal secrets about human health, pollution and biodiversity.

• Nature, 6/9/2026, by Ewen Callaway: Ancient ground squirrels feasted on carcasses like ‘zombies of the Pleistocene.‘

• Murchie et al., 2026. Ground squirrel coprolites preserve complex archives of ancient environmental DNA over 700,000 years.

• Los Angeles Times, 6/30/2026, by Lila Seidman: 450 wild horses face a roundup in Eastern Sierra as feds proceed with contested plan.

• U.S. Forest Service press release, 6/22/2026: Inyo wild horse gather starts July 8.

• Environmental Health News, 6/5/2026: Study finds EMF radiation exposure disrupts bat behavior for hours.

• Lindecke et al., 2026. Disruptive effects of brief radiofrequency noise exposure on migratory bat navigation.

• Pew Research Center, 6/30/2026, by Carol Kaufman: States act to reduce wildlife collisions.

• Scioto Analysis, 3/10/2025: Scioto Analysis releases cost-benefit analysis of wildlife crossings.

I’ve been in love with turtles ever since, so when I was asked to report on a local zoo’s efforts to protect another rare turtle species - the charismatic yet secretive spotted turtle - I was excited to say yes.

This is a neat story about a pilot program to learn whether raising hatchlings in captivity could be a way to bolster local populations of the threatened turtle, while also teaching students what it takes to care for protected species.

The article I wrote for WKTV Journal can be found here. I had to keep that story fairly short, so could go into more depth here.

And, as usual now, I also recorded an audio version, so if you’re short on time you can listen to the story - including hearing directly from the experts I talked to, available wherever you get your podcasts!

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One of Michigan’s rarest turtles is getting a boost in early survival thanks to a program called ‘headstarting,’ where biologists collect eggs, hatch them in captivity, and raise the babies through the winter. The young turtles are then released back into the wild in the spring.

Spotted turtle eggs and hatchlings are particularly vulnerable to predators like raccoons, Bill Flanagan, conservation director at John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan, told me. The secretive turtles are listed as threatened in Michigan and categorized as ‘endangered’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“Raccoons are very efficient predators of turtles. They’re really good at finding the nest, they’re really good at finding the little guys,” he said. And because raccoons do well around humans, their populations have skyrocketed in recent years.

That’s why the zoo teamed up with Calvin University to test if headstarting, which has been successfully done with other turtles like the rare eastern box turtle, will lead to more spotted turtles surviving to adulthood.

Testing if headstarting might help spotted turtles

“The idea is that we can grow a larger baby turtle that’s more robust to some of these challenges that they will meet in their native environment,” Will Miller, associate professor of biology at Calvin University, told me.

Many nests and juvenile turtles never make it to adulthood, which can then compound other issues like habitat destruction, as well as poaching for the pet trade, he added.

Zoo researchers gathered 15 eggs from spotted turtle females in the wild last fall and divided them into two cohorts, Flanagan said.

One group was released into the wild immediately after hatching. Hatchlings in the other group were raised in captivity and released this spring. Both groups are tracked by zoo staff using telemetry to ultimately compare the outcomes between the groups.

Combining conservation and educating the next generation of biologists

While zoo biologists were responsible for the fieldwork, Calvin University students, with help from faculty and zoo staff, cared for the baby turtles once they hatched.

It was a rare opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience raising rare turtles. The animals were fed a nutrient-dense diet to fatten them up as quickly as possible and needed daily care, so students had to come in on weekends and during holiday breaks.

“We saw this as a major win-win, both from an educational and a conservation research standpoint,” Miller said. “The students absolutely loved being part of this project.”

It’s too early to know just how much of a growth advantage the turtles get after spending a winter gorging on plentiful food compared to their wild brethren and sistren, but Flanagan said box turtles in headstarting programs grew to the size of a typical three- or four-year-old turtle in just 10 months.

And that size difference could mean the difference between life and death for young turtles.

Flanagan said the project will continue for at least another season to get as much data as possible on how the animals do. He’s also hoping to find more nesting females.

“We’re really keyed in on trying to learn more about the nesting ecology for spotted turtles,” he said. “This is a species that we don’t know a ton about how they nest, especially here in Michigan.”

Spotted turtles’ reclusive habits make them difficult to study

Spotted turtles are among the smaller turtles in the world – adults grow up to just over 5 inches long (around 14 cm), about the size of an index card. They also spend time in shallow wetlands away from humans, Dan Earl, a zoology research assistant with the Michigan Natural Features Inventory, told me.

“They’re pretty reclusive as far as our turtle species go,” he said. “They tend to not be as mobile as some of our other turtles, and they also have a very short active season.”

Spotted turtles start moving early in the spring and are fairly cold-tolerant. “But when you get past June, they kind of hunker down for the year,” Earl added. “They’re just hard to find.”

Because they don’t reproduce until they’re 10 to 15 years old and the young have a high mortality rate, it’s especially important that adults survive as long as possible.

But more adult turtles are dying because of humans, including getting hit by cars and through habitat loss.

Aquatic species like the spotted turtle are dependent on wetlands, but that habitat type has declined dramatically in past centuries. By United Nations estimates, more than 85% of wetlands were lost worldwide between 1700 and 2000. In Michigan, nearly 40% of wetlands had disappeared by 2005.

And more wetlands are disappearing every year. For species that aren’t very mobile, like turtles, that’s a problem.

“They’re not going to be able to get up and move miles over farm fields and roads to get to a new pocket of habitat, they kind of have to hold on to where they are,” Earl said.

Dangers from the illegal pet trade

Additionally, spotted turtles are among the most charismatic local turtles, and their small size makes them highly desirable for the illegal pet trade.

“Their superpower, which is to be super cute, may also sometimes be their greatest detriment,” Miller said.

Flanagan described incidences where entire turtle populations were virtually wiped out in just a few weekends of collection.

“Collectors going in there and taking out the adults in the spring when the turtles are all out basking, and it’s easy to get a hold of a significant portion of the reproductive adults,” he added.

Biologists therefore need to keep locations where they find or release the rare turtles secret to avoid unscrupulous individuals getting word about where to find them.

Aging ‘ghost populations’ concern researchers

One worry when nesting success declines is what Earl calls “ghost populations.” That’s when adults persist at a site, but the population slowly dies out if no young turtles survive.

And since spotted turtles can live for more than 30 years, biologists may not realize what’s happening until it’s too late.

That’s why many biologists have such high hopes for headstarting programs. But, even if the initiative proves successful for spotted turtles, Earl warns that they won’t be out of the woods just yet.

“I would not rely on it as the sole way of saving the species,” he said. “If you’re just headstarting, you’re not addressing the root causes of why these populations are in decline. I think it’s going to be an excellent way to help them bounce back, but I think that’s going to go hand in hand with a lot of the other work.”

What you can do to help turtles

To help turtles, Flanagan encourages people to simply leave wild turtles where they are.

“One of the things we always say is, ‘If you care, leave it there.’ So, if you find a turtle in the wild, make sure that you leave it where it’s at,” he said. That’s because the animals are often moving for a reason, like to find a nest site.

But, if a turtle is on a road, it’s best to move it in the direction it’s going and not far from where it was found – as long as it’s safe for you to do so.

Additionally, “one of the really key things that people can do for nature is to get out and enjoy nature,” Flanagan added. And support local conservation organizations.

Miller encourages people to contribute to conservation efforts not only by donating money but to also get involved with citizen monitoring programs and learn about wetlands.

“They’re a critical and often endangered ecosystem type that our turtles rely upon, we rely upon for a variety of different ecosystem services,” Miller said. “Because what’s good for the turtle is good for us all.”

The loss of biodiversity isolates us, Miller said. “We draw connections to the world around us through our relationships with important animals and plants.”

He thinks we can also learn from turtles. “Sometimes we need a turtle to remind us that life is slow sometimes, and sometimes slowing down and doing things slowly provides immense value to people.”

Resources & Links:

• IUCN Red List: Spotted Turtle

• IUCN Red List: Eastern Box Turtle

• International Convention on Wetlands: Global Wetland Outlook 2025

• United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Report

• Michigan EGLE: Status and Trends of Michigan’s Wetlands: Pre-European Settlement to 2005

• John Ball Zoo’s Great Lakes Rare Turtles Program

• Michigan Herp Atlas

• Turtle Survival Alliance

• Cornell Wildlife Health Lab: What the heck is herping?

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The researchers found that 49% of species in temperate areas have disappeared from parts of their range, compared to 33% in tropical regions. Nearly three-quarters of species in temperate areas are also not moving into cooler areas, endangering their long-term survival.

“This data actually tells us that climate change has already happened, and it has important consequences already on species,” Gopal Murali, the lead author of the study and former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona, told me.

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Digging through the data to track survival of species over time

Murali and his collaborators spent a couple of years poring through dozens of studies, compiling information about more than 5,100 animal and plant species surveyed at tens of thousands of sites around the world, to determine if their ranges changed as a result of climate change.

They cast a wide net, scrutinizing data about a wide variety of life - including moths, beetles, birds, mammals, frogs, turtles, snakes, lizards, fish, and plants.

Their goal was to find studies that measured so-called “local extinctions” – areas within a species’ range from where it has disappeared – specifically caused by climate change, Murali said.

Isolating the cause was tricky. Biodiversity loss is complicated and has many causes that often interact with each other. In addition to climate change, threats like habitat loss, pollution from environmental toxins, pesticides, overharvesting, the pet trade, illegal logging, poaching, and invasive species all take their toll on local wildlife and plants across the world.

That made the selection of studies to include in the analysis crucial.

The research team decided to only include studies that spanned several years. That way they could track the survival of a species at a given site over time.

They used several other criteria to disqualify studies. To rule out habitat loss as the reason for a species’ disappearance, all surveys had to be in natural areas. They also excluded game animals or other potentially overexploited plants and wildlife.

Nearly half of species in temperate zones have disappeared from parts of their range

The results surprised them.

Biologists had long thought that tropical species were more vulnerable to climate change than those in temperate areas, such as North America and Europe.

“We actually found the opposite, that instead it’s not tropical species, but it was the temperate species,” that were affected more, Murali said.

The results held across the board - almost all groups faced higher local extinction rates in temperate regions than in the tropics.

Some of the hardest-hit groups in temperate zones were insects, marine species, and vertebrates – animals with a backbone like mammals, birds, and reptiles. More than half of those groups went locally extinct in temperate areas.

Although a third of all tropical species experienced local extinctions, different groups reacted differently. About half of marine fish and terrestrial vertebrates and insects disappeared from parts of their range in the tropics, compared to about one-fifth of plants and one-third of freshwater vertebrates.

Marine non-fish species were the hardest hit group, with 67% experiencing local extinctions in temperate areas compared to 60% in the tropics.

The world has changed

The research team was surprised by the results because one of the study authors’ own studies from 10 years ago had found that tropical species were more vulnerable to climate change.

“In that study, in 2016, about 39% of the species had local extinctions in the temperate zone. And then now it’s like 49%. So, basically, the temperate extinction increased,” John Wiens, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the study, told me.

When asked why he thought the results were different now, he said, “I think just the world changed.”

The world has gotten hotter. The years 2015-2025 were the 11 hottest years on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization, but the warming trend has been observed for many decades.

The new study also included about five times as many species, Wiens said, and it included more tropical plants, which appear to be comparatively resilient to climate change. Only 18% of tropical plants have experienced local extinctions because of it, compared to 45% of temperate plants.

Most temperate species are not moving north in response to climate change

The researchers noted that in tropical areas, species tended to disappear mostly in the warmest parts of their range – what biologists call the “warm-edge.”

That’s exactly what biologists had predicted. Basically, animals and plants would slowly migrate from warmer areas to regions farther from the equator, or, in mountainous areas, higher up, to seek cooler temperatures.

“The expectation then is that species will go extinct first at the warmest edge, because that’s already where they’re potentially heat-stressed,” Wiens said.

But to their surprise, they found that in temperate areas, climate change caused animals and plants to go locally extinct throughout their ranges, even in the cooler areas. And most did not move north to escape the heat.

“One of the big findings that we made was that they’re often not doing that. Seventy percent of the species are not expanding at their cool-range edges,” he said.

And that can have drastic repercussions for biodiversity.

“So, basically, the fight for [the species’] survival is going to depend mostly on whether or not these local populations go extinct or whether they survive,” he added.

What does it mean for conservation?

The findings have important implications for conservation.

Conservationists thought that by connecting natural areas, animals and plants would be able to naturally disperse to a more agreeable climate.

“But the truth is that we’re not seeing it. It’s not even a question of, are they moving fast enough? [They’re] not moving at all,” Wiens said. “These climate-related extinctions, at least in the temperate zone, could happen anywhere.”

And since the research had purposely focused on species relatively safe from other potential threats, other species could be in worse shape, Murali said, with additive effects from stressors such as habitat loss, invasive species, and others that impact their survival in addition to climate change.

What the future holds

But there is hope.

Earlier this year, scientists officially declared the most extreme climate change scenario, dubbed “RCP 8.5,” as “implausible” given current energy trends. That means it’s unlikely we’ll see the highest predicted global temperature increase of around 4.4 degrees Celsius (nearly 8 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

While the current study is cause for concern, there is evidence that conservation actions are paying off. For example, another of Wiens’ studies recently found that the rate of extinction over the past 500 years peaked around 100 years ago and has since slowed.

That means conservation actions can slow biodiversity loss, and studies like this can help isolate the causes and help direct resources to where they will be most effective in protecting species.

Still, every degree of warming matters, and protecting biodiversity over the long term will require not only direct conservation efforts but also climate action.

“I think we just need to be aggressive on all of these fronts. The pollution, the habitat destruction, everything,” Wiens said. “Because there’s all these things weighing down on these species and populations.”

But, he said, climate change “is particularly bad. Because you can protect [species] from all these other things, and climate change may still be coming for them.”

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Useful Resources and Links:

• Murali, G., Karger, D.N. & Wiens, J.J. Temperate local extinctions from climate change are outpacing tropical extinctions. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2026).

• Kristen E. Saban, John J. Wiens; Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals. Proc Biol Sci. (2025)

• World Meteorological Organization: 2025 State of Climate Report.

• Berkeley Earth: Global Temperature Report for 2025.

• New York Times, 5/26/2026, by Brad Plumer and Eric Niiler: Why scientists retired the dire climate scenario used for over a decade.

• NOAA’s Science on a Sphere program: Climate Model: Temperature Change (RCP 8.5) - 2006 - 2100.

• European Commission: Five things you should know about climate scenarios.

From now on my plan is to integrate both formats in the same post, so you can choose which format you prefer, or go back and forth if you’d like. Never fear, I will not neglect the written articles, which will remain my main focus - making sure the information is informative, well-researched and centered around biodiversity.

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As I’m transitioning my posting schedule (or at least the podcast schedule - the written article schedule will remain the same with a new post every Saturday), I thought I’d bring you a post from several months ago about the potential of wolves to expand across the eastern U.S. The podcast version also features the researchers I talked to, so I hope you give it a listen - available here, on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts!

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Gray wolves could thrive in several regions in the eastern U.S.

Gray wolves could thrive in the eastern United States well beyond their current range in the Great Lakes region, but they might have a hard time reaching other suitable habitats without human intervention, researchers say.

The animals once had the largest known range of any land mammal but were nearly exterminated in the United States in the early 1900s after persecution by humans.

Their population only recovered after they were placed under federal protection in the 1970s. They have since recolonized some areas where they once flourished, including in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

A 2022 study analyzed which areas in the eastern U.S. still have suitable habitat for wolves and are connected enough to each other so wolves might be able to travel between them.

To do that, the researchers used survey data collected between 2018 and 2020 by biologists working for the natural resource departments in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

They then modeled the characteristics of the habitats where wolves were found and predicted where else in the eastern U.S. large tracts of suitable areas occur. They also modeled how connected to each other those areas are.

They found that six areas had good habitat and were large enough to sustain wolves, but the animals occur in only one of them, the western Great Lakes. The other areas are separated from each other by less wolf-friendly habitats, including agricultural and urban areas.

Jerrold Belant, a professor of wildlife biology at Michigan State University and one of the co-authors of the study, said not all of these barriers are impossible for wolves to cross.

“The longer or wider that distance is, and the less suitable [for wolves] that is, the less likely the wolf is to cross it,” he said. “It doesn’t mean wolves won’t cross it or can’t cross it, it just is less likely.”

The other areas the study identified as suitable habitat were in the Great Plains, Appalachian Mountains, Adirondacks, New England and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.

Barriers to wolf expansion

“But for a wolf to get from upper Michigan or Wisconsin all the way there, that’s tricky with all the highways, all the cities, all the agricultural zones,” said Merijn van den Bosch, a wildlife ecologist with Colorado State University who co-authored the study while a graduate student at Michigan State University. “It’s tough.”

Crossing the Straits of Mackinac between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas, for example, is difficult for wolves.

“Wolves can swim, and they can swim pretty well,” van den Bosch said. “During ice-over they can cross the straits relatively easily.”

The straits don’t always ice over, however. And when they do, shipping traffic usually breaks the ice up quickly, he said.

“Wolves have made it to the Lower Peninsula a couple of times,” he said, but not often enough to establish a population.

It’s not just the barriers between suitable habitats that might prevent wolves from expanding their current range, but also the human populations in and around those areas.

“Humans kind of ultimately decide where wolves are and where they are not,” he said. “Most wolf mortality is human-caused.”

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Protection under the Endangered Species Act

Wolves have been protected under the federal Endangered Species Act since the 1970s and have since partially recovered, Belant said.

Many people therefore argue that they don’t need to be protected anymore.

But delisting them is not that simple.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has tried to delist the gray wolf several times, only to be sued by conservation groups. Courts have sided with the conservation groups, ordering the wolf to be listed again.

The confusion comes from the wording of the Endangered Species Act, which defines an endangered species as “any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.”

What exactly is considered a “significant portion” is not clear.

“Some of the more recent debates have been centered around how much of the range is occupied,” Belant said. “And part of that centers around historical range.”

About two-thirds of former wolf habitat in the eastern U.S. is no longer suitable for them because of human development and agriculture, he said. According to Belant, today wolves occupy only about 4% of their historical range and about 12% of the current suitable range.

John Vucetich, a wildlife biology professor at Michigan Technological University, said “there is no question that wolves do fit the definition of endangered species as provided in the Endangered Species Act.”

If wolves are delisted, states could introduce wolf hunts again, and each state would probably end up managing wolves differently.

But, he said, it is not purely a biological question, but also an ethical one.

The ethical side of wolf conservation

“Wolves are symbols of nature for many humans across millennia,” he said. “What people love and hate about nature.”

Wolves also occasionally kill livestock and pets. Many states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, have programs that reimburse livestock owners for the value of any animals wolves kill.

Vucetich said that we live in a world where we’re losing a sense of what it means to conserve nature.

“There are so many competing values, there’s human interests that are maybe a little separate from nature’s interests, and they often compete,” he said. “And so when does one prevail over the other?”

This story originally appeared in MSU’s Great Lakes Echo under the title “Wolves could expand across the eastern U.S. - but they might need help.”

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This week I’m covering stories about:

1:01 – Elephant poop’s essential role in African ecosystems, thanks to dung beetles.

4:04 - The last known caterpillar of a rare butterfly has died, all but eliminating any hope of reviving the species.

5:43 - Daddy longlegs don’t just eat insects - they also hunt down frogs.

7:15 - Scientists tagged a rare sea turtle while she was laying eggs, hoping to discover her migration and feeding patterns to help with conservation decisions.

8:18 - Incorporating nature into farming practices to make crops resilient to climate change.

10:47 - Biodiversity conservation as a solution for climate change.

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The written version is available here:

Articles & Resources:

• Anthropocene Magazine, 5/28/2026, by Warren Cornwall: What happens to the small things when the big things disappear?

• Gijsman, Nutter, and Pringle, 2026: Importance of elephants for dung beetle diversity and ecosystem functions. Science: 392(6801).

• The New York Times, 5/21/2026, by Catrin Einhorn: A very lonely caterpillar, possibly the last of its kind, has died

• The New York Times, 3/6/2025, by Catrin Einhorn and Harry Stevens: See how butterflies are surviving, or not, near you.

• Scientific American, 5/21/2026, by Jake Buehler: Daddy longlegs are actually bloodthirsty killers - of frogs.

• Calvache et al., 2026: Harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones) as overlooked predators of anurans in the neotropics. Ecology and Evolution: 16 (4).

• Mongabay, 5/26/2026, by Bobby Bascomb: Tracking Lucero: Scientists follow a rare Eastern Pacific leatherback sea turtle.

• IUCN: Leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea).

• Atmos, 5/25/2026, by Becca Warner: For more successful farming, follow the forest.

• Biomimicry Center, Arizona State University.

• The Guardian, 5/24/2026, editorial: Could nature itself hold the solution to climate change?

Nature Signals is a reader-supported publication. It takes many hours to write and research each post. To receive new posts in your inbox and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Today I’m covering:

• Elephants are essential for African ecosystems, and so is their poop. Just ask the dung beetles.

• The last known caterpillar of a rare butterfly has died, all but eliminating all hope of reviving the species.

• Daddy longlegs don’t just eat insects - they also hunt down frogs.

• Scientists tagged a rare sea turtle while she was laying eggs, hoping to discover her migration and feeding patterns to help with conservation decisions.

• Incorporating nature into farming practices to make crops resilient to climate change.

• Biodiversity conservation as a solution for climate change.

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Elephants are essential for African ecosystems, and so is their poop. Just ask the dung beetles.

One thing that always amazes me about biodiversity is how everything is connected, and removing one species from the system can have surprising effects on other species. For instance, ecologists have long known that elephants are vital to their habitats because of their direct effect on vegetation. What was, until recently, underappreciated is how important their poop is.

Dung beetles play an important role in recycling nutrients in animals’ scat, making them available for uptake by plants. The insects have evolved into an amazing diversity at the Mpala Research Center in Kenya, where a whopping 176 species of dung beetles have been identified. And a new study discovered that this diversity is surprisingly dependent on one particular animal in the area - elephants, reports Warren Cornwall for Anthropocene Magazine:

Insect diversity can hinge on the health of a single giant herbivore species. And that in turn can influence everything from nutrient cycling to seed dispersal. It’s a lesson how shifts in diversity can fray whole ecosystems.

The researchers found that while elephants are just one of many large herbivores in Africa - think giraffes, hippopotami, buffaloes, and wildebeest, to name just a few - they seem to influence the abundance of dung beetles, and, therefore, the decomposition of poop and resulting dispersal of seeds from said poop, more than elephants’ size, or the size of their dung piles, would suggest. It turns out that dung beetles really dig elephant dung. Cornwall writes:

Traps set next to piles of elephant poop captured between 1.5 and 24 times more individual beetles and 2 to 6 times more species than any other kind of feces.

To test the connection, researchers excluded elephants and giraffes from certain areas. When they compared those areas to other areas 15 years later, plots that were accessible to elephants had the “highest total number of dung beetles, the largest variety of beetle species and the largest total biomass of the beetles.” Further testing showed that it was the exclusion of elephants, not of giraffes, that had likely produced those results.

Additionally, they found that dung piles decomposed about a third slower in areas from which elephants were excluded, and small fake seeds the researchers had placed in the poop were removed at about half the pace.

It turns out that dung beetles, despite their small size - and, shall we say, interesting feeding habits - have an outsized role in the ecosystem, Cornwall writes:

Their work breaking down dung not only helps disperse seeds and spread nutrients, it also reduces parasites and pests and enhances carbon storage. Their presence in the U.K. alone was estimated to have produced some $800 million in benefits to the cattle industry there in today’s dollars.

But the beetles’ sensitivity to the removal of one animal is a reminder of just how precarious the balance among species is in an ecosystem, and how difficult it is to predict downstream effects when one is removed.

The last known caterpillar of a rare butterfly has died, all but eliminating all hope of reviving the species.

Speaking of extinctions - for nearly four years, scientists have been caring for the last known caterpillar of the Sacramento Mountains checkerspot, a butterfly native to New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains, reports Catrin Einhorn for the New York Times.

It has now died.

The butterfly was common until just a few decades ago. In 2022, biologists caught four wild butterflies, which produced more than 160 caterpillars. Three years later, only one had survived.

In a desperate attempt to save it, the researchers induced hibernation. At first, it seemed like it might have worked, but as spring approached, its health worsened. The biologists did what they could to revive the caterpillar, Einhorn writes:

They brought it up to temperature and examined it carefully. They offered it crushed leaves. They gently brushed its bristles. As hope drained, they gave it a couple of extra days, just to be sure.

Without luck.

Still, there’s a small chance that some wild butterflies could remain, undiscovered, in the mountains. Surveys are planned to try to find any survivors, but hope is dim. Researchers believe that a combination of climate change, changing wildfire regimes, overgrazing, and invasive species has caused the butterfly’s decline. Einhorn writes:

Species at high elevations, like the Sacramento Mountains checkerspot, are especially at risk because they often can’t flee to cooler habitats.

“It’s called the elevator to extinction,” [said Quin Blaine, the invertebrate species survival specialist at the New Mexico BioPark Society and one of the scientists in charge of the caterpillar’s care]. “Moving up and up and up the slope until there’s nowhere else to go.”

Daddy longlegs don’t just eat insects - they also hunt down frogs.

Delicate daddy longlegs - the familiar, gangly arachnids also called harvestmen - don’t look like they could be a danger to any animal other than insects. A new study sheds light on an unexpected talent: catching frogs, reports Jake Buehler for Scientific American:

“We were shocked,” says study co-author Luís Fernando García, an arachnologist at the University of the Republic in Uruguay. “The literature often says that harvestmen are omnivores, that they are slow, they are weak.”

First reports appeared nearly 20 years ago, when Venezuelan biologists observed a harvestman “pinning down a struggling frog,” Buehler writes. The researchers were surprised. Over the years, more instances were observed in Ecuador and Colombia.

It appeared that the practice was more common than thought, but much remains unknown, Buehler writes:

It’s still unclear how the somewhat unathletic arachnids are capturing strong, leaping prey, particularly because they don’t have venom like their spider and scorpion relatives do. Their primarily pinching mouthparts are typically used to nibble at very small insects, fungi and plants, says Jose Valdez of the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, who was not involved with the new paper.

So far, it’s not known if daddy longlegs outside of the Neotropics are capable of hunting and killing frogs. They are bigger and sturdier in the tropics than in the more temperate areas of North America or Europe.

But it does show how much we still don’t know about the behavior of even some of the more common species on our planet.

Scientists tagged a rare sea turtle while laying eggs, hoping to discover her migration and feeding patterns to help with conservation decisions.

Leatherback turtles in the eastern Pacific are critically endangered, with fewer than 1,000 remaining, so researchers in Ecuador were thrilled when they were able to tag a female as she was laying eggs, reports Bobby Bascomb for Mongabay:

Scientists named the turtle Lucero, “morning star” in Spanish, and estimated her age at 25-40 years. They plan to gather data on her migration and feeding patterns, which should help inform conservation policies.

Leatherback turtles, which occur in most oceans, are rated as “vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. But their subpopulation in the eastern Pacific has declined by around 98%, Bascomb writes:

One of their biggest threats is getting caught in fishing nets as bycatch, which can be deadly for turtles and expensive for fishers, whose nets get damaged in these entanglements.

Now, every time Lucero surfaces, the biologists can track her movements, providing vital information to inform fishers how they can avoid the large sea turtles.

Incorporating nature into farming practices to make crops resilient to climate change.

Climate change is causing rising temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns, with some areas experiencing droughts and others increased rain. Now, two farmers in Italy discovered a novel way to make their farm, Quintasapore, more resilient to the capricious weather: replicating some of the natural processes they observed in a nearby forest, reports Becca Warner for Atmos.

During the punishingly hot summer of 2020, with temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (around 40 degrees Celsius), much of their crops failed, but the nearby woodland survived. Warner writes:

Inspired by what they saw, Alessandro and Nicola set out to replicate the forest. They planted 1,000 fast-growing trees all over the farm, across about 89 acres. The canopies now shade the crops in summer, and in autumn the leaves fall and decompose, adding nutrients to the soil. The brothers opted for species with deep roots, which reduces the need for irrigation.

The brothers call their approach “biomimetic,” referring to the mimicry of nature. It’s a movement that is gaining traction, including at Arizona State University’s Biomimicry Center. Warner writes:

Nature’s systems, [explained Sara El-Sayed, director of the Biomimicry Center at ASU], are about optimization, not just efficiency. “Nature is not trying to solve for one thing. It’s trying to solve for many things,” she said.

Systems built by people, on the other hand, usually prioritize efficiency and uniformity. Hence, the monocultures that are often preferred for efficiency. That often neglects resilience, however.

The brothers estimate that their farm now hosts around 1,600 plants and fungi species. And they don’t neglect promoting variety in insects and microbes either. They don’t use pesticides and have substituted a blend of bacteria, yeasts, and fungi, called “effective microorganisms,” for standard fertilizer.

Research suggests the approach may be increasing the crops’ nutritional value, including their olive oil, though more studies are needed. But there are tradeoffs - not surprisingly, it costs more than conventional agriculture. Warner writes:

[Nicola] argues the price reflects value—especially if the food is more nutrient-dense, as the olive oil analysis suggests. “When you’re hungry, it means your body is craving a certain amount of nutrients,” he said. “You’re not necessarily saving money buying crappy food, because you need to buy three, four times more to feel full.”

Biodiversity conservation as a solution for climate change.

Scientists have been arguing for a long time about “the best” way to combat climate change. That designation is typically measured by a strategy’s ability to reduce greenhouse gases. Now Thomas Crowther contends in an editorial in the Guardian that we should also consider the impact on biodiversity and the capacity to “improve the livelihood and wellbeing of people”:

There is one set of solutions, however, that present[s] no trade-off at all when … done right. The restoration of natural habitats like forests is an exception in our climate toolkit because it draws on the same network of connections that allowed life to flourish in the first place.

Most technological advancements that reduce emissions, he argues, while essential, also come at a price, be it financial, energy disrupting, or by impacting our ecosystems.

But “the revival of nature might help with 30% of our carbon drawdown needs,” he writes. Much of that benefit comes from the underappreciated effects of “feedback loops” - self-regulating processes that impact other processes. We generally differentiate between positive feedback loops and negative ones. Positive feedback loops amplify a process, and negative ones counteract it.

Natural feedback loops have operated since the beginning of life on Earth, he writes:

Around 3.8bn to 4.2bn years ago, feedback loops allowed life to spread on an otherwise toxic and uninhabitable planet: Earth. As life gained a foothold, it began to transform the environment, making it hospitable to more life. Species emerged that generated opportunities for even more species.

Humans introduced new processes, however. Climate change, for example, causes more carbon to be released, leading to more warming, which dries forests, which can then store less moisture, causing more drying.

Crowther cites several examples of successful conservation projects that interrupt the harmful cycles and support Earth’s positive feedback loops, leading not only to healthier ecosystems but also increasing their ability to store carbon. And local (human) communities also often benefit, which motivates them to protect the environment around them in a win-win scenario.

Crowther writes:

We do not need remarkable innovation or great sacrifice to move things forward. We just need to allow a tiny fraction of our collective attention and wealth (perhaps less than 1% of global GDP) to flow towards these rural land stewards, supporting their ongoing efforts.

I recently wrote about one such example: the farming of tropical butterflies for butterfly exhibits:

In that case, while regulations should be tightened to minimize risks to insects, it demonstrates the potential, when done right and enforced appropriately, that conservation efforts like this can provide a livelihood to communities that centers on the protection of local biodiversity rather than illegal logging or poaching.

And that’s it for this week’s updates.

Drop a note in the comments if any article resonated with you, or if there’s another biodiversity or other nature-related story you’d like to share with us!

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Articles & Resources:

• Anthropocene Magazine, 5/28/2026, by Warren Cornwall: What happens to the small things when the big things disappear?

• Gijsman, Nutter, and Pringle, 2026: Importance of elephants for dung beetle diversity and ecosystem functions. Science: 392(6801).

• The New York Times, 5/21/2026, by Catrin Einhorn: A very lonely caterpillar, possibly the last of its kind, has died

• The New York Times, 3/6/2025, by Catrin Einhorn and Harry Stevens: See how butterflies are surviving, or not, near you.

• Scientific American, 5/21/2026, by Jake Buehler: Daddy longlegs are actually bloodthirsty killers - of frogs.

• Calvache et al., 2026: Harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones) as overlooked predators of anurans in the neotropics. Ecology and Evolution: 16 (4).

• Mongabay, 5/26/2026, by Bobby Bascomb: Tracking Lucero: Scientists follow a rare Eastern Pacific leatherback sea turtle.

• IUCN: Leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea).

• Atmos, 5/25/2026, by Becca Warner: For more successful farming, follow the forest.

• Biomimicry Center, Arizona State University.

• The Guardian, 5/24/2026, editorial: Could nature itself hold the solution to climate change?

Nature Signals is a reader-supported publication. It takes many hours to write and research each post. To receive new posts in your inbox and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

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You can read the story here:

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Resources:

• Study: Ren et al., 2025. Suspect screening and nontargeted analysis of polyfluoroalkyl substances in Lake Huron water and biota. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 51(2):102507.

• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences: Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

• European Food Safety Authority: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: PFAS explained.

• Study: Yu et al., 2025. A global overview of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance regulatory strategies and their environmental impact. Toxics, 13(4): 251.

• Michigan Eat Safe Fish Guides.

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It’s a subject I find deeply alarming. There are around 15,000 of the chemicals, which have been manufactured since the 1940s. Chemists keep creating more of them for use in consumer products without much knowledge about the chemicals’ effects on people, animals or the environment.

Only two are well-studied, and they have been implicated in a host of serious health problems, including cancer. PFAS chemicals are also often present in plastic, potentially increasing its toxicity.

Countries around the world have started paying attention, however, and governments are starting to regulate the manufacture and use of some of them, especially in consumer products. Still, the vast majority remain unregulated.

So I thought I’d raise awareness of the issue by bringing you an article I wrote last year about a study that found dozens of PFAS chemicals not only in the waters of Lake Huron, but also the fish that draw so many anglers to the area.

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This article previously appeared in Michigan State University’s Capital News Service under the title “Researchers scrambling to understand implications of forever chemicals found in fish, waters of Lake Huron.” It was also picked up by several news outlets throughout Michigan.

Dozens of ‘forever chemicals’ found in one of the Great Lakes

A 2025 study found dozens of previously unknown “forever chemicals” in the fish, mussels and waters of Lake Huron, revealing more contamination than previously realized.

Researchers from Clarkson University in New York looked for new contaminants, Bernard Crimmins, an environmental analytical chemist with the university and a co-author of the study, told me.

“There are thousands of PFAS chemicals in use and potentially out in the environment. We need to expand our understanding,” he said, “to see what the true contamination is in the environment.”

What are PFAS?

The group of chemicals known as PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, includes around 15,000 chemicals. They are persistent in the environment and commonly referred to as “forever chemicals.”

Most are not well-studied, and some are known to be associated with significant human health problems, including kidney and prostate cancers, decreased ability to fight infections, decreased fertility, higher cholesterol levels and increased risk of obesity, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The chemicals are all human-made and have been produced since the 1940s for use in many consumer products, some labeled as water- or stain-resistant.

Now researchers are scrambling to understand the health and environmental effects of these chemicals.

Using a new method to find previously unknown chemicals

Crimmins said the study was novel in that it looked not only at the known PFAS chemicals that most other labs study. It also employed what is called a “non-targeted analysis” to find previously unknown contaminants.

“Every year, we go out and sample all of the different compartments of the food web” in one of the Great Lakes, Crimmins said. Last year the team sampled sites near Rockport and Port Austin in Michigan.

The study appeared in the Journal of Great Lakes Research.

Crimmins said chemicals that accumulate in the flesh and fatty tissues of fish, especially top predators and popular trophy species such as lake trout, likely have adverse health impacts on people who eat them.

“If they’re accumulating up the food web, that means that they’re enriching in the body,” he said, referring to the accumulation of the chemicals in the fish.

“They’re not doing anything good to those species,” Crimmins said.

The scientists then focused on those chemicals for further research since they’re the most likely to be ecologically relevant.

Other chemicals of concern include mercury, dioxin and PCBs, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Service’s Eat Safe Fish Guides.

Fishing charter concerns around contaminated fish

“Captain Steve” Hubert runs Chum Bucket Charters, a fishing charter service out of Alpena, Michigan. He told me he’s concerned about contaminants such as PFAS hurting his business.

He said while he is fortunate to keep busy, he’s heard concerns from clients about contaminants in the fish they catch.

“I tell them to not keep those larger fish because they’re just nothing but a filter,” he said. “As they eat, contaminants build up like a filter would, and the older that fish is, the more PFAS and these other chemicals get into his body.”

“We’ll take the photos of the larger fish, release the bigger ones and then keep the smaller ones for eating,” Hubert said.

PFAS manufacturers aren’t required to prove their products are safe before using them in a wide variety of consumer items, including food packaging, non-stick cookware, clothing and carpets.

Gillian Miller is a senior scientist with the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor who was not involved with the Clarkson University study. She told me such research is important despite being time-consuming and challenging.

Regulating PFAS chemicals - or not

“There are so many different PFAS,” Miller said, “it’s difficult to get a handle on what all is in the environment.”

Miller said the Ecology Center and other environmental advocates have been pushing for government regulation of PFAS as a class rather than individual PFAS chemicals.

“The one-by-one regulation approach is ineffective,” she said. “It’s a start, but it will take forever to regulate this class of compounds in a way that’s protective of human health and, certainly, of ecosystem health and wildlife as well.”

Miller said the current state and federal regulatory structure allows manufacturers to produce and release chemicals without testing first to safeguard human health.

“The system is set up to allow new chemicals to be used with limited information and without putting a burden on producers to demonstrate safety beforehand,” she said.

Many consumer products contain PFAS and federal regulations do not limit most of their uses.

Michigan is one of the few states limiting PFAS chemicals in drinking water. But of the thousands of PFAS chemicals Michigan regulates only seven.

No regulations exist to limit the use of most of the rest, and there is little information on potential health or environmental impacts.

Toxins in common consumer products

In 2024, Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou, D-East Lansing, introduced a bill in Michigan to limit PFAS chemicals in consumer products.

“The more I learned about how they’re in so many of our products, and how they can lead to so many health impacts, including cancer,” Tsernoglou told me. “That’s something that I want to avoid, not only for my family, but for everyone’s family.”

Tsernoglou said substitute products are available that companies could use without PFAS.

“Most people don’t know that PFAS are an issue and something they’re exposing themselves and their families to on a daily basis,” Tsernoglou said. “We shouldn’t be exposing ourselves to these chemicals if there are other alternatives.”

Her bill, however, was not passed. It would need to be re-introduced and it is uncertain if it would get the needed support this session, Tsernoglou said.

Hubert, the charter boat captain, says he advises clients to trim the fat off the fish to remove some of the contaminants and get the fish as healthy as possible.

“I still believe it’s probably better to eat one of those than a farm-raised fish that’s been in a display case from a market,” he said. “Who knows what kind of chemicals they give those fish.”

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Related stories:

Useful resources:

• Study: Ren et al., 2025. Suspect screening and nontargeted analysis of polyfluoroalkyl substances in Lake Huron water and biota. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 51(2):102507.

• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences: Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

• European Food Safety Authority: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: PFAS explained.

• Study: Yu et al., 2025. A global overview of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance regulatory strategies and their environmental impact. Toxics, 13(4): 251.

• Michigan Eat Safe Fish Guides.

Honey bees have gotten a bad rap lately because of evidence they can compete with native bees. But, as usual, the story’s complicated, and a lot depends on location, context, and the density of bee hives in relation to the abundance of flowers.

The WKTV Journal story can be found here. Since it had to adhere to a limited word count, I could expand on some key details in the version below.

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Many homeowners have stopped mowing their lawns in May to help bees and other pollinators. It’s part of an international initiative dubbed ‘No Mow May.’

But now experts say the practice may be overrated.

“There’s no strong evidence that No Mow May really benefits wild bees,” said Logan Rowe, conservation associate with the Michigan Natural Features Inventory. “There are many other ways that will have a greater impact on native bee populations and communities.”

Besides the familiar honey bee, which was imported from Europe and is not native to the U.S., Michigan boasts around 470 native bee species. Worldwide there are more than 20,000 species, with around 3,600 native to North America and 2,100 to Europe.

Some have been declining recently, with potentially dire consequences for agriculture and natural communities, which depend on the insects for pollination.

Many bees are declining

Rowe specializes in rare insects, including the several wild bees that are dwindling or have disappeared altogether. But exactly how many of the Michigan’s native bees are in trouble is not clear, he said.

“We have two species that are state endangered, legally protected. Those are the rusty patched bumble bee and the American bumble bee,” Rowe told me.

But there’s evidence other native bees aren’t doing well, either, including the four other bumble bees that are designated as “species in greatest need of conservation” in the state.

“Habitat loss is probably the biggest threat, but it operates in many different ways,” Rowe said. For example, converting natural areas to agriculture leads to more exposure to harmful pesticides.

Additionally, honey bees can compete with native bees for resources. “There’s evidence that shows that if a plant species is dominated by honey bees, you’ll get less native bees visiting that plant,” Rowe said. Honey bees can also transmit harmful pathogens.

“We have an agricultural system that is reliant on honey bees. That doesn’t mean native bees don’t contribute,” Rowe said. “There’s plenty of research that will show that supporting native bees within agricultural landscapes leads to increased crop production.”

Honey bees have different concerns than wild bees

But, Rowe said, the concerns around honey bees differ from those around native bees. “Honey bees are managed livestock, essentially. They’re not native bees, so it’s a different type of worry - it’s more of a management concern, as opposed to a species loss concern, because we’re not going to lose honey bees as a species.”

Rufus Isaacs, a professor at Michigan State University, told me that “there are clear signals that some bee species have declined in some areas, and honey bee numbers have gone through some tough times as well.”

Isaacs is an extension specialist at MSU, and part of his job is to support berry farmers in the state and help them manage insects. “Sometimes it’s pest insects, but often we’re also interested in managing the beneficial insects. And, of course, bees fall in that category,” Isaacs said.

Because much agriculture is dependent on bees, what’s causing their decline needs to be better understood, he said.

“We talk about the ‘four Ps,’” he explained – poor nutrition, or a lack of access to flowering plants, pesticides, pathogens and parasites. “Bees are dealing with a lot of these challenges in combined ways as well, and that can make it hard to understand how those are all interacting.”

While maintaining healthy honey bee populations is essential for agriculture, so is keeping native bees healthy.

For example, Rowe said, “having both honey bees and native bees in a blueberry field in southwest Michigan is going to produce a better crop than either on its own.”

Michigan’s fruit crops largely depend on bees

Most of Michigan’s fruit crops are dependent on bee pollination - including blueberries, apples, cherries and cranberries – as are most vegetable crops, and some nuts, Isaacs said.

On the larger commercial berry farms, the “farmers need very large numbers of insects to move the pollen among millions [of flowers] that are only going to be open for a couple of days,” he added.

Much of that is accomplished through the large numbers of honey bees farmers bring in seasonally to pollinate their crops. That’s why commercial bee keepers, who move their hives from farm to farm, are so important.

But, Isaacs said, wild bees are more efficient pollinators, especially for crops that are native to the U.S. While honey bees need to visit those flowers multiple times to fully pollinate them, it often just takes one visit by a wild bee.

There’s evidence that “well-pollinated” plants produce sweeter crops that also have a better shelf life in the grocery store.

“That’s why farmers are spending money on bringing in honey bees, planting conservation plantings and doing whatever they can around the farm to enhance the level of pollination,” – including from native bees, Isaacs said.

“Blueberries and cranberries are two good examples where their whole reproductive system is adapted for pollination by bumble bees, and the bumble bees that are in this region do a great job of pollinating those crops,” Isaacs said.

Native bees are also more tolerant of the Midwest climate. While honey bees don’t want to fly when it’s cool or windy, wild bees are adapted to these conditions.

Another factor affecting wild bees is climate change, Isaacs said. “Just how the climate is changing quickly, and in ways sort of unpredictable.” For example, when flowers come out early in an unseasonable warming spell, but then freeze again, they become unavailable for bees.

“That’s something that I think is also affecting wild bees,” Isaacs said. “There are some signals where certain species are retreating north and are not as common in the southern part of the state. Maybe the climate is not as suitable for them as it used to be.”

Losing bees and their pollination services could have dire consequences for people, Rowe said. “If we lose wild bees, we could see collapses of our natural communities, and we have no idea what that would mean for the natural areas in the state.”

Bumble Bee Atlas community science project

Rowe said bumble bees are a good place to start if people are interested in learning more about wild bees.

“Bumble bees are charismatic and fuzzy, and people like them,” he said.

They’re also easier to identify than other bees. That’s part of the reason the Michigan Natural Features Inventory and Michigan State University Extension launched the Michigan Bumble Bee Atlas, a community science project in which volunteers look for bumble bees and record any sightings.

Similarly, many U.S. areas participate in a Bumble Bee Atlas coordinated by the Xerces Society and partners.

How to support bees

If you want to help native bees, Rowe recommends planting native flowers and grasses. “There’s a lot of nesting that can happen in the stems of grasses, in the clumps on the ground.”

While ‘No Mow May’ is a start, “there’s only so much that you can get out of a lawn full of dandelions and other flowering weeds,” he said.

Instead of parking your lawn mower for one month out of the year, people should consider supporting native pollinators year-round.

For example, Isaacs encourages growing a “mullet garden” — tidy in the front, (wildlife) party in the back — where the front yard, where neighbors walk past, is nicely maintained.

“Then in the back garden that my neighbors can’t see is where I have the nesting habitat. I’ve got some piles of logs, and some areas that are just like old branches and places that are undisturbed,” he said. That provides wild bees with areas to nest.

Also, “the more diversity of flowering plants you have out there, the more different kinds of bees you’ll have,” Isaacs said. Planting flowers that bloom throughout the growing season ensures bees have a continuous supply of food, since different bees are active at different times of year.

It’s best to limit the application of pesticides, which can harm beneficial insects.

But if you decide that you do need to use pesticides, “spraying at night is one way that you can minimize direct exposure to pollinators, but also think about not spraying anything that’s blooming,” Isaacs said. Products are available that are selective and only kill the target insects.

Urban areas with many bee hives can cause competition between honey bees and native bees for the limited number of flowers available. Isaacs cautioned that many hobbyist bee keepers underestimate the complexity of keeping their hives healthy and free of pathogens and parasites.

“If you’re really trying to ‘save the bees,’ I don’t think you do that by putting a honey bee hive in your backyard,” Isaacs said. “The best thing you can do is plant flowers, create habitat for them, enjoy all the different kinds of bees that will come if you create a little patch of that in your garden.”

What you can do:

For those in Michigan, if you’re interested in helping bees, you can join the Michigan Bumble Bee Atlas as a volunteer – community members of all backgrounds and skill levels are encouraged to participate. Check the website for more information.

For other U.S. states, check the Bumble Bee Atlas to see if your state has a community science program.

Worldwide, you can take photos of bees (or any animal or plant) and submit them to iNaturalist to help document occurrences. More information can be found at iNaturalist.org.

Useful links:

• Royal Horticultural Society: Mullet gardening

• Xerces Society: Wild bee conservation

• Xerces Society: U.S. Bumble Bee Atlas

• Pollinator Partnership

• U.S. Regional pollinator friendly planting guides

• Pollinator Friendly Alliance

• iNaturalist

• Beginner’s guide to common native bees, by Utah State University

• American Beekeping Federation

• Michigan Pollinator Initiative

• Michigan Bumble Bee Atlas

• Michigan Beekeepers Association

• Common bees of Michigan

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Related stories:

This week I’m covering stories about:

Biodiversity:

0:54 - Some birds steal nesting materials from other nests, potentially contributing to nest failures.

2:37 - City birds appear to be more afraid of women than of men, for unknown reasons.

3:42 - More wolves are thriving on Isle Royale than in nearly 50 years, finally keeping moose numbers in check.

5:00 - The botched rescue attempt of Timmy, the humpback whale stranded in Germany.

Pollution & Plastics

8:02 - Toxic chemicals and climate change work together to harm fertility in both humans and wildlife.

8:54 - Seven days without plastic contact slashes chemicals in the body, according to a new study.

Have an extra two minutes? I’d greatly appreciate if you would answer a few questions to help me make Nature Signals better!

Reader Survey

The written version is available here:

Articles & Resources:

• The New York Times, 5/12/2026, by Sara Novak: Building nests is hard. That’s why some birds steal.

• Wilson Ranking et al., 2026, Upcycling in the Hawaiian islands: Native forest birds commonly engage in nest material kleptoparasitism. American Naturalist.

• Scientific American, 4/28/2026, by Blaire Cameron: City birds appear to be more afraid of women than men, and scientists have no idea why.

• Morelli et al., 2025, Sex matters: European urban birds flee approaching women sooner than approaching men. People and Nature: 8(2): 316-326.

• MLive, 4/27/2026, by Tanda Gmiter: Isle Royale’s wolf population surges to highest numbers in nearly 50 years.

• Michigan Technological University, 4/27/2026, by Cyndi Perkins: Isle Royale wolf population nears historic high as moose numbers plummet.

• Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project annual reports.

• Science, 5/4/2026, by Martin Enserink: Chaotic whale rescue shocks marine scientists.

• The Guardian, 5/5/2026, by Kate Connolly: Rescue of Timmy the whale ‘an all-round catastrophe’ after tracker failure.

• IFAW News, 5/11/2026: Timmy the whale and the limits of good intentions.

• The Guardian, 5/15/2026, by Patrick Greenfield: What the fate of Timmy the whale says about conservation.

• EHN, 5/1/2026, by Staff: Toxic chemicals and climate change work together to harm fertility across species.

• Brander et al., 2026, Impacts of environmental stressors on fertility and fecundity across taxa, with implications for planetary health.NPJ Emerging Contaminants: 2, 12.

• Medical Xpress, 4/22/2026, by Sadie Harley: Seven days without plastic contact slashes phthalates and bisphenols in body.

• Harray et al., 2026, Low-plastic diet and urinary levels of plastic-associated phthalates and bisphenols: the randomized controlled PERTH trial. Nature Medicine.

Nature Signals is a reader-supported publication. It takes many hours to write and research each post. To receive new posts in your inbox and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

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Here’s what’s new this week in nature:

Biodiversity:

• Some birds steal nesting materials from other nests, potentially contributing to nest failures.

• City birds appear to be more afraid of women than of men, for unknown reasons.

• More wolves are thriving on Isle Royale than in nearly 50 years, finally keeping moose numbers in check.

• The botched rescue attempt of Timmy, the humpback whale stranded in Germany.

Pollution & Plastics

• Toxic chemicals and climate change work together to harm fertility in both humans and wildlife.

• Seven days without plastic contact slashes chemicals in the body, according to a new study.

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Prefer to listen to your biodiversity news? Check out the podcast version here (or look for the ‘Nature Signals’ podcast wherever you get your podcasts from!):

Biodiversity

Some birds steal nesting materials from other nests, potentially contributing to nest failures

Some songbirds in Hawaii take a shortcut when it comes to building nests. Instead of gathering their own nesting materials - small twigs, vegetation, and softer materials - they simply steal them from other nests, reports Sara Novak for the New York Times.

Researchers have known that many birds sometimes steal parts of other nests - more than 40 species have been observed doing so. It even has its own scientific term - “nest material kleptoparasitism” - but authors of a recent study were surprised by how common the practice was after using GPS trackers to monitor 216 Hawaiian honeycreeper nests. Novak writes:

Most pilfered nests were inactive at the time of theft, but five were still active — and two of those thefts may have contributed to nest failures, in which parents abandon the nest and the offspring fail to survive. The three species stole from one another regardless of species identity.

Building nests is hard. Birds need to find and gather the materials, then shape them into a nest with a soft lining to help with incubation and keep their chicks safe. It takes experience and skill, and younger birds often struggle to get it right. But stealing from others has its own risks, such as attacks by the resident birds and parasites in abandoned nests that could be transferred to the new ones.

Hawaiian honeycreepers face a slew of threats besides nest thievery, however. Climate change, the introduction of rats, and disease has forced them to move from much of their former range to the highest elevations. Novak writes:

“The fact that they’re stealing from each other is just another challenge that they have to face,” [said Jessie Knowlton, an avian ecologist and conservation biologist at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, one of the study authors].

City birds appear to be more afraid of women than of men, for unknown reasons

In more bizarre news about birds, a new study found that dozens of European bird species apparently fear women more than men, reports Claire Cameron for Scientific American:

In the study, men could get about a meter closer to birds than women could before the animals flew away, according to the results. This pattern remained regardless of what the men and women were wearing, what their height was or how they tried to approach the creatures.

The researchers could not explain the results, which were consistent across nearly 40 species, including European great tits, magpies, and pigeons, in five countries. They theorized that the birds could be picking up on chemical signals or differences in people’s gait.

Ironically, other studies had found that lab rats are more stressed when handled by male researchers than by female ones. Cameron writes:

“We have identified a phenomenon, but we really don’t know why. What our results do highlight is the birds’ sophisticated ability to evaluate their environment,” said study co-author Federico Morelli, an associate professor at the University of Turin, in a statement.

More wolves are thriving on Isle Royale than in nearly 50 years, finally keeping moose numbers in check

Wolves on Isle Royale, a remote island in Lake Superior between Canada and Michigan, are once again thriving, according to the latest results of the world’s longest predator-prey study, reports Tanda Gmiter for MLive:

Thirty-seven wolves are now organized into three packs across the island - and all packs will likely welcome pups this year, according to researchers with the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project, [now in it’s 68th year].

That’s a dramatic change from 10 years ago, when just two wolves remained on the island, all of which is protected as a national park. With the absence of meaningful predation, the island’s moose population had increased without check to more than 2,000 by 2019, damaging the balsam fir forests.

In 2018 and 2019, researchers released 19 wolves to restore a healthier predator-prey balance, which seems to be working - during the last winter survey, only 524 moose were counted. The scientists found that wolves killed nearly one quarter of the moose population, bringing it closer to what they believe is a healthier balance for the animals and vegetation on the island.

“The wolf and moose populations are now approaching the edge of where they have been in the past, with moose low and wolves high,” said Rolf Peterson, co-leader of the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project.

The botched rescue attempt of Timmy, the humpback whale stranded in Germany

If you live in Germany, you’ve probably heard the tragic story about a humpback whale that was stranded along the Baltic coast beginning in March. It was nicknamed “Timmy” after the beach where it was first stranded, Timmendorfer Strand near Lübeck in northern Germany.

The animal (it’s not known if Timmy is male or female) had tried to free itself several times, but without success. It was weakened, unresponsive, and had developed skin lesions, a symptom of “freshwater skin disease” because the Baltic Sea is not as salty as the ocean. It was also injured after apparently getting tangled in fishing nets, with rope and nets potentially stuck in its mouth and into its esophagus, reports Martin Enserink for Science.

It’s a heartbreaking story of what happens when pressure from media and social media - some well-meaning, some self-serving to get more clicks - overrules the advice of experts.

After initial efforts to help the whale free itself were futile, marine biologists and whale researchers agreed that additional attempts would only cause Timmy more suffering. Enserink writes:

The Strandings Experts Panel of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) said on 7 April that “palliative care”—leaving the animal on the beach but keeping it wet and creating a calm and quiet environment—was “the only responsible, humane, and pragmatic response.”

Instead, after a public outcry, a privately-funded rescue mission was initiated that quickly turned into a media circus. Enserink writes:

Key faces of the effort included Danny.Firstclass, a German influencer and far-right activist whose real name is Danny Hilse, and Sergio Bambarén Roggero, a Peruvian writer of spiritual stories about the ocean frequently described as a “whale whisperer.”

The injured whale was transported in a water-filled barge and released in the strait between Denmark and Norway. Enserink writes:

A drone video of the whale on the day before its release, struggling and banging against the sides of the barge as the crew apparently tried to pull it out, has shocked researchers. “It’s very hard to watch,” says oceanographer Burkard Baschek, director of the Ocean Museum Germany. “The animal must have suffered greatly.”

Conflicts between the crew and veterinarians were reported, at least one of the funders has distanced themself from the effort, and some experts are calling for an investigation.

Meanwhile, Timmy’s tracker has malfunctioned and the whale is lost at sea, presumed dead, writes Patrick Greenfield for the Guardian in an editorial that examines the “tensions between animal rights activism and other choices around biodiversity.”

The whale’s fate has deeply touched me. I was one of those people following the stranding from the beginning, and hoping from week to week that Timmy would be able to free itself. But once it was clear just how weak Timmy had grown, and experts knew that any rescue attempt would be futile and painful for the whale, palliative care should have been implemented to ease its suffering.

The money for the rescue attempt would have been better spent protecting all whales and their habitat, preventing vessel strikes and entanglements with fishing nets, and keeping plastics out of the oceans.

Pollution & Plastics

Toxic chemicals and climate change work together to harm fertility in both humans and wildlife

A new review in the Nature journal “Emerging Contaminants” found that exposure to both toxic chemicals and climate change is decreasing the fertility of humans and wildlife - including insects, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals, reports Environmental Health News.

People and the environment are often exposed to multiple stressors simultaneously, including various chemicals in plastics, so-called “forever chemicals,” pesticides, air pollution, and increased temperatures. These stressors can influence each other in ways that are not necessarily apparent when studying just one chemical or stressor at a time.

The authors found that negative effects also impact the health of future generations and other environmental factors:

The stress caused by these exposures also impacts overall health, harming animals’ ability to adapt to a changing environment and worsening global biodiversity loss.

Seven days without plastic slashes chemicals in the body, according to a new study

The last couple of stories were pretty depressing, so I’m glad to end this article with some hopeful news: a recent study in Australia found that minimizing plastic for just one week measurably reduced the amounts of plastic chemicals in people, reports Sadie Harley for Medical Xpress:

By minimizing plastic touchpoints, including food processing materials, food packaging, kitchenware and using personal care items low in plastic chemicals, the levels of these chemicals in the human body could be reduced in seven days.

The researchers analyzed the levels of bisphenols and phthalates, both hormone-disrupting chemicals - also referred to as “endocrine disruptors” - in a three-year project involving more than 200 people.

All participants had high levels of at least six plastic chemicals on any day. By measuring the amount of chemicals in their urine and analyzing their lifestyles, the authors “identified that highly processed, packaged and canned foods and beverages were significant contributors.”

When a subgroup of 60 individuals tested a low-plastic lifestyle, the levels of both phthalates and bisphenols (including BPA and its substitute BPS) decreased by around half. It’s not known what a safe level of plastic chemicals is. Harley writes:

“We do know that plastic chemicals are harmful to humans, and the health burden has and will increase over time unless we intervene,” [said Amelia Harray, one of the study’s lead authors].

To reduce the plastic you ingest, switch to food that is not packaged in plastic as much as possible, and use wooden chopping boards and stainless-steel pots, pans, and kettles. Experts also advise to never heat food in plastic, as that can increase the chemicals that leach into it.

Incidentally, by reducing our plastic use we will also decrease plastic pollution in the environment and the negative impacts of microplastics and their associated 16,000 chemicals on animals.

Which, in turn, will reduce microplastics and chemicals absorbed by crops from the soil and further decrease plastics in our food. It’s all connected.

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And that’s it for this week’s updates.

Drop a note in the comments if any article resonated with you, or if there’s another biodiversity or other nature-related story you’d like to share with us!

Articles & Resources:

• The New York Times, 5/12/2026, by Sara Novak: Building nests is hard. That’s why some birds steal.

• Wilson Ranking et al., 2026, Upcycling in the Hawaiian islands: Native forest birds commonly engage in nest material kleptoparasitism. American Naturalist.

• Scientific American, 4/28/2026, by Blaire Cameron: City birds appear to be more afraid of women than men, and scientists have no idea why.

• Morelli et al., 2025, Sex matters: European urban birds flee approaching women sooner than approaching men. People and Nature: 8(2): 316-326.

• MLive, 4/27/2026, by Tanda Gmiter: Isle Royale’s wolf population surges to highest numbers in nearly 50 years.

• Michigan Technological University, 4/27/2026, by Cyndi Perkins: Isle Royale wolf population nears historic high as moose numbers plummet.

• Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project annual reports.

• Science, 5/4/2026, by Martin Enserink: Chaotic whale rescue shocks marine scientists.

• The Guardian, 5/5/2026, by Kate Connolly: Rescue of Timmy the whale ‘an all-round catastrophe’ after tracker failure.

• IFAW News, 5/11/2026: Timmy the whale and the limits of good intentions.

• The Guardian, 5/15/2026, by Patrick Greenfield: What the fate of Timmy the whale says about conservation.

• EHN, 5/1/2026, by Staff: Toxic chemicals and climate change work together to harm fertility across species.

• Brander et al., 2026, Impacts of environmental stressors on fertility and fecundity across taxa, with implications for planetary health.NPJ Emerging Contaminants: 2, 12.

• Medical Xpress, 4/22/2026, by Sadie Harley: Seven days without plastic contact slashes phthalates and bisphenols in body.

• Harray et al., 2026, Low-plastic diet and urinary levels of plastic-associated phthalates and bisphenols: the randomized controlled PERTH trial. Nature Medicine.

Nature Signals is a reader-supported publication. It takes many hours to write and research each post. To receive new posts in your inbox and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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You can read the story here:

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Resources:

Selected news articles and websites:

• Earth Island Journal, by Bob Koigi, 7/18/2016: How butterfly farmers are safeguarding the forest in Kenya.

• Mongabay, by Janet Njung’e, 2/8/2019: Butterfly business: Insect farmers help conserve East African forests.

• United Nations Environment Programme, 1/2/2020: Paying the school fees, one butterfly at a time.

• Kipepeo Butterfly Project, Kenya.

• Butterfly farm: El Bosque Nuevo, Costa Rica.

Conservation organizations:

• Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.

  • Report: State of butterflies in the United States: A Roadmap for Butterfly Conservation in the 21st Century. 2025.

• North American Butterfly Association (NABA)

• Butterfly Conservation Europe (BCE)

• MonarchWatch - researches monarch butterflies, their habitat and fall migration.

Trade organizations:

• International Butterfly Breeders Association (IBBA)

• Association for Butterflies (AFB)

Selected scientific articles:

• Parsons, 1992. The butterfly farming and trading industry in the Indo-Australian region and its role in tropical forest conservation. Tropical Lepidoptera, 3(Suppl. 1): 1-31.

• Boppré and Vane-Wright, 2012. The butterfly house industry: Conservation risks and education opportunities. Conservation & Society, 10(3): 285-303.

• Tenger-Trolander et al., 2019. Contemporary loss of migration in monarch butterflies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(29): 14671-14676.

• Davis, Smith and Ballew. 2020. A poor substitute for the real thing: captive-reared monarch butterflies are weaker, paler and have less elongated wings than wild migrants. Biology Letters, the Royal Society Publishing. 16(4): 20190922.

• Wilcox et al., 2021. Captive-reared migratory monarch butterflies show natural orientation when released in the wild. Conservation physiology, 9(1): coab32.

• Saul-Gershenz, 2022. Insect zoos and butterfly houses for public education: issues related to shipping and international trade of non-native insects. Scientific and Technical Review, 41(1): 142-157.

• Tenger-Trolander, 2023. Environmental and genetic effects of captivity - are there lessons for monarch butterfly conservation? Current Opinion in Insect Science, 59: 101088.

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Are butterfly houses really a boon for butterflies, as proponents claim?

So I decided to delve into the topic and find out what the pros and cons of the global trade in butterflies are – for the insects themselves, their habitats, and the people living in the local communities where they are farmed, mostly in the Global South.

All photos were taken by me at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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What are the concerns?

Butterfly house enthusiasts often cite both benefits to habitats and to local communities – after all, it’s in the best interest of breeders to maintain healthy forests that can support lots of butterflies to ensure a reliable supply of fresh breeding stock. Similarly, providing local communities with a source of income independent of illegal timbering, deforestation for agriculture, or poaching provides an incentive to protect the environment.

Critics, however, say that over-collecting, genetic mixing within and between species that don’t naturally occur together, introduction of diseases, and accidental releases that would introduce non-native insects could harm both local butterflies and those in destination countries.

There are also ethical concerns around keeping thousands of butterflies in captivity and viewing them as objects whose sole purpose is to entertain visitors. While butterflies are short-lived – most live an average of only around two weeks as adults – and are usually allowed to die naturally, the welfare of insects is not generally a consideration for many people compared to animals more like us, such as mammals or birds.

So who’s right? It’s a surprisingly nuanced answer and depends on the specific farms where the butterflies originate and the efforts of individual butterfly houses to support conservation and educate the public about the bigger picture.

The rise of the butterfly house industry

As I was researching the subject, I was surprised at the dearth of reliable information about it.

Considering that butterfly houses have been around since at least 1980 and have proliferated all over the world – one study listed nearly 140, most in the U.S. and Europe (the author admitted it was not an exhaustive list) – there does not seem to have been much scientific inquiry into their biological or economic effects.

It’s a large market, though exactly how large is anybody’s guess. The best estimate I found for the annual value of the global butterfly trade is around $100 million – but that figure originated in a 1992 paper. I’ve seen it cited in reports as recently as 2015, but would not be surprised if the value has increased exponentially since then, given the proliferation of butterfly houses over the past 34 years and the millions of butterflies traded every year. And people love them - around 40 million are thought to visit butterfly houses annually, according to a 2002 study.

Butterfly farms and their products

Most butterflies are farmed in tropical countries, mainly in South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. They are grown specifically for export to supply the global insect trade, in dedicated butterfly farms - much like fruit or other food crops are grown.

Butterflies spend most of their lives not as the beautiful, winged insects we admire, but in inconspicuous, immature stages. Female butterflies lay hundreds of eggs, which turn into voracious caterpillars that feed on various host plants, before transforming into immobile “chrysalises” – also referred to as “pupae” - that eventually metamorphose into the colorful butterflies that many people regard as the only “good” insect.

They’re usually shipped in their chrysalis stage to supply butterfly houses. That phase lasts an average of around two weeks – depending on the species - before the adult butterflies emerge, so transportation has to be quick and efficient. That’s often accomplished through brokers who specialize in the trade, combining batches from several farms and shipping the insects across borders using commercial airlines or shippers such as FedEx to their destinations in cities around the world.

The entire process is regulated by various permits, both from the exporting and importing countries. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora – referred to as CITES – and other laws prohibit the shipment of endangered species, so usually only common butterflies are displayed. In the U.S., butterfly houses are regulated and inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In tropical areas, butterfly farms can be as simple as areas that contain caterpillars’ host plants enclosed by netting so the butterflies can’t escape. The butterflies are either captured from surrounding forests or bred in the facility.

These farms breed butterflies not only for display in butterfly houses, but also for live releases at weddings and funerals (generally, only butterflies native to an area may be released), classroom rearing kits, scientific research, and to supply dead specimens for jewelry and art (the butterflies are generally not killed for that use, but are allowed to live out their short lives naturally, according to the farms and websites that sell these items).

For this article I focused mainly on the international butterfly house industry. Each of the other uses has its own unique set of considerations and tradeoffs. Other insects are also traded, though butterflies are by far the most popular. I was amazed at how complex and large the global insect trade is.

Pros and cons for butterflies

Few independent studies address the impacts of the butterfly trade on conservation.

One that does is a seminal 2012 essay by Michael Boppré with the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany, and Richard Vane-Wright, formerly with the Natural History Museum in London.

Boppré and Vane-Wright describe the dangers to butterflies, including loss of genetic fitness through breeding and the danger of tropical butterflies escaping either en route or from an exhibition, potentially harming local butterflies. There’s also a risk of introducing new diseases and inadvertently importing parasitic wasps or other predators that could wreak havoc on local insect populations.

How large-scale breeding affects insects’ fitness over the long term is not known, though studies in monarchs have shown that captive-bred individuals look different from wild butterflies, especially after a few generations, may not migrate as well, and have lower survival rates. This is a huge concern as classroom rearing kits have become more common and many people participate in the ever-more popular rearing and release of thousands of monarchs in the well-meaning hope of supplementing dwindling wild populations.

Experts and conservation organizations are concerned about released individuals inadvertently harming wild butterflies. They caution that captive rearing should be seen as an educational practice to teach kids about insects, not as a viable way to save them. Experts generally recommend that people do not rear more than a dozen or so monarchs to ensure that wild populations are not negatively impacted.

While these studies are specific to monarchs bred and released in North America, it’s plausible that other butterfly species could be affected similarly, both through decreased fitness and subtle changes in behavior. Some tropical butterfly farms release some of their reared individuals in an attempt to supplement local populations, and they regularly add wild butterflies to prevent inbreeding. Doing this is considered a sustainable farming practice, however it’s not known how those captive-reared butterflies compare to, or affect, their wild counterparts.

Effects on tropical butterfly habitats

Butterfly farms sometimes directly benefit local habitats, protecting neighboring forested areas to safeguard a continual supply of healthy butterflies. It makes sense – a healthy insect population is dependent on a healthy ecosystem, and smart breeders recognize the connection.

For instance, the Kipepeo Butterfly Project in Kenya began in 1993 to provide local communities around the Arabuku Sokoke forest with a way to earn a livelihood without resorting to illegal logging. The forest is the largest remaining patch in the region of a vast tropical coastal forest that once stretched from Somalia to Mozambique. Up to 1,200 people in Kenya and neighboring Tanzania now participate in butterfly farming, generating income by raising and selling butterflies to Europe and Turkey, reports Janet Njung’e for Mongabay in a 2019 story. Many of the farmers were once loggers but now recognize the value of keeping the forest intact and healthy to support butterflies for export.

In Costa Rica, the butterfly farm El Bosque Nuevo uses the proceeds from its sales to buy neighboring land and protect and restore forests. It now owns 285 hectares (or about 700 acres, a little smaller than Central Park in New York City) of forest, according to its website. The farm works with dozens of local families who supply them with additional chrysalises for export to butterfly houses all over the world.

So, do butterfly houses actually help butterflies?

As I immersed myself in the world of butterfly houses, I was amazed by how complex and nuanced the industry is. It’s not a simple answer.

It does appear that when done well, butterfly farms provide an incentive to protect healthy tropical ecosystems so the breeding stock is plentiful and healthy. Without insects as a source of income, many people might resort to illegal logging. Many farms also employ women in areas where employment for them is scarce.

The effects on the butterflies themselves are more difficult to assess, we just don’t know what the effects of captive-rearing are on wild populations. Studies on monarchs show that there could be unintended consequences on genetics and fitness. Keeping them indoors in captivity for the entertainment of visitors is also an ethical question.

Many of the biological risks, however, could be mitigated through proper education of people involved in all steps of the process – the breeders, brokers who facilitate the collection and transportation of the pupae, and staff in the butterfly houses. But that would require stricter regulation than is the case now.

We should also not underestimate the opportunity to educate the millions of visitors butterfly houses attract about biodiversity, the web of life, and the threats that harm butterflies and other animals.

This potential is not sufficiently realized now, however. Interpretive displays are often incomplete, missing altogether, or incorrect, according to Boppré and Van-Wright.

What you can do to help butterflies

Whether or not you decide that you’d like to visit a butterfly house, there’s plenty you can do to help butterflies.

Experts agree that their biggest threats are habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change.

By planting native species in your yard or balcony you can directly support your local insects – every little bit is important, even if it’s only a flowerpot on your doorstep. Not mowing a corner of your lawn also helps, as does minimizing pesticides.

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Resources

Selected news articles and websites:

• Earth Island Journal, by Bob Koigi, 7/18/2016: How butterfly farmers are safeguarding the forest in Kenya.

• Mongabay, by Janet Njung’e, 2/8/2019: Butterfly business: Insect farmers help conserve East African forests.

• United Nations Environment Programme, 1/2/2020: Paying the school fees, one butterfly at a time.

• Kipepeo Butterfly Project, Kenya.

• Butterfly farm: El Bosque Nuevo, Costa Rica.

Conservation organizations:

• Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.

  • Report: State of butterflies in the United States: A Roadmap for Butterfly Conservation in the 21st Century. 2025.

• North American Butterfly Association (NABA)

• Butterfly Conservation Europe (BCE)

• MonarchWatch - researches monarch butterflies, their habitat and fall migration.

Trade organizations:

• International Butterfly Breeders Association (IBBA)

• Association for Butterflies (AFB)

Selected scientific articles:

• Parsons, 1992. The butterfly farming and trading industry in the Indo-Australian region and its role in tropical forest conservation. Tropical Lepidoptera, 3(Suppl. 1): 1-31.

• Boppré and Vane-Wright, 2012. The butterfly house industry: Conservation risks and education opportunities. Conservation & Society, 10(3): 285-303.

• Tenger-Trolander et al., 2019. Contemporary loss of migration in monarch butterflies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(29): 14671-14676.

• Davis, Smith and Ballew. 2020. A poor substitute for the real thing: captive-reared monarch butterflies are weaker, paler and have less elongated wings than wild migrants. Biology Letters, the Royal Society Publishing. 16(4): 20190922.

• Wilcox et al., 2021. Captive-reared migratory monarch butterflies show natural orientation when released in the wild. Conservation physiology, 9(1): coab32.

• Saul-Gershenz, 2022. Insect zoos and butterfly houses for public education: issues related to shipping and international trade of non-native insects. Scientific and Technical Review, 41(1): 142-157.

• Tenger-Trolander, 2023. Environmental and genetic effects of captivity - are there lessons for monarch butterfly conservation? Current Opinion in Insect Science, 59: 101088.