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Brigitte Bardot: French screen legend and controversial activist dead at 91

The actress who rose to fame in 1956 with "And God Created Woman" later abandoned her film career to become a passionate and often polarizing animal rights advocate.

By THOMAS ADAMSON and ELAINE GANLEY, The Associated PressPARIS (AP) — Brigitte Bardot, the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91.Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals. Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death and said that no arrangements had been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie, “And God Created Woman.” Directed by then husband, Roger Vadim, it triggered a scandal with scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on tables naked.At the height of a cinema career that spanned more than two dozen films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize a nation bursting out of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond hair, voluptuous figure and pouty irreverence made her one of France’s best-known stars, even as she struggled with depression.Such was her widespread appeal that in 1969 her features were chosen to be the model for “Marianne,” the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and coins.‘’We are mourning a legend,’’ French President Emmanuel Macron said in an X post.Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals. She also condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments, and she opposed Muslim slaughter rituals.“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers, since it has no power, no words to defend itself.”Her activism earned her compatriots’ respect and, in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honor, the nation’s highest recognition.Turn to the far rightLater, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone. She frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.She was convicted and fined five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred, in incidents inspired by her opposition to the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays.Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime adviser to far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political shift. She described Le Pen, an outspoken nationalist with multiple racism convictions of his own, as a “lovely, intelligent man.”FILE - French actress Brigitte Bardot poses with a huge sombrero she brought back from Mexico, as she arrives at Orly Airport in Paris, France, on May 27, 1965. (AP Photo/File)APIn 2012, she supported the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father’s renamed National Rally party. Le Pen paid homage Sunday to an “exceptional woman” who was “incredibly French.”In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview that most actors protesting sexual harassment in the film industry were “hypocritical,” because many played “the teases” with producers to land parts.She said she had never had been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.”Privileged but ‘difficult’ upbringingBrigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy industrialist. A shy child, she studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at age 14.Bardot once described her childhood as “difficult” and said that her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a horse whip.Vadim, a French movie produce who she married in 1952, saw her potential and wrote “And God Created Woman” to showcase her provocative sensuality, an explosive cocktail of childlike innocence and raw sexuality.The film, which portrayed Bardot as a teen who marries to escape an orphanage and then beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, and came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.The film was a box-office hit, and it made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, tiny waist and generous bust were often more appreciated than her talent.“It’s an embarrassment to have acted so badly,” Bardot said of her early films. “I suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”Bardot’s unabashed, off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and turned her into a hot prize for paparazzi.Bardot never adjusted to the limelight. She blamed the constant media attention for the suicide attempt that followed 10 months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers had broken into her house two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of her pregnant.Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor who she married in 1959 but who never felt comfortable in his role as Monsieur Bardot. Bardot soon gave up her son to his father, and later said she had been chronically depressed and unready for the duties of being a mother.“I was looking for roots then,” she said in an interview. “I had none to offer.”FILE - French Actress Brigitte Bardot with a dog in the Gennevilliers, Paris, while supporting the French animal protection society operation, Feb. 10, 1982. (AP Photo/Duclos, File)APIn her 1996 autobiography “Initiales B.B.,” she likened her pregnancy to “a tumor growing inside me,” and described Charrier as “temperamental and abusive.”Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, and they divorced three years later.Among her films were “A Parisian” (1957); “In Case of Misfortune,” in which she starred in 1958 with screen legend Jean Gabin; “The Truth” (1960); “Private Life” (1962); “A Ravishing Idiot” (1964); “Shalako” (1968); “Women” (1969); “The Bear And The Doll” (1970); “Rum Boulevard” (1971); and “Don Juan” (1973).With the exception of 1963’s critically acclaimed “Contempt,” directed by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun.“It was never a great passion of mine,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn (Monroe) perished because of it.”Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.” As fans brought flowers to her home Sunday, the local St. Tropez administration called for “respect for the privacy of her family and the serenity of the places where she lived.”Middle-aged reinventionShe emerged a decade later with a new persona: An animal rights lobbyist, her face was wrinkled and her voice was deep following years of heavy smoking. She abandoned her jet-set life and sold off movie memorabilia and jewelry to create a foundation devoted exclusively to the prevention of animal cruelty.Depression sometimes dogged her, and she said that she attempted suicide again on her 49th birthday.Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to U.S. President Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. Navy recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.She attacked centuries-old French and Italian sporting traditions including the Palio, a free-for-all horse race, and campaigned on behalf of wolves, rabbits, kittens and turtle doves.“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things move forward ... my distress takes over,” Bardot told the AP when asked about her racial hatred convictions and opposition to Muslim ritual slaughter,In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne after the actress voiced anti-immigrant sentiment. Also that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat.Environmental campaigner Paul Watson, who was beaten on a seal hunt protest in Canada alongside Bardot in 1977 and campaigned with her for five decades, acknowledged that “many disagreed with Brigitte’s politics or some of her views.”FILE - French actress Brigitte Bardot poses in character from the motion picture "Voulez-Vous Danser Avec Moi" (Do you Want to Dance With Me), on Sept. 10, 1959. (AP Photo/File)AP“Her allegiance was not to the world of humans,” he said. “The animals of this world lost a wonderful friend today.”Bardot once said that she identified with the animals that she was trying to save.“I can understand hunted animals, because of the way I was treated,” Bardot said. “What happened to me was inhuman. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.”Elaine Ganley provided reporting for this story before her retirement. Angela Charlton contributed to this report.

Activism
Animals

With every extinction, we lose not just a species but a treasure trove of knowledge

Every new extinction ripples out beyond the affected species, from ecosystems to human knowledge across culture, spirituality and science.

The extinct desert rat kangaroo John Gould, Mammals of Australia (1845)The millions of species humans share the world with are valuable in their own right. When one species is lost, it has a ripple effect throughout the ecosystems it existed within. But there’s a hidden toll. Each loss takes something from humanity too. Extinction silences scientific insights, ends cultural traditions and snuffs out spiritual connections enriching human life. For instance, when China’s baiji river dolphin vanished, local memory of it faded within a single generation. When New Zealand’s giant flightless moa were hunted to extinction, the words and body of knowledge associated with them began to fade. In these ways, conservation is as much about safeguarding knowledge as it is about saving nature, as I suggest in my research. We’re currently living through what scientists call the planet’s sixth mass extinction. Unlike earlier events triggered by natural catastrophes, today’s accelerating losses are overwhelmingly driven by human activities, from habitat destruction to introduced species to climate change. Current extinction rates are tens to hundreds of times higher than natural levels. The United Nations warns up to 1 million species may disappear this century, many within decades. This extinction crisis isn’t just a loss to broader nature – it’s a loss for humans. New Zealand once had nine species of moa, large flightless birds. Richard Owen, Memoirs on the extinct wingless birds of New Zealand (1879), via Biodiversity Heritage Library/Unsplash, CC BY-NC-ND Lost to science Extinction extinguishes the light of knowledge nowhere more clearly than in science. Every species has a unique genetic code and ecological role. When it vanishes, the world loses an untapped reservoir of scientific knowledge – genetic blueprints, biochemical pathways, ecological relationships and even potential medical treatments. The two species of gastric-brooding frog once lived in small patches of rainforest in Queensland. These extraordinary frogs could turn their stomachs into wombs, shutting down gastric acid production to safely brooding their young tadpoles internally. Both went extinct in the 1980s under pressure from human development and the introduced chytrid fungus. Their unique reproductive biology is gone forever. No other frog is known to do this. Studying these biological marvels could have yielded insights into human conditions such as acid reflux and certain cancers. Ecologists Gerardo Ceballos and Paul Ehrlich called their extinctions a tragic loss for science, lamenting: “Now they are lost to us as experimental models”. Efforts at de-extinction have so far not succeeded. Biodiversity holds immense potential for breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, materials and even climate change. As species vanish, the library of life shrinks, and with it, the vault of future human discoveries. Lost to culture Nature is deeply woven through many human cultures. First Nations people living on traditional lands hold detailed knowledge of local species in language, story and ceremony. Many urban residents orient their lives around local birds, trees, rivers and parks. When species decline or vanish, the songs, stories, experiences and everyday practices built around them can thin out or disappear. Extinction erodes our sense of companionship with the natural world and diminishes the countless small interactions with other species which help root our lives in joy, wonder and reverence. The bioacoustics researcher Christopher Clark has likened extinction to an orchestra gradually falling silent: everywhere there is life, there is song. The planet is singing – everywhere. But what’s happening is we’re killing the voices […] It’s like [plucking] the instruments out of the orchestra … and then it’s gone One haunting example of a vanished voice comes from Hawaii. In 2023, a small black-and-yellow songbird, the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, was declared extinct. All that’s left is a last recording, where the last male sings for a female who will never come. Illustration of the extinct Kauaʻi ʻōʻō (Moho braccatus), adult and juvenile. John Gerrard Keulemans/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-ND Disturbingly, birdsong is declining worldwide, diminishing the richness of our shared sensory world. From an ecocentric perspective, each loss leaves the whole community of companion species poorer – humans included. Scientists call this the “extinction of experience”. As biologist David George Haskell writes, extinction is leaving the future: an impoverished sensory world […] less vital, blander. The loss of species is not only an ecological crisis but also a rupture in the communion of life – a deep injury to the bonds uniting beings. Loss of spiritual knowledge For many communities, nature is imbued with sacred meaning. Often, particular species or ecosystems hold deep spiritual significance. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is venerated by Indigenous custodians, whose traditions describe it as part of a sacred, living seascape. As the reef’s biodiversity declines under climate stress, these spiritual connections are eroding, diminishing the sources of wonder, reverence and existential orientation which help define human belonging in the world – across and beyond faith traditions. Some ecotheological traditions regard nature as a book – a way to reveal divine truth alongside scripture. Nature holds deep significance for the varied communities and traditions viewing the land and its creatures as sentient, interconnected and sacred. Extinction weakens nature’s capacity to embody transcendent meaning. The natural world dims and dulls, leaving us with fewer opportunities to experience awe, beauty and a sense of the sacred. In this sense, extinction is more than biological loss. It severs spiritual ties between human and other beings in ways transcending worldviews. How do we grieve extinction? Extinctions often evoke grief, which is a way of knowing through feeling. Grieving a lost species points to the scale of the loss across scientific, cultural and spiritual dimensions. For Indigenous communities, this grief can be profound, born of deep environmental attachment. Scientists and conservationists witness cascading losses and bear the burden of foresight. Their grief may trigger anxiety, burnout and sorrow. But mourning the lost also makes the crisis tangible. Grieving for extinct life isn’t pointless. It can compel us to look closely at what remains, to recognise the intrinsic value of a species and to resist reducing biodiversity to its instrumental uses. This kind of mourning carries the seeds of ecological responsibility, inviting us to protect life not just for our purposes but because of its irreplaceable role in the communion of life. Johannes M. Luetz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Extinction
Culture
Science

Louis Gerstner, Former IBM CEO Who Revitalized 'Big Blue,' Dies at 83

Dec 28 (Reuters) - Louis Gerstner, the former CEO ‌and ​chairman of IBM, died ‌on Saturday, aged 83.IBM chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna ​announced...

Dec 28 (Reuters) - Louis Gerstner, the former CEO ‌and ​chairman of IBM, died ‌on Saturday, aged 83.IBM chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna ​announced Gerstner’s death in an email sent Sunday to employees, but did not ‍provide a cause of death."Lou ​arrived at IBM at a moment when the company's future was ​genuinely ⁠uncertain. His leadership during that period reshaped the company. Not by looking backward, but by focusing relentlessly on what our clients would need next", Krishna said in his email. Gerstner moved to IBM from being the CEO of ‌RJR Nabisco in April 1993 after stints at American Express and the ​consultancy McKinsey, ‌becoming the first outsider ‍to ⁠run Big Blue, as IBM was called. During the nine years he led the computer giant, he was widely credited with turning around a company that was facing potential bankruptcy, pivoting the company to business services. He radically changed IBM's culture and focus while slashing expenses, selling assets and repurchasing stock. Gerstner retired as ​CEO of IBM in 2002, with the stock some 800% higher than when he had started, moving to become the chairman of Carlyle Group until his retirement in 2008. The author of "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance" and co-author of "Reinventing Education: Entrepreneurship in America's Public Schools," Gerstner was on the board of several companies including Bristol-Myers, the New York Times, American Express, AT&T and Caterpillar. Gerstner was passionate about public education in the U.S, launching an initiative at IBM ​to use company technology in schools.He established the Gerstner Philanthropies in 1989, which included the Gerstner Family Foundation, emphasizing support for biomedical research, environmental and education initiatives, and social services serving New York ​City, Boston, and Palm Beach County, Florida.(Reporting by Chandni Shah in BengaluruEditing by Nick Zieminski)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

Business
Culture
Education

What ‘data center alley’ portends for America’s AI-powered future

As data centers hurtle to the forefront of the national debate over artificial intelligence (AI) and energy costs, northern Virginia offers a preview of the political fights that will play out in communities across the country seeking to cash in on the booming industry. Virginia is the unofficial data center capital of the world, with...

As data centers hurtle to the forefront of the national debate over artificial intelligence (AI) and energy costs, northern Virginia offers a preview of the political fights that will play out in communities across the country seeking to cash in on the booming industry.  Virginia is the unofficial data center capital of the world, with more than half of the world’s internet traffic running through hundreds of facilities in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, generating some 74,000 jobs and $9.1 billion for the state’s economy each year.  But the sprawling data centers are also transforming the landscape and gobbling up massive amounts of water and electricity, leading state politicians to grapple with how to regulate and monitor the rapid development — without alienating the powerful interests backing the projects, from tech giants to local leaders and labor unions.  It’s a delicate balance that’s quickly moving to the center of a national conversation about how to execute on the Trump administration’s push to rapidly expand the country’s AI infrastructure.  Policymakers across the country are watching Virginia’s efforts closely, said Michael Villa, an analyst at 10a Labs, the AI company behind the Data Center Watch Project. “They look up to Northern Virginia because [they] are the ones with more experience and where this dynamic has been working for longer,” he told The Hill.  Your data is ‘in a building in Ashburn’ Northern Virginia has been a hot spot for data centers stretching back to the 1990s, due to its proximity to the nation’s capital and surrounding metro areas, land affordability, tax breaks and local ordinances clearing the way for construction.  The demand for the data centers — massive facilities that house computers, servers, and other IT systems that process and store online data — has steadily increased over the years and is set to explode amid the global race for computing power.  “Everybody doesn’t really realize that your data isn’t just out there, your photos are not just wandering in the ether,” said Trinity Mills, a conservation advocacy coordinator at the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy. “They’re in a building in Ashburn.” It’s a frustrating reality for people living next to these buildings, who point to higher energy bills and increased noise in their neighborhoods.  Tracy Fowle, a 57-year-old lifelong resident of Loudoun County, said the emergence of data centers in her community is driving her out.  “Well, it’s certainly very depressing, such so that I’m going to be leaving the area…We are going to put our house on the market next year,” Fowle told The Hill. “We’ve lived here since 2006, but this is not a comfortable place for me anymore.”  “The power lines, the growth of the data centers [and] the construction doesn’t stop. It is just ongoing. And I would rather have something more peaceful in my backyard,” she added.  With Homeowner Associations (HOAs) unable to slow the construction, she said residents have three choice: “grin and bear it,” move someplace else or band together to force political action. Energy costs: A major flashpoint The impact on energy costs, amid a growing focus on “affordability” under Trump, is particularly prickly for developers. The three states with the largest concentration of data centers saw a surge in utility bills as of August, compared to the same time last year. Illinois saw a 16 percent increase, Virginia followed at 13 percent and Ohio at 12 percent, according to a report from CNBC, well above the 6 percent average national increase in electricity prices.  Some of the largest data centers are expected to consume as much electricity as a city of more than half a million people, Ali Fenn, president of Lancium, a company that secures land and power for data centers in Texas, told CNBC. Dan Dorio, vice president of state policy at the Data Center Coalition (DCC), a membership organization for the industry, said the jury is still out on the impact of these projects on regional energy costs.  He pointed to a University of California, Berkeley study that found states with the highest “load growth” in electricity demand saw reductions in real prices from 2019 to 2024, “whereas states with contracting loads generally saw prices rise.” “The industry is leaning in to be a responsible, [responsive] partner in the communities where they operate to help answer questions about the development, to work with those local leaders, those local infrastructure providers, to ensure that these projects are going to be economic value to the community,” Dorio said. Over 300 data centers across northern Virginia used nearly two billion gallons of water in 2023, while Loudoun County alone used 900 million, according to a study by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Along with using substantial amounts of water to cool off servers, data centers depend on back-up diesel generators that pollute the air 200-600 times more than natural gas-fired power plants, according to a study conducted by University of California, Riverside.  Emissions are projected to cost the public health care system more than $20 billion come 2028, with disadvantaged communities being more susceptible, according to the study.  Uphill fight to impose guardrails The financial benefits of data centers for local coffers are undeniable.  Revenue generated from data centers accounts for over a third of Loudoun’s tax base, bringing the county over $1 billion this year, and has reduced residential property taxes by 48 cents per $100 of value, according to a Loudoun County spokesperson.  However, Buddy Rizer, executive director for economic development in Loudoun County, said the county is slowing down applications because of energy constraints.  “We’re toward the end of our growth for data centers,” he said.  But Rizer doesn’t expect the national demand to slow down anytime soon. “I don’t know what the alternative is, unless everyone’s going to stop using the internet,” he said.   Given the economic boon, lawmakers have been cautious in crafting new regulations.  Virginia House Del. Ian Lovejoy, a Republican who represents a district in northern Virginia, introduced legislation to place a land buffer between data centers and residential areas, spurred by data centers sharing property lines with homes and elementary schools in his district.  He has found support from Del. Shelly Simonds (D), who plans to introduce her own legislation tracking water usage by the facilities in the state. Both Simonds and Lovejoy said that bills to regulate the centers have been hard to pass due to some indifference from colleagues representing southern Virginia and opposition from local politicians on county boards that support the developments.  “There’s a rising awareness that the data centers are contributing to higher energy costs across the state,” said Simonds, who represents a southern Virginia district.  State legislators managed to pass some legislation to regulate the industry earlier this year, only to have it shot down by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican.  Youngkin vetoed the bill in November that would’ve required developers to perform a land assessment of proposals that are within 500 feet of homes and schools, looking at ground and surface water resources in the area and potential interference with historic sites.  “While well-intentioned, the legislation imposes a one-size-fits-all approach on communities that are best positioned to make their own decisions,” he said in explaining the veto.  “Virginia is the data center capital of the world, and we should not enact legislation to allow other states to pass us by nor to restrict local government from developing data centers based on their community’s specific circumstances,” Youngkin continued.  Powerful forces meet growing resistance Prominent data center operators have also courted Virginia lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.  A Business Insider review of filings earlier this year found that the DCC donated around $165,000 to state lawmakers between last year’s November elections and the start of the January legislative session.  The group donated $25,000 to Youngkin, who last month announced two data center developments from Vantage and CleanArc Data Centers, collectively valued at $5 billion. The incoming Democratic administration of Gov.-elect Abigail Spangerger and Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi has proposed working with the legislature to force data centers to “pay their fair share” for electricity, to ensure that consumers don’t see inflated energy bills.  But data centers have faced limited resistance at the state level, due in part to an unusual alliance between big business and labor unions, said Lovejoy, the Republican state legislator.  “You have the business community, and you have the labor unions who really, really enjoy these types of projects,” he said. “So you have sort of this bond between two opposing forces that are usually opposed to one another, all swimming in the same direction for once.” However, voices of opposition are seeing increasing success across the country.  At least 16 data center projects, including nine in Virginia, have been blocked or delayed as local opposition mounts to the developments, according to a new study, which also found growing opposition from local politicians in both parties.   Brennan Gilmore, executive director of environmental group Clean Virginia, said that mounting successful opposition now was especially important because the “worst impacts are still to come.” Gilmore warned of projections that energy costs would double or even triple if the current trajectory in data centers continued.  “Virginia is expected to bear the burden of building out the infrastructure to support that level of demand, a build out that took 100 years to get to our current level, in an extraordinarily collapsed time frame,” he said. “So essentially we have an energy crisis on the horizon.”  Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Energy
Business
Crisis

Costa Rica’s Térraba Community Battles Biodiversity Loss with Tree-Planting Revival

In southern Costa Rica, the Térraba Indigenous community stands as a frontline defender against a deepening global biodiversity crisis. With one million species facing extinction and ecosystems eroding faster than ever, according to United Nations assessments, local efforts like those in Térraba offer a model for resistance and recovery. The Térraba people, known as the […] The post Costa Rica’s Térraba Community Battles Biodiversity Loss with Tree-Planting Revival appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

In southern Costa Rica, the Térraba Indigenous community stands as a frontline defender against a deepening global biodiversity crisis. With one million species facing extinction and ecosystems eroding faster than ever, according to United Nations assessments, local efforts like those in Térraba offer a model for resistance and recovery. The Térraba people, known as the Brörán, have long confronted deforestation driven by logging and the spread of chemical-heavy agriculture. For decades, they have protected their ancestral lands, where rivers and forests hold deep cultural meaning. Pollution from upstream farms once tainted their water sources, killing fish and harming wildlife. Community members responded by restoring habitats and promoting sustainable practices that honor their traditions. Paulino Nájera Rivera embodies this commitment. Growing up amid the forests of Buenos Aires, he learned from elders about the balance between people and nature. In the 1980s, as trees fell to clear land for crops and cattle, he saw the damage firsthand. By the 1990s, he and his siblings took action, planting more than 37,000 native trees. They gathered seeds from rare species on the brink of disappearance, guided by traditional knowledge. Exotic plants popular for quick profits held no appeal; instead, they focused on species that belonged to the ecosystem. Today, Nájera Rivera’s land thrives with regenerated rainforest. Birds and animals have returned, and the soil supports diverse plant life. He turned this revival into a business called Rincón Ecológico Cultural, where he guides visitors on trails through the woods. Guests walk paths lined with towering trees, hear stories of Brörán heritage, and see before-and-after photos of the transformation. Groups of up to 100 people, including students from over 30 countries in Europe and beyond, join these tours. They learn about environmental stewardship and the community’s bond with the land. “Rincón Ecológico Cultural started from a dream that no one backed at first,” Nájera Rivera said. “We aimed to highlight our culture and let people understand who we are.” Nájera Rivera is among 77 Indigenous entrepreneurs who gained support from the Raíces program, a government-led initiative backed by the United Nations Development Programme’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative. Launched in 2020, Raíces—meaning “roots” in Spanish—serves as an incubator for sustainable tourism ventures in Indigenous territories. It provides training, funding access, and business tools tailored to communities often overlooked by traditional banks. Challenges like limited land titles and digital skills get addressed through customized approaches. Across its first three editions, Raíces has channeled over $1.7 million to back 35 ventures. Two-thirds are led by women, reflecting a push for gender balance in economic development. The program now enters its fourth round, expanding to Caribbean territories like Nairi-Awari and Bajo Chirripó, alongside southern areas such as Boruca, Cabagra, and Térraba. Other entrepreneurs echo Nájera Rivera’s success. In Térraba, Elides Rivera Navas runs Jardín del Idön, a garden-based tour operation that lets her stay rooted in her community while earning income. “Raíces gave me the chance to build a business without leaving my territory,” she explained. It balanced her family duties with professional growth. In the Boruca territory, Johanna Lázaro Morales operates Caushas Farm, offering cultural experiences tied to agriculture. The support improved her services, allowing her to care for her children and elderly parents. “It changed how we share our ways with the world,” Lázaro Morales noted, emphasizing community uplift through women’s roles. Andrey Zúñiga Torres, of Bribri-Cabécar descent in Ujarrás, leads KuyekECoVida, which spotlights local ecology and traditions. His work boosts the economy while passing knowledge to younger generations.These businesses do more than generate revenue; they safeguard biodiversity. By drawing tourists to restored sites, they fund conservation and educate visitors on threats like habitat loss. Indigenous groups manage a significant portion of the world’s remaining intact forests—about 36 percent globally—making their strategies key to addressing the crisis. In Costa Rica, where tourism brings in $4.3 billion yearly and protected areas cover a quarter of the land, such models align with national goals. The country reversed severe deforestation in the late 20th century through policies that value forests economically. Yet challenges persist. Global funding for biodiversity falls short by hundreds of billions annually, risking further declines in services like clean water and pollination that underpin half the world’s economy. In Térraba, ongoing pressures from agriculture demand vigilance. Raíces demonstrates how targeted support can empower communities to lead. As Nájera Rivera walks his trails, he shows that reconnecting with ancestral ways can heal the land and inspire change. For Costa Rica and beyond, these Indigenous efforts point to a path where people and nature sustain each other. The post Costa Rica’s Térraba Community Battles Biodiversity Loss with Tree-Planting Revival appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

Crisis
Extinction
Indigenous

Railroad company appeals water pollution fine after train crash into Oregon river

The Department of Environmental Quality fined the railroad company $81,600 after the January crash.

The railroad company whose trestle collapsed earlier this year, derailing a train into the Marys River in Corvallis, has appealed a fine for water pollution stemming from the incident, denying state officials’ versions of events.Included in the Department of Environmental Quality penalty notice that fined Portland & Western Railroad $81,600 fine was an order that the company inspect all its water crossing trestles for safety concerns and formulate a process for evaluating and prioritizing repairs, modifications or replacement.‘Reckless disregard’In January, the train bridge spanning Avery Park and Pioneer Park gave way under a 19-car freight train carrying pelletized fertilizer, dropping one railcar into the Marys River and leaving another partially in the water.The derailment spilled 199 tons of urea into the river over nine days, according to the DEQ. Urea, which can be synthesized or harvested from animal urine and is used in fertilizer, both sinks and dissolves in water.DEQ alleges the derailment was caused by reckless disregard on the part of Portland & Western Railroad Inc., issuing a civil penalty of $81,600 to the company in a notice made public Friday, Dec. 19.Several attempts, by email and phone, to reach railroad officials went unanswered.The appealPortland & Western Railroad filed an appeal the same day, according to a document provided by the DEQ. The agency initially reported that it wasn’t sure the appeal was filed by the established deadline.The company has requested a hearing with the agency over the penalty and denies several of the DEQ’s findings outlined in the notice.In its appeal, the company denies that the Jan. 4 incident “had a significant adverse impact on human health and the environment.” It also denies that railcars continued to release urea into the river through Jan. 12, as the DEQ alleges.Furthermore, Portland & Western Railroad denies the “characterization of and the related factual allegations regarding the condition of the bridge.” It also denies how the state characterized the railroad’s actions with respect to ”the inspection, maintenance and operation of the bridge.”In its defense, the Portland & Western Railroad appeal claims the bridge failure was an “act of God/Nature,” saying river flooding generated unusually high and fast-flowing water at the time and was a significant contributing factor to the collapse.The state has said urea can pollute water by introducing excessive nitrogen that promotes algal blooms, depletes dissolved oxygen and disrupts aquatic ecosystems. When it breaks down into ammonia, it can be toxic to aquatic organisms.Precipitating event?In May 2022, the trestle caught fire and took nearly nine hours to extinguish. Witnesses reported hearing explosions, possibly from propane tanks at a homeless encampment under the bridge.At the time, a spokesperson for Portland & Western Railroad Inc. said the structure had been “inspected thoroughly” and repairs were made before rail traffic resumed.The DEQ says the company in fact made only “minor repairs” at the trestle damaged in the 2022 fire and ”continued running freight trains over it” rather than replacing it.“Given the threat to human health, safety and the environment posed by a train accident involving freight such as chemicals, disregarding that risk constituted a gross deviation from the standard of care a reasonable person would observe in that situation,” the DEQ said in the penalty notice.As such, the state is demanding Portland & Western reinspect every trestle over a body of water in Oregon.However, in the appeal the railroad company is denying that it operates approximately 478 miles in Oregon. The railroad was bought by Genesee & Wyoming Inc. in 1995 but still uses the Portland & Western name locally.

Pollution
Water
Chemicals

The Environmental and Human Rights Costs of China’s Clean Energy Investments Abroad

Chinese companies have pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy manufacturing investments overseas, but the projects are having significant social, environmental, and human rights impacts.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News as part of its Planet China series and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.The audience sat patiently through the presentations about the cluster of battery factories going up nearby. They listened to descriptions of the hazardous chemicals the plants will use, their huge water withdrawals and energy demands.WIRED's Guide to How the Universe WorksYour weekly roundup of the best stories on health care, the climate crisis, new scientific discoveries, and more. When it came time for questions, people began shifting in their chairs and standing up, making the cramped room feel even smaller.What if the chemicals leak, one woman asked. What’s in it for the politicians in their “velvet chairs,” another demanded. A third warned it would be just like the Soviet era, when iron and steel plants left a polluted legacy.Then a woman began to tear up as she told the 50 or so people who had gathered in a community center on a cold, dark evening that the factories’ smokestacks and hazardous materials were about a mile from her daughter’s kindergarten.“Please stand up for yourselves,” she said, urging the audience to spread the word.The Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL, is nearing completion on what could be one of Europe’s largest electric vehicle battery factories. The industrial park where it is located, outside Debrecen, Hungary’s second-largest city, also hosts several other manufacturers of battery parts and supplies. At least two of those are owned by Chinese companies, one by a South Korean firm. Another Chinese-owned battery factory is being built on the other side of the city.The surge of construction is part of a nationwide frenzy, prompted by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s goal to make Hungary a leading battery manufacturer. To reach this target, Orbán has looked primarily to Beijing. Chinese companies have announced or built at least 18 EV and battery-related projects in Hungary so far, $17 billion in pledged investments, according to data compiled by the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University.While the factories could position Hungary in the center of Europe’s transition off fossil fuels, they have prompted a backlash from residents worried about their impacts on public health and the environment.“Everyone will get their fair share of this stew,” said Éva Kozma, who leads the Mikepércs Mothers for the Environment Association, a citizen activist group that hosted the event. Kozma helped form the group after CATL announced its plans in 2022 and has since been highlighting the risks posed by battery development, identifying pollution events and scrutinizing the factories’ permits.

Energy
Activism
Climate

‘Ghost resorts’: as hundreds of ski slopes lie abandoned, will nature reclaim the Alps?

With the snow line edging higher, 186 French ski resorts have shut, while global heating threatens dozens moreWhen Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.Six years on, a yellowing newspaper dated 8 March 2018 sits folded on its side, as if someone has just flicked through it during a quiet spell. A half-drunk bottle of water remains on the table. Continue reading...

When Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.Six years on, a yellowing newspaper dated 8 March 2018 sits folded on its side, as if someone has just flicked through it during a quiet spell. A half-drunk bottle of water remains on the table.The Céüze 2000 resort when snow was plentiful.The Céüze resort in the southern French Alps had been open for 85 years and was one of the oldest in the country. Today, it is one of scores of ski resorts abandoned across France – part of a new landscape of “ghost stations”.More than 186 have been permanently closed already, raising questions about how we leave mountains – among the last wild spaces in Europe – once the lifts stop running.It was costing more to keep it open than closed … We looked into using artificial snow but realised that would delay the inevitableAs global heating pushes the snow line higher across the Alps, thousands of structures are being left to rot – some of them breaking down and contaminating the surrounding earth, driving debate about what should happen to the remnants of old ways of life – and whether to let nature reclaim the mountains.Snowfall at Céüze started becoming unreliable in the 1990s. To be financially viable, the resort needed to be open for at least three months. In that last winter, it only managed a month and a half. For the two years before that it had not been able to operate at all.Opening the resort each season cost the local authority as much as €450,000 (£390,000). As the season got shorter, the numbers no longer added up. To avoid a spiral of debt, the decision was made to close.The resort closed permanently during the 2020 winter due to a lack of snow. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian“It was costing us more to keep it open than to keep it closed for the season,” says Michel Ricou-Charles, president of the local Buëch‑Dévoluy community council, which oversees the site. Even under the most optimistic projections, the future looked bleak. “We looked into using artificial snow, but realised that would delay the inevitable,” he says.It was seven years before the trucks and helicopters came in to begin removing the pylons. Still, the local community grieved for the small, family-oriented resort, which was host to generations of memories. As demolitions began, they came to take nuts, bolts and washers as mementoes of what they had lost.Degrading wild terrainIn France, there are today 113 ski lifts totalling nearly 40 miles (63km) in length that have been abandoned, nearly three-quarters of them in protected areas. It is not just ski infrastructure. The Mountain Wilderness association estimates that there are more than 3,000 abandoned structures dotted around French mountains, slowly degrading Europe’s richest wild terrain. This includes military, industrial and forestry waste, such as old cables, bits of barbed wire, fencing and old machinery.There are 113 abandoned ski lifts in France, nearly three-quarters of which are in protected areas. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianCéüze ski resort is fast becoming one of these pollutants. The little wooden cabin at the bottom of the first button lift is shedding insulation. Ropes once used to mark out the piste hang in tatters and bits of plastic are falling off a pylon. The old sheds at each end of the ski lifts often still contain transformers, asbestos, motor oils and greases. Over time, these substances seep into the soil and water.Corrosion and rust from metal structures left over from the second world war, such as anti-tank rails and metal spikes, have led to changes in plant species in the surrounding area, potentially offering a vision of what could happen if pylons are left to rust over the coming decades.Don’t think that you are making eternal things; they will end up becoming obsolete … ask yourself: what will remain?Nicolas Masson, Mountain Wilderness“In Latin, we say memento mori – remember that you are mortal. Don’t think that you are making eternal things; they will end up becoming obsolete,” says Nicolas Masson, from Mountain Wilderness, which is campaigning for old ski infrastructure to be dismantled to make space for nature. “When you make them, ask yourself the question: what will remain?”Some believe the resorts should remain memorialised landscapes, honouring generations of people who lived and skied here; others believe they should be returned to wild landscapes with their disintegrating machinery removed.Ecologist Nicolas Masson is part of a campaign to dismantle old ski infrastructure. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianNature’s recoveryCéüze’s deconstruction started on 4 November 2025, a month before the ski season would once have kicked off. The resort’s ski lifts were airlifted out using a helicopter to minimise environmental disturbance and compression of the earth.French law requires ski lifts to be removed and dismantled if they are no longer in use. The law only applies to ski lifts built after 2017, however. Most last for 30 years, so no lifts would be considered obsolete until at least 2047. The process is also expensive: dismantling Céüze will cost €123,000. This means most abandoned ski infrastructure is left to disintegrate in situ. What is happening in Céüze is rare. With pylons cleared and the resort already closed for seven years, early signs of ecological recovery are already visible. A red haze floats over the white snow: winter berries of the dog rose are sprouting where the piste is no longer mown.Berries can be see on dog rose shrubs which are starting to flourish now the piste is no longer cleared for skiers. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianThe berries are important winter food for birds such as the rare red-billed chough, and their thorny stems are used for nest-building come spring. In the summer, orchids and yellow gentians bloom over these hillsides. The hills surrounding the site are classed as Natura 2000, meaning they are home to Europe’s rarest and most protected wildlife.The trees are coming back too. “I don’t know if it would take 10, 20 or 50 years, but this is becoming a forest,” says Masson.A fraction of a degree changes everything in the mountain environment. It’s the difference between snow and no snowWild boar and roe deer living in these forests will benefit from quieter winters. Birds such as grouse shelter from severe cold in winter by digging into the snow, and prefer deep powdery snow – just like skiers. The species is endangered in all the mountain ranges of France.The dismantling of Céüze comes at a time when many spaces for nature are shrinking. Pierre-Alexandre Métral, a geographer at the University of Grenoble Alpes, who studies abandoned ski resorts, says: “There is a lot of debate about the nature of this dismantling – is it just removing mechanical stuff, or are we attempting to put mountains back into a kind of original state?”Ecological recovery can be filled with surprises, he says, noting that the maintenance of pistes can be beneficial to some alpine flowers. “If we let nature come back spontaneously – in a wild, uncontrolled way – there are also risks that some invasive species that tend to be stronger could colonise faster,” says Métral.The hills around the former resort are home to some of Europe’s rarest and most protected wildlife. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianThere is scant research in this area, but studies from the Valcotos ski resort closure in Madrid’s Sierra de Guadarrama in 1999 show it led to significant recovery of native vegetation and cleaner waterways, while reducing soil erosion.“These are laboratories of what the mountain could be like in the future with new closures,” says Métral.On the brinkThe question of what to do with these places will play out across Europe’s mountains, and around the world. Skiing is disappearing from many alpine landscapes. “Many lower ones are already closed,” says Masson. “A fraction of a degree changes everything in the mountain environment. It’s the difference between having snow and no snow.”Richard Klein believes the resort should have been saved. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianResearch suggests that with 2C (3.6F) of global heating, more than half of existing resorts risk having too little snow. Higher altitude resorts are vulnerable to the loss of permafrost, threatening pylons that have been drilled into it. Some resorts, such as St-Honoré 1500, were abandoned before construction was even completed. Even bigger resorts, which typically have funds to invest in new pistes and artificial snow, are struggling to survive.For some, the loss of Céüze feels premature. Richard Klein,who lives in Roche des Arnauds, near Céüze, feels the ski resort could – and should – have been saved. “It’s a wonderful place to learn to ski – it’s the best. I think it’s really stupid they closed it,” he says. “There were always loads of people.” Klein believes the local authority should have begun using artificial snow, adding: “Now it’s too late.”Yet life has not disappeared from Céüze. In October 2025, the resort’s Hotel Galliard is being sold to a developer looking to open it for events, according to Ricou-Charles. A property developer has bought the children’s holiday residence, and a carpenter has moved into the building where the old ticket office was. The rooms used as a holiday camp for children have cracks appearing down the side, but might open again in the future.“Céüze will continue to live, despite the loss of the resort,” says Ricou-Charles. “We are not mourning Céüze because it is not dead.”On winter weekends dozens of cars still gather in the car park, with people enjoying quieter activities on the hillside, such as walking, snow-shoeing, cross-country skiing and sledging.A poster from the resort’s 80th anniversary celebrations. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianMasson does not like the term “ghost resort” because it suggests total abandonment when what is happening in his area is more complicated. “People continue to come,” he says. “We don’t need large machines to make mountains attractive.”What happens at Céüze is a glimpse into a future that faces dozens of other small resorts, and mountain landscapes, across Europe. “What is our heritage that we will want to keep,” asks Masson. “And what is just a ruin we want to dismantle? That is a question we have to ask every time, and it requires some reflection.”

Nature
Water
Forests

Sure, the Newspaper Informed. but as It Fades, Those Who Used It for Other Things Must Adjust, Too

The lurch in the media business has changed America over the last two decades

The sun would rise over the Rockies, and Robin Gammons would run to the front porch to grab the morning paper before school.She wanted the comics and her dad wanted sports, but the Montana Standard meant more than their daily race to grab “Calvin and Hobbes” or baseball scores. When one of the three kids made honor roll, won a basketball game or dressed a freshly slain bison for the History Club, appearing in the Standard's pages made the achievement feel more real. Robin became an artist with a one-woman show at a downtown gallery and the front-page article went on the fridge, too. Five years later, the yellowing article is still there. The Montana Standard slashed print circulation to three days a week two years ago, cutting back the expense of printing like 1,200 U.S. newspapers over the past two decades. About 3,500 papers closed over the same time. An average of two a week have shut this year.That slow fade, it turns out, means more than changing news habits. It speaks directly to the newspaper's presence in our lives — not just in terms of the information printed upon it, but in its identity as a physical object with many other uses.“You can pass it on. You can keep it. And then, of course, there’s all the fun things,” says Diane DeBlois, one of the founders of the Ephemera Society of America, a group of scholars, researchers, dealers and collectors who focus on what they call “precious primary source information.”“Newspapers wrapped fish. They washed windows. They appeared in outhouses,” she says. “And — free toilet paper.”The downward lurch in the media business has changed American democracy over the last two decades — some think for better, many for worse. What's indisputable: The gradual dwindling of the printed paper — the item that so many millions read to inform themselves and then repurposed into household workflows — has quietly altered the texture of daily life. American democracy and pet cages People used to catch up on the world, then save their precious memories, protect their floors and furniture, wrap gifts, line pet cages and light fires. In Butte, in San Antonio, Texas, in much of New Jersey and worldwide, lives without the printed paper are just a tiny bit different. For newspaper publishers, the expense of printing is just too high in an industry that's under strain in an online society. For ordinary people, the physical paper is joining the pay phone, the cassette tape, the answering machine, the bank check, the sound of the internal combustion engine and the ivory-white pair of women's gloves as objects whose disappearance marks the passage of time.“Very hard to see it while it’s happening, much easier to see things like that in even modest retrospect,” says Marilyn Nissenson, co-author of “Going Going Gone: Vanishing Americana.” “Young women were going to work and they wore them for a while and then one day they looked at them and thought, ‘This is ludicrous.’ That was a small but telling icon for a much larger social change.”Nick Mathews thinks a lot about newspapers. Both of his parents worked at the Pekin (Illinois) Daily Times. He went on to become sports editor of the Houston Chronicle and, now, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism.“I have fond memories of my parents using newspapers to wrap presents,” he says. “In my family, you always knew that the gift was from my parents because of what it was wrapped in.”In Houston, he recently recalled, the Chronicle reliably sold out when the Astros, Rockets or Texas won a championship because so many people wanted the paper as a keepsake. Four years ago, Mathews interviewed 19 people in Caroline County, Virginia, about the 2018 shuttering of the Caroline Progress, a 99-year-old weekly paper that was shuttered months before its 100th anniversary. In “Print Imprint: The Connection Between the Physical Newspaper and the Self,” published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, wistful Virginians remember their senior high school portrait and their daughter’s picture in a wedding dress appearing in the Progress. Plus, one told Mathews, "My fingers are too clean now. I feel sad without ink smudges.”Flush with cash from Omahans who invested years ago with local boy Warren Buffett, Nebraska Wildlife Rehab is a well-equipped center for migratory waterfowl, wading birds, reptiles, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, mink and beaver.“We get over 8,000 animals every year and we use that newspaper for almost all of those animals,” Executive Director Laura Stastny says.Getting old newspapers has never been a problem in this neighborly Midwestern city. Yet Stastny frets about the electronic future.“We do pretty well now,” she says. “If we lost that source and had to use something else or had to purchase something, that, with the available options that we have now, would cost us more than $10,000 a year easily.”That would be nearly 1% of the budget, Stastny says, but “I’ve never been in a position to be without them, so I might be shocked with a higher dollar figure."Until 1974, the Omaha World-Herald printed a morning edition and two afternoon ones, including a late-afternoon Wall Street Edition with closing prices.“Afternoon major-league baseball was still standard then, so I got to gorge on both baseball and stock market facts,” an 85-year-old Buffett told the World-Herald in 2013, By then, he had become the world’s most famous investor and the paper’s owner.The World-Herald ended its second afternoon edition in 2016 and Buffett left the newspaper business five years ago. Fewer than 60,000 households take the paper today, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, down from nearly more than 190,000 in 2005, or about one per household.Few places symbolize the move from print to digital more than Akalla, a district of Stockholm where the ST01 data center sits at a site once occupied by the factory that prints Sweden main newspaper, Kaun says.“They have less and less machines, and instead the building is taken over more and more by this co-location data center,” she says.Data centers use huge amounts of energy, of course, and the environmental benefit of using less printing paper is also offset by the enormous popularity of online shopping.“You will see a decline in printed papers, but there is a huge increase in packaging,” says Cecilia Alcoreza, manager, of forest sector transformation for the World Wildlife Fund. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced in August that it would stop providing a print edition at year’s end and go completely digital, making Atlanta the largest U.S. metro area without a printed daily newspaper.The habit of following the news — of being informed about the world — can't be divorced from the existence of print, says Anne Kaun, professor of media and communication studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm. Children who grew up in homes with printed newspapers and magazines randomly came across news and socialized into a news-reading habit, Kaun observed. With cell phones, that doesn't happen. "I do think it meaningfully changes how we relate to each other, how we relate to things like the news. It is reshaping attention spans and communications,” says Sarah Wasserman, a cultural critic and assistant dean at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire who specializes in changing forms of communication. “These things will always continue to exist in certain spheres and certain pockets and certain class niches,” she says. “But I do think they’re fading."Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – December 2025

Business
Animals
Forests

Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing

These fungi boost plant growth and restore depleted ecosystems, but federal funding for a library housing them has been cut – and it may be forced to closeInside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fungal spores harvested from these plants, then carefully preserved by the researchers.The samples in this seemingly unremarkable room are part of the International Collection of Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (INVAM), the world’s largest living library of soil fungi. Four decades in the making, it could cease to exist within a year due to federal budget cuts. Continue reading...

Inside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fungal spores harvested from these plants, then carefully preserved by the researchers.The samples in this seemingly unremarkable room are part of the International Collection of Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (INVAM), the world’s largest living library of soil fungi. Four decades in the making, it could cease to exist within a year due to federal budget cuts.For leading mycologist Toby Kiers, this would be catastrophic. “INVAM represents a library of hundreds of millions of years of evolution,” said Kiers, executive director of the Society for Protection of Underground Networks (Spun). “Ending INVAM for scientists is like closing the Louvre for artists.”The arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi conserved by INVAM are symbiotic organisms that support the growth of 70% of land plant species across all ecosystems. In exchange for sugars and fats, they provide plants with vital nutrients – phosphorus, nitrogen, trace metals – and buffer them against drought, disease and other stressors. They also represent a substantial underground sink for carbon dioxide. INVAM maintains living spores of more than 900 distinct fungal strains collected from six continents. It’s an irreplaceable hub for mycological research worldwide – but these fungi also have practical power: restoring degraded ecosystems, rebuilding damaged soils and slashing artificial fertilizer use. They are essential tools for growing food and undoing the environmental harm caused by agriculture.Established in 1985, INVAM has relied on successive federal grants for its entire existence. Its latest US National Science Foundation (NSF) funding ended in May. As curator and professor Jim Bever and team prepare a new funding proposal, the outlook is ominous: the Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 would slash NSF funding by 57% and make it even more difficult to win the remaining funds.Without another grant, Bever estimates the collection can limp along for perhaps another year. Beyond that, INVAM could be forced to close. “I have a hard time thinking about that possibility,” Bever said, “but we can’t deny it’s true.” For now, INVAM is surviving on temporary research grants and volunteer labor. Unlike the collection’s previous home at West Virginia University, which provided institutional support for personnel, the University of Kansas covers infrastructure and overhead costs but not staffing.Liz Koziol and Terra Lubin stand amid sudan grass plants used to culture AM fungal spores in INVAM’s greenhouse at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Photograph: Ben MartynogaAnd the staff are critical. Unlike seeds stored in vaults or cells frozen indefinitely, without sustained, meticulous work, the spores of AM fungi die. At INVAM, associate curator Lubin works at a microscope to isolate and identify AM spores from intact soils. Seen through the microscope, these spores are visually stunning: glistening orbs, packed with nutrients needed to support young fungi.Lubin then paints isolated spores onto the roots of a sudan grass seedling. These host plants will grow in a sterile greenhouse for 12 weeks while fungi colonize their roots and soil. Then the plants will be water-starved, prompting the fungus to produce millions of spores, which workers harvest and store in the adjoining cold room. For every one of INVAM’s 900-plus strains, this process must be repeated annually.“The isolation and maintenance of AM fungi requires an arcane skillset,” said Bever. “There really isn’t another lab in the US that has been doing this.”Most commercial biofertilizers are ‘really just terrible’INVAM prepares small batches of AM fungal spores to distribute or sell to other researchers and land managers. But Bever is clear this isn’t a commercial operation, and INVAM has neither the capacity nor the ambition to scale up production. That matters because the commercial AM fungus market is rife with problems.In a 2024 study, Bever and colleagues tested 23 products marketed as fungal biofertilizers – AM spores alleged to boost plant growth naturally. Eighty-seven per cent failed to colonize plant roots. Many contained only dead spores or no spores at all. Some products contained known plant pathogens. A large-scale 2022 study by European researchers revealed similar failings. Bever and Koziol’s 2024 mata-analysis of global research reached the same disturbing conclusion: the majority of commercial AM fertilizers are worthless.“Unfortunately, the quality of most products available to farmers or restoration practitioners is really just terrible,” said Bever.Yet land managers are buying them. The global market for fungal biofertilizers is worth $1.29bn. Most of that money is being wasted on products that simply do not work. Bever sees two key problems: the industry lacks regulation, and most producers lack the specialized expertise needed to steward and distribute these delicate organisms effectively. Meanwhile, the public research infrastructure that could provide real solutions struggles to survive.But quality biofertilizers can be pricelessThe failure of most commercial biofertilizers stands in stark contrast to research demonstrating what these organisms can actually achieve.At a field research plot near INVAM’s base in Lawrence, Kansas, the impact of invisible fungi is obvious. Nine years ago, this was a tired old hay field, dominated by invasive grass. Today it is a riot of color and diversity. Twelve-foot prairie docks tower over head-tall grasses; grasshoppers leap and butterflies flit between late blooming flowers, even in October. This small patch has become a reincarnation of the tall-grass prairie that once dominated the central US states. It was this ecosystem that built the deep, fertile soils that made this area such a prime target for conversion to farmland – a shift that has diminished the prairie to a mere 1-4% of its original extent.AM fungi drove the transformation. In 2016, INVAM curator Koziol seeded plots with dozens of native prairie plants, plus AM spores from surviving old-growth prairie fragments. Control plots received the seeds but not the fungi. As a result, dozens of plants in the control plots failed to establish and all plants grew slowly. Nine years on, the difference between control and AM-treated plots is still clear.Modern agriculture decimates AM fungi – which is why reintroducing them can deliver such dramatic results. Fungicides used to control plant diseases seep into soils, killing AM fungi. Excessive synthetic fertilizer application causes plants to break symbiotic ties, starving fungi. Ploughing destroys their underground networks. As a result, AM fungi often vanish entirely from cultivated land, “We can barely even find the DNA [of AM fungi] in some of the soils that have been in intensive agricultural production,” said leading fungal ecologist Matthias Rillig of Freie Universität Berlin.This matters because AM fungi disperse slowly – they produce no above-ground fruiting bodies to scatter spores on the wind. As a result, reintroduction is often essential for restoration.Building on their successful prairie restoration experiments, Bever and Koziol see potential for AM fungi in establishing prairie strips – patches of deep-rooted, species-rich perennial plants within existing farm fields that boost pollinators and limit fertilizer runoff, which contaminates groundwater and creates dead zones in bodies of water.“Prairie strips are awesome,” said Bever, but he believes there’s grander potential in the Conservation Reserve Program. This federal scheme has already enlisted more than 20m acres, supporting landowners to transition marginal farmland into native grassland and woodland to improve soil health, retain water and store carbon. “The return on that investment would be much greater if there was a national policy to reinoculate with native mycorrhizal fungi,” he said.Beyond habitat restoration, and despite the current failure of most commercial fungal biofertilizers, AM fungi can be useful in mainstream agriculture. In 2016, Koziol founded MycoBloom to produce high-quality preparations of old-growth prairie fungus spores. In addition to restoration practitioners, customers report promising results in vineyards, orange orchards, and high-value organic crops such as peppers and tomatoes.The effects of AM fungi are likely to be strongest in perennial crops, including new grains like Kernza, whose roots remain in the ground long enough for stable symbiosis to establish. But evidence shows AM fungi can also boost growth of annual staples such as maize.“The benefits of mycorrhizal fungi are real,” said Bever. Yet scientists are only beginning to understand how these organisms work. Numerous research questions about AM fungi can only be answered with living libraries such as INVAM, Bever added. Why do AM fungal cells contain thousands of nuclei, for instance, when ours need just one? And how can apparently distinct species merge their cells to create hybrids? “Research on mycorrhizal fungi is totally dependent on having these fungi in culture,” Bever said.“The current administration has shifted funding away from basic science,” he added, “and while there is always a hope that private donors could fill that void, I don’t think there is a real substitute for federal investment.”Kiers, now a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, described how visiting INVAM in the 1990s to identify spores collected from Panama’s hyper-diverse rainforests shaped her entire career: “After seeing the collection, I was hooked. It changed the way I saw the underground.”“To have any hope in leveraging fungi for future climate change strategies, restoration efforts and regenerative agriculture, we need to safeguard this collection,” Kiers said.Merlin Sheldrake, mycologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures, agreed emphatically.“These organisms are vital ecosystem engineers that hold the key to so many problems we face,” he said. “To lose this library would be an unimaginable tragedy.”

Agriculture
Climate
CO2

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