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Galápagos had no native amphibians. Then it was invaded by hundreds of thousands of frogs

Scientists are only beginning to grasp the scale of the issue and understand what impact the tree frogs may have on the islands’ rare wildlifeOn the way to her office at the Charles Darwin research station, biologist Miriam San José crouches down near a shallow pond shrouded by vegetation and reaches deep into the foliage, pulling out a small green plastic box recorder.She left it there overnight to capture the infamous croaks of a Fowler’s snouted treefrog (Scinax quinquefasciatus), known to Galápagos scientists as an invasive threat, with repercussions researchers are only beginning to grasp. Continue reading...

On the way to her office at the Charles Darwin research station, biologist Miriam San José crouches down near a shallow pond shrouded by vegetation and reaches deep into the foliage, pulling out a small green plastic box recorder.She left it there overnight to capture the infamous croaks of a Fowler’s snouted treefrog (Scinax quinquefasciatus), known to Galápagos scientists as an invasive threat, with repercussions researchers are only beginning to grasp.Despite abounding with wildlife – centuries-old giant tortoises, swimming iguanas, and the finches that sparked Darwin’s theory of evolution – the Galápagos archipelago off the coast of Ecuador has long been free from amphibians. Until recently, no frogs, toads, newts, or salamanders waddled or hopped on its volcanic islands.In the late 1990s, that changed. Some small tree frogs made their way from mainland Ecuador to the islands, likely as stowaways on cargo ships.Fowler’s snouted tree frogs arrived in the 90s and have become established on Isabela and Santa Cruz islands. Photograph: Rashid Cruz/Charles Darwin Research StationGenetic studies suggest that, over the years, there have been repeated accidental introductions to the archipelago, and the frogs now have a strong foothold on two islands: Isabela and Santa Cruz. The population is growing so fast that scientists have been struggling to keep track, estimating numbers in the hundreds of thousands on each island, across urban and agricultural areas, but also in the protected Galápagos national park.When San José marked frogs and tried to recapture them in the following 10 days – a technique commonly used to make estimates of animal populations – she could find just one marked frog every once in a while, suggesting their populations were huge. They estimated 6,000 frogs in a single pond. “Our estimates are still very conservative,” says San José. “I am pretty sure there are even more.”The frogs’ abundance is clear from the acoustic chaos they cause. “The amount of frogs and the noise – it’s really insane,” says San José.For the scientists, their nightly mating calls are helpful in estimating their presence in far-flung areas, using recorders like the one outside San José’s office. But local farmers say the calls are so raucous they keep them up at night.“During the wet season, I constantly hear their calls and they’re really loud,” says Jadira Larrea Saltos, a coffee farmer at Finca La Envidia on Santa Cruz.“At first it was a surprise, seeing the first frogs in the area,” says Larrea Saltos, who started noticing their abundance about three years ago when one jumped on her hand as she was walking out of her front door. Now she has more poultry on her property, which she thinks has helped keep the populations relatively at bay.The noise isn’t the fundamental problem, though. While the species has been in the Galápagos for almost 30 years, scientists still know very little about its impact on the archipelago’s delicately balanced land and water ecosystems.Scientists are finding out more about the frogs, including that they can remain as tadpoles for as long as six months. Photograph: Joshua Vela Fonseca/Charles Darwin Research StationOn islands, it is very common for invasive species to thrive, as they have none of their natural predators. The Galápagos counts 1,645 invasive species, many of which are seriously disrupting the safety of its endemic ones. Avian vampire flies are bleeding rare bird hatchlings dry, and the hardy blackberry plant is encroaching on the Scalesia forests.A 2020 study suggests the invasive frogs are voracious insect eaters, and might be disproportionately consuming rare insects found only on the archipelago, or depleting the food sources of the islands’ rare birds, disrupting the food chain. Since the frogs’ diet is dominated by moths, they could even be affecting pollination on the islands, according to ecologist María del Mar Moretta-Urdiales, who was involved in the study.The Galápagos frogs have exhibited some unusual traits, including living in brackish water, which is uncommon for amphibians. Their metamorphosis process is also extremely variable, with some tadpoles turning into frogs very quickly and others taking a long time: San José observed one which remained as a tadpole in her lab for six months.“We really don’t know this part,” she says, worried the tadpoles could be affecting the islands’ freshwater, a very scarce resource in Galápagos. And even though studies show that the Galápagos diving beetle now eats large numbers of tadpoles in its diet, it doesn’t seem to be making a dent in their populations.More research is needed to determine the best way to control the frogs without harming other species. Photograph: Rashid Cruz/Charles Darwin Research StationMethods to curb the frogs in the early 2000s were largely unsuccessful. Park rangers tried capturing large numbers by hand and gradually increasing the salinity of lagoons in vain. Research suggests spraying coffee – which is highly toxic to frogs – or using electrocution could help, but these methods aren’t necessarily safe for other rare Galápagos species.Without answers to more of the basic questions about their biology and impact, culling the frogs might not even be the right way to go, says San José.While she hopes the growing use of environmental DNA techniques and genetic analysis will help her team make sense of the invader, funding for the project has been hard to come by. “Everybody wants to give funding for preserving frogs,” says San José. “But it’s harder to find funding for an introduced frog that you might want to control for.”Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage

Animals
Extinction
Food

How El Jefe, the Lone Arizona Jaguar Who Captivated a Nation in 2016, Became a 'Rock Star'

Once called “America’s last jaguar,” the solitary male wandered across the southern border in 2011 and became the centerpiece of a campaign to protect habitat in the Santa Rita Mountains

How El Jefe, the Lone Arizona Jaguar Who Captivated a Nation in 2016, Became a ‘Rock Star’ Once called “America’s last jaguar,” the solitary male wandered across the southern border in 2011 and became the centerpiece of a campaign to protect habitat in the Santa Rita Mountains James Campbell - Author, Heart of the Jaguar November 4, 2025 8:00 a.m. A camera trap image of El Jefe, a male jaguar who made international news as the only known jaguar in the United States. USFWS When the jaguar who came to be known as El Jefe crossed the United States-Mexico border in 2011 and entered Arizona, he had no idea he was walking onto a stage where he would be the star performer.  He had been on the move for days, or possibly weeks, having left his home 125 miles south of the border, in the 90-square-mile Northern Jaguar Reserve in the Sierra Madres of northwestern Mexico, where teams of American and Mexican conservationists were struggling to protect a waning population of the world’s northernmost jaguars. El Jefe had likely fled to save his life. At 2 years of age, and weighing just 120 pounds, staying put had become dangerous. Larger, more territorial males, unwilling to tolerate an adolescent intruder, prowled the countryside. But unlike the others, who escaped with their lives by traveling south, El Jefe responded to the magnetic pull of his internal compass by fleeing north, becoming just the fourth documented male jaguar in two decades to make the border crossing into Arizona and what was once jaguar country. There, he was utterly alone—perhaps the loneliest jaguar in the history of the species—but content for a time.  In 1963, the last known female jaguar in the U.S. was killed by a hunter at 9,000 feet in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests of eastern Arizona. The hunter, who thought he was zeroing in on a big bobcat, shot her at 80 yards in the evening’s dwindling light. Two years later, the last legally killed jaguar, a male, was shot by a hunter in the Patagonia Mountains of southern Arizona. In 1969, Arizona finally outlawed most jaguar hunting, but with no known females roaming the state, the prospects for a rebounding population of indigenous big cats were exceedingly dim.  No one knows exactly when El Jefe entered the U.S., but it’s possible that a Border Patrol helicopter pilot who had reported seeing a jaguar in the Santa Rita Mountains in June 2011 was the first one to spot him. The first clearly documented sighting of El Jefe was in November 2011, east of the Santa Ritas in the Whetstone Mountains, 25 miles north of the Mexican border, by an Arizona man named Donnie Fenn. Fenn ran a part-time business, Chasin’ Tail Guide Service, that specialized in mountain lion hunts. He and his 10-year-old daughter, Alyson, already an accomplished horsewoman, left their home on a Saturday morning bound for the Whetstones.  Once they saddled their mules, they rode with a pack of eight dogs up ahead singing. They were about to call it a day when the strike hound cut a trail. The Fenns followed the dogs as they ran through the canyon in full cry. After a short chase, Fenn saw his hounds 200 yards ahead, bellowing frantically. Calming his mule, he approached slowly. Assuming his dogs had treed a mountain lion, he used his telephoto lens to zoom in on the tree. As he got closer, he saw it. He was astounded by its size. He guessed that it was twice as big as a mountain lion. Then he dismounted. His heart was pounding, but he was mesmerized. He could sense the jaguar’s power. He watched as the big cat slowly climbed down the tree. When its feet hit the ground, he thought for a moment it might turn to pounce on him. Instead, it took off at a high speed in the opposite direction, and his dogs gave chase.  About two miles down the trail, the hounds brought the jaguar to bay. It was growling in a raw and aggressive way, making sounds Fenn had never heard from an animal. His hounds, excited to the point of frenzy, had encircled the jaguar, and it was swiping at them. He worried that the big cat would tear his dogs apart. But the jaguar made its final escape, and Fenn shouted to his crazed hounds, commanding them to hold hard. “It’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me,” Fenn later told the Arizona Daily Star. “I got to see it in real life, my daughter got to see it, but I hope never to encounter it again.”  James Campbell tells the story of the extraordinary undertaking to save the jaguar, as well as the impassioned conservationist Alan Rabinowitz, who dedicated his life to the species. Fenn alerted Arizona Game and Fish Department officials, who found hair samples left behind by the animal and obligingly told his tale to the media.  What El Jefe did after encountering Fenn and his hounds, no one really knows. Having learned from his experience in the Whetstones, he likely grew even more stealthy, moving largely at night. He wasn’t seen again until late 2012, when some of the hundreds of remote wireless infrared cameras operated by the University of Arizona’s Jaguar Survey and Monitoring Project captured photos of a male jaguar lurking in the Santa Rita Mountains—the perfect hiding place for a lone jaguar. A wildlife camera automatically snapped this photo of El Jefe on October 25, 2012. USFWS / UA / DHS The wild Santa Ritas, just 28 miles southeast of Tucson, had everything El Jefe needed: high country, with its narrow ridges and steep slopes, swathed in pine forests, where he could move unseen; mid-elevations scattered with live oaks, Gambel oaks and junipers; and fecund washes thick with walnuts, hackberry, willows and cottonwoods. And an impressive array of wild game was there for the taking—deer, javelinas, coatis, skunks, turkeys, jackrabbits and raccoons. He was able to find water in streams, ephemeral ponds and springs. Mountain lions inhabited the area, but they seemed to know, instinctively, who the boss was.  The primary danger for El Jefe was that he was fond of space and was partial to wandering. In his next encounter with people—or perhaps a busy highway—he might not be so lucky.  Among the handful who knew of El Jefe’s presence, no one was better acquainted with the jaguar than wildlife biologist Chris Bugbee. Along with his 65-pound Belgian Malinois Mayke—who had failed as a Border Patrol drugs and explosives dog and whom he had carefully trained to be a jaguar scent detection dog—the burly and rugged Bugbee had been steadily tracking El Jefe’s movements across the Santa Ritas for the University of Arizona.  It took a long time for Bugbee to turn the skittish canine into a dependable jaguar scat detection dog. But at some point, Mayke blossomed. She’d scent over puma scat and would drive off impudent black bears, but when she found jaguar scat, she would stand over it and bark repeatedly. The longer Bugbee and Mayke tracked El Jefe, the more curious the big cat became. Often, when they would return to a camera that they had checked days before, the time code would show that El Jefe had visited that same camera just minutes after they had. In other words, the big cat was tracking them. At first, it made Bugbee break out in an anxious sweat, but he told me that as they became more familiar with each other, it turned into a “special relationship,” one that Bugbee came to “cherish”—just him, his faithful dog and the United States’ only wild jaguar. Fun fact: A jaguar’s spots A jaguar’s tan-and-black spots are called “rosettes,” and each animal has its own unique pattern of these markings. That’s how scientists can recognize an individual jaguar in camera trap images, even years later. By 2015, El Jefe—though not yet enmeshed in a thicket of complicated and conflicting human ambitions—was becoming a local legend and something of a household name as media attention to the “Santa Rita jaguar” or “America’s last jaguar” intensified. But the charismatic big cat was still an anonymous jaguar who had taken up residence some 200 miles north of where he was born. For some biologists, his presence was a thrilling development, signifying the auspicious return of jaguars to an area where for millennia big cats had thrived. However, Alan Rabinowitz, an American zoologist and big cat expert, was not especially impressed and went on record saying that a lone big cat, especially a male, wandering the mountains of southern Arizona, was nothing more than a fortuitous exception and had little or no ecological significance. If anything, he argued, jaguars dispersing from a fragile population in Sonora, Mexico, were acting as desperate organisms might, searching for a way to survive.  The Center for Biological Diversity wasn’t buying Rabinowitz’s indifference. The gutsy and contentious Tucson-based nonprofit environmental organization, with a reputation for filing lawsuits based on the Endangered Species Act since its founding in 1989, began a campaign in May 2015, focusing on the big cat and on Arizona jaguars in general. Not long afterward, Mike Stark and Russ McSpadden, from the center’s communication department, and Randy Serraglio, a magnetic and outspoken conservation advocate for the center, began laying plans for a considerably more aggressive publicity campaign with the ambitious goal of branding jaguars as icons of wildness in southern Arizona. But perhaps their greatest dream, one they were reluctant even to whisper about outside the confines of the conference room, was to turn the Santa Ritas jaguar into a national cynosure and, dare they hope, even a rock star.  While brainstorming, Serraglio, McFadden and Stark hit on the notion of holding a naming contest for the big cat. An anonymous apex predator on the loose in Tucson’s remote outskirts was exciting, but a jaguar with a resonant moniker could be a powerful symbol. Further refining the idea, they decided to enlist the help of local schoolkids. They settled on Valencia Middle School in Tucson, composed largely of Indigenous and Mexican American students, which had a jaguar as its mascot. Serraglio took the lead, contacting Valencia’s principal, who embraced the idea. Together she and Serraglio established a jaguar curriculum. Following the study unit, their plan was to hold a schoolwide vote to determine the jaguar’s name. Simultaneously, the center ran an online vote for their members and supporters across the country, using the teaser: “Cast your vote: ProtectOurJaguars.org.”  The program was even more successful than Serraglio imagined. On the final day of the study unit, the school staged a huge pep rally, replete with a large, 12-by-14-­foot Chinese-dragon-style jaguar puppet, operated by five people; music and singing; and a relay race where kids, emulating jaguars, had to secure “resources” around the school grounds while avoiding “threats” (a mine, roads and the border wall). Serraglio described the celebration as a “jaguar frenzy.” McFadden filmed and did interviews with the students about what name they chose and why. Later he spliced together the video clips, which the center used on its website.  In early October 2015, Serraglio tallied all the votes from the school and the online campaign. The top five names were: O’oshad (the Tohono O’odham word for jaguar); Rito, in honor of the Santa Ritas; Scout; Spirit; and El Jefe. The winner was El Jefe, Spanish for “the Boss,” by a whisker. One month later, on November 2, Serraglio and the center staged a live press event at the school to announce El Jefe as the winner of the jaguar naming contest. Meanwhile, in the months leading up to November 2, Chris Bugbee had grown frustrated with the University of Arizona’s resistance to making public his stirring and unprecedented footage of El Jefe. From his perspective, the footage was “gold” for jaguar conservation in the U.S. that the directors of the project refused to use. He’d also become deeply upset with the Forest Service, which had issued a preliminary permit for a copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains that would challenge the inviolability of the Endangered Species Act, which protected jaguars like El Jefe and their habitat. One of Bugbee’s videos showed El Jefe just a half-mile from the proposed mine site. “We wanted to show the world that we still have jaguars in Arizona,” Bugbee told the Arizona Daily Star. “We wanted to get the American public involved in this question: Do we want to recover jaguars, or do we want them to just become a piece of local history?” Bugbee later spoke of his frustration: “Nobody wanted to do any advocacy for jaguars or say a word against this mine … not the university, not the wildlife agencies. El Jefe was like a dirty little secret they wanted to keep quiet. It didn’t sit right with me. It kept me up at night.” El Jefe, caught on camera in 2013 United States Fish and Wildlife Service via Wikimedia Commons So Bugbee and his wife, Aletris Neils, a fellow biologist who had studied black bears in Florida, contemplated going public with the photos and the video footage of El Jefe that Bugbee had collected under the aegis of the University of Arizona’s Jaguar Survey and Monitoring Project. Though Bugbee hadn’t intended to mix science with advocacy, both he and Neils sensed that the big cat could be a galvanizing publicity tool in the fight against the copper mine. They also feared for him. Rural Arizona could be hostile territory for a jaguar. Someone filled with hate might try to track down El Jefe and shoot him.  Bugbee and Neils agonized over the decision, knowing, too, the kind of discord it could create in the academic and conservation community. Some would applaud it, but most would regard the move as roguish, and it would alienate colleagues who believed that the university had proprietary rights to the footage or that under no circumstances should a vulnerable jaguar’s movements ever be made public. The University of Arizona and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) would eventually employ a federal agent and a prosecutor to investigate Bugbee’s and Neils’ conduct for allegedly stealing intellectual property and cameras; five years later, it ended with no convictions.  At the same time, the University of Arizona’s money for Bugbee’s camera program ran out. Bugbee tried to convince the FWS, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and even the Forest Service to pick up the funding, but when they balked, he approached the Center for Biological Diversity. The center ponied up the money to keep Bugbee’s research going, but it negotiated a promise from him that he would provide footage it could use in its ongoing PR campaign for jaguars.  Bugbee and Mayke then resumed tracking El Jefe, using an expired university research permit. By the fall of 2015, Bugbee realized that after appearing regularly and reliably on cameras for several years, El Jefe was nowhere to be found. Mayke hadn’t barked in months.  In late January 2016, Serraglio alerted Bugbee that McSpadden had cut a 41-second video clip, which the center was planning to release on the Conservation CATalyst website, an organization Bugbee and Neils had established hoping to educate the public about big cats and promote their protection. The center had picked a day that would precede the local Barrio Brewing Company’s much-anticipated rollout of its El Jefe Hefeweizen, infused with catnip. Bugbee and Neils held their breath. On February 3, according to plan, the center released the video—actually a compilation of three separate videos—showing El Jefe, now a robust 150-pound male in his prime, moving like a ghost through the forest and up a creek bed. Midway through, El Jefe walks, broad-shouldered and muscular, right into the camera. El Jefe: Americas Only Known Wild Jaguar According to Bugbee, once the video hit and legend merged with reality, “all hell broke loose.” The following weeks were nothing but a “blur.” The press coverage was preponderantly positive, but the FWS field supervisor for the Southwest, unaware that El Jefe had likely decamped for new territory, accused Bugbee of blatantly violating the terms of the research permit and endangering the big cat’s life.  The video went viral. Twenty-one million television viewers in the U.S. saw it, and El Jefe, the incarnation of beauty and wildness, became an object of adoration and admiration, a national—and international—sensation. He was Arizona’s version of the iconic Yellowstone wolf, O-Six, or Los Angeles’ beloved puma, P-22, and as close to a natural cause célèbre as the state had ever seen. Within just 48 hours, the video had reportedly appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” NBC’s “Today Show,” CBS “This Morning” and nearly 830 other TV segments in the U.S. Millions more saw the video on national newspaper websites. The center’s rough estimate was that 100 million people globally viewed the video. El Jefe was indeed a rock star. But by the time El Jefe became famous, he was already gone. He likely did what jaguars sometimes do—disappear. Some claimed he went east into the Patagonia Mountains. Others said he followed his sun compass hundreds of miles back into the foothills of the Sierra Madres. Bugbee, who in almost four years of tracking El Jefe never had the good fortune of laying his eyes on the big cat, recalls some of the last photos of El Jefe, in the fall of 2015, his testicles bulging. He thinks the big lusty cat, obeying a biological imperative, went south in search of a mate, knowing that his sojourn in Arizona was reproductively doomed. What exactly happened to El Jefe, no one knows. But for a few years he graced Arizona with his presence, and for a brief time, he captivated a nation. Excerpted from Heart of the Jaguar: The Extraordinary Conservation Effort to Save the Americas’ Legendary Cat. Copyright ©2025 by James Campbell. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

Mountains
Animals
Conservation

Massive crocodile taken to Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo despite traditional owners’ anger over removal

Old Faithful, measuring more than 4 metres, rehomed to Sunshine Coast facility after removal from far north Queensland waterholeFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAn “iconic” saltwater crocodile has been transported more than 1,600km to Australia Zoo – made famous by Steve Irwin – almost two months after its controversial removal from its far north Queensland habitat.But while the Sunshine Coast zoo said it was proud to become the “forever home” of Old Faithful, as the crocodile that measures longer than 4 metres is known, traditional owners said they were “very upset” by the outcome, which conservationists describe as a “cover-up”. Continue reading...

An “iconic” saltwater crocodile has been transported more than 1,600km to Australia Zoo – made famous by Steve Irwin – almost two months after its controversial removal from its far north Queensland habitat.But while the Sunshine Coast zoo said it was proud to become the “forever home” of Old Faithful, as the crocodile that measures longer than 4 metres is known, traditional owners said they were “very upset” by the outcome, which conservationists describe as a “cover-up”.Australia Zoo announced the crocodile had arrived at its facility, near the Glasshouse Mountains of south-east Queensland, via a social media video on Monday morning.The clip begins with footage of the late Steve Irwin capturing Old Faithful in the waterhole for which he is named in Rinyirru – or Lakefield national park – as portrayed in the mid-1990s television series The Crocodile Hunter.In that episode, Irwin “hazed” the apex predator, before returning him to his home on the Normanby River, in an effort to instil fear of humans into the big reptile and so avoid conflict with anglers – a pioneering experiment which appears to have been successful for almost two decades.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailBut that coexistence unravelled on 8 September when Old Faithful and a second – albeit smaller – crocodile were removed from the river by wildlife officers.It came after the Queensland environment department said it received reports of the crocodile’s repeated, concerning escalating behaviour “as a direct result of it being fed by people”.Old Faithful in a shallow pool at a government facility in Cairns after his removal from the wildIn the social media video, Australia Zoo’s Toby Millyard says the crocodile research team he leads had initially hoped Old Faithful would be released back into its natural habitat.“Once we heard that he was unreleasable, we jumped in to offer to give him a home because we know that we can give him the best of the best for the rest of his life,” Millyard said.But the Rinyirru (Lakefield) Aboriginal Corporation chair, Alwyn Lyall, said he was saddened and “pissed off” to learn on Monday morning that this “important and totemic” animal had been taken so far from his country and its traditional owners.“This crocodile comes from up here in Cape York,” Lyall said. “A zoo is the wrong place for that animal.“To remove him over the weekend without [any] notice or notification to us traditional owners, or anything – it’s like a thief in the night sort of rubbish?“We never gave the authority for that to happen.”Lyall said that if the croc had to be rehomed, he would rather Old Faithful go to a facility in Babinda, less than 400km south, and more accessible to traditional owners. Croc Country Australia also runs training courses with Indigenous rangers, and is home to another icon crocodile removed from Rinyirru.Its owner, Jesse Crampton, confirmed he had put in an expression of interest to the department to house Old Faithful.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Breaking News AustraliaGet the most important news as it breaksPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionCrampton said he established the facility specifically to meet a “housing crisis” for crocodiles deemed icons under Queensland law – which are longer than 4 metres – but also considered a problem by authorities.“We’ve got a purpose-built, newly established crocodile facility designed to house icon crocodiles for these kinds of scenarios,” he said.In September, the Environmental Defenders Office – acting for advocacy group Community Representation of Crocodiles (Croc) – lodged a request for a statement of reasons for Old Faithful’s removal.Croc’s co-founder Amanda French said the department requested an extension for the request until Wednesday, but had simultaneously “fast-tracked the paperwork and transport logistics” to move Old Faithful. She said this amounted to a “cover-up for mistakes” made in a removal from the wild that lacked “transparency” and “cultural authority”.She said Old Faithful would no doubt provide “a great commercial opportunity” for the zoo.“It’s incredibly sad that a crocodile that survived decades in the wild – swimming enormous distances, feeding on whatever he wants, mating with whomever he wants – is now sentenced to a lifetime in [captivity] … for tourists’ [amusement],” French said.A department spokesperson confirmed the smaller reptile captured along with Old Faithful had been relocated to a crocodile farm in far north Queensland.

Conservation
Water
Crisis

Controversial UK oil field publishes full scale of climate impact

The impact from the Rosebank oil field is estimated at nearly 250 million tonnes of planet warming CO2.

The UK's largest undeveloped oil field has revealed the full scale of its environmental impact, should it gain approval by the government.Developers of the Rosebank oil field said nearly 250 million tonnes of planet warming gas would be released from using oil products from the field.The amount would vary each year, but by comparison the UK's annual emissions in 2024 were 371 million tonnes.The field's developer said its emissions were "not significant" considering the UK's international climate commitments.Rosebank is an oil and gas field which lies about 80 miles north-west of Shetland and is one of the largest undeveloped discoveries of fossil fuels in UK waters.It is said to contain up to 300 million barrels of oil and some gas, and is owned by Norwegian energy giant Equinor and British firm Ithaca Energy.The field was originally approved in 2023, but in July a court ruled that a more detailed assessment of the field's environmental impact was required, taking into account the effect on the climate of burning any fossil fuels extracted from it.A public consultation has now been opened, and will run until 20th November 2025.The final decision on whether to approve the field will be made by the Energy Secretary.Until recently such projects were only required to consider the impact on the environment from extracting the fossil fuels.But in June last year the Supreme Court ruled that authorities must take account of the impact from also using the products, after a woman in Surrey challenged the development of her local gas project.This ruling was then used in a further challenge to the Rosebank oil field by environmental campaigners Uplift and Greenpeace - which was subsequently successful in January. Equinor was required to recalculate the "full impact" of the field and it now estimates that it will contribute an additional 249 million tonnes of the planet warming gas CO2 over the next 25 years. This is more than 50 times greater than the original figure of 4.5 million tonnes it gave from extracting the oil and gas.The UK has a target to produce no additional emissions by 2050 and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has been vocal about the need to move away from fossil fuels. On Tuesday, he told an industry conference that the UK's dependence on fossil fuels was its "Achilles' heel" and argued clean power was the only way to reduce bills.The fossil fuels for the Rosebank field are not guaranteed to be used in the UK but would be sold on the international market.As such the project is unlikely to have an impact on lowering gas prices. The UK's independent climate advisors said in 2022 that any more domestic oil and gas extraction would have "at most, a marginal effect on prices".But Arne Gurtner, Equinor's senior vice president for the UK, has previously said that: "If the UK needs Rosebank oil, it will go to the UK through open market mechanisms."

Climate
Energy
Water

Scientists Hope Underwater Fiber-Optic Cables Can Help Save Endangered Orcas

Scientists from the University of Washington recently deployed a little over 1 mile of fiber-optic cable in the Salish Sea to test whether internet cables can monitor endangered orcas

SAN JUAN ISLAND, Wash. (AP) — As dawn broke over San Juan Island, a team of scientists stood on the deck of a barge and unspooled over a mile of fiber-optic cable into the frigid waters of the Salish Sea. Working by headlamp, they fed the line from the rocky shore down to the seafloor — home to the region's orcas.The bet is that the same hair-thin strands that carry internet signals can be transformed into a continuous underwater microphone to capture the clicks, calls and whistles of passing whales — information that could reveal how they respond to ship traffic, food scarcity and climate change. If the experiment works, the thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables that already crisscross the ocean floor could be turned into a vast listening network that could inform conservation efforts worldwide.The technology, called Distributed Acoustic Sensing, or DAS, was developed to monitor pipelines and detect infrastructure problems. Now University of Washington scientists are adapting it to listen to the ocean. Unlike traditional hydrophones that listen from a single spot, DAS turns the entire cable into a sensor, allowing it to pinpoint the exact location of an animal and determine the direction it’s heading.“We can imagine that we have thousands of hydrophones along the cable recording data continuously,” said Shima Abadi, professor at the University of Washington Bothell School of STEM and the University of Washington School of Oceanography. “We can know where the animals are and learn about their migration patterns much better than hydrophones.”The researchers have already proven the technology works with large baleen whales. In a test off the Oregon coast, they recorded the low-frequency rumblings of fin whales and blue whales using existing telecommunications cables.But orcas present a bigger challenge: Their clicks and calls operate at high frequencies at which the technology hasn’t yet been tested.The stakes are high. The Southern Resident orcas that frequent the Salish Sea are endangered, with a population hovering around 75. The whales face a triple threat: underwater noise pollution, toxic contaminants and food scarcity.“We have an endangered killer whale trying to eat an endangered salmon species,” said Scott Veirs, president of Beam Reach Marine Science and Sustainability, an organization that develops open-source acoustic systems for whale conservation.The Chinook salmon that orcas depend on have declined dramatically. Since the Pacific Salmon Commission began tracking numbers in 1984, populations have dropped 60% due to habitat loss, overfishing, dams and climate change.Orcas use echolocation – rapid clicks that bounce off objects – to find salmon in murky water. Ship noise can mask those clicks, making it difficult for them to hunt.If DAS works as hoped, it could give conservationists real-time information to protect the whales. For instance, if the system detects orcas heading south toward Seattle and calculates their travel speed, scientists could alert Washington State Ferries to postpone noisy activities or to slow down until the whales pass.“It will for sure help with dynamic management and long-term policy that will have real benefits for the whales,” Veirs said.The technology would also answer basic questions about orca behavior that have eluded scientists, such as determining whether their communication changes when they’re in different behavioral states and how they hunt together. It could even enable researchers to identify which sound is coming from a particular whale — a kind of voice recognition for orcas.The implications extend far beyond the Salish Sea. With some 870,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) of fiber-optic cables already installed underwater globally, the infrastructure for ocean monitoring largely exists. It just needs to be tapped. “One of the most important challenges for managing wildlife, conserving biodiversity and combating climate change is that there’s just a lack of data overall,” said Yuta Masuda, director of science at Allen Family Philanthropies, which helped fund the project.The timing is critical. The High Seas Treaty enters into force in January, which will allow for new marine protected areas in international waters. But scientists still don’t understand how human activities affect most ocean species or where protections are most needed. A dataset as vast as the one the global web of submarine cables could provide might help determine which areas should be prioritized for protection.“We think this has a lot of promise to fill in those key data gaps,” Masuda said.Back on the barge, the team faced a delicate task: fusing two fibers together above the rolling swell. They struggled to align the strands in a fusion splicer, a device that precisely positions the fiber ends before melting them together with an electric current. The boat rocked. They steadied their hands and tried again, and again. Finally, the weld held. Data soon began flowing to a computer on shore, appearing as waterfall plots — cascading visualizations that show sound frequencies over time. Nearby, cameras trained on the water stood ready so that if a vocalization was detected, researchers could link a behavior with a specific call.All that was left was to sit and wait for orcas.The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environmentCopyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

Water
Animals
Conservation

How Promote Giving, a New Investment Model, Will Raise Millions for Charities

Joel Holsinger, a partner at Ares Management Corp., on Wednesday launched Promote Giving, an initiative encouraging investment managers to donate a portion of their fees to charity

The first foreign trip Joel Holsinger took in 2019 after joining the board of directors at the global health nonprofit PATH convinced him that he needed to do more to raise money for charities.The investment manager, who is now also a partner and co-head of alternative credit at Ares Management Corp., saw firsthand how a tuberculosis prevention program was helping residents of Dharavi, India's largest slum. He also saw that the main hurdle to expanding the program’s success was simply a lack of funding.“I wanted to do something that has purpose,” Holsinger told The Associated Press. “I wanted a charitable tie-in to whatever I do.”Shortly after returning from India, Holsinger created a new line of investment funds where Ares Management would donate at least 5% of its performance fee, also known as the “promote,” to charities. The first two funds of the resulting Pathfinder family of funds alone have raised more than $10 billion in investments and, as of June, pledged more than $40 million to charity.Holsinger wanted to expand the model further. On Wednesday, he announced Promote Giving, a new initiative to encourage other investment managers to use the model, which launches with funds from nine firms, including Ares Management, Pantheon and Pretium. The funds that are now part of Promote Giving represent about $35 billion in assets and could result in charitable donations of up to $250 million over the next 10 years.Unlike broader models like ESG investing, where environmental, social and governance factors are taken into account when making business decisions, or impact investing, where investors seek a social return along with a financial one, Promote Giving seeks to maximize the return on investment, Holsinger said. The donation only comes after investors receive their promised return and only from the manager's fees. “We’re not doing anything that looks at lower returns,” Holsinger said. “It’s basically just a dual mandate: If we do good on returns for our institutional investors, we will also drive returns that go directly to charity.”Charities, especially those who do international work, are in the midst of a difficult funding landscape. The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and massive cuts to foreign aid this year have affected nearly all nonprofits in some way. Those nonprofits who don't normally receive funding from the U.S. government still face increased competition for grants from organizations who saw their funding cut.Kammerle Schneider, PATH’s chief global health programs officer, said this year has shown how fragile public health systems are and has reinforced the need for “agile catalytic capital” that Promote Giving could provide.“There is nothing that is going to replace U.S. government funding,” said Schneider, adding that the launch of Promote Giving offers hope that new private donors may step in to help offer solutions to specific public health problems. “I think it comes at a time where we really need to look at the overall architecture of how we’re doing this and how we could be doing it better with less.”Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, which offers free learning resources for teachers and students, says the structure of Promote Giving could provide nonprofits stable income over several years that would allow them to spend less time fundraising and more time on their charitable work. “It's actually been hard for us to raise the philanthropy needed for us to have the maximum impact globally,” said Khan. While Khan Academy has the knowledge base to expand rapidly around the world and numerous countries have shown interest, Khan said the nonprofit lacks enough resources to do the expensive work of software development, localization and building infrastructure in every country.Khan hopes Promote Giving can grow into a major funder that could help with those costs. "We would be able to build that infrastructure so that we can literally educate anyone in the world,” he said.Holsinger hopes for that kind of growth as well. He envisions investment managers signing on to Promote Giving the way billionaires pledge to give away half their wealth through the Giving Pledge and he hopes other industries will develop their own mechanisms to make charitable donations part of their business models. Kate Stobbe, director of corporate insights at Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, a coalition that advises companies on sustainability and corporate responsibility issues, said their research shows that companies that establish mission statements that include reasons for existing beyond simply profit generation have higher revenue growth and provide a higher return on investment.Having a common purpose increases workers' engagement and productivity, while also helping companies with recruitment and retention, said Stobbe, who said CECP will release a report that documents those findings based on 20 years of data later this week. “Having initiatives around corporate purpose help employees feel a connection to something bigger,” she said. "It really does contribute to that bottom line.”That kind of win-win is what Holsinger hopes to create with Promote Giving. He said many of the world's problems don't lack solutions. They lack enough capital to pay for the solutions.“We just need to drive more capital to these nonprofits and to these charities that are doing amazing work every day,” he said. “We're trying to build that model that drives impact through charitable dollars.”Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

Business
Government
Health

Why Lung Cancer Is Increasing among Nonsmoking Women Under Age 65

Thoracic surgeon Jonathan Villena explains why early screening for lung cancer is critical—even for those without symptoms.

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer among women in the United States, surpassing the mortality numbers of breast and ovarian cancer combined. And surprisingly, younger women who have never smoked are increasingly being diagnosed with the disease.Here to explain what could be driving this trend—and why early screening can make all the difference—is Johnathan Villena, a thoracic surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Thank you so much for joining us.Johnathan Villena: Thank you for having me.Feltman: So our viewers and listeners might be surprised to hear that lung cancer [deaths] in women now tops breast cancer, ovarian cancer combined. Can you tell us more about what’s going on there?Villena: Yeah, definitely. So in general lung cancer is the number-one cancer [killing]people in the U.S., both men and women. If you look at the American Cancer Society, around 226 new—226,000 new cases of lung cancer are projected to be diagnosed in 2025. Of those about 50 percent are cancer-related deaths, meaning [roughly] 120,000 people die every year from lung cancer. Now, what’s—the good news is that the incidence has actually been decreasing in the last few years.Feltman: Mm.Villena: If you look at the American Cancer Society’s statistics, in the last 10 years [ of data, which goes through 2021], the, the incidence of lung cancer has decreased in men around 3 percent per year. And it’s about half of that in women, meaning it’s decreasing [roughly] 1.5 percent per year. So one of the reasons that they think that this might be happening is that there was an uptick in smoking in women around the ’60s and ’70s, and that’s why we’re seeing a slight, you know, decrease in the incidence in men but not so much in the women.What’s more interesting and very surprising is the fact that when you look at younger people, meaning less than 65 years old—especially younger never-smoking people—there’s actually an increase of women in that subgroup. They’re overrepresented, and that’s something very surprising.Feltman: Does the research offer us any clues about what’s going on in this demographic of younger women?Villena: Yeah, so there’s been a lot of research. So, you know, in general—and something that people don’t know is that about 20 percent of lung cancers actually occur in people that have never smoked in their entire lives.Feltman: Mm.Villena: This is something that we don’t really understand why this happens to this one in five people, but there are some risk factors associated with it. Number one is exposure to radon, which is a natural gas that sometimes people are exposed to for a prolonged time. Number two is secondhand smoking ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: So they don’t smoke directly, but they live in a household where they smoke. And number three are kind of other environmental factors, things such as working in a specific, you know, manufacturing plant that deals with specific chemicals. And then lastly, the one that has had, actually, had a lot of research into it are genetic factors. There’s definitely a preponderance of certain mutations in somebody’s genes that can cause lung cancer, and that is overrepresented in women.Feltman: Do women face any unique challenges in getting diagnosed or treated when it comes to lung cancer?Villena: So, yes. First of all, you know, how do we treat or catch lung cancer? So the newest and, and latest way of catching this disease is actually through lung cancer screening.That’s something that’s relatively new; it’s only happened in the last 10 years. And that’s in certain demographics, meaning that if someone is over 50 years old and they have smoked more than one pack per day for 20 years, they meet the criteria for lung cancer screening, which is basically a radiograph or a CAT scan of their lungs. That’s the way that we pick up lung cancer.That’s the—almost the exact same thing that people have for breast cancer, such as mammography, or colonoscopy. So that’s before any symptoms come in. That’s really just to try to capture it when it’s in very nascent stages, right?Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: Where it’s very small or not symptomatic. And that’s the way we diagnose a, a lot of lung cancer.Now, that being said, there’s a couple of things. So first of all, [roughly] 60 to 70 percent of people, like, in general get mammographies.Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: [About] 60 to 70 percent of people get colonoscopies. Only 6 percent of people actually get lung cancer screening. So it’s dismally low.Feltman: Yeah.Villena: The reason being that sometimes people don’t know about it; it’s relatively new. Sometimes even doctors don’t know about it. There’s also a little bit of guilt involved, where people, you know, they think they did it to themselves by smoking ...Feltman: Hmm.Villena: So they don’t wanna go do it. The second thing is that, as you could imagine, this is only for high-risk individuals or people that have a history of smoking, all right? So it misses these never-smoking one in five patients. So that’s one of the things that we’re actively working on.Feltman: Yeah, how else does the, you know, the stigma associated with lung cancer because of its association with smoking, how does that impact people’s ability to get diagnosed and treated?Villena: I think there’s a lot of hesitancy between patients. There’s, you know, a recent study that showed that people are more—have more tendency to downplay their smoking history, meaning that if they quit, let’s say 10 years ago, you tell your doctor that you never smoked.Feltman: Mm.Villena: And that’s something very common. Or if you smoked, you know, one pack a day, maybe you say you smoked half a pack a day because you feel that guilt. So then you don’t give your doctor or your caretaker the full picture. And sometimes that prevents you from getting these tests, right? So there’s definitely that attitude.There’s also a bit of a fatalistic attitude, sort of like, “I did it to myself. I’d rather not know. You know, this is something that—you know, I made that choice, and if I get cancer, that’s my choice.” Right? So that’s, that’s also another attitude that we’re constantly trying to change in patients. You know, the treatment, once you capture it, is all the same, but really it’s about getting screening and it’s about finding the lung cancer.Feltman: So with smoking no longer necessarily being the driving factor, at least in this younger demographic, what kinds of risk factors should we be talking about more?Villena: So I think, you know—so smoking is always number one.Feltman: Sure.Villena: In the never-smoking people it’s either radon, secondhand smoking or environmental factors, and then a little bit of genetics plays, plays a part.Radon is something that people can test for in their homes. It’s something that people should read up on. So that’s number one: if you have exposure to that, to get rid of that.If you are in, in an environment, let’s say you work with chemicals that you think, you know, are astringent or have caused—causes you to have coughs or, you know, affects you in any sort of way, to kind of try to talk to your employer to work in a more ventilated setting.Really important with genetic factors is understanding your family history.Feltman: Mm.Villena: If you have a mother, a grandmother, a grandfather who died of cancer or you have a lot of cancer in your family, sometimes understanding that and knowing that from your, you know, from your family perspective will actually clue a doctor in to doing further tests, to looking into that further, ’cause that sometimes is passed down and you can have the same genes.Feltman: Are there any big research questions that scientists need to answer about lung cancer, specifically in young women?Villena: So, you know, there’s so much to look at, all right? So if we think about just the genetic aspect of it, there’s one specific gene called the EGFR gene—or it’s a mutation that’s found in lung cancer that in, if you look at all people with lung cancer, it’s found in about 15 percent ...Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: Of the population with lung cancer. Now, if you look at never-smoking Asian women that get lung cancer, it’s about 60 percent of them ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: Have that mutation. So the important thing about that EGFR mutation is there’s a specific drug for that mutation, all right?So there’s definitely a lot of genetic kind of information that we’re still actively researching. But the important thing about this genetic information is that there’s drugs targeted specifically for those mutations. So the more we know, the more we understand, the better.Feltman: So for folks who are hearing this and are surprised and, and maybe concerned what is your advice for how they should proceed, how they should look into their risk factors?Villena: You know, I think one of the, the, the major aspects of health in general is understanding your own health.Feltman: Mm.Villena: I think that younger people tend to delay care, tend to not see their doctors, and because, one, they’re busy, right, at their very busy moment in their lives. But second is that, you know, you don’t wanna deal with it, and you think that you will not get cancer, that you will not get this disease because you’re young and you’ve never smoked and you’ve never done anything bad.Feltman: Mm.Villena: But, you know, you have to be very aware of your body, so what are the kind of top four symptoms? So number one, let’s say you have a cough, and that cough lasts for longer than two weeks, right?Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: A normal cold, things like that will go away after a couple of weeks. But if it’s there for a couple of months, and I’ve definitely seen patients that tell me in retrospect, you know, “I’ve had this cough for three months,” right, and it should have been checked up sooner. So understanding yourself, understanding your body, not, you know, waiting for things, not procrastinating, which is very hard to do, but you should definitely see your doctor ...Feltman: Yeah.Villena: Regularly.Second is, like I said before, understanding your family, right, and what your genetic makeup is, right? Knowing your family history, understanding if your parents, grandparents had cancer, etcetera, or other chronic diseases.Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: And that’s, that’s basically the, the major aspects of it. It’s really being in tune with yourself.Feltman: So once a patient is actually diagnosed, what does treatment look like?Villena: So treatment for lung cancer, actually, is heavily dependent on the stage. There’s everything from stage 1, in which it’s localized to one portion of a lung, to stage 4, where it actually has gone to other parts of the body.Now, stage 1 disease, you basically need a simple surgery, where that lung nodule, or that lung cancer, is surgically removed, and typically you don’t need any other treatments. So stage 1 is what we look for. Stage 1 is the reason that lung cancer screening works because stage 1 doesn’t really have any symptoms ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: So when you find it that early patients do very well.Stage 4, once it’s left the lung, you are no longer a surgical candidate, unless in, you know, sometimes very specific cases, but for the most part you’re no longer a surgical candidate. And there you need systemic treatments.Feltman: And how long does the treatment tend to take for a stage 1 patient, if it’s just a surgical procedure?Villena: So if it’s just a surgical procedure, look, I do these surgeries all the time: the patient comes in; we do the surgery; the patients usually go home the next day.Feltman: Wow.Villena: And then we follow the patient and get CAT scans every six months for a long time to make sure nothing comes back or nothing new comes. So it’s pretty straightforward, and we do this all the time. We do these surgeries robotically now. Patients recover incredibly well, and they’re out, you know, doing—living their lives in a couple of weeks. So it’s really something very, very, very efficient.Feltman: Yeah, so huge incentive to get checked early.Villena: Mm-hmm.Feltman: Are there any advances in treatment, you know, any new treatments that doctors are excited about?Villena: Yeah, so there’s two major steps forward that have changed lung cancer treatment. Number one is something called targeted therapy.Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: So that means that there’s a drug that targets a specific mutation. So just how I was speaking about earlier about the EGFR mutation in young, never-smoking Asian women, there is a drug that targets that mutation that has really shown amazing results at all stages now.And the second one is actually immunotherapy, which won the Nobel Prize, which is this idea that you can use your own body’s immune system to kill the cancer cell. So cancer is very smart—what it does is it evades your immune system; it pretends that it’s part of your own body. And what this drug does is that it basically reawakens your immune system to recognize that cancer again and kill it. And we’ve seen amazing results, even in the stage 4 patients, where they are potentially cured of cancer, which, which we’ve never seen before.Feltman: What motivated you to get into this specialty?Villena: You know, I do have a family history of this in an uncle that passed away from lung cancer ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: And he was a heavy smoker. And, you know, I saw how, basically, decimated his, he was—[his] life [was], basically. He was a very vibrant guy, he was very active, and in six months he was gone, right?And I think, you know, once I started getting into, you know, medical school and understanding things, one of the major things that I really got into was research. And I see that if my uncle had been treated 20 years ago, he potentially could have been saved ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: Because of these advances in research. And right now we are right at the cusp where we are learning all these new things, and we actually have the tools to change how patients are treated, you know? And this—every year there’s a new treatment, which prior to that, there was no new treatment; i t was basically just chemo, and that’s it, all right? So I think that that really motivated me—something that I can actually take part in and actually change the course for a lot of people.Feltman: Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat with us today. This has been great.Villena: Thank you.Feltman: That’s all for today’s episode. We’ll be back on Friday to unpack the shocking story of a missing meteorite.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura and Kylie Murphy. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time.

Chemicals
Health
Science

The Blue-State Governors Who’ve Gone Weak on Climate Policy

If you scroll California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press releases, a portrait emerges of a undaunted climate fighter. One day he’s “paving [the] way for climate pollution-cutting technology”; another he’s launching “new international climate partnerships as Trump unleashes unhinged UN rant.” Last month, he announced the signing of a suite of measures “saving billions on electric bills, stabilizing [the] gas market and cutting pollution.” But look under the hood, and his heroic self-image dims somewhat. That big legislative package, for instance, also increases oil drilling and sets up a regional electricity market that “could tether California to fossil-fuel states at a time when the Trump administration is moving to roll back clean energy,” CalMatters reported.With Trump in death-drive mode on climate, canceling renewable energy projects left and right and even forbidding federal agencies to use language such as “climate change,” “green,”or “sustainable,” blue-state governors are well positioned to distinguish themselves and their party on the issue. They also have a responsibility: The states are our best hope for policy at a scale to match the problem. Yet a worrying trend is taking shape: Blue-state governors are making a big show of battling the Trump administration, but on climate issues they’ve been disappointing—and sometimes downright infuriating. Last month’s climate package wasn’t the California Democrats’ first flub this year. Over the summer, in what Politico dubbed the state’s “Great Climate Retreat,” they weakened limits on the carbon intensity of transportation fuels, rolled back environmental reviews for new housing, and lifted a cap on oil industry profits. “California was the vocal climate leader during the first Trump administration,” Chris Chavez, deputy policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, told Politico. “It’s questionable whether or not that leadership is still there.” In Maryland, a climate advisory panel appointed by Governor Wes Moore has hit the brakes on a carbon trading measure, and late last month the state Department of the Environment, or MDE, appeared to cave to the Trump administration in abandoning some environmental justice metrics, which many fear means abandoning Black and brown communities to the whims of polluters. “It just appears to me that MDE blatantly does not want to be accountable in the massive pollution and the overburden of these heavy industrial industries,” Kamita Gray, a community leader in Brandywine—a majority-Black town that’s home to gas-fired power plants, a coal ash dump, and a Superfund site—told Maryland Matters.Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania too is under fire from climate critics. As attorney general, he authored a solid road map for protecting Pennsylvanians from the harmful environmental and health effects of fracking, but in his two years as governor he has allowed companies to be secretive about the chemicals used in fracking, and has not pushed to pass any laws curbing the industry. The Environmental Health Project, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, said “residents are still waiting for meaningful action. Our assessment concludes that the Shapiro administration has not fulfilled the commitments the governor made to Pennsylvanians in general and to frontline communities in particular.”And then there’s New York. Governor Kathy Hochul has been failing to follow the decarbonization timeline that was outlined in the state’s 2019 climate law, prompting environmental justice groups to sue her. She has delayed plans for “cap and invest” and is dragging her feet on building public renewables (despite the state’s landmark Build Public Renewables Act, which passed in 2023). She has seemingly caved to Trump by going ahead with gas pipelines she previously rejected. And it’s unclear whether she will sign a repeal of the outdated “100 foot rule,” which requires utility ratepayers to subsize the cost of connecting new customers to the gas system, a reform that has long been a priority of the state’s climate movement.Part of what’s so self-destructive here is that energy affordability is a highly salient issue for voters, taking center stage, for example in the governor’s race in New Jersey, where electricity rates have risen 22 percent. Interviewed in Friday’s New York Times on this subject, David Springe of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates described electricity as “the new eggs,” an indicator of how costly daily life is for most Americans. Republicans in New York have seized on the problem as an opportunity to blame Democrats and climate-friendly policies. Stephan Edel of New York Renews, a progressive coalition fighting for clean energy, told me the governor “has spoken really eloquently about the need to do something about affordability.” Indeed, she endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist, for New York City mayor, partly for this reason. She often uses “affordability” to justify rightward shifts or retreats from climate policy, he said, adding that, inexplicably, she also shies away from touting the affordability benefits of climate policies that she does support. For example, in the state budget last year, she agreed to invest over a billion dollars in funding for climate programs, including one that will help make homes for low-income New Yorkers more energy efficient and another that will save school districts money by shifting to electric school buses. Instead of touting those wins for affordability—or embracing the potential of publicly owned renewables to do the same—she’s embraced the Republican narrative that climate policy and affordability are at odds.By contrast, Mikie Sherill in New Jersey has been touting clean energy as a solution to energy affordability woes. If she gets elected and continues this path, more blue state governors should follow her lead. The Democratic base is desperate to see its leaders stand up to Trump on both climate and affordability. (And when Democratic governors do stand up to Trump on anything—Illinois’s JB Pritzker on the militarization of Chicago, Maine’s Janet Mills on health care—their poll numbers spike.)And the reverse is also true—failing to differentiate themselves from Trump has been political suicide for many Democrats. “Every time one of these elected officials says, ‘I’m going to stand up to Trump, I’m going to protect affordability, I’m going to address climate change,’ and then doesn’t do it,” that’s a win for the Republicans, Edel said, because it fuels low turnout for Democratic voters. Climate offers an obvious opportunity to isolate the Republicans on a matter of broad concern, renew Americans’ faith in government, and make real progress. The Democratic governors flailing so badly on this issue have not only a moral obligation to change course, but also a political one.

If you scroll California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press releases, a portrait emerges of a undaunted climate fighter. One day he’s “paving [the] way for climate pollution-cutting technology”; another he’s launching “new international climate partnerships as Trump unleashes unhinged UN rant.” Last month, he announced the signing of a suite of measures “saving billions on electric bills, stabilizing [the] gas market and cutting pollution.” But look under the hood, and his heroic self-image dims somewhat. That big legislative package, for instance, also increases oil drilling and sets up a regional electricity market that “could tether California to fossil-fuel states at a time when the Trump administration is moving to roll back clean energy,” CalMatters reported.With Trump in death-drive mode on climate, canceling renewable energy projects left and right and even forbidding federal agencies to use language such as “climate change,” “green,”or “sustainable,” blue-state governors are well positioned to distinguish themselves and their party on the issue. They also have a responsibility: The states are our best hope for policy at a scale to match the problem. Yet a worrying trend is taking shape: Blue-state governors are making a big show of battling the Trump administration, but on climate issues they’ve been disappointing—and sometimes downright infuriating. Last month’s climate package wasn’t the California Democrats’ first flub this year. Over the summer, in what Politico dubbed the state’s “Great Climate Retreat,” they weakened limits on the carbon intensity of transportation fuels, rolled back environmental reviews for new housing, and lifted a cap on oil industry profits. “California was the vocal climate leader during the first Trump administration,” Chris Chavez, deputy policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, told Politico. “It’s questionable whether or not that leadership is still there.” In Maryland, a climate advisory panel appointed by Governor Wes Moore has hit the brakes on a carbon trading measure, and late last month the state Department of the Environment, or MDE, appeared to cave to the Trump administration in abandoning some environmental justice metrics, which many fear means abandoning Black and brown communities to the whims of polluters. “It just appears to me that MDE blatantly does not want to be accountable in the massive pollution and the overburden of these heavy industrial industries,” Kamita Gray, a community leader in Brandywine—a majority-Black town that’s home to gas-fired power plants, a coal ash dump, and a Superfund site—told Maryland Matters.Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania too is under fire from climate critics. As attorney general, he authored a solid road map for protecting Pennsylvanians from the harmful environmental and health effects of fracking, but in his two years as governor he has allowed companies to be secretive about the chemicals used in fracking, and has not pushed to pass any laws curbing the industry. The Environmental Health Project, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, said “residents are still waiting for meaningful action. Our assessment concludes that the Shapiro administration has not fulfilled the commitments the governor made to Pennsylvanians in general and to frontline communities in particular.”And then there’s New York. Governor Kathy Hochul has been failing to follow the decarbonization timeline that was outlined in the state’s 2019 climate law, prompting environmental justice groups to sue her. She has delayed plans for “cap and invest” and is dragging her feet on building public renewables (despite the state’s landmark Build Public Renewables Act, which passed in 2023). She has seemingly caved to Trump by going ahead with gas pipelines she previously rejected. And it’s unclear whether she will sign a repeal of the outdated “100 foot rule,” which requires utility ratepayers to subsize the cost of connecting new customers to the gas system, a reform that has long been a priority of the state’s climate movement.Part of what’s so self-destructive here is that energy affordability is a highly salient issue for voters, taking center stage, for example in the governor’s race in New Jersey, where electricity rates have risen 22 percent. Interviewed in Friday’s New York Times on this subject, David Springe of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates described electricity as “the new eggs,” an indicator of how costly daily life is for most Americans. Republicans in New York have seized on the problem as an opportunity to blame Democrats and climate-friendly policies. Stephan Edel of New York Renews, a progressive coalition fighting for clean energy, told me the governor “has spoken really eloquently about the need to do something about affordability.” Indeed, she endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist, for New York City mayor, partly for this reason. She often uses “affordability” to justify rightward shifts or retreats from climate policy, he said, adding that, inexplicably, she also shies away from touting the affordability benefits of climate policies that she does support. For example, in the state budget last year, she agreed to invest over a billion dollars in funding for climate programs, including one that will help make homes for low-income New Yorkers more energy efficient and another that will save school districts money by shifting to electric school buses. Instead of touting those wins for affordability—or embracing the potential of publicly owned renewables to do the same—she’s embraced the Republican narrative that climate policy and affordability are at odds.By contrast, Mikie Sherill in New Jersey has been touting clean energy as a solution to energy affordability woes. If she gets elected and continues this path, more blue state governors should follow her lead. The Democratic base is desperate to see its leaders stand up to Trump on both climate and affordability. (And when Democratic governors do stand up to Trump on anything—Illinois’s JB Pritzker on the militarization of Chicago, Maine’s Janet Mills on health care—their poll numbers spike.)And the reverse is also true—failing to differentiate themselves from Trump has been political suicide for many Democrats. “Every time one of these elected officials says, ‘I’m going to stand up to Trump, I’m going to protect affordability, I’m going to address climate change,’ and then doesn’t do it,” that’s a win for the Republicans, Edel said, because it fuels low turnout for Democratic voters. Climate offers an obvious opportunity to isolate the Republicans on a matter of broad concern, renew Americans’ faith in government, and make real progress. The Democratic governors flailing so badly on this issue have not only a moral obligation to change course, but also a political one.

Climate
Chemicals
Government

Nature groups rebuke Reeves for ‘cynical’ 11th-hour planning bill changes

Chancellor accused of removing environmental protections to win short-term growth and save her budgetUK politics live – latest updatesLast-minute changes to the government’s landmark planning bill have sparked a furious backlash from nature groups who have mounted an attack on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, over her plans to remove environmental protections.The changes to the legislation come as it enters its final stages before being signed into law. Continue reading...

Last-minute changes to the government’s landmark planning bill have sparked a furious backlash from nature groups who have mounted an attack on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, over her plans to remove environmental protections.The changes to the legislation come as it enters its final stages before being signed into law.Promoted by Reeves, they are designed to make it easier for developers to side-step environmental laws in order to build major projects such as AI datacentres.They include new powers for the government to overrule local democracy if councils refuse developments based on environmental grounds, or on issues such as water shortages.But in outspoken attacks on the chancellor, charities including household names such as the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts say Reeves is seeking to grab short-term growth headlines to save her budget, rather than well-thought-out reforms to planning.Reeves is pushing for the planning bill to be passed before her budget on 26 November so that she is able to factor it into forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which could give her about £3bn extra breathing room against her own debt rules.The charities have spent months working with ministers in an attempt to forge the best planning bill to ensure growth and nature recovery go hand in hand.Dr James Robinson, the RSPB’s chief operating officer, said: “Dropping 67 amendments to the planning bill at the 11th hour isn’t just poor process, it’s legislative chaos. There’s no time for proper scrutiny, no clarity on the cumulative impact, and no confidence this is about good planning rather than political optics.“It looks like a cynical attempt to game a better forecast from the OBR, rather than a serious effort to fix the planning system.”The intervention by Reeves into the landmark bill comes after she was filmed boasting about her closeness to a major developer after she intervened to lift legal blocks to their housing plans.The objections to 21,000 homes being built in Sussex concerned water shortages and concerns over the amount of water being taken from rivers and wetlands in the Arun Valley, which risked affecting protected wildlife and local water resources. The MP for Horsham, John Milne has criticised the chancellor’s intervention, stating that it was top-down government at its worst.“This decision rides roughshod over the work that Horsham district council has been carrying out to find a balanced solution.”One amendment promoted by Reeves would allow more central government intervention in local decision making. It allows the secretary of state to overrule councils that refuse permission for projects, even if they have legitimate concerns on environmental grounds, or there are issues relating to water shortages.The amendment is designed to ease the path of major infrastructure projects, for example AI datacentres, which create vast amounts of CO2 and put huge pressure on water resources.Alexa Culver, an environmental lawyer from RSK Wilding, said: “For the first time, the secretary of state will be able to make orders that prevent refusals of planning permission by planning authorities.“This could direct authorities to ignore real-world infastructure and environmental constraints – like water shortages – to allow harmful development through that leaves local communities stranded.”Joan Edwards, director of policy and public affairs at the Wildlife Trusts, said Reeves was trying to grab headlines about growth measures before her budget.“The chancellor continues to fail to understand that a healthy natural environment underpins a healthy economy. These performative amendments represent neither a win for development or the economy, and promise only delay and muddle in planning and marine policy.”Richard Benwell, CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said the government’s race to speed up planning decisions would fall flat on its face if it did not include the environment at its core.“Last-minute changes to the bill are being made in a hurried and piecemeal approach,” he said. “This kind of scattergun policymaking doesn’t give businesses or investors the certainty they need to drive growth, and it puts the UK’s irreplaceable natural environment at risk.”Government officials have said the amendments were required in part because an earlier watering down of the bill in the summer damaged investor confidence. However, no data has been provided to back this claim.The government said if passed, each of these “pro-growth changes” would accelerate the government’s “plan for change” to build 1.5m homes, achieve clean power by 2030 and raise living standards across the country.Steve Reed, the housing secretary, said: “Britain’s potential has been shackled by governments unwilling to overhaul the stubborn planning system that has erected barriers to building at every turn. It is simply not true that nature has to lose for economic growth to succeed.“Sluggish planning has real-world consequences. Every new house blocked deprives a family of a home. Every infrastructure project that gets delayed blocks someone from a much-needed job. This will now end.”

Nature
Government
Health

Watchdog rules Red Tractor exaggerated its environmental standards

The Advertising Standards Authority agrees with River Action that the food safety body’s 2023 advert misled the publicThe UK’s advertising watchdog has upheld a complaint that Britain’s biggest farm assurance scheme misled the public in a TV ad about its environmental standards.The Red Tractor scheme, used by leading supermarkets including Tesco, Asda and Morrisons to assure customers their food meets high standards for welfare, environment, traceability and safety, is the biggest and perhaps best known assurance system in Britain. Continue reading...

The UK’s advertising watchdog has upheld a complaint that Britain’s biggest farm assurance scheme misled the public in a TV ad about its environmental standards.The Red Tractor scheme, used by leading supermarkets including Tesco, Asda and Morrisons to assure customers their food meets high standards for welfare, environment, traceability and safety, is the biggest and perhaps best known assurance system in Britain.About 45,000 of the UK’s farms are members of the scheme, and the advert promised that food carrying the logo had been “farmed with care”.But the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint from the clean water campaign group River Action that the scheme’s environmental standards were exaggerated in the advert, last aired in 2023.In its judgment, the ASA said the ad must not be shown again in its current form. It said in future Red Tractor should make clear exactly what standards it is referring to when it uses the phrases “farmed with care” and “all our standards are met”.River Action said it made the complaint because it was concerned environmental standards relating to pollution were not being met on Red Tractor farms, including the claim “When the Red Tractor’s there, your food’s farmed with care … from field to store all our standards are met.”The ASA considered evidence from an Environment Agency report into Red Tractor farms, which found that 62% of the most critical pollution incidents occurred on Red Tractor farms between 2014 and 2019.Charles Watson, chair and founder of River Action, said large food retailers such as Tesco and Asda should lay out credible plans as to how they would move away from what he termed a “busted flush” of a certification scheme and instead support farmers whose working practices were genuinely sustainable.“Red Tractor farms are polluting the UK’s rivers, and consumers trying to make environmentally responsible choices have been misled,” said Watson.“This ASA ruling confirms what we’ve long argued: Red Tractor’s claims aren’t just misleading – they provide cover for farms breaking the law.”Red Tractor said its standards did not cover all environmental legislation. Therefore, data on compliance with environmental regulation should not be confused with farms’ compliance with Red Tractor’s requirements.Jim Moseley, CEO of Red Tractor, said: “We believe the ASA’s final decision is fundamentally flawed and misinterprets the content of our advert.“If the advert was clearly misleading, it wouldn’t have taken so long to reach this conclusion. Accordingly, the ASA’s actions are minimal. They’ve confirmed that we can continue to use ‘farmed with care’ but simply need to provide more information on the specific standards being referred to.“The advert … made no environmental claim, and we completely disagree with the assumption that it would have been misinterpreted by consumers.”

Food
Pollution
Water

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