GoGreenNation news

New York’s plastic lawsuit against PepsiCo has been dismissed. What’s next?

News Feed

Monday, November 18, 2024

Late last month, the New York state Supreme Court granted a request from PepsiCo to dismiss a plastic pollution lawsuit brought against it by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James. The complaint, which sought civil penalties against the food and beverage corporation for causing plastic pollution in the Buffalo River, was “predatory,” according to the decision written by Judge Emilio Colaiacovo. He accused James’ office of making “phantom assertions of liability that do nothing to solve the problem that exists.” PepsiCo “did not pollute the Buffalo River or any other local waterways,” Colaiacovo wrote. “Other people did!” That unusually emphatic dismissal raises questions about similar lawsuits that are pending around the country — as well as the prospect of future litigation to hold companies responsible for the plastic pollution generated by their products. Just one day before Colaiacovo’s decision was released, Los Angeles County filed a similar complaint against PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, arguing that the companies had harmed public health and deceived consumers about the efficacy of plastics recycling. The city of Baltimore has filed its own suit against PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Frito Lay, and plastic manufacturing companies, and two lawsuits in California — one from the state attorney general’s office and one from a coalition of environmental nonprofits — allege that Exxon Mobil promoted plastics recycling despite knowing it would be unable to keep pace with waste generation. But several attorneys Grist spoke with — and James’ office — said they’re not concerned. Jill Heaps, senior legal director for the nonprofit Surfrider, said Colaicovo’s dismissal was “disappointing,” but she anticipates it will be overturned on appeal. “I don’t think it has any negative consequences for the litigation happening in California or elsewhere.” Every year, the U.S. produces 73 million metric tons of plastic garbage, and about 95 percent of it doesn’t get recycled — not just because the U.S. lacks sufficient recycling infrastructure, but because of inherent properties of the material itself. All that nonrecycled plastic eventually gets burned or sent to a landfill, or else becomes litter in the natural environment, where it breaks down into small fragments called microplastics. Scientists have found these fragments in virtually every environment they’ve studied, and in the bodies of hundreds of animal species. In humans, they’ve linked microplastics to health concerns including metabolic disorders and an increased risk of heart attack. The premise of the New York lawsuit and others like it is that major manufacturers of plastic products shouldn’t just wash their hands of these impacts and blame consumers for improperly disposing of their products. In the view of prosecutors and environmental groups, companies should be financially responsible for managing the pollution they generate. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued PepsiCo in 2023 over plastic pollution in the Buffalo River. John Lamparski / AFP via Getty Images James’ lawsuit was the first brought by a state against a major plastics polluter. In her complaint, filed last year, James described PepsiCo’s trash as a “persistent and dangerous form of plastic pollution.” Her first legal claim against the company was that it had created a “public nuisance” for residents of the Buffalo River watershed. This was based on a 2022 survey of all types of waste along the river, which found that the majority of the waste was plastic and that the leading contributor to that plastic was PepsiCo. The company’s plastic garbage was identified three times more often than that of the second-greatest contributor. The complaint’s other claim involved consumer protection law: Although PepsiCo had “long been aware” of the environmental and human health risks posed by single-use plastics, James’ office said PepsiCo had obscured these risks in its communications to the public, in part by promoting plastics recycling. Colaiacovo rejected both of the lawsuit’s claims. He said James “fails to provide any evidence” that PepsiCo knew its plastic packaging would become pollution, and seemed to agree with PepsiCo that it should not be held liable for what happens to its plastic packaging after consumers are done with it. He characterized James’ arguments as a slippery slope that could eventually allow litigation against any company, so long as the plaintiff could construct a conceivable scenario linking an undesired action to a product it makes. Plastic pollution “is a purely legislative or executive function to ameliorate,” he wrote, calling the lawsuit “policy idealism.” Heaps, whose organization is part of the coalition that recently sued Exxon Mobil in California, said Colaiacovo shouldn’t have dismissed the case so early. “The judge’s job in a motion to dismiss is to give all of the assumptions in the favor of the plaintiff,” she said — “to ask: ‘Is it possible to make this argument?’” and then to allow the plaintiff to produce additional evidence to do so. That’s what happened with a similar consumer protection lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Earth Island Institute against Coca-Cola. This August, an appeals court in Washington, D.C., said that Earth Island’s claims were “facially plausible” and that it should have a chance to further substantiate them in the D.C. Superior Court. Additionally, Heaps noted some other peculiarities in Colaiacovo’s dismissal, starting with a statement that in order for a public nuisance claim to be viable, the product in question must be “defective or unlawful.” “I don’t know where he made that up,” she said. “I’ve never seen that in any case law.” Tyson Redenbarger, a civil litigation attorney with the firm Cotchett, Pitre, & McCarthy LLP — which is representing the California nonprofits in their plastics lawsuit against Exxon Mobil — agreed. To justify a public nuisance claim, a product or practice must violate public health, morals, comfort, or other common rights. Redenbarger listed a number of legal products that have been found to have caused a public nuisance, like lead paint sold before 1978, which contributed to widespread health issues. “Defendants always argue, ‘Oh, my product is legal, and I sell it throughout the state,’” he said. “But that’s not the standard for nuisance.” Plastic bottles of Diet Pepsi line a store shelf. Roberto Machado Noa / LightRocket via Getty Images Heaps also called out the decision’s unusually emotional tenor — characterized by, for example, the use of an exclamation point when describing consumers’ responsibility for waste generation, not PepsiCo’s. She said it was “very unusual” to see an exclamation in legal filings: “I was like, ‘Which law clerk wrote that?’” In a statement to Grist, PepsiCo said it was pleased with the dismissal and that it “remains serious about plastic reduction and effective recycling. “We will continue to collaborate with key partners to advance smart material collection policies, improve recycling infrastructure, boost consumer awareness about the importance of recycling and establish partnerships focused on reducing waste and exploring innovative solutions to plastic pollution,” said the company’s vice president of global corporate communications, Andrea Foote. Earlier this year, PepsiCo company said it would likely miss a self-imposed deadline to make 100 percent of its packaging recyclable, compostable, biodegradable, or reusable by 2025. Its most recent sustainability update reported a 6 percent increase in the use of virgin plastic, in contrast to the company’s goal to reduce it by one-fifth by the end of the decade. Sumona Majumdar, the Earth Island Institute’s CEO, said she didn’t think the New York state case was a bellwether. Her organization’s D.C. lawsuit has already demonstrated the plausibility of plastic pollution-related consumer protection claims, and a separate lawsuit brought by the Earth Island Institute in California was recently allowed to move forward with public nuisance claims against Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and large consumer goods companies. Sara Gross, chief of the affirmative litigation division for the city of Baltimore, is representing Baltimore in its public nuisance and consumer protection lawsuit against Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Frito Lay, and large plastic manufacturers. “We respectfully disagree with the New York judge’s ruling and intend to proceed with our case,” she told Grist. A spokesperson for the New York attorney general’s office declined to say whether James would appeal to an appellate court, but they opposed the characterization of their lawsuit as some sort of fishing expedition — seeking to “impose punishment while searching for a crime,” as Colaiacovo put it. “This legal theory is growing, … others are pursuing it, and this one decision is certainly not going to be the be-all, end-all,” the spokesperson said. “We wouldn’t have taken the steps of filing a lawsuit if we didn’t believe that the legal argument had merit.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New York’s plastic lawsuit against PepsiCo has been dismissed. What’s next? on Nov 18, 2024.

Despite the setback, environmental attorneys think similar litigation can succeed elsewhere.

Late last month, the New York state Supreme Court granted a request from PepsiCo to dismiss a plastic pollution lawsuit brought against it by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James.

The complaint, which sought civil penalties against the food and beverage corporation for causing plastic pollution in the Buffalo River, was “predatory,” according to the decision written by Judge Emilio Colaiacovo. He accused James’ office of making “phantom assertions of liability that do nothing to solve the problem that exists.”

PepsiCo “did not pollute the Buffalo River or any other local waterways,” Colaiacovo wrote. “Other people did!”

That unusually emphatic dismissal raises questions about similar lawsuits that are pending around the country — as well as the prospect of future litigation to hold companies responsible for the plastic pollution generated by their products. Just one day before Colaiacovo’s decision was released, Los Angeles County filed a similar complaint against PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, arguing that the companies had harmed public health and deceived consumers about the efficacy of plastics recycling. The city of Baltimore has filed its own suit against PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Frito Lay, and plastic manufacturing companies, and two lawsuits in California — one from the state attorney general’s office and one from a coalition of environmental nonprofits — allege that Exxon Mobil promoted plastics recycling despite knowing it would be unable to keep pace with waste generation.

But several attorneys Grist spoke with — and James’ office — said they’re not concerned. Jill Heaps, senior legal director for the nonprofit Surfrider, said Colaicovo’s dismissal was “disappointing,” but she anticipates it will be overturned on appeal. “I don’t think it has any negative consequences for the litigation happening in California or elsewhere.”

Every year, the U.S. produces 73 million metric tons of plastic garbage, and about 95 percent of it doesn’t get recycled — not just because the U.S. lacks sufficient recycling infrastructure, but because of inherent properties of the material itself. All that nonrecycled plastic eventually gets burned or sent to a landfill, or else becomes litter in the natural environment, where it breaks down into small fragments called microplastics. Scientists have found these fragments in virtually every environment they’ve studied, and in the bodies of hundreds of animal species. In humans, they’ve linked microplastics to health concerns including metabolic disorders and an increased risk of heart attack.

The premise of the New York lawsuit and others like it is that major manufacturers of plastic products shouldn’t just wash their hands of these impacts and blame consumers for improperly disposing of their products. In the view of prosecutors and environmental groups, companies should be financially responsible for managing the pollution they generate.

NY Attorney General Letitia James stands in front of stairs wearing a black jacket, with many news microphones pointing toward her. — New York Attorney General Letitia James sued PepsiCo in 2023 over plastic pollution in the Buffalo River. John Lamparski / AFP via Getty Images

James’ lawsuit was the first brought by a state against a major plastics polluter. In her complaint, filed last year, James described PepsiCo’s trash as a “persistent and dangerous form of plastic pollution.” Her first legal claim against the company was that it had created a “public nuisance” for residents of the Buffalo River watershed. This was based on a 2022 survey of all types of waste along the river, which found that the majority of the waste was plastic and that the leading contributor to that plastic was PepsiCo. The company’s plastic garbage was identified three times more often than that of the second-greatest contributor.

The complaint’s other claim involved consumer protection law: Although PepsiCo had “long been aware” of the environmental and human health risks posed by single-use plastics, James’ office said PepsiCo had obscured these risks in its communications to the public, in part by promoting plastics recycling.

Colaiacovo rejected both of the lawsuit’s claims. He said James “fails to provide any evidence” that PepsiCo knew its plastic packaging would become pollution, and seemed to agree with PepsiCo that it should not be held liable for what happens to its plastic packaging after consumers are done with it. He characterized James’ arguments as a slippery slope that could eventually allow litigation against any company, so long as the plaintiff could construct a conceivable scenario linking an undesired action to a product it makes.

Plastic pollution “is a purely legislative or executive function to ameliorate,” he wrote, calling the lawsuit “policy idealism.”

Heaps, whose organization is part of the coalition that recently sued Exxon Mobil in California, said Colaiacovo shouldn’t have dismissed the case so early. “The judge’s job in a motion to dismiss is to give all of the assumptions in the favor of the plaintiff,” she said — “to ask: ‘Is it possible to make this argument?’” and then to allow the plaintiff to produce additional evidence to do so. That’s what happened with a similar consumer protection lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Earth Island Institute against Coca-Cola. This August, an appeals court in Washington, D.C., said that Earth Island’s claims were “facially plausible” and that it should have a chance to further substantiate them in the D.C. Superior Court.

Additionally, Heaps noted some other peculiarities in Colaiacovo’s dismissal, starting with a statement that in order for a public nuisance claim to be viable, the product in question must be “defective or unlawful.”

“I don’t know where he made that up,” she said. “I’ve never seen that in any case law.”

Tyson Redenbarger, a civil litigation attorney with the firm Cotchett, Pitre, & McCarthy LLP — which is representing the California nonprofits in their plastics lawsuit against Exxon Mobil — agreed. To justify a public nuisance claim, a product or practice must violate public health, morals, comfort, or other common rights. Redenbarger listed a number of legal products that have been found to have caused a public nuisance, like lead paint sold before 1978, which contributed to widespread health issues. “Defendants always argue, ‘Oh, my product is legal, and I sell it throughout the state,’” he said. “But that’s not the standard for nuisance.”

Diet Pepsi bottles on a shelf, viewed with a fish eye lens. — Plastic bottles of Diet Pepsi line a store shelf. Roberto Machado Noa / LightRocket via Getty Images

Heaps also called out the decision’s unusually emotional tenor — characterized by, for example, the use of an exclamation point when describing consumers’ responsibility for waste generation, not PepsiCo’s. She said it was “very unusual” to see an exclamation in legal filings: “I was like, ‘Which law clerk wrote that?’”

In a statement to Grist, PepsiCo said it was pleased with the dismissal and that it “remains serious about plastic reduction and effective recycling.

“We will continue to collaborate with key partners to advance smart material collection policies, improve recycling infrastructure, boost consumer awareness about the importance of recycling and establish partnerships focused on reducing waste and exploring innovative solutions to plastic pollution,” said the company’s vice president of global corporate communications, Andrea Foote.

Earlier this year, PepsiCo company said it would likely miss a self-imposed deadline to make 100 percent of its packaging recyclable, compostable, biodegradable, or reusable by 2025. Its most recent sustainability update reported a 6 percent increase in the use of virgin plastic, in contrast to the company’s goal to reduce it by one-fifth by the end of the decade.

Sumona Majumdar, the Earth Island Institute’s CEO, said she didn’t think the New York state case was a bellwether. Her organization’s D.C. lawsuit has already demonstrated the plausibility of plastic pollution-related consumer protection claims, and a separate lawsuit brought by the Earth Island Institute in California was recently allowed to move forward with public nuisance claims against Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and large consumer goods companies.

Sara Gross, chief of the affirmative litigation division for the city of Baltimore, is representing Baltimore in its public nuisance and consumer protection lawsuit against Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Frito Lay, and large plastic manufacturers. “We respectfully disagree with the New York judge’s ruling and intend to proceed with our case,” she told Grist.

A spokesperson for the New York attorney general’s office declined to say whether James would appeal to an appellate court, but they opposed the characterization of their lawsuit as some sort of fishing expedition — seeking to “impose punishment while searching for a crime,” as Colaiacovo put it.

“This legal theory is growing, … others are pursuing it, and this one decision is certainly not going to be the be-all, end-all,” the spokesperson said. “We wouldn’t have taken the steps of filing a lawsuit if we didn’t believe that the legal argument had merit.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New York’s plastic lawsuit against PepsiCo has been dismissed. What’s next? on Nov 18, 2024.

Read the full story here.

Photos courtesy of

Related News

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt Embarked on an Ambitious Expedition to East Africa. Here’s Why His Trip Still Matters Today

The 26th U.S. president is both lauded as a conservationist and condemned as a big-game hunter. A new book recounts the historic journey on which he helped form a significant collection of animals at the National Museum of Natural History

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt Embarked on an Ambitious Expedition to East Africa. Here’s Why His Trip Still Matters Today The 26th U.S. president is both lauded as a conservationist and condemned as a big-game hunter. A new book recounts the historic journey on which he helped form a significant collection of animals at the National Museum of Natural History Roosevelt stands between the Sister of Rev. W.F. Bumsted, at that time mother superior of the convent, and the young King Daudi of Uganda, and is surrounded by members of the king's court at St. Mary's Convent, near Kampala, December 22, 1909 Unidentified photographer / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University On a frigid day in March 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt rode slowly through the streets of Washington, D.C., his horse-drawn carriage navigating nearly a foot of snow and slush on the way to the inauguration of his successor, William Howard Taft. The short trip marked Roosevelt’s exit from the White House, but his thoughts were already on the next great journey of his life. Before the month was over, Roosevelt again found himself surrounded by cheering throngs at another historic departure. This time, in New York, Roosevelt was boarding the Hamburg to embark on an adventure that captivated people all over the world: the Smithsonian expedition to British East Africa. Eager to escape the responsibilities of the presidency and give Taft space to govern, Roosevelt longed to get away, enjoy camp life and take to the field with his gun. Roosevelt and his son Kermit would bag elephants, rhinoceroses and lions—but theirs was no simple big-game safari. The 1909-1910 expedition, through parts of what is now Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, included leading scientists. It produced a written and photographic record of an Africa that few in the West had seen, and it diligently described and preserved hundreds of African animals that became a foundational collection for the newly minted National Museum of Natural History. In a new title from Smithsonian Books, Theodore Roosevelt and the Smithsonian Expedition to British East Africa, 1909-1910, readers can experience the expedition in Roosevelt’s own words, written during evenings in his camp tent. The book features 28 excerpts from his chronicle of the trip, African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist. It’s illustrated with more than 100 fascinating expedition photographs, many taken by Kermit Roosevelt, that capture East Africa’s landscapes, fauna and people. Author Frank H. Goodyear III provides thoughtful historical context and commentary on the expedition’s enduring scientific significance, while exploring how the endeavor reflects the era’s colonial imperialist attitudes toward Africa and its people. “He saw a long tradition of exploration and seeking out new knowledge, and trying to connect worlds together,” Goodyear says. “Of course, exploration is also part of empire building, so that’s a part of the legacy here as well. But I think he very much saw himself as participating in this history of Western exploration.” Accompany Theodore Roosevelt on his Smithsonian safari to East Africa with new context and perspectives. Key takeaways: Theodore Roosevelt's trip to East Africa In 1909, just after his presidency ended, Roosevelt and his son Kermit journeyed to East Africa to collect specimens for the Smithsonian's new National Museum of Natural History. The museum opened to the public in 1910, and the many animal and plant species that Roosevelt and fellow naturalists brought back from the trip helped form a significant collection for the museum of today. It was a crucial time for such a trip. Roosevelt saw how railroads and settlers had forever altered the wild landscape of the American West. In Africa, such change was happening quickly. Roosevelt knew it, as did many others who were scrambling to collect and document African species and ecosystems that were on the brink of radical transformation or extinction. “It’s a real transitional moment in the history of East Africa,” Goodyear says. “Colonization is really beginning to take hold. You have the construction of the Uganda Railroad that literally opens up the territory; you have the beginnings of large-scale ranching and farming; you have colonial settlements being established throughout the land. So it was clear that the impact on indigenous ecosystems was going to be profound.” Roosevelt presents Kermit to King Daudi of Uganda, December 21, 1909 Charles W. Hattersley / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Roosevelt’s environmental legacy remains complex. He’s been celebrated as a conservationist and criticized for being a big-game hunter, especially by those who had recently witnessed the destruction of the buffalo and the native ecosystems of the American West. “It was controversial in its own day, and it remains controversial. What some perceived as the wanton destruction of wildlife offended many people,” Goodyear says. But Roosevelt was aware of this criticism and determined that this trip would not be an exercise in “game butchery.” “I would a great deal rather have this a scientific trip, which would give it a purpose and character, than simply a prolonged holiday of mine,” he explained in a letter to his friend Henry Cabot Lodge. Roosevelt’s passion for the natural sciences was real and lifelong, notes Darrin Lunde, mammals collections manager at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “Yes, he liked big-game hunting,” Lunde says. “But he was so much more than a hunter. It genuinely was a scientific expedition led by a former president who himself could hold his own as an ornithologist and a mammalogist.” He was an eternal naturalist who collected specimens and started his own museum as a child. “He was one of those guys who liked to get out with his gun, collect things, do taxidermy, describe new species,” Lunde says, noting that Roosevelt originally went to Harvard University to be a naturalist, a part of him that always remained. He kept correspondence with leading naturalists and curators throughout his life. For Roosevelt, this trip “started out as a hunt and very quickly became a museum expedition,” Lunde says. “Because this was a chance to live that boyhood dream of being this great, classical kind of museum naturalist.” Roosevelt on his favorite horse, Tranquillity, in Nairobi, Kenya, July 26, 1909 Paul Thompson / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Planning the trip in the White House, Roosevelt proposed an intriguing partnership to Secretary of the Smithsonian Charles Doolittle Walcott. If Walcott would provide naturalists who could identify, describe and catalog the species of Africa, and prepare specimens for transport, Roosevelt would donate them as a collection for the new National Museum of Natural History. “Now, it seems to me that this [trip] opens the best chance for the National Museum to get a fine collection not only of the big-game beasts, but of the smaller mammals and birds of Africa; and looking at it dispassionately, it seems to me that the chance ought not to be neglected,” Roosevelt wrote, asking to except only “a very few personal trophies of little scientific value which for some reason I might like to keep.” The deal also had a financial angle. Roosevelt was adamant about paying for his own expenses, but the extensive scientific aspects of the expedition needed funding. Walcott, thrilled at the prospect of securing a landmark collection for the museum and publicizing it by partnering with a former president, was willing to help. The Smithsonian pledged $30,000, all raised by private subscription, avoiding the need to ask Congress for funds, which Roosevelt found ethically and politically distasteful. The museum got more than its money’s worth. Three naturalists—Edgar Mearns, co-founder of the American Ornithologists’ Union and a former military surgeon; Edmund Heller, an expert in large mammals and African game; and J. Alden Loring, a small mammal specialist with experience on Smithsonian scientific expeditions—worked tirelessly collecting mice, bats, birds and shrews, as well as pressing plants and stockpiling interesting insects. Roosevelt’s Life-Histories of African Game Animals chronicled the collection—which includes thousands of mammal, bird and plant specimens. Each one was measured, cataloged and painstakingly preserved for travel. Many were photographed, and expedition members recorded the time and place of collection habitats, the subjects’ behavior in the field, and other details. The effort produced a collection of enduring value. “All of those Roosevelt specimens, for the most part, are still here,” Lunde says. “We have the best collection of East African mammals anywhere, in large part because of the contributions of the Roosevelt expedition.” The collection is irreplaceable, he notes, because it occurred at a time when scientists could get not just the little mammals still collected today, but the elephants, rhinos and other megafauna still prevalent at the time. Even now, Lunde notes, scientists study the collection: “It’s all represented here, and people are coming in all the time and using those specimens, to this day, and publishing on it.” Mammals Exhibits, Natural History Building, Square-Lipped Rhinoceros Group, 1913 Unidentified photographer / Smithsonian Institution Archives Because Roosevelt was one of the world’s most famous people, countless reporters hoped to accompany the expedition and scoop its stories of African adventure. He rejected them all, preferring to control the narrative and tell the story himself—while earning cash to help fund his personal expenses. Scribner’s paid $50,000 for Roosevelt to write 12 articles from the field, set to appear in Scribner’s Monthly, and the publishing house also agreed to print African Game Trails, which would bring the series together in one volume. Kermit, who had trained as the expedition’s primary photographer, and others supplemented this with an incredible array of pictures. These had scientific value; showing African fauna in their native habitats gave a fuller picture of Africa’s ecosystems. They also helped to promote the trip abroad and enhance Roosevelt’s hale and hardy image. “The photography is what first drew me into this project,” says Goodyear, a former curator of photography at the National Portrait Gallery. “They are absolutely extraordinary: extraordinary in the story they tell and extraordinary in their depth. There are more than 1,000 of these photos, and they comprise an incredible record of the people, places and fauna of East Africa.” (Though not part of the expedition, British photographer and filmmaker Cherry Kearton was also in Africa at the time and crossed paths with Roosevelt at several points, shooting footage that would become the 1910 film Roosevelt in Africa.) A herd of elephants in an open forest, 1909 Kermit Roosevelt / Smithsonian Institution Archives Kenyan entomologist Dino Martins has written a valuable afterword to Goodyear’s book. In it, he stresses that, like other African expeditions and collecting trips, Roosevelt’s group depended on support and knowledge from a wide range of individuals and communities, including traders, local leaders, porters and guides who knew how to travel and survive in a challenging landscape. “Though often unacknowledged, that local knowledge and support made it possible for Western explorers to undertake these journeys, for without them their expeditions would certainly have failed,” Martins writes. Despite their importance to the journey, African people are largely absent from Roosevelt’s narrative in African Game Trails. “Outside of himself, Kermit and a few heads of game, nearly all other figures in the book are shadowy, and even Africa itself does not stand out very clearly. The book is avowedly Rooseveltian,” a reviewer from the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote of Roosevelt’s work in 1910. Although the critic dubbed this trait the “greatest charm” of African Game Trails, today, this narrow focus seems like a lost opportunity. “Some of the Kikuyu assistants and guides did become really close to Roosevelt,” Goodyear says. “But you can only kind of tease out the nature of these relationships by a few passing comments.” Tohan with a Marabou stork, 1909 Kermit Roosevelt / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University The expedition has also contributed a lasting scientific legacy in Africa; it was one of the first to extensively collect and document animals and plants beyond the classic big-game species. In 2015, a “Roosevelt Resurvey” expedition included Kenyan scientists and naturalists co-leading fieldwork and research programs that retraced the footsteps of the Roosevelt expedition. It found a rodent species on Mount Kenya that had been described by the Smithsonian naturalists during the original expedition, then “lost” for more than a century afterward. “Two data points on this little rat, over a century apart: a lesson on how much we still need to learn about the world around us,” writes Martins. And while the Roosevelt expedition literally put a site called Rhino Camp on the map by shooting white rhinos there, its work studying the many smaller species and their interactions has since proved very valuable. “They documented the fauna of that region when it was intact, when it still had white rhino roaming around, so we have an accurate picture before it was perturbed in any serious way,” Lunde explains. More than a century later, that landscape has changed dramatically, with rhinos and other animals wiped out and people moved in. But the Uganda Wildlife Authority is working at the Ajai Reserve to restore the ecosystem and its megafauna, including the iconic white rhino. Doing so successfully is a complicated endeavor, but it’s being informed by the time-machine-like snapshot gathered by the early 20th-century expedition. “Without it, efforts to create these parks would just be guesswork,” says Lunde, whose team at the museum is aiding the effort by surveying existing species to contrast with the past. “Now, the Ugandans are actually doing it, and thanks to the Roosevelt-Smithsonian expedition they are able to refer to a record of what these habitats were like in their natural state.” From left to right: Theodore Roosevelt, R.J. Cuninghame and Edgar A. Mearns, on the way to Kijabe, Kenya, June 3, 1909 Unidentified photographer / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Get the latest on what's happening At the Smithsonian in your inbox.

Animals

Conservation

Forests

California issues advisory on a parasitic fly whose maggots can infest living humans

California health officials warn that the New World Screwworm could arrive in California from an infested traveler or animal, or from the natural travel of the parasitic flies.

A parasitic fly whose maggots can infest living livestock, birds, pets and humans, could threaten California soon. The New World Screwworm has rapidly spread northward from Panama since 2023 and farther into Central America. As of early September, the parasitic fly was present in seven states in southern Mexico, where 720 humans have been infested and six of them have died. More than 111,000 animals also have been infested, health officials said. In early August, a person traveling from El Salvador to Maryland was discovered to have been infested, federal officials said. But the parasitic fly has not been found in the wild within a 20-mile radius of the infested person, which includes Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. After the Maryland incident, the California Department of Public Health decided to issue a health advisory this month warning that the New World Screwworm could arrive in California from an infested traveler or animal, or from the natural travel of the flies.Graphic images of New World Screwworm infestations show open wounds in cows, deer, pigs, chickens, horses and goats, infesting a wide swath of the body from the neck, head and mouth to the belly and legs.The Latin species name of the fly — hominivorax — loosely translates to “maneater.”“People have to be aware of it,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases specialist. “As the New World Screwworm flies northward, they may start to see people at the borders — through the cattle industry — get them, too.”Other people at higher risk include those living in rural areas where there’s an outbreak, anyone with open sores or wounds, those who are immunocompromised, the very young and very old, and people who are malnourished, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. There could be grave economic consequences should the New World Screwworm get out of hand among U.S. livestock, leading to animal deaths, decreased livestock production, and decreased availability of manure and draught animals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “It is not only a threat to our ranching community — but it is a threat to our food supply and our national security,” the USDA said.Already, in May, the USDA suspended imports of live cattle, horse and bison from the Mexican border because of the parasitic fly’s spread through southern Mexico. The New World Screwworm isn’t new to the U.S. But it was considered eradicated in the United States in 1966, and by 1996, the economic benefit of that eradication was estimated at nearly $800 million, “with an estimated $2.8 billion benefit to the wider economy,” the USDA said. Texas suffered an outbreak in 1976. A repeat could cost the state’s livestock producers $732 million a year and the state economy $1.8 billion, the USDA said. Historically, the New World Screwworm was a problem in the U.S. Southwest and expanded to the Southeast in the 1930s after a shipment of infested animals, the USDA said. Scientists in the 1950s discovered a technique that uses radiation to sterilize male parasitic flies. Female flies that mate with the sterile male flies produce sterile eggs, “so they can’t propagate anymore,” Chin-Hong said. It was this technique that allowed the U.S., Mexico and Central America to eradicate the New World Screwworm by the 1960s. But the parasitic fly has remained endemic in South America, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In late August, the USDA said it would invest in new technology to try to accelerate the pace of sterile fly production. The agency also said it would build a sterile-fly production facility at Edinburg, Texas, which is close to the Mexico border, and would be able to produce up to 300 million sterile flies per week. “This will be the only United States-based sterile fly facility and will work in tandem with facilities in Panama and Mexico to help eradicate the pest and protect American agriculture,” the USDA said. The USDA is already releasing sterile flies in southern Mexico and Central America.The risk to humans from the fly, particularly in the U.S., is relatively low. “We have decent nutrition; people have access to medical care,” Chin-Hong said. But infestations can happen. Open wounds are a danger, and mucus membranes can also be infested, such as inside the nose, according to the CDC. An infestation occurs when fly maggots infest the living flesh of warm-blooded animals, the CDC says. The flies “land on the eyes or the nose or the mouth,” Chin-Hong said, or, according to the CDC, in an opening such as the genitals or a wound as small as an insect bite. A single female fly can lay 200 to 300 eggs at a time. When they hatch, the maggots — which are called screwworms — “have these little sharp teeth or hooks in their mouths, and they chomp away at the flesh and burrow,” Chin-Hong said. After feeding for about seven days, a maggot will fall to the ground, dig into the soil and then awaken as an adult fly. Deaths among humans are uncommon but can happen, Chin-Hong said. Infestation should be treated as soon as possible. Symptoms can include painful skin sores or wounds that may not heal, the feeling of the larvae moving, or a foul-smelling odor, the CDC says. Patients are treated by removal of the maggots, which need to be killed by putting them into a sealed container of concentrated ethyl or isopropyl alcohol then disposed of as biohazardous waste. The parasitic fly has been found recently in seven Mexican states: Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz, and Yucatán. Officials urge travelers to keep open wounds clean and covered, avoid insect bites, and wear hats, loose-fitting long-sleeved shirts and pants, socks, and insect repellents registered by the Environmental Protection Agency as effective.

Animals

Health

Food

How Birds Began Migrating to the Arctic to Breed

Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Golden autumn sunlight glints through the sedges and shrubs of the tundra in northern Alaska. Winter is approaching, and soon the region will be buried under snow and ice. For the past three months the chatter of the Arctic Tern colony has served as the soundtrack of the summer breeding season. But now, with daylight waning, the terns need to head south. In an instant, the usually noisy birds will fall silent, a behavior known as “dread.” Moments later the entire colony will take to the skies to begin its 25,000-mile journey to Antarctica—the longest known migration of any animal on Earth.The Arctic Tern is not the only bird that spends its breeding season in the Arctic. Billions of birds belonging to nearly 200 species—from small sparrows such as the Smith’s Longspur to large waterfowl such as the Greater White-fronted Goose—make their way to the far north every spring to reproduce and then make the return flight south for the winter. It’s no easy feat. Migration is costly. Even under ideal conditions, such an epic journey requires huge amounts of energy and exposes the travelers to dangerous weather. The mortality risk is high.But undertaking these trips allows the birds to take advantage of the seasonal conditions in these environments. The endless summer sun supports lush plant growth, flourishing insect swarms, and plentiful fish populations nourished by zooplankton blooms. With 24 hours of light a day, the birds can more easily catch food such as slippery fish and tiny insects. The round-the-clock daylight also means many of the animals that prey on birds are less likely to sneak up on a nest unnoticed.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.Scientists have long wondered when birds began making these extraordinary journeys. New fossils that we and our colleagues have discovered and analyzed are finally providing some clues. A decade of expeditions to the Arctic Circle in Alaska has yielded a trove of bird fossils—including several hatchlings. The remains, which date to approximately 73 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period, constitute the earliest known record of birds reproducing at polar latitude. The fossils hint that early birds may have already been traveling to the top of the world to raise the next generation of winged wonders.The polar migration of birds is one of nature’s great spectacles. To make the marathon journey to the Arctic, birds need physical stamina. They typically have various anatomical and behavioral adaptations to long-distance travel. The Arctic Tern, for example, is a marvel of efficiency. Its skeleton is lightweight and partially filled with air, allowing it to glide for long distances without expending any energy to flap its wings. It can eat on the move, plucking fish from the surface of the ocean as it flies. And, like many migratory birds, it can sleep while gliding.Migrants also need to be skilled navigators to reach their breeding ground. The precise methods by which birds find their way remain mysterious, but biologists generally agree that they use some combination of visual landmarks; the position of the sun, moon and stars; Earth’s magnetic field; and scent-based clues. A degree of learning also seems to be involved—in many species, first-time migrants appear to simply fly in the correct general direction, whereas experienced birds may use landmarks to take a more efficient route.Scientists have rediscovered dozens of three-dimensionally preserved teeth and bones from hatchling birds, including this tip of a beak, from the Arctic Circle in Alaska, showing that birds were reproducing at polar latitude by 73 million years ago.As impressive as the trip itself is, the Arctic migration is part of a much grander scheme: the birds are literally changing their ecosystems at their destinations. Although most Arctic birds are only physically in the Arctic for the breeding season, they spur the success of plants by pollinating flowers and dispersing seeds. They also help to manage insect and rodent populations and, by extension, help to control the spread of disease. In fact, birds are so critical to the success of their habitats that they are hypothesized to have played a key role in structuring remote ecosystems over deep time. Birds carry small organisms, such as plants and insects, over long distances to colonize remote polar regions. Were it not for the evolution of migratory birds, today’s tundra would be much more barren.Despite the importance of migration for the birds themselves and for the wider landscape they inhabit, we actually know very little about the origins of this phenomenon. To answer such a fundamental question, we have to look backward in time to the fossil record. Unfortunately, the polar fossil record is sparse, and most of the fossil-bearing sediments there are covered in ice or water. In spots where these sediments are exposed, fieldwork is often challenging, dangerous and expensive. Furthermore, bird bones are some of the rarest fossils in the world because they are small and fragile, making them less likely to survive long enough to fossilize, let alone to be discovered by paleontologists.In the rare cases when we do manage to find a fossil bird in the Arctic, it can be difficult to determine whether that bird was a visiting migrant or a permanent resident. Let’s say we find exactly the same species, in rocks from exactly the same time period, at both temperate and polar latitudes. Even then, we can’t say the extinct species migrated. There’s always the possibility that it merely inhabited a broad area year-round. The range of the modern-day Common Raven, for instance, encompasses practically the entire Northern Hemisphere.There is a clever way to home in on whether a fossil deposit contains migratory birds, however. The vast majority of living birds that inhabit polar regions migrate to lower latitudes after the breeding season ends. So, if we find fossil evidence of birds not just present but breeding at polar latitudes, we are headed in the right direction. This is where our work on fossils from a Late Cretaceous body of rock in northern Alaska called the Prince Creek Formation comes in.At the beginning of the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, a team of paleontologists gently brushes away sand to reveal an intact dinosaur skeleton in the badlands of Montana. Although fossil fieldwork is never as simple as removing loose sediment with a paintbrush (sorry, Steven Spielberg), Arctic fieldwork is in a league of its own. Winter brings temperatures as low as –50 degrees Fahrenheit, tons of snow and limited hours of daylight. The summer isn’t a walk in the park, either: giant mosquitoes are out in force, it’s almost always rainy and cold, and there is So. Much. Mud. Moreover, large mammals are out and about, making potentially dangerous wildlife encounters a concern.In August of 2022 one of us (Wilson) was on her second trip to the Arctic. It was about five in the morning when she awoke in her tent along the Colville River near the Prince Creek Formation. The sun had already been up for hours. With a couple more hours before she needed to be up, she was frustrated that she had to climb out of her warm sleeping bag to pee. She begrudgingly put on a hat and coat and unzipped her tent, still half asleep. Then her heart stopped. About 20 yards away, right near one of her crewmates’ tents, was a giant, fuzzy brown blob. She tried frantically to remember her bear training: Should she call out and try to wake everyone else up? Grab her bear spray? Try to scare it out of the camp? Only after putting herself through this roller coaster of emotions did she finally realize that the “bear” had a large set of horns on its head. Thankfully, the camp visitor was just a musk ox.Brittany Cheung (feature icons) and Rebecca Gelernter (bird illustrations)One may wonder why we bother with such extreme fieldwork. Wilson has often found herself wondering the same thing while working in –30-degree-F weather. But for the same reason the fieldwork is challenging, the fossil discoveries in the Arctic are some of the most exciting in the world. The Prince Creek Formation is located at a modern-day latitude of 70 degrees north and preserves fossils of animals that lived an estimated 72.8 million years ago. Plate tectonic activity has shifted Alaska south since that time. During the Late Cretaceous, these species would have been living at an even higher paleolatitude of 80 to 85 degrees north, practically at the North Pole. Summers would have brought plentiful light and warmth, but year-round occupants of the ecosystem had to endure winters with freezing temperatures, snowfall and about four months of continuous darkness.Paleontologists have known about dinosaurs from the Prince Creek Formation since 1983, but it’s only in the past couple of decades that work led by Patrick Druckenmiller of the University of Alaska Museum of the North and Gregory Erickson of Florida State University has begun to change our perception of Arctic life in the Cretaceous. Their team’s discovery of baby dinosaur fossils helped to demonstrate that dinosaurs were year-round inhabitants of the ecosystem because the baby dinosaurs would have been too young to migrate before the onset of winter. More recently, smaller bones found alongside the dinosaur fossils have led to another exciting discovery: the oldest evidence of polar bird reproduction.To date, we have identified more than 50 three-dimensionally preserved bird bones, along with dozens of teeth, from the site. The fossils are so tiny that they could all fit together in a single jam jar. Nevertheless, they represent one of the best collections of Late Cretaceous North American bird fossils and document the presence of at least three types of birds that lived alongside nonbird dinosaurs in Arctic Alaska. Not only that, but many of the fossils belong to baby birds and represent the earliest known growth stages of these groups of birds. Together these fossils demonstrate that birds have been nesting in the Arctic for at least 73 million years, nearly half the time they have existed on Earth.Close study of these delicate fossils has allowed us to reconstruct the birds of the Prince Creek Formation and their role in the ecosystem. Picture the Arctic in early summer 73 million years ago. The coastal floodplain that was desolate throughout the long winter is now lush with plant life and buzzing with insects. It’s the perfect setting for a newly hatched chick to grow up in. A head pops up from a bowl-shaped nest. It belongs to a baby ornithurine, a close relative of modern birds. He is still covered in downy feathers and scrambles about on skinny legs, not yet ready to take flight. While learning his way around the world, he takes special care to stick close to his parents. Unlike many other Late Cretaceous birds, he and his relatives have a toothless beak that serves as a precise tool for picking off creeping insects under their watchful eyes. This chick hatched a month ago and is already off to a strong start thanks to a new evolutionary innovation: the larger egg laid by advanced ornithurine birds.The coastal floodplain offers premium real estate for nesting. Dinosaurs of all kinds are preparing for the arrival of their young, and last year’s young are still recovering from their first Arctic winter. The ornithurine chick and his family aren’t the only types of birds here to call this landscape home. Kick-diving hesperornithines are hunting in the river waters, and ternlike ichthyornithines are wheeling overhead. And they’re all here for the same reason birds still nest in the Arctic today: lots and lots of sunshine.The Prince Creek birds provide definitive evidence that birds bred in the Arctic during the Cretaceous. Whether they migrated there from elsewhere to reproduce is tougher to establish. We can get at this question from a few angles, however. Let’s start by considering whether these birds had the ability to make such a journey in the first place. We know that any birds from the preceding Jurassic period are unlikely to have flown very far. Such early birds had not yet evolved many of the features that help modern birds fly skillfully and efficiently. For example, the iconic Archaeopteryx was capable of flight, but it appears to have had relatively low endurance and couldn’t perform complex maneuvers. The keeled sternum, or breastbone, that anchors the pectoral muscles in modern birds was either absent or at most a flat cartilaginous plate in Archaeopteryx. Clawed fingers interrupted the leading edge of its wing, and compared with birds of today, its feathers appear to have been less flexible and thus less adept at forming a coherent airfoil. Even its tail seems like an archaic reminder of Archaeopteryx’s grounded ancestry. Whereas modern birds have a short tail with a special plough-shaped bone called the pygostyle that lets them spread their tail feathers into a fan, Archaeopteryx retained a long and aerodynamically unwieldy tail similar to that of its theropod dinosaur ancestors.Researchers excavate a fossil site along the Colville River in northern Alaska.Over time birds evolved a panoply of skeletal and soft-tissue features that improved their flight capabilities. The bony tail became shorter, and the fingertips diminished from large claws to tiny bones hidden under the feathers. Advanced Cretaceous birds in the group Ornithothoraces, which includes the Prince Creek specimens, are in many ways the first birds with an unquestionably proficient flight apparatus. In these birds, the sternum bears a keel that provides additional attachment for the muscles that power the flight stroke. The shoulder joint is oriented higher on the back, allowing for better positioning of the wings. The first finger also anchors an alula, a cluster of small feathers that acts as a mini airfoil, helping in fine maneuvers. Thanks to these anatomical innovations, the Prince Creek birds (apart from the flightless hesperornithines) would have been capable of flying great distances to the Arctic to breed.A closer look at where these birds fit in the avian family tree provides more clues to how they came to reproduce in the far north. Ornithothoraces is divided into two groups: the enantiornithines and the ornithurines. Enantiornithines were the dominant birds for most of the Cretaceous period. These toothed birds ranged from sparrow- to turkey-size and showed a great diversity of forms, from Longirostravis, with its slender bill, to the blunt-toothed Bohaiornis, to the toucan-beaked Falcatakely. They lived almost everywhere.Ornithurines, which include modern birds and their close relatives, were rarer in Cretaceous ecosystems. Like enantiornithines, most Cretaceous ornithurines still had teeth. But advanced members of the group differed from enantiornithines in having fewer teeth; no gastralia, or belly ribs; and separated pubis bones, which allowed them to lay larger eggs. In contrast to the enantiornithines, which seem to have thrived in forested environments, ornithurines appear to have stuck largely to aquatic habitats during the Cretaceous.Intriguingly, the Prince Creek bird fossils all come from ornithurine birds. We have identified bones and teeth of three types so far: ternlike ichthyornithines; hesperornithines, which used their feet to propel themselves through water; and some nearly modern close relatives of living birds. Notably absent from our assemblage are any enantiornithines. If all Ornithothoraces were capable of long-distance flight, why are the otherwise ubiquitous enantiornithines missing from Alaska?To recover small bones and teeth, the team washes fossil-bearing sediments through screens and takes the resulting concentrate back to the laboratory for examination under a microscope.We suspect one answer lies in the egg. Anyone who regularly cooks eggs has probably noticed a little white blob, which for many people spoils the otherwise appetizing appearance of the yolk. This blob is the chalazae, a pair of protein-rich “tethers” that attach the yolk to the shell. Chalazae protect the embryo when birds rotate their eggs in the nest to ensure that the embryos get thoroughly bathed in nutrients during incubation. Reptiles, which lack chalazae, do not practice egg rotation. In fact, rotating a crocodile egg can disrupt development of and kill the embryo.So far paleontologists haven’t found any fossil chalazae that might allow them to trace the origin of this structure. But we have a hunch that it evolved in ornithurines because crocodilians, nonavian dinosaurs and enantiornithines all buried their eggs at least partially in the ground. Fossil clutches of enantiornithines demonstrate that they placed their eggs vertically in sediment or soil, leaving only the tops exposed. This arrangement would have stabilized the eggs, keeping the embryo safely attached to the yolk, but it was much less efficient for incubation. At best, brooding enantiornithines would have been able to make only partial contact with their eggs, resulting in poorer heat transfer and slower development of the embryo. In fact, some paleontologists speculate that they could not incubate via body contact at all, because the eggs were too small to support that parent’s weight.Perhaps the lack of this tiny embryo “seat belt” explains the absence of enantiornithines in the Arctic. Most modern birds that breed in northern Alaska nest from late May through June. For birds that can nest in vegetation, this is a lovely time of year. Yet even at the start of June, snow may still persist in patches, and the soil may remain chilly or even frozen. Temperatures were warmer in the Cretaceous, but the Arctic winter was still dark and cold, and spring would have taken longer to arrive than at more southern latitudes. For ground-nesting enantiornithines, cold soil would have been highly unwelcoming for nests.Why not just wait until later in the summer to nest? There may simply not have been enough time. Because enantiornithines could not provide full-contact incubation, their eggs probably took substantially longer to hatch than those of birds that can sit on their eggs in nests built in vegetation. The inexorable march of the seasons would have left almost no time for fledging for birds that hatched in late summer.The Arctic Tern migrates tens of thousands of miles every year between its breeding grounds in the Arctic and its wintering grounds in Antarctica.Mark Boulton/Science SourceStill, although enantiornithines took several years to grow to full size, they appear to have been highly precocial as hatchlings. In fact, there is some evidence they could fly within a day of hatching. That might seem to make up for the longer incubation time in the race against winter. But another aspect of enantiornithine biology might have thrown up a roadblock to Arctic breeding.Recently discovered fossils preserved in amber reveal that enantiornithines molted their body feathers all at once. This style of molting allowed them to trade their juvenile plumage for adult plumage rapidly when the time came. Yet it would have been a big liability in colder climates. If an early cold snap occurred during a molting interval, being caught half naked could have been deadly to small-bodied birds that had to generate their own body heat, as opposed to obtaining it from external sources such as the sun. By eliminating the possibility of nesting in the summer and overwintering, this molting pattern might have served as a barrier to those birds inhabiting Arctic environments year-round.Needing a longer runway to make it from the egg to migration-ready seems to have left enantiornithines unable to establish themselves in the Arctic. Ornithurines, in contrast, were able to exploit the Arctic at least seasonally thanks to evolutionary innovations in reproduction and development that occurred in their lineage.Our work on the Prince Creek birds is not over yet. We currently have only circumstantial evidence that they were migrating to the Arctic to breed rather than living there year-round. But we may be able to build our case with a technique called stable isotope analysis, which lets us use comparisons of the ratios of different forms, or isotopes, of the same element in an animal’s teeth or bones to infer its diet, reconstruct its environmental conditions, and even trace its movements over its lifetime.We know that dinosaurs were overwintering in the Arctic because their young would not have been ready to migrate anywhere the first winter after hatching. Perhaps comparisons of the isotopic compositions of bird and dinosaur teeth could inform us about the habits of the Prince Creek birds. Many biological factors, such as diet and metabolism, influence isotopic compositions, though. We still have a lot of groundwork to do to understand these factors before we apply stable isotope techniques to our fossil birds.Meanwhile let’s check in on our hatchling. The Late Cretaceous world is harsh for an ornithurine chick still learning the ropes. At just a month old, he is still very vulnerable and depends on his parents for comfort and safety. If he strays too far, he risks becoming dinner for one of the many dromaeosaurs who are also trying to provide for their young. Because of these predators, many of his siblings won’t survive to the end of the summer, and some just might end up as fossils in the long run. If he can make it a few months, perhaps he will fly south with his kin to somewhere sunny for the winter. He’d be one of the lucky ones. This scenario is the harsh reality of life at the top of the world. But in the remarkable adaptations and behaviors of birds lies hope for survival.

Animals

Climate

Energy

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

EU legislators are considering a form of regulation that could protect many species from unsafe exploitation — if it’s done right. The post The Exotic Pet Trade Harms Animals and Humans. The European Union Is Studying a Potential Solution appeared first on The Revelator.

By the time a sugar glider named Mango entered an animal sanctuary in the Netherlands in 2023, life as a pet had taken a terrible toll. Mango lost both his brothers and his right eye due to health issues, despite being kept by a veterinarian for seven years. These days, Europeans keep tens of millions of exotic pets — as do people in other countries around the world. Although beloved by their owners, experts say most of these animals, like Mango, do not adapt well to life in captivity and often face health problems and premature death as a result of this legal trade. Mango the sugar glider. Courtesy Animal Advocacy and Protection Globally, the business involves an estimated 13,000 species, many unsuited to being companion animals, says Michèle Hamers, EU policy officer at the nonprofit Animal Advocacy and Protection. The organization runs the sanctuary where 9-year-old Mango lived — alongside fellow sugar gliders Radagast, Didache, Duizeltje, and Sushi — until his sudden death on July 21, likely from a hematoma. “Something needs to change,” says Hamers. For her organization, that change would involve the introduction of an EU-wide “positive list” for exotic pets — a limited inventory of approved pet species suited to captivity. They’re not the only ones asking for this. In recent years, momentum has grown toward making this a reality. The Pet Trade in Europe Sugar gliders are marsupials native to Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea named for their ability to “glide” through the air between trees on fleshy membranes connecting their front and back legs. Their arboreal, nocturnal lifestyles are among the traits that make them unsuitable for living in a cage in someone’s house, Animal Advocacy and Protection says. By their very nature of being wild, many other species don’t do well in captivity. As a result, the nonprofit’s rescue centers in the Netherlands and Spain take in as many exotic pets as they can. It’s never enough: they typically have a waiting list in the hundreds. Hamers says relinquished or seized animals typically arrive with behavioral and physical problems, including bone malformations, malnutrition, and stress-related issues like self-mutilation. An exotic bird market in Paris, which was shuttered in 2021. Photo: Elekes Andor via Wikimedia Commons To tackle the root cause of the situation, the organization and other concerned NGOs are pushing for EU-wide legislative change, preferably a “preventative approach” to regulating the trade. Hamers says this would establish a selective list of animals who can be kept, with all others banned by default. This type of system is known as positive, reverse, or whitelisting. Only animals who “can thrive in captivity and are safe to be kept” should make the cut, explains Hamers. Presently, the EU has no regulation designed to address the pet trade, although the market sometimes falls under laws concerning animal health, “invasive alien” species, and trade in threatened wildlife. Mostly, though, member states decide their own rules on exotic pets, which can vary greatly from country to country. Some EU nations don’t regulate the exotic pet trade at all, while others use a negative list system, meaning they create lists of banned species. The remaining member states — 12 out of 27 — have some form of positive list in place or the legal basis to develop them, says Hamers. In recent years European lawmakers have signaled support for an EU-wide positive list through varied resolutions and action plans. As a result the European Commission, which is the bloc’s executive body, commissioned a study on its feasibility in late 2023. The results are due later this year. On June 19, as part of a proposed regulation on the trade in pet cats and dogs, the European Parliament also voted in favor of establishing an EU-wide positive list for exotic pets, providing that the feasibility study shows the measure to be valuable and legally possible. One Trade, Many Problems In the proposed regulation, EU lawmakers warn that “the absence of a common Union framework” leads to “inconsistencies, gaps in enforcement, confusion for consumers and, often, to serious animal welfare consequences for species that are unsuitable to be kept as pets, as well as risks to biodiversity, human health and safety and nature conservation.” This statement illustrates why support for a positive list is gaining steam: the exotic pet trade is associated with several problems, not solely animal welfare. For Animal Advocacy and Protection, the welfare of kept animals is a priority. Whether captivity can meet animals’ physical and psychological needs should be the main criteria for considering who gets on the list, says Hamers. But, she adds, the criteria should include other factors, such as risks to biodiversity and public health and safety. A 2021 report by nonprofits Born Free and the RSPCA highlighted the potential risks exotic pets pose to public health. They include injuries and transmission of zoonotic pathogens: diseases like Covid-19 that can be passed between humans and other animals. A dyeing poison dart frog, a popular species in the pet trade. Photo: Michael Hoefner/Wikimedia Commons More than 85% of live animals traded globally are not native to the countries importing them, according to a 2023 analysis, which can pose a risk to environmental health. Hundreds of imported species have ended up being released into the wild, sometimes with dire consequences for native wildlife. For instance, scientists have implicated the trade in live amphibians for pets and meat in the global spread of the disease chytridiomycosis, which is linked to widespread amphibian population declines and 90 documented extinctions. On the flip side, trade can pose a threat to exploited species themselves. Scientists have calculated that 25% of the over 800 amphibian species traded as pets are threatened. They said further regulation and other measures are “urgently needed to slow the decline of populations and loss of species as a consequence of unsustainable, and largely unmonitored trade in wildlife.” Likewise, the industry is notorious for scooping up newly described species, often ones with limited ranges, to support collectors’ voracious desire for novelty. Positive lists could help to nip this unscrupulous inclination in the bud, because commerce in such species would be banned by default. Exotic pets are both sourced from the wild and bred in captivity. Breeding operations can relieve pressure on wild populations. But they can also be associated with illicit activity, such as the laundering of wild-caught animals into the captive-bred trade. In 2019, Belgium’s federal body for health, food chain safety, and environment, pointed to further links between captive breeding and illegality in a factsheet about the live amphibian trade. It stated, “illegal specimens are assumed to be the founding stock for many captive specimens, including within the European Union.” Illegal trade is a significant issue in the exotic pet business. A report by Traffic highlighted that 28% of all animals seized by EU countries in 2023 were likely destined to be pets, amounting to some 3,500 individuals. The lack of uniform regulation across the EU is a “massive problem” in this regard, says Hamers. Market fragmentation in a free trade bloc creates a ripe environment for illegal trade, she explains, because people can purchase animals banned in their own country from other EU states with relative ease. The United States has the same issue. In a 2023 paper, researchers noted that state and local regulations govern much of the trade, despite federal rules having some bearing on it, such as the Lacey Act’s prohibitions on the importation of certain “injurious” species. Differing and incomplete rules across states, alongside lackluster penalties for wrongdoing, have “facilitated continued possession of exotic pets in states where these animals are banned,” the researchers warned. They concluded the U.S. would benefit from a nationwide positive list system, too. Making Positive Lists Meaningful Even with captive breeding, many exotic pets being traded across the EU and the U.S. originated from countries elsewhere, says Peter Lanius, director of the Australian nonprofit Nature Needs More. Lanius’ organization released a report in June outlining how a global positive list for exotic pets could be introduced by the global wildlife trade treaty body, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Alongside yardsticks like considering species’ welfare needs and mortality rates in captivity, it argues that a determining factor should include whether trade is easy to monitor. View this post on Instagram A post shared by ShaldonZoo (@shaldonzoo) This ties to the report’s broader theme: the importance of establishing a robust regulatory architecture around positive lists, which the authors say is generally lacking even for the few that already exist. Pet industry advocates have described existing lists in European countries and elsewhere as “unenforceable,” the report notes. “If you stop at the point where you just list what can be traded, but there’s no infrastructure… it’s symbolic, not practical,” insists Lynn Johnson, Nature Needs More’s founder and CEO. Positive lists must be accompanied by “dedicated monitoring and enforcement capacity,” according to the report. Nature Needs More also calls for businesses to be registered, licensed, and required to provide end-to-end traceability for the animals they trade. Owners should be required to register exotic pets too, the report says, with the veterinary profession engaged in maintaining care standards. Other outlined provisions include creating a listing authority to determine and perpetually review the positive list, as well as interventions to reduce consumer demand for banned species. The organization also calls for legislation to compel social media companies to police commerce on their sites by making them liable for traded animals. The organization says financing these provisions should come from a business levy on traders. None of these ideas are revolutionary, the nonprofit stresses. Nations have imposed similar regulatory measures on the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. But the model would be a massive step for the wildlife trade, which typically lacks adequate monitoring and enforcement. A Trivial Trade in Living Beings This January the European Pet Organization — which bills itself as “the voice of the pet sector at European level” — released a position statement on positive lists. In contrast to ornamental fish trade veteran Tim Haywood, who told The Revelator last year that the number of species in the pet fish trade must shrink, the pet organization rejected the idea of “restrictive measures” such as positive lists. The group suggested poor welfare and illegality in the trade are limited and could be dealt with through improved enforcement of existing legislation and education of consumers. It also argued that restricting petkeeping through positive lists wouldn’t stop determined owners from buying forbidden exotic animals. However, a Finnish study found that many hobbyists are put off from buying exotic pets when the animals are subject to trade restrictions. Hamers has further reason to doubt that a positive list system will lead to significant rises in illegal petkeeping. The trade is “hyper-commercialized,” she explains, and “many purchases are done on the whim,” often driven by popular culture trends like movies or social media. “Once species aren’t for sale anymore through common channels, the possibility to buy an animal on an impulse also disappears,” says Hamers. For Nature Needs More, the often-trivial nature of modern-day pet purchasing makes positive listing so necessary. Although the keeping of exotic pets has occurred for centuries, substantially more people can casually engage it now due to having the money, time, and access to animals in “our globalized, industrial society,” its report says. “When a trade in living beings is allowed to function by the rules of the throw-away consumer society, then we have a serious problem,” the organization warns. Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Scan the QR code, or sign up here. Previously in The Revelator: Time to Confront the Aquarium Trade’s ‘Gray Areas’ The post The Exotic Pet Trade Harms Animals and Humans. The European Union Is Studying a Potential Solution appeared first on The Revelator.

Animals

Business

Conservation

Giant Sloths and Many Other Massive Creatures Were Once Common on Our Planet. With Environmental Changes, Such Giants Could Thrive Again

If large creatures like elephants, giraffes and bison are allowed to thrive, they could alter habitats that allow for the rise of other giants

Giant Sloths and Many Other Massive Creatures Were Once Common on Our Planet. With Environmental Changes, Such Giants Could Thrive Again If large creatures like elephants, giraffes and bison are allowed to thrive, they could alter habitats that allow for the rise of other giants Riley Black - Science Correspondent July 11, 2025 8:00 a.m. Ancient sloths lived in trees, on mountains, in deserts, in boreal forests and on open savannas. Some grew as large as elephants. Illustration by Diego Barletta The largest sloth of all time was the size of an elephant. Known to paleontologists as Eremotherium, the shaggy giant shuffled across the woodlands of the ancient Americas between 60,000 and five million years ago. Paleontologists have spent decades hotly debating why such magnificent beasts went extinct, the emerging picture involving a one-two punch of increasing human influence on the landscape and a warmer interglacial climate that began to change the world’s ecosystems. But even less understood is how our planet came to host entire communities of such immense animals during the Pleistocene. Now, a new study on the success of the sloths helps to reveal how the world of Ice Age giants came to be, and hints that an Earth brimming with enormous animals could come again. Florida Museum of Natural History paleontologist Rachel Narducci and colleagues tracked how sloths came to be such widespread and essential parts of the Pleistocene Americas and published their findings in Science this May. The researchers found that climate shifts that underwrote the spread of grasslands allowed big sloths to arise, the shaggy mammals then altering those habitats to maintain open spaces best suited to big bodies capable of moving long distances. The interactions between the animals and environment show how giants attained their massive size, and how strange it is that now our planet has fewer big animals than would otherwise be here. Earth still boasts some impressively big species. In fact, the largest animal of all time is alive right now and only evolved relatively recently. The earliest blue whale fossils date to about 1.5 million years ago, and, at 98 feet long and more than 200 tons, the whale is larger than any mammoth or dinosaur. Our planet has always boasted a greater array of small species than large ones, even during prehistoric ages thought of as synonymous with megafauna. Nevertheless, Earth’s ecosystems are still in a megafaunal lull that began at the close of the Ice Age. “I often say we are living on a downsized planet Earth,” says University of Maine paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill.Consider what North America was like during the Pleistocene, between 11,000 years and two million ago. The landmass used to host multiple forms of mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, enormous armadillos, multiple species of sabercat, huge bison, dire wolves and many more large creatures that formed ancient ecosystems unlike anything on our planet today. In addition, many familiar species such as jaguars, black bears, coyotes, white-tailed deer and golden eagles also thrived. Elsewhere in the world lived terror birds taller than an adult human, wombats the size of cars, woolly rhinos, a variety of elephants with unusual tusks and other creatures. Ecosystems capable of supporting such giants have been the norm rather than the exception for tens of millions of years. Giant sloths were among the greatest success stories among the giant-size menagerie. The herbivores evolved on South America when it was still an island continent, only moving into Central and North America as prehistoric Panama connected the landmasses about 2.7 million years ago. Some were small, like living two- and three-toed sloths, while others embodied a range of sizes all the way up to elephant-sized giants like Eremotherium and the “giant beast” Megatherium. An Eremotherium skeleton at the Houston Museum of Natural Science demonstrates just how large the creature grew. James Nielsen / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images The earliest sloths originated on South America about 35 million years ago. They were already big. Narducci and colleagues estimate that the common ancestor of all sloths was between about 150 and 770 pounds—or similar to the range of sizes seen among black bears today—and they walked on the ground. “I was surprised and thrilled” to find that sloths started off large, Narducci says, as ancestral forms of major mammal groups are often small, nocturnal creatures. The earliest sloths were already in a good position to shift with Earth’s climate and ecological changes. The uplift of the Andes Mountains in South America led to changes on the continent as more open, drier grasslands spread where there had previously been wetter woodlands and forests. While some sloths became smaller as they spent more time around and within trees, the grasslands would host the broadest diversity of sloth species. The grasslands sloths were the ones that ballooned to exceptional sizes. Earth has been shifting between warmer and wetter times, like now, and cooler and drier climates over millions of years. The chillier and more arid times are what gave sloths their size boost. During these colder spans, bigger sloths were better able to hold on to their body heat, but they also didn’t need as much water, and they were capable of traveling long distances more efficiently thanks to their size. “The cooler and drier the climate, especially after 11.6 million years ago, led to expansive grasslands, which tends to favor the evolution of increasing body mass,” Narducci says. The combination of climate shifts, mountain uplift and vegetation changes created environments where sloths could evolve into a variety of forms—including multiple times when sloths became giants again. Gill says that large body size was a “winning strategy” for herbivores. “At a certain point, megaherbivores get so large that most predators can’t touch them; they’re able to access nutrition in foods that other animals can’t really even digest thanks to gut microbes that help them digest cellulose, and being large means you’re also mobile,” Gill adds, underscoring advantages that have repeatedly pushed animals to get big time and again. The same advantages underwrote the rise of the biggest dinosaurs as well as more recent giants like the sloths and mastodons. As large sloths could travel further, suitable grassland habitats stretched from Central America to prehistoric Florida. “This is what also allowed for their passage into North America,” Narducci says. Sloths were able to follow their favored habitats between continents. If the world were to shift back toward cooler and drier conditions that assisted the spread of the grasslands that gave sloths their size boost, perhaps similar giants could evolve. The sticking point is what humans are doing to Earth’s climate, ecosystems and existing species. The diversity and number of large species alive today is vastly, and often negatively, affected by humans. A 2019 study of human influences on 362 megafauna species, on land and in the water, found that 70 percent are diminishing in number, and 59 percent are getting dangerously close to extinction. But if that relationship were to change, either through our actions or intentions, studies like the new paper on giant sloths hint that ecosystems brimming with a wealth of megafaunal species could evolve again. Big animals change the habitats where they live, which in turn tends to support more large species adapted to those environments. The giant sloths that evolved among ancient grasslands helped to keep those spaces open in tandem with other big herbivores, such as mastodons, as well as the large carnivores that preyed upon them. Paleontologists and ecologists know this from studies of how large animals such as giraffes and rhinos affect vegetation around them. Big herbivores, in particular, tend to keep habitats relatively open. Elephants and other big beasts push over trees, trample vegetation underfoot, eat vast amounts of greenery and transport seeds in their dung, disassembling vegetation while unintentionally planting the beginnings of new habitats. Such broad, open spaces were essential to the origins of the giant sloths, and so creating wide-open spaces helps spur the evolution of giants to roam such environments. For now, we are left with the fossil record of giant animals that were here so recently that some of their bones aren’t even petrified, skin and fur still clinging to some skeletons. “The grasslands they left behind are just not the same, in ways we’re really only starting to understand and appreciate,” Gill says. A 2019 study on prehistoric herbivores in Africa, for example, found that the large plant-eaters altered the water cycling, incidence of fire and vegetation of their environment in a way that has no modern equivalent and can’t just be assumed to be an ancient version of today’s savannas. The few megaherbivores still with us alter the plant life, water flow, seed dispersal and other aspects of modern environments in their own unique ways, she notes, which should be a warning to us to protect them—and the ways in which they affect our planet. If humans wish to see the origin of new magnificent giants like the ones we visit museums to see, we must change our relationship to the Earth first. Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

Animals

Climate

Extinction

Suggested Viewing

Primal State

Set at the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center, Port Aransas, Texas, the film is supportive of the international efforts to utilize wastewater treatment facilities as bird sanctuaries. The film features an original jazz score and commentary by naturalist Jeff Anderson and provides a glimpse of some of the diversity of bird life found along the Texas Coast while conjuring a Zen-like union with nature.

Animals

Music

Conservation

A Year With Northern Owls

We follow five North American owls in different seasons; from summer heat to spring rejuvenation.

Animals

Conservation

Documentary

Birdwatchers

Illustrating the wide array of birds that live in and around the city of Toronto, the film features passionate birdwatchers who have devoted most of their lives to discovering these birds. In the process, these dedicated people promote Toronto as an international location for birdwatching, which also leads to conservation efforts to protect animals and green land.

Animals

Conservation

Culture

Waterfall Birds

In a place in Egypt that is close to Cairo, however, most people do not know it. The filmmaker went on a Nile cruise to discover the waterfalls world and their islands. At this place, she started a very interesting hobby called birdwatching. This hobby makes her identify different types of birds that are not known among the public.

Animals

Education

Student

Weathering Tides: Saving the Black Rail in South Carolina

The Eastern Black Rail is a federally Endangered and extremely secretive marsh bird, found primarily along the mid-Atlantic and Southeast coast of the United States. Habitat loss from development and sea-level rise inundation has reduced populations by 90% since the 1990s. Without intervention, the remaining east coast population is projected to be extirpated before 2070. Black Rails’ breeding success is incredibly vulnerable to minute changes in water level, and in coastal regions experiencing dramatic changes in storm regimes and steadily rising seas, their future depends on precise water-level management within the critical sites that remain. South Carolina’s ACE Basin is a one such landscape, uniquely comprised of historically dike-impounded wetlands, which today provides a stronghold for some 30 breeding pairs. A grassroots partnership among private landowners, non-profit conservation groups, and state and federal agencies is working urgently to understand the rails’ precise and cryptic needs, and to develop the techniques—and support—required to create those conditions on the ground. The Cornell Lab’s Center for Conservation Media has produced “Weathering Tides” (13 minutes), a short film highlighting the unlikely partnerships and pioneering techniques of this dedicated coalition. The film will be used by agency and non-profit partners in South Carolina and across the Atlantic Coast to build the support and participation necessary to scale effective management efforts beyond the ACE Basin, and to recover Eastern Black Rail populations. To learn more about the work in South Carolina, visit southcarolinablackrails.org. To learn more about efforts to recover Black Rail population across the Atlantic Coast, visit acjv.org/black-rail This film was made possible through generous support from the Robert F. Schumann Foundation.

Animals

Conservation

Documentary

Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

GoGreenNation news

New York’s plastic lawsuit against PepsiCo has been dismissed. What’s next?

Related News

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt Embarked on an Ambitious Expedition to East Africa. Here’s Why His Trip Still Matters Today

California issues advisory on a parasitic fly whose maggots can infest living humans

How Birds Began Migrating to the Arctic to Breed

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

Giant Sloths and Many Other Massive Creatures Were Once Common on Our Planet. With Environmental Changes, Such Giants Could Thrive Again

Suggested Viewing

Primal State

A Year With Northern Owls

Birdwatchers

Waterfall Birds

Weathering Tides: Saving the Black Rail in South Carolina

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

New York’s plastic lawsuit against PepsiCo has been dismissed. What’s next?

Related News

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt Embarked on an Ambitious Expedition to East Africa. Here’s Why His Trip Still Matters Today

California issues advisory on a parasitic fly whose maggots can infest living humans

How Birds Began Migrating to the Arctic to Breed

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

Giant Sloths and Many Other Massive Creatures Were Once Common on Our Planet. With Environmental Changes, Such Giants Could Thrive Again

Suggested Viewing

Primal State

A Year With Northern Owls

Birdwatchers

Waterfall Birds

Weathering Tides: Saving the Black Rail in South Carolina

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future