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The Latest Lab Leak Controversy Doesn’t Mean What Conservatives Think It Does

News Feed
Wednesday, March 8, 2023

When multiple news outlets reported last week that both the Department of Energy and the FBI now believe the Covid-19 pandemic originated in an accidental leak from a lab, Republicans, along with many others on the internet, quickly declared victory for the “lab leak” hypothesis, reiterating their criticism of viral research, which they see as reckless and dangerous. In the past few months, conservative politicians have expressed interest in curtailing such research even in the United States—especially so-called “gain of function” research, a field that they have condemned for potentially leading to more transmissible or virulent pathogens among people.Yet while these two agencies’ conclusions were based on intelligence that has not been made publicly available, a close reading of initial reporting shows almost the exact opposite of what lab leak theory proponents and conservative lawmakers have been saying: Contrary to the idea that Covid was the result of either malicious or irresponsible lab tinkering, this virus was originally found in nature before escaping from a lab, if the reports are true. That means research on natural viruses—how they evolve and, in some cases, become more lethal—may be more vital than ever.As reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, the Department of Energy has assessed, with low confidence, that Covid was spread from a lab “mishap,” ruling out an engineered virus that was intentionally released. The FBI came to the same conclusion with moderate confidence.Without experts outside of the government being allowed to examine the report, it’s difficult for the public to know how reliable or accurate these conclusions are. Yet these findings are consistent with available evidence showing that SARS-CoV-2 is likely of natural origin, not created in a petri dish. It either traveled through animals or, as this intelligence report claims, through researchers who collected a sample from nature. But in both scenarios, it spilled over from wildlife at some point.The only question is where that spillover happened. And although we may never get a complete answer on that, the ultimate lesson remains the same, researchers say: No matter what happened in the initial spillover, we know that we need to improve monitoring of animals and people coming into increased contact with each other in a changing world. We need to reexamine patterns of land use and deforestation. And rather than curtailing funding for viral research, we need to bolster it, making it safer and more clearly regulated, before the next crisis hits. It’s difficult to unpack exactly what the intelligence reports say, outside experts told me. “It’s very difficult to comment on it, because we don’t actually know what evidence was used to make that assessment,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, said. Four U.S. agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded the pandemic most likely stemmed from a natural outbreak, while others remain undecided. The two agencies saying a lab leak is possible both seem to agree that this wasn’t an engineered virus or a bioweapon but a laboratory accident that presumably happened while handling a virus sample.“Virologists cannot create or design viruses out of thin air.”That tracks with the scientific consensus that SARS-CoV-2 is a poor candidate for bioengineering. First of all, there’s no known backbone—the molecular structure for any engineered virus—upon which SARS-CoV-2 was built. The backbone is a crucial part of bioengineering, since “virologists cannot create or design viruses out of thin air,” Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane Medical School, told me in an email. “There would need to be at least something or somethings close in nature.”The closest other known virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is called RaTG13, which is 96.2 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. That may sound very similar, but 96.2 percent actually means RaTG13 has more than 1,100 different mutations spread throughout the genome, which would present an insurmountable barrier for any scientist trying to build one from another. “There is no way possible that RaTG13 could have become SARS-CoV-2,” Rasmussen said.Second, all the features found in SARS-CoV-2, all the properties that make it spread efficiently in humans, are already found in nature. So the entire discussion about research that may result in a virus with more dangerous properties is likely a red herring when it comes to SARS-CoV-2.An engineered virus seems particularly unlikely in this case because of where the leak reportedly happened: the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. As far as experts can tell, there is little research and no gain of function work done on coronaviruses at the Wuhan CDC; they primarily collect and analyze samples. If a lab sample were collected from nature or from a patient and then accidentally released, this theory means the virus was indeed already in nature.The current body of scientific evidence, the mysterious intelligence report aside, says this pandemic emerged through (at least) two separate zoonotic spillover events at the Huanan seafood market, in association with the live animal trade.Lineage B of this virus, the one that is more prevalent across the globe, seemed to be a more evolved version than lineage A, which looks more like a bat virus. Yet lineage B actually appeared sooner in reported human cases around the market than lineage A did—pointing to two different introductions, rather than evolution from one lineage to another. This leads scientists to believe there were at least two different sources spilling the virus over within weeks of each other. Two separate lab accidents, with two different strains of the virus, in a short period of time seem less likely than multiple animals or people carrying the virus with them to the market, scientists say.Spillover, meaning the jump of an animal pathogen into humans, happens all the time—one study estimates that 400,000 people are infected by SARS-like coronaviruses each year in South and Southeast Asia—but often we get lucky and the viruses fizzle out or only cause mild illness. Plenty of studies from before this pandemic raised alarms about the potential for coronavirus spillover from nature. And Wuhan was on the list of potential places where that might happen. Scientists and the Wuhan CDC flagged the Huanan market as having pandemic spillover potential in 2014, and there were wildlife farms located south of Wuhan with animals known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-1.Lab leak proponents sometimes point to the lack of a known ancestor in nature. If SARS-CoV-2 spilled over at the market or among animals hunted or raised nearby, why haven’t we found the source yet, they reason.“We’re busy talking about a hypothetical  cover-up and ignoring a cover-up that we know happened.”It’s true that, after SARS-CoV-1, officials searched for and found the virus circulating in animals within months. But after SARS-CoV-2, they didn’t seem to look—or if they did, they’ve hidden the evidence. Chinese officials shut down the Huanan market, denying that susceptible animals were traded there—despite evidence to the contrary. They also closed farms with susceptible animals in the surrounding area. And they haven’t released details on samples or animals sold in other Wuhan markets.“This is exactly what the Chinese government pledged to prevent from happening again, after SARS-1,” Rasmussen said, referring to the outbreak from 2002 to 2004. “It is striking to me that we’re busy talking about a hypothetical [lab] cover-up and ignoring a cover-up that we know happened—or, at least, we know for a fact that we have not been able to get access to those samples. And I should add, we haven’t been able to get access to the raw data from the environmental sequencing samples, either.”Finding similar viruses in nature is like searching for a needle in a haystack: difficult, but it can be done. When officials drop a match on the whole barn, though—and then refuse to let investigators examine the wreckage—it gets a lot harder.“The reason we haven’t found the intermediate species is not because we’ve been looking and we haven’t found one, it’s because we haven’t been able to look,” Rasmussen said. “You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it.”The scientists I’ve spoken to about the origins of the pandemic wouldn’t rule out a lab leak in the presence of strong evidence. Rasmussen said she would need to see proof that there was a progenitor virus—a virus very closely related to SARS-CoV-2—being studied in these labs. But as it stands now, the strongest available evidence points to zoonotic spillover. “There’s been substantial analysis that underscores zoonotic spillover as the most likely source for SARS-CoV-2 introduction,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, told me in an email. The fact that the intelligence report hasn’t been released, the lack of consensus among different agencies about how to interpret intelligence, and the “low confidence” of the Energy Department assessment all raise questions. It means that “for this to be considered the main source of Covid, there needs to be far more evidence that is publicly reported and has enough scientific support,” she said.That hasn’t stopped conservative lawmakers from introducing bans on the research that, paradoxically, can help us better understand pandemics—even though the very intelligence reports they acclaim contradict the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was made worse by experiments, instead pointing toward a natural virus that, once collected, escaped.“Making policies, or even really contemplating policies, that are more or less based on vibes is a terrible way to move forward.”“Making policies, or even really contemplating policies, that are more or less based on vibes is a terrible way to move forward,” Rasmussen said. Research on pathogens doesn’t just help us understand what they can do; it also helps us develop treatments and vaccines, she pointed out. Restrictions on pandemic-potential pathogen research that move forward because of Covid politicization could have a “profound” effect on research into other pressing topics, such as influenza, as well as on science that has nothing to do with pandemic prevention, Rasmussen said.Part of the issue around the gain of function debate is that the phrase is hard to define. Anytime a scientist works with a virus and something changes, that’s technically a gain of function. But often researchers aren’t adding a new function on purpose—those changes happen as they’re studying other processes. And it certainly doesn’t mean the change presents a danger to people. Gain of function writ large is critical for understanding the threats posed by pathogens—disease transmission, future pandemic threats, medical preparedness, and more. “Outlawing so-called GoF research could be a disaster and make everyone on the planet less safe,” Garry said.When “gain of function” is invoked in political debates, it usually refers to a small subset of research on enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and dual-use research of concern—which means research that can be misused, intentionally or accidentally. For the small sliver of virological research that examines what changes could make viruses worse for humans, there need to be better definitions for what type of work qualifies and how it is assessed, Rasmussen said—improvements that virologists would welcome. “The terminology and the guidance need to be more specific so that people can understand how to comply with it properly.” Any restrictions would need to define carefully what type of research would be regulated or banned, and researchers would need to know when their work fits the bill. And it’s important to involve actual researchers in these conversations, the experts said.Fieldwork, where specimens are collected or researchers come into contact with animals that could harbor deadly viruses, could always be made safer—especially research in fields other than virology, where field-workers may not be familiar with the risks of working around animals harboring viruses. Accidental lab exposures can and do happen, but they’re usually caught quickly—and it’s fairly easy to prevent them from happening again by improving ventilation or preventing cross contamination. While laboratory incidents can occur, “there are existing biosafety and biosecurity measures in place,” and ongoing discussions around those should continue to occur, Popescu said. But the debates in this context are largely theoretical, she pointed out, because “infections as a result of a lab leak/accident have not occurred in a GoF study.”This entire debate obscures a simple fact: None of this actually matters when it comes to what we need to do next. Whether this was a lab accident with a virus collected from nature or a natural spillover—or, conceivably, both—we still need good oversight of lab safety and more, not less, work on worrying viruses. To defend against zoonotic disease in the future, we also need to reexamine the ways we use land, the way we farm and deforest, and the ways we monitor diseases among animals and the people who come in contact with them. We need to improve food security and make animal trade and hunting safer. And we need to understand the ways that our health is intricately linked to the health of the planet and everything that lives on it.“Here’s the quiet part we need to say out loud—this research and Covid origin investigations have become increasingly political and this creates bias in any conversation surrounding them—to a point where progress and partnership become nearly impossible,” Popescu said. “Understanding the origins of a pandemic is important and requires global collaboration, in which the U.S. should be a major partner,” she said. But at the same time, “we need to stop letting this debate distract us from real questions about how [the] U.S. response to Covid was so inadequate.” Virologists have warned for years that we were overdue for a coronavirus pandemic. The emergence of SARS-CoV-1 in 2003 and MERS in 2012, which were tragic in their own right, were warnings of a much bigger challenge to come. And we’re not out of the woods when it comes to coronaviruses, even after all of the devastation wrought by Covid. After all, there are several other types of coronaviruses that haven’t yet caused outbreaks in humans. They could mutate to become dangerous for us, and we would have no prior immunity against them.These discussions unveil a painful truth that no one, least of all anyone in power, wants to acknowledge. We weren’t brought to our knees because China unleashed a bioweapon, purposefully or accidentally; it’s because we repeatedly pushed nature toward the next pandemic and then threw away the playbook for containing it. The desperate scramble to point fingers will only put us in worse shape for the next one.

When multiple news outlets reported last week that both the Department of Energy and the FBI now believe the Covid-19 pandemic originated in an accidental leak from a lab, Republicans, along with many others on the internet, quickly declared victory for the “lab leak” hypothesis, reiterating their criticism of viral research, which they see as reckless and dangerous. In the past few months, conservative politicians have expressed interest in curtailing such research even in the United States—especially so-called “gain of function” research, a field that they have condemned for potentially leading to more transmissible or virulent pathogens among people.Yet while these two agencies’ conclusions were based on intelligence that has not been made publicly available, a close reading of initial reporting shows almost the exact opposite of what lab leak theory proponents and conservative lawmakers have been saying: Contrary to the idea that Covid was the result of either malicious or irresponsible lab tinkering, this virus was originally found in nature before escaping from a lab, if the reports are true. That means research on natural viruses—how they evolve and, in some cases, become more lethal—may be more vital than ever.As reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, the Department of Energy has assessed, with low confidence, that Covid was spread from a lab “mishap,” ruling out an engineered virus that was intentionally released. The FBI came to the same conclusion with moderate confidence.Without experts outside of the government being allowed to examine the report, it’s difficult for the public to know how reliable or accurate these conclusions are. Yet these findings are consistent with available evidence showing that SARS-CoV-2 is likely of natural origin, not created in a petri dish. It either traveled through animals or, as this intelligence report claims, through researchers who collected a sample from nature. But in both scenarios, it spilled over from wildlife at some point.The only question is where that spillover happened. And although we may never get a complete answer on that, the ultimate lesson remains the same, researchers say: No matter what happened in the initial spillover, we know that we need to improve monitoring of animals and people coming into increased contact with each other in a changing world. We need to reexamine patterns of land use and deforestation. And rather than curtailing funding for viral research, we need to bolster it, making it safer and more clearly regulated, before the next crisis hits. It’s difficult to unpack exactly what the intelligence reports say, outside experts told me. “It’s very difficult to comment on it, because we don’t actually know what evidence was used to make that assessment,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, said. Four U.S. agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded the pandemic most likely stemmed from a natural outbreak, while others remain undecided. The two agencies saying a lab leak is possible both seem to agree that this wasn’t an engineered virus or a bioweapon but a laboratory accident that presumably happened while handling a virus sample.“Virologists cannot create or design viruses out of thin air.”That tracks with the scientific consensus that SARS-CoV-2 is a poor candidate for bioengineering. First of all, there’s no known backbone—the molecular structure for any engineered virus—upon which SARS-CoV-2 was built. The backbone is a crucial part of bioengineering, since “virologists cannot create or design viruses out of thin air,” Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane Medical School, told me in an email. “There would need to be at least something or somethings close in nature.”The closest other known virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is called RaTG13, which is 96.2 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. That may sound very similar, but 96.2 percent actually means RaTG13 has more than 1,100 different mutations spread throughout the genome, which would present an insurmountable barrier for any scientist trying to build one from another. “There is no way possible that RaTG13 could have become SARS-CoV-2,” Rasmussen said.Second, all the features found in SARS-CoV-2, all the properties that make it spread efficiently in humans, are already found in nature. So the entire discussion about research that may result in a virus with more dangerous properties is likely a red herring when it comes to SARS-CoV-2.An engineered virus seems particularly unlikely in this case because of where the leak reportedly happened: the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. As far as experts can tell, there is little research and no gain of function work done on coronaviruses at the Wuhan CDC; they primarily collect and analyze samples. If a lab sample were collected from nature or from a patient and then accidentally released, this theory means the virus was indeed already in nature.The current body of scientific evidence, the mysterious intelligence report aside, says this pandemic emerged through (at least) two separate zoonotic spillover events at the Huanan seafood market, in association with the live animal trade.Lineage B of this virus, the one that is more prevalent across the globe, seemed to be a more evolved version than lineage A, which looks more like a bat virus. Yet lineage B actually appeared sooner in reported human cases around the market than lineage A did—pointing to two different introductions, rather than evolution from one lineage to another. This leads scientists to believe there were at least two different sources spilling the virus over within weeks of each other. Two separate lab accidents, with two different strains of the virus, in a short period of time seem less likely than multiple animals or people carrying the virus with them to the market, scientists say.Spillover, meaning the jump of an animal pathogen into humans, happens all the time—one study estimates that 400,000 people are infected by SARS-like coronaviruses each year in South and Southeast Asia—but often we get lucky and the viruses fizzle out or only cause mild illness. Plenty of studies from before this pandemic raised alarms about the potential for coronavirus spillover from nature. And Wuhan was on the list of potential places where that might happen. Scientists and the Wuhan CDC flagged the Huanan market as having pandemic spillover potential in 2014, and there were wildlife farms located south of Wuhan with animals known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-1.Lab leak proponents sometimes point to the lack of a known ancestor in nature. If SARS-CoV-2 spilled over at the market or among animals hunted or raised nearby, why haven’t we found the source yet, they reason.“We’re busy talking about a hypothetical  cover-up and ignoring a cover-up that we know happened.”It’s true that, after SARS-CoV-1, officials searched for and found the virus circulating in animals within months. But after SARS-CoV-2, they didn’t seem to look—or if they did, they’ve hidden the evidence. Chinese officials shut down the Huanan market, denying that susceptible animals were traded there—despite evidence to the contrary. They also closed farms with susceptible animals in the surrounding area. And they haven’t released details on samples or animals sold in other Wuhan markets.“This is exactly what the Chinese government pledged to prevent from happening again, after SARS-1,” Rasmussen said, referring to the outbreak from 2002 to 2004. “It is striking to me that we’re busy talking about a hypothetical [lab] cover-up and ignoring a cover-up that we know happened—or, at least, we know for a fact that we have not been able to get access to those samples. And I should add, we haven’t been able to get access to the raw data from the environmental sequencing samples, either.”Finding similar viruses in nature is like searching for a needle in a haystack: difficult, but it can be done. When officials drop a match on the whole barn, though—and then refuse to let investigators examine the wreckage—it gets a lot harder.“The reason we haven’t found the intermediate species is not because we’ve been looking and we haven’t found one, it’s because we haven’t been able to look,” Rasmussen said. “You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it.”The scientists I’ve spoken to about the origins of the pandemic wouldn’t rule out a lab leak in the presence of strong evidence. Rasmussen said she would need to see proof that there was a progenitor virus—a virus very closely related to SARS-CoV-2—being studied in these labs. But as it stands now, the strongest available evidence points to zoonotic spillover. “There’s been substantial analysis that underscores zoonotic spillover as the most likely source for SARS-CoV-2 introduction,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, told me in an email. The fact that the intelligence report hasn’t been released, the lack of consensus among different agencies about how to interpret intelligence, and the “low confidence” of the Energy Department assessment all raise questions. It means that “for this to be considered the main source of Covid, there needs to be far more evidence that is publicly reported and has enough scientific support,” she said.That hasn’t stopped conservative lawmakers from introducing bans on the research that, paradoxically, can help us better understand pandemics—even though the very intelligence reports they acclaim contradict the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was made worse by experiments, instead pointing toward a natural virus that, once collected, escaped.“Making policies, or even really contemplating policies, that are more or less based on vibes is a terrible way to move forward.”“Making policies, or even really contemplating policies, that are more or less based on vibes is a terrible way to move forward,” Rasmussen said. Research on pathogens doesn’t just help us understand what they can do; it also helps us develop treatments and vaccines, she pointed out. Restrictions on pandemic-potential pathogen research that move forward because of Covid politicization could have a “profound” effect on research into other pressing topics, such as influenza, as well as on science that has nothing to do with pandemic prevention, Rasmussen said.Part of the issue around the gain of function debate is that the phrase is hard to define. Anytime a scientist works with a virus and something changes, that’s technically a gain of function. But often researchers aren’t adding a new function on purpose—those changes happen as they’re studying other processes. And it certainly doesn’t mean the change presents a danger to people. Gain of function writ large is critical for understanding the threats posed by pathogens—disease transmission, future pandemic threats, medical preparedness, and more. “Outlawing so-called GoF research could be a disaster and make everyone on the planet less safe,” Garry said.When “gain of function” is invoked in political debates, it usually refers to a small subset of research on enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and dual-use research of concern—which means research that can be misused, intentionally or accidentally. For the small sliver of virological research that examines what changes could make viruses worse for humans, there need to be better definitions for what type of work qualifies and how it is assessed, Rasmussen said—improvements that virologists would welcome. “The terminology and the guidance need to be more specific so that people can understand how to comply with it properly.” Any restrictions would need to define carefully what type of research would be regulated or banned, and researchers would need to know when their work fits the bill. And it’s important to involve actual researchers in these conversations, the experts said.Fieldwork, where specimens are collected or researchers come into contact with animals that could harbor deadly viruses, could always be made safer—especially research in fields other than virology, where field-workers may not be familiar with the risks of working around animals harboring viruses. Accidental lab exposures can and do happen, but they’re usually caught quickly—and it’s fairly easy to prevent them from happening again by improving ventilation or preventing cross contamination. While laboratory incidents can occur, “there are existing biosafety and biosecurity measures in place,” and ongoing discussions around those should continue to occur, Popescu said. But the debates in this context are largely theoretical, she pointed out, because “infections as a result of a lab leak/accident have not occurred in a GoF study.”This entire debate obscures a simple fact: None of this actually matters when it comes to what we need to do next. Whether this was a lab accident with a virus collected from nature or a natural spillover—or, conceivably, both—we still need good oversight of lab safety and more, not less, work on worrying viruses. To defend against zoonotic disease in the future, we also need to reexamine the ways we use land, the way we farm and deforest, and the ways we monitor diseases among animals and the people who come in contact with them. We need to improve food security and make animal trade and hunting safer. And we need to understand the ways that our health is intricately linked to the health of the planet and everything that lives on it.“Here’s the quiet part we need to say out loud—this research and Covid origin investigations have become increasingly political and this creates bias in any conversation surrounding them—to a point where progress and partnership become nearly impossible,” Popescu said. “Understanding the origins of a pandemic is important and requires global collaboration, in which the U.S. should be a major partner,” she said. But at the same time, “we need to stop letting this debate distract us from real questions about how [the] U.S. response to Covid was so inadequate.” Virologists have warned for years that we were overdue for a coronavirus pandemic. The emergence of SARS-CoV-1 in 2003 and MERS in 2012, which were tragic in their own right, were warnings of a much bigger challenge to come. And we’re not out of the woods when it comes to coronaviruses, even after all of the devastation wrought by Covid. After all, there are several other types of coronaviruses that haven’t yet caused outbreaks in humans. They could mutate to become dangerous for us, and we would have no prior immunity against them.These discussions unveil a painful truth that no one, least of all anyone in power, wants to acknowledge. We weren’t brought to our knees because China unleashed a bioweapon, purposefully or accidentally; it’s because we repeatedly pushed nature toward the next pandemic and then threw away the playbook for containing it. The desperate scramble to point fingers will only put us in worse shape for the next one.

When multiple news outlets reported last week that both the Department of Energy and the FBI now believe the Covid-19 pandemic originated in an accidental leak from a lab, Republicans, along with many others on the internet, quickly declared victory for the “lab leak” hypothesis, reiterating their criticism of viral research, which they see as reckless and dangerous. In the past few months, conservative politicians have expressed interest in curtailing such research even in the United States—especially so-called “gain of function” research, a field that they have condemned for potentially leading to more transmissible or virulent pathogens among people.

Yet while these two agencies’ conclusions were based on intelligence that has not been made publicly available, a close reading of initial reporting shows almost the exact opposite of what lab leak theory proponents and conservative lawmakers have been saying: Contrary to the idea that Covid was the result of either malicious or irresponsible lab tinkering, this virus was originally found in nature before escaping from a lab, if the reports are true. That means research on natural viruses—how they evolve and, in some cases, become more lethal—may be more vital than ever.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, the Department of Energy has assessed, with low confidence, that Covid was spread from a lab “mishap,” ruling out an engineered virus that was intentionally released. The FBI came to the same conclusion with moderate confidence.

Without experts outside of the government being allowed to examine the report, it’s difficult for the public to know how reliable or accurate these conclusions are. Yet these findings are consistent with available evidence showing that SARS-CoV-2 is likely of natural origin, not created in a petri dish. It either traveled through animals or, as this intelligence report claims, through researchers who collected a sample from nature. But in both scenarios, it spilled over from wildlife at some point.

The only question is where that spillover happened. And although we may never get a complete answer on that, the ultimate lesson remains the same, researchers say: No matter what happened in the initial spillover, we know that we need to improve monitoring of animals and people coming into increased contact with each other in a changing world. We need to reexamine patterns of land use and deforestation. And rather than curtailing funding for viral research, we need to bolster it, making it safer and more clearly regulated, before the next crisis hits.


It’s difficult to unpack exactly what the intelligence reports say, outside experts told me. “It’s very difficult to comment on it, because we don’t actually know what evidence was used to make that assessment,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, said. Four U.S. agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded the pandemic most likely stemmed from a natural outbreak, while others remain undecided. The two agencies saying a lab leak is possible both seem to agree that this wasn’t an engineered virus or a bioweapon but a laboratory accident that presumably happened while handling a virus sample.

That tracks with the scientific consensus that SARS-CoV-2 is a poor candidate for bioengineering. First of all, there’s no known backbone—the molecular structure for any engineered virus—upon which SARS-CoV-2 was built. The backbone is a crucial part of bioengineering, since “virologists cannot create or design viruses out of thin air,” Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane Medical School, told me in an email. “There would need to be at least something or somethings close in nature.”

The closest other known virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is called RaTG13, which is 96.2 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. That may sound very similar, but 96.2 percent actually means RaTG13 has more than 1,100 different mutations spread throughout the genome, which would present an insurmountable barrier for any scientist trying to build one from another. “There is no way possible that RaTG13 could have become SARS-CoV-2,” Rasmussen said.

Second, all the features found in SARS-CoV-2, all the properties that make it spread efficiently in humans, are already found in nature. So the entire discussion about research that may result in a virus with more dangerous properties is likely a red herring when it comes to SARS-CoV-2.

An engineered virus seems particularly unlikely in this case because of where the leak reportedly happened: the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. As far as experts can tell, there is little research and no gain of function work done on coronaviruses at the Wuhan CDC; they primarily collect and analyze samples. If a lab sample were collected from nature or from a patient and then accidentally released, this theory means the virus was indeed already in nature.

The current body of scientific evidence, the mysterious intelligence report aside, says this pandemic emerged through (at least) two separate zoonotic spillover events at the Huanan seafood market, in association with the live animal trade.

Lineage B of this virus, the one that is more prevalent across the globe, seemed to be a more evolved version than lineage A, which looks more like a bat virus. Yet lineage B actually appeared sooner in reported human cases around the market than lineage A did—pointing to two different introductions, rather than evolution from one lineage to another. This leads scientists to believe there were at least two different sources spilling the virus over within weeks of each other. Two separate lab accidents, with two different strains of the virus, in a short period of time seem less likely than multiple animals or people carrying the virus with them to the market, scientists say.

Spillover, meaning the jump of an animal pathogen into humans, happens all the time—one study estimates that 400,000 people are infected by SARS-like coronaviruses each year in South and Southeast Asia—but often we get lucky and the viruses fizzle out or only cause mild illness. Plenty of studies from before this pandemic raised alarms about the potential for coronavirus spillover from nature. And Wuhan was on the list of potential places where that might happen. Scientists and the Wuhan CDC flagged the Huanan market as having pandemic spillover potential in 2014, and there were wildlife farms located south of Wuhan with animals known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-1.

Lab leak proponents sometimes point to the lack of a known ancestor in nature. If SARS-CoV-2 spilled over at the market or among animals hunted or raised nearby, why haven’t we found the source yet, they reason.

It’s true that, after SARS-CoV-1, officials searched for and found the virus circulating in animals within months. But after SARS-CoV-2, they didn’t seem to look—or if they did, they’ve hidden the evidence. Chinese officials shut down the Huanan market, denying that susceptible animals were traded there—despite evidence to the contrary. They also closed farms with susceptible animals in the surrounding area. And they haven’t released details on samples or animals sold in other Wuhan markets.

“This is exactly what the Chinese government pledged to prevent from happening again, after SARS-1,” Rasmussen said, referring to the outbreak from 2002 to 2004. “It is striking to me that we’re busy talking about a hypothetical [lab] cover-up and ignoring a cover-up that we know happened—or, at least, we know for a fact that we have not been able to get access to those samples. And I should add, we haven’t been able to get access to the raw data from the environmental sequencing samples, either.”

Finding similar viruses in nature is like searching for a needle in a haystack: difficult, but it can be done. When officials drop a match on the whole barn, though—and then refuse to let investigators examine the wreckage—it gets a lot harder.

“The reason we haven’t found the intermediate species is not because we’ve been looking and we haven’t found one, it’s because we haven’t been able to look,” Rasmussen said. “You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it.”


The scientists I’ve spoken to about the origins of the pandemic wouldn’t rule out a lab leak in the presence of strong evidence. Rasmussen said she would need to see proof that there was a progenitor virus—a virus very closely related to SARS-CoV-2—being studied in these labs. But as it stands now, the strongest available evidence points to zoonotic spillover.

“There’s been substantial analysis that underscores zoonotic spillover as the most likely source for SARS-CoV-2 introduction,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, told me in an email. The fact that the intelligence report hasn’t been released, the lack of consensus among different agencies about how to interpret intelligence, and the “low confidence” of the Energy Department assessment all raise questions. It means that “for this to be considered the main source of Covid, there needs to be far more evidence that is publicly reported and has enough scientific support,” she said.

That hasn’t stopped conservative lawmakers from introducing bans on the research that, paradoxically, can help us better understand pandemics—even though the very intelligence reports they acclaim contradict the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was made worse by experiments, instead pointing toward a natural virus that, once collected, escaped.

“Making policies, or even really contemplating policies, that are more or less based on vibes is a terrible way to move forward,” Rasmussen said. Research on pathogens doesn’t just help us understand what they can do; it also helps us develop treatments and vaccines, she pointed out. Restrictions on pandemic-potential pathogen research that move forward because of Covid politicization could have a “profound” effect on research into other pressing topics, such as influenza, as well as on science that has nothing to do with pandemic prevention, Rasmussen said.

Part of the issue around the gain of function debate is that the phrase is hard to define. Anytime a scientist works with a virus and something changes, that’s technically a gain of function. But often researchers aren’t adding a new function on purpose—those changes happen as they’re studying other processes. And it certainly doesn’t mean the change presents a danger to people. Gain of function writ large is critical for understanding the threats posed by pathogens—disease transmission, future pandemic threats, medical preparedness, and more. “Outlawing so-called GoF research could be a disaster and make everyone on the planet less safe,” Garry said.

When “gain of function” is invoked in political debates, it usually refers to a small subset of research on enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and dual-use research of concern—which means research that can be misused, intentionally or accidentally. For the small sliver of virological research that examines what changes could make viruses worse for humans, there need to be better definitions for what type of work qualifies and how it is assessed, Rasmussen said—improvements that virologists would welcome. “The terminology and the guidance need to be more specific so that people can understand how to comply with it properly.” Any restrictions would need to define carefully what type of research would be regulated or banned, and researchers would need to know when their work fits the bill. And it’s important to involve actual researchers in these conversations, the experts said.

Fieldwork, where specimens are collected or researchers come into contact with animals that could harbor deadly viruses, could always be made safer—especially research in fields other than virology, where field-workers may not be familiar with the risks of working around animals harboring viruses. Accidental lab exposures can and do happen, but they’re usually caught quickly—and it’s fairly easy to prevent them from happening again by improving ventilation or preventing cross contamination. While laboratory incidents can occur, “there are existing biosafety and biosecurity measures in place,” and ongoing discussions around those should continue to occur, Popescu said. But the debates in this context are largely theoretical, she pointed out, because “infections as a result of a lab leak/accident have not occurred in a GoF study.”


This entire debate obscures a simple fact: None of this actually matters when it comes to what we need to do next. Whether this was a lab accident with a virus collected from nature or a natural spillover—or, conceivably, both—we still need good oversight of lab safety and more, not less, work on worrying viruses. To defend against zoonotic disease in the future, we also need to reexamine the ways we use land, the way we farm and deforest, and the ways we monitor diseases among animals and the people who come in contact with them. We need to improve food security and make animal trade and hunting safer. And we need to understand the ways that our health is intricately linked to the health of the planet and everything that lives on it.

“Here’s the quiet part we need to say out loud—this research and Covid origin investigations have become increasingly political and this creates bias in any conversation surrounding them—to a point where progress and partnership become nearly impossible,” Popescu said. “Understanding the origins of a pandemic is important and requires global collaboration, in which the U.S. should be a major partner,” she said. But at the same time, “we need to stop letting this debate distract us from real questions about how [the] U.S. response to Covid was so inadequate.”

Virologists have warned for years that we were overdue for a coronavirus pandemic. The emergence of SARS-CoV-1 in 2003 and MERS in 2012, which were tragic in their own right, were warnings of a much bigger challenge to come. And we’re not out of the woods when it comes to coronaviruses, even after all of the devastation wrought by Covid. After all, there are several other types of coronaviruses that haven’t yet caused outbreaks in humans. They could mutate to become dangerous for us, and we would have no prior immunity against them.

These discussions unveil a painful truth that no one, least of all anyone in power, wants to acknowledge. We weren’t brought to our knees because China unleashed a bioweapon, purposefully or accidentally; it’s because we repeatedly pushed nature toward the next pandemic and then threw away the playbook for containing it. The desperate scramble to point fingers will only put us in worse shape for the next one.

Read the full story here.
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Birds, bees and even plants might act weird during the solar eclipse

A total eclipse isn’t just a spectacle in the sky. Birds, insects and even plants will take notice, and might start acting strange.

A total eclipse isn’t just a spectacle in the sky. When the moon consumes the sun on April 8, day will plunge into twilight, the temperature will drop — and nature will take notice.Reports abound of unusual animal and plant behavior during eclipses. A swarm of ants carrying food froze until the sun reemerged during an 1851 eclipse in Sweden. A pantry in Massachusetts was “greatly infested” with cockroaches just after totality in 1932. Sap flowed more slowly in a 75-year-old beech tree in Belgium in 1999. Orb-weaving spiders started tearing down their webs and North American side-blotched lizards closed their eyes during an eclipse in Mexico in 1991.Plenty of scientists see eclipses as rare opportunities to bolster anecdotal reports by studying how nature responds — or doesn’t — to a few minutes of dusk in the middle of the day. That’s why teams across the country produced a swarm of studies about plant and animal behavior during the last total eclipse to cut across the United States in 2017.Some of these scientists found that when the sun vanished, insects, birds and plants seemed to enter into something approaching a nocturnal pattern. Case in point: Scientists in multiple states reported that fireflies started flashing, and a team in Idaho captured two species of voles that are normally active at night.Bat researchers in Georgia, on the other hand, weren’t convinced that the eclipse had any effect on behavior, though they noticed slightly more bat activity on the night after the eclipse than on previous or subsequent nights. Beetles flew around as normal in South Carolina.Understanding how eclipses affect nature writ large is nearly impossible. That’s because eclipses don’t follow one of the most basic rules of science: replication. They don’t happen with regularity in the same spot. They vary in length. They happen at different times of day, during different seasons.“A lot of the things we found in the literature were exactly that — a curiosity. It happens once every so often, so it’s curious, but not generally informative of animal behavior,” said Olav Rueppell, a scientist who studies honeybee biology at the University of Alberta in Canada.And while an eclipse is an incredible time to observe the natural world, there’s also a potential observer effect: People who might normally be at school, at work or simply distracted are looking and listening closely, and what they see as responses to the eclipse could just be normal behaviors that escape notice on a typical day.Adam Hartstone-Rose, a professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University, led a study of how animals reacted to the 2017 eclipse at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, S.C.“At any given point on Earth, a total eclipse occurs once every 375 years. So it’s not like you’re learning something now you can use again in the future, and that’s certainly true for animals,” Hartstone-Rose said.“But it’s a unifying event. All of us have this experience together,” he said, adding that during the April eclipse, “we’re all going to be communing with animals and thinking about how they experience it.”Experimenting with natureStudies of animal behavior during an eclipse tend to fall into two categories. Some biologists who are near the path of totality will design a study to see how the eclipse affects their favorite organism, whether it be honeybees or chimpanzees. Others try to activate members of the public to take data and make observations all across the path, which the scientists can use to discern broad patterns.The NASA-backed Eclipse Soundscapes project, for example, will collect audio data and observations from hundreds of people during the April eclipse to repeat, with a bit more rigor, a citizen-science study of animal responses to a 1932 eclipse.In his team’s 2017 study of zoo animals, Hartstone-Rose had researchers systematically observe 17 species, including baboons, flamingos and Galapagos tortoises.Most responded to the eerie darkness in some way — whether by starting their bedtime routines, acting anxious or mating. Giraffes that had been munching on lettuce and chewing their cud huddled near their barn or galloped through their exhibit. A Komodo dragon that hadn’t moved in a day raced around its enclosure and climbed up the wall.Hartstone-Rose is repeating the observations this year at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas, and he is drafting more than a thousand volunteers across the country to collect records of animal behavior through a project called Solar Eclipse Safari. He’s as interested in the anomalous behavior of animals as he is in learning how observing animals and trying to understand their experience affects humans, perhaps widening their sense of wonder and awe.One common report is that birds go to roost and go quiet during an eclipse. But when a team of ornithologists from Cornell University made recordings along an old logging road near the town of Corinna, Maine, for the 1963 eclipse, they heard the per-chic-o-ree of a goldfinch in the middle of totality, along with a hermit thrush, a Swainson’s thrush and a veery.“Perhaps no two lists of birds heard before, during, and after the eclipse would be anywhere near similar,” they wrote in their summary of the observations.In the 50 minutes before and after totality in 2017, researchers monitoring flying insects and birds via the weather radar network found that the skies went eerily quiet, but there was an intriguing uptick of activity right at totality. The researchers speculated that it might be some kind of insect reacting to the sudden darkness, while the birds possibly grew still due to confusion.“Some previous research shows that insects react much more immediately to light cues, while birds are more like, ‘What’s going on?’” said Cecilia Nilsson, a biologist at Lund University in Sweden. “Totality only lasts a few minutes, so by the time you’re figuring it out, it’s over.”For bird lovers, the many uncontrollable variables of an eclipse can be scientific opportunities, too.One exciting aspect of the 2024 eclipse is that it is happening during the spring, whereas the North American eclipse of 2017 took place very early in the fall migration season, Nilsson said. Many birds, she noted, migrate at night and are often more motivated during the spring migration, so it’s possible that abrupt darkness will have a different effect this time around.Rueppell, the honeybee scientist, was based in North Carolina during the total eclipse in 2017. He decided with collaborators to try to bring some rigor to previous observations of honeybee behavior.A crowdsourced compilation of observations from a 1932 total eclipse, for example, included reports of a swarm of 200 bees showing “apprehensiveness” in the minutes before totality. Another observer reported that “as darkness increased the outgoing bees diminished in numbers and the return battalions grew larger.”Rueppell and colleagues at Clemson University in South Carolina enlisted observers to watch the entrances of hives, counting how many honeybees were exiting and how many were returning from foraging trips before, during and after totality. They made some hives hungrier than others by taking the bees’ honey away before the eclipse, to see if that changed their willingness to forage.The researchers found that the environmental cues overrode bees’ own internal circadian clocks, with darkness causing them to return to the hive and hunker down. Those findings square with another study that found bees stopped buzzing around flowers during totality. But hives that were stressed by hunger shut down less completely than those that weren’t.They also conducted a second experiment, putting fluorescent powder on bees and releasing them away from their hives, then measuring how quickly they returned.Right before totality, they found the bees were returning faster, almost as if they were panicked.The forests full of treesDaniel Beverly, a plant ecophysiologist at Indiana University, studied how sagebrush in Wyoming reacted during the 2017 eclipse. A total eclipse last passed over Wyoming in 1918, though it traversed different parts of the state.“These plants are 60 to 100 years old, and they’ve never seen this midday darkness,” he said. The scientists found that photosynthesis plummeted during totality, then took hours to recover from the shock of the sun reemerging minutes later.This year Beverly will be measuring ecological responses to the eclipse at a forest in Indiana that is part of a long-term project monitoring carbon, water and energy flux through the ecosystem. Because the Morgan-Monroe State Forest is already the subject of intense scientific scrutiny, scientists can take advantage of existing instruments to measure factors such as carbon flux and water movement in white oak, tulip poplars, sassafras and sugar maples.Beverly noted that he’s excited to get as much of the data collection automated as possible so he and his team can fully appreciate the brief but wondrous moment of totality.“It is pretty awesome and life-changing,” Beverly said. “Just the spectacle of it. I don’t know what it does to the human brain.”

Aellopobatis bavarica: Scientists Discover New 150 Million-Year-Old Species of Rays

A new species of fossil ray, Aellopobatis bavarica, has been discovered in Bavarica, Germany, dating back to the Late Jurassic period. In a new study...

Aellopobatis bavarica: The newly discovered species, complete fossils are only known from Germany. This species is also the largest species of all and can grow up to 170 cm in size. Credit: Türtscher et al. (2024, Figure 4)A new species of fossil ray, Aellopobatis bavarica, has been discovered in Bavarica, Germany, dating back to the Late Jurassic period.In a new study recently published in the journal Papers in Palaeontology, an international team of scientists led by palaeobiologist Julia Türtscher from the University of Vienna has explored the puzzling world of rays that lived 150 million years ago and discovered a previously hidden diversity – including a new ray species.This study significantly expands the understanding of these ancient cartilaginous fish and provides further insights into a past marine ecosystem.In her new study, palaeobiologist Julia Türtscher from the Institute of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna examined 52 fossil rays from the Late Jurassic period. These rays are 150 million years old, from a time when Europe was largely covered by the sea, except for a few islands, comparable to today’s Caribbean. The Late Jurassic specimens are particularly valuable to scientists because they are among the oldest known fully preserved ray specimens. As only the teeth of fossilized rays are usually preserved, such rare skeletal finds provide exciting insights into the early evolution of this group. Although the exceptionally well-preserved fossils (from Germany, France, and the UK) have been known for some time, they have been largely unexplored. Türtscher’s study is the first comprehensive analysis of the variation in body shape in these rays.Palaeobiologist Julia Türtscher in the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, where several specimens of the new ray species are on display. Credit: Patrick L. JamburaThe results show a greater diversity of holomorphic (fully preserved) rays in the Late Jurassic than previously thought. “Until now, only three holomorphic ray species have been confirmed from the Late Jurassic, but thanks to this study, a total of five species have now been identified,” says Türtscher.Based on their analyses, the researchers were able to confirm a fourth species that had been discussed for some time, as well as documenting and introducing a new, previously undiscovered ray species: Aellopobatis bavarica. This species, which can grow up to 170 cm long, was previously thought to be a large form of the much smaller French Spathobatis bugesiacus, which is 60 cm long. However, by analyzing the skeletal structures and body shapes in detail, the scientists were able to show that Aellopobatis bavarica is a separate species.The new results also suggest that the five species occurred in very restricted areas, but the authors are reluctant to jump to conclusions about possible endemisms: “Further studies on the tooth morphology of the specimens and subsequent comparisons with isolated teeth from other sites may help to reconstruct the palaeogeographic distribution of Late Jurassic rays,” explains Türtscher.Insight into past marine ecosystemsThe results of this new study not only contribute to the understanding of the biodiversity and evolution of rays in the Upper Jurassic, but also have direct implications on the identification of fossil ray species that are known from isolated teeth solely. Continual new discoveries about these fascinating animals provide insights into the dynamics of past marine ecosystems and highlight the importance of well-preserved fossils in the reconstruction of our geological past. “We can only draw accurate conclusions about living species if we also understand the past of a group, including its evolution, its adaptations to changing environmental factors over time, and the extinction this group has faced during its evolutionary history. Palaeobiological knowledge enables us to better understand the dynamics behind evolution and extinction of species and thus aids to develop more effective conservation measures for today’s endangered species” says second author Patrick L. Jambura from the Institute of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna.Reference: “Rostral and body shape analyses reveal cryptic diversity of Late Jurassic batomorphs (Chondrichthyes, Elasmobranchii) from Europe” by Julia Türtscher, Patrick L. Jambura, Eduardo Villalobos-Segura, Faviel A. López-Romero, Charlie J. Underwood, Detlev Thies, Bruce Lauer, René Lauer and Jürgen Kriwet, 19 March 2024, Papers in Palaeontology.DOI: 10.1002/spp2.1552

We Can Still Save the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge belongs to the planet. And we can still save it.

One of the hardest things to reconcile about living in the American South is how this region of extraordinary natural beauty, this still-wild place of irreplaceable biodiversity, is mostly in the hands of politicians who will gladly sell it to the highest bidder. It’s hard to reconcile how even land that’s ostensibly protected is never truly safe. And how state regulators charged with protecting it will often look the other way when the highest bidder violates the state’s own environmental regulations.An egregious example of this pattern is unfolding now in Georgia, where state officials are poised to approve a strip mine on the southeastern edge of the magnificent Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.At 407,000 acres, the Okefenokee is the largest ecologically intact blackwater swamp in North America and the largest National Wildlife Refuge east of the Mississippi River. It hosts or shelters a huge range of plant and animal life, including endangered and threatened species. It is a crucial way station for migratory birds. Designated a Wetland of International Importance under the RAMSAR Convention of 1971, it sequesters an immense amount of carbon in the form of peat.The proposed mine poses a profound risk to the swamp. Trail Ridge, the site where Twin Pines Minerals will begin operations, is a geological formation that functions as a low earthen dam holding the waters of the Okefenokee in place. The mine would remove the topsoil, dig out the sand pits, separate the titanium from the sand, and then return sand and soil to some approximation of their original place. To manage all this, Twin Pines would need to pump 1.4 million gallons of groundwater a day from the aquifer that serves the Okefenokee.It doesn’t sound too bad, I guess, unless you know that this destroy-extract-replace plan is effectively mountaintop-removal mining transferred to the watery lowlands. There is no restoring an ecosystem after an assault like that. Aquatic plants and animals die off if waterways become clogged with silt. Drinking water can be contaminated by heavy metals. Ancient land formations and the habitats they underpin are lost forever. The living soil is left barren.As a species, we have never let ecological necessity get in the way of something we think we need from the land. Thing is, we don’t need this mine. Titanium dioxide is used primarily as pigment in a range of products, including paint and toothpaste. It is not difficult to find in less environmentally sensitive areas.Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Grey-headed flying-fox population is stable – 10 years of monitoring reveals this threatened species is doing well

Ten years of data from Australia’s comprehensive national flying-fox monitoring program reveals the grey-headed flying fox (fruit bat) population is stable. It’s good news for this threatened species.

Adam McKeown, CSIROFlying foxes, or fruit bats, are familiar to many Australians. So it may come as a surprise to learn two of the four mainland species, both grey-headed and spectacled flying foxes, are threatened with extinction. But our decade-long survey of one of these species – the grey-headed flying fox – brings some encouraging news. Our data show the population has been relatively stable since 2012, when surveys first began under the National Flying-fox Monitoring Program. Incredibly, the species emerged from the Black Summer of 2019–20 relatively unscathed. Flying foxes also suffer in heatwaves and many die, but overall numbers have remained stable. While this study is good news for the species, we must not become complacent. Heatwaves are expected to become more frequent and intense as the climate changes. Only further monitoring can determine its effects. Read more: Flying foxes pollinate forests and spread seeds. Here's how we can make peace with our noisy neighbours Hanging out with flying foxes The grey-headed flying fox (Pteropus poliocephalus) is common in most cities and towns across south-eastern Australia. More recently, colonies have become established in South Australia. The species can be found anywhere from Maryborough, on Queensland’s Fraser Coast, to Adelaide, with some outlying populations as far north as Ingham in north Queensland. There’s also a breakaway group in Port Augusta, 300km north of Adelaide. The “vulnerable” listing means the species is at risk of extinction. But it’s not as dire as if it were “endangered”. The original vulnerable assessment, endorsed in 2001, was based on a population decline of about 30% over ten years and the potential for ongoing land clearing in the grey-headed flying fox’s core range. But this is the flying fox you’re most likely to see and hear in south-east Australia, from Sydney to Adelaide. During the day, flying foxes like to hang out together. They rest and socialise in large roosts, sometimes numbering more than 100,000 animals. More than 150,000 grey-headed flying foxes roosted in Gympie, Queensland, after much of their habitat burned during the Black Summer of 2019-20. Eric Vanderduys, CSIRO As the sun sets, they take to the sky, departing in large streams to forage during the night in the surrounding landscape. They can travel long distances to find food, sometimes venturing more than 40km from home, and flying more than 300km in a single night. Their food of choice is nectar from a wide variety of eucalypt, bloodwood and melaleuca species. In return, they play an important pollination role, as if they were nocturnal bees with a one-metre wingspan. They also feed extensively on native figs. In urban areas, they feast on the nectar and fruit of introduced species found in gardens and street trees. Individuals regularly change roosts. They move throughout the species’ range, following food resources. That means the number of bats in roosts is constantly changing, depending on the availability of the surrounding resources, which makes accurate counting particularly challenging. Grey-headed flying foxes sleep and socialise during the day but are often well aware of approaching humans. Adam McKeown, CSIRO Monitoring a threatened species Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, co-ordinated the National Flying-fox Monitoring Program in partnership with federal and state environmental agencies from 2012 to 2022. The intention was to monitor the populations of the two nationally listed flying fox species on the mainland. It was specifically designed to understand their population trends. Here we focus on the grey-headed flying foxes. The program involved quarterly visits by federal, state and local government staff and volunteers to as many flying fox roosts as possible. Over the entire program almost 12,000 counts were conducted at 912 potential roosts. Grey-headed flying foxes were found at 469 of those roosts. This program would not have been possible without hundreds of hours of work around the clock by staff and volunteers, often in challenging conditions. Their work highlights the importance of long-term monitoring programs. From 2012 to 2022 we counted an average of 580,000 grey-headed flying foxes in each survey. But total numbers ranged between 330,000 and 990,000, with strong seasonal variation. This variation relates to their reproductive cycle and the availability of food within their range. Flying foxes pup late in the year. When those pups become independent, they can be counted. This results in a sudden increase in the numbers, typically around February. So while our data show peaks and troughs throughout each year, overall the population remained stable. We developed a model to allow for this seasonality and examine overall population trends. The model strongly suggests the population hovered around 600,000 adults for the ten years of the survey. We found a 70% chance of a slightly increasing population, versus a 30% chance the population has declined slightly. The population appeared to be stable despite exceptional events such as the 2019–20 megafires and severe heatwaves known to have killed thousands of flying foxes. The flying foxes seem resilient to these threats for two main reasons. First, they are nomadic and well adapted to travelling long distances. This allows them to evade threats such as fires and droughts. Second, grey-headed flying-foxes are likely to benefit from a “human-modified landscape”. In other words, they may well be urban “winners”, as the urban areas we’ve created provide diverse foraging opportunities. Grey-headed flying foxes continually occupied all major cities within their range throughout our monitoring program. These urban environments offer a smorgasbord of flowering and fruiting species, especially palms and figs. Many of these species are exotics, with flowering and fruiting patterns that flying foxes can readily exploit. We found continuous occupation of individual roosts was unusual. The few that were continuously occupied were all in urban areas, supporting the view that urban areas are increasingly important for this species. This young grey-headed flying fox is big enough to count. Eric Vanderduys, CSIRO Good news, but we need to be cautious After ten years of monitoring we can safely say the grey-headed flying fox is doing ok, for the time being. But threats to its survival remain. Climate change is expected to cause more heatwaves, bushfires and droughts within their range. This could turn their fate around. It’s also worth noting that while our monitoring continued for two years after the 2019–20 bushfires, the longer-term impacts are still unknown. Given this uncertainty, continuing monitoring using similar methods and incorporating updated technology would increase certainty about the population trajectory. Unfortunately, monitoring has paused since 2022, pending further funding discussions. Read more: To stop new viruses jumping across to humans, we must protect and restore bat habitat. Here's why Eric Vanderduys works for CSIRO. He receives funding from a range of federal and state government agencies.Adam McKeown receives funding from a variety of federal and state government agencies.Chris R. Pavey works for CSIRO. He receives funding from a variety of federal and state government agencies. John Martin works for Ecosure ecological consultancy. He receives funding from a variety of federal and state government agencies.Peter Caley works for the CSIRO. He receives funding from a range of federal and state government agencies.

Oregon Is Now Home to the World's Largest Dark Sky Sanctuary

The Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary covers 2.5 million acres in the southeastern part of the state

Officials have been working toward the designation for four years. Travel Southern Oregon Calling all stargazers: Oregon is now home to the largest Dark Sky Sanctuary in the world. Earlier this month, DarkSky International certified a remote, 2.5 million-acre area in the southeastern part of the state. From this rugged swath of high desert landscape dotted with sagebrush, visitors who stay up late can see large numbers of stars, planets and other celestial bodies. “It’s surprising sometimes to see that many stars all at once,” says Bob Hackett, executive director of Travel Southern Oregon, to the Guardian’s Dani Anguiano. “It catches you, and it makes you pause because you feel like you can touch it … That vastness of the whole cosmos up there—it almost makes you get closer to the people you’re with on the ground.” DarkSky International is a nonprofit that certifies areas that have developed comprehensive protections against light pollution. To date, the group has certified more than 200 Dark Sky Places in 22 countries. The newly certified area is called the Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary, and officials spent four years working to earn the designation. They’ve implemented a lighting management plan that will help preserve the region’s unobstructed night sky views, which includes measures such as installing motion detectors and reducing the number of lights that point upward. Additionally, every light source within the sanctuary’s boundaries will need to comply with DarkSky International’s standards within the next decade, reports KLCC’s Nathan Wilk. In Dark Sky Sanctuaries, travelers can marvel at the cosmos without interference from light pollution. Travel Southern Oregon These efforts will not only benefit stargazers and astronomers but also help protect the many animals that call the region home, such as sage grouse, bighorn sheep, migratory birds and white-tailed jackrabbits. Light pollution can disrupt breeding, migration and other wildlife behaviors. Moths, for example, can congregate around street lights to the point of exhaustion, while sea turtle hatchlings can die after becoming disoriented by artificial lighting near the shore. Humans, too, suffer because of light pollution, which is getting worse year after year. In addition to obscuring views of the night sky, it is also a health hazard. Studies have linked light pollution to an array of problems, from sleep disorders and depression to obesity and diabetes. The new Oregon sanctuary is now the biggest in the world. But local officials want to make it even bigger: They hope someday to expand the sanctuary into neighboring Harney and Malheur counties, covering a total of 11 million acres, per KLCC. If they achieve this goal, they’ll have protected roughly one-fifth of the entire state, reports AFAR’s Bailey Berg. “As the population of Oregon and the trend of light pollution continue to rise, the unparalleled scale and quality of the Outback’s dark skies will long serve as a starry refuge to people and wildlife alike,” says Dawn Nilson, an environmental consultant who helped get the area certified, in a statement. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

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