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GoGreenNation news

These startups are using traces of DNA to spy on nature for good—and profit

News Feed
Monday, April 15, 2024

In 2010, Noah Wilson-Rich was juggling several jobs while earning his PhD in biology at Tufts University: He taught classes at several nearby universities, and one day a week, tended bar at a cafe in the lobby of the Hult International Business School. On one of his shifts, he overheard customers discussing a competition for entrepreneurs. The next day, he entered, pitching a company that would gather insect health data at beehives. “They were like, ‘The bartender won?’ said Wilson-Rich. “Okay, you all need to respect your service workers.” Two thousand dollars in prize money helped Wilson-Rich launch The Best Bees Company. Now, more than a decade later, Best Bees offers corporate and residential beekeeping services near two dozen U.S. cities. The company also charges up to $450 for a “HoneyDNA” kit, which uses environmental DNA, or eDNA—genetic information deposited by a wide range of organisms in the surrounding environment—to test a hive’s health, or simply provide information about the “terroir” of the honey, said Wilson-Rich. The kit, which the company started selling in 2015, includes a sample bottle and a prepaid envelope; upon receipt, Best Bees sends honey samples out to a lab for sequencing to reveal what plant DNA is found in a hive’s product. The results can indicate whether the bees have been feeding on lavender, or how far they’re traveling from the hive; the company also provides corporate sustainability impact reporting. Best Bees is one of the many companies carving out a niche in a commercial landscape increasingly focused on advertising environmental responsibility, pushed by both customer demand and regulatory requirements. Testing environmental DNA, which allows data to be gathered from the tiny pieces of skin, scales, and slime that species shed as they move through the world, has been framed as a cheap and efficient way to understand a corporation’s impact. As supporters lobby for regulatory acceptance, a group of large consulting companies and eDNA specialists see the tool as a promising way to monitor corporate sustainability, like measuring the success of conservation efforts or the possible effects of a new bridge or parking lot. Experts say eDNA has limitations and drawbacks. So far, it appears that the tool is best used as one tool among a suite of monitoring methods, so it’s unlikely the technology will completely disrupt the environmental consulting industry, which according to The Insight Partners, a market research firm, was valued at more than $34 billion globally in 2020. But eDNA has undoubtedly created new opportunities to gather and monetize data. Meanwhile, both company representatives and researchers say it’s still early days in understanding all its possible capabilities and applications; some, like Wilson-Rich, are devising completely novel ways to sell eDNA services.  “It’s not just science for science’s sake,” said Ryan Kelly, an ecologist and legal scholar at the University of Washington, who works with government agencies on ecosystem management. “We’re making tools that it seems pretty clear can answer questions that haven’t been asked before, or can help people do their jobs better, cheaper, and faster.”  Often, before any huge infrastructure project can be constructed, governments and regulators require companies to prove they aren’t disturbing the natural landscape where the project would be built. The companies running those assessments, some of them large international corporations, have become an industry unto themselves: By 2028, the environmental consulting market is forecast to reach $50 billion in value, according to The Insight Partners. eDNA has the potential to make the work of those companies much easier, and much cheaper.   Traditional environmental monitoring “can be quite a laborious process,” according to Nicole Fahner, executive director at CEGA, an eDNA research and development center, and eDNAtec, a Canadian eDNA company. Such monitoring can require teams of highly trained biologists and ecologists, at times dispersed across sweeping landscapes like deserts and dense forests to set up traps, cameras, and remote sensing equipment. In lakes, streams, or reservoirs, scientists sometimes stick an electrified rod into the water to stun fish, to identify and count them. Surveys may happen multiple times over a series of months. And based on when a species is likely to appear, surveys may be conducted under the cover of night.  Surveys are even more challenging in parts of the deep ocean where some offshore wind and oil prospectors are eyeing projects, Fahner said, because the depths are difficult to reach and some are home to species that have never been identified and cataloged.  To meet regulatory requirements, environmental monitoring consulting is “worth a lot of money as an industry,” said Kelly. “If they could do it in a way that was more efficient and more powerful, they would.” Purveyors of environmental DNA prize its efficiency. eDNA sampling requires fewer people collecting air, dirt, or water in cheap bottles or vials. Much of the work happens back at the lab, where companies extract DNA from samples, sequence it, and then enter the results in a database to identify species matches. eDNA tests can locate a specific species, like an endangered animal or an invasive plant, or provide a picture of an entire ecosystem. And researchers are deploying methods that allow for live sequencing in the field. Today, according to industry experts, the most well-established use of eDNA for species monitoring is tracking of the great crested newt, an amphibian native to Europe and legally protected in the United Kingdom. Traditional surveys to track the newt required four night missions—one in each season—to trap specimens under plastic bottles, with a return in the morning to count them. For the last several years, biodiversity monitoring companies have used environmental DNA instead. Surveyors can scoop up water at any time of day and the DNA isolated can signal if newts are present, saving both time and labor.  “It all comes down to that value proposition: What is the advantage of using eDNA over other methods?” said Andrew Weeks, technical director at EnviroDNA, an Australian eDNA company that Weeks believes was the first to operate in the country. In 2008, Gregg Schumer was working at a highly secure Canadian microbiology lab. His days were spent harvesting animal tissue and testing it for viral DNA from pathogens like Ebola. At the time, a childhood friend was the principal scientist at a consulting company that was tracking the Delta smelt, an endangered fish usually less than three inches long, in California waterways.  “We began talking,” said Schumer, “and realized that my searching for viruses in organ systems was not unlike trying to find a really small fish in a very big system, and that we could use the exact same technique.” Soon, the two started sampling water from the same California rivers they grew up fishing, analyzing the samples for smelt DNA. In 2009, that work gave rise to one of the earliest environmental DNA companies: Genidaqs.  Genidaqs got its first grant soon after eDNA entered academic parlance. In 2008, researchers in France proposed a “novel approach” to detect species from aquatic samples, amplifying short sequences of DNA and matching it to a species of frog. That paper is recognized as the first to recommend eDNA to monitor species, but the general concept has been around for much longer, Schumer said. “The term eDNA, for use in ecological or pathogen-detection applications, in that context, is relatively new,” he said. “But people have been pulling DNA out of the environment ever since they knew that DNA existed.”  The commercial eDNA landscape rose up soon after the French paper was published, with companies like Genidaqs, pronounced genetics, and SPYGEN, a French company that in 2011 rolled out of the lab that produced that original paper.  Many eDNA companies have sprouted from academic labs or research settings, after biologists and geneticists familiar with DNA sequencing saw an opening to use the tool to pull more information from uncontrolled settings like rivers. Most companies are relatively young; only in the past few years, Schumer said, has there been enough interest for a company to exist on eDNA-related business alone.  Large international consulting companies, including Jacobs and Stantec, now also offer environmental DNA services to clients, but sequencing is still largely carried out at a handful of corporate and academic labs. “There’s not very many commercial labs that do environmental DNA work out there, and there’s even fewer that are dedicated towards it,” said Fahner at eDNAtec, founded by a professor at Canada’s University of Guelph in 2015.   Though eDNA services are becoming more in demand, regulations are most advanced in Europe, where England’s acceptance of eDNA tools to monitor great crested newts in 2014 “really changed things,” said Liz Allchin, global principal for biology and ecology at Jacobs. To date, Weeks and Kelly said, England appears to be the only country with a national, regulatory eDNA standard; in this case it provisions how eDNA can be used to monitor a specific species. Elsewhere, the legal landscape for eDNA methods remains a bit of a “wild west,” said Schumer.  There is international interest, though. In Canada, eDNAtec has collaborated with the government on a few projects; the country’s Science Advisory Secretariat has also created a guidance document on using eDNA in decision-making. Finland has a national eDNA strategy and Australia developed a national eDNA reference center. Japan maintains a biodiversity monitoring network that uses eDNA and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency uses the tool to monitor for aquatic invasive species. Beginning in 2016, the U.S. government eDNA working group has convened researchers and officials at least six times to discuss the state of eDNA research and how to integrate the tool into governmental work in areas such as invasive species or pollinator monitoring. Some U.S. agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have used eDNA testing. But no national strategy exists in the U.S., though some academics, including Kelly, have advocated for one.  Wide-ranging governmental acceptance of eDNA would mean a windfall for companies selling these tools. Without it, some companies and researchers are hesitant to estimate the market’s future size.  Meanwhile, companies like Best Bees are experimenting with applications outside of traditional environmental monitoring. Wilson-Rich has consulted on how certain honey producers can verify the origin of their product through the plant DNA it contains and sell it at a premium, similar to Manuka honey, a mainstay at health food stores. Sustainable fishery advocates have proposed monitoring for illegal fishing using eDNA. Biologists and engineers have deployed autonomous submersibles to trawl the ocean floor for eDNA that may lead to new drugs. And on farms, scientists have experimented with using eDNA to test soil health and identify pests.  eDNA data could eventually generate value on its own. Last year, BeZero Carbon, an agency that rates the quality of carbon credits, began testing the use of eDNA as a proxy to gauge ecosystem health by looking for changes in the makeup of microbial communities in response to environmental stressors. Its use “as a tool for capturing ecosystem characteristics,” the agency notes on its website, “could be an important step in the development of nature-based credits.” Biodiversity credits could one day be available to companies that demonstrate an improvement to the natural landscape. That credit market is nascent—and it’s already received criticism—but international interest is growing. By 2030, the biodiversity offsets and credit market could be worth over $160 billion, according to BloombergNEF. Measuring biodiversity is more difficult than other voluntary credit systems, like carbon credits, said BeZero Carbon’s chief science officer Nick Atkinson, because biodiversity is not defined by a single measure. eDNA results can be collected over time, demonstrating how an environment changes. “We need the tools and the techniques to be able to measure biodiversity, and eDNA is one of them,” said Atkinson. “It’s very useful.” Along with excitement, though, there is skepticism. Atkinson is quick to point out that eDNA is no “magic bullet.” As with any set of data, it is open to bias, said Kelly at the University of Washington: “It could be analyzed in a responsible way, or an irresponsible way.” Bioethicists also worry that, without regulation, eDNA could lead to serious privacy concerns if companies are not restricted on how they can use it or whether they’re able to sell the data they collect. The tool has other limitations. Environmental DNA currently can’t be used to determine abundance of a species, for instance. And in certain circumstances, eDNA tests can lead to false positives and negatives—a winged creature may pick up plant or animal DNA in a field and drop it in an unexpected place, like a parking lot, or a fish may swim through an area and leave very little DNA behind. “Usually when you don’t detect something, you can’t say it was absent, you can say it wasn’t detected,” said Fahner. “All tests have a limit.” Instead, eDNA may work best if used as “an early warning system” to guide further research, said Weeks. eDNA can provide a snapshot of a landscape and offer information on a wide area; then, those tests may still need to be followed up with catch surveys or field surveys.  “It’s like a hammer, you can pound a nail with it or you can smash your thumb. So, if it’s used correctly, in the right context, it does provide meaningful data that add value to what’s already being done,” said Schumer at Genidaqs. “That added value, that’s the business.” The challenge now, according to Weeks, is to prove that value without overpromising.  “It’s like any new technology: It’ll go through that innovation adoption curve, where you’ll have early adopters, you’ll have this weight of expectation of what it can provide,” he said. “Eventually, there will be some, probably, level of disillusionment, because it can’t actually supply some of the things that people thought it could.”  “The challenge for us, as people that provide the service in the industry,” he added, “is to make sure that weight of expectation never gets beyond what it really can do.”  This story was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

In 2010, Noah Wilson-Rich was juggling several jobs while earning his PhD in biology at Tufts University: He taught classes at several nearby universities, and one day a week, tended bar at a cafe in the lobby of the Hult International Business School. On one of his shifts, he overheard customers discussing a competition for entrepreneurs. The next day, he entered, pitching a company that would gather insect health data at beehives. “They were like, ‘The bartender won?’ said Wilson-Rich. “Okay, you all need to respect your service workers.” Two thousand dollars in prize money helped Wilson-Rich launch The Best Bees Company. Now, more than a decade later, Best Bees offers corporate and residential beekeeping services near two dozen U.S. cities. The company also charges up to $450 for a “HoneyDNA” kit, which uses environmental DNA, or eDNA—genetic information deposited by a wide range of organisms in the surrounding environment—to test a hive’s health, or simply provide information about the “terroir” of the honey, said Wilson-Rich. The kit, which the company started selling in 2015, includes a sample bottle and a prepaid envelope; upon receipt, Best Bees sends honey samples out to a lab for sequencing to reveal what plant DNA is found in a hive’s product. The results can indicate whether the bees have been feeding on lavender, or how far they’re traveling from the hive; the company also provides corporate sustainability impact reporting. Best Bees is one of the many companies carving out a niche in a commercial landscape increasingly focused on advertising environmental responsibility, pushed by both customer demand and regulatory requirements. Testing environmental DNA, which allows data to be gathered from the tiny pieces of skin, scales, and slime that species shed as they move through the world, has been framed as a cheap and efficient way to understand a corporation’s impact. As supporters lobby for regulatory acceptance, a group of large consulting companies and eDNA specialists see the tool as a promising way to monitor corporate sustainability, like measuring the success of conservation efforts or the possible effects of a new bridge or parking lot. Experts say eDNA has limitations and drawbacks. So far, it appears that the tool is best used as one tool among a suite of monitoring methods, so it’s unlikely the technology will completely disrupt the environmental consulting industry, which according to The Insight Partners, a market research firm, was valued at more than $34 billion globally in 2020. But eDNA has undoubtedly created new opportunities to gather and monetize data. Meanwhile, both company representatives and researchers say it’s still early days in understanding all its possible capabilities and applications; some, like Wilson-Rich, are devising completely novel ways to sell eDNA services.  “It’s not just science for science’s sake,” said Ryan Kelly, an ecologist and legal scholar at the University of Washington, who works with government agencies on ecosystem management. “We’re making tools that it seems pretty clear can answer questions that haven’t been asked before, or can help people do their jobs better, cheaper, and faster.”  Often, before any huge infrastructure project can be constructed, governments and regulators require companies to prove they aren’t disturbing the natural landscape where the project would be built. The companies running those assessments, some of them large international corporations, have become an industry unto themselves: By 2028, the environmental consulting market is forecast to reach $50 billion in value, according to The Insight Partners. eDNA has the potential to make the work of those companies much easier, and much cheaper.   Traditional environmental monitoring “can be quite a laborious process,” according to Nicole Fahner, executive director at CEGA, an eDNA research and development center, and eDNAtec, a Canadian eDNA company. Such monitoring can require teams of highly trained biologists and ecologists, at times dispersed across sweeping landscapes like deserts and dense forests to set up traps, cameras, and remote sensing equipment. In lakes, streams, or reservoirs, scientists sometimes stick an electrified rod into the water to stun fish, to identify and count them. Surveys may happen multiple times over a series of months. And based on when a species is likely to appear, surveys may be conducted under the cover of night.  Surveys are even more challenging in parts of the deep ocean where some offshore wind and oil prospectors are eyeing projects, Fahner said, because the depths are difficult to reach and some are home to species that have never been identified and cataloged.  To meet regulatory requirements, environmental monitoring consulting is “worth a lot of money as an industry,” said Kelly. “If they could do it in a way that was more efficient and more powerful, they would.” Purveyors of environmental DNA prize its efficiency. eDNA sampling requires fewer people collecting air, dirt, or water in cheap bottles or vials. Much of the work happens back at the lab, where companies extract DNA from samples, sequence it, and then enter the results in a database to identify species matches. eDNA tests can locate a specific species, like an endangered animal or an invasive plant, or provide a picture of an entire ecosystem. And researchers are deploying methods that allow for live sequencing in the field. Today, according to industry experts, the most well-established use of eDNA for species monitoring is tracking of the great crested newt, an amphibian native to Europe and legally protected in the United Kingdom. Traditional surveys to track the newt required four night missions—one in each season—to trap specimens under plastic bottles, with a return in the morning to count them. For the last several years, biodiversity monitoring companies have used environmental DNA instead. Surveyors can scoop up water at any time of day and the DNA isolated can signal if newts are present, saving both time and labor.  “It all comes down to that value proposition: What is the advantage of using eDNA over other methods?” said Andrew Weeks, technical director at EnviroDNA, an Australian eDNA company that Weeks believes was the first to operate in the country. In 2008, Gregg Schumer was working at a highly secure Canadian microbiology lab. His days were spent harvesting animal tissue and testing it for viral DNA from pathogens like Ebola. At the time, a childhood friend was the principal scientist at a consulting company that was tracking the Delta smelt, an endangered fish usually less than three inches long, in California waterways.  “We began talking,” said Schumer, “and realized that my searching for viruses in organ systems was not unlike trying to find a really small fish in a very big system, and that we could use the exact same technique.” Soon, the two started sampling water from the same California rivers they grew up fishing, analyzing the samples for smelt DNA. In 2009, that work gave rise to one of the earliest environmental DNA companies: Genidaqs.  Genidaqs got its first grant soon after eDNA entered academic parlance. In 2008, researchers in France proposed a “novel approach” to detect species from aquatic samples, amplifying short sequences of DNA and matching it to a species of frog. That paper is recognized as the first to recommend eDNA to monitor species, but the general concept has been around for much longer, Schumer said. “The term eDNA, for use in ecological or pathogen-detection applications, in that context, is relatively new,” he said. “But people have been pulling DNA out of the environment ever since they knew that DNA existed.”  The commercial eDNA landscape rose up soon after the French paper was published, with companies like Genidaqs, pronounced genetics, and SPYGEN, a French company that in 2011 rolled out of the lab that produced that original paper.  Many eDNA companies have sprouted from academic labs or research settings, after biologists and geneticists familiar with DNA sequencing saw an opening to use the tool to pull more information from uncontrolled settings like rivers. Most companies are relatively young; only in the past few years, Schumer said, has there been enough interest for a company to exist on eDNA-related business alone.  Large international consulting companies, including Jacobs and Stantec, now also offer environmental DNA services to clients, but sequencing is still largely carried out at a handful of corporate and academic labs. “There’s not very many commercial labs that do environmental DNA work out there, and there’s even fewer that are dedicated towards it,” said Fahner at eDNAtec, founded by a professor at Canada’s University of Guelph in 2015.   Though eDNA services are becoming more in demand, regulations are most advanced in Europe, where England’s acceptance of eDNA tools to monitor great crested newts in 2014 “really changed things,” said Liz Allchin, global principal for biology and ecology at Jacobs. To date, Weeks and Kelly said, England appears to be the only country with a national, regulatory eDNA standard; in this case it provisions how eDNA can be used to monitor a specific species. Elsewhere, the legal landscape for eDNA methods remains a bit of a “wild west,” said Schumer.  There is international interest, though. In Canada, eDNAtec has collaborated with the government on a few projects; the country’s Science Advisory Secretariat has also created a guidance document on using eDNA in decision-making. Finland has a national eDNA strategy and Australia developed a national eDNA reference center. Japan maintains a biodiversity monitoring network that uses eDNA and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency uses the tool to monitor for aquatic invasive species. Beginning in 2016, the U.S. government eDNA working group has convened researchers and officials at least six times to discuss the state of eDNA research and how to integrate the tool into governmental work in areas such as invasive species or pollinator monitoring. Some U.S. agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have used eDNA testing. But no national strategy exists in the U.S., though some academics, including Kelly, have advocated for one.  Wide-ranging governmental acceptance of eDNA would mean a windfall for companies selling these tools. Without it, some companies and researchers are hesitant to estimate the market’s future size.  Meanwhile, companies like Best Bees are experimenting with applications outside of traditional environmental monitoring. Wilson-Rich has consulted on how certain honey producers can verify the origin of their product through the plant DNA it contains and sell it at a premium, similar to Manuka honey, a mainstay at health food stores. Sustainable fishery advocates have proposed monitoring for illegal fishing using eDNA. Biologists and engineers have deployed autonomous submersibles to trawl the ocean floor for eDNA that may lead to new drugs. And on farms, scientists have experimented with using eDNA to test soil health and identify pests.  eDNA data could eventually generate value on its own. Last year, BeZero Carbon, an agency that rates the quality of carbon credits, began testing the use of eDNA as a proxy to gauge ecosystem health by looking for changes in the makeup of microbial communities in response to environmental stressors. Its use “as a tool for capturing ecosystem characteristics,” the agency notes on its website, “could be an important step in the development of nature-based credits.” Biodiversity credits could one day be available to companies that demonstrate an improvement to the natural landscape. That credit market is nascent—and it’s already received criticism—but international interest is growing. By 2030, the biodiversity offsets and credit market could be worth over $160 billion, according to BloombergNEF. Measuring biodiversity is more difficult than other voluntary credit systems, like carbon credits, said BeZero Carbon’s chief science officer Nick Atkinson, because biodiversity is not defined by a single measure. eDNA results can be collected over time, demonstrating how an environment changes. “We need the tools and the techniques to be able to measure biodiversity, and eDNA is one of them,” said Atkinson. “It’s very useful.” Along with excitement, though, there is skepticism. Atkinson is quick to point out that eDNA is no “magic bullet.” As with any set of data, it is open to bias, said Kelly at the University of Washington: “It could be analyzed in a responsible way, or an irresponsible way.” Bioethicists also worry that, without regulation, eDNA could lead to serious privacy concerns if companies are not restricted on how they can use it or whether they’re able to sell the data they collect. The tool has other limitations. Environmental DNA currently can’t be used to determine abundance of a species, for instance. And in certain circumstances, eDNA tests can lead to false positives and negatives—a winged creature may pick up plant or animal DNA in a field and drop it in an unexpected place, like a parking lot, or a fish may swim through an area and leave very little DNA behind. “Usually when you don’t detect something, you can’t say it was absent, you can say it wasn’t detected,” said Fahner. “All tests have a limit.” Instead, eDNA may work best if used as “an early warning system” to guide further research, said Weeks. eDNA can provide a snapshot of a landscape and offer information on a wide area; then, those tests may still need to be followed up with catch surveys or field surveys.  “It’s like a hammer, you can pound a nail with it or you can smash your thumb. So, if it’s used correctly, in the right context, it does provide meaningful data that add value to what’s already being done,” said Schumer at Genidaqs. “That added value, that’s the business.” The challenge now, according to Weeks, is to prove that value without overpromising.  “It’s like any new technology: It’ll go through that innovation adoption curve, where you’ll have early adopters, you’ll have this weight of expectation of what it can provide,” he said. “Eventually, there will be some, probably, level of disillusionment, because it can’t actually supply some of the things that people thought it could.”  “The challenge for us, as people that provide the service in the industry,” he added, “is to make sure that weight of expectation never gets beyond what it really can do.”  This story was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

In 2010, Noah Wilson-Rich was juggling several jobs while earning his PhD in biology at Tufts University: He taught classes at several nearby universities, and one day a week, tended bar at a cafe in the lobby of the Hult International Business School.

On one of his shifts, he overheard customers discussing a competition for entrepreneurs. The next day, he entered, pitching a company that would gather insect health data at beehives. “They were like, ‘The bartender won?’ said Wilson-Rich. “Okay, you all need to respect your service workers.”

Two thousand dollars in prize money helped Wilson-Rich launch The Best Bees Company. Now, more than a decade later, Best Bees offers corporate and residential beekeeping services near two dozen U.S. cities. The company also charges up to $450 for a “HoneyDNA” kit, which uses environmental DNA, or eDNA—genetic information deposited by a wide range of organisms in the surrounding environment—to test a hive’s health, or simply provide information about the “terroir” of the honey, said Wilson-Rich. The kit, which the company started selling in 2015, includes a sample bottle and a prepaid envelope; upon receipt, Best Bees sends honey samples out to a lab for sequencing to reveal what plant DNA is found in a hive’s product. The results can indicate whether the bees have been feeding on lavender, or how far they’re traveling from the hive; the company also provides corporate sustainability impact reporting.

Best Bees is one of the many companies carving out a niche in a commercial landscape increasingly focused on advertising environmental responsibility, pushed by both customer demand and regulatory requirements. Testing environmental DNA, which allows data to be gathered from the tiny pieces of skin, scales, and slime that species shed as they move through the world, has been framed as a cheap and efficient way to understand a corporation’s impact.

As supporters lobby for regulatory acceptance, a group of large consulting companies and eDNA specialists see the tool as a promising way to monitor corporate sustainability, like measuring the success of conservation efforts or the possible effects of a new bridge or parking lot. Experts say eDNA has limitations and drawbacks. So far, it appears that the tool is best used as one tool among a suite of monitoring methods, so it’s unlikely the technology will completely disrupt the environmental consulting industry, which according to The Insight Partners, a market research firm, was valued at more than $34 billion globally in 2020. But eDNA has undoubtedly created new opportunities to gather and monetize data.

Meanwhile, both company representatives and researchers say it’s still early days in understanding all its possible capabilities and applications; some, like Wilson-Rich, are devising completely novel ways to sell eDNA services. 

“It’s not just science for science’s sake,” said Ryan Kelly, an ecologist and legal scholar at the University of Washington, who works with government agencies on ecosystem management. “We’re making tools that it seems pretty clear can answer questions that haven’t been asked before, or can help people do their jobs better, cheaper, and faster.” 

Often, before any huge infrastructure project can be constructed, governments and regulators require companies to prove they aren’t disturbing the natural landscape where the project would be built. The companies running those assessments, some of them large international corporations, have become an industry unto themselves: By 2028, the environmental consulting market is forecast to reach $50 billion in value, according to The Insight Partners.

eDNA has the potential to make the work of those companies much easier, and much cheaper.  

Traditional environmental monitoring “can be quite a laborious process,” according to Nicole Fahner, executive director at CEGA, an eDNA research and development center, and eDNAtec, a Canadian eDNA company. Such monitoring can require teams of highly trained biologists and ecologists, at times dispersed across sweeping landscapes like deserts and dense forests to set up traps, cameras, and remote sensing equipment. In lakes, streams, or reservoirs, scientists sometimes stick an electrified rod into the water to stun fish, to identify and count them. Surveys may happen multiple times over a series of months. And based on when a species is likely to appear, surveys may be conducted under the cover of night. 

Surveys are even more challenging in parts of the deep ocean where some offshore wind and oil prospectors are eyeing projects, Fahner said, because the depths are difficult to reach and some are home to species that have never been identified and cataloged. 

To meet regulatory requirements, environmental monitoring consulting is “worth a lot of money as an industry,” said Kelly. “If they could do it in a way that was more efficient and more powerful, they would.”

Purveyors of environmental DNA prize its efficiency. eDNA sampling requires fewer people collecting air, dirt, or water in cheap bottles or vials. Much of the work happens back at the lab, where companies extract DNA from samples, sequence it, and then enter the results in a database to identify species matches. eDNA tests can locate a specific species, like an endangered animal or an invasive plant, or provide a picture of an entire ecosystem. And researchers are deploying methods that allow for live sequencing in the field.

Today, according to industry experts, the most well-established use of eDNA for species monitoring is tracking of the great crested newt, an amphibian native to Europe and legally protected in the United Kingdom. Traditional surveys to track the newt required four night missions—one in each season—to trap specimens under plastic bottles, with a return in the morning to count them. For the last several years, biodiversity monitoring companies have used environmental DNA instead. Surveyors can scoop up water at any time of day and the DNA isolated can signal if newts are present, saving both time and labor. 

“It all comes down to that value proposition: What is the advantage of using eDNA over other methods?” said Andrew Weeks, technical director at EnviroDNA, an Australian eDNA company that Weeks believes was the first to operate in the country.

In 2008, Gregg Schumer was working at a highly secure Canadian microbiology lab. His days were spent harvesting animal tissue and testing it for viral DNA from pathogens like Ebola. At the time, a childhood friend was the principal scientist at a consulting company that was tracking the Delta smelt, an endangered fish usually less than three inches long, in California waterways. 

“We began talking,” said Schumer, “and realized that my searching for viruses in organ systems was not unlike trying to find a really small fish in a very big system, and that we could use the exact same technique.” Soon, the two started sampling water from the same California rivers they grew up fishing, analyzing the samples for smelt DNA. In 2009, that work gave rise to one of the earliest environmental DNA companies: Genidaqs. 

Genidaqs got its first grant soon after eDNA entered academic parlance. In 2008, researchers in France proposed a “novel approach” to detect species from aquatic samples, amplifying short sequences of DNA and matching it to a species of frog. That paper is recognized as the first to recommend eDNA to monitor species, but the general concept has been around for much longer, Schumer said.

“The term eDNA, for use in ecological or pathogen-detection applications, in that context, is relatively new,” he said. “But people have been pulling DNA out of the environment ever since they knew that DNA existed.” 

The commercial eDNA landscape rose up soon after the French paper was published, with companies like Genidaqs, pronounced genetics, and SPYGEN, a French company that in 2011 rolled out of the lab that produced that original paper. 

Many eDNA companies have sprouted from academic labs or research settings, after biologists and geneticists familiar with DNA sequencing saw an opening to use the tool to pull more information from uncontrolled settings like rivers. Most companies are relatively young; only in the past few years, Schumer said, has there been enough interest for a company to exist on eDNA-related business alone. 

Large international consulting companies, including Jacobs and Stantec, now also offer environmental DNA services to clients, but sequencing is still largely carried out at a handful of corporate and academic labs. “There’s not very many commercial labs that do environmental DNA work out there, and there’s even fewer that are dedicated towards it,” said Fahner at eDNAtec, founded by a professor at Canada’s University of Guelph in 2015.  

Though eDNA services are becoming more in demand, regulations are most advanced in Europe, where England’s acceptance of eDNA tools to monitor great crested newts in 2014 “really changed things,” said Liz Allchin, global principal for biology and ecology at Jacobs. To date, Weeks and Kelly said, England appears to be the only country with a national, regulatory eDNA standard; in this case it provisions how eDNA can be used to monitor a specific species.

Elsewhere, the legal landscape for eDNA methods remains a bit of a “wild west,” said Schumer. 

There is international interest, though. In Canada, eDNAtec has collaborated with the government on a few projects; the country’s Science Advisory Secretariat has also created a guidance document on using eDNA in decision-making. Finland has a national eDNA strategy and Australia developed a national eDNA reference center. Japan maintains a biodiversity monitoring network that uses eDNA and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency uses the tool to monitor for aquatic invasive species.

Beginning in 2016, the U.S. government eDNA working group has convened researchers and officials at least six times to discuss the state of eDNA research and how to integrate the tool into governmental work in areas such as invasive species or pollinator monitoring. Some U.S. agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have used eDNA testing. But no national strategy exists in the U.S., though some academics, including Kelly, have advocated for one. 

Wide-ranging governmental acceptance of eDNA would mean a windfall for companies selling these tools. Without it, some companies and researchers are hesitant to estimate the market’s future size. 

Meanwhile, companies like Best Bees are experimenting with applications outside of traditional environmental monitoring. Wilson-Rich has consulted on how certain honey producers can verify the origin of their product through the plant DNA it contains and sell it at a premium, similar to Manuka honey, a mainstay at health food stores. Sustainable fishery advocates have proposed monitoring for illegal fishing using eDNA. Biologists and engineers have deployed autonomous submersibles to trawl the ocean floor for eDNA that may lead to new drugs. And on farms, scientists have experimented with using eDNA to test soil health and identify pests. 

eDNA data could eventually generate value on its own. Last year, BeZero Carbon, an agency that rates the quality of carbon credits, began testing the use of eDNA as a proxy to gauge ecosystem health by looking for changes in the makeup of microbial communities in response to environmental stressors. Its use “as a tool for capturing ecosystem characteristics,” the agency notes on its website, “could be an important step in the development of nature-based credits.” Biodiversity credits could one day be available to companies that demonstrate an improvement to the natural landscape. That credit market is nascent—and it’s already received criticism—but international interest is growing. By 2030, the biodiversity offsets and credit market could be worth over $160 billion, according to BloombergNEF.

Measuring biodiversity is more difficult than other voluntary credit systems, like carbon credits, said BeZero Carbon’s chief science officer Nick Atkinson, because biodiversity is not defined by a single measure. eDNA results can be collected over time, demonstrating how an environment changes. “We need the tools and the techniques to be able to measure biodiversity, and eDNA is one of them,” said Atkinson. “It’s very useful.”

Along with excitement, though, there is skepticism. Atkinson is quick to point out that eDNA is no “magic bullet.” As with any set of data, it is open to bias, said Kelly at the University of Washington: “It could be analyzed in a responsible way, or an irresponsible way.” Bioethicists also worry that, without regulation, eDNA could lead to serious privacy concerns if companies are not restricted on how they can use it or whether they’re able to sell the data they collect.

The tool has other limitations. Environmental DNA currently can’t be used to determine abundance of a species, for instance. And in certain circumstances, eDNA tests can lead to false positives and negatives—a winged creature may pick up plant or animal DNA in a field and drop it in an unexpected place, like a parking lot, or a fish may swim through an area and leave very little DNA behind. “Usually when you don’t detect something, you can’t say it was absent, you can say it wasn’t detected,” said Fahner. “All tests have a limit.”

Instead, eDNA may work best if used as “an early warning system” to guide further research, said Weeks. eDNA can provide a snapshot of a landscape and offer information on a wide area; then, those tests may still need to be followed up with catch surveys or field surveys. 

“It’s like a hammer, you can pound a nail with it or you can smash your thumb. So, if it’s used correctly, in the right context, it does provide meaningful data that add value to what’s already being done,” said Schumer at Genidaqs. “That added value, that’s the business.”

The challenge now, according to Weeks, is to prove that value without overpromising. 

“It’s like any new technology: It’ll go through that innovation adoption curve, where you’ll have early adopters, you’ll have this weight of expectation of what it can provide,” he said. “Eventually, there will be some, probably, level of disillusionment, because it can’t actually supply some of the things that people thought it could.” 

“The challenge for us, as people that provide the service in the industry,” he added, “is to make sure that weight of expectation never gets beyond what it really can do.” 

This story was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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Why Is That Woodpecker White?

For years, the author has gathered photographs of local leucistic birds: white (or whitish) woodpeckers, hummingbirds, sparrows, turkeys, bald eagles, and more.  The post Why Is That Woodpecker White? appeared first on Bay Nature.

For several years in my garden, one of the harbingers of spring would be the arrival of the white-headed girl. This bird was a female house sparrow, normal except for her bright white cap. She stood out: field guides describe these birds’ caps as “drab,” meaning grayish-brown. Not white. So the first time I saw her, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on.  That became clear about a month later on a trip to the Sierras. As the sun was setting, the trip leader spotted two red-tailed hawks perched on top of a distant barn. At first glance, they didn’t look like a pair—one’s head seemed encircled by a saintly halo. A look through a spotting scope and a word from the trip leader clarified that the bird was leucistic. Now that I knew what I was seeing, I started noticing leucistic birds elsewhere, and I began collecting photographs of them from local Bay Area bird photographers. Photographer Alan Krakauer captured this partially leucistic white-crowned sparrow at his home in Richmond. Like my white-headed girl, he says that this bird returned annually for several years: “This bird was the VIB [very important bird] of our backyard and we always particularly loved finding it in with the other white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows.”Photographer Marty Lycan took this photo in January 2023 at Shadow Cliffs Regional Park in Pleasanton. This particular bald eagle had been reported at several other hot spots continuing in 2024, and then into the new year.Mark Rauzon describes these photographs: “Bishop Ranch, San Ramon is a steep hill of super sticky mud, pockmarked by cattle hooves, that make for a challenge as you listen for the ‘haha’ laughing acorn woodpecker, hoping to see a white blur fly by. With patience, especially sitting quietly by the acorn granary, soon a normal and a white bird with a vermilion cap will drop by. Pretty much every bird photographer has made the pilgrimage to see them and take their best shot.” These birds were first reported in the summer of 2023. As of October 1, 2026, Mark thinks there might be as many as five. I love this particular photograph for showing both a typical acorn woodpecker and a leucistic one.Leucism is a rare condition in which a bird’s plumage has white feathers that aren’t normally white. Data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Feederwatch Program estimates that one in 30,000 birds has leucistic or albinistic plumage. Among those, most are leucistic, as opposed to albino. The difference is often—but not always—clear-cut: albino birds have no melanin, the pigment responsible for color, turning their plumage pure white, their eyes pink or red, and their legs and bills pale. Leucistic birds, instead, have normal eyes, bills, and legs for their species. And their whiteness comes in varying degrees.  Some leucistic birds—like my white-headed girl—have white patches where they shouldn’t have them. Others will have plumage that looks faded—half way between its normal color and white. And in the most extreme cases, the bird’s feathers are completely white.  This Anna’s hummingbird appeared in photographer Alan Bade’s garden for a few weeks in the springtime, but avoided his hummingbird feeders, perhaps avoiding competition with other birds, Alan speculates. He added that it seemed “a little timid and more delicate than our normal hummers. It goes away for a few days and then shows up again, like a ghost.” When Alan sent a picture of the bird—which he thought was leucistic—to expert Sherri Williamson, she replied that its “‘washed-out’ appearance” is “suggestive of one of the less extreme forms of albinism.” Her prognosis for the bird, however, was hopeful: “Though severe pigment abnormalities can make a bird more vulnerable to excessive plumage wear, sunburn, disease, and predation, there are some cases of ‘pigment-challenged’ Anna’s hummingbirds living to adulthood and breeding successfully. Here’s hoping that this will be one of those success stories.”Photographer Keith Malley is part of a regular crew at the Presidio’s Battery Godfrey who watch for seabirds and birds on migration. They observed this turkey vulture recently as it rose up behind their position at the ocean’s edge, then coursed along the bluff for about an hour before crossing north into Marin.Photographer Marty Lycan captured this almost completely leucistic white-crowned sparrow in winter several years ago while walking his dogs near a baseball field adjacent to Sycamore Valley Park. Was the location coincidental? The bird is about the size and color of a baseball showing a few scuff marks. It had been reported there the previous year, too, and then reappeared the following two winters. Sparrows seem to do this.Photographer Mark Rauzon found these finches in Panoche Valley, San Benito Co. where large flocks of house finches and various kinds of sparrows congregate in winter. Mark notes, “Obviously one stood out as it perched on the farming equipment.” Most often, a genetic defect causes leucism, by preventing pigment from moving into the feathers during development. Genetic leucism can result in birds that have patches of white (sometimes called piebald) or that are completely white. But various environmental factors can also contribute to leucism. Poor diet can lead to a loss of pigments, producing gray, pale, or white feathers. So can exposure to pollutants or radiation. Birds that lose feathers through injury sometimes replace the lost ones with new ones that lack pigment, regaining normal color only after the next molt’s feathers come in. And, like humans, birds can experience “progressive graying,”  in which cells lose pigment as they age. Mark Rauzon seems to attract leucistic birds. He described this yellow-rumped warbler, at the Las Gallinas Sanitation Ponds in San Rafael, as “a butterbutt with mayo” or, alternately, “an Audubon warbler piebald with splotches of white and yellow, gray and gray.” (Audubon is a subspecies of yellow-rumped warbler). Photographer Becky Matsubara took this picture of this bird at Marta’s Marsh in Corte Madera a couple of summers ago; it was among 12 other northern mockingbirds. It had first been reported in April and stayed around until at least August. It reminds me of the mockingbird fledglings that descend on my backyard each summer, eating all of my blueberries. While leucistic birds can be a source of wonder for us humans, the abnormal coloration can cause problems for the birds themselves. A bird’s appearance is often critical in its ability to find a mate, and a bird that looks like a snowball instead of a rainbow might have problems getting a date. A bird’s color can camouflage it from predators, but, again, all of that white can be like a painted target. Melanin not only provides color in feathers but it also provides structural integrity, making feathers more durable. And finally, a lack of melanin can affect a bird’s ability to thermoregulate—lighter feathers may absorb less light and heat, so birds might struggle to stay warm in cold temperatures. I heard about this turkey from some friends who had said it had been hanging out with three “normal” turkeys (is there such a thing?) in the grassy center divider of Sacramento Avenue in Berkeley for a few days. When I went to find it, the three turkeys were about four blocks away from the leucistic bird. The leucistic turkey disappeared a few days after I photographed it. The others, six months later, are still hanging around (I had to chase them out of my driveway last month!) (Eric Schroeder)At the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, photographer Rick Lewis remembers: “It was early morning, the sun was rising, no other vehicles in sight; I was driving solo and immediately recognized the silhouette as a black phoebe. Very exciting as I focused my binoculars and realized that it was leucistic.”Although there have been no large studies that show leucism is on the rise, human activity leads me to believe there are more odd-colored birds around.Some of that increase is intentional: Hummingbird expert Sherri Williamson points out that humans sometimes selectively breed for rare qualities like albinism, meaning we’ve created “hundreds of fancy varieties of poultry, pigeons, and cage birds.” But other increases in leucistic birds are accidental: One study done in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster revealed that there was a tenfold increase in the number of leucistic barn swallows locally. With habitat loss (and degraded avian diets resulting from this), human influences, and other environmental factors, the numbers of leucistic birds are bound to increase. That might not always be a good thing, as we’ve seen.  A bird hotline—in the pre-listserv and eBird days—alerted photographer Bob Lewis to this American robin about a decade ago, on a garage roof in a Berkeley neighborhood.  It hung around the neighborhood for several days before disappearing. When I asked him what he thought happened to it, he said he suspected “something ate it.”Photographer Torgil Zethson found this western sandpiper on the Newark Slough Trail at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in the South Bay. Because this almost pure-white bird was so striking, he suspected that it might be the same one photographed a week earlier in Monterey County or even a bird seen in Coos Bay, Oregon ten days before that. (Torgil Zethson)But of course, the other explanation is that perhaps what’s increasing isn’t leucistic bird numbers, but rather the number of people watching and photographing birds. And I’m encouraged—as are the other Bay Area birders who’ve watched them—by those individual birds that keep showing up year after year, like my white-headed girl once did. After four years of backyard visits, she disappeared. Still, eight years later, when spring rolls around, I keep an eye open for her—or perhaps her offspring. Leucistic acorn woodpeckers. (Mark Rauzon)

Nature

With Dams Removed, Spawning Salmon Are Heading Up Alameda Creek

These chinooks are likely hatchery strays. But they are still an ecosystem boon—and flaming-bright symbols of restoration at work. The post With Dams Removed, Spawning Salmon Are Heading Up Alameda Creek appeared first on Bay Nature.

Nearly a dozen chinook salmon have swum the 12 miles upstream from the San Francisco Bay through Alameda Creek into Niles Canyon—likely the first salmon to spawn there in 30 years, according to Jeff Miller, founder of the Alameda Creek Alliance.  From its mouth in the East Bay, between the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges, Alameda Creek leads forty miles east into the Sunol Wilderness through abundant potential spawning grounds. But dams, pipelines, bridges, and other human structures in the creek blocked fish from that potential paradise in 1967. Since 1998, the Alameda Creek Alliance, a grassroots advocacy group, has worked alongside agencies, nonprofits, and community members to take down these barriers one by one. Two multimillion-dollar fish ladders opened the route to Niles Canyon in 2022. This September, the mainstem creek’s last remaining barrier, a concrete mat over a PG&E gas pipeline, was removed. Bay Nature featured the watershed moment—and the decades of advocacy that led up to it—in a May 2025 story, “After 28 Years, Alameda Creek Opens Up to Fish.”  Claire Buchanan, CalTrout’s central California regional director, says that on Wednesday environmental consultants spotted two chinooks that went even farther—they were crossing the former pipeline, some 20 miles upstream from the mouth.  These chinooks are likely hatchery strays, says Miller. But they are still an ecosystem boon, bringing nutrients into the stream. They also serve as flaming-bright symbols of restoration-at-work to the public—proof that salmon can find their way to new spawning grounds. Chinook salmon males redden as they prepare to spawn and develop a characteristic hooked jaw. Volunteers spotted both males and (hopefully egg-laden) females crossing the former barriers on the lower creek last week. Volunteers with the Alameda Creek Alliance as well as agency staff are watching the creek for salmon and trout—and now looking for where they might have spawned. (Left, David Young; right, Dan Sarka) As the fish now swim up through Niles Canyon, the females will search for quiet spots to lay their eggs, which males will then fertilize. This part, Miller doesn’t worry about helping along. “They’re pretty good at what they do,” he says. 

Nature
Water

Nature recovery plan in England hit by clause allowing contracts to end with a year’s notice

Conservationists say changes, coupled with underfunding, will curb take-up and leave less land protected for natureUK politics live – latest updatesAn ambitious scheme to restore England’s nature over coming decades has been undermined after the government inserted a clause allowing it to terminate contracts with only a year’s notice, conservationists have said.The project was designed to fund landscape-scale restoration over thousands of hectares, whether on large estates or across farms and nature reserves. The idea was to create huge reserves for rare species to thrive – projects promoted as decades-long commitments to securing habitat for wildlife well into the future. Continue reading...

An ambitious scheme to restore England’s nature over coming decades has been undermined after the government inserted a clause allowing it to terminate contracts with only a year’s notice, conservationists have said.The project was designed to fund landscape-scale restoration over thousands of hectares, whether on large estates or across farms and nature reserves. The idea was to create huge reserves for rare species to thrive – projects promoted as decades-long commitments to securing habitat for wildlife well into the future.Conservationists have warned these changes, as well as underfunding, will lead to low take-up and less land protected for nature. They say allowing contracts to be ripped up after a year is unworkable, as it would leave landowners with rewilded land they can no longer farm and too little time to reconvert it.Landscape recovery is the most ambitious part of the environmental land management schemes (Elms), which were introduced by the previous Conservative government to replace EU farming subsidies.Initially, the schemes were to be split into three strands, with landscape recovery receiving a third of the £2.4bn a year funding pot. But this week, the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, announced the projects would be given only £500m over 20 years.Jake Fiennes, the director of conservation at the Holkham estate, one of the government’s first pilot schemes for landscape recovery in 2022. He has been creating more than 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres) of wildlife-rich habitat along the north Norfolk coast, including restoring wetland that has already attracted thriving bird life such as the return of rare spoonbills.Fiennes said: “£500m over 20 years is sod all. It was supposed to be a third of the [farming] budget – we could have worked with that. If you’re the person in the street, £500m sounds like the most enormous amount of money. But if you understand the environment and food budget is £2.4bn annually, this is a fifth of that over 20 years. A tiny fraction of it for the most ambitious nature schemes.”Spread across the landscape recovery schemes, it will amount to only a few million pounds a year. But what is being asked of the landowners is incredibly expensive and ambitious, Fiennes says.“Some of the pilots are asking so much more than that as they understand the value of land, and if you put it into permanent land use change, you permanently remove its value. Then it’s implementing your scheme, like re-meandering a river and completely redesigning a landscape. That costs money,” he added.The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has claimed the funding shortfall could be topped up with private investment. However, farmers say this is unlikely while schemes remain vulnerable to being scrapped with only a year’s notice.The president of the National Farmers’ Union, Tom Bradshaw, said: “Defra’s plans for landscape recovery projects under the [environmental improvement plan] involve combining government funding with private investment.“However, experience shows that attracting private investment has been challenging, raising concerns about how farmers can confidently engage their businesses in the projects.”Toby Perkins, the chair of the environmental audit committee, said: “Do the government’s commitments match its ambition? The £500m for landscape recovery is much needed but, at £25m a year, I am very sceptical that it offers anything like adequate funding.”The government’s environmental improvement plan, announced this week, has watered down the overall ambition for nature on farmland.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionAlice Groom, the head of sustainable land policy at the RSPB, said: “In just two years, we’ve gone from needing 65–80% of farmers to manage 10% of their land for nature, to a new target of just 41% of farmers managing only 7%. That is a huge step backwards.“The science is unequivocal: on-farm habitat must be high-quality, the right mix and in the right places to support thriving wildlife populations. Government is simply wrong to suggest that getting 41% of farms to manage 7% of land under almost any [sustainable farming incentive (SFI)] option will be enough. It won’t. And it risks locking in further decline. “The falling numbers of species like corn buntings and turtle doves tell us something deeper that pollinators, beneficial insects, soils and climate-resilient landscapes are under stress.”Farmers and other landowners who signed up to the scheme found that their contracts allowed the government to terminate them for convenience – with no fault attached – with just 12 months’ notice.Fiennes said that he would not sign up to the new schemes yet and hoped to renegotiate with the government.He added: “Some of the legal advice says don’t sign because the government can end the scheme in 12 months. If you’ve done potentially irreversible land use change, you are up a creek without a paddle. Pension funds, banks – if they know there is a commitment from government for a set period, they will top this up, but at the moment it can be struck off in a year.”The nature-friendly farming schemes have been beset by difficulties and delays. Under the Labour government, funding was cut by £100m and the SFI was abruptly frozen, locking farmers out. Ministers say they plan to reopen the SFI in the new year.A Defra spokesperson said: “The £500m for landscape recovery projects is a downpayment which will go a long way to protecting and restoring nature across England.”

Nature
Conservation
Government

Why Is That Woodpecker White?

For years, the author has gathered photographs of local leucistic birds: white (or whitish) woodpeckers, hummingbirds, sparrows, turkeys, bald eagles, and more.  The post Why Is That Woodpecker White? appeared first on Bay Nature.

For several years in my garden, one of the harbingers of spring would be the arrival of the white-headed girl. This bird was a female house sparrow, normal except for her bright white cap. She stood out: field guides describe these birds’ caps as “drab,” meaning grayish-brown. Not white. So the first time I saw her, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on.  That became clear about a month later on a trip to the Sierras. As the sun was setting, the trip leader spotted two red-tailed hawks perched on top of a distant barn. At first glance, they didn’t look like a pair—one’s head seemed encircled by a saintly halo. A look through a spotting scope and a word from the trip leader clarified that the bird was leucistic. Now that I knew what I was seeing, I started noticing leucistic birds elsewhere, and I began collecting photographs of them from local Bay Area bird photographers. Photographer Alan Krakauer captured this partially leucistic white-crowned sparrow at his home in Richmond. Like my white-headed girl, he says that this bird returned annually for several years: “This bird was the VIB [very important bird] of our backyard and we always particularly loved finding it in with the other white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows.”Photographer Marty Lycan took this photo in January 2023 at Shadow Cliffs Regional Park in Pleasanton. This particular bald eagle had been reported at several other hot spots continuing in 2024, and then into the new year.Mark Rauzon describes these photographs: “Bishop Ranch, San Ramon is a steep hill of super sticky mud, pockmarked by cattle hooves, that make for a challenge as you listen for the ‘haha’ laughing acorn woodpecker, hoping to see a white blur fly by. With patience, especially sitting quietly by the acorn granary, soon a normal and a white bird with a vermilion cap will drop by. Pretty much every bird photographer has made the pilgrimage to see them and take their best shot.” These birds were first reported in the summer of 2023. As of October 1, 2026, Mark thinks there might be as many as five. I love this particular photograph for showing both a typical acorn woodpecker and a leucistic one.Leucism is a rare condition in which a bird’s plumage has white feathers that aren’t normally white. Data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Feederwatch Program estimates that one in 30,000 birds has leucistic or albinistic plumage. Among those, most are leucistic, as opposed to albino. The difference is often—but not always—clear-cut: albino birds have no melanin, the pigment responsible for color, turning their plumage pure white, their eyes pink or red, and their legs and bills pale. Leucistic birds, instead, have normal eyes, bills, and legs for their species. And their whiteness comes in varying degrees.  Some leucistic birds—like my white-headed girl—have white patches where they shouldn’t have them. Others will have plumage that looks faded—half way between its normal color and white. And in the most extreme cases, the bird’s feathers are completely white.  This bird appeared in photographer Alan Bade’s garden for a few weeks in the springtime, but avoided his hummingbird feeders, perhaps avoiding competition with other birds, Alan speculates. He added that it seemed “a little timid and more delicate than our normal hummers. It goes away for a few days and then shows up again, like a ghost.” When Alan sent a picture of the bird—which he thought was leucistic—to expert Sherri Williamson, she replied that its “‘washed-out’ appearance” is “suggestive of one of the less extreme forms of albinism.” Her prognosis for the bird, however, was hopeful: “Though severe pigment abnormalities can make a bird more vulnerable to excessive plumage wear, sunburn, disease, and predation, there are some cases of ‘pigment-challenged’ Anna’s hummingbirds living to adulthood and breeding successfully. Here’s hoping that this will be one of those success stories.” Photographer Keith Malley is part of a regular crew at the Presidio’s Battery Godfrey who watch for seabirds and birds on migration. They observed this bird recently as it rose up behind their position at the ocean’s edge, then coursed along the bluff for about an hour before crossing north into Marin.Photographer Marty Lycan captured this almost completely leucistic white-crowned sparrow in winter several years ago while walking his dogs near a baseball field adjacent to Sycamore Valley Park. Was the location coincidental? The bird is about the size and color of a baseball showing a few scuff marks. It had been reported there the previous year, too, and then reappeared the following two winters. Sparrows seem to do this.Photographer Mark Rauzon found these finches in Panoche Valley, San Benito Co. where large flocks of house finches and various kinds of sparrows congregate in winter. Mark notes, “Obviously one stood out as it perched on the farming equipment.” Most often, a genetic defect causes leucism, by preventing pigment from moving into the feathers during development. Genetic leucism can result in birds that have patches of white (sometimes called piebald) or that are completely white. But various environmental factors can also contribute to leucism. Poor diet can lead to a loss of pigments, producing gray, pale, or white feathers. So can exposure to pollutants or radiation. Birds that lose feathers through injury sometimes replace the lost ones with new ones that lack pigment, regaining normal color only after the next molt’s feathers come in. And, like humans, birds can experience “progressive graying,”  in which cells lose pigment as they age. Mark Rauzon seems to attract leucistic birds. He described this yellow-rumped warbler, at the Las Gallinas Sanitation Ponds in San Rafael, as “a butterbutt with mayo” or, alternately, “an Audubon warbler piebald with splotches of white and yellow, gray and gray.” (Audubon is a subspecies of yellow-rumped warbler). Photographer Becky Matsubara took this picture of this bird at Marta’s Marsh in Corte Madera a couple of summers ago; it was among 12 other northern mockingbirds. It had first been reported in April and stayed around until at least August. It reminds me of the mockingbird fledglings that descend on my backyard each summer, eating all of my blueberries. While leucistic birds can be a source of wonder for us humans, the abnormal coloration can cause problems for the birds themselves. A bird’s appearance is often critical in its ability to find a mate, and a bird that looks like a snowball instead of a rainbow might have problems getting a date. A bird’s color can camouflage it from predators, but, again, all of that white can be like a painted target. Melanin not only provides color in feathers but it also provides structural integrity, making feathers more durable. And finally, a lack of melanin can affect a bird’s ability to thermoregulate—lighter feathers may absorb less light and heat, so birds might struggle to stay warm in cold temperatures. I heard about this bird from some friends who had said it had been hanging out with three “normal” turkeys (is there such a thing?) in the grassy center divider of Sacramento Avenue in Berkeley for a few days. When I went to find it, the three turkeys were about four blocks away from the leucistic bird. The leucistic turkey disappeared a few days after I photographed it. The others, six months later, are still hanging around (I had to chase them out of my driveway last month!) (Eric Schroeder)At the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, photographer Rick Lewis remembers: “It was early morning, the sun was rising, no other vehicles in sight; I was driving solo and immediately recognized the silhouette as a phoebe. Very exciting as I focused my binoculars and realized that it was leucistic.” Although there have been no large studies that show leucism is on the rise, human activity leads me to believe there are more odd-colored birds around.Some of that increase is intentional: Hummingbird expert Sherri Williamson points out that humans sometimes selectively breed for rare qualities like albinism, meaning we’ve created “hundreds of fancy varieties of poultry, pigeons, and cage birds.” But other increases in leucistic birds are accidental: One study done in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster revealed that there was a tenfold increase in the number of leucistic barn swallows locally. With habitat loss (and degraded avian diets resulting from this), human influences, and other environmental factors, the numbers of leucistic birds are bound to increase. That might not always be a good thing, as we’ve seen.  A bird hotline—in the pre-listserv and eBird days—alerted photographer Bob Lewis to this bird about a decade ago, on a garage roof in a Berkeley neighborhood.  It hung around the neighborhood for several days before disappearing. When I asked him what he thought happened to it, he said he suspected “something ate it.”Photographer Torgil Zethson found this western sandpiper on the Newark Slough Trail at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in the South Bay. Because this almost pure-white bird was so striking, he suspected that it might be the same one photographed a week earlier in Monterey County or even a bird seen in Coos Bay, Oregon ten days before that. (Torgil Zethson)But of course, the other explanation is that perhaps what’s increasing isn’t leucistic bird numbers, but rather the number of people watching and photographing birds. And I’m encouraged—as are the other Bay Area birders who’ve watched them—by those individual birds that keep showing up year after year, like my white-headed girl once did. After four years of backyard visits, she disappeared. Still, eight years later, when spring rolls around, I keep an eye open for her—or perhaps her offspring. Leucistic acorn woodpeckers. (Mark Rauzon)

Nature

Birdgirl' marks decade of making nature accessible

Dr Mya-Rose Craig marks 10 years of Black2Nature and calls for wider access to nature across the UK.

'Birdgirl' marks decade of making nature accessibleOliver Edwards PhotographyDr Mya-Rose Craig says Black2Nature has helped hundreds of children over the past decadeAn environmental campaigner who founded a charity to help children from ethnic minorities access nature says the cultural landscape has "shifted" since she began her work a decade ago.Dr Mya-Rose Craig, 23, nicknamed 'Birdgirl', set up Black2Nature at the age of 13 to connect more children from Visible Minority Ethnic (VME) communities with the outdoors.Reflecting on the charity's 10th anniversary, she said the current environment feels "very different"; although there is still "a lot of progress to be made". "It's amazing to look back over the past decade of all the hundreds of kids that we've worked with," she said. "All the different activities, the lives we've changed."Dr Craig said that when she first began speaking about the lack of diversity in nature spaces, the reaction was markedly different."I remember when I first started having these conversations, people didn't want to have them with me," she said."It made them very uncomfortable. I think they didn't want to acknowledge that there was exclusion and racism. So much has shifted in the past decade. "For me, that is really exciting, because I think that is how you build a more sustainable environment, by getting everyone on board."Oliver Edwards PhotographyDr Craig says she has noticed a shift in the cultural landscape over the past decadeBlack2Nature runs camps, day trips and outdoor adventures designed to increase access for VME children, young people and families.The organisation also campaigns for greater racial diversity in the environmental sector and for equal access to green spaces.Dr Craig, who is from the Chew Valley in Somerset, said the idea to set up the charity came from a "very deep love of nature and the environment.""I strongly felt that nature was a very important resource for other kids to have access to in terms of mental and physical health," she said."A lot of these kids have never been to the countryside, so it's about breaking down those assumptions."For a lot of kids that we work with, they feel like the countryside is not a space for them."Research from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) shows that people from ethnic minorities have an average of 11 times less access to green space than others in society.For parents such as Kumar Sultana, 42, from Bristol, Black2Nature has provided opportunities her family would have otherwise missed."I'm a low-income parent and I can't afford things like camping," she explained.She added the activities have helped her children connect with the natural world and learn about sustainability.Black2NatureBlack2Nature runs camps and adventure trips for childrenMs Sultana, who has a Pakistani background, said she did not have those experiences growing up."We don't have camping in our culture and money is also a barrier to accessing it," she said."Some of the places we've been, I couldn't afford to take my kids."Black2NatureThe charity campaigns for equal access to green spacesTo mark its 10th anniversary, the charity will host a conference at the University of the West of England (UWE) on Wednesday, focusing on race equity, education and career pathways in the environmental sector.Looking ahead, Dr Craig said she hopes to see environmental organisations engage more meaningfully with diverse communities and for young people to be made aware of career prospects in that sector.She also wants wider access to nature across the UK."I'd love to see better quality of green spaces in cities. There's very often a class divide in terms of green spaces, where nicer neighbourhoods have nicer parks."

Nature
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Health

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