The car lurches forward, bouncing down the sandy two track. Birds roll and dive in a frenzy, gorging on the mosquitoes and grasshoppers before dusk slips away. Slowly, the shrubby landscape blurs into darkness.
I glance to the left and the car lurches as it whacks a pothole at full force. I slam on the brakes and whip my head around. There it is, a dog shaped creature standing stock still. I squint my eyes the way my grandma does when she is trying to read something on her phone. Looking harder, I realize it is an African Wild Dog!
Slowly my eyes adjust as the camo-patterned canine starts to amble. Then, another one bounds his way into eyesight. Oh, there’s another one! Soon enough, I’m surrounded by the entire pack.
I’ve stumbled upon an incredible moment: their evening ritual.
As the last light fades, the sociable pack has all found themselves back to their denning area. The hunting party returns, the pups are out making life difficult for mom, and the air is filled with the high-pitched yelps from a rambunctious pair of subadults. It’s a party of sorts. A pre-bed social hour for the pack.
I stay until the silhouettes fade into darkness, until the joyful yips are engulfed by the stillness of Botswana’s wetlands.
Figure 1. A pack of African Wild Dogs By Bart Swanson (Bkswanson) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
Social Structure
These “painted dogs” are not your average pack animal. In fact, they put many animals to shame with their complexity, cohesion, and altruism.
Unlike the gray wolf —their North American cousin— fighting within the pack is almost non-existent. They still retain a hierarchy, but it is reinforced by social aspects beyond physical dominance. It is a hierarchy dictated through physical postures, yelps, and even sneezes! They can hit high notes with their yips that Bono could not imagine. They can smile wider than you would ever guess possible. And, just like a dog pestering you at the dinner table, they have the muscles responsible for “puppy eyes.”
More than just complex, African Wild Dogs are cohesive and altruistic. Sick and old dogs are taken care of. In the case of injured dogs, one member of the pack assumes the role of “doctor,” cleaning and guarding the injured dog while it recovers.
The pack cohesion especially shines with the pups. African Wild Dog pups are cared for by the entire pack, and during hunts the alpha mom enlists a subordinate dog as “babysitter.” This babysitter stands on alert for danger and ensures pups are safe, even if it comes at the cost of chasing away the danger.
Figure 2. African Wild Dog pups are extremely vulnerable to other predators. Source: New York Times, Brett Kuxhausen/Gorongosa Media
Hunting
While the “babysitter” works tirelessly back at the den, the hunting squad is on the move.
Because African Wild Dogs do not scavenge their prey, they move across large distances to find suitable targets. These targets are most often different species of medium-sized antelope, but they will target animals as large as wildebeest and zebra.
Once they find their victim, the pack works as a team to relentlessly run it down. As a pack they each take a turn at the lead, and with exceptional communication often end successfully. In fact, 80% of African Wild Dog hunts end successfully! When compared to a pride of lions, who only succeed 30% of the time, one realizes how exceptional these hunters are.
But what makes them such exceptional hunters? Alone they are these small and skinny dogs, who look far too cute to be such lethal predators. But as a pack, they are one of the scariest things on the landscape. The cohesion and communication of the pack is their secret weapon. The nighttime routine I witnessed is just one of many trust building moments within the pack, and that trust helps them survive.
Threats
Survival is quickly becoming more and more difficult for the African Wild Dog. A pack mentality might help protect the dogs from an annoyed lion, but not an angry farmer with a rifle. The pack might protect their injured, but high speed collisions only injure more of them.
Once upon a time the African Wild Dog was found from the Kalahari to Kilimanjaro, from the southernmost tip of Africa to northern reaches of Egypt.
Unfortunately, in the past century, African Wild Dog numbers have plummeted. African Wild Dogs need vast home ranges covering hundreds of square miles, and as human encroachment has resulted in massive losses in habitat, they have not been able to survive in smaller protected areas like many other threatened creatures.
This human presence has led to two major impacts: human-wildlife conflict and increased competition with larger predators. African Wild Dogs were often the victim of indiscriminate slaughter by farmers in their habitat. Often, fueled by other predators killing livestock. In Zimbabwe alone, during the 5-year period 1956-1961, at least 2674 dogs were killed. To put that into perspective, fewer than 7000 African Wild Dogs remain today. As the African Wild Dogs learned to avoid human danger, they found themselves more and more concentrated on protected lands. These protected areas contain high densities of larger predators, which pose another massive risk to their young.
While human encroachment is an issue, the lethal issue is how communities resolve human-wildlife conflicts. In a tale as old as time, we need to work with community members to prevent predator mortalities. As hard as it seems, communities are not going to uproot themselves, and conservationists —especially those across the world like myself— should not expect them to do so.
Nonetheless, further conservation efforts with communities are needed for the survival of the African Wild Dog. Compromises must be made to prevent African Wild Dog mortalities. Conservationists must protect corridors to connect further fragmenting populations of these expressive, considerate, and exceptional creatures. In doing so, many other species would benefit from the same corridors!
The threats facing African Wild Dogs might seem far removed from our day to day lives. But, the symptoms of their dire situation could not be more universal.
Think about the animals in your backyard. Think about the wolves, bears, mountain lions, and coyotes that are victims of human-wildlife conflict. While very few species are in such a dire situation as the African Wild Dog, I implore you to think critically about the effects human-wildlife conflicts have on predators. Think about what you and your community could do to minimize those conflicts, and how we can best conserve the incredible biodiversity we celebrate every day.
Cyrus Kiely is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, studying Quantitative Social Science and Environmental Studies. He is an avid skier, hunter, and lifelong outdoorsman with a passion for biodiversity conservation. His experiences growing up in Montana, combined with environmentally focused opportunities abroad in Mongolia and Namibia, have shaped his commitment to fighting environmental challenges. Particularly the importance of large landscape conservation in the face of rapid development.
An especially prolific cactus digs its spines through my kneepad. Wincing in pain, I peer through the thicket of bramble… My heart sinks.
Three hundred yards out, a cloud of dust rises from the dry Montana ground, stirred up by North America’s speediest land animal: The Pronghorn. At 50 miles-per-hour, the herd crests the hill, disappearing as quickly as they entered my field of vision. I groan in frustration, begrudgingly picking the cactus spines out of my knees.
I crash through the remaining bramble to find myself surrounded by a mosaic of small, heart-shaped indentations, a telltale sign of the “speed goats” themselves. The herd’s tracks bob and weave through the sagebrush, slowly converging in their hasty escape.
I make my way up the hill, tensing with anticipation.
The horizon drops, and I look out into a field of gold. Wheat stubble extends for miles in every direction, broken up only by farmhouses, service roads, and the faintest lines of barbed wire fences.
Among this hegemony, a unified clump of brown and white races across the landscape. After a mere two minutes, the Pronghorn and I are now separated by a mile of gold.
A really fast patch of brown in a field of gold. (Photo Credit: Path of the Pronghorn — NFWF)
There is no simple introduction for this charismatic creature. The Pronghorn is a story of unmatched speed, of a creature evolved to outsprint even the fastest predators. To understand why, we have to go way back…During the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 million to 16,000 years ago), North America was home to Miracinonyx, North America’s cheetah species. Over eons, the Miracinonyx and Pronghorn were locked in a race of sorts, a competition to outrun the other. Over thousands of years, the two species pushed each other to go faster, to maximize their bodies for the art of sprinting. Scientists describe the phenomenon as “an evolutionary arms race,” a label for these constantly escalating adaptations.
A forgotten evolutionary arms race (Photo Credit: Blue Line American Cheetah — Rayan)
But, like any good drama, there is a plot twist. The Miracinonyx went extinct, and the Pronghorn no longer had anything to give it a good chase. On the flip side, nothing could catch it. So, the Pronghorn continued to flourish on the prairie, sprinting through sage brush, munching on bushes, and taunting predators who couldn’t run fast enough. This strategy worked for thousands of years, and besides the tough winters, life was good for the Pronghorn. Unfortunately their speed came at a cost: the Pronghorn never learned how to jump.
You might wonder, why does this matter today? Why does a prairie creature need to be able to jump? Four reasons: four strands of barbed wire fencing.
The American west is crisscrossed with fences, dividing property lines; ranches from farms, state land from private land. Barbed wire fence is one of the landscape’s constants: a dependable division of land.
When a Pronghorn meets one of these fences, it can be a battle to the death. As they try to duck under the bottom strand of barbed wire, the hide on their back is commonly scraped off by the barb, causing issues like infection and frostbite. Even worse, Pronghorn find themselves entangled in these fences beyond escape, sentenced to a cruel and unusual punishment for the Pronghorn: a stationary death.
For an animal that loves to run as much as the Pronghorn, these four strands hit hard.
Uh oh!Fence! (Photo Credits: 1. Out West — Joe Wilkins, 2.The Great Migration: the Path of the Pronghorn — Vance Martin)
So, how do we coexist with and protect a creature built for openness in an increasingly divided landscape? The first steps are surprisingly simple.
A study from the Alberta Conservation Association (ACA) experimented with different strategies that either raised the strand height or got rid of the barbs, one way or another.
Many of these strategies come at the cost of the landowner. Fence work is expensive, it’s time intensive, and downright frustrating. But, ACA found one time-efficient and inexpensive strategy that stood out: carabiners!
By clipping the bottom wire to the one above it, ranchers create just enough space for a pronghorn to slide under safely, without losing the barrier they need for their cattle. A low cost and time efficient first step. While an elevated bottom strand may not look like much, for a Pronghorn it could turn an obstacle into a doorway. With enough doorways, entire migration corridors stay intact, mortalities plummet, and Pronghorn thrive.
For the Pronghorn, strategies of mitigating harm are out there. Yet, there are so many places they haven’t been implemented; where we need to take that first step.
If we take enough of these first steps, I will be able to stand in that same prairie with our next generation. I will hear the squeal of excitement a young hunter makes as they proudly discover a trail of hoofmarks. I will give an annoyed “Shush! It’s right there!” as a Pronghorn ambles in the pre-dawn light. If we’re so lucky, simple acts like a carabiner could bridge generations, in awe of that patch of brown racing through a field of gold.
Cyrus Kiely is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, studying Quantitative Social Science and Environmental Studies. He is an avid skier, hunter, and lifelong outdoorsman with a passion for biodiversity conservation. His experiences growing up in Montana, combined with environmentally focused opportunities abroad in Mongolia and Namibia ,have shaped his commitment to fighting environmental challenges. Particularly the importance of large landscape conservation in the face of rapid development.
Can you name a carnivore that eats no meat, has a pseudo opposable thumb, but is not a primate?
Meet the Giant Panda!
Bei Bei, a then subadult panda at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, Washington, D.C., 2018 (Image credit: Sienna Weinstein)
In the summer of 2018, I took on a photography and videography internship at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. to do what I love: take photos of animals. Photographing animals is more than just shooting images. For me, it’s promoting the natural beauty of animal species that may or may not be in danger of becoming extinct. I feel that photography is a medium that can be used to promote the conservation of wildlife worldwide. And what better example than one of the National Zoo’s most famous residents, the giant panda?
Eat, Sleep, Poop, Repeat
A symbol of China and the mission of wildlife conservation alike, the giant panda needs minimal introduction. The rarest of all bear species, the solitary giant panda is native to just a few mountain ranges in south central China where it spends up to 16 hours a day munching and crunching on one particular food: bamboo. When it comes to sleep, pandas take short, incremental naps between meals, typically lasting two to four hours for a total of 8-12 hours per day. Though this may sound like an idyllic lifestyle, there’s one major catch: bamboo is a poor source of nutrients.
Evolution is a slow process, and the giant panda’s digestive system hasn’t evolved to support their low protein, high cellulose diet. As a result, they only digest about 17% of the bamboo they eat. Pandas spend the majority of their days eating between 26 to 84 pounds of bamboo in order to secure sufficient nutrients. This also means that the giant panda defecates more than 100 times a day!
Despite their leafy diet (of which 99% is bamboo), giant pandas are still classified as carnivores, as they have a short digestive tract with gut bacteria more similar to those of other carnivores rather than herbivores. Luckily, evolution has provided them with one advantageous adaptation to assist with their bamboo obsession: a pseudo-thumb (an elongated wrist bone) on each paw, designed to help them manipulate and maintain a sturdy grip on the bamboo.
Unlike other bears, pandas neither store fat nor hibernate as bamboo doesn’t provide enough nutrients to sustain hibernation. Since they need to search for food year-round, pandas move to lower elevations during the winter for warmth and more plentiful bamboo than can be found at higher elevations. When warmer temperatures return in spring and summer, the pandas migrate back to the higher elevations to cool down and allow the bamboo in lower regions of the forest time to grow and recover. This unique (for a bear) feeding pattern influences the animal’s black and white coloration!
But how? Well, the types of habitats the panda travels through in its endless quest for food vary between elevations, from snowy mountains above, to tropical forests down below. The white areas of fur serve as camouflage in the snow, while the black legs, arms, and band across the back connecting the forelimbs help the panda hide in the shade of the forest. Their black and white coloration serves another purpose as well: communication. Pandas are solitary, and only meet for breeding. Their communication primarily consists of scent-based cues such as urine. Scientists at the University of California Davis, however, determined that a panda’s black ears are likely used to signal ferocity, while their dark eye patches may enable them to recognize distinct individuals.[1][2]
Bei Bei doing what he does best: Eating bamboo. Note the pseudo-thumb visible on his right paw. (Image credit: Sienna Weinstein)
A Cute Keystone Species and Conservation Success Story
The panda plays a crucial role in maintaining the health and diversity of their native ecosystems, as their actions significantly impact the environment and other species. As they lumber, climb, and even swim within the bamboo forests of China, plant and tree seeds often attach to their fur and get deposited in scattered locations. This, along with the large quantities of bamboo seeds that get deposited from their feces during their travels, assists in spreading the growth of native vegetation, which in turn enhances the overall health of the forest ecosystem. It also helps that, like any other fertilizer, panda poop enriches the soil with helpful nutrients and promotes plant growth.
Their voracious appetite for fast-growing bamboo has a surprising benefit: it prevents forests from becoming overgrown with bamboo and inhospitable for other species that share the panda’s home. Like the black and white yin-yang symbol, the panda is a black and white representation of balance between the abundance of bamboo in their native forests with the damage caused by humans. This balance is important in a historical context, as the panda’s current range is highly fragmented due to centuries of human encroachment and habitat loss at lower elevations. Exacerbated by human activity and climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation remains the primary threat facing pandas today.
Luckily, the panda has one indisputable advantage: their cuteness. Their fluffy, round appearance and affinity for lounging around while eating bamboo makes them an adorable, captivating species to fawn over on TV screens and local zoos alike. Their resulting popularity has extended to their becoming an ambassador species for conservation worldwide, including as the iconic symbol of the World Wildlife Fund (also known as the World Wide Fund for Nature everywhere except in the United States and Canada), a global conservation organization. Ultimately, this strategy has been successful: Thanks to conservation efforts, as of July 2021, the giant panda was downgraded from Endangered to Vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species! Wild populations currently stand at above 1,800 individuals, and are increasing. While they’re not out of the (bamboo) woods yet, the panda is certainly a conservation success story, and an example of how humans can come together to take action against the looming threat of extinction for animal species worldwide.
Sienna Weinstein is a wildlife photographer, zoologist, and lifelong advocate for the conservation of wildlife across the globe. She earned her B.S. in Zoology from the University of Vermont, followed by a M.S. degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. While earning her Bachelor’s degree, Sienna participated in a study abroad program in South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), taking part in fieldwork involving species abundance and diversity in the southern African ecosystem. She is also an official member of the Upsilon Tau chapter of the Beta Beta Beta National Biological Honor Society.
Deciding at the end of her academic career that she wanted to grow her natural creativity and hobby of photography into something more, Sienna dedicated herself to the field of wildlife conservation communication as a means to promote the conservation of wildlife. Her photography has been credited by organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Zoo New England, and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. She was also an invited reviewer of an elephant ethology lesson plan for Picture Perfect STEM Lessons (May 2017) by NSTA Press. Along with writing for Bio4Climate, she is also a volunteer writer for the New England Primate Conservancy. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games, watching wildlife documentaries, photographing nature and wildlife, and posting her work on her LinkedIn profile. She hopes to create a more professional portfolio in the near future.
A dromedary camel photographed in Varamin, Iran Image credit: Houman Doroudi via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)
What animal is the “Superhero of the Desert,” reshaping entire ecosystems simply by eating, roaming, and . . . pooping?
Meet the Desert Superhero!
A dromedary camel photographed in Varamin, Iran Image credit: Houman Doroudi via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)
Desert wanderer Curved as the dunes he walks on Splat! Anger expressed
A close family friend asked me to cover camels as one of my Featured Creatures. Ask, and ye shall receive! Despite the majority of camels today being domesticated species, they still play important roles in their local ecosystem, and contribute to the biodiversity of the habitats in which they live.
Dominating the Desert, and De-bunking Assumptions
Camels are far more than the four-legged, desert pack animals typically shown in movies—their presence shapes the health, stability, and biodiversity of their ecosystems. Their grazing patterns, movement, digestion, and remarkable resilience collectively engineer the landscapes they inhabit.
Camels haven’t just adapted to desert life, their entire bodies are designed for endurance in some of the most unforgiving climates on Earth. Did you know they can go up to 10 days without drinking, even in extreme heat! Their long legs help keep them cool, elevating their bodies away from ground temperatures that can reach 158ºF (70°C), and their thick coat insulates them against radiant heat. In the summer, their coats lighten to reflect the sunlight.
Long eyelashes, ear hairs, and sealable nostrils protect against the blowing sand, while their wide, padded feet keep them from sinking into the desert sand or snow. Bactrian camels grow heavy winter coats that enable survival in winter temperatures (-20ºF [-29ºC]), then shed them to adapt to the hot summer temperatures. Their mouths have a thick, leathery lining that allows them to chew thorny, salty vegetation, with split, mobile upper lips that help them grasp sparse grasses . . . and spit. Well, sorta. . .
Desert Engineers and Seed Dispersers
These “ships of the desert” feed on thorny, salty, dry plants that most herbivores avoid, keeping dominant species in check and promoting plant diversity. Their nomadic lifestyle prevents overgrazing, spreading this balancing effect across vast ranges and reducing the risk of desertification. As they move, they disperse seeds in their dung, enriching poor soils with nutrients and enabling new vegetation to take hold where it otherwise could not.
Even their hydration strategy—relying heavily on moisture from plants and drinking only occasionally—protects scarce water sources that smaller species depend on. Trails they create become pathways for other wildlife, while their presence attracts predators and scavengers, helping sustain food webs in seemingly barren terrain.
People often assume that camels carry water in their humps and spit when they are annoyed. But those humps aren’t sloshing with water. They are fat-storage structures that provide a slow-burning energy reserve when food is scarce. And that spitting? It’s actually a warning system composed of both saliva and partially digested stomach contents.
Helping People and Ecosystems Endure
Even though they may look goofy at first, the ecological and cultural value of the camel is extraordinary.
They have supported human survival in harsh environments for thousands of years. Domesticated camels provide wool, meat, milk, transportation, and labor. Their endurance and strength have made them central to trade routes, cultural traditions, and economic activity across regions where few other animals could thrive.
Camels shape vegetation patterns, support biodiversity, stabilize fragile ecosystems, and enable life in regions that would otherwise be nearly uninhabitable. Without camels, many desert landscapes would lose the very processes that sustain them.
So next time you see a camel, in a movie, at a zoo, or on your travels, remember that these are no ordinary creatures. They are survival specialists and a cornerstone of some of the world’s harshest and most remarkable environments.
The wild bactrian camel (of which there are only 950 remaining) photographed in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. Image credit: Chris Scharf, a client of Royle Safaris via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)
Sienna Weinstein is a wildlife photographer, zoologist, and lifelong advocate for the conservation of wildlife across the globe. She earned her B.S. in Zoology from the University of Vermont, followed by a M.S. degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. While earning her Bachelor’s degree, Sienna participated in a study abroad program in South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), taking part in fieldwork involving species abundance and diversity in the southern African ecosystem. She is also an official member of the Upsilon Tau chapter of the Beta Beta Beta National Biological Honor Society.
Deciding at the end of her academic career that she wanted to grow her natural creativity and hobby of photography into something more, Sienna dedicated herself to the field of wildlife conservation communication as a means to promote the conservation of wildlife. Her photography has been credited by organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Zoo New England, and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. She was also an invited reviewer of an elephant ethology lesson plan for Picture Perfect STEM Lessons (May 2017) by NSTA Press. Along with writing for Bio4Climate, she is also a volunteer writer for the New England Primate Conservancy. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games, watching wildlife documentaries, photographing nature and wildlife, and posting her work on her LinkedIn profile. She hopes to create a more professional portfolio in the near future.
It’s 9:30 on a cool summer night in the Upper Valley—the orogenous area surrounding the Connecticut River in New Hampshire and Vermont. My friends and I are making the steep journey up the unfamiliar grass-covered slopes of the Dartmouth Skiway. With sleeping bags, no signal, and only a slight idea of where our cabin is, we trek upwards using our phones’ flashlights. We hear the crunch of leaves under our feet, unspecified animals rustling, and echoes in the woods. Some of the less outdoorsy members seem on edge, eager to reach somewhere with walls and a roof. A loud whine startles Tom, not helped by the stories we’ve told of potential bear and coyote sightings. I chuckle and affirm, “Tom, that was an owl.”
Identifiable in the darkness by its tremolo, an even-pitched trill that bounces through the trees, the eastern screech owl (Megascops asio) is one of the most common owls across the United States. They inhabit the Great Lakes down to the bottom of Texas, and from western Kansas to the Atlantic coast (Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 2024). Throughout such a vast range, they have adapted well to living alongside humans; it is one of the few birds of prey (raptors) that nest in New York City and other urban settings. Unlike many other raptors, the eastern screech owl has demonstrated a positive relationship with lower forest cover. In smaller green spaces, such as suburban parks, they thrive where larger predators cannot, thereby facing less competition for available prey (Nagy, 2012). However, smaller urbanized parks with impervious surfaces restrict their populations. Additionally, residing in concentrated residential or commercial areas increases their risk of human-related mortality and restricts movement to other populations.
Challenges of a Changing Climate
Eastern screech owls face danger from increasing development and changing conditions caused by climate change. A 30-year study in Texas, where annual temperatures rose by more than 20℉ due to the heat-island effect, saw changes in the timing of hatching (Gehlbach, 2012). Temporal change can alter how species intermix with their food, prey, and habitat as they adapt at different rates and may fall out of their population niches.
Their ability to thrive in such myriad environments comes from their variations in size and color. Their heights vary from roughly 6 to 10 inches, and their wingspan from 18 to 24 inches. This, combined with their lack of a neck, raised ear tufts, and short tail, gives them a rounded, unintimidating shape. Their smaller size contributes to their ability to camouflage into their environment. Most plumage ranges from grey to brown to a rusty red, adapted to the environment around them. Populations in southern states, like Texas, typically see higher numbers of red, and Northern states find more grey. In evergreen or deciduous forests, the eastern screech blends in meticulously with the trees (Lockwood, M. W., 2021).
This adaptation allows eastern screech owls to make quick work of their wide variety of prey. It’s a resourceful bird, consuming small rodents like mice, smaller birds, and insects. It plays an important role as a mesopredator, a mid-ranking role in the food web, that keeps lower populations in check, while also serving as prey for others. Still, their camouflage protects them from such predators. Larger owls and hawks, mammals like raccoons and mink, and even interspecies hunting by other eastern screech owls look to them for food; don’t be fooled by their small packages, these owls are fierce! (Chesapeake Bay Program). Whether waiting to swoop down from their perch, or in some cases fishing at water edges, the eastern screech owl is prepped to use its clawed feet against any foe (Peregrine Fund).
Conservation and Coexistence
While the eastern screech owl is resilient, they’re at risk too. By protecting existing populations through green spaces and human-based amenities, like nest boxes, we can contribute to their preservation. Community-led efforts like “Lights Out” campaigns, designed to reduce bird collisions and habitat disruptions, can also help.
Ryan Hill is currently an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College studying Environmental Studies and Studio Art. He is passionate about the conservation of local biodiversity and learning more about the ecosystems that make up our planet. He takes artistic inspiration from the natural world and admires the beauty of small insect colonies, to widespread old-growth forests.
Lockwood, M. W. (2021). WESTERN SCREECH-OWL and EASTERN SCREECH-OWL. In Basic Texas Birds (pp. 172–173). University of Texas Press. https://doi.org/10.7560/713499-082
Gehlbach, F. R. (2012). Eastern Screech-Owl Responses to Suburban Sprawl, Warmer Climate, and Additional Avian Food in Central Texas. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, 124(3), 630–633. https://doi.org/10.1676/11-157.1
What lizard is among the largest in the Western Hemisphere, has striking red eyes to reduce the sun’s glare, and has been called the “Gardener of the Forest” in their native ecosystem?
A male Grand Cayman blue iguana sunning himself Image credit: David Jeffrey Ringer via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)
Big, Blue, and Totally Cool
As its name suggests, the Grand Cayman blue iguana is native to the largest of the Caribbean’s Cayman Islands. An example of island gigantism, the Grand Cayman blue iguana is also among the largest lizards in the Western Hemisphere, measuring five feet (1.5 m) from nose-to-tail, and weighing as much as 30 pounds (14 kg).
Adult iguanas are typically dark gray in color, matching the karst rock of the landscape. In the presence of other individual iguanas, however, they change their color to blue to signal to one another and establish territorial boundaries. Grand Cayman blue iguanas also exhibit sexual dimorphism, or noticeable physical differences between genders. Males are larger, are dark gray to turquoise blue in color, have more prominent crests along the back, and larger femoral pores (secretory glands which release pheromones, or chemical signals) on their thighs. Females are smaller than males, are typically colored olive green to pale blue, and have smaller and less prominent dorsal crests and femoral pores. Both genders have black feet, and, as equally striking as their skin color, have eyes sporting gold or blue-ish gray irises and red sclera. The red coloration of the sclera (the “white” part of the eyes in humans) is an adaptation to protect the pupils from the sun’s powerful glare in their tropical habitat.
Speaking of habitat, this iguana prefers dry, rocky forests in coastal areas of the island, but may also be found in scrub woodlands, semi-deciduous forests, and dry-to-subtropical, moist forests. Iguanas as a whole are rather adaptable, and can be found in manmade habitats as well, especially farmlands bursting with their favorite foods, such as flowers, fruits, leaves, nuts, and stems of over 45 different plant species. Although predominantly herbivorous, the Grand Cayman blue iguana has occasionally been observed feeding on fungi, insects, crabs, slugs, soil, small rocks, bits of shed skin, and feces.
The Grand Cayman blue iguana is diurnal, or most active during daylight hours. They begin their day basking in the sun to warm up, and at the end of the day, retreat to rock crevices, caves, tree cavities, and in more urbanized locations, buildings and piles of construction material. Adults are primarily terrestrial, and while not known to be arboreal (tree-dwelling), individuals have been observed climbing trees 15 feet (4.6 m) and higher. Younger individuals tend to be more arboreal. This iguana’s large size also comes with a few additional benefits: adults have no natural predators, and while their average longevity is not known, the species can live in excess of 50 years! One wild-caught individual (appropriately named Godzilla) who was transferred to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas was estimated to be 69 years of age upon his death in 2004. Notice how I said that adults have no natural predators? Hatchlings are preyed upon by the native snake the Grand Cayman racer, as well as rats, while iguanas of any age can fall victim to feral, free-roaming dogs and cats introduced by humans.
Headshot of a male Grand Cayman blue iguana at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, Washington, D.C. Image credit: Sienna Weinstein
An Important Lizard and an Ongoing Conservation Success Story
The Grand Cayman blue iguana is considered a flagship species of the Cayman Islands–a symbol of not only the area’s unique biodiversity, but also the broader conservation effort due to its public appeal as a strikingly colorful species of Grand Cayman. This iguana plays a pivotal role within its habitat as a keystone species–one that plays a crucial role in maintaining the health and diversity of their native ecosystems, as their actions significantly impact the environment and other species. As Grand Cayman’s largest native herbivore, this iguana helps distribute native fruit and plant species across the island via their feces. This has led to them being called the “Gardener of the Forest” by tropical field biologist and conservationist Ian Redmond–a worthy title indeed. Through this role as a living, breathing forest-growing machine, they help to maintain the delicate balance between the climate and vegetation necessary for all species to survive in the island’s ecosystem.
The main threats facing the Grand Cayman blue iguana are predation of adults by feral cats and dogs, habitat conversion (mainly from fruit farms to grasslands for cattle grazing), deaths from vehicle collisions, trapping and shooting by farmers, being mistaken for the invasive green iguana and retaliated against, and occasional illegal capture of iguanas for the local pet trade. In 2002, only 10-25 individuals were recorded, making this iguana one of the most critically endangered lizards on Earth. Thanks to an extensive recovery program, among other conservation partnerships, as of July 2018, wild Grand Cayman blue iguana numbers have rebounded to over 1,000 individuals, moving on the IUCN’s Red List from Critically Endangered to Endangered. Ongoing conservation needs for the Grand Cayman blue iguana include additional research to manage the genetic diversity of the species, controlling populations of feral cats and dogs, and continuous public education and outreach efforts to combat the threats this unique species of iguana still faces today.
Sienna Weinstein is a wildlife photographer, zoologist, and lifelong advocate for the conservation of wildlife across the globe. She earned her B.S. in Zoology from the University of Vermont, followed by a M.S. degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. While earning her Bachelor’s degree, Sienna participated in a study abroad program in South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), taking part in fieldwork involving species abundance and diversity in the southern African ecosystem. She is also an official member of the Upsilon Tau chapter of the Beta Beta Beta National Biological Honor Society.
Deciding at the end of her academic career that she wanted to grow her natural creativity and hobby of photography into something more, Sienna dedicated herself to the field of wildlife conservation communication as a means to promote the conservation of wildlife. Her photography has been credited by organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Zoo New England, and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. She was also an invited reviewer of an elephant ethology lesson plan for Picture Perfect STEM Lessons (May 2017) by NSTA Press. Along with writing for Bio4Climate, she is also a volunteer writer for the New England Primate Conservancy. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games, watching wildlife documentaries, photographing nature and wildlife, and posting her work on her LinkedIn profile. She hopes to create a more professional portfolio in the near future.
The guide pulls back on the oars, straining with effort to stay in place against the current. The angler leans back in a similar manner, his rod bowed under pressure.
A fish erupts from the water, scales glimmering with the evening light.
Just as quickly as it broke the surface, it disappears from view, still engaged in its titanic struggle at the end of the line. After fifteen minutes of unpredictable splashes, tension, and shouts of excitement, I was introduced to the most charismatic creature I’ve ever met: the Siberian Taimen.
This particular Taimen was four feet of silvery power. We stood in awe as the bright red tail slipped through the angler’s hand, disappearing once more into a dark pool. Not to be held by another human for years, if ever again. I sighed with relief, thankful our good practice led to a healthy release.
I remember reflecting on how much needed to happen to reach this moment. The client had to take 3-4 flights to get across the world, followed by 8 hours crammed in a Jeep from the 20th century, navigating dirt roads.
They did this all for just the opportunity to catch a taimen — a creature notorious for being incredibly difficult to catch.
But that singular moment makes it all worthwhile.
The exact fish described above. Unfortunately, my hand was shaking so much that I couldn’t capture the vibrant red tail. Cyrus Kiely
This was my first week on the job at Mongolia River Outfitters — a premier fly fishing outfitter and conservation organization. Throughout the rest of the season, I learned how this awe-inspiring creature holds its entire ecosystem in balance, a balance threatened by the fragility of the species.
Taimen are the largest Salmonids (the trout and salmon family) in the world. They can live up to 30 to 50 years, reach sizes greater than SIX FEET, and weigh more than 100 pounds! Ecologically speaking, they are slow growing, apex predators, feasting on trout, ducklings, and small mammals that find themselves at the mercy of the river.
The landscape of a wild taimen river. Cyrus Kiely
Taimen epitomizes the term “keystone”.
They keep their river’s ecosystem in delicate balance, regulate prey populations, cycle nutrients, and occupy an indispensable niche.
By regulating prey populations, smaller fish species such as lenok or arctic grayling are unable to outcompete the rest and establish a hegemony within the river. In turn, these rivers remain rich in biodiversity!
In fact, thanks to the Taimen, these rivers grow even more nutrient rich and biodiverse. In parts of Russia, they have been known to regularly prey on adult Pacific salmon. These salmon (averaging around 20 lbs) run up freshwater rivers from the ocean, bringing the nutrients from the Pacific along with them. Thanks to the Taimen, these nutrients get passed from individual to individual, benefitting the entire ecosystem with their presence.
Taimen truly are facilitators of interconnectedness, maintaining population structures and promoting the flow of nutrients. While this importance often goes unnoticed and underappreciated, it’s only when they disappear that everyone sees just how integral these fish are.
When Taimen disappear from their historic waters, their absence can lead to a domino effect in the structure of the ecosystem.
Without the Taimen to keep them in check, prey populations such as lenok and grayling explode. In this exponential growth, the aquatic invertebrate (water bugs) populations they feed on plummet due to overpredation. Because of this, algae and plants are no longer kept in check by these aquatic invertebrates ,which feed on them.
So far, in this theoretical event, we have a lot of small fish, not too many bugs, and way too much algae in the river. But, over time, the situation will grow more dire. As the fish lose insects to feed on, they begin to experience massive die-offs. The insect populations vary wildly, as predator pressure shifts unpredictably, and algae blooms become a real issue. They suck up an incredible share of oxygen from the water, a vital element of a trout’s ideal habitat.
The simple absence of Taimen causes a cascade of domino effects, ending in low trout numbers and a less suitable environment due to lower oxygen levels. Luckily, this is the worst case scenario. Today, taimen continue to thrive in many protected areas, maintaining the delicate balance of these ecosystems. As conservationists, environmentalists, and people who really like cool creatures, it’s our job to investigate what threatens this delicate balance.
Poaching: A Threat to a Delicate Balance
If Taimen are so integral to the ecosystems they live in, don’t we understand that we need to protect them? Yes, but when an unexpected threat hits Taimen, it hits them hard.
Due to their large size, old age, and voracious appetite, Taimen have a very low population density within rivers. This fact means the death of a single mature Taimen is a significant ecological shift in population dynamics.
As humans, we have struggled to comprehend this fact. Individual deaths may seem insignificant when compared to the abundance of smaller fish, but for the Taimen, each loss represents decades of growth, reproduction, and ecological importance within an ecosystem.
Today, the threat of poaching looms over many of these protected fish with the very real issue of local extinction.
Over three months on the river, I witnessed countless poaching related incidents. I saw the head and carcass of what was a 20 year-old fish filleted and carelessly tossed away on the bank. Another time, a dead Taimen washed up on the shore with a barbed treble hook lodged down its throat, shredding its stomach and causing a slow and painful death.
Lenok Book Talk, The Dawn Patrol Diaries, James Card
How much poaching and loss are we willing to put up with?
I hope for a future where I can relive that magical summer evening. I hope to one day lean back, straining with effort as I reel in, physically and spiritually connected to one of nature’s most remarkable creatures. I hope we have enough foresight to prevent such a loss, so the world can continue to marvel at the charisma of such an ancient and inspiring animal.
Cyrus Kiely is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, studying Quantitative Social Science and Environmental Studies. He is an avid skier, hunter, and lifelong outdoorsman with a passion for biodiversity conservation. His experiences growing up in Montana, combined with environmentally focused opportunities abroad in Mongolia and Namibia ,have shaped his commitment to fighting environmental challenges. Particularly the importance of large landscape conservation in the face of rapid development.
What animal was revered and worshipped by ancient American civilizations, whose name means “he who kills with one leap”, and who has the strongest bite force relative to size among the big cats?
A female jaguar observed in Brazil Image Credit: Paul Steeves via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)
It was a typical hot and humid day while I was on my lunch break at the Stone Zoo. I was doing my usual photography rounds, scouting out opportunities for taking shots of the zoo’s animals. I came upon the jaguar enclosure to find Seymour, a gorgeous individual seeking relief from the heat underneath a large makeshift shelter. Against the dark confines of his shelter, the afternoon sun cast an incredible glow, highlighting his face. I crouched down to his level and took what I believe to be the best photograph of my “career”. Said photo can be seen further down in this profile, and is responsible for making me appreciate this species of cat all the more–grateful to know that this big cat calls the Americas home.
One Big Cat, and a Lengthy Resumé of Worship and Uniqueness
Scientists categorize the “big cats” based upon two qualities: they belong to the Panthera genus, and they have a specialized two-piece hyoid bone in their throat which allows them to roar. The jaguar is the sole member of the big cat family to reside in the Americas, and the third largest of the big cats after the tiger and lion. Their range extends from the Southwestern United States across Mexico and much of Central America, the Amazon rainforest, and further south to Paraguay and northern Argentina. They are extinct in El Salvador and Uruguay. Within this vast range, jaguars are found in a variety of habitats, including wet and dry forests, savannas, and shrublands. In addition to being strong climbers (unlike the stereotype regarding most cats), jaguars are also powerful swimmers. In fact, jaguars are highly dependent upon large swarths of territory per individual as well as healthy freshwater systems for their survival.
While they may look like the leopards of Africa and Asia, jaguars are distinguished not only by their fondness for water, but their stockier and heavier build, a distinct “blockiness” to the head, and the coat featuring strikingly large rosettes with distinct internal spots.
The name “jaguar” is derived from the Tupi-Guarani word “yaguareté” or “yaguar”, which can translate to “he who kills with one leap” and “true, fierce beast”, among other intimidatingly mighty monikers.
Jaguars were historically worshipped by various civilizations from Mesoamerica down to the Amazon as authoritative and martial symbols, gods, and for having the ability to move between the mortal world and underworld. Today, among some indigenous religions, jaguars are still viewed with high regard, as shown with ritualistic dances, music, and shaman-based practices connected to this powerful feline.
Headshot of a male jaguar at the Stone Zoo, Stoneham, Massachusetts Image credit: Sienna Weinstein
A Powerful Apex Predator Under Threat
Depending upon their habitat, the jaguar’s diet is varied, consisting of numerous mammals, reptiles, and birds. While the bite force of bone-crunching hyenas and Arctic polar bears clocks in at 1,100 and 1,200 pounds per square inch (psi), respectively, that of the jaguar measures 1,500 psi. This power allows the jaguar to crush the shells of turtles and tortoises, and easily pierce through the skin of caimans.
As the top predator in their range, jaguars are classified as a keystone species–one that plays a crucial role in maintaining the health and diversity of their native ecosystems, as their actions significantly impact the environment and other species. By regulating the numbers of prey species, jaguars indirectly influence the abundance and distribution of other species, contributing to the overall richness and stability of the ecosystem. This top-down control has cascading effects, influencing everything from plant life to soil quality.
Despite their status as a keystone species and a cultural icon of the southern Americas, the jaguar is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. It is estimated that their populations have decreased by up to 25% over the past few decades. Jaguars face numerous threats to their survival, including habitat loss and fragmentation, competition for prey by human hunters, and human hunting of jaguars for trophies, the illegal body part trade, and retaliation for livestock killing.
Various conservation actions have been implemented in countries where the jaguar is found, including, but not limited to: developing national, regional, and local monitoring programs for jaguars and their prey; monitoring and safeguarding jaguar core populations (aka Jaguar Conservation Units, or JCUs); and finally, understanding and addressing the hunting of jaguars, as well as raising awareness of the laws governing wildlife hunting and the need to adopt sustainable hunting practices.
Luckily, specific conservation plans for jaguars have been developed in Mexico, Panama, Honduras, and Brazil. Only time and plenty of actions will tell whether this unique cat of the Americas will continue to lurk, hunt, and inspire cultural legends for years to come.
Sienna Weinstein is a wildlife photographer, zoologist, and lifelong advocate for the conservation of wildlife across the globe. She earned her B.S. in Zoology from the University of Vermont, followed by a M.S. degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. While earning her Bachelor’s degree, Sienna participated in a study abroad program in South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), taking part in fieldwork involving species abundance and diversity in the southern African ecosystem. She is also an official member of the Upsilon Tau chapter of the Beta Beta Beta National Biological Honor Society.
Deciding at the end of her academic career that she wanted to grow her natural creativity and hobby of photography into something more, Sienna dedicated herself to the field of wildlife conservation communication as a means to promote the conservation of wildlife. Her photography has been credited by organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Zoo New England, and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. She was also an invited reviewer of an elephant ethology lesson plan for Picture Perfect STEM Lessons (May 2017) by NSTA Press. Along with writing for Bio4Climate, she is also a volunteer writer for the New England Primate Conservancy. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games, watching wildlife documentaries, photographing nature and wildlife, and posting her work on her LinkedIn profile. She hopes to create a more professional portfolio in the near future.
What river-dwelling goddess could navigate by sound alone, survived twenty million years of environmental change, yet disappeared within a few decades of human industrial expansion?
Image Credit: Hu Weiming/IC
According to Chinese legend, the story of the baiji begins with a beautiful young girl who lived along the Yangtze River with her evil stepfather. One day he took her out by boat, with hopes to sell her at the local market. During this journey, he attempted to take advantage of the girl, and she dove into the welcoming arms of the Yangtze river to escape. Suddenly, a storm rose, capsizing the boat and drowning him. When the water calmed, a white dolphin appeared gliding across the current. The locals believed this to be the girl reborn as the baiji: Goddess of the Yangtze and guardian of fishermen.
For centuries, the baiji was more than a dolphin. She was deeply embedded in Chinese mythology, and fishermen considered encountering the baiji a good sign. The baiji embodied the river itself and served as a reminder of the river’s generosity, as well as the dangers. Unfortunately, in 2006, experts declared the baiji as functionally extinct.
The baiji fell victim to the one force she could not outswim: human industrial expansion.
A Living Fossil
The baiji, Lipotes vexillifer, was one of only five freshwater dolphin species in the world. Nicknamed the “living fossil,” the baiji was a subspecies that diverged about sixteen million years ago from two South American species: La Plata dolphins and the Amazonian river dolphin. The baiji was the only member of the mammal family called Lipotidae since they carried unique traits such as a single stomach rather than two and small eyes adapted to the Yangtze’s murky waters.
The Yangtze: Lifeline and Powerhouse
Stretching over 6,300 kilometres from the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea, the Yangtze is Asia’s longest river and the third longest in the world. Today it supports mega dams like the Three Gorges, shipping routes carrying millions of tonnes of cargo, and over 400 million people living in cities along its banks. Alongside this, it generates about $2 trillion annually, nearly 40% of China’s GDP and sustains hundreds of fish, mammal, amphibian and reptile species. The baiji was perfectly adapted to this environment, with a long, narrow beak and echolocation ideal for shifting through silt and mud in search of carp and catfish. She often fed near sandbars, where nutrient-rich deposits attracted fish and fishermen alike. But even these adaptations could not save her against escalating industrialisation.
Sadly this is not the only extinction story from the Yangtze. The Chinese paddlefish, and last member of its genus Psephurus, was last seen in 2003. This species survived for at least two hundred million years, and was killed, with overfishing and dam construction to blame.
Tan Wei Liang Byorn
When Growth Outpaces Nature
Before China’s industrialisation in the 1950s, there were an estimated six thousand baiji living in the Yangtze’s thriving ecosystem. By the 1980s, only a few hundred remained, and by 1997, fewer than twenty were left. The baiji’s collapse reflects what can happen when economic growth is expedited at the expense of ecologies, both human and non-human.
China’s proto-industrialisation began in 1978, and while the baiji were initially hunted for meat, oil and leather, the greater threats came later from dredging, untreated waste, and the Three Gorges, which permanently altered the Yangtze’s flow. Studies suggest that it was not simply the changes to the river flow, but the relentless pursuit of artisanal fishing that posed a major threat to the baiji. Many small-scale fishers, trapped in poverty, ignored restrictions and turned to destructive methods such as electric shocks and dynamite. In 1981, extreme poverty affected 70% of urban and 97% of rural Chinese populations, thus leaving fishermen little choice but to prioritise survival over sustainability.
The baiji were not deliberately hunted to extinction but perished as bycatch, a concept economics call a ‘negative externality’ which reflects the hidden costs of rapid industrialisation. These costs include habitat destruction, pollution, and biodiversity loss; all of which were not factored into economic calculations that drove further development along the Yangtze. Each of these costs matter individually, yet when collectively overlooked they do not only lead to environmental damage, but also result in missed opportunities for intervention that could have prevented irreversible loss.
Missed Chances
The Yangtze can be described as a social-ecological system due to its interconnected importance for humanity and nature alike, thus making its management complex and politically charged. As baiji populations declined alongside other species, Chinese lawmakers implemented protective legislation in the late 1970s banning harmful fishing practices and creating reserves along the main channel. The issue of how to save the baiji was debated internationally, including in two IUCN reports, but the existence of differing opinions led to minimal financial or logistical support ever materialising. In-situ reserves (on-site conservation efforts) proved inadequate, and the later ex-situ (controlled preservation of a species outside of its natural habitat) programme at the Tian’e-Zhou oxbow lake came too late. In 1995, one baiji was successfully transferred, but perished due to summer flooding and thus the initiative collapsed.
Arguably, only a total fishing ban could have offered real protection, however given that the majority of Chinese households lived in extreme poverty in the 1980s, this would have been economically and socially unfeasible. Families depended on the river for survival, and there would have been a need to provide alternative income sources and livelihoods for river communities. It seems almost impossible for a developing nation to shoulder this economic burden. In 2021, China finally implemented a 10-year fishing ban. By 2020, studies show that the share of people living in extreme poverty in both urban and rural areas was below 1%, and now as the world’s second-largest economy China could absorb the financial cost of such policies.
Sadly, it was too late for the baiji. This case is illustrated by the ‘environmental Kuznets curve’ (EKC), shown below, which describes the relationship between economic development and environmental degradation. EKC suggests that environmental degradation initially increases with economic growth in poorer countries, then decreases after reaching a certain income level. The idea is that countries often cannot afford environmental protection until a certain level of development is reached. But, by that point, often too much damage has been done to the most vulnerable species.
Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons
What happens when everyone has access to an abundant public resource? American ecologist and microbiologist, Garrett Hardin, considered this very question with his concept of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons.’ He describes a situation in which individuals with access to a finite public resource, such as the Yangtze, will all act in their own interest and thus overuse it, even possibly destroying the resource altogether. This concept links well to artisanal fishing. The regulation of common resources is a widely discussed concept, as it focuses on creating incentives to change individuals’ behaviour and use of shared resources, rather than relying on government ownership and direct control.
Yet Hardin’s model captures only one part of the baiji’s story. As mentioned earlier, much of the destructive fishing stemmed from economic desperation with families choosing to provide for themselves no matter the cost. Even those aware of the damage often continued because others did, a dynamic known as conditional cooperations. This reflects a wider reality that many of the ‘tragedies of the commoners’ are at heart, tragedies of inadequate social policy, where poverty traps leave communities without viable alternatives.
For the case of the baiji, the Yangtze required not only stronger top-down regulation, but also community-level institutions that Noble-prize winner Elinor Ostrom described within the concept of ‘polycentric governance.’ This governance system requires multiple, independent decision-making centres to interact and coordinate, rather than relying on a single, centralised authority. In the context of the Yangtze, this method requires not just regulation from Beijing, but also local fishing cooperatives collaborating and collectively developing economic incentives for conservation and alternative livelihoods for river-dependent communities. Economists now promote a scheme called ‘Payments for Ecosystem Services’, where communities are paid to conserve biodiversity. Had such frameworks been in place in the 1980s, fishermen might have been given both the means and the incentives to protect the baiji. Unfortunately, the absence of these mechanisms left short-term survival and extraction as the only rational choice.
Moving forward
All six river dolphin species in the world are classified as Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In South Asia, the Ganges River Dolphin, scientifically known as Platanista gangetica, is officially endangered. Like the baiji, the Ganges River Dolphin holds significant cultural importance in Hinduism, but is struggling under mounting pressures from industrial runoff and accidental bycatch. Meanwhile, in South America, the Amazon River Dolphin faces mercury contamination from gold mining, entanglement in fishing gear, and deliberate killing for use as bait. It seems that the baiji’s extinction is not an isolated tragedy, but part of a global pattern for other river dolphins.
Despite these challenges, there are signs of hope for river dolphins around the world. Studies show that China’s 10-year ban has shown promising results for biodiversity recovery. Fish eggs and fry counts in 2023 from the Jianli monitoring section reached six billion in total which is 4.4 times higher than those in 2020. However, scholars debate whether the ban alone is enough to reverse the situation, particularly since overfishing contributed only 30% of the total fish decline, with human activities contributing more heavily. Globally, there is a clear increase in integrating ecological resilience into economic frameworks. For instance, Costa Rica’s Payments for Environmental Services Program (PES) is the first scheme of its type in the region. This program is designed to promote forest ecosystem conservation and combat land degradation In which landowners receive payments for adopting sustainable land-use and forest-management techniques. Additionally, WWF’s River Dolphin Initiative acts as a global knowledge hub of the best practices for river dolphin conservation and management.
The baiji’s extinction illustrates the cost of delayed regulation, undervalued ecosystem services tied together with short-term economic thinking. Extinction is final, and the baiji’s story reminds us that we must embed biodiversity into policy before it is too late.
Once revered as the Goddess of the Yangtze and guardian of fishermen, the baiji now endures as a warning, that treating rivers as merely resources erodes not just ecosystems but the very myths that bound us to them.
Marija Trendafiloska is a final-year BSc (Hons) Economics and Management student at King’s College London with a keen interest in environmental economics and climate policy. Her research experience has focused on turning complex economic concepts into clear, actionable policy insights, something she is motivated to deepen through postgraduate study. As the Co-President of KCL Green Finance Society, she also explores the intersection of sustainable finance, policy, and real-world impact. Beyond her academic commitments, Marija is passionate about reading, painting, and playing the piano, alongside being an avid gym-goer.
Which species of bear is the smallest and most arboreal, has the longest tongue of all bears, and are so smart, they can pick locks with their claws?
Courtesy Pexels
Made for the trees
If there is perhaps one thing to know about the sun bear, it’s that they are built for life in the trees.
If you were to design a near-perfect specimen for the arboreal life, you might end up with something pretty close to a sun bear.
Think about it. Its front paws turn inward like a pigeon’s, giving extra grip when climbing, while its strong, curved claws act like hooks to pull it upward. A flattened chest streamlines the body, reducing drag as the bear moves among a complex array of branches. Bare paw pads help add even more traction. And that thick coat? It helps protect these climbers from stings, scrapes, and tropical downpours…regular hazards of the trade. Even its eyes are set slightly forward compared to other bears, improving depth perception and giving their balance a boost high off the ground.
Sun bears are the smallest of all bear species, at 3.5-4.5 feet (1.1-1.4 m) long, and weighing 60-145 pounds (23-65 kg); males are almost 25 percent larger than females. Despite their awkward-looking gait on the ground due to their inward-facing front paws, their small size allows them to be quick-moving and flexible within their habitat, resulting in an ability to climb up to 40 feet (12.2 m) into the canopy! This impressive climbing feat makes the sun bear the one of the highest-climbing bear species of them all.
By hugging the tree more effectively with those inward-turned paws we just learned about, the sun bear can use its powerful forearm and chest muscles to climb. The inward angle essentially helps the front paws act like grappling hooks–preventing slipping while the hind legs push upward. For such a small bear, there’s a lot of muscle involved!
Shy and reclusive, sun bears are largely solitary (except for a mother and her cubs), and are typically most active during the day, foraging for food in the trees, and sunbathing in tree crevices, fallen logs, and especially nests they create out of twigs and leaves among the branches of the trees. They tend to be found far from human activity and can adjust their activities to be more nocturnal in order to avoid humans and any potential consequences that may result from such an encounter.
Sun bears are opportunistic omnivores, primarily eating fruits, insects (especially bees and termites), lizards, rodents, and their absolute(ly cliché) favorite: honey! Using their sharp claws, they break tree bark and beehives and use their impressive 8-10 inch (20-25 cm) long tongue (!!!) to lick up the insect and honey goodies. Their love for honey has unsurprisingly given them the nickname of “honey bear”, beruang madu, in Malay and Indonesian.
And they’re smart, too. A 2019 study discovered that, like humans and gorillas, sun bears use facial mimicry to communicate with one another. The study concluded that sun bears use distinct open-mouthed expressions during play, which could be used to communicate an interest in play or to strengthen social bonds. This power of observation extends to a little harmless tomofoolery, too. A captive sun bear was once observed carefully watching as sugar was locked away in a cupboard. Later, it used one of its claws like a key to open the lock and reward itself by snatching the sweet treat.
Sun bears play an important role in helping maintain the health and diversity of their native ecosystems, as their actions, routines, and behaviors significantly impact the environment and other species. While searching for beetles and other insects to eat, sun bears tear into tree trunks with their claws, leaving behind gashes and hollows. What begins as a little collateral damage later becomes a gift to the forest: the openings provide nesting spots and shelter for birds, reptiles, and other smaller animals. In addition, as fruit and seed-eaters, sun bears aid in the regeneration of their forest habitats by dispersing seeds through their feces as they move around. Finally, they can be considered pest controllers as a result of their diet consisting of insects and small rodents.
The sun bear is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Due to their secretive nature, it is unknown just how many wild individuals remain. But we do know they are in steep decline, with observable populations shrinking by more than 30% over the past three decades. Farming, logging, and poaching for meat or traditional medicine have stripped away both their habitat and safety, while the illegal pet trade adds further pressure. Their tendency to raid palm oil plantations and other crops has also fueled conflict with people.
While it is illegal to kill sun bears, laws protecting them are rarely enforced, and those laws that exist are poorly executed. There is A LOT that needs to be done in order to protect the sun bear on national, international, and local levels. Additional studies to further our knowledge of sun bear ecology, population distribution, conservation status, and the effect of threats, along with intense actions designed to reduce the trade in bear parts and to reduce habitat loss and degradation are some of the conservation actions needed to ensure that the smallest bear in the world remains free to climb trees and slurp up honey for years to come.
Sienna Weinstein is a wildlife photographer, zoologist, and lifelong advocate for the conservation of wildlife across the globe. She earned her B.S. in Zoology from the University of Vermont, followed by a M.S. degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. While earning her Bachelor’s degree, Sienna participated in a study abroad program in South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), taking part in fieldwork involving species abundance and diversity in the southern African ecosystem. She is also an official member of the Upsilon Tau chapter of the Beta Beta Beta National Biological Honor Society.
Deciding at the end of her academic career that she wanted to grow her natural creativity and hobby of photography into something more, Sienna dedicated herself to the field of wildlife conservation communication as a means to promote the conservation of wildlife. Her photography has been credited by organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Zoo New England, and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. She was also an invited reviewer of an elephant ethology lesson plan for Picture Perfect STEM Lessons (May 2017) by NSTA Press. Along with writing for Bio4Climate, she is also a volunteer writer for the New England Primate Conservancy. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games, watching wildlife documentaries, photographing nature and wildlife, and posting her work on her LinkedIn profile. She hopes to create a more professional portfolio in the near future.
What species fights climate change, creates “surface-active groups,” and shares a home with the Maine lobster?
North Atlantic Right Whale Image credit: NOAA
That would be the North Atlantic right whale. Hardly an unsung species, this large marine mammal is one of the most critically endangered in the world, with approximately 372 members remaining. Unfortunately for the whale, its story is inexplicably intertwined with that of North Atlantic fishermen, in particular the Maine lobster industry. On the surface, this is a battle between said industry and whale conservationists. But must this story be a zero-sum game?
A Deep Dive
As one of the largest species on the planet, the North Atlantic right whale can grow up to 14-17 meters long and weigh up to 154,000 pounds. During my research, I was surprised to find that there are three subspecies of right whale, which appear very similar but have lived in genetic isolation for millions of years. In addition to the North Atlantic right whale, there are the North Pacific and South Atlantic right whale species. All three are listed as “Endangered” under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), a designation that triggers various types of protective legislation. While the North Pacific right whale fares about as well as the North Atlantic under these conditions, estimates of the South Pacific right whale population are as high as 4,000.
Despite their formidable size, the right whale is a gentle giant. They are incredibly slow swimmers, and can reach swimming speeds of
They also use their baleen to filter their food and have diets mainly consisting of copepods. This diet is also part of the whale’s role as a “nutrient cycler” in the ocean ecosystem: by feeding and defecating, the whales provide crucial nutrients to phytoplankton, which helps sequester atmospheric carbon– hence their role as a climate change fighter!
Right whales are also incredibly social creatures and are often seen vocally interacting on the surface of the ocean in both mating and social settings. These interactions are called surface active groups (SAG), and make for great whale watching. Analogously, the speed, size, and behavior of the right whale led to its persecution by whale hunters for centuries. These actors even named the species, as they were the so-called “right whale” to hunt. The slow-moving, blubber-rich, and surface-active North Atlantic right whale was thus hunted to near extinction several times in history. The first concrete step toward whale protection at an international level occurred in 1946, when the United Nations established the still-active International Whaling Commission.
The North Atlantic right whale commonly resides on the east coast of the United States and the west coast of Europe. In the states, the whale is known for feeding in the north (especially by Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine) and calving in the south near Georgia. Afterward, the mothers herd their calves north so they can benefit from the plentiful copepods off the coast of Massachusetts.
NOAA
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that right whales are entirely bound to such human-mapped migration patterns. This was pointed out to me by Rob Moir of the Ocean River Institute (ORI), who showed me examples of whales breaking these patterns. Notably, the ORI reported an instance of two female right whales, Curlew and Koala, migrating as far south as the Bahamas and as far north as Prince Edward Island.
This outlier displaying whale intelligence reminded me of a larger point that my professors often make, that discourse around environmental protection sometimes falls into the trap of framing such actions as benevolence on our part. In reality, we share this planet with complex, intelligent species and natural processes, and it is in our best interest to preserve them. I believe wholeheartedly in the importance of functional natural systems. As someone born and raised in Maine, my public school education was full of cautionary tales of how anthropogenic changes can destabilize human lives.
In Maine, we have a long history of learning from unsustainable economic systems the hard way.For better or worse, many livelihoods here are tied to the functionality of our natural resources. In the early 1990s, Atlantic cod stocks virtually collapsed after decades of overfishing. Similar results in the shrimp, halibut, and numerous other populations led many to move into the lobstering industry. Beyond massive job losses, these shifts were particularly painful in a state whose cultural identity rests on continuing these ways of
Lobster vs. Whale
The Maine lobster industry faces numerous threats to its well-being, including legal gains in right whale conservation. In many ways, the continuance of the Maine lobster industry is a bit of a miracle: it is a vintage way of life, an occupation only made possible by stringent and consensual regulations designed to limit overfishing. The catching of egg-laying female lobsters is prohibited, and limits on the minimum size allowed for a harvested lobster are routinely updated. Hauling times are also limited during the summer months, and hauling is prohibited after sunset from November through May. These efforts become more important in the face of lobster northward migration to the Bay of Fundy. The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, creating increasingly less suitable lobster conditions.
When you look at the numbers, the importance of the lobster industry in Maine becomes clear. Estimates from a 2019 Middlebury College study report that the seafood sector provided as many as 33,000 Maine jobs and $3.2 billion in revenue in Maine annually. Although these numbers have since decreased, they stand to represent the strong presence of moneyed interests in the fight against right whale conservation, but also that the livelihoods of ordinary Mainers and New Englanders are at stake. Under these pressures, lawmakers are undoubtedly tempted to side with economic progress over conservation, which begs the question…
What Rights Do Whales Have?
In 1973, the United States government passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which holds the federal government responsible for the conservation of species classified as threatened or endangered by the US agencies. In article (a)(1)of Section II, the ESA asserts that species loss is a “consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation.” Thus, the framers of this document intended this law to empower the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and successful plaintiffs to defend endangered animals against economic interests.
But what, exactly, is the monetary value of a given species on this planet? The 1978 court case Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) v. Hill, which was the Supreme Court’s first exercise in interpreting the ESA, explored this question. The plaintiff was second-year Tennessee University Law student Hiram Hill, who sued the TVA to halt the construction of the Tellico Dam. The dam was set to bring immense economic benefits to the area, but would also render the snail darter, a small, endangered fish residing in the ESA-designated critical habitat of the Tennessee River, extinct.
Tellico Dam, mid-construction. Courtesy Tennessee Valley Authority
Initially, the courts sided with the TVA. The District Court claimed that protecting the snail darter would create “an unreasonable result,” essentially, that the existence of the snail darter was not worth the price of halting the dam’s construction. Unfortunately for the TVA, such an exemption is not provided for in the ESA. SCOTUS saw this and reversed earlier rulings, siding with Hill. This ruling was not obeyed by Congress, however. A few years later, a small amendment authorizing the TVA to complete the Tellico Dam was thrown into an unrelated bill, which became law. This was illegal and violated SCOTUS’s authority.
At this point, you may be asking what a fifty-year-old court case about a freshwater fish (which did not go extinct, by the way) has to do with the right whale. The answer is quite a bit. In court, the snail darter faced off with the Tellico Dam for the right to exist, with the former providing no major economic benefit and the latter with grand claims that it would. In the end, the fight was not defined by this metric- instead, the highest court in the United States ruled that all species have a right to exist that is monetarily immeasurable.
North Atlantic Right Whale and Fishing Line Source: NOAA
The Blame Game
The necessary solutions for right whale survival will be disruptive. Organizations such as Oceana name the two biggest threats to right whales as vessel strikes and entanglements with ropes used in fishing equipment (despite decades-old Maine laws mandating weak links and sinking lines to limit whale entanglements). Regarding the latter, the most productive lobster season in Maine and Massachusetts coincides with the right whale’s food-motivated pilgrimage to the same waters. NOAA first officially connected the lobster industry to right whale deaths in 1996 and recommended seasonal prohibitions on fishing.
In 2017, NOAA recorded an “Unusual Mortality Event” where 17 right whales died, many due to fishing gear entanglements. This event spurred many of the modern “whale versus lobster” legal battles and debates we see today. In 2022, U.S. representatives in Congress secured a six-year pause on legislating the lobstering industry in the way of whale conservation, citing a history of sustainable practices in the industry. As a compromise, the bill featured forensic gear-marking requirements and authorized funding for whale-safe ropeless traps. These trap technologies today remain unreliable, despite extra funding.
The Right Way Forward
What elements define a sustainable policy? In this case, the answer isn’t black and white: it’s not pro-whale or pro-lobster industry. On one hand, the ESA asserts that the North Atlantic right whale has the right to live. On the other hand, the hardships that the lobster industry currently faces are not the result of poor choices made by the industry itself. Climate change is the fault of larger societal processes and decisions, and the lobster fishermen of Maine have long been careful to maintain the size of the local lobster population. As for sustainability in the way of right whales, ropeless traps aren’t currently reliable enough for commercial use: fortunately, the industry has until 2028 to make them so.
In the meantime, whale conservationists see other solutions to protect the North Atlantic right whale populations. For example, the Ocean River Institute advocates for a designated right whale sanctuary off the coast of Massachusetts. This area, which is already a desirable feeding area for right whales, would be administered by a diverse advisory council of interested parties, including scientists and representatives of the fishing industry. If the area in question were to become designated under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, fishing of any kind would include restrictions on commercial fishing and types of gear.
Proposed Right Whale National Marine Sanctuary Ocean River Institute
Furthermore, the ORI sees the planting of Miyawaki forests in Massachusetts coastal towns as a tool to improve the lives of right whales. Beyond causes of mortality, whales suffer when polluted stormwater enters their habitat. This process can lead them to ingest pollutants that cause illness and infections. Additionally, contaminated stormwater can cause algae blooms and deplete the nutritional quality and availability of copepods. One way to limit stormwater runoff into the ocean is to create land conditions where water can be absorbed. Miyawaki forests are excellent at this task: their loose soil and dense vegetation (which is meant to mimic an old-growth forest for rapid plant growth) is perfectly suited to absorb large amounts of water. This could improve conditions for right whales off the coast of Massachusetts and beyond.
As a self proclaimed “policy person,” the lack of legislative progress on climate and conservation issues is incredibly frustrating. I also believe that the government owes a fair solution to the lobster industry. Delivering justice in this situation would therefore be a complex process- fortunately, we can initiate and foster change at an individual level.
**Special thanks to Rob Moir (Ocean River Institute) and Taylor Mann (Oceana) for providing information for this piece!
Alexa Hankins is a student at Boston University, where she is pursuing a degree in International Relations with a concentration in environment and development policy. She discovered Bio4Climate through her research to develop a Miyawaki forest bike tour in greater Boston. Alexa is passionate about accessible climate education, environmental justice, and climate resilience initiatives. In her free time, she likes to read, develop her skills with houseplants, and explore the Boston area!
What animal is the largest of the wild goat species, whose name means “snake eater” in Persian, and is the national animal of Pakistan?
An adult male markhor at the Stone Zoo, Stoneham, Massachusetts Image credit: Sienna Weinstein
Not Your Average Billy Goat
While interning at the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Massachusetts, one of my duties involved filling up large black food bowls with a carefully measured mix of various feed for the zoo’s markhor. Prior to this internship, I had never heard of this fascinating species of bovid. The males were majestic with their artistically-curved horns and strikingly-bearded chin; so of course, my lunch break that day was spent photographing these amazing animals. This was no easy task, as these creatures had the habit of moving just out of sight around their enclosure as soon as my camera was properly set. However, persistence paid off, and I managed to snap a few photos during the brief moments when the markhors obliged me by standing still.
At 4.5-6.2 feet (1.37-1.89 m) long, with females typically weighing between 70 and 88 pounds (39.9 kg), with some weighing upwards of 100 (45.4 kg) or 110 lbs (49.9 kg) and males weighing up to 242 pounds (110 kg), the markhor is the largest of all wild goat species. Males release a pungent odor which has been described as stronger than that of domestic goats, and is used to repel predators, mark territory, and as a natural cologne to attract females during the breeding season.
There are a few examples of sexual dimorphism, or noticeable physical differences between genders, among markhor. Besides their differences in size, males have a longer coat, especially around the chin, throat, chest, and shanks. Females are typically redder in color compared with males, have shorter hair and beards, and lack the majestic mane males display along their neck. Both genders also sport an impressive set of corkscrew-like horns, which measure up to 10 inches (0.25 m) for females, but can exceed an astonishing 5 feet (1.52 m) for males!
What’s In a Name? A lot for the Markhor!
Found primarily in Pakistan, parts of Afghanistan, and the mountain ranges of the Himalayas and Karakoram, the markhor is the national animal of Pakistan. In Pakistan, the markhor is known as the “screw-horn”, or “screw-horned goat.” The Persian words “mar” and “khor” mean “snake” and “eater”, respectively, leading to the moniker “snake eater” or “snake killer”. This moniker is in reference to the ancient belief that the markhor would actively kill and consume snakes! (Which is not correct–markhors are herbivores.) This regional myth is believed to stem from the “snake-like” form of the male’s horns, curling and twisting like a snake, possibly leading ancient peoples of the area to associate them with these limbless reptiles.
Capra falconeri distribution, Shackleton, 1997
Native to the mountainous regions of South and Central Asia, the markhor has evolved powerful and flexible hooves with hard, large outer edges and softer centers to grip the rocky surfaces of the terrain. Their hooves allow them to scale sheer cliffs and escape predators such as Eurasian lynx, wolves, and snow leopards.
The markhor plays a crucial role within its ecosystem by contributing to the health of their mountainous habitat. Keeping the native plants in check, the markhor controls the growth of certain vegetation through their eating habits, even climbing trees to reach the tastiest bits. Markhors spend more than half of their day grazing, about 12–14 hours on average! They mostly feed on grass in the warmer months, but upon the arrival of winter, they switch to other plants, including shrubs and twigs. This seasonal shift from grazing (eating grasses and low vegetation) to browsing (eating leaves, shrubs, and woody plants) helps balance plant communities at different heights and root structures, which supports more diverse insect, bird, and herbivore populations. Their feeding habits prevent overgrazing and help to promote biodiversity by allowing a range of plant life to flourish.
A female markhor and her kid at the Stone Zoo, Stoneham, Massachusetts Image credit: Sienna Weinstein
An Icon Under Threat
Despite their impressive adaptations, generally majestic appearance, ecological importance, and status in Pakistan, the markhor faces numerous threats to survival. Listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, the markhor is hunted for their meat, skin, and horns. Across their range, overhunting and poaching have negatively impacted their populations. In addition, habitat degradation due to excessive wood cutting for fuel, as well as increased grazing by livestock leading to competition, and even hybridization between species, have further contributed to the markhor’s decline. Numerous conservation actions have been proposed via the markhor’s webpage on the IUCN Red List, and only time will tell whether potential collaboration between the locals of the region, government bodies, and conservationists can save this icon of the South and Central Asian mountains.
It required persistence and patience for my photos of the markhor to come to fruition before the individuals slipped away and out of sight. Similarly, persistence and patience must be employed in order to ensure that the species as a whole doesn’t slip away permanently.
Sienna Weinstein is a wildlife photographer, zoologist, and lifelong advocate for the conservation of wildlife across the globe. She earned her B.S. in Zoology from the University of Vermont, followed by a M.S. degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. While earning her Bachelor’s degree, Sienna participated in a study abroad program in South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), taking part in fieldwork involving species abundance and diversity in the southern African ecosystem. She is also an official member of the Upsilon Tau chapter of the Beta Beta Beta National Biological Honor Society.
Deciding at the end of her academic career that she wanted to grow her natural creativity and hobby of photography into something more, Sienna dedicated herself to the field of wildlife conservation communication as a means to promote the conservation of wildlife. Her photography has been credited by organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Zoo New England, and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. She was also an invited reviewer of an elephant ethology lesson plan for Picture Perfect STEM Lessons (May 2017) by NSTA Press. Along with writing for Bio4Climate, she is also a volunteer writer for the New England Primate Conservancy. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games, watching wildlife documentaries, photographing nature and wildlife, and posting her work on her LinkedIn profile. She hopes to create a more professional portfolio in the near future.
What species is the tallest tree in the world, produces fog, and provides habitat for many organisms?
Adrianna Drindak
Let me introduce you to this ecosystem, beginning with a moment of meeting.
The metal boardwalk presses into my back, creating small indentations along my spine. A few meters away, a stream whispers, with the sound of swirling eddies lingering in my ears as the water glides and splashes. The surrounding ecosystem dazzles with green as the ferns dance from the nudge of a passing breeze. There is a deep silence in this forest. A silence that penetrates your soul, a true peace that quiets every internal murmur. Your attention drifts away from both the mundane and real challenges of the world, and shifts to look one way – up.
Now, let’s go for a walk to see the tallest trees in the world.
Adrianna Drindak
We step foot into the forest, with gigantic trees limiting our vision of the sky above. Today we’ll be meandering through the forest, stopping to explore and learn more about the vitality of the coast redwoods and the critical roles they play in this environment. But what does a redwood look like? The tallest known coast redwood is 379 feet (115 m) tall, which is similar to about 38 regulation height NBA hoops stacked on top of each other. This tree has a diameter of up to 26 ft (8 m) which is the equivalent to the length of about one stretch limousine. Recent research has found that there is more carbon stored aboveground in old-growth redwood networks than any other forest system.
Where did these enormous trees, towering above our heads, come from?
There are three species of redwoods found around the world, with each organism populating different biomes: Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), and Giant Sequoia (Sequoidendron giganteum). The redwoods originated from conifers that grew alongside dinosaurs in the Jurassic period, about 145 million years ago. With shifts in the climate, the redwoods became constrained to their present geographic regions. Today the Dawn Redwood is found in central China and the Giant Sequoia thrives in the rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. The Coast Redwood is distributed along the coast of southern Oregon and northern California, and stands as the tallest known tree species on the planet.
Adrianna Drindak
We are walking down a gentle dirt path, deep within a redwood forest along the California coast, with our necks craned upwards to the giants above. As we wander amongst the trees, some over 2,000 years old, the branches above our heads are draped with lush greenery. Ferns, saplings, lichens and mosses rest within the tree; not causing harm, rather living peacefully from a higher viewpoint. These plants reposed in the canopy of the coast redwood are referred to as epiphytes. The quiet flutter of other biota sounds from above, such as the endangered Marbled Murrelets chirping from a nest and Wandering salamanders leaping between branches. The rumbling of a stream nearby is a reminder that while we cannot see below our feet, the redwoods are also building relationships below. Coast redwoods shade these aquatic environments and reduce erosion, which cools these areas for salmon populations. In exchange, the salmon provide marine nutrients to the ecosystem and the coast redwoods as they reproduce and decay.
Fog weaves through the afternoon sunlight, making our vision of the path ahead hazy. We pause, with one of the redwoods extending far below our feet, roots entangled with a neighbor, and many meters above our heads, branches draped. This redwood does not only provide habitats for a wide range of organisms, but also facilitates the local climate to support them. Redwoods play a central role in the water cycle of this coastal ecosystem, particularly through their relationship with fog. Coast redwoods require increased moisture levels to reach such extraordinary heights, and use a chemical called terpene to remove moisture from the air. This chemical causes these water droplets to condense, which creates low-lying clouds. This cycle of fog production, fueled by the nearby ocean, sustains the growth of redwood forests.
Adrianna Drindak
The fog slowly lifts and we continue our walk on the dirt path. The forest rustles as we reach a fallen redwood, obscuring part of our trail. The giant lies on its side, resting, with an immense root system exposed. There are ferns and mosses that have grown from the tree and a banana slug inches across the surface, leaving a slimy trail on the rough bark. Fallen redwoods give back to the community in many ways. The Yurok people have cultural traditions that involve working with fallen redwoods to create canoes and other structures. David Eric Stevens, a Yurok Canoe Builder, tells us the story of how the redwood canoe originated. “There’s a story of a redwood tree that wanted to live among humans, and the creator gave him the opportunity to live among humans by giving us canoes.” The canoes carved from fallen redwoods can take approximately seven years to create. Canoe Captain Julian Markussen describes, “If you take care of them properly, they can last for over 100 years.” These fallen redwoods continue to live even after falling, whether that be as habitat for organisms or in an extended life as canoes.
We step past the fallen redwood to continue our meander, dodging the ferns sprouting from the decaying bark. But as we walk, something changes in the forest. The redwoods seem to reach further and expand wider. The vegetation is more vibrant and green than anywhere else in the forest. The sunlight trickles through the branches above, dancing between lichen-covered branches. This is an old-growth redwood forest. Old-growth forests are hubs of biodiversity, with these trees acting as central to underground communication networks, providing habitat, and facilitating an interconnected ecosystem. The few trees that surround us are some that have been protected from historical logging in the region, as only 5 percent of these ancient coast redwood forests remain. We pause here and take a step back in time. There are hundreds of years of history captured in the lush undergrowth and full canopy.
We have reached the end of the path, emerging from the cool shade. We turn to look back, marveling once more at the incredible organisms we had the opportunity to meet. Coast redwoods regulate this vibrant, green ecosystem, endless beyond our sight. It is time to leave this magical forest, with the magnificent, ancient giants that shoot up out of our eyes’ reach. We have peered into an interconnected world, where these trees interact with the atmosphere, flourishing plant life, and abundant critters. There is a pause before we turn to go. What does this forest teach us?
I think back to that moment of meeting, lying on the boardwalk looking up. My first encounter with the coastal redwoods was magical, to say the least. There are no words to describe the might of these ancient beings, as their uppermost branches, or crown, beckon you to look up. In the sharing of gentle silence, as I laid down on the boardwalk surrounded by an ecosystem teeming with life, I dared my eyes to look farther and memorize every detail. I felt a deep desire to cherish and protect these organisms, and to share my joy for the incredible ways they shape their ecosystems and our planet. Most of all, the redwoods revived a deep sense of wonder. This wonder, inspired by such magnificent organisms, pulls you to be present. Just by nature of being and interacting with the redwoods, these trees inspire care, generosity, and resilience. How lucky we are to walk amongst such powerful beings.
Adrianna Drindak is a rising senior at Dartmouth College studying Environmental Earth Sciences and Environmental Studies. Prior to interning at Bio4Climate, she worked as a field technician studying ovenbirds at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest and as a laboratory technician in an ecology lab. Adrianna is currently an undergraduate researcher in the Quaternary Geology Lab at Dartmouth, with a specific focus on documenting climate history and past glaciations in the northeast region of the United States. This summer, Adrianna is looking forward to applying her science background to an outreach role, and is excited to brainstorm ways to make science more accessible. In her free time, Adrianna enjoys reading, baking gluten free treats, hiking, and backpacking.
What animal, despite having the same number of vertebrae, has a neck longer than the average human, has spot patterns as unique between individuals as our fingerprints, and despite their gentle appearance, can kill lions with a karate-style kick!?
A tower of Reticulated giraffes (G. reticulata) Image credit: Bird Explorers via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)
Some might say this is quite the… tall order for my very first Featured Creature profile! (Hold the applause!)
One of my earliest memories regarding these unique icons of the African savanna was when I was around five years old. My parents and I were visiting the Southwick Zoo in Mendon, Massachusetts, when we came upon the giraffe enclosure. One of these quiet, lanky creatures lowered its head across the fence bordering the enclosure, and licked my dad on the face with its looooong, black tongue! Once the laughter had died down, a flood of questions rushed into my head:
Why DOES the giraffe have such a long neck?
How do they sleep at night?
And what’s the deal with those black tongues?
A Tall-Walking, Awkwardly-Galloping African Animal
Their scattered range in sub-Saharan Africa extends from Chad in the north to South Africa in the south, and from Niger in the west to Somalia in the east. Within this range, giraffes typically live in savannahs and open woodlands, where their food sources include leaves, fruits, and flowers of woody plants. Giraffes primarily consume material of the acacia species, which they browse at heights most other ground-based herbivores can’t reach. Fully-grown giraffes stand at 14-19 feet (4.3-5.7 m) tall, with males taller than females. The average weight is 2,628 pounds (1,192 kg) for an adult male, while an adult female weighs on average 1,825 pounds (828 kg).
A giraffe’s front legs tend to be longer than the hind legs, and males have proportionally longer front legs than females. This trait gives them better support when swinging their necks during fights over females.
Giraffes have only two gaits: walking and galloping. When galloping, the hind legs move around the front legs before the latter move forward. The movements of the head and neck provide balance and control momentum while galloping. Despite their size, and their arguably cumbersome gallop, giraffes can reach a sprint speed of up to 37 miles per hour (60 km/h), and can sustain 31 miles per hour (50 km/h) for up to 1.2 miles (2 km).
Herd of giraffes running in Tanzania, Africa
When it’s not eating or galavanting across the savanna, a giraffe rests by lying with its body on top of its folded legs. When you’re 18 feet tall, some things are easier said than done. To lie down is something of a tedious balancing act. The giraffe first kneels on its front legs, then lowers the rest of its body. To get back up, it first gets on its front knees and positions its backside on top of its hind legs. Then, it pulls the backside upwards, and the front legs stand straight up again. At each stage, the individual swings its head for balance. To drink water from a low source such as a waterhole, a giraffe will either spread its front legs or bend its knees. Studies involving captive giraffes found they sleep intermittently up to 4.6 hours per day, and needing as little as 30 minutes a day in the wild. The studies also recorded that giraffes usually sleep lying down; however, “standing sleeps” have been recorded, particularly in older individuals.
Cameleopard
The term “cameleopard” is an archaic English portmanteau for the giraffe, which derives from “camel” and “leopard”, referring to its camel-like shape and leopard-like coloration. Giraffes are not closely related to either camels or leopards. Rather, they are just one of two members of the family Giraffidae, the other being the okapi. Giraffes are the tallest ruminants (cud-chewers) and are in the order Artiodactyla, or “even-toed ungulates”.
A giraffe’s coat contains cream or white-colored hair, covered in dark blotches or patches which can be brown, chestnut, orange, or nearly black. Scientists theorize the coat pattern serves as camouflage within the light and shade patterns of the savannah woodlands. And just like our fingerprints, every giraffe has a unique coat pattern!
The tongue is black and about 18 inches (45 cm) long, able to grasp foliage and delicately pick off leaves. Biologists thinks that the tongue’s coloration protects it against sunburn, given the large amount of time it spends in the fresh air, poking and prodding for something to eat. Acacia giraffes are known for having thorny branches, and the giraffe has a flexible, hairy upper lip to protect against the sharp prickles.
Both genders have prominent horn-like structures called ossicones, which can reach 5.3 inches (13.5 cm), and are used in male-to-male combat. These ossicones offer a reliable way to age and sex a giraffe: the ossicones of females and young are thin and display tufts of hair on top, whereas those of adult males tend to be bald and knobbed on top.
An elderly adult male Masai giraffe at the Franklin Park Zoo, Boston, Massachusetts Image credit: Sienna Weinstein
There is still some debate over just why the giraffe evolved such a long neck. The possible theories include the “necks-for-sex” hypothesis, in which evolution of long necks was driven by competition among males, who duke it out in “necking” battles over females, versus the high nutritional needs for (pregnant and lactating) females. A 2024 study by Pennsylvania State University found that both were essentially acceptable! Check out the graphic below for a good visualization.
A graphic summarizing the evolution of the giraffe’s body based on gender needs Image credit: Penn State University, CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0
A Flagship AND Keystone Species
Alongside other noteworthy African savanna species, such as elephants and rhinoceroses, giraffes are considered a flagship species, well-known organisms that represent ecosystems, used to raise awareness and support for conservation, and helping to protect the habitats in which they’re found. As one of the many creatures that generate public interest and support for various conservation efforts in habitats around the world, giraffes have a significant role.
Giraffes, like elephants and rhinos, are also classified as a keystone species–one that plays a crucial role in maintaining the health and diversity of their native ecosystems, as their actions significantly impact the environment and other species. What is it that giraffes do that impacts their local ecosystems and environment? By browsing vegetation high up in the trees, they open up areas around the bases of trees to promote the growth of other plants, creating microhabitats for other species. In addition, through their dung and urine, they help distribute nutrients throughout their habitat. Some acacia seedlings don’t even sprout and grow until they’ve passed through a giraffe’s digestive system! By protecting giraffes, we also contribute to protecting other plant and animal species of the African savanna and open woodlands!
The Life We Share
The woodlands and grasslands where giraffes live are shaped in part by those long necks and unique feeding habits. As they browse high in the canopy, they open up space for other plants and animals to thrive. These ecosystems aren’t something we built, they’re something we’re lucky to witness. And if we have a role to play, maybe it’s simply to make sure our presence doesn’t undo the work that nature is already doing so well.
Sienna Weinstein is a wildlife photographer, zoologist, and lifelong advocate for the conservation of wildlife across the globe. She earned her B.S. in Zoology from the University of Vermont, followed by a M.S. degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. While earning her Bachelor’s degree, Sienna participated in a study abroad program in South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), taking part in fieldwork involving species abundance and diversity in the southern African ecosystem. She is also an official member of the Upsilon Tau chapter of the Beta Beta Beta National Biological Honor Society.
Deciding at the end of her academic career that she wanted to grow her natural creativity and hobby of photography into something more, Sienna dedicated herself to the field of wildlife conservation communication as a means to promote the conservation of wildlife. Her photography has been credited by organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Zoo New England, and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. She was also an invited reviewer of an elephant ethology lesson plan for Picture Perfect STEM Lessons (May 2017) by NSTA Press. Along with writing for Bio4Climate, she is also a volunteer writer for the New England Primate Conservancy. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games, watching wildlife documentaries, photographing nature and wildlife, and posting her work on her LinkedIn profile. She hopes to create a more professional portfolio in the near future.
I prowl the woods, both fierce and lean, With golden eyes and coat unseen. Once a ghost upon the land, Now brought back by careful hand. Who am I, wild and free, Yet bound by fate and history?
Many moons ago, for two years during college and one year after, I worked at the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium in central Ohio (for those keeping score at home, that’s Jack Hanna’s zoo. Yes I met him.)
I spent thousands of hours over hundreds of days at that zoo. I got to know every path, every Dippin’ Dots stand, and every habitat under the zoo’s care.
The Columbus Zoo & Aquarium has an incredible collection of creatures (they’re one of the only institutions outside of Florida with manatees). While I was enamored with all of them, my favorite were the Mexican Wolves, a critically imperiled species.
In a place full of more diversity and creatures than I could ever count, the zoo’s Mexican wolves were different. As part of the (American) Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan, a nationwide conservation effort. There were excellent educators of the impact one creature can have on an ecosystem, and what can happen when we don’t take care of them.
A Mexican Wolf at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. Credit: JCaputo via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
A Predator on the Brink
The Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) is both the rarest and most genetically distinct subspecies of the more well known gray wolf. It is notably smaller than its northern relatives, with adults weighing standing about two feet tallat the top of the shoulder. Despite this (relatively) diminutive stature, the Mexican wolf is an apex predator in its environment, finely tuned by evolution for survival in the rugged, often unforgiving landscapes of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
Consider those landscapes for a moment. What does it take for a species already up against the ropes to survive there? What would it take for you to survive there?
You’d have to have exceptional endurance to hunt in vast, open environments. Long, slender legs and a streamlined body would allow you to cover these great distances while tracking prey, often over the course of 30 miles in a single day. You’d require an acute sense of smell and keen eyesight to pick up on the movements of smaller creatures from far away, even in the dim light of dawn or dusk when your prey is most active.
You’d be an expert of efficient thermoregulation, that is, keeping cool in the heat and warm in the cold. And you’d have to be, an expert, when your world ranges from scorching desert heat to bitter mountain cold, these wolves have developed a double-layered coat that provides insulation in winter while shedding excess warmth in summer. The coat’s coloration, a mixture of gray, rust, and buff, serves as excellent camouflage against the rocky and forested landscapes they inhabit.
A Wolf’s Role
It’s old news to you, I know, but it bears repeating. For ecosystems to function, predators must play their part. Like other wolves, the Mexican wolf is a keystone species, regulating prey populations and influencing plant communities. Without them, the system unravels.
The Mexican wolf primarily hunts elk, white-tailed deer, mule deer, and occasionally livestock, but they will also take smaller mammals like rabbits and rodents when such larger prey is scarce. When they hunt, they do so together, as cooperative pack hunters. Their strong social structure is as essential a tool as their razor sharp incisors in felling prey much larger than themselves. Beyond the hunt, these [ack dynamics are critical to their survival—each member has a role, from rearing the pups learning the ropes to experienced hunters leading coordinated chases.
Both on the hunt and at home, communication is central to the wolves’ social structure. Howling serves as both a bonding ritual and a way to locate packmates over vast distances. Body language, like tail positioning and ear movement, helps maintain hierarchy within the group. You may even recognize a few of these traits in your own dog, barking or howling to communicate, using their tail and ears to express emotion, or learning through playful wrestling as a puppy.
Packs are tight-knit, usually number four to six members, though some may grow larger depending on prey availability. They establish territories spanning up to 200 square miles, marking them with scent and vocalizing to warn off intruding wolves and other creatures.
A Mexican wolf and her pup. Image by Bob Haarmans, CC BY 2.0
In the absence of wolves, prey populations, especially elk and deer, explode, stripping vegetation and weakening forests. Overgrazed lands mean fewer young trees, degraded soil, less cover for smaller animals and heightened wildfire risk. This domino effect, known more scientifically as trophic cascade, ripples through the entire ecosystem. Beavers lose the young saplings they rely on for food and dams. Birds struggle to find nesting spots. Streams warm without tree cover, altering aquatic life.
But when wolves return, balance begins to restore itself. Just ask Yellowstone National Park. Wolves keep elk and deer moving, preventing over-grazing in sensitive areas. Carcasses left behind provide food for scavengers, including ravens, eagles, foxes, and even bears. Their presence reshapes the landscape, not just through their actions but through the fear they instill in prey. They don’t just hunt; they change the way the river of life flows.
A Fragile Comeback
Conservation and reintroduction of Mexican wolves has been an uphill, if slightly progressive, endeavor since the first captive-bred wolves were reintroduced into Arizona and New Mexico in 1998.
Ranchers in the area saw them as a renewed threat to livestock, and illegal killings were common practice. Some reintroduced wolves were shot before they had a chance to establish packs. Others were relocated after venturing too close to human settlements and industry.
Populations have grown slowly. From a low of just seven wolves in 1980, there are now about 250-300 Mexican wolves in the wild today. This precarious population is still critically small, vulnerable to disease, low genetic variation, and continued conflict with humans.
Climate change has also complicated things.
Rising temperatures are altering the Mexican wolf’s habitat. More frequent and severe droughts in the American Southwest threaten prey availability, pushing elk and deer into different ranges. Increased wildfires, driven by hotter, drier, and more flammable conditions, destroy the forests that wolves depend on for cover and prey.
Mexican Wolf experimental population area map. Courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Last Word
I know zoos can be complicated, controversial places at times. I’m not really here to weigh in on that. But I think like many things in life, there is great value in the best parts of them. As we all continue to advocate for a less-extractive relationship with the rivers of life beyond our front door, I think the ability to educate, connect, and inspire others to care about the world around them is critically important. I saw the Columbus Zoo do that well time and time again, and I think every time we share a featured creature, post a picture of our gardens, or take someone along for a Miyawaki planting, we do the same.
Brendan Kelly began his career teaching conservation education programs at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. He is interested in how the intersection of informal education, mass communications and marketing can be retooled to drive relatable, accessible climate action. While he loves all ecosystems equally, he is admittedly partial to those in the alpine.
What creature grows backwards and can swallow a tree whole?
The strangler fig!
A strangler fig in Mossman Gorge, Queensland. (Image by author).
A Fig Grows in Manhattan
I recently wrapped a fig tree for the winter. Nestled in the back of a community garden, in the heart of New York City, I was one of many who flocked not for its fruit but for its barren limbs. An Italian cultivar, and therefore unfit to withstand east coast winters, this fig depends on a bundle of insulation to survive the season. The tree grows in Elizabeth Street Garden, a space that serves the community in innumerable ways, including as a source of ecological awareness.
Wrapping the fig was no small task. With frozen fingers we tied twigs together with twine, like bows on presents. Strangers held branches for one another to fasten, and together we contained the fig’s unwieldy body into clusters. Neighbors exchanged introductions and experienced volunteers advised the novice, including me. Though I’d spent countless hours in the garden, this was my first fig wrapping. My arms trembled as the tree resisted each bind. Guiding the branches together without snapping them was a delicate balance. But caring for our fig felt good and I like to think that after several springs in the sunlight it understood our efforts. Eventually, we wrapped each cluster with burlap, stuffed them with straw and tied them off again. In the end, the tree resembled a different creature entirely.
Elizabeth Street Garden, New York, NY. (Image by author)
Growing Down
Two springs earlier, I was wrapped up with another fig. I was in Australia for a semester, studying at the University of Melbourne, and had traveled with friends to the northeast coast of Queensland to see the Great Barrier Reef. It was there that I fell in love with the oldest tropical rainforest in the world, the Daintree Rainforest.
The fig I found there was monumental. Its roots spread across the forest floor like a junkyard of mangled metal beams that seemed to never end. They climbed and twisted their way around an older tree, reaching over the canopy where they encased it entirely.
Detail, strangler fig encases support tree. Al Kordesch, iNaturalist, CC0A strangler fig in Mossman Gorge, Queensland. (Image by author).
The strangler fig begins its life at the top of the forest, often from a seed dropped by a bird into the notch of another tree. From there it absorbs an abundance of light inaccessible to the forest’s understory and sends its roots crawling down its support tree in search of fertile ground. Quickly then, the strangler fig grows, fueled by an unstoppable combination of sunlight, moisture, and nutrients from the soil. Sometimes, in this process, the fig consumes and strangles its support tree to death, hence its name. Other times, the fig can actually act as a brace or shield, protecting the support tree from storms and other damage. Even as they may overtake one tree, strangler figs also give new life to the forest.
As many as one million figs can come from a single tree. It is these figs that attract the animals who disperse both their seeds and the seeds of thousands of other plant species. With more than 750 species of Ficus feeding more than 1,200 distinct species of birds and mammals, the fig is a keystone resource of the tropical rainforest —the ecological community depends upon its presence and without it, the habitat’s biodiversity is at risk.
Fig-Wasp Pollination
Like the strangler fig, its pollination story is also one of sacrifice. Each fig species is uniquely pollinated by one, or in some cases a few, corresponding species of wasp. While figs are commonly thought of as fruit, they are technically capsules of many tiny flowers turned inward, also known as a syconium. This is where their pollination begins. The life of a female fig wasp essentially starts when she exits the fig from which she was born to reproduce inside of another. Each Ficus species depends upon one or two unique species of wasps, and she must find a fig of both the right species and perfect stage of development. Upon finding the perfect fig, the female wasp enters through a tiny hole at the top of the syconium, losing her wings and antennae in the process. She will not need them again, on a one way journey to lay her eggs and die. The male wasps make a similar sacrifice. The first to hatch, they are wingless, only intended to mate with the females and chew out an exit before dying. The females, loaded with eggs and pollen, emerge from the fig and continue the cycle.
The life cycle of the fig wasp. (U.S. Forest Service, Illustration by Simon van Noort, Iziko Museum of Cape Town)
The mutualistic relationship between the fig and its wasp is critical to its role as a keystone resource. As each wasp must reproduce additional fig species in the forest at different stages of development, there remains a constant supply of figs for the rainforest.
However, climate change threatens these wasps and their figs. Studies have shown that in higher temperatures, fig wasps live shorter lives which makes it more difficult for them to travel the long distances needed to reach the trees they pollinate. One study found that the suboptimal temperatures even shifted the competitive balance to favor non-pollinating wasps rather than the typically dominant pollinators.
Another critical threat to figs across the globe is deforestation, in its destruction of habitat and exacerbation of climate change. In Australia, this threat looms large. Is it the only developed nation listed in a 2021 World Wildlife Fund study on deforestation hotspots, with Queensland as the epicenter of forest loss. Further, a study published earlier this year in Conservation Biology concluded that in failing to comply with environmental law, Australia has fallen short on international deforestation commitments. Fortunately, the strangler figs I fell in love with in the Daintree are protected as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988 and Indigenous Protected Area in 2013.
The view flying into Cairns, Queensland. (Image by author)Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas, Queensland. (Image by author)
Stewards of the Rainforest
The Daintree Rainforest has been home to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people for more than 50,000 years. Aboriginal Australians with a deep cultural and spiritual connection to the land, the Eastern Kuku Yalanji have been fighting to reclaim their ancestral territory since European colonization in the 18th century. Only in 2021 did the Australian government formally return more than 160,000 hectares to the land’s original custodians. The Queensland government and the Eastern Kuku Yalanji now jointly manage the Daintree, Ngalba Bulal, Kalkajaka, and Hope Islands parks with the intention for the Eastern Kuku Yalanji to eventually be the sole stewards.
Rooted in an understanding of the land as kin, the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people are collaborating with environmental charities like Rainforest Rescue and Climate Force to repair what’s been lost, reforesting hundreds of acres and creating a wildlife corridor between the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. The corridor aims to regenerate a portion of the rainforest that was cleared in the 1950s for agriculture.
Upon returning to Cairns from the rainforest, we set sail and marveled at the Great Barrier Reef. My memories of the Daintree’s deep greens mingled with the underwater rainbow of the reef. At the Cairns Art Gallery the next day, a solo exhibition of artist Maharlina Gorospe-Lockie’s work, Once Was, visualized this amalgamation of colors in my mind. Gorospe-Lockie’s imagined tropical coastal landscapes draw from her work on coastal zone management in the Philippines and challenge viewers to consider the changes in our natural environment.
Maharlina Gorospe-Lockie, Everything Will Be Fine #1 2023 From the solo exhibition Once Was at the Cairns Art Gallery. (photo by author).
On the final day wrapping our fig in New York, I lean on a ladder above the canopy of our community garden and in the understory of the urban jungle. Visitors filter in and out, often stopping to ask what we’re up to. Some offer condolences for the garden and our beloved fig, at risk of eviction in February. We share stories of the burlap tree and look forward to the day we unwrap its branches.
The parallel lives of these figs cross paths only in my mind, and now yours. Perhaps also in the fig on your plate or the tree soon to be planted around the corner.
Jane Olsen is a writer committed to climate justice. Born and raised in New York City, she is driven to make cities more livable, green and just. She is also passionate about the power of storytelling to evoke change and build community. This fuels her love for writing, as does a desire to convey and inspire biophilia. Jane earned her BA in English with a Creative Writing concentration and a minor in Government and Legal Studies from Bowdoin College.
What plant was the first to flower in space and is the most widely used model species for studying plant biology?
Arabidopsis thaliana (Mouse-ear cress)!
Mouse-ear Cress, Arabidopsis thaliana (Image Credit: Brendan Cole via iNaturalist)
If you’re a regular reader of Bio4Climate’s Featured Creature series, you might be wondering why I wrote the scientific name of this organism first, rather than its common name. Arabidopsis thaliana (also known as mouse-ear cress, thale cress, or rock cress) is, in fact, recognized by its scientific name more often because it’s one of the most popular organisms used in plant studies and has become the model system of choice for researchers exploring plant biology and comparative genomics. In fact, it’s often dubbed the “white mouse” of the plant research community, making its common name something of a double entendre.
bodhiheera via INaturalist (CC BY NC)The basal rosette (circular or spiral leaf pattern at base)
A. thaliana is a small plant with a basal rosette of leaves (a circular or spiral pattern near the base of a plant) that grows up to 9.5 inches (25 cm) in height, and small white flowers that give the plant its name. Mouse-ear is a member of the Brassicaceae (Brass-si-case-see), or mustard, family, which includes plants like —you guessed it— mustard, along with cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and radish. While A. thaliana is indeed edible like these more economically important crop plants, its capacity as a spring vegetable is not the reason for its fame. More on that story in a minute.
Native to Eurasia and Africa and naturalized worldwide due to human disturbance, A. thaliana is often found by roadsides and other disrupted (or man-made) environments. You have most likely walked by this cruciferous plant without even realizing it. To many, it’s just another weed (though it’s not actually a weed). A. thaliana is widely distributed in habitats with bare, nutrient-poor soil and rocky areas where other plants struggle to establish,needing only air, water, sunlight, and a few minerals to complete its short six-week life cycle. As a self-pollinating plant (selfer), it can also produce seeds without external pollinators. These characteristics help A. thaliana colonize those barren or disturbed areas, making it a pioneer plant—those hardy plants that pave the way and help initiate the development of a plant community.
What makes Arabidopsis thaliana so important in plant research?
Arabidopsis thaliana’s popularity as a leading research organism really exploded when its genome was fully sequenced in 2000. With relatively fewer base pairs of DNA and around 25,000 genes (other plants can have upwards of 30,000-45,000), the plant’s genetic simplicity —paired with its short life cycle— allows researchers to conduct experiments and analyze how specific genes influence development, physiology, and reproduction. Due to the volume of work being focused on the plant since its genome sequencing, A. thaliana is genetically well-characterized, and it’s become an important model system for identifying genes and their functions.
An invaluable effort supporting this research is The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR). The online database offers open access to gene sequences, molecular data, and research findings, fostering collaboration and accelerating discovery. The Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC) complements TAIR by maintaining the world’s largest seed collection for A. thaliana. With more that one million seed stocks and distribution networks spanning 30 countries, NASC ensures that scientists have ready access to the genetic material they need to push plant science forward.
The plant’s limited space requirements and ability to produce high quantities of seeds and specimens assists in repeated and efficient genetic experiments.
Adept at Adapting
When you think of plants and flowers, words like “fragile” or “delicate” often come to mind. While this may be true, nature is much stronger and more resilient than people first assume. A. thaliana is a prime example of how a small, seemingly weak-looking plant can, in fact, adapt well and keep itself alive. As a plant living in the natural world, A. thaliana has a range of defense mechanisms available to protect against herbivorous insects. Many unique samples of A. thaliana have leaves covered in trichomes, which are bristle-like outgrowths on the outer layer of the plant, that ward off moths and flea beetles. When A. thaliana’s plant tissue is damaged, special compounds call glucosinolates interact with an enzyme, producing toxins that deter most would-be attackers. Studying these Arabidopsis-insect interactions can provide crucial information on mechanisms behind traits that may be important for other plant species.
Using A. thaliana as a research tool has applications for larger, more complex crops. It has furthered our understanding of germination, aspects of plant growth, and been a key to identifying a wide range of plant-specific gene functions.
While A. thaliana has helped form the foundation of modern plant biology, its research informs areas outside strictly plant science as well, including air and soil quality from a public health perspective. A. thaliana can be used as an environmental monitor by tracking its exposure and reaction to different pollutants. This small plant also plays a part in biofuel production and space biology.
Arabidopsis thaliana grown in lunar soil Image Credit: Tyler Jones via NASA
Did you say space biology?
Yes, I did! Arabidopsis thaliana was the first plant to flower in space in 1982 aboard the Soviet Salyut 7. Due to its research value, to this day is it one of the most commonly grown plants in space. While it’s not a viable source of food, discoveries made using A. thaliana provide insights that can be applied to a variety of other plants. In the inhospitable environment of space, researchers deploy advanced plant habitats (APHs) with automated water recovery, distribution, atmosphere content, moisture levels, and temperature to assess how A. thaliana’s gene expression and plant health changes in space. When the plants are mature, the crew will freeze or chemically fix samples to preserve them on their journey back down to Earth for further study. Experiments to understand how space affects A. thaliana’s growth and development are key to learning how to keep plants flourishing in space and, some day, help promote long-duration missions for astronauts.
Nature’s little secrets
Nature can be found in the most improbable of places. Yesterday, A. thaliana was just a weed, one of the countless others blooming in places we’ve made natural life nearly impossible. Along a busy road or in the cracks of an aging sidewalk. I’ve stepped over it and driven by it every day without thinking twice.
Today, it’s a rugged little plant growing in some of the most unlikely or inhospitable places, not the least of which is about 250 nautical miles above our heads. A. thaliana’s relatively simple and unremarkable nature is precisely what makes it valuable to science, acting as a sort of legend to help researchers study other plants. It makes me wonder what other of nature’s secrets I pass every day, hidden in plain sight.
Remembering to appreciate those little plants growing on the sidewalk,
Abigail
Abigail Gipson is an environmental advocate with a bachelor’s degree in humanitarian studies from Fordham University. Working to protect the natural world and its inhabitants, Abigail is specifically interested in environmental protection, ecosystem-based adaptation, and the intersection of climate change with human rights and animal welfare. She loves autumn, reading, and gardening.
I was back on my run through Madrid’s Casa de Campo, the 4,257 acre public park and preserve where I found Feature Creature inspiration in the form of a sickly hare a few weeks ago. After spending several minutes observing the hare, I continued as my run opened into a large clearing. A cinematic scene rolled out before me, as a red kite (milvus milvus), one of the hare’s natural predators, dropped out of an umbrella pine and flew off before me.
Maybe it was just my own naivety, but it was a special moment for me. You see, I’d run the park many times before, but rarely looked any further than the trail in front of me. Instead, this time I tried to pay attention to the web of life around me, and how each strand of it, living or not, connected with the others around it.
Take that red kite. It is an animal that works in service of its environment with a body and design that, in turn, work in near perfect service of it.
Nature’s cleanup crew
The red kite’s nesting range stretches in a broad band from the southern corner of Portugal, up through the Iberian Peninsula, central France, and Germany, before reaching the Baltic states. Smaller populations are also found in Mediterranean islands, coastal Italy, and the British Isles, where reintroduction campaigns in the 1980’s successfully revived its numbers.
They prefer to nest at the edge of woodlands, enabling quick and easy access to the open sky and landscape, not unlike how I look for an apartment within walking distance to the metro, or how a commuter in the suburbs might prefer to live a short drive from a highway or major thoroughfare on ramp. But wherever the red kite calls home, it has an important job to do.
The red kite is, first and foremost, a scavenger. Its diet consists primarily of carrion—dead animals, often livestock and game. By feeding on these carcasses, the red kite acts as a natural janitor and ultimately helps recycle nutrients back into the soil and surrounding environment.
When a scavenger like the red kite feasts on a dead animal, it kickstarts nature’s process for removing a carcass from (or to!) the environment. In feeding, they speed up the process of decomposition by physically breaking down the body and handing off a more manageable scene to smaller organisms like insects, bacteria, and fungi.
These insects and microbes release nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon into the soil as they break down the red kite’s leftovers. These nutrients enrich the soil, promoting plant growth, supporting other forms of life in the ecosystem, and maintaining essential geosystems.
It’s humbling. What seems brutal or grotesque—feasting on dead animals—is really an elegant solution from nature to each life’s inevitable end.
Plasticity
While foraged carrion can make up the majority of the red kite’s diet (upwards of 75%), it is also an agile and capable hunter of hares, birds, rodents, and lizards, respectably quick prey in their own right. A deeply forked tail acts like a rudder, providing precision flight control when on the hunt.
Red kite displaying its distinctive forked tail Stephen Noulta (CC via Pexels)
This remarkable agility serves another purpose: communication. The red kite pairs a variety of unique vocalizations with striking physical displays, especially during courtship. And man, on that front does it deliver. It’s as if, in a bid to outdo the more visually aesthetic displays of other birds like parrots and peacocks, the red kite said, “alright, I see your colorful feathers and raise you tandem, spiraling corkscrew dives.” It’s worth taking a few seconds to watch.
Red kites locked in a dive
This is all to say that the red kite is well-equipped to meet the demands of its environment, whether foraging or hunting. They have been observed changing their foraging behavior and diet based on food availability and changing environmental conditions. While this level of flexibility, or plasticity, is found among other raptors, what makes the red kite stand out in this regard is its success adapting to both rural and increasingly urbanized environments.
A connected, complicated story
It’s difficult to tell the story of the red kite without understanding the species’ relationship with us, with humans.
A natural & social scavenger, the red kite’s role in our story goes back almost as long as we’ve been hunting, practicing agriculture, and leaving waste in the streets. Our complex relationship spans centuries and reflects our evolving attitudes toward wildlife, shifting dynamics of human environments, and the species’ own plasticity. In the middle ages, the red kite was a common sight in European cities, and especially London, where it acted as a natural street cleaner, scavenging for scraps and waste in the then-squalid streets. In fact, it was protected by law, and harming one was a punishable offense, as its presence was crucial to maintaining urban sanitation.
Attitudes began to shift however as human settlements expanded and agricultural practices intensified. The birds came to be seen as vermin, threatening livestock and hunting game populations. This, combined with a broader adoption of poison to control other animals like foxes, led to a dramatic decline in red kite populations. By the turn of the 20th century, the red kite had been pushed to near extinction in many parts of Europe. As few as a handful of pairs were believed to have survived in remote parts of Wales.
But as part of larger, global conservation trends, red kite reintroduction programs took off in the 1980’s, particularly in the UK. These efforts were successful, with Royal Society for the Protection of Birds operations director Jeff Knott declaring that it “might be the biggest species success story in UK conservation history.”
As I’ve come to understand it, this recovery is not so much the end of a story, but the beginning of a new, equally complicated chapter in Europe’s story with the red kite. Bird populations have rebounded, and are now learning how to live in a densely populated, 21st century world. Ever the survivors, red kites are adapting to modern urban and semi-urban environments. In southern England, they’ve once again become a common sight, soaring over towns and cities as they did hundreds of years ago, and foraging for food in suburban gardens.
Red kites soar above Barton-le-clay, UK bitsandbugs (CC via iNaturalist)
Raised on a steady diet of Planet Earth, Animal Planet, and Nat Geo, I think it was easy to see “nature” as a separate thing we’re siloed off from in our built environments, something wonderful and to be safeguarded in a separate place, something we can enter and exit at our leisure. It’s evident even in the way we collectively discuss it. We talk about “being out in nature,” “escaping to the outdoors,” “getting away from it all.”
And sometimes it takes a bird like the red kite to remind you that nature doesn’t exist separately from us. The red kite doesn’t necessarily see the Iberian savannah as any more or less wild than a British village. Where there is any life, there is an ecosystem.
Running to catch the next creature, Brendan
BrendanKelly began his career teaching conservation education programs at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. He is interested in how the intersection of informal education, mass communications and marketing can be retooled to drive relatable, accessible climate action. While he loves all ecosystems equally, he is admittedly partial to those in the alpine.
What seemingly cute, small creature is, in fact, a terrifying killer that drills a hole into their prey, liquifies it, and then sucks it out like a smoothie?
Have you ever noticed those shells at the beach with perfectly round holes in them? I’ve always wondered how they end up like that. I thought, “surely it is not a coincidence that jewelry-ready shells are left in the sand for a craft-lover like me.” Amazingly, the neat holes are the work of the moon snail.
Take a look at holes made by the moon snail; maybe you’ve seen them before too.
The Small Snowplows of the Ocean
The moon snail is a predatory sea snail from the Naticidae family, named for the half-moon shaped opening on the underside of its globular shell. They are smooth and shiny and come in a variety of colors and patterns depending on the species: white, gray, brown, blue, or orange, with different spiral bands or waves. The size of moon snails also varies by species, ranging from as small as a marble to as large as a baseball. To traverse the ocean floor, moon snails use a big, fleshy foot to burrow through the sand. They pump water into the foot’s hollow sinuses to expand it in front of and over the shell, making it easier to travel along the ocean floor, like a snowplow. (Or should we call it a sand plow?)
Northern Moonsnail, Euspira heros (Image Credit: Cassidy Best via iNaturalist)Lewis’s Moon Snail, Neverita lewisii (Image Credit: BrewBooks, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)
Moon snails live in various saltwater habitats along the coast of North America. A diversity of species can be found along both the Atlantic Coast between Canada down to North Carolina, and the Pacific Coast from British Columbia down to Baja California, Mexico. They live on silty, sandy substrates at a variety of depths depending on the species, from the intertidal zone and shallow waters below the tidemark to muddy bottoms off the coast 500 meters deep (about 1640 feet, which is greater than the height of the Empire State Building!). You might find a moon snail during a full moon, when the tide is higher and more seashells wash up on shore, plowing through the sand looking for its next meal.
Northern Moonsnail, Euspira heros (Image Credit: Ian Manning via iNaturalist)
When a moon snail fills its muscular foot with water, it can almost cover its entire shell!
Lewis’s Moon Snail, Neverita lewisii (Image Credit: Ed Bierman via Wikimedia Commons)
The moon snail is part of a taxonomic class called Gastropoda, which describes a group of animals that includes snails, slugs, and nudibranchs. The word gastropod comes from Greek and translates to “stomach foot.” The moon snail is a part of this belly-crawler club because it has a foot that runs along the underside of its belly that it uses to get around!
What’s on the menu? Clam chowder!
What does the moon snail eat? These ocean invertebrates prey primarily on other mollusks that share their habitat, like clams and mussels. They use chemoreception (a process by which organisms respond to chemical stimuli in their environment) to locate a mollusk and envelop it in their inflated foot, dragging it farther into the sand.
Nearly all gastropods have a radula (think of a tongue with a lot of tiny, sharp teeth) that they use to consume smaller pieces of food or scrape algae off rocks. Moon snails are different. After their prey is captured, moon snails use their radula to grind away at a spot on their prey’s shell. With the help of enzymes and acids secreted from glands on the bottom of their foot, they drill completely through the shell of their victim at a rate of half a millimeter per day. Once the drilling is complete, moon snails inject digestive fluids into the mollusk, liquefying its innards, and slurp up the chowder inside with their tubular proboscis. The entire process takes about four to five days. Vicious, right? And what is even more brutal is that sometimes, moon snails are cannibalistic!
What role does the moon snail play in its environment?
Phytoplankton and algae form the foundation of the marine food web, providing food and energy to the entire ecosystem of sea creatures. Organisms that fall prey to moon snails, like clams and mussels, consume this microscopic algae, as well as other bacteria and plant detritus. The moon snail is a vital link in this interconnected food chain because not only is it important prey for predators like crabs, lobsters, and shorebirds, but it also provides these organisms with energy and key nutrients. Through decomposition, moon snails’ feces, dead bodies, and shells become nutrients for producers like phytoplankton and algae.
Unfortunately, many things can harm moon snails and their habitats. Meteorological events like hurricanes can cause fluctuations in the species’ abundance. During heatwaves, when record high temperatures combine with extreme low tides like the one in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, moon snails can become extended from their shells, leading to desiccation and death.
The Earth’s temperature has risen at a rate of approximately 0.2°C per decade since 1982, making 2023 the warmest year since global records began in 1850. If yearly greenhouse gas emissions continue to rapidly increase, the global temperature will be at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer and possibly as much as 10.2 degrees warmer by 2100. This continuous increase in temperature puts not just moon snails but humans and the Earth’s biodiversity at large at risk, not only because of more frequent heat waves, but because oceans are becoming more acidic as the water absorbs excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As reporter Hari Sreenivasan explained in the PBS NewsHour report, Acidifying Waters Corrode Northwest Shellfish, ocean acidification affects shellfish a lot like how osteoporosis causes bones to become brittle in humans. The increasing acidity in the ocean reduces the amount of carbonate in the seawater, making it more difficult for moon snails and other shellfish to build and maintain strong calcium carbonate shells.
Colorful Moon Snail, Naticarius canrena (Image Credit: Joe Tomoleoni via iNaturalist)
Human activities also threaten marine creatures like moon snails. Shoreline hardening, aquaculture operations, and water management disturbs the food web and drives species towards extinction. Building structures on the shore to protect against erosion, storm surge, and sea level rise; projects such as geoduck farming; and creating dams and other water diversions disrupts animal communities and results in considerable habitat change. Fortunately, there are environmentally friendly alternatives, like living shorelines. These use plants and other natural features like rocks and shells to stabilize sediments, absorb wave energy, and protect against erosion.
What can you do to protect these clam-chowing sand plows and the biodiversity of the marine sediment?
One thing you can do to help moon snails is protect their egg casings. In the summer, more moon snails emerge in the shallow, intertidal habitats because it’s time for them to breed. To lay eggs, the female moon snail covers her entire foot in a thick layer of sand that she cements together with mucus. After laying tiny eggs on top, she sandwiches them between another layer of sand and detaches herself from the firm, gelatinous egg mass and leaves them to hatch in a few weeks. These collar-shaped egg casings can sometimes look like pieces of plastic or trash, so make sure you don’t pick them up and throw them away!
Moon snails can be found washed up on dry parts of the beach as well as in submerged parts of sand flats during low tide. If you pick up a moon snail, remember to put it back in the water so it doesn’t dry out in the sun.
The biodiversity in the marine sediment rivals even coral reefs and tropical rainforests. The organisms that live in this part of the ocean and the services they provide are essential for life on Earth. They cycle nutrients, break down pollutants, filter water, and feed commercial species like cod and scallop that humans eat all the time. Historical fishing activities, bottom trawling, habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, food web modification, and invasive species threaten biodiversity, functions, and services of marine sedimentary habitats. While there are many unknowns and ongoing threats to ocean life, that also means there are more opportunities for research and discovery that can inform effective ocean conservation policies. Supporting these policies that protect oceans and marine life is a way to protect moon snails too.
In ecology, there is a principle that suggests that each ecological niche is occupied by a distinct organism uniquely suited to it. This means organisms exist everywhere, and they have evolved to exist in these places in specific ways. The moon snail’s unique characteristics – notably the way it uses its radula to drill into its prey – shows us that in almost any niche, the organism which occupies it has similarly adapted to optimize its place in that habitat. I’m curious to learn what other unique traits organisms have evolved to adapt to their unique niche.
Off to shell-ebrate the beauty of our oceans and their creatures,
Abigail
Abigail Gipson is an environmental advocate with a bachelor’s degree in humanitarian studies from Fordham University. Working to protect the natural world and its inhabitants, Abigail is specifically interested in environmental protection, ecosystem-based adaptation, and the intersection of climate change with human rights and animal welfare. She loves autumn, reading, and gardening.
This sea creature was thought to be extinct for 65 million years before it was rediscovered in 1938. Ancient and rare, the coelacanth is a fish so named from its fossil. Scientists knew this fish once existed but never expected to find it alive in the depths of the ocean. The coelacanth (pronounced seel-a-canth) is about 200 pounds and can grow to over 6.5 feet in length. Two species exist today – the Indonesian coelacanth (Latimeria menadoensis) and the African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae).
Anatomy
Coelacanth is derived from Latin and means “hollow spine” due to their hollow caudal fin rays. They have thick scales giving them an ancient appearance.These fish lack boney vertebrae. Instead, they have a notochord which is a fluid-filled rod beneath the spinal cord. Coelacanths also use a rostral organ to detect the electrical impulses of nearby prey much like stingrays and sharks. Most distinctive is the coelacanth’s limb-like pectoral fins that appear more like an arm than a fin. The coelacanth has a very unique anatomy. No other fish on Earth possesses these special features.
The next discovery of a live coelacanth came in 1952 – 14 years after the first revelation. But why did it take so long for another fish to be caught? Coelacanths live at great very deep depths, often over 500 feet beneath the surface of the ocean. When they venture into shallower waters, they tend to do so at night. Coelacanths are nocturnal predators.They hide under rock formations and in caves until nightfall when they emerge to hunt other fish, crabs, eels, and squid.They use their hinged skull which enlarges their gape to swallow prey.
Population
The IUCN has listed the coelacanth as critically endangered. It is estimated that only 500 coelacanths exist today. Although not considered an edible fish, as its meat is too oily for consumption, the coelacanth still falls prey to deep-sea fishing nets. If caught as by-catch, coelacanths can die from the stress. These threats can deeply affect the population because coelacanths have an unusually long gestation period of three years – the longest of any vertebrate species. Such factors make coelacanths extremely vulnerable to extinction.
The story of the coelacanth proves there is always more to discover. Biodiversity fosters a sense of curiosity about the endless possibilities of the natural world.
I wonder, if a creature like this still exists, what other species remain unknown to humanity?
Swimming away for now, Joely
Joely Hart is a wildlife enthusiast writing to inspire curiosity about Earth’s creatures. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Central Florida and has a special interest in obscure, lesser-known species.
The bearded vulture (Gypaetus Barbatus) is a bird of prey known by many names including lammergeier, quebrantahuesos, boanbrüchl, and ossifrage.
The origin of these monikers come from the bird’s unique diet – bones. While most vultures pick off the meat on a carcass, the bearded vulture prefers to consume the skeleton itself. Over 80% of their diet consists solely of bones.
Weighing in at about 16 pounds and equipped with a wingspan of over 9 feet, bearded vultures are among the top ten largest birds of prey in the world. They use their substantial size to hoist the bone of their choice from the skeleton to the sky. They fly high enough to drop it onto a clifftop or boulder to break the bone into smaller, bite-sized pieces which they then swallow whole.
What makes these birds capable of digesting bone is the strength of their stomach acid. Bearded vultures have a stomach acid of nearly zero pH. This extreme acidity dissolves bone within 24 hours. To put this in perspective, humans have a stomach acid pH of about 2 while battery acid has a pH of about 0.8. Bearded vultures are the only carnivores capable of completely digesting bone.
Bearded vultures appear different from most other vultures due to the lack of a bald head. Most vultures are known for having no feathers around their head and neck which helps them remain clean when scavenging carrion. Bearded vultures, because of their chosen bone-based diet, do not need this adaptation, and sport a feathered head. Adults have white feathers along their body, chest, and face while their wings are dark brown. Black tufts protrude from their chin which gives them their modern namesake of bearded vulture.
Bearded vultures have large, glacier-white eyes that help them spot carcasses from the sky. As Old World vultures, their sense of smell is not advanced and they rely primarily on their eyesight when scavenging. When threatened or excited, the scleral ring around their eyes turns a bright red.
Bearded vultures have a unique propensity for the color red, so much so that they dye their white feathers a rusty vermilion. These birds will seek iron-oxide rich pools of muddy water or dust and bathe in it to color themselves a red-orange hue. Researchers are unsure of why they do this. Some posit that it is a sign of status – the redder the bird, the higher the seniority. Others believe the iron-oxide coloring helps prevent infections when breeding. Whatever the reason, bearded vultures paint themselves into a real-life phoenix.
Bearded vultures call the mountainous regions of Eurasia, East Africa, and parts of the Middle East their home. They prefer to live in areas that grant them the best visibility such as remote mountain ranges, steppes, canyons, and alpine valleys.
These birds tend to fly at high altitudes of about 6,500 feet above sea level. They utilize updrafts to ride the air currents which helps them conserve energy and glide for many miles.
In the early 1900s bearded vultures were hunted in Europe due to a false myth that they supposedly preyed upon children and livestock. The population in this area declined and is still recovering today. Currently, humans are the greatest threat to bearded vultures as habitat loss and poisoning endanger the remaining populations. The species is listed as near threatened by the IUCN.
Bearded vultures are an incredibly important species for the ecosystem because they act as nature’s garbage disposal. They help clean the environment of carcasses and diseases which keeps other species healthy.
Soaring away for now, Joely
Joely Hart is a wildlife enthusiast writing to inspire curiosity about Earth’s creatures. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Central Florida and has a special interest in obscure, lesser-known species.
Blue whales are the largest creature to ever grace this Earth. They can grow to around 100 ft (33 meters), which is more than twice the size of a T-Rex dinosaur! Newborn calves are around the same size as an adult African elephant – about 23 ft (7 meters). To get more of an idea of how huge these animals are, picture this: a blue whale’s heart is the size of a car, and their blood vessels are so wide a person can swim through them!
Despite their large size, blue whales eat tiny organisms. Their favorite food is krill, small shrimp-like creatures. They can eat up to 40 million of these every day. They do so by opening their mouths really wide, and after getting a mouthful, they’ll close their mouths and force out the swallowed water with their tongue, while trapping the krill behind their baleen plates – this method is known as filter feeding.
Blue whales live in every ocean except the Arctic. They usually travel alone or in small groups of up to four, but when there are plenty of krill to go around, more than 60 of these mega-creatures will gather around and feast.
Blue whales can communicate across 1,000 miles (over 1600 km)! Their calls are loud and deep, reaching up to 188 decibels – so loud that it would be too painful for human ears to bear. Scientists believe that these calls produce sonar – helping the whales navigate through dark ocean depths.
Climate Regulator
All that krill has to go somewhere, meaning out the other end. Whale poop helps maintain the health of oceans by fertilizing microscopic plankton. Plankton is the bedrock of all sea life, as it feeds the smallest of critters, and these critters then feed larger creatures (and on goes the food chain). Plankton include algae and cyanobacteria that get their energy through photosynthesis, and they are abundant throughout Earth’s oceans. These microorganisms contribute to carbon storage by promoting the cycling of carbon in the ocean, rather than its emission in the form of carbon dioxide. Without whales, we wouldn’t have as much plankton, and without plankton, the food cycle would collapse, and more gas would rise to the atmosphere. Therefore, whale poop acts as a climate stabilizer.
Learn more about this whale-based nutrient cycle here:
Size doesn’t equal protection
Unfortunately, the sheer size of blue whales isn’t enough to prevent them from harm. Blue whales were heavily hunted until last century, and although a global ban was imposed in 1966, they are still considered endangered.
Today, blue whales must navigate large and cumbersome fishing gear. When they get entangled, the gear attached to them can cause severe injury. Dragging all that gear adds a lot of weight, so this also zaps their energy sources. Since blue whales communicate through calls intended to travel long distances, increased ocean noise either from ships or underwater military tests can also disrupt their natural behaviors.
Another threat blue whales face are vessel strikes. They can swim up to 20 miles an hour, but only for short bursts. Usually, blue whales travel at a steady pace of 5 miles per hour. This means that they aren’t fast enough to dodge incoming vessels, and these collisions can lead to injuries or even death for the whales. In areas where traffic is high, such as ports and shipping lanes, this threat becomes even more prominent.
To protect blue whales, and our oceans, we can implement sustainable fishing practices that use marine mammal-friendly gear. We can also reduce man-made noise, and utilize precautionary measures when venturing out to sea. That way we avoid vessel strikes and have a higher chance of witnessing the largest creature to ever grace our planet.
For creatures big, bigger, and biggest, Tania
Tania graduated from Tufts University with a Master of Science in Animals and Public Policy. Her academic research projects focused on wildlife conservation efforts, and the impacts that human activities have on wild habitats. As a writer and activist, Tania emphasizes the connections between planet, human, and animal health. She is a co-founder of the podcast Closing the Gap, and works on outreach and communications for Sustainable Harvest International. She loves hiking, snorkeling, and advocating for social justice.
In the vast expanses of the world’s oceans, a symphony of moans, cries, and howls fills the water, echoing across great distances. This stunning serenade is the song of the humpback whale, one of the most majestic creatures to grace the seas.
Scientifically known as Megaptera novaeangliae, the humpback whale derives its common name from the distinctive hump on its back. With dark backs, light bellies, and long pectoral fins that resemble wings, these whales are a sight to behold. Their Latin name, signifying “big wing of New England,” pays homage to those impressive pectoral fins and early encounters European whalers had with these graceful giants off the coast of New England.
Humpback whales are renowned for their enchanting songs, which echo through the ocean depths for great distances. These compositions, which consist of moans, howls, and cries, are among the longest and most complex in the animal kingdom. Scientists speculate that these melodic masterpieces serve as a means of communication and courtship, with male humpbacks serenading potential mates during the breeding season for minutes to hours at a time. Songs have also been observed during coastal migrations and hunts. Many artists have taken inspiration from these songs, and you can even listen to eight-hour mixes of them to help you get to sleep. Check it out:
Another marvel of the humpback are their awe-inspiring displays of acrobatics, from flipper slapping to full-body breaching. Despite their colossal size, these creatures display remarkable agility and grace. With lengths of up to 62.5 feet (19m, or one school bus!) and weights of 40 tons (40,000 kg), humpback whales are true behemoths of the ocean.
Life on the move
Life for a humpback whale is a tale of two halves—a perpetual journey between polar feeding grounds and tropical breeding waters. These remarkable migrations span thousands of miles and rank as one of the longest animal migrations on the planet, and the longest among mammals.
Feasting on plankton, krill, and small schooling fish, humpback whales are skilled hunters, capable of consuming up to 1,360 kilograms of food per day. Employing innovative techniques such as bubble-netting and kick-feeding, they ensnare their prey with precision and efficiency. Generally these whales stay in small and dynamic groups, and they use their social intelligence and coordination to orchestrate these group hunting mechanisms.
Ecological powerhouses
Humpback whales’ feeding and movement contributes to more than just their own wellbeing. As these majestic creatures feed on zooplankton, copepods, and other food sources in the oceans’ depths, and subsequently ascend to the surface, they disrupt the thermocline—a boundary between surface and deep waters—facilitating greater mixing of ocean layers. This enhanced mixing fosters increased nutrient availability, benefiting a myriad of marine organisms.
They also cycle nutrients through their own consumption and excretion, contributing to a phenomenon known as the “biological pump.” These whales ingest biomass and nutrients from microscopic and small macroscopic organisms in deeper waters, digest it, and excrete their own waste in large macroscopic fecal plumes on the ocean’s surface. This cyclical process effectively transports nutrients from the ocean depths back to the surface, replenishing vital elements such as nitrogen for algae and phytoplankton growth. In regions like the Gulf of Maine, the nitrogen influx from whale feces surpasses that of all nearby rivers combined, underscoring the profound impact of these marine giants on nutrient cycling. Finally, when a whale’s life has come to an end, its own massive body sinks to the ocean floor and countless organisms are nourished by it in the decomposition process.
Understanding the multifaceted lives and roles of humpback whales underscores the urgency of their conservation. Historically valued solely for commercial exploitation, these majestic creatures now emerge as essential components of oceanic ecosystems. Though humpback whales have faced centuries of exploitation and habitat degradation, concerted conservation efforts offer hope for their survival, not only safeguarding whales themselves but also preserving the intricate ecological processes that sustain marine life and biodiversity.
Whales continue to face threats from ship collisions, entanglement in fishing gear, noise pollution, and the disruption of habitat for their food sources due to trawling, pollution, and encroachment. But strong advocacy has brought these creatures back from the brink before, and our conservation and restoration work can safeguard the future of these enchanting giants and ensure that their songs continue to echo through the seas for generations to come.
Take a look at Sir David Attenborough’s tale of their resurgence and beauty:
May we steward the ocean with love and care,
Maya
Maya Dutta is an environmental advocate and ecosystem restorer working to spread understanding on the key role of biodiversity in shaping the climate and the water, carbon, nutrient and energy cycles we rely on. She is passionate about climate change adaptation and mitigation and the ways that community-led ecosystem restoration can fight global climate change while improving the livelihood and equity of human communities. Having grown up in New York City and lived in cities all her life, Maya is interested in creating more natural infrastructure, biodiversity, and access to nature and ecological connection in urban areas.
What furry feline has stealthy skills, built-in snow gear, and a surprising screech?
The Canada lynx!
Photo by Kevin Pepper
The Canada lynx, also known as Lynx canadensis or the Inuktut name of ᐱᖅᑐᖅᓯᕋᖅ (‘piqtuqsiraq’), is a charismatic mammal of the Northernmost parts of North America. This furry, fierce cousin of the bobcat can be found in Canada, of course, as well as Alaska and in some parts of Northern Maine.
This forest feline may resemble a larger version of a housecat, but its predatory prowess is nothing short of formidable. With a heavy coat of fur, including distinctive tufts at its ears and a short, black-tipped tail, large paws that help navigate snowy terrain, and excellent vision and hearing, the Canada lynx is extremely well adapted to its environment.
Photo by Laura Lorman from National Wildlife Federation
Prime Predator
In terms of physical attributes and behavior, the Canada lynx possesses exceptional senses, including large eyes and acute hearing, making it an adept nocturnal hunter. In fact, they are able to detect prey in the darkness from as far as 250 feet (76 m) away.
Although not known for speed, these stealthy predators rely on their knack for stealth. They often lie in wait, concealed in strategic hiding spots, before making a calculated pounce on unsuspecting prey. Patiently biding their time for hours on end is not uncommon in their pursuit of sustenance.
Exhibiting a very specific carnivorous diet, these lynxes primarily subsist on snowshoe hares, and fluctuations in hare populations directly correlate with the rise and fall of lynx numbers. When it is available, a single lynx might consume an entire hare for a meal, storing remnants for later consumption. In the absence of hares, they resort to hunting small mammals, birds, and occasionally larger prey such as caribou.
Photo from Shuttershock
Suited to the snow
Characterized by a compact body, diminutive tail, and elongated legs, the Canada lynx sports a dense, lengthy, and gray fur coat during winter, while transitioning to a shorter, lighter brown coat in summer. Their facial appearance appears broad due to elongated fur patches extending from their cheeks that can give the appearance of a two-pronged beard. They also sport distinctive black-tipped, bobbed tails and elongated tufts on their triangular ears.
Closely resembling the southern-dwelling bobcat, the key difference lies in their tails— the Canada lynx boasts completely black-tipped tails compared to the bobcat’s tail that features a white ring below the black tip. Moreover, the lynx’s sizable, heavily furred paws act as natural snowshoes, with a high surface area to support their movement over deep snow, aiding their mobility during winter hunts.
Residing across forested regions spanning Canada, Alaska, and certain parts of the contiguous United States, Canada lynxes prefer making dens under fallen trees, tree stumps, rock formations, or dense vegetation. These territorial animals are mostly solitary, particularly with male lynxes leading an almost entirely solitary existence.
Photo from National Geographic
However, young lynxes stay in the care of their mothers for about a year, and some females have been observed living and hunting in pairs, raising questions for scientists about the social behavior of these big cats. Recently, a team of researchers has begun delving into the social lives of lynxes by tracking their vocalizations. And whether or not you are engaged in studying lynx populations, it’s well worth checking out the haunting sounds of the lynx call:
Big Cats of the Boreal
The Canada lynx, a native denizen of the expansive Boreal Forest, relies heavily on this vast and biodiverse habitat for survival. The boreal ecosystem, characterized by its dense forests of coniferous trees, provides the ideal cover and sustenance for these elusive predators. The lynx thrives amidst the rich tapestry of dense vegetation, fallen trees, and rocky outcrops, creating a mosaic of hiding spots and denning sites crucial for their survival. However, threats to the Boreal Forest, including deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and climate change, pose significant risks to the Canada lynx population.
Deforestation for logging, mining, and human settlement disrupts the lynx’s habitat, diminishing their hunting grounds and safe havens. Fragmentation of the forest reduces connectivity between lynx populations, affecting genetic diversity and hindering their ability to roam and find suitable mates. Climate change exacerbates these issues, altering the boreal ecosystem and impacting prey availability, which is pivotal for the lynx’s sustenance. The cumulative effect of these threats imperils the Canada lynx, highlighting the urgent need for conservation efforts to safeguard both the lynx and its vital habitat in the Boreal Forest, which in turn plays an essential role regulating the carbon and water cycles and overall stability of our climate.
The Canada lynx is more than just an example of might and physical prowess in nature. A true embodiment of the northern forests, these elusive creatures and their unique lifestyle are treasures of the wild. Let us work for ecological integrity in all forests and ecosystems, Boreal and beyond.
For my fellow cat lovers,
Maya
Maya Dutta is an environmental advocate and ecosystem restorer working to spread understanding on the key role of biodiversity in shaping the climate and the water, carbon, nutrient and energy cycles we rely on. She is passionate about climate change adaptation and mitigation and the ways that community-led ecosystem restoration can fight global climate change while improving the livelihood and equity of human communities. Having grown up in New York City and lived in cities all her life, Maya is interested in creating more natural infrastructure, biodiversity, and access to nature and ecological connection in urban areas.
You’ve never heard of Pando? Neither had I, till Paula Phipps here at Bio4Climate suggested it as a Featured Creature!
Pando is a 108-acre forest of quaking aspens in Utah, thousands of years old, in which all of the trees are genetically identical! These trees are all branches on a shared root system that is thousands of years old, so the whole forest is one single organism!
Known as the “Trembling Giant,” Pando is more than just your average arbor. It’s so unique it has a name. In a sense, Pando “redefines trees,” says Lance Oditt, who directs the nonprofit Friends of Pando (you will see his name on some of the photos in this piece). Pando also has symbolic significance to many people. Former First Lady of California Maria Shriver puts it this way: “Pando means I belong to you, you belong to me, we belong to each other.”
Aerial outline of Pando, with Fish Lake in the foreground. Lance Oditt/Friends of Pando (Wikimedia Commons)
Pando (Latin for “I spread”) is a single clonal organism, i.e., it is one unified plant representing one individual male quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides). This living organism was identified as a single creature because its parts possess identical genes with a unitary massively-interconnected underground root system. This plant is located in the Fremont River Ranger District of the Fishlake National Forest in south-central Utah, United States, around 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of Fish Lake. Pando occupies 108 acres (43.6 ha) and is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000 tonnes (6,000,000 kg), making it the heaviest known organism on earth.
Its age has been estimated at between 10,000 and 80,000 years, since there is no way to assess it with any precision due to the irrelevance of branch core samples to the age of the whole creature. Its size, weight, and prehistoric age have given it worldwide fame. These trees not only cover 108 acres of national forestland, but weigh a shocking six million kilograms (13 million pounds). This makes Pando the most massive genetically distinct organism. However, the title for the largest organism goes to “the humongous fungus,” a network of dark honey fungus (Armillaria ostoyae) in Oregon that covers an amazing 2,200 acres. I had no idea such single living organisms could exist! I was instantaneously intrigued, and wanted to learn more about this curious entity.
Deer eating Pando shoots. (Lance Oditt/Friends of Pando)
Pando is also in trouble, because older branches (since it is not composed of individual “trees” despite its appearance, but sprouts from one extensive root system) are not being replaced by young shoots to perpetuate the organism. The reason is difficult to determine, between issues of drought, human development, aging, excessive grazing by herbivores (cattle, elk and deer), and fire suppression (as fire benefits aspens). The forest is being studied, and fencing has been put up around most of the area to prevent browsing animals from entering the forest and eating up the young shoots sprouting from this unified root system. Scientists believe that both the ongoing management of this area and uncontrolled foraging by wild and domestic animals have had deeply adverse effects on Pando’s long-term resilience. Overgrazing by deer and elk has become one of the biggest worries. Wolves and cougars once kept the numbers in check of these herbivores, but their herds are now much larger because of the loss of such apex predators. These game species also tend to congregate around Pando as they have learned that they are not in any danger of being hunted in this protected woodland.
An Epic History
Despite its fame today, the Pando tree was not even identified until 1976. The clone was re-examined in 1992 and named Pando, recognized as a single asexual entity based on its morphological characteristics, and described as the world’s largest organism by weight. In 2006 the U.S. Postal Service honored the Pando Clone with a commemorative stamp as one of the “40 Wonders of America.”
Genetic sampling and analysis in 2008 increased the clone’s estimated size from 43.3 to 43.6 hectares. The first complete assessment of Pando’s status was conducted in 2018 with a new understanding of the importance of reducing herbivory by mule deer and elk to protect the future of Pando. These findings were also reinforced with further research in 2019. But Pando is constantly changing its shape and form, moving in any direction the sun and soil conditions create advantages. Any place a branch comes up is a new hub that can send the tree in a new direction. If you visit the tree and see new stems, you are witnessing the tree moving or “spreading” out in that direction.
Botanists Burton Barnes and Jerry Kemperman were the first to identify Pando as a single organism after examining aerial photographs and conducting land delineation (basically, tracking its borders). They revealed their groundbreaking discovery in a 1976 paper.
Today, perhaps the person who knows the most about Pando’s genetics is Karen Mock, a molecular ecologist at Utah State University in Logan. She and three other scientists ground the aspen’s leaves into a fine powder and then extracted DNA from the dried samples. “When we started our research, I was expecting that it wouldn’t be one single clone,” as is the case with other systems, Mock says. “I was wrong. Pando is a ginormous single clone.” They published their findings in a 2008 study. The group also confirmed that this quaking giant is male, creates pollen and constantly regenerates itself by sending new branches up from its root system in a process called “suckering.”
“The original seed started out about the same size as an aphid,” Mock says. “It’s tiny, and to think that it started this one little tree, its roots spreading and sending up suckers to become one vast single clone.” For context, Pando’s current size is about 10-11 times bigger than that!
Their research has forever changed the way that the scientific community approaches Pando and helped raise public awareness of this unique clone growing in southern Utah while providing it additional protection. For example, Friends of Pando has fixed numerous broken fences that were allowing deer access to the tree.
A wintry vista on Monroe Mountain gives us an idea of what the land the Pando Seed sat down in may have looked like (Lance Oditt/Friends of Pando)
Speculating about how Pando started, biologists have woven a rough image of its early origins. They describe Pando as a tree that transcends nearly every concept of trees and natural classifications we have today. Pando is simultaneously the heaviest tree, the largest tree by land mass, and the largest quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides). A masterpiece of botanical imagination, how Pando came to be is even more improbable than the challenge of classifying it. One possibility is that on one of the first warm spring days of the year, thousands of years after the last ice age, a single Aspen seed floating 9,000 feet in the sky came to rest on the southeastern edge of the Fishlake Basin, a land littered with massive volcanic boulders, split apart along an active fault line, carved by glaciers, littered with mineral rich glacial till and shaped by landslides and torrential snow melts that continue to this day.
But what would appear to be a wasteland to the untrained eye made for a perfect home for the Pando seed. This was a prime location along the steep side of a spreading fault zone that provides water drainage to the lake below and a barren landscape with rich soil laid down by glaciers. Therefore this was a place where the light-hungry Pando seed would face no competition for sunlight. Underground, a tumultuous geologic landscape favored Pando’s sideways moving roots system over other native trees that prefer to dig down.
If we were to see the first branch of Pando, we might think nothing of it, not knowing what was in store for this organism with the ability to grow up to 3 feet per year. Those first years, any number of disasters could have destroyed the tree altogether.
In fact, for Pando to exist at all, at least one disaster likely set the tree on a new course that created the tree we know today. As a male tree, Pando only produces pollen so, to advance itself over the land, Pando has to replicate itself by sending up new stems from its root, a process called suckering. Probably at some time during those first 150 years of Pando’s life, something disrupted the growth hormones underground and within its trunk, creating an imbalance so Pando began to sucker. Although there’s no way to tell what that force was, we do know that was the moment Pando started to self-propagate, to spread both across the land and toward us in time. And today, that one tree has become a lattice-work of roots and stems that a rough field estimate indicates would conceivably be able to stretch as far as 12,000 miles or about halfway around the world.
Opinions do seem to vary on different estimates of Pando’s real weight and age. One source said Pando’s collective weight was 13 million pounds, double the estimate stated above, with the root system of these aspens believed to have been born from a single seed at the end of the last major ice age (about 2.6 million years ago). As we cannot measure Pando’s true age, we are left with intelligent guesses. This reminds me of what I often jestfully say might be an academic’s ideal state of mind, to be “unencumbered by facts or information and thus free to theorize”!
While Pando is the largest known aspen clone, other large and old clones exist, so Pando is not totally unique. According to a 2000 OECD report, clonal groups of Populus tremuloides in eastern North America are very common, but generally less than 0.1 hectare in size, while in areas of Utah, groups as large as 80 hectares have been observed. The age of this species is difficult to establish with any precision. In the western United States, some argue that widespread seedling establishment has not occurred since the last glaciation, some 10,000 years ago, but some biologists think these western clones could be as much as 1 million years old.
Pando encompasses 108 acres, weighs nearly 6,000 metric tons, and has over 40,000 stems or trunks, which die individually and are replaced by new stems growing from its roots. The root system is estimated to be several thousand years old with habitat modeling suggesting a maximum age of 14,000 years, but others estimate it as much older than that. Individual aspen stems typically do not live beyond 100–130 years and mature areas within Pando are approaching this limit. Indeed, the worry is that there are so few younger stems surviving that the whole organism is being placed at risk. This is why the scientists are trying to restrict herbivore access to this protected area.
A 72 year aerial photo chronosequence showing forest cover change within the Pando aspenclone. Base images courtesy of USDA Aerial Photography Field Office, Salt Lake City, Utah
This ancient giant, however, has been shrinking since the 1960s or 70s. This timing is no coincidence. As human activity has grown in the western United States, so has our impact on the surrounding ecosystems. The biggest factor behind this shrinking is a lack of “new recruits.” The shoots that form from Pando’s ancient rootstock are not making it to maturity. Instead, they are being eaten while they are still small, soft, and nutritious. Mule deer are the main culprits. Cattle are also allowed to browse in this forest for brief intervals every year, and the combined herbivory has thwarted Pando’s efforts to keep up with old dying trees.
These changes have led to a thinning of the forest. One study used aerial imagery to identify these changes, showing that Pando isn’t regenerating in the way that it should. Researchers assessed 65 plots that had been subjected to varying degrees of human efforts to protect the grove: some plots had been surrounded by a fence, some had been fenced in and regulated through interventions like shrub removal and selective tree cutting, and some were untouched. The team tracked the number of living and dead trees, along with the number of new stems. Researchers also examined animal feces to determine how species that graze in Fishlake National Forest might be impacting Pando’s health.
The problem is that with enough loss of old trees, the grove will lose its ability to regenerate. A dense forest can feed its roots with fuel from photosynthesis, and is able to send up new shoots regularly. But as it loses leaves and their photosynthetic capability, it can start to shrink.
A map showing the extent of Pando as well as recent fencing installations to protect its growth Image courtesy of Paul Rogers and Darren McAvoy, St. George News
As part of this new study, the team analyzed aerial photographs of Pando taken over the past 72 years (see previous image above with photos from 1939 to 2011). These impressions drive home the grove’s dire state. In the late 1930s, the crowns of the trees were touching. But over the past 30 to 40 years, gaps begin to appear within the forest, indicating that new trees aren’t cropping up to replace the ones that have died. And that isn’t great news for the animals and plants that depend on the trees to survive, researcher Paul C. Rogers said in a statement.
Fortunately, all is not lost. There are ways that humans can intervene to give Pando the time it needs to get back on track, among them culling voracious deer and putting up better fencing to keep the animals away from saplings. As Rogers says, “It would be a shame to witness the significant reduction of this iconic forest when reversing this decline is realizable should we demonstrate the will to do so.”
Though it seems easy to blame these changes on deer, the real blame still lies with us humans. Throughout the 20th century, deer populations have been hugely impacted by humans. Human impacts on ecosystems are complex and far-reaching. A major problem is the lack of apex predators in the area; in the early 1900s, humans aggressively hunted animals like wolves, mountain lions and grizzly bears, which helped keep mule deer in check. And much of the fencing that was erected to protect Pando isn’t working: mule deer, it seems, are able to jump over the fences. So we need to monitor all ecosystems to understand how they respond to human activity if we are to minimize damage, and take steps to compensate for the imbalances we create.
The aspen clone is one of the largest living organisms on the planet. (Lance Oditt/Friends of Pando)
Though it is hotly contested by ranchers wanting to protect their cattle, wolf reintroduction is ongoing in the West. Hunting is also regulated by federal and state agencies, which artificially adjust deer populations. The effects of these changes are not always immediately apparent. Forest managers do their best to replicate historical levels and manage new threats.
However, we lack good historical data on herbivory in Pando or many other surrounding areas. Controlling herbivory with more hunting is one remedial option. Reduced cattle grazing in the grove has also been suggested by researchers.
Reproduction and Threats
As mentioned, the asexual reproductive process for this entity is not like that of a regular forest. An individual stem sends out lateral roots that, under the right conditions, send up other erect stems which look just like individual trees. The process is then repeated until a whole stand, of what appear to be individual trees, forms. These collections of multiple stems, called ramets, all together form one, single, genetic individual, usually termed a clone. Thus, although it looks like a woodland of individual trees, with striking white bark and small leaves that flutter in the slightest breeze, they are one entity all linked together underground by a single complex system of roots.
Lance Oditt demonstrates how to use a 360-degree camerafor the Pando Photographic Survey. As of July, Oditt and his team had taken around 7,300 photos (Credit: Tonia Lewis)
A healthy aspen grove can replace dying trees with young saplings. As dying trees clear the canopy, more sunlight makes it to the forest floor, where young shoots can take advantage of the opening to rapidly grow. This keeps the forest eternally young, cycling through trees of all ages, as new clonal stems start growing, but when grazing animals eat the tops off newly forming stems, they die. This is why large portions of Pando have seen very little new growth.
The exception is one area that was fenced off a few decades ago to remove dying trees. This area excluded elk and deer from browsing and thus has experienced a successful regeneration of new clonal stems, with dense growth referred to as the “bamboo garden.”
Some other amazing features of Pando rise from the way aspens grow and develop. In Canada, aspen have earned the nickname “asbestos forests” as they have two unique characteristics that make them more fire tolerant. Aspen store massive quantities of water, allowing them to thwart low and medium intensity fires by simply being less flammable. They also do not create large quantities of flammable volatile oils that can make their conifer cousins so fire prone. Second, their branches reach high rather than spreading densely at the base, allowing them to avoid catching flame from fires that move over the land below.
Living where the growing season is short and winters are harsh, Pando features another advantage over other trees. It contains chlorophyll in its bark which allows it to create energy without leaves during the dark, cold winter months. Although this process is nowhere near as efficient as the energy production of the leaves in summer, this small energy boost allows Pando to get a head start by surging into bloom once temperatures reach 54 degrees for more than 6 days each spring.
However, the older stems in Pando are affected by at least three diseases: sooty bark canker, leaf spot, and conk fungal disease. While plant diseases have thrived in aspen stands for millennia, it is unknown what their ongoing ecosystemic effects might be, given Pando’s lack of new growth and an ever-increasing list of other pressures on the clonal giant, including that of climate change. Pando arose after the last ice age, so has had the benefit of a largely stable climate ever since, but that stability may be changing enough to endanger Pando’s long-term survival.
A scientist can plug in the metadata of a particular tree within the clone and be taken directly to that tree without having to navigate the entire forest virtually. (Intermountain Forest Service, USDA Region 4 Photography (Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Insects such as bark beetles and disease such as root rot and cankers attack the overstory trees, weakening and killing them. A lack of regeneration combined with weakening and dying trees, in time, could result in a smaller clone or a complete die-off. So the Forest Service in cooperation with partner organizations are working together to study Pando and address these issues. Over the years, foresters have tested different methods to stimulate the roots to encourage new sprouting. Research plots have been set up in all treated areas to track Pando’s progress, as foresters learn from Pando and adapt to their evolving understanding.
With regard to our changing climate, Pando inhabits an alpine region surrounded by desert, meaning it is no stranger to warm temperatures or drought. But climate change threatens the size and lifespan of the tree, as well as the whole complex ecosystem that it hosts. Aspen stands in other locations have struggled with climate-related pressures, such as reduced water supply and heat spells, all of which make it harder for these trees to form new leaves, which lead to declines in photosynthetic coverage and the continued viability of this amazing organism.
With more competition for ever-dwindling water resources (the nearby Fish Lake is just out of reach of the tree’s root system), with summertime temperatures expected to continue to reach record highs, and with the threat of more intense wildfires, Pando will certainly have to struggle to adjust to these fast-changing conditions while maintaining its full extent and size.
Age Estimates for Pando
Due to the progressive replacement of stems and roots, the overall age of an aspen clone cannot be determined from tree rings. In Pando’s case, ages up to 1 million years have therefore been suggested. An age of 80,000 years is often given for Pando, but this claim has not been verified and is inconsistent with the Forest Service‘s post ice-age estimate. Glaciers have repeatedly formed on the Fish Lake Plateau over the past several hundred thousand years and the Fish Lake valley occupied by Pando was partially filled by ice as recently as the last glacial maximum, about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. Consequently, ages greater than approximately 16,000 years require Pando to have survived at least the Pinedale glaciation, something that appears unlikely under current genetic estimates of Pando’s age and the likely variation in Pando’s local climate.
Its longevity and remoteness have enabled a whole ecosystem of 68 plant species and many animals to evolve and be supported under its shade. However, this entire ecosystem relies on the aspen remaining healthy and upright. Though Pando is protected by the US National Forest Service and is not in danger of being cut down, it is in danger of disappearing due to several other factors and concerns, as noted above.
Estimates of Pando’s age have also been affected by changes in our understanding of aspen clones in western North America. Earlier sources argued germination and successful establishment of aspen on new sites was rare in the last 10,000 years, implying that Pando’s root system was likely over 10,000 years old. More recent observations, however, have disproved that view, showing seedling establishment of new aspen clones as a regular occurrence, especially on sites exposed to wildfire.
More recent research has documented post-fire quaking aspen seedling establishment following the 1986 and 1988 fires in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, respectively, where seedlings were concentrated in kettles and other topographic depressions, seeps, springs, lake margins, and burnt-out riparian zones. A few seedlings were widely scattered throughout the burns. Seedlings surviving past one season occurred almost exclusively on severely burned surfaces. While these findings haven’t led to a conclusive settling of Pando’s age, they do leave us with much to marvel over in this species’ longevity and history.
“Geologic Map of Fishlake Basin in Utah. Inset, an illustration of a Graben shows forces that continue to shape the land today.” (Friends of Pando)
Pando’s Uncertain Future
Pando is resilient; it has already survived rapid environmental changes, especially when European settlers arrived in the area in the 19th century, and after the rise of many intrusive 20th-century recreational activities. It has survived through disease, wildfires, and too much grazing before. Pando also remains the world’s largest single organism enjoying close scientific documentation. Thus, in spite of all these concerns, there is reason for hopefulness as scientists are working to unlock the secrets to Pando’s resilience, while conservation groups and the US Forest Service are working diligently to protect this tree and its associated ecosystem. A new group called the Friends of Pando is also making this tree accessible to virtually everyone through a series of 360˚ video recordings.
If you were able to visit Pando in summertime, you would walk under a series of towering mature stems swaying and “quaking” in the gentle breeze, between some thick new growth in the “bamboo garden,” and even venturing into charming meadows that puncture portions of the otherwise-enclosed center. You would see all sorts of wildflowers and other plants under the dappled shade canopy, along with lots of pollinating insects, birds, foxes, beaver, and deer, all using some part of the rich ecosystem created by Pando. In the summer the green, fluttering leaves symbolize the relief from summer’s heat that you get coming to the basin. In autumn the oranges and yellows of the leaves as they change color give a hint of the fall spectacular that is the Fish Lake Basin. All this can give us a renewed appreciation of how all these plants, animals, and ecosystems are well worth defending. And with respect to Pando, we can work to protect all three.
But attempts to do so have had some surprising consequences that were quite unexpected. When land managers, recognizing the stress that Pando was under from herbivores, fenced off one part of the stand to protect it from browsing, they split the grove into three parts: an unfenced control zone, an area with a fence erected in 2013, and another area that was first fenced in 2014. The 2014 fence was built from older materials to save money. This fence quickly fell into disrepair, such that mule deer could easily get around it until it was repaired in 2019. As a result, though they did not design it this way, managers had effectively created three treatment zones: a control area, a browse-free zone, and an area that experienced some browsing between 2014 and 2019. Unfortunately, these good intentions confused Pando. In 2021, it appeared that Pando was fracturing into three separate forests. With only 16 percent of the fenced area effectively keeping out herbivores, and over half of Pando without fencing, a single organism was effectively cut into 3 separate parts and exposed to varying ecological pressures.
The diverging ecologies of the world’s largest living organism, an aspen stand called Pando. Credit: Infographic Lael Gilbert
Bottom of Form
As Rogers explained, “Barriers appear to be having unintended consequences, potentially sectioning Pando into divergent ecological zones rather than encouraging a single resilient forest.” So not only does the stubborn trend of limited stand replacement persist in Pando, but by applying three treatments to a single organism, we also encouraged it to fracture into three distinct entities. The stumble makes sense; it is hard to understand whether fencing will work unless we compare the treatment to a control group. But the strategy does show our failing to understand Pando as one entity. After all, we would not apply three treatments to a single human. These surprising outcomes fuel vital learning experiences for researchers.
Furthermore, it may be that fencing Pando is not a solution to its regeneration problems. While unfenced areas are rapidly dying off, fencing alone is encouraging single-aged regeneration in a forest that has sustained itself over the centuries by varying growth. While this may not seem critical, aspen and understory growth patterns at odds from the past are already occurring, said Rogers. In Utah and across the West, Pando is iconic, and something of a canary in the coal mine.
As a keystone species, aspen forests support high levels of biodiversity—from chickadees to thimbleberry. As aspen ecosystems flourish or diminish, myriad dependent species follow suit. Long-term failure for new recruitment in aspen systems may have cascading effects on hundreds of species dependent on them.
Additionally, there are aesthetic and philosophical problems with a fencing strategy, said Rogers. “I think that if we try to save the organism with fences alone, we’ll find ourselves trying to create something like a zoo in the wild,” said Rogers. “Although the fencing strategy is well-intentioned, we’ll ultimately need to address the underlying problems of too many browsing deer and cattle on this landscape.”
Pando’s Songs?
“Microphones attached to Pando”. Photo Credit: Jeff Rice
Lance Oditt, Executive Director of Friends of Pando, is always searching for better ways to get his head around a tree this enormous. And he started wondering: “What would happen if we asked a sound conservationist to record the tree? What could a geologist, for example, learn from that, or a wildlife biologist?” So, Oditt invited sound artist Jeff Rice to visit Pando and record the tree.
“I just dove in and started recording everything I could in any way that I could,” says Rice, after making his pilgrimage to the mighty aspen. Rice says his sound recordings aren’t just works of art. “They also are a record of the place in time, the species and the health of the environment,” he says. “You can use these recordings as a baseline as the environment changes.” The wonders of science and curiosity never cease, do they?
In mid-summer, the aspen’s leaves are pretty much at their largest. “And there’s just a really nice shimmering quality to Pando when you walk through it,” says Rice. “It’s like a presence when the wind blows.” So that’s what Rice wanted to capture first — the sound of those bright lime green leaves fluttering in the wind. He then attached little contact microphones to individual leaves and was treated to a unique sound in return. The leaves had “this percussive quality,” he says. “And I knew that all of these vibrating leaves would create a significant amount of vibration within the tree.” Rice then set out to capture that tree-wide vibration in the midst of a thunderstorm. “I was hunkered down and huddling, trying to stay out of the lightning. When those storms come through Pando, they’re pretty big. They’re pretty dramatic.” All that wind blowing through the innumerable leaves offered Rice a sonic opportunity to record the tree.
A hydrophone was placed in contact with the roots of a tree (or “stem”) in the Pando aspen forest in south-central Utah. The sound captures vibrations from beneath the tree that may be emanating from the root system or the soil. The recording was made during a July 2022 thunderstorm and represents perhaps millions of aspen leaves trembling in the wind. It was made by Jeff Rice as part of an artist residency with the non-profit group Friends of Pando. Rice gives special thanks to Lance Oditt for his help in identifying recording locations, including the mysterious “portal to Pando.”
“We found this incredible opening in one of the [stems] that I’ve dubbed the Pando portal,” he says. Into that portal, he lowered a mic until it was touching the massive tangle of roots below. “As soon as the wind would blow and the leaves would start to vibrate,” Rice says, “you would hear this amazing low rumble.” The vibrations, he says, were passing through Pando’s branches and trunks into the ground. “It’s almost like the whole Earth is vibrating,” says Rice. “It just emphasizes the power of all of these trembling leaves, the connectedness, I think, of this as a single organism.” Rice and Oditt presented these recordings at an Acoustical Society of America meeting in Chicago.
“Field Technicians Rebekah Adams and Etta Crowley take vegetation measurement under Pando, the world’s largest living organism. A recent evaluation of the massive aspen stand in south-central Utah found that Pando seems to be taking three disparate ecological paths based on how the different segments are managed.” Credit: Paul Rogers
“This is the song of this ecosystem, this tree,” says Oditt. “So now we know sound is another way we can understand the tree.” In fact, the recordings have given Oditt research ideas, like using sound to map Pando’s labyrinth of roots. But above all, they’re a sonic snapshot of this leviathan at this moment in time. “We have to keep in mind,” says Oditt, “that it’s been changing shape and form for like 9000 years. I call it the David Bowie problem. It’s constantly reinventing itself!” And now, we’ve turned up the volume to hear Pando as the baritone soloist it has always been.
Pando as Teacher and Metaphor
Pando is seen as an inspiring symbol of our connectedness, in many engaging statements found here. I put just a few of them below, to give you the idea of how various people have reacted to Pando and its potential significance.
From The Rev. Ed Bacon, Former Senior Rector, All Saints Church, Pasadena, and Board Member, Pando Populus:
“‘We are already one but we imagine that we are not.’ Thomas Merton said those words just before his accidental death. A few months earlier in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King in his last Sunday sermon notes that the ‘universe is constructed’ in an interdependent way: my destiny depends on yours. If there is one truth that will see us through whatever threats and chaos lie before us, it is that there will be no future without policies and attitudes based in the kind of Oneness we see in the one-tree Forest, Pando.”
FromJohn B. Cobb, Jr., Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Board Chair, Pando Populus:
“The one-tree forest we call Pando is a community. The health and well-being of every tree contributes to the whole of the root system and lives from it. But does it make sense today for Pando to be the symbol of what we aspire to in this country, when there are such intense political feelings and competing fears? Yes, it is in just such circumstances that seeking community is most important. If you are in any of the country’s opposing camps, you can begin by formulating the way people in other camps view the world and you. You do not have to agree. But if you understand why so many people feel so disturbed and even threatened by you and your values and beliefs, you have the beginning of community. Even that beginning might save us from the worst.”
From Paul Rogers, Chief Scientist for the Pando Aspen Clone and Director of the Western Aspen Alliance:
“In recent decades resource misuse – comorbid to a warming planet – have left a long-thriving colossus gasping for breath. In Pando, as in human societies, it is easy to forget vital relations between individuals and communities. Impulses are shared as mortality portends rebirth. Vast root networks maintain a single immense colony: e pluribus unum. Pando’s 47,000 stems with enumerable variation remain linked by DNA. Humans, though genetically distinct, are joined by need, desire, and innate dependence on Mother Earth. Pando’s paradox implores us to mutually foster communities and individuals. He is the trembling giant. She is the nurturing spring.”
From Devorah Brous, environmental consultant:
“To foster wholesale systems change, go to the roots. We gather in a sacred grove and branch out to feed shared roots – as descendants of colonizers and the colonized. We break bread as formerly enslaved peoples and enslavers, as immigrants, as indigenous peoples, as refugees. As ranchers and vegans. As scientists and spiritualists. As non-binary changemakers, and established clergy. As creatives, pioneers, and politicians. To study the known and unknown teachings of the trees – we sit still under a canopy of stark differences and harvest the nature of unity. We quest to feed and water a dying tree of life.”
* * * * *
I’ve written such a lengthy piece about Pando because it has so many fascinating and unusual characteristics. Who could ever imagine all the wondrous things that Nature creates? I think Her endless spontaneity in developing biodiverse life-forms is a truly intriguing phenomenon that motivates so many of our ‘Featured Creature’ essays. And exploring them is such an interesting process. We learn new aspects of Nature’s mysteries every time. Perhaps Pando has additional lessons for us as well!
So let us continue to root for this amazingly unified tree named Pando…
Fred
Fred is from Ipswich, MA, where he has spent most of his life. He is an ecological economist with a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Stanford, both in economics. Fred is also an avid conservationist and fly fisherman. He enjoys the outdoors, and has written about natural processes and about economic theory. He has 40 years of teaching and research experience, first in academics and then in economic litigation. He also enjoys his seasonal practice as a saltwater fly fishing guide in Ipswich, MA. Fred joined Biodiversity for a Livable Climate in 2016.
At Bio4Climate, we LOVE beavers. We’re borderline obsessed with them (or maybe not so borderline) because they do SO much for Earth’s ecosystems, natural cycles, and biodiversity. These furry, water-loving creatures are finally beginning to receive the recognition they deserve in mainstream media now that more people see how their existence and behaviors lead to numerous benefits for everyone’s climate resilience.
We are one of the many organizations advocating for their reintroduction across North America and some places in Europe. For this reason, when I spotted one on a hike during my time in Tennessee, I did what any Bio4Climate team member would do: jump in excitement, yell out “Oh my gosh it’s a BEAVER!” and take a picture that I’ll treasure forever.
Photo by Tania Roa
The rockin’ rodent
Beavers live in family groups of up to eight members. Offspring stay with their parents for up to two years, meanwhile helping with newborns, food gathering, and dam building. To create dams, beavers use their large teeth to cut down trees and lug over branches, rocks, and mud until they successfully slow down the flow of water. These dams include lodges that beavers use as bedrooms and to escape from predators. Dams are designed according to the water’s speed: in steady water, the dam is built straight across, and in rushing water the dam is built with a curve. These engineers build their dams in a way that makes them nearly indestructible against storms, fires, and floods.
Look at those bright orange teeth! The color is thanks to an iron-rich protective coating. Beaver teeth grow continuously, and require gnawing on trees for trimming.
Beaver dams are what make these rodents, the largest ones in North America, so special. When dams alter the flow of water, they create ponds that stretch out a river into a wide wetland. These ponds filter pollutants and store nutrients that then attract a variety of wildlife including fish seeking nurseries, amphibians looking for shelter, and mammals and birds searching for food and water sources.
The abundance of wildlife and the storage of necessary nutrients in beaver ponds classifies these places as biodiversity hotspots, meaning they are “biogeographic regions with significant levels of biodiversity that are threatened by human habitation” (Wikipedia). Beaver ponds also store sediment, and this helps recharge groundwater. Due to the sheer wetness of these ponds, and how deep the water filters into the soil, fires are often extinguished as soon as they reach a beaver pond. In this way, beavers are nature’s firefighters, of which we need many more in areas where extreme heat is increasing.
“There’s a beaver for that” — Ben Goldfarb
Wetland Creation
Biodiversity Support
Water Filtration
Erosion Control
Wildlife Habitat
Flood Management
Drought Resilience
Forest Fire Prevention
Carbon Sequestration
They’re Cool (pun intended)
Beavers are considered ‘ecosystem engineers’ because they actively shift the landscape by fluctuating the flow of water and the placement of plants and trees. Muskrats, minks, and river otters also find refuge in beaver lodges. When beavers take down trees, they create pockets of refuge for insects. Using their constructive talents, beavers significantly modify the region and, in turn, create much-needed habitat for many. Numerous creatures rely on beaver dams for survival, and the local ecosystem dramatically changes when a beaver family is exterminated; for these reasons, we also consider them ‘keystone species.’
Disliked dam builders
Despite the positive impact beavers have on biodiversity and ecosystems, we humans have viewed them as fur, pests, and perfume. By 1900, beavers went nearly extinct across Europe and North America. We hunted them for their fur in response to fashion trends, and trapped them for their anal musk glands, or castors, which produce castoreum, a secretion that beavers use to mark their homes and that humans use to make perfume. When beaver populations plummeted, so did the number of dams and ponds, meaning vast swaths of land were drastically altered during this time – and not for the better. To this day, we kill beavers when they wander into military bases or near urban areas since we see their dam-building behaviors as potentially damaging to man-made properties.
Thankfully, as more ‘Beaver Believers’ speak out against these practices and more authorities recognize the importance of beaver benefits, these rodents are beginning to return to their original homes. California recently passed a program specifically for beaver reintroduction efforts across the state. Washington, Utah, and Massachusetts are other states witnessing the return of beavers. People like Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceivers are designing culverts that prevent beaver dams from damaging infrastructure, but allow the beavers to create their biodiverse-filled ponds. These are just a few examples of the ways we can coexist with beavers, and in turn heal our communities.
There are places in North America where water sources are decreasing for all living things, and in other regions the amount of rainfall is increasing while the amount of snow is decreasing. These weather conditions are detrimental to all of our health, unless we welcome back beavers.
As the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss increase, storing water, preventing runoff and erosion, and protecting biodiverse hotspots become more important by the hour. By restoring local water cycles, beaver ponds provide a source of life. By spreading water channels and creating new ones, beaver dams prevent flooding and stave off wildfires. By encouraging the cycling and storage of nutrients, beaver ponds nurture soil health and that leads to carbon sequestration. We all have something to gain from beavers as long as we allow them to do what they do best: build those dams.
To learn more about beavers, watch the video below and the two in the ‘Sources’ section. We also highly recommend Ben Goldfarb’s Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter for further reading.
The majestic whale shark is famed for being the largest fish in existence. With a length of up to 33 feet and weight up to 20 tons, they are not only the largest living fish, but thought to be the largest fish that ever lived on this planet. Though their name might suggest otherwise, whale sharks are not a type of whale at all, but instead a member of the shark family. It is their enormous size (akin to a school bus) that led them to be compared with whales.
Like their other shark relatives, these creatures are excellent swimmers and true masters of the deep. People are coming to recognize that all sharks, even carnivorous species that hunt marine mammals, fish, or other invertebrates, have been unfairly mischaracterized as threatening, and whale sharks are another species you need not be afraid of.
In fact, one of the most fascinating traits of the whale shark is its diet. Despite their own large size, whale sharks subsist on some of the smallest ocean inhabitants, plankton. Much like the enormous blue whale, whale sharks are a living example of one of the most interesting links in the food chain, where nutrients are cycled from microscopic life to macroscopic organisms.
They filter-feed by opening their mouths and letting plankton-rich waters pass through, as well as ingesting other small fish or unlucky invertebrates along the way. But even in this habit they are unique. Whale sharks use a technique called “cross-flow filtration,” in which particles do not actually catch on the filter (the way it works when we drain pasta through a strainer or breathe through an N95 mask). Instead, water is directed away through the gills while particles move towards the back of the mouth. A bolus (or a spinning ball of food) grows in size as more particles are concentrated, finally triggering a swallowing reflex in the throat. This avoids clogging any filters in the process and is a particularly efficient method of filter feeding.
Because they are so large, whale sharks need a lot of food to sustain themselves, and so they journey long distances in order to eat enough for their great big appetites. They can be observed throughout the world in warm tropical waters and tend to lead solitary lives. Where there is an abundance of plankton, however, whale sharks are sure to follow. For example, in the Springtime many whale sharks migrate to the continental shelf of the Central West Coast of Australia, where Ningaloo Reef is the site of a great coral spawning that produces water rich with plankton for our giant fishy friends to enjoy.
The whale shark contributes to nutrient cycling throughout its lifespan, providing important benefits to the ecosystems they are a part of. Some of the warm tropical waters that whale sharks call home tend to be low in nutrients and productivity, and in these areas whale sharks can make a big difference due to their size and force. As they undertake migrations or even as they go about daily swimming and feeding activities, their motion stimulates small ocean currents that can help nutrients travel from areas of high productivity to waters where they are much less concentrated.
Their own eating habits rely on an abundance of microscopic creatures and the nutrients they metabolize, and eventually each mighty whale shark passes on and becomes food itself, returning those nutrients to the ocean food web. After death, whale sharks sink to the ocean floor and the benthic organisms that reside there find food and shelter in the great carcasses. It can take decades for this decomposition to occur, and in the meantime hundreds of creatures benefit from the habitat and nutrients left behind.
In life as well, whale sharks can provide refuge to smaller species of fish that travel around their great bodies, taking advantage of the shelter these gentle giants create. As largely docile creatures, whale sharks can be quite approachable and playful with divers who are also interested in tagging along:
In a couple of instances, humans have even pushed their luck so far as to ride along on a whale shark’s back! Such close contact is discouraged by conservationists to protect the personal space of these beautiful animals, but whale sharks’ friendly reputation remains.
Though they may be steady, generous members of the ocean community, whale sharks are struggling to survive in changing conditions. They are an endangered species, and while some protections for these creatures have been enacted across the coastal waters of the world, they are still hunted for meat, fins, and oil, or captured or killed as bycatch in industrial fishing operations. Whale sharks also suffer from the plastic pollution in our oceans, as microplastics mingle with the food they rely on. Like the rest of us, whale sharks need clean, healthy, abundant environments in which to live and co-create.
Whale shark in the Maldives (Photo by Sebastian Pena Lambarri from Unsplash)
Unique beauties
Whale sharks may be known for their size, but that’s not the only special thing about their anatomy and appearance. Each whale shark sports a beautiful pattern of white markings on its dark gray back. Not only does this make these creatures look like giant mobile modern art pieces, but the patterns also uniquely identify whale shark individuals.
It is not conclusively determined why whale sharks carry these unique signatures, their own version of the human fingerprint. Some scientists speculate that the patterns, which tend to be common among carpet sharks and other species that find such markings useful for camouflage as they traverse the ocean floor, indicate a close evolutionary link among these organisms.
The World Wildlife Fund has used these markings to identify individuals in the waters around the Philippines and keep track of whale shark population numbers there, so that humans can make the interventions needed to mindfully coexist with our marine friends. Whatever its distant origin or function today, this feature makes it clear that each whale shark is a special and irreplaceable member of our blue planet.
For gentle giants and filtering friends, Maya
Maya Dutta is an environmental advocate and ecosystem restorer working to spread understanding on the key role of biodiversity in shaping the climate and the water, carbon, nutrient and energy cycles we rely on. She is passionate about climate change adaptation and mitigation and the ways that community-led ecosystem restoration can fight global climate change while improving the livelihood and equity of human communities. Having grown up in New York City and lived in cities all her life, Maya is interested in creating more natural infrastructure, biodiversity, and access to nature and ecological connection in urban areas.
What creature grows tall and sturdy, cleans up its neighborhood, and defends itself from predators – all without moving a muscle?
The Giant Barrel Sponge, or Xestospongia muta!
Photo By Twilight Zone Expedition Team 2007, NOAA-OE – NOAA Photo Library (Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
A Giant Barrel by any other name…
Giant barrel sponges are aptly named for their shape and great size. They grow over 1 m tall, but only grow an average of about 1.5 cm a year. After all, good things take time!
Giant barrel sponges come in a range of colors, depending on the presence of the cyanobacteria that they work with in symbiosis. They can be pink, purple, brown, reddish brown, and gray, and tend to be different colors at different depths.
You may be wondering why this “giant barrel” doesn’t look very much like Spongebob Squarepants, or the sponge you use to clean up in the kitchen. Well sponges, or animals of the phylum Porifera, come in all shapes and sizes, and there is great diversity among the 8,550 species of them. Sponges are quite ancient, with their oldest fossil records dating back 600 million years, so they’ve had time to differentiate and find their own ecological niches.
The giant barrel sponge is known as the “Redwood of the Sea.” The phrase comes from the fact that giant barrel sponges share the tendency for individuals to live long lives, from a few hundred to thousands of years old. In fact, the oldest known giant barrel sponge is over 2000 years old.
Old age isn’t the only thing they have in common with their counterparts on land. Like the magnificent redwoods, they do wonders to clean up and support the environment around them. Giant barrel sponges can filter up to 50,000 times their own volume in water in a single day. They also provide habitat to several small fish and other invertebrates that can be found living inside or on the surface of the sponge.
Although giant barrel sponges are, well, giant, their diet is anything but. These creatures, like many species of whales, sustain their size not by eating very large sources of food, but by eating large volumes of it. Giant barrel sponges are filter feeders, and consume microorganisms from the water around them that they pump through their bodies. The sponges have special cells along their inner cavities called choanocytes, which work to facilitate the movement of water and the capture of food from it.
In their ocean food chain, giant barrel sponges take their place above their symbiotic partners cyanobacteria, and are consumed in turn by macroorganisms like fishes, turtles, and sea urchin. They try to defend themselves by releasing chemicals to repel their predators, but there’s only so much they can do when stuck in one place, waiting to be ingested by so many types of marine life. Like other filter feeders, giant barrel sponges ultimately form an important branch in the transfer of nutrients from very small to much larger life forms.
They don’t even have tissues, let alone organs, but their simple structure is more than enough to ensure their survival and proliferation. Giant barrel sponges reproduce by spawning, and are one of the few species of sponge that undertake sexual reproduction. Males and females release sperm and egg cells into the ocean synchronously, so that when the time comes, they have a chance of contributing to a fertilized egg that grows into a larva and, after being carried by currents to a new spot of the ocean floor, establishes itself as an independent sponge.
Check out this short video of the spawning phenomenon:
A valued community member
Giant barrel sponges are native to the oceans of the Americas, found primarily in the Caribbean Sea, and observed as far south as the coasts of Venezuela.
Due to their filtration capabilities, giant barrel sponges are real assets to the ecosystems they are a part of, but boosting water quality is not the only ecological role they play. As mentioned, many other creatures live in and around the cavernous sponges, and giant barrel sponges are one of the largest organisms in the coral reef environments where they are found. They are thought to help coral anchor to substrate (the mix of mineral, rock, and skeleton that binds reefs together), and themselves make up about 9% of coral reef substrate in certain areas where they are found. By helping in this binding process, giant barrel sponges can play an important role in reef regeneration.
Though the giant barrel sponge is not currently classified as threatened, like all of us, it is living in vulnerable times, as reef habitats are weakened in warming, acidifying waters. It is susceptible to a disease called Sponge Orange Band disease that afflicts all kinds of sponges. They can also be damaged or killed by human activities that disturb reefs and break sponges off from their surroundings.
On the flip side, when these great creatures are doing well, they enable the thriving of life all around them. May all of us aspire to say the same.
With one giant smile, Maya
Maya Dutta is an environmental advocate and ecosystem restorer working to spread understanding on the key role of biodiversity in shaping the climate and the water, carbon, nutrient and energy cycles we rely on. She is passionate about climate change adaptation and mitigation and the ways that community-led ecosystem restoration can fight global climate change while improving the livelihood and equity of human communities. Having grown up in New York City and lived in cities all her life, Maya is interested in creating more natural infrastructure, biodiversity, and access to nature and ecological connection in urban areas.
Pacific salmon are famous for their migrations from the saltwater habitats they live in as mature adults to the freshwater rivers and streams where they were born and return to spawn. Salmon have two means of finding their way back to where they first hatched, often to the very same patch of gravel.
In the open ocean, they have a GPS system based on the earth’s magnetic fields sensed through their lateral line (a highly-sensitive line of nerves running down each side of their bodies). When they get near shore, they then follow smells that they imprinted from their natal river up to where they originally hatched, to spawn again and continue this cycle.
How do salmon manage to get back upstream?
Salmon make their way back home against the current of streams and rivers, even climbing mountains in the process. As they go, they feed upland forests by transporting ocean nutrients into the headwaters of their natal streams, supporting all kinds of life in the process (and not just hungry bears)!
What happens to Pacific salmon after they successfully spawn?
Spawned-out Pacific salmon all die after completing their journey. In late fall, on a salmon river, rotting corpses and dying fish appear everywhere, white with mold and stinking with decay. In doing so, they feed forests and the aquatic life that sustains the next generation of fish when they hatch in the spring. We don’t really know why they all die after spawning, unlike the Atlantic salmon, which live after the process is complete.
Bears also increase the ecological reach of these salmon by catching them in rivers and streams and carrying them deep into the forest to feast. This brings their helpful nutrients, particularly nitrogen, into dense stretches of forest where they can fertilize the ecosystem and help trees grow. In fact, it is estimated that eighty percent of the nitrogen in the trees of the Great Bear Forest in Canada comes from salmon. Learn about the interdependent links of salmon, bears, and forest health here.
Where do we find Pacific salmon?
Pacific salmon are an anadromous species, which means they live in seawater but spawn in freshwater. They hatch from eggs in gravel and spend their early years in freshwater rivers up high in the mountains and forests along the Pacific coast. Then, once they reach about 6-8 inches in length, they move down through the estuarial waters to spend several years in the open ocean, feeding and growing large, before they journey upstream to spawn and die.
What is the cultural significance of these fish?
Pacific salmon are part of a religious cycle of life for Indigenous peoples on the American and Canadian West coasts as well as across the planet. Their annual return is celebrated as part of a natural process in which Autumn brings a bountiful harvest of fish to add to other stores of food to last through a long cold winter. Salmon are objects of worship by coastal native inhabitants, human and nonhuman alike, who depend on the annual return of these salmon in the fall to help them get through a long cold winter.
A Shoshone-Paiute tribal member during the reintroduction of the Chinook Salmon into the East Fork Owyhee River by the Shosone-Paiute Tribe (May 28, 2015) (Photo by Jeff Allen, Northwest Power and Conservation Council)
We want renewable energy sources! So why are we destroying them for these salmon?
From the 18th into the 20th centuries, our human thirst for factory power had us constructing many dams on our rivers, with little attention to their harmful ecological impact. Many of our anadromous fish species – adapted to the specific conditions of their river watersheds – were lost forever when dams left them unable to complete their journeys upstream.
It is only in recent decades that a powerful movement for dam removal and habitat restoration has been gaining momentum as a means of saving these precious species. The beneficial effects of removing these barriers have been spectacular, as rivers – freed from their shackles – blossom with new life. Along with the salmon have come a revival of other runs, including steelhead, herring, eels, shad and other diadromous fish (ones that transition between freshwater and saltwater environments), as well as birds and wildlife previously not seen in these areas. Our rivers are showing us all that we had lost and all the flourishing that is possible once we get out of their way.
How are human activities impacting these salmon?
Pacific salmon are in serious trouble. A thirst for hydropower has placed them at dire risk of extinction. We are removing dams, building fish ladders on existing dams (since their proper design is crucial), making sure culverts and other means of fish passage stay open and unhindered. But salmon are cold water species, so a warming planet puts them in peril.
However, there is much we can do to protect them, and restore them once they are threatened or lost. Several short but informative videos on salmon restoration efforts can be found here and here.
May we keep supporting the Pacific Salmon,
Fred
Fred is from Ipswich, MA, where he has spent most of his life. He is an ecological economist with a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Stanford, both in economics. Fred is also an avid conservationist and fly fisherman. He enjoys the outdoors, and has written about natural processes and about economic theory. He has 40 years of teaching and research experience, first in academics and then in economic litigation. He also enjoys his seasonal practice as a saltwater fly fishing guide in Ipswich, MA. Fred joined Biodiversity for a Livable Climate in 2016.
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