The Revelator

Adapted from Chapter 5 of The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth From the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction (Princeton University Press).

Blame the word wizardry of Charles Dickens. In 1852 the great Victorian novelist described a long-forgotten naval admiral with the coinage “as dead as the Dodo.” The phrase was catchy. It appeared just a few years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which stoked almost as much interest in the ends of species as in their beginnings. The poor dodo then appeared, as a clownish figure, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The bird’s reputation was sealed, and the dodo became not just an emblem of extinction but a byword for doomed obsolescence. To go the way of the dodo meant to succumb to inevitable oblivion.

In truth, the dodo’s fame is out of proportion to its significance. And yet the bird, rightly understood, is the perfect allegory for the fate of island biota in modern times. That is to say, if we understand its story correctly in place and time, the precise way that its evolutionary history intersects our own, the dodo can help us understand the true depth of human impact — and why the conventional ways we measure that impact threaten to understate the damage we have done.

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) lived on the island of Mauritius in the Mascarene archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The species was a flightless member of the pigeon/dove family (Columbidae). Dodos boasted long and colorful beaks. They ate fruit and perhaps small crabs. The portrayal of the dodo as ridiculous or clumsy is absurdly unfair. Mauritius lacked native mammals (with the exception of one bat, now endangered), so the niches normally occupied by mammals were infilled by birds, reptiles, and even crabs. The dodo, far from a defective product of evolution, was a stroke of creative genius, executed under the severest constraints — a plump pigeon playing the part of a mammal. Until we showed up, they thrived.

The Mascarenes make a rich case study in the annals of extinction history because, as Anthony Cheke and Julian Hume have observed, “Their despoilers took good notes.” This is no accident. The Mascarenes were ground zero for some of the first environmental thinking — and activism — in recognizably modern form. Deforestation and defaunation startled European observers. Mauritius, in the words of the historian Richard Grove, acquired “a disproportionate significance in the history of European colonial environmental policy.” The phrase “dead as a dodo” was not only catchy — it had been primed for success by two centuries of awareness and angst about European impact on this exotic landscape.

Even so, the exact date of the most famous extinction is still fuzzy: The dodo was last securely observed in the 1630s, but they may have survived for a few more decades. The precise cause of their demise is also obscure — in large part because the bird suffered all the usual forces of ecological upheaval at once. Their habitat was destroyed by farms. Their eggs were eaten by invasive species. And, certainly, we hunted the dodos.

The dodo symbolizes the total biotic chaos instigated when Europeans showed up on these islands. At some point or another, more than seventeen mammals, roughly three dozen birds, over a dozen reptiles, a handful of frogs, and numerous invertebrates (among them the nasty predator known as the rosy wolf snail) were introduced. The archipelago’s new residents made their presence felt: Pigs ran rampant, rats gorged on birds and their eggs, and the crab-eating macaque, a monkey native to Southeast Asia, feasted on unwary endemic animals. The effects rippled. Since the first caravel cast its shadow on these shores, more than fifty species have vanished from the Mascarenes.

Human arrival unthreaded a unique fabric woven over incomprehensible reaches of geological time. Islands confront us with the active role of geology in evolution. Islands broadly fall into two types, oceanic and continental, with distinctive evolutionary dynamics. Oceanic islands are usually volcanic in origin (e.g., Palmyra, Hawaii, the Mascarenes), though sometimes they are created by uplift (e.g., Cyprus). Continental islands are bits of landmasses that have become stranded (e.g., the British Isles). Unlike oceanic islands, continental islands start with life, a random sample drawn from continental flora and fauna, like a handful of trail mix grabbed in the dark.

Evolution will work with whatever it is given, and since the constraints are heavy, island biogeography is, in the words of David Quammen, “a catalogue of quirks and superlatives.” Physical barriers drive evolutionary divergence; island populations, separated from the continents, follow unique evolutionary paths. With predators absent and competition sparse, natural selection tilts in unexpected directions. Traits that make no sense on continents — like flightlessness in birds — flourish. Entire systems of interdependence evolve around these peculiarities. And the result is that a staggering share of the world’s species diversity has been hatched on islands.

With great distinctness comes great fragility. Small populations on islands are always vulnerable to shocks, and island species often lack defenses that continental animals must acquire in constant competition against predators, parasites, and even disease. In sum, it is exactly that which makes islands different that leaves them especially vulnerable to us. Their essence is isolation; ours is connectivity. Their tempo is Earth time; our schedules are manic. And when the two collide, the result is often catastrophic.

The Portuguese first set foot on Mauritius around 1507 CE. This timing is of enormous consequence. The year 1500 has come to denote a stark boundary in the literature on the Sixth Extinction (in essence, because the IUCN started noting known extinctions since that date in its Red List). In order to compare past and present rates of extinction, it is commonplace to start tallying species that have disappeared since that time. Round numbers are always suspect, but this one is unusually complicated. Scientists, with a solemn duty to measure things precisely, must start somewhere. Historians, whose tapestry is woven of countless threads, prefer to linger over complexity, to insist on a mix of continuity and change in all human affairs. As a scholar of divided loyalties, I can sympathize with, and become frustrated by, both sides.

Even if the year 1500 is asked to bear an unrealistic amount of weight, the choice is not arbitrary. Around this time, Europeans started crossing oceans with some regularity. The pace of change accelerated. The human impact on biodiversity not only became more pronounced in the Age of Discovery, but the record of our impact also became much richer. No one denies that something dramatically changes around the year 1500, but as the ecologist Robert Whittaker put it, “Using a baseline of AD 1500 is to begin in the middle of the movie.” Whittaker describes our impact on islands in terms of “successive waves of transformation, a form of anthropogenic ratchet effect.”

Human impact on island fauna goes back to the original Ice Age dispersal of humans. Since the Pleistocene, colonization has often meant the onset of hunting and the beginning of the end for large animals, like the pygmy hippos and dwarf elephants on Cyprus. In general, the bigger the animal and the higher up the food web, the more likely it was to vanish. Flightless birds and big reptiles bore the brunt. The giant ground birds of New Zealand, the moas, are a striking case. Geology destined it to be a land of birds. With no mammals (apart from a few bats), the avian fauna of New Zealand gives us a sense of what evolution might have done if the asteroid had wiped out the mammals. The Polynesians who arrived found an Edenic landscape: nine moa species, some towering up to 12 feet tall and weighing hundreds of pounds. Tens to hundreds of thousands of these birds roamed the islands. Within two or three centuries, every species of moa was extinct.

European colonization in the Age of Discovery marked a new era within this much longer story. What makes this period stand out is that the fate of island biodiversity became entangled with novel power dynamics between human societies. Virgin islands like Mauritius were long since rare by 1500 CE, so in most cases, Europeans arrived on already-inhabited islands, disrupting socioecological balances of long standing. The Caribbean offers a quintessential case. Even before European contact, human impact unfolded in distinct waves, but the arrival of Columbus brought a cascade of new pressures: invasive animals, unfamiliar pathogens, and extractive technologies. Indigenous societies and island ecosystems were thrown into turmoil.

The result is measured in rapid faunal turnover. In the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico), there were 116 species of mammals at the beginning of the Holocene. Around 60 of them are gone. If bats are excluded, more than 4 out of every 5 mammals have gone extinct. Cuba, which includes the largest island in the Caribbean plus an archipelago of more than three thousand small islands, has seen approximately 24 of its 59 native mammals go extinct. Deforestation and direct exploitation were important drivers, but the role of invasive species was primary: Over 40 nonnative mammals have been introduced. To the east, on Hispaniola, virtually all the nonflying mammals are gone. On Puerto Rico, all seven are gone.

Mammals were not the only victims. Caribbean birds were threatened by new predators like rats and cats, and they were evicted from their shrinking forests. More than 60 species of birds have certainly gone extinct, and most that remain are threatened or endangered. Over half of the endemic parrots of the Caribbean have been snuffed out. Reptiles have suffered a similar fate. Although modern research has skewed away from our cold-blooded cousins, reptiles are integral to Caribbean ecosystems. Yet since European arrival, turtles, snakes, and lizards have been in freefall. On Guadeloupe, for instance, half to two-thirds of snakes and lizards have gone extinct. Many of the ecological jobs undertaken by reptiles go unreplaced, making the loss of functional diversity even greater.

The story of island biodiversity will thread through future chapters too. As steam replaced sail, the problem of invasive species only became more acute. In the last century, pollution and climate change have become new threats. There was a long pre-history to human impact before 1500 CE; European colonization marks not a beginning but a distinct new phase, a speeding up; and now the Anthropocene is somehow accelerating human impact again.

All in all, the human-dominated planet leaves less life on islands. What endures is quieter, more uniform, less exuberant than before. The raw numbers are revealing. Consider that since the beginning of the late Pleistocene — roughly 126,000 years ago — about 600 bird species are known to have gone extinct, and the real number is probably twice as high. Around 80% of the extinct species were island endemics. Even more generally, around three out of every four anthropogenic extinctions to date have involved island species. If global biodiversity is a great library, written over tens of millions of years, then we have erased an inordinate portion of its rare books collection — the most archaic, most colorful, and most singular volumes.

The year 1500 always saw a speeding up of human impact on ocean life, but the contrast between oceans and islands puts the proposition of the Sixth Extinction, its limits and its strengths, in a distinct light. Oceans are vast and resilient. Islands are small and fragile. If we measure human impact by counting extinctions alone, we will underestimate what we have done to life in the oceans. At the same time, extinction is a reasonable measure of our impact on islands, at least so far, even if we rarely count or even consider the losses before 1500 CE. And counting extinctions is only one crude measure of what we care about. Conceivably, the rate of island extinction could slow down, only because we have already done so much damage to the most vulnerable ecosystems. This is hardly cause for complacency. In fact, just the opposite: Because we have already lost so much diversity on islands, we might strain all the more to protect what remains.

Previously in The Revelator:

For Bald Eagles, the Descendants of the Destroyers Became the Restorers

The post The Way of the Dodo: Thinking Historically About Extinction appeared first on The Revelator.

Indonesia is a young country — in more ways than one.

Its current democratic government dates back under three decades to 1998, after the fall of Soeharto, the military dictator who led the country for 32 years.

It’s also demographically young, with a median age of just 31. That means fewer and fewer people in Indonesia remember the time they were under Soeharto’s ‘New Order’ rule.

But despite the fading memory of Soeharto’s reign, one of the decisions he made in the later years — selecting a National Precious Bird — is outlasting his regime.

Ten days into January 1993, President Soeharto signed his fourth Presidential Decree of that year. The first three dealt with setting the domestic retail sale prices of petroleum and tariffs for electricity and public transportation. The fourth declared an until-then largely unknown bird, the Javan hawk-eagle (Nisaetus bartelsi), as Indonesia’s national bird. The United States had its bald eagle, China had its giant panda, and now Indonesia had its hawk-eagle.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Three reasons favored giving the Javan hawk-eagle this title.

First, their appearance and prominent crest mirrors the mythical bird Garuda, which is central to Indonesia’s national coat of arms, the Garuda Pancasila.

Second, the loss of rainforest on Java — Indonesia’s most densely populated and least forested island — meant very few hawk-eagles remained, and increased attention could be beneficial to their conservation.

Third, a national bird had to be found exclusively within Indonesia, and Soeharto’s regime heavily favored Java, leading to a “Javanization” of Indonesian politics, culture, and economic development. The Javan hawk-eagle fit like a glove.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Ornithologist Bas van Balen, one of the first people to study the species, recalls that the decree established three national “mascots” — a popular animal, a charming one, and a rare one. The animals were selected “during a workshop in 1993, attended by representatives of various governmental bodies, such as the Forest and Environmental departments, the parliament, the scientific authority, local universities, media mass, NGOs and various experts. Worries that the eagle would undergo the same fate as for instance the black-naped oriole — provincial faunal symbol of Central Java, which was much sought after for the bird trade in the years after its nomination — were discounted, as its protection was believed by the committee to be the authorities’ responsibility.”

In 1993 I was a young biologist, eager to study birds in the rainforest. The announcement of the Javan hawk-eagle as Indonesia’s national bird, and the observation by French naturalists of a juvenile on a mountain in central Java, spurred me on to make the move to Indonesia.

At the time there were no photographs of the bird — either in the wild or in captivity — and I had to rely on some 30 preserved skins in Dutch museums to get a good idea what the bird looked like. I also had the fortune to become acquainted with the then 87-year-old ornithologist Hans Bartels, the middle of the Bartels family (Max Sr, Max Jr, Hans, and Ernst) after which Javan hawk-eagles received their taxonomic name.

Javan hawk-eagles were already legally protected — all birds of prey in Indonesia were put on the county’s protected species list in 1970, signed by Soeharto’s long-trusted Minister of Agriculture, Toyib Hadiwinata — and none lived in zoos or private collections. After the national bird declaration, any individuals or institutions that wanted to keep a Javan hawk-eagle had to receive presidential permission. Only one person was granted this: Ibu Tien, Soeharto’s wife. Her Javan hawk-eagle, a juvenile bird almost certainly illegally taken from its nest, was displayed at a Jakarta zoo run and managed by one of many Soeharto family foundations.

In those first years during many of my visits, more zoo directors expressed the desire to display Javan hawk-eagles and even breed them. Of course zoos were not allowed to obtain them, but “gifts by anonymous donors” created a loophole. Two years after the declaration, three zoos on Java displayed or had displayed a total of 14 Javan hawk-eagles, six of whom died within one year.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Zoos were not the only ones eager to own a national bird. In an Indonesian context, owning and displaying legally protected species was, and perhaps still is, seen as a sign of status, of “being untouchable” or above the law. Ibu Tien’s display of a Javan hawk-eagle could be interpreted in this context, as was the decision by a national celebrity to have himself photographed in traditional dress next to his pet Javan hawk-eagle for the women’s magazine Femina.

It was, and still is, challenging to keep a rainforest eagle in captivity, as attested by the high mortality rates in Indonesian zoos. Most of the Javan hawk-eagles I saw in zoos in the 1990s and 2000s were first-year birds — easily recognizable as such because young birds have blueish eyes that turn yellow as they get older.  This was not evidence of captive breeding but attested to them being poached from their nests.

Looking back, the decision to declare such a rare bird as a national symbol, without first putting proper protection and management in place, may not have been wise. When I started my research on Java, every large eagle regardless of species was described as a “Javan eagle,” but this changed rapidly and the Javan hawk-eagle quickly became recognized as something special. Enforcement of protected species legislation in Indonesia was and continues to be weak, and under Soeharto’s rule corruption and nepotism allowed for exceptions to be made.

Today numerous people and zoos keep Javan hawk-eagles, and young birds are frequently offered for sale. In the early years one could find them in the dark corners of one of the many bird markets that are present throughout Indonesia, but increasingly they are offered for sale on e-commerce platforms and social media sites.

But all is not negative.

At time of the declaration, very little was known about Javan hawk-eagles. Based on very limited surveys — including ones done by Bas van Balen — they were considered among the rarest birds in the world, with fewer than 60 pairs confined to five or six widely separated forest fragments and millions of people living in the areas in between. The first people who recorded the species and commented on their conservation were non-Indonesian birders, either living in Indonesia or visiting.

This has now changed. Today Javan hawk-eagles are arguably Indonesia’s most frequently studied birds, with university students’ conducting projects year after year on the eagles themselves, their habitat, and their distribution.

Meanwhile a solid group of dedicated raptor enthusiasts works to study, monitor, and protect the species. We now know more about Javan hawk-eagles than ever before, and the earlier population estimates were off by an order of magnitude.

And it turned out that the birds were not confined to the island of Java: They’ve been observed flying on neighboring Bali as well.

Trade and continuing habitat loss remain the main threats to the species, but guard nest protection programs have been very successful.

Zaini Rakhman, chairman of Raptor Indonesia, says that “between 2001 and 2021, 40 confiscated or surrendered Javan hawk-eagles were released and 27 of them survived in their new habitats.”

In 2023 two Javan hawk-eagles, captive born in an Indonesian zoo, were released into a national park in western Java — an area that might not have been protected if not for the birds.

“The presence of Javan hawk-eagles was one of the reasons why the forests on Mt. Murio in central Java were declared as a Grand Forest Park,” says Rakhman. “Increased protection of additional forest areas are currently under review.”

In the early 1990s Hans Bartels was of the opinion that the survival of the Javan hawk-eagle and its forest was fully dependent on Indonesia’s younger generation. They have taken this to heart. The eagle is now the pride of many Indonesians — and rightly so — and December 2025 saw the opening of the Bartels Javan Hawk-Eagle Conservation Museum, in a historic building that had originally been the private residence of the Bartels family.

Even President Soeharto could not have imagined this would be the cumulation of his single-handed declaration of Indonesia’s national bird.

References:

Nijman, V. 2020. Illegal trade in Indonesia’s National Rare Animal has moved online. Oryx 54(1), 12.

Nijman, V., Shepherd, C.R., Van Balen, S. 2009. Declaration of the Javan hawk eagle Spizaetus bartelsi as Indonesia’s National Rare Animal impedes conservation of the species. Oryx 43(1), 122-128.

Thiollay, J.M., Meyburg, B.U. 1988. Forest fragmentation and the conservation of raptors: a survey on the island of Java. Biological Conservation 44(4),229-250.

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The post Authoritarianism and Conservation: How a Dictator Shaped the Future of an Endangered Bird appeared first on The Revelator.

Marcia Ciro
Pause
Charles River, Dover, Massachusetts
Infrared photography
© copyright Marcia Ciro

“I’m not sure of the species, just got ‘ray-finned fishes’ on apps. I’ve been exploring local underwater environments in nearby rivers and lakes. I am fascinated by the complexity that lurks just below the surface.” Image taken with a digital camera modified to shoot infrared images.

 

 

 

 

Marcia Ciro
Untitled
Ipswich River, Ipswich, Massachusetts
Infrared photography
© copyright Marcia Ciro Both photos were taken with a digital camera modified to shoot infrared images. Marcia Ciro’s website is papertracestudio.com if you want to see more of her work, including more landscapes in color and infrared.

 

 

 

 

Barri Hitchin
Alien Visitor
Somerset Levels, United Kingdom
Inspiration: Surreal Wetland
Photograph
© copyright Barri Hitchin

 

 

 

 

Karl J. Findling
Hell’s Canyon, Oregon
Oregon Pack Works
Bend, Oregon
© copyright Karl J. Findling

 

 

 

 

 

María Isabel Dabrowski
SSSSlithering Through the Jungle
Bocaracá
Eyelash palm pitviper/Bothriechis schlegelii
La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica
© María Isabel Dabrowski

“While at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica for a training, I met a lovely wildlife biologist who is studying this species at La Selva to learn more about what, if anything, impacts the color variation of the Bocaracá. While we were admiring this bright yellow danger noodle from a respectful distance, the snake began moving along the tree branch; as this species mostly moves at night, the wildlife biologist we were with was super excited to watch the Bocaracá’s tongue-flicking and branch-wending in daylight.”

 

 

 

 

 

Lizann Michaud
Black-Tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalu molossus)
Mule Mountains of southeastern Arizona
© 2026 Lizann Michaud

“We knew this small black-tailed rattlesnake was there only when it began to move (and we of course hopped back a safe distance in reply). It didn’t rattle, and appeared remarkably relaxed, so I took a golden sunset-lit photo of this curious beauty.”

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Reed
Colorado Columbine and Greenback Trout
Rocky Mountain National Park
© copyright Stephen Reed

“Here’s an unintentional double exposure from Rocky Mountain National Park. It shows the state flower (blue columbine) and the state fish (greenback trout) in a tribute to the 150th anniversary of the state of Colorado.”

 

 

 

 

Stephen Reed
Bison Profile
©copyright Stephen Reed

“Here’s a bison profile taken with a 300mm telephoto lens near Soda Butte Creek in Yellowstone. What caught MY eye was the knot of fur near the nose (shaped like a false eye) that makes that nose look like a monkey face within the image. I cannot un-see it…”

 

 

 

 

Kate Chabarek
European Black Bee on Teasle
Basque Country, Spain
Photography, edited with Adobe Lightroom Classic (manual tools only)
© copyright Kate Chabarek

“My three-year-old son and I saw the European Black Bee by the Urumea River, near the town of Hernani, where we live. He warned me quite strenuously about the “erlea” (bee) and how it would “mina eman” (give pain), in the Basque language. I want to encourage him to be interested in nature, and I enjoy talking with him about plants and animals in English, so he can talk to his grandmother in the United States about them.”

 

 

 

 

Puffball
The Adirondacks in Northern NY
© copyright Kate Chabarek

 

 

 

 

 

Red Eft or eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens)
© copyright Kate Chabarek

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Ross
Wildlife Observing the Wildlife Photographer
Red foxes
Dean Hill Road, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania
Canon Powershot SX70 HS
© copyright Robert Ross Robert Ross
Wildlife Observing the Wildlife Photographer
Red foxes
Dean Hill Road, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania
Canon Powershot SX70 HS
© copyright Robert Ross

“While trying to get good photographic evidence (for the 3rd Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas) of a mother Bobolink feeding its young in a hayfield, I noticed a family of red foxes watching me the whole time from their upscale home nearby. These moments are what makes the project well worth the time spent.”

 

 

 

 

Candace Galen
Complementary Colors
Little blue butterfly (Icarica) on a purple aster
Hoosier Ridge — part of the Continental Divide just north of Hoosier Pass in central Colorado.
Photography, using a Sony Alpha II camera with telephoto lens and a continuous shoot setting so as not to disturb the butterfly.
© copyright Candace Galen

“Though tiny, these are truly the smallest of butterflies, their luminescent blue color is a showstopper. This one, flitting from flower to flower in an alpine meadow was irresistible.

An interesting fact: this species was given its scientific name by the Russian writer, Vladimir Nabokov, better known for his literary contributions (for example, Lolita). Exiled from Russia in the 1940s, he hired on as Curator of Lepidoptera at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.”

 

 

 

 

Linda Carroll
Moth Feasts on Sunflower
© copyright Linda Carroll

“I confess I don’t know the moth species. The photo was taken in Spokane, Washington. I went out to water the plants one summer morning and was taken by the beauty of the moth and the grouping of bright colors. I took a number of photos, moving closer each time but trying to do so without the moth noticing me. It wasn’t easy because the sun was behind me and I didn’t want to create a shadow, which would have disturbed the moth and spoiled the photo. This was the closest I got and the best shot. Shortly thereafter, the moth became annoyed with me and flew away.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I enjoyed talking about narwhals last month. What whale are we talking about this time?

This time we’re diving into one of my personal favorites: the humpback.

Wait, we usually talk about more obscure whales. Aren’t humpbacks kind of mainstream?

That’s true, but mainstream doesn’t mean boring. Humpbacks embody cetacean charisma. In addition to their good looks, they’re champion swimmers — they’re constantly observed leaping almost entirely out of the water in giant, thunderous breaches.

They’re also icons of conservation efforts; pop-culture superstars; and the subjects of amazing new science. Humpbacks are constantly in the news, too. One was recently spotted in a California river miles away from the ocean. Another made worldwide headlines for a very emotional display of grief after the loss of her calf.

Oh, that’s sad.

Yeah, but seeing that grief helps humans understand humpbacks even better — and maybe love them even more.

So where do they get the name “humpback”? I’ve seen photos — their backs don’t look all that humpy.

That’s true. But the name comes from those famous breaches and a distinct hump that forms on their backs when they arch to dive deep into the water.

Photo by Chinh Le Duc on Unsplash

That dive is a great opportunity to see one of humpbacks’ most beloved features: their tail flukes, which display unique black-and-white patterns on the underside. Photo-identification databases of these tail patterns allow scientists to track individual humpbacks across thousands of miles and throughout their decades-long lifespans. (Writer and whale fan Christopher Moore based an entire novel on those patterns.)

Getting back to their nomenclature, their scientific name, Megaptera novaeangliae, means “big-winged New Englander” and refers to their gigantic, wing-like pectoral flippers, which can grow up to 16 feet long — about a third of their total body length.

That must help them swim. Don’t they hold some kind of record for migrating?

You’ve been doing some reading in between these discussions! Good for you. Yes, humpback whales complete some of the longest migrations of any mammal on Earth. Each population has a different migratory path, but generally speaking they spend their summers in chilly, nutrient-rich polar waters where they gorge on krill and tiny fish — often using air bubbles to condense their prey into one location for easy pickings. Once suitably fattened up, they head north — a journey of several thousand miles to warm tropical waters near the equator, where they mate and give birth. They barely eat anything during the migration or their winter breeding season and live off their thick blubber stores.

That sounds like an intense diet plan. What else makes them famous?

Their music. Male humpbacks are known for their complex underwater “songs” — elaborate arrangements of moans, howls, and cries arranged in patterns that can last for hours. The songs evolve over time, with new “remixes” spreading across entire whale populations.

WhaleTrustMaui · Humpback Whale Song Recorded off the Coast of Maui in 2004

Those vocalizations are arguably one of the reasons we still have humpbacks. The 1970 album Songs of the Humpback Whale, recorded by bio-acoustician Roger Payne, sold more than 100,000 copies (about the same as David Bowie’s The Man Who Saved the World the same year) and helped kick off the global “Save the Whales” movement — not to mention my own fascination with whales. I heard part of the album for the first time in 1979 when an issue of National Geographic magazine included an excerpt on flexi-disc — a record printed on flexible plastic instead of pressed on vinyl. I must have listened to it a thousand times over the next couple of years.

Cool. I’ll have to look for a copy of that issue on eBay. How are humpbacks doing these days? They were heavily hunted, right?

Extremely heavily. Commercial whaling reduced global humpback populations by an estimated 90% before the international whaling moratorium took effect in 1986.

But 40 years later, humpbacks are often celebrated as one of conservation’s greatest success stories and the species overall is classified as “least concern” by the IUCN, with an estimated adult population of 84,000 and rising.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

It all depends on where humpbacks live, of course, but many populations have rebounded dramatically thanks to international protections (and U.S. protections under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act). One of the most exciting population recoveries is taking place off the coast of Brazil, where they’d all but disappeared four decades ago. Another unexpected site is the waters off the coast of New York City, where the nonprofit Gotham Whale recently documented 500 humpbacks, up from just 10-30 in the area a decade ago.

There’s a “but” coming, isn’t there?

You know me (and the world) too well. Not all populations have recovered equally. Specific distinct population segments — like the Arabian Sea and Oceania populations — remain endangered. (Newly published research also suggests the Arabian humpbacks may be a unique subspecies with low genetic diversity.)

Even for recovering populations, modern ocean life is a minefield. Humpbacks face constant threats from entanglements in commercial fishing gear and vessel strikes. On top of that, climate change is altering marine food webs, shifting krill distributions, and forcing whales to feed in new areas — where they become even more vulnerable to ship traffic. It’s a nasty circle.

Krill, climate, and humpbacks are intricately linked. A recent study found that a marine heatwave in the northeastern Pacific Ocean from 2013-2016 caused krill and small fish populations to crash — which then caused a decline in humpback populations in Hawaiʻi.

More recently a few starved and emaciated whales have washed ashore in places like Maine and Oregon. Is that a portent of things to come? I’m a bit worried.

So what can people do to help ensure humpbacks keep swimming, feeding, and breaching?

A few key things: If you’re ever out on a boat or taking a whale-watching tour (which I encourage you to do), make sure the operator follows responsible viewing guidelines and keeps a safe distance.

We can also support policy efforts that demand modifications in fisheries gear, such as ropeless fishing technology to eliminate dangerous entanglements like one that mangled a humpback’s jaw this summer. We also need to advocate for reducing boat noise in key migration corridors. A recent study found that engine noise reduced scientists’ ability to record humpback calls by 40-45%. If we can’t hear them, it’s a safe bet to assume they can’t hear themselves.

And, as with other species, supporting broader marine habitat protection and climate action helps safeguard the food and ocean ecosystems humpbacks rely on.

Got it. So what whale are we tackling next month?

That’s the toughest question you ask me each month. There are so many to choose from, including some species that are in the news. I have a few ideas, but anyone reading this can send their own favorites to me at jplatt@therevelator.org.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Songs Whales Sing: The Peculiar History of Commercial Whaling

The post Whale of the Month: Humpback Whales appeared first on The Revelator.

This story is part of a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization in Washington, D.C.

Global trade is remarkably efficient at moving things. It carries copper, cars, cameras, and crude oil across oceans and borders with astonishing speed. It takes the product of one country’s labor and ecology and delivers it to warehouses and supermarkets in another with so little friction that consumers barely register the distance.

But some things, intentionally, do not travel down the supply chain. One of them is stench.

Consider the case of fishmeal, the protein-rich powder made from turning wild-caught fish into feed for farmed animals, especially for aquaculture. The foul air produced by fishmeal factories stays in the poorer coastal communities where the fish is unloaded, cooked, pressed, dried, and ground — far from the dinner plates where the seafood gets eaten. Wealthy markets import the benefits of this globally essential commodity, but only after it has been cleaned of certain dirty truths.

In August 2022 at least 50 protesters spilled into the streets of Kayar, a fishing town on Senegal’s Atlantic coast, demanding the closure of a nearby fishmeal plant, Touba Protein Marine. Marching from the fishing wharf to the factory, they carried signs reading “Kayar is sick.” In a video that spread on Facebook, demonstrators chanted, “Time to respect our Kayar.”

The factory, they said, had been built less than a third of a mile from residential neighborhoods, triggering health problems and violating local zoning laws.

Smoke rises from a fishmeal factory in 2025 near a residential community in Callao, Peru. Emissions from fishmeal factories include ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, and methane, impacting more than 9.5 million people who live within a mile of the nearly 1,800 fishmeal plants operating in more than 50 countries. Credit: Ministry of Production of Peru

That same year in Vietnam, hundreds of residents on the country’s northeastern coast surrounded another plant and, for days, blasted loudspeakers at it in protest. In India, in 2024, the odor from fishmeal factories spurred protests that lasted more than 100 days, ending in a boycott of local elections and in villagers convening parallel meetings to pass resolutions against the plants.

These uprisings were not set off by the kind of industrial disaster that usually commands global attention. What brought people onto the streets was fishmeal’s foul smell.

My organization, The Ocean Outlaw Project, recently completed a global investigation of this product’s hidden costs. It reveals that the industry’s rancid odor was among the least tracked, most personally intimate, and widely suffered impacts of this growing market. Half of the seafood eaten globally comes from fish farms, most of them powered by fishmeal and fish oil. More than 9.5 million people worldwide, including nearly 1.7 million under the age of 15, live within a mile of fishmeal plants, according to Bait to Plate, an online tool that tracks the fishing and seafood industries.

This satellite image shows a fishmeal factory under construction near densely populated neighborhoods in Senegal in 2020, with thousands of residents living within a half mile of the plant. The country’s zoning rules forbid fishmeal companies from building plants within 500 meters, or about 550 yards, of a residential area.
The Outlaw Ocean Project/Google Maps

The industry plays a major role in global inequity. Despite claims that fish farming offers an ecological and ethical way to sustain a growing global population, accounting for feed reveals a different dynamic — one that resembles a form of food colonialism. Much of global aquaculture produces high-value seafood for wealthier markets by diverting food-grade fish from poorer regions that depend on those species as affordable sources of protein. Roughly 90% of the catch used to produce fishmeal is edible for humans. Most fishmeal plants rely on whole fish rather than processing waste or inedible byproducts, further intensifying local food insecurity in the communities where these fish are taken.

The industry is also unsustainable. At least half of the species landed by the 2,400 fishmeal ships assessed by the investigation were classified by scientific studies as “overexploited” or worse. Most of the vessels in this fleet are purse seiners or trawlers, which deploy vast nets to capture dense schools of fish. Both gear types are associated with high levels of waste, routinely hauling in large volumes of bycatch and nontarget species. At least 165 of the ships in the global fishmeal fleet were bottom trawlers, a particularly destructive form of fishing that uses weighted nets that scrape the ocean floor, destroying virtually everything in their paths.

The investigation involved more than two dozen journalists in as many countries. In our global discussions, neighbors living near fishmeal plants described to reporters experiencing nausea, headaches, eye irritation, dizziness, coughing fits, and loss of appetite. They recounted laundry brought in early to keep the smell from settling into fabric, doors kept shut in coastal heat, sleep broken at night, and a low-grade sense of agitation that comes from never being able to trust the next gust of wind.

“We don’t invite family or friends here because we are embarrassed that we live in a place that smells like it’s rotting,” a man in Songkla, Thailand explained.

The investigation documented more than 70 cases of neighbors complaining about stench from at least 60 plants in 15 countries. In Mar del Plata, Argentina, the smell from fishmeal plants was so bad that tourists visiting a local hotel sometimes had to step into the courtyard to vomit. In Ecuador the odor emitted by fishmeal plants overwhelmed nearby residents and paralyzed the tourism sector. In the southern town of Huaquillas, which shares a border with Peru, residents told a daily newspaper in 2021 that the smell from fishmeal processing was “unbearable” and “impossible to be around.” In Salango, a rural parish on Ecuador’s coast more than 270 miles north of Huaquillas, researchers who sought to attract beach visitors in 2022 acknowledged that it would be an uphill battle because the smell from an industrial fishmeal factory there “generates unpleasant odors that deter tourists and cause them to choose other destinations.”

The foul smell from these plants was more than just a nuisance. The stink corrodes the local economy by undercutting tourism and scaring away restaurant patrons and beach visitors.

The stench is also an indicator of the release of noxious chemicals like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, and methane, which have been known to cause serious health problems, including pulmonary edema. The worst part of the odor is from trimethylamine, or TMA, a colorless gas characterized by a “fishy” smell. In 2021 the Society of Chemical Industry identified TMA as “strongly toxic and carcinogenic.”

Humans’ sensitivity to foul odors is a defense mechanism borne of evolution. As part of a basic survival instinct developed over millions of years, people are repulsed by smells like that of feces, rotting food, decaying flesh, or acrid chemicals. This visceral reaction also brings intense feelings of disgust and anxiety that lead to negative health consequences when these exposures last longer than several minutes, according to a 2016 study from the journal Brain Sciences.

In many countries chemical waste is closely regulated, particularly if it makes people sick or harms the environment. But emitting bad smells is typically seen as more of an inconvenience than an actual environmental or health hazard.

Bad smells are also difficult to measure or regulate. “The technology for detecting and characterizing complex odors has not developed to the level of a reliable surveillance method, which has hindered regulatory frameworks,” stated a 2021 piece in a waste-management magazine written by a group of environmental engineers at Florida Atlantic University.

Though there are many studies focused on the health and environmental impact of specific chemicals emitted by sewage plants, livestock operations, composting facilities, landfills, paper mills, or petrochemical industries, little research has concentrated on the “impact of olfactory nuisance,” according to a 2021 study published in the journal Environmental Health.

Stinky industries like chemical refineries, fertilizer factories, incinerators, and landfills are typically limited by zoning laws to prevent them from being too close to residential homes. In the United States, neighbors near businesses that emit foul odors have sometimes successfully filed complaints under federal nuisance laws, which are designed to protect residents from unreasonable interference with the enjoyment of their property. Between 2018 and 2019, juries in five trials awarded 36 plaintiffs a total of $550 million in lawsuits filed against Murphy-Brown/Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producers in the world. The amount was later reduced due to a state cap on punitive damages. For decades neighbors of the farms in North Carolina, the majority of whom were Black, endured “the piercing, acrid odor of hog manure, reminiscent of rotten eggs and ammonia,” according to one report referenced in the lawsuits.

In 2020 the company asked for a retrial, but the 4th District Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s verdict. The conditions at the farms, which included “spraying untreated hog waste high into the air — where it then drifts toward nearby homes,” wrote Justice J. Harvie Wilkinson in a concurring opinion, “violated homeowners’ rights to the healthful enjoyment of their property.”

These types of regulations tend to be applied more in wealthier countries, and the vast majority of fishmeal plants are in poorer nations. In Senegal, where there are at least nine fishmeal plants, the investigation found that zoning rules forbid fishmeal companies from building plants within 500 meters, or about 550 yards, of a residential area. But a review of satellite imagery of the country’s plants vis-a-vis homes indicated that companies routinely violated this rule, the investigation found.

Methods for measuring airborne TMA have been around since at least the 1970s. Over the past few decades, however, the more standard approach has involved collecting air samples with what are known as “solid-phase extraction” tubes and then analyzing those samples at a lab using techniques called “liquid chromatography” and “mass spectrometry.” These techniques are precise but pricey, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2009 a Peruvian scientist named Josué Padilla Lauriano set out to find a cheaper option for testing TMA levels. He focused his research on Chimbote, a city along Peru’s western coast that was not only the world’s largest producer of fishmeal but also ranked as one of the most polluted places on Earth. Using simple air bubblers and a spectrophotometer — standard tools found in nearly every chemistry lab — and adapting a technique originally developed to detect TMA in dead fish, not air, Lauriano and his team spent 20 months collecting samples. Lauriano’s device only cost a few hundred dollars to take measurements. Under local regulations plants were supposed to stay under 12 parts per million (ppm), but Lauriano found nighttime emissions averaging above 17 ppm when the plants cook the most and a maximum reading from a plant that topped 32 ppm.

Even when testing was feasible, many countries did not have emissions standards that included thresholds for foul odors, according to a 2025 paper published in Applied Sciences. “The mechanism of human odor detection is still not fully understood,” which, the paper said, is one reason stench is so difficult to measure and regulate objectively.

The countries that set standards for how much TMA could be released were usually not based on stench or quality-of-life concerns, but instead on the level at which this chemical began to negatively affect human health. In the United States health regulators typically use guidelines between 5-10 ppm as long-term exposure limits. These limits are substantially higher than what a typical person’s nose can detect. TMA can be detected at concentrations as low as 0.0002 ppm, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Fishmeal stench is not an unsolvable problem. When factory owners have tried to reduce it, they have usually succeeded. In 2008 in the United States, in 2021 in South Africa, and in 2022 in Yemen, plant owners installed various types of devices, some of them called scrubbers, that researchers later concluded had drastically reduced the foulest-smelling chemicals. Scrubbers are not more common partly because they can cost upwards of US$1 million.

Costs notwithstanding, there are deeper reasons stench stays far away from consumers. In wealthier nations, plant neighbors more often successfully pressure their governments to require odor controls. In poorer nations, people living in the industrial areas where these plants are built usually lack political clout. Their governments are also more desperate for revenue and more reluctant to put up regulatory burdens that may scare away foreign investment. As a result there’s little incentive or pressure for foreign fishmeal producers to fix a problem that does not directly affect their bottom line.

The price being paid by the oceans writ large, and the coastal countries whose resources are being sapped, rarely appear in the balance sheets of the feed and aquaculture companies that profit from this type of extraction. Nor will they appear on the seafood menu. Over a fifth of all marine life pulled from the sea is converted into fishmeal, which is a major factor in why over a third of the world’s stocks are overfished and worsening every year. Despite decades of warnings, this remains a problem that is out of sight and out of mind for the average consumer.

Modern life tends to rank injuries by how neatly they can be photographed, measured, litigated, or charted. Faraway, slow-moving, and intangible harms like stench are the very ones that globalized economies have become especially efficient at disappearing for the customers at the wealthier and tail end of long supply chains.

Or, as the novelist John Berger once asked in another context: “What is the social value of a pain eased?”

(The reporting for this story was part of a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project.)

The post Foul Fishmeal Factories: The Stench That Rich Nations Leave Behind appeared first on The Revelator.

A joint publication of The Revelator and Crucial Comix.

Sources:

• • 50 office spaces https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/energy-star-expands-efforts-improve-energy-efficiency-us-data-centers
  • 3-5 million gallons of water per day for cooling https://vcnva.org/bill-of-the-day-data-center-growth/
  • Heat nearby neighborhoods by as much as 4 degrees F https://news.asu.edu/20260518-environment-and-sustainability-turning-down-heat-data-centers
  • Constant, low-frequency noise https://www.sierraclub.org/ohio/blog/2026/02/data-centers-noise-pollution-ohio-communities-are-organizing-accountability
  • Size of 150 Walmart Supercenters https://www.pecva.org/work/energy-work/mitigating-data-center-developments-impacts/
  • $2.4 billion per month https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-is-the-us-spending-on-building-data-centers
  • do not bring many permanent jobs https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/do-data-centers-create-few-permanent-jobs
  • County administrator is tearing up https://virginiabusiness.com/google-botetourt-data-center-purchase/
  • 8th largest data center complex in the world https://cardinalnews.org/2026/07/09/by-water-use-googles-botetourt-site-would-be-its-8th-largest-data-center-complex-in-the-world/
  • 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools https://scienceline.org/2010/02/what-would-you-do-with-eight-million-gallons-of-water-every-day/
  • Government and companies have an insatiable need https://wtop.com/virginia/2026/07/how-virginia-became-the-worlds-data-center-capital-and-how-its-going/
  • 72% of Virginia voters oppose the state-wide tax exemption for data centers https://wjla.com/news/local/virginia-spanberger-popularity-vcu-poll-election-commonwealth-university-abigail-democrats-economy-data-centers-grocery-store-costs-of-living-impacts-business
  • 73% of Virginia voters blame data centers for rising energy bills https://ccanactionfund.org/media/New-Polling-on-Virginians-Views-of-Data-Centers-and-Rising-Energy-Costs.pdf
  • A map of the United States with data centers https://cleanview.co/data-centers/us

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

The Land Is an Ancestor We Refuse to Abandon: In the Shadows of the Hermosa Mine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Virginia Is for Lovers … of Data Centers? appeared first on The Revelator.

Every evening , like clockwork, Arnen Sula wraps up work at his office, collects his drums, and heads to Skanderbeg Square in the Albanian capital of Tirana.

“Eskobari i Ballkanit
O hajduti i buxhetit
Ne nuk ikim pa doreheqje
HEY RAMA, SHPORRU TI TANI!”
 
(The Escobar of the Balkans!
You budget thief!
We won’t leave until you resign!
HEY RAMA, GET OUT NOW!)

These are lyrics to one of dozens of songs and poems that Sula and fellow demonstrators have chanted every day since June as they march while carrying cutouts of large flamingos.

“It is our take on Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall,’ and we have changed the first few stanzas to make it make sense in the Albanian context,” Sula explains.

The context he’s referring to is a months-long protest against the construction of a luxury resort funded by U.S. President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner that will potentially raze 42 square kilometers (16 square miles) of wetland around the Vjosa Narta river, as well as a proposed development on the 567 hectares (1.8 square miles) of Sazan Island close by.

Skanderbeg Square has been the heart of a movement that has grown steadily and consistently. Every day peaceful demonstrators fill the streets of Tirana with chants and folk songs and march toward the prime minister’s office.

There they are joined by artists who use a projector to broadcast their messages on the facade of the building.

 

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“Initially, we started with a two-part animated video showing the machines and bulldozers working in Vjosa Narta, and the visuals of the flamingos,” says Besjana Guri, environmental activist, Goldman Environmental Prize winner, and founder of a nongovernmental organization called LUMI, which in Albanian means “river.”

 

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A post shared by @qendralumi

The flamingos represent one of hundreds of species of wildlife at risk from the Trump-Kushner development and inspired the name of the movement: the Flamingo Revolution.

Their voices, in unison, echo a collective demand: Save the last wild river of Europe.

“The protest is about opposing one of the huge touristic resorts with a severe ecological footprint that is planned to take place in the middle of one of the most important protected areas for Albania and for Europe,” explains Olsi Nika, environmental biologist and executive director of Eco Albania, an environmental protection organization.

What’s at Risk at Vjosa Narta

“Well, everything basically,” Nika tells The Revelator.

“We are not talking about just one building here, or one hotel there — although even that is not acceptable. But we are talking about the construction of a new city from scratch that will take place in the middle of a natural, pristine area,” he says.

 

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A post shared by Undiscovered Balkans (@undiscoveredbalkans)

Few details are available about the project, but according to some of the project renderings briefly published by Affinity Partners, the Kusher-linked investment firm, the Zvërnec Peninsula, which sits right beside the Narta Lagoon, will be home to a 445-hectare (1.7 square miles) luxury resort.

Meanwhile Kusher told The Guardian last year that he planned to “create the ideal resort…a very high-end luxury product” on Sazan Island, an abandoned communist outpost still littered with unexploded ordnance.

Environmentalists familiar with the developments say this involves construction of at least 10,000 units.

“When you imagine this … it involves construction that could take 10-15 years, trucks, bulldozers, with thousands of people working here, excavators digging in protected land, putting concrete,” says Zydjon Vorpsi, project manager at Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania.

“And once it’s operational, it will be a city of thousands of people that will need energy infrastructure, water, asphalt, pavements, lights, waste management — all of which comes at the expense of the wildlife here. We are talking about wiping out nature; we are talking about transforming this very special area completely,” Vorpsi says.

Nearly everyone interviewed for this article echoed the sentiment and called Vjosa Narta — the last free-flowing river in Europe — “very special.”

“The uniqueness of that river is its free-flowingness,” explains Nika. “It flows to the Adriatic, shaping the features of the delta along the way, which is also the only ecologically pristine delta in the entire Mediterranean Basin.”

The delicate ecosystem created where the Vjosa meets the Adriatic Sea on the southern coast of Albania is home to 2,300 species of flora and fauna, including 200 bird species, at least 70 of which are endangered, such as Dalmatian pelicans and stone curlews.

The rare sand dune formation on the coastline, which serves as a nesting spot for sea turtles, has already faced some damage from gravel dumped by excavators, a Birdlife International report noted earlier this year.

“Construction has also blocked one of the two openings connecting the Narta Lagoon to the sea, cutting off tidal exchange with immediate, cascading consequences for fish, birds, and the entire food chain,” the report stated. “Every day the blockage continues, the damage deepens.”

Additionally, the local Indigenous communities living for generations in the region are facing land disputes in part of the project.

“The village nearby does not have drinking water in taps,” Vorpsi says. “But meanwhile, we’re about to build 10,000 more units there, which, of course, will need fresh water that will be sourced from other areas, through pipelines that will add to the damage and destroy another river to feed this area with fresh water.”

But most importantly, Nika says, “This treasure simply does not belong to us alone, but also to Europe, to the world. It’s not only protected by Albanian law, but also has recognition from international treaties and conventions,” he says. “It is recognized as a Ramsar site under the Ramsar Convention and is a candidate for an Emerald Site in accordance with the Bern Convention.” The river also has the potential to be included in Natura 2000, the European Union’s protected sites, if Albania gets membership in the EU.

Albania applied for EU membership in 2009 and was granted candidate status in 2014. However, as protests expand, the EU Commission has indicated that the environmental violations linked to the Trump-Kushner project could risk Albania’s path to join the union.

Race to Save Vjosa Narta

The history of eco-resistance in Albania is long and complex. With abundant natural resources and an economy that relies heavily on tourism, the debate over protection versus development remains a constant battle.

The race to protect the Vjosa Narta actually started more than a decade ago, Nika says. “The current government, which came to power in 2013, already announced in 2014 its vision to develop the protected areas.” Since then the government has worked to rewrite legal and administrative frameworks to accommodate development.

In 2019 the government announced a full revision of the protected areas in Albania. But this process was rushed, according to Nika.

“Their assessment reduced the areas of protected territories, and one of them was the Vjosa,” he says, adding that in some areas appeared with permissible enclaves “like holes within the protected regimes” such as the Vlora Airport being constructed in the Vjosa region.

“If you exclude a part of a protected region, it still impacts the ecological integrity of the entire area. You cannot build a factory or an airport in the middle of a protected region,” he says.

But through persistent advocacy, environmental activists were able to achieve some success. “We managed to push back on that at least, and all these holes disappeared, with the exception of the airport,” he says.

Then in 2024 the government passed its new Law on Protected Area, “but ironically, it undermined all principles of conservation,” Nika says. “All its content is about how to develop the protected areas, not how to conserve protected areas.”

The new law “said that five-star resorts are allowed even in the national parks and in all protected areas, paving the way for this project, and other ‘tourism of excellence,’ as they call it,” says Vorpsi.

“In the beginning, when this project was announced, Jared Kushner always referred to it as Sazan Island, and never attached Vjosa Narta,” he adds.

Fast forward to April 2026, when environmentalists documented unannounced excavation taking place in the protected areas. Gradually, it became clear that the ongoing construction was linked to the Trump-Kushner project.

“We began protesting the presence of bulldozers and other heavy machinery in the region, which was supposed to be protected land. However, protesters were met with private security guards who used violence to remove them,” Vorpsi says.

A video from May 31 showing a protester being beaten until he fainted and was dragged out went viral across Albanian social media, attracting strong criticism and anger from the public.

“These constructions started without a public hearing, without a permit; they were illegal and criminal,” Vorpsi says. The Albanian anti-corruption prosecutor’s office in Vlora has since opened an investigation into the legality of the project.

Within days, thousands of Albanians took to the streets to demand the end of the Trump-Kusher project. Soon, however, the demonstrations expanded into a call for larger social change, particularly on systemic corruption that allowed billionaires to take advantage of Albania’s resources.

“It started as a protest for the environment and against this project, but it has changed it into something bigger,” Sula says. “It’s about the Narta, but it is also about corruption, the political situation, the theft by the government, the education system, the health care system, and everything else.”

‘Rhythms of Resistance’

As the movement remains resilient, it’s the music and art that have provided the protesters with the expression to communicate their message to the government and those in power.

In the months since the start of the protest, Guri has brought her projector to the town square nearly every day and used it to broadcast an array of messages onto the government building, sometimes accompanied by an impromptu choir.

“Every day we prepare a combination of elements: memes, messages, graphics, sometimes funny ones, sometimes strong — it’s a daily protest, and this is one way to keep it vivid,” she explains.

Not all songs and poetry recited by the protesters are Western-inspired. Some are derived from the region’s long history of folk music.

“We have collected some 10 old Albanian songs. These are songs all about nature, so they sing about the flowers, the birds, and so on. And we created a band and organized public concerts [at the protest site] of these songs,” Sula says.

Sula works with an organization called Tek Bunkeri that collaborates with rural communities and artists to create campaigns on shared social issues.

Their songs and chants have become something of an anthem for the protests. “We use art to make activism. And in these protests, we are creating the rhythm of the resistance,” he explains.

“Ki kujdes ki kujdes nga flamingot.
Revolucion ne kete shesh dhe ti rreshket.
Nje ze flet Rama ra nga flamingot.
Lumturia e pushtoi kete vend.”

(Watch out, watch out for the flamingos.
Revolution in this square — and you’re slipping.
A voice cries out: Rama fell from the flamingos.
Happiness has taken over this land)

 

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Tek Bunkeri has created an entire playlist of songs, Çel Ensemble, that “explores exploring memory, nature and tradition through sound” to raise awareness on ecological conservation. Using diverse forms of music, from jazz to chambers, the themes run between the topics of rivers, flowers, landscapes, and collective memory.

Music has always been at the heart of Albanian conservation efforts, environmentalists shared. In 2016 a similar movement to protect the Valbona River against hydropower projects that threatened damage to surrounding regions culminated in a protest concert in Valbona valley by Albanian and Kosovan musicians.

Later in 2018 Albanian artists collaborated to produce “Lum Lumi i Lirë!” (Blessed be the free rivers), a song to raise awareness of the need for protection of the Valbona and Vjosa rivers.

One thing that Albanians unanimously told The Revelator is that they feel a strong sense of responsibility for the land they inhabit.

“We do have plenty of protected areas in Albania because simply Albania has a lot to host when it comes to biodiversity and nature. And this is our duty to protect them,” Nika says, embodying the sentiment on the streets of Tirana.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

The Two Words Giving Me Hope — Even As the Trump Administration Dismantles More Climate Regulations

The post The Flamingo Revolution and the Rhythm of Resistance: The Race to Save Europe’s Last Wild River appeared first on The Revelator.

I am not a climate scientist, and I want to say that plainly. What follows is the account of a metabolism researcher who kept finding something she wasn’t looking for, until the pattern became too consistent to file under coincidence.

My colleagues and I run randomized clinical trials to answer a narrow question: What happens to a person’s health when they change how they eat? We recruit volunteers, assign diets, and measure what clinicians care about — insulin sensitivity, weight, cholesterol, blood sugar. The work is aimed at the body, not the atmosphere. The atmosphere intruded almost by accident. We had run a trial in adults with type 1 diabetes, the autoimmune form no diet can cure. Half our participants adopted a low-fat diet built around vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and legumes; the rest ate a conventional diet with meat and dairy. The clinical results were what we’d hoped: better insulin sensitivity, less insulin needed.

Image by Joanna Wielgosz from Pixabay

But we also had detailed food records from 12 weeks of real eating, so someone on the team asked a question that had nothing to do with medicine: What was the environmental footprint of all that food?

When we looked into it, we found that the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in participants’ diets had fallen by more than half. The energy required to produce that food dropped nearly as much. Nobody had set out to produce that effect — these were people managing a brutal, lifelong disease. The climate benefit came along for the ride. I might have filed that under coincidence. Then it happened again, in a larger trial of 244 overweight adults randomized to a low-fat vegan diet or no change, followed for 16 weeks. Once more the emissions embedded in participants’ food fell by about half, driven mostly by less meat, with dairy and eggs close behind — roughly what you’d save each day by leaving a gasoline car parked instead of driving it four miles. The third time, we sharpened the comparison, still for health reasons: a low-fat vegan diet against the Mediterranean diet, the pattern nutritionists and environmentalists alike celebrate as the responsible choice for both body and planet. If anything was going to match the vegan diet’s footprint, surely it was this one. It didn’t. The Mediterranean diet cut diet-related emissions by about 20%, a real improvement, its green reputation earned. The

vegan diet cut them by 57% and slashed the energy demand of the food system by 55%. The Mediterranean diet barely moved food-related energy demand at all; its signature olive oil even nudged the footprint upward. The gap wasn’t the vegetables — both diets had those. It was the animal foods that persisted in one diet and vanished from the other.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Three trials, three populations, three designs, each run for a medical reason that had nothing to do with climate. The same finding surfaced every time.

Here’s why I think this matters past nutrition. Almost everything we ask of people for the climate is a sacrifice: a cost paid now, by you, for a benefit collected later, by someone else, somewhere else. Insulate the house. Pay the carbon tax. Trust a ledger you’ll never personally see balance. Economists call this intertemporal discounting — weighing a certain cost today far more heavily than an uncertain, diffuse benefit decades out. Climate communicators have spent decades trying to talk people out of that instinct through duty, fear, or guilt, and global emissions keep rising anyway.

My trials kept showing me that food is one of the rare places where the ledger balances immediately, in the same body, in the same season. The changes that lowered participants’ carbon footprint also lowered their insulin needs, their weight, and their cardiovascular risk. There was no gap between actor and beneficiary to bridge. The benefit to the planet and the benefit to the body weren’t competing for the same scarce willpower — they were the same act, seen from two angles, landing on the same afternoon.

That convergence is rarer than it sounds, and our institutions are poorly built to notice it. Climate policy has organized itself, sensibly, around problems with a genuine collective-action structure — emissions trading, grid decarbonization, treaties — built for diffuse, delayed, free-rider-prone harms. That architecture is necessary; energy and transportation remain the largest levers, and no dietary shift substitutes for decarbonizing them.

But that toolkit is poorly suited to an intervention whose discount rate is close to zero, because the payoff shows up in a person’s own bloodwork within weeks. Food systems account for roughly a third of global emissions, on par with energy, yet they’re still treated as a footnote about cattle methane rather than a demand-side lever with an unusually favorable incentive structure. Health systems have been just as slow: Dietary counseling remains a peripheral, underfunded sliver of chronic-disease care, even though a doctor’s conversation about insulin resistance is, in effect, also a conversation about emissions.

Image by PIRO 4D from Pixabay

I want to be careful here, because overreach is how researchers lose people’s trust. These were secondary analyses, not the trials’ purpose, built on self-reported food records over weeks, not years, from volunteers rather than a random slice of humanity. No single study, nor all three together, can carry the weight of the global climate problem.

What they can do is point to a category of climate intervention our institutions aren’t built to reward: one where the beneficiary isn’t a future stranger but the person making the choice, this week, at their own table.

I still think of myself as a metabolism researcher. I arrived at this subject not through conviction, but by running the same kind of study three times and watching the same shadow fall across the results each time. That’s the pattern a scientist learns to trust most — not the striking one-off, which might be chance, but the finding that refuses to go away no matter how many times you look. This one has refused to go away.

Conflict of interest: The author directs clinical research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that advocates for plant-based nutrition, and led the trials cited in this piece.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Dangerous Drinking: Is Bottled Water Really Safer Than Tap Water?

The post Climate Policy Has a Sacrifice Problem. My Clinical Trials Kept Solving It by Accident. appeared first on The Revelator.

The Place:

Morrell Nature Sanctuary is a 110-hectare (270-acre) preserve of coastal Douglas-fir forest in British Columbia that volunteers battle to keep safe from invasive species. The sanctuary is a shelter for a biodiverse ecosystem where fir coexist with massive red cedars, Garry oaks, and twisting, hard-as-stone arbutus trees with their shocking, ever-peeling red and pistachio-green trunks. The forest’s undergrowth is dominated by salal, Oregon grape, and ferns. But those are just a few of the more than 100 species of plants that provide a home for animals, including deer and bears. Ravens and barred owls regularly oversee our work.

Why it matters:

According to the Coastal Douglas-fir Conservation Partnership, this type of forest is the most at-risk zone in British Columbia, yet it contains the highest diversity of plant species in the province. Morrell Nature Sanctuary is a volunteer-led organization trying to maintain a small piece of this forest for all.

A barred owl looks down on Morrell. Photo: Tanya Berry (used with permission) The threat:

The forest is in peril. Always creeping in from the edges or growing from bits dropped by birds are invasive Christmas-card perfect holly trees and very pretty, but toxic, daphne laurel. The open, rocky bluffs that the arbutus and Garry oaks favor are at risk of being taken over by Scotch broom. Local lore attributes the broom plague to a sentimental Scot who planted a few seeds to remind him of home. Now the broom has taken over any disturbed (literally and metaphorically) location across large swathes of southwestern British Columbia. It runs rampant up hydro lines, along trails and ditches, and in lots clearcut and then abandoned by developers. We curse the homesick Scot even as we grudgingly admire the bright yellow blooms in late spring.

It’s not just the sanctuary volunteers who engage in the Sisyphean labor of cutting blooming broom as close to the ground as possible. Many groups work to eradicate it, worrying the highly flammable, toxic bush will kill the native species and fuel a forest fire. It is dangerously everywhere.

The invasive-fighting volunteers have heard the arguments. Isn’t it natural evolution to let plants grow as they wish? That’s hard to believe if you witness the monoculture left under the canopy if you let daphne laurel grow at will. Isn’t it a waste of time? I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to liberate an arbutus from a surround of broom and know that even if you need to come back to cut baby broom next year, the arbutus is free for now. Parts of the sanctuary are close to pristine, where breathing is easier for everyone — and that can’t possibly be a waste of time or labor.

So we persist against the holly, daphne laurel, and broom while occasionally tackling other problematic plants in our neck of the woods: Periwinkle, English ivy (homesick settlers take note!) and Himalayan blackberry have also taken root.

My place in this place:

Of all the invasive plants, it’s the blackberry I find most difficult — and not just because of its vicious, rope-thick cane and brambles. There’s actually very little of it in the sanctuary, but when I occasionally come across it, I morph into a blackberry terminator, lasering in on the plant as I approach for the kill.

The author at Morrell.

My technique involves clipping back as much of the vine and cane that I can until the roots are exposed, which I pull out of the ground with specially designed “puller-bears.” These heavy contraptions are very useful for pinching around the base of a plant and then slowly levering the roots out of the ground. They’re indispensable for clearing daphne laurel and smaller holly trees, which will regrow if cut. But never use a puller-bear on broom: You’ll just disturb the soil and create the perfect nursery for thousands of dormant broom seeds to sprout. It’s better to cut blooming broom off at the base, which will likely kill it.

But back to the blackberries. In the sanctuary I gleefully eradicate them. It’s when I leave that problems arise, as I wrestle with my hypocritical lust for a perfectly ripe blackberry. As soon as I touch a plump fruit, I know whether I should immediately pull it to my mouth or drop it in a bucket to freeze for delayed gratification over the winter. The ripe ones come to you willingly, almost falling into your hand as you caress them and then offer explosions of sweetness leaving a lingering, subtle, delicious tartness on your palate. There’s a reason “hints of blackberry” is often used to describe rich red wines.

As I walk to the sanctuary on summer mornings I assess the readiness of the crop, justifying my greediness with every step. They’ll still be there, taking over fields and ditches if I don’t eat them. And it’s free food! (Monetarily, at least.)

The coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem also has native trailing blackberries. Their fruits are smaller and sweeter, and many claim more delicious, than Himalayan blackberries. The trailing blackberry vine is also more delicate, and there’s no cane. While Himalayan blackberries would make an extremely effective defense against invaders, trailing blackberries allow animals to move through and coexist with salal and Oregon grape. Nonnative blackberries grow prolifically, not allowing anything else to grow and even competing with broom in disturbed sites. I believe it’s the alpha blackberry that will win out.

Have I mentioned the thorns the size of tacks that tear at your clothes, sometimes piercing the armor you donned before heading out on the hunt? For a month or so every summer the invasive blackberries dare you to come and get ’em if you’re brave enough to try. It’s not a chore for the unprepared. No matter the weather, you have to wear thick clothing and closed-toe shoes, if not boots. Mesh-topped running shoes won’t last a minute. The wise bring hand clippers to carve out a relatively safe space to pick. My husband carries an old broomstick with a bent nail banged into one end, which he uses to snag berry-laden branches and pull them within reach. He favors cutting his way in where others dare not go and picking in one spot. I wear a thick work glove on my non-picking hand to maneuver fruit nearer as I skim along the surface of the brambles. We’ve enviously watched seasoned warriors lean ladders against three-meter-high blackberry hedges to get at the ones the rest of us can’t reach.

My love of blackberries illustrates the issue at hand. Many invasive plants were originally planted in gardens because they’re pretty or taste good. I, along with everyone else, need to tamp down our selfish need for plants that don’t belong here. Inevitably as I enter the sanctuary, my mouth stained a deep purple, I relax because it’s always cooler there when it’s hot out. On rainy days the towering canopy gives protection. I stop and breathe and know that given the choice of this or blackberries, I will choose the forest every time. That’s what we are fighting to protect.

Who’s protecting it now:

Volunteers. In addition to the Morrell nature sanctuary, volunteers with organizations such as BroomBusters are working in the region to eradicate invasive species, Scotch broom in particular.

Photo: Tanya Berry (used with permission) What this place needs:

The smallest actions, such as ripping out an invasive plant as one walks by, can quickly add up, clearing areas remarkably effectively. But local government leaders also need to step in and recognize the threat posed by invasive plants. The wildfires should terrify us all and spur action to legislate the removal of plants such as Scotch broom or fine those who don’t take action. Another step is to make the disposal of invasive plants easier. Right now, it costs us to take bags of pulled or cut plants for disposal; we need support, not barriers.

Lessons from the fight:

A small group of mostly retired people working a few hours a week can make a surprisingly big difference. But we Morrell volunteers are only working on a tiny piece of the landscape. If more people started working a bit more broadly, I believe much more of the forest could be protected. For example, I regularly walk through a Nanaimo park that’s choking on invasive plants. Holly and daphne are everywhere, and the cedars and firs are covered in ivy. Yet it’s obvious where people have stepped in to eradicate the interlopers, leaving pockets of forest in a clean state. It can be done.

Learn more:

To find out more about the Morrell Nature Sanctuary, visit their website or follow them on Facebook.

To see the work of another invasive fighting volunteer organization, with inspiring examples of small groups who made big impacts, visit the BroomBuster’s website.

To learn more about the coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem visit: https://www.cdfcp.ca/about-the-cdfcp/.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Protect This Place: The Florida Panhandle vs. Petrochemicals

The post Protect This Place: Coastal Douglas-Fir Forest of Southwestern British Columbia appeared first on The Revelator.