Feature image: Lotte Hass poses with her underwater camera housing. (Source: Hans Hass Institute)
One summer, there was a little girl who couldn’t go to the sea. She had to stay in the city, surrounded by grey buildings and sizzling sidewalks, while her friends left for faraway beaches.
So, every afternoon, she would retreat to her room, open the window to catch a breeze, close her eyes—and imagine. She imagined herself on a salt-scented island, where days drifted by between waves and rocks, halfway between land and ocean.
She saw tiny crabs chasing each other, sea anemones swaying with the currents, and little snails as slow as dreams.With an imaginary mask on her face, she sat on the seabed of her carpet and held her breath. She pretended to be Ariel, the little mermaid—talking to fish, listening to the stories whispered by seashells.
One day, rummaging through a bookshelf at home, she found an old book with a blue cover and a photo of a man in a boat wearing a red beanie. It was Jacques Cousteau, a French naval officer and ocean explorer who co-invented the first underwater breathing apparatus (now commonly called scuba). And inside those pages were underwater worlds full of mystery: sharks, shipwrecks, whales, coral reefs and men exploring the deep. She read it all in one sitting. She admired him. But over time, a question grew inside her:
“And the women? Where are mermaids in these stories?”
One day she asked her mother. Her mom smiled, sat next to her on the bed, and began to speak. She told her that real mermaids had always existed—but their stories were often hidden, silent, like shells resting on the ocean floor. Then she began to tell her about one in particular.
It didn’t begin by the sea, but high in the mountains of a country called Austria. There lived a girl named Lotte, who dreamed of a life filled with adventures, travels, and underwater discoveries. Back then, diving was “a man’s world”. People said the ocean was too dangerous for a girl. But Lotte didn’t believe that. She wanted to be a real mermaid.
And she became one.
Just after finishing school, at age 18, Lotte began working as a secretary for one of the most famous underwater explorers in the world: Hans Hass. But her job wasn’t what she had imagined—her days were full of paperwork, phone calls, and calendars to organise. No diving. No fins. No fish.
And yet, every time Hans told stories about distant seas and coral reefs, Lotte listened with eyes full of wonder. In her free time, she started learning. Quietly. Secretly. No one thought a woman could live such extraordinary adventures. Scuba tanks were as heavy as anchors. Underwater cameras looked like iron suitcases.
But nothing could stop Lotte. She wanted to learn everything—how to breathe underwater, how to use a camera in the deep, how to swim among corals without disturbing them. She wanted to be part of Hans’ team. She wanted to become one of them.
When Hans found out, he tried to change her mind in every way. He told her diving was for men, too hard, too risky. But Lotte didn’t give up. The more they said, “You can’t”, the more she whispered, “Yes, I can.”
And then an unexpected opportunity arrived. Hans was planning a new expedition to the Red Sea. He wanted to film sharks and coral reefs and show their beauty to the world. But to do it, he needed funding. He went to a film studio for help. The producers listened, and then said: “The sea is beautiful but we need something special. A story. A character. Maybe a woman?”
So, a little by chance and a little by necessity, Hans agreed: Lotte would join the expedition.
The heat was unbearable. The work was exhausting. The other crew members were skeptical. But Lotte stayed strong. She had something to prove. And so, she became the first woman to dive in the Red Sea.
Lotte frames her next underwater shot (Source: I photographed Under the Seven Seas, 1956)
At the time, that sea was still almost completely unexplored by scientists, far from tourism, full of wonders. The fish, rays, and coral they encountered had probably never seen a human being with an oxygen tank before! Day by day, fin by fin, Lotte picked up the camera. She learned how to use it better and better. Every photograph was a little piece of ocean she brought back to the surface—to share with others, especially those who, like her, had grown up far from the sea.
After the expedition, Hans and Lotte—now in love—got married. Their documentary won awards and brought the underwater world into homes around the world. But Lotte didn’t stop diving. She kept exploring, filming, and telling the stories of the sea. Her love for the ocean never faded. She received many honours. A tiny reef fish was even named after her: Lotilia graciliosa.
She also became the first European woman inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, a kind of club for real-life ocean heroines—like Sylvia Earle and many others—women who have done amazing things underwater: protecting sharks, exploring underwater caves, teaching others how to dive safely. These women are celebrated for their courage, their curiosity, and their dedication to protecting the ocean.
And so, the little girl who spent her summer at home discovered that real mermaids do exist. They don’t have tails—but they wear fins, carry tanks, and hold cameras. They are women like Lotte Hass, who opened the way when no one thought it was possible. Women who showed that you don’t have to be born by the sea to love it deeply. That even a “no” can turn into a dive toward new possibilities. You just have to believe.
And who knows? Maybe one day, between the rocks of an island or in the heart of a coral reef, you’ll discover that the colorful, silent world beneath the waves belongs to you, too.
Further Reading
Cardone, B. 1996. Women pioneers in diving. Historical Diver 9: 20–25.
Hass, L. 1972. Girl on the Ocean Floor. London: George G. Harrap & Co.
Comme un monde alien obscur souterrain, la haute mer abrite des habitats uniques et des créatures merveilleusement étranges, des poissons marcheurs aux concombres hérissés en passant par Casper l’octopode ! Couvrant 65 pour cent de la surface de la planète, les grands fonds marins constituent le plus grand écosystème du monde, mais aussi l’un des moins explorés. Cependant, une étude récente par Ramón Gallego et ses collègues, publiée dans Communications Biology, adécouvert que les éponges de mer peuvent contenir un catalogue génétique de secrets profonds et salés.
Avec une profondeur moyenne de plus de 3 500 mètres (11 000 pieds), les grands fonds marins constituent une frontière écologique coûteuse. Les pressions immenses, presque des températures gelées et le noir complète de l’obscurité font de l’étude de la vie dans la haute mer l’une des plus grandes teste de biodiversité. Les méthodes conventionnelles pour collectionner de donnée basique près de la surface de l’océan sont d’un coût prohibitif et posent des problèmes techniques dans les eaux plus profondes.
Malgré ces difficultés, c’est crucial de savoir quelles espèces vivent sur les fonds marins et où. Sans cette connaissance, des habitats rares et fragiles— qui inclurent les jardins de coraux et d’eau froide— sont menacés par la surexploitation, le chalutage de fond, la prospection de sites pétroliers et l’exploitation minière de métaux rares en eaux profondes.
Ces années récentes, une méthode relativement peu coûteuse pour collecter des données génétiques d’eau de mer a révolutionné la surveillance et la gestion de la biodiversité dans des zones reculées, tels que les grands fonds Chaque organisme vivant mue l’ADN dans l’air, le sol ou l’eau qui l’entoure. Ce matériau génétique, connue sur le nom « ADN environnemental » ou « ADNe », peut être utilisé à déterminer la présence de différentes espèces. Jusque un échantillon de 500 ml d’eau de mer peut contenir des milliards de cellules muées d’animaux, dont l’ADN peut être extrait pour identifier les espèces récemment passées.
Cependant, ces échantillons sont souvent inondés par les microbes unicellulares et ils comprennent peu d’information sur les coraux, les poissons et les autres grands animaux marins. Les études ont aussi révélé que cette méthode est restreinte à la capture de l’ADN dans une fenêtre temporelle relativement courte—car l’Adné se dégrade au fil du temps et c’est la période pendant laquelle il est détectable et usable.
Des chercheurs du Musée national de Madrid ont récemment mis au point une nouvelle méthode « haute résolution » d’échantillonnage de l’ADN électronique en exploitant le pouvoir filtrant naturel des éponges de mer. Leur approche permet d’obtenir un trésor de données génétiques sans précédent. Les éponges de mer sont des créatures immobiles qui filtrent continuellement de grands volumes d’eau, accumulant naturellement et consommant des particules microscopiques telles que les cellules rejetées par d’autres animaux.
Crédit photo: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2015 Hohonu Moana
Par rapport aux échantillons d’eau de mer, les éponges de mer peuvent contenir du matériel génétique provenant de zones beaucoup plus étendues. Cela est probablement dû à leur énorme capacité de filtrage, une éponge d’un kilo pompant jusqu’à 24 000 litres d’eau par jour. Une étude réalisée en 2022 a également montré que certaines éponges capturent l’ADN électronique sur une période plus longue que les échantillons d’eau de mer, ce qui en fait un inventaire extrêmement précieux de l’ADN électronique.
Gallego et ses collègues ont prélevé des morceaux de tissu d’un centimètre sur 97 éponges d’eau profonde de quatre espèces de l’Arctique et de l’Atlantique Nord. La précision remarquable de l’ADN électronique obtenu à partir des éponges a permis aux chercheurs d’identifier plus de 400 espèces animales, dont plusieurs « espèces indicatrices » comme les coraux, qui sont utilisées pour aider à identifier les écosystèmes marins vulnérables (EMV).
Les EMV sont des écosystèmes désignés comme « hautement menacés » par les pressions humaines et protégés par la politique des Nations unies contre les pratiques de pêche destructrices. Toutefois, la cartographie de la présence d’espèces indicatrices d’EMV dans les grands fonds marins se heurte actuellement à d’importants obstacles financiers, techniques et logistiques. Les progrès récents en matière de biosurveillance de l’« ADN d’éponge » offrent un outil transformateur et rentable pour informer la gestion et la protection des grands fonds marins.
De manière inattendue, des espèces non indigènes telles que la limule d’Amérique du Nord ont également été observées dans le cadre de l’étude. L’équipe suggère que l’« ADN d’éponge » peut détecter de manière fiable les espèces dont la répartition est modifiée en raison du changement climatique rapide. Par exemple, les auteurs ont trouvé des preuves d’un phénomène appelé « atlantification », selon lequel des espèces typiquement atlantiques colonisent progressivement les eaux arctiques qui se réchauffent.
À l’avenir, l’équipe souhaite identifier les espèces d’éponges qui capturent et stockent le plus d’ADN électronique. Elle espère que cela permettra de collecter des données encore plus détaillées et d’améliorer la rentabilité de la surveillance de la biodiversité des grands fonds marin
Autres lectures
Cai, W., L. R. Harper, E. F. Neave, P. Shum, J. Craggs, M. B. Arias, A. Riesgo et al. 2022. Environmental DNA persistence and fish detection in captive sponges. Molecular Ecology Resources 22(8): 2956–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13677.
Collins, R. A., O. S. Wangensteen, E. J. O’Gorman, S. Mariani, D. W. Sims and M. J. Genner. 2018. Persistence of environmental DNA in marine systems. Communications Biology 1: 185. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-018-0192-6.
Gallego, R., M. B. Arias, A. Corral-Lou, C. Díez-Vives, E. F. Neave, C. Wang, P. Cárdenas, et al. 2024. North Atlantic deep-sea benthic biodiversity unveiled through sponge natural sampler DNA. Communications Biology 7: 1015. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06695-4.
La culture est souvent définie comme le mode de la vie, qui inclus les coutumes et les croyances— d’un groupe particulier à un moment précis. Alors que les divers aspects de la culture, tels que la musique, l’art, la littérature et les langues, sont associés typiquement à l’homme, ils ne sont pas exclusifs aux nous. Parmi les animaux, la culture fait référence à des comportements appris et des vocalisations appris, et transmis socialement de génération en génération. De nombreux animaux sociaux tels que les baleines, les chimpanzés et les oiseux présentent des traits culturels, comme l’utilisation d’outils et des signaux vocaux spécialisés. Bien que la culture la culture animale diffère de la culture humaine, elle présente des similarités essentielles en matière d’apprentissage social et de transmission.
L’évolution culturelle en des vocalisations d’oiseux est bien documentée, avec des changements au fil du temps et à travers les régions. Par exemple, les bruants à gorge blanche d’Amérique du Nord sont récemment passés d’un chant à triple fin à un chant à double fin, un dialecte qui est originaire de l’ouest des montagnes Rocheuses et qui s’est répandu à l’échelle du continent. Dans les populations de petite taille ou fragmentées, l’évolution culturelle peut être néfaste—parce que le nombre limité de tuteurs rend difficile la transmission du répertoire original— qui résulte en nouvelles variations de chants ou des comportements mal adaptés.
Le moqueur de Floreana (Mimus trifasciatus), espèce en voie de disparition, est une espèce rare, qui a la reproduction coopérative est qui est endémique aux îles Galápagos. C’oiseau a probablement inspiré les théories de Darwin sur l’évolution. Sa principale population a disparu de l’île de Floreana 50 ans seulement après sa visite, laissant moins de 300 individus sur deux petits îlots rocheux au large – Champion (0,1 km2) et Gardner-by-Floreana (0,8 km2).
Un projet majeur du parc national des Galápagosa a l’objectif à rétablir l’île de Floreana, par la réintroduction d’oiseau moqueur de Floreana qui est localement disparu. Les oiseaux des deux populations restantes établiront une troisième population sur Floreana, réduisant ainsi le risque de l’extinction. Alors que les facteurs écologiques et génétiques relatifs à la réintroduction ont été largement étudiés pendant des décennies, les aspects comportementaux tels que les vocalisations n’ont pas reçu la même attention, malgré l’influence que ce trait pourrait avoir dans le succès de la réintroduction.
Une étude récente publiée dans Pacific Conservation Biology a examiné comment l’isolement des deux populations restantes—suivant l’extinction de la population principale— a peut-être accéléré le changement culturel. L’étude a montré que le manque de connectivité entre les deux populations a conduit au développement de « dialectes » distincts dans les vocalisations sur chaque île. Cette divergence dans les modèles de vocalisation peut avoir été influencée par les différences entre la morphologie du bec entres des populations, les oiseaux d’une population étant généralement plus grands que ceux d’autre.
En outre, l’étude a montré comment les variations aléatoires des vocalisations entre les îles—connues sous le nom de « dérive culturelle »— pourraient également avoir joué un rôle dans la divergence des vocalisations. Les chercheurs ont testé cette hypothèse en comparant les enregistrements d’espèces datant des années 1960s avec des enregistrements plus récents et ont observé des différences entre les vocalisations d’une même population au fils du temps.
Cette étude souligne l’importance de considérer les aspects comportementaux dans la conservation. La réintroduction du moqueur de Floriane pourrait rencontrer des défis en raison des variations vocales entre les deux populations d’origine, ce qui pourrait retarder l’amélioration de la diversité génétique. Par exemple, la réintroduction d’individus avec des dialectes différents pourrait conduire aux individus qui accouplent avec jusque ces qui << parlent >> le même dialecte et, par conséquent, ralentissent la formation des groupes et le mélange des gènes. Cependant, recherche supplémentaires est nécessaire parce que les oiseaux moqueurs montrent une grande capacité d’adaptation et peuvent apprendre de nouvelles vocalisations même à l’âge adulte, ce qui pourrait aider l’intégration des répertoires vocaux locaux entre les deux populations d’origine.
Autres lectures:
Reyes E. M. R., M. Roper Michelle, C. Sevilla, D. Rueda, H. Brunton Dianne, N. H. Smith Adam, and L. Ortiz-Catedral. 2024. Cultural divergence and morphological variation of isolated remnant populations of the endangered Floreana mockingbird. Pacific Conservation Biology 30: PC23055. https://doi.org/10.1071/PC23055.
Feature image: Valparai plateau in the Western Ghats is surrounded by tea plantations (Photo credit: Vijay Ramesh)
Hearing a forest awaken with chirps of its feathered inhabitants makes each morning feel like a blessing (less so if you prefer to sleep in!). This melodious orchestra of bird vocalisations as the horizon lightens is referred to as the ‘dawn chorus’. This peak in vocal activity is followed by a lull later in the day, and again, a subtler affair, the ‘dusk chorus’ in the evening. You must have observed the difference in bird vocalisations throughout the day, but have you wondered why that’s the case?
Some researchers attribute high vocal activity earlier in the day to better transmission conditions, while others propose that the early morning flurry of vocalisations serves to deter intruders. There is also a hypothesis that suggests that low light levels at pre-dawn and post-dusk hours make it difficult for birds to forage for food, so they vocalise instead. However, other researchers suggest that searching for food and informing their mates about it may be how birds prefer to start the day. People have been searching for answers to this question for over a century, but the jury is still out.
Passive acoustic recorders were left out in the field to capture the sounds of the rainforest(Photo credit: Vijay Ramesh)
We, at Project Dhvani, a research collaboration that uses sounds to study biodiversity, were puzzled by this question as well. So, we set out to the Valparai plateau—located in the Anamalai Hills in India’s Western Ghats—to listen to what the birds had to say on this matter. We left audio recorders in the field to capture the sounds of the rainforest. This technique of using remote devices to record sounds without direct observation is called passive acoustic technology. Then, using spectrograms—visual representations of the loudness of sounds at different frequencies across time—we visualised and marked bird vocalisations. And we used these vocalisations to test the different hypotheses for the dawn chorus.
We could decipher so much of the forest drama from sounds alone! As soon as the sun rose, the environment filled with notes of the choral explosion. A pair of Grey-headed Canary-flycatchers let out squeaky whistles, while a Malabar Whistling-thrush chipped in with its melody. Meanwhile, Indian White-eyes and Brown-cheeked Fulvettas engaged in a flurry of vocal activity. Come evening, the dusk chorus kicked in with the calls of Malabar Grey Hornbills. And Dark-fronted Babblers rattled while scrambling through the understory, and an Indian Pitta uttered two-note whistles.
Spectrogram showing the vocalisations of different birds (Photo credit: Vijay Ramesh)
Our results showed that most birds vocalised more at dawn than at dusk. Species that fiercely maintain and defend territories, such as the White-bellied Treepie, and those that are omnivorous, such as the Yellow-browed Bulbul, tended to vocalise more at dawn than dusk. In the Western Ghats, omnivores and insectivores have been observed to form mixed-species flocks, where species flock together and hunt in groups to stay protected from predators and become more efficient foragers. These flocks may vocalise to alert others about predators, and they tend to be more active at dawn than dusk. Overall, our results suggest that vocalising at dawn plays a role in advertising and defending territories, and it is also driven by the availability of food, such as insects.
Our research shows how passive acoustic technology could help us answer one of the most fundamental scientific queries—why do birds sing so much in the morning? The audio recorders also helped us study birds at multiple sites simultaneously over long periods. Going ahead, we look forward to integrating field observations with acoustic technology to provide deeper insights into behavioural patterns.
So maybe next time, remember the idiom as ‘The early bird gets the worm, and its territories stand firm’.
Further Reading Ramesh, V., P. Sundar, M. Srivathsa and L. Symes. 2025 Why is the early bird early? An evaluation of hypotheses for avian dawn-biased vocal activity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 380: 20240054. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0054.
Feature image: A guava is not just for human consumption but also food for the rose-ringed parakeet
We all have good reasons to fight for safeguarding the natural world. As an ecologist, I have been fortunate to observe, learn, and study various organisms, from monkeys and jungle cats to birds, bats, butterflies, crickets, and most recently, ghost crabs. This unique experience, coupled with teaching and interacting with undergraduates, has led me to introspect on whether facts and figures about deteriorating air, water, and soil conditions, the rise in carbon dioxide emissions, and the extinction of species, necessarily inspire action. Instead, I argue for individuals to develop a deeper connection with nature that will eventually promote understanding, care, and ultimately policy change. Such connections will not only be for the betterment of humans, but also non-humans with whom we share the planet.
We live in unprecedented times, more popularly referred to as the Anthropocene. Unfortunately, the name does not stand as an achievement of humankind, but rather for its dubious distinction of how we are altering the environment. The United Nations states that our population is set to hit 10 billion in the 2050s. The exponential rise in human numbers over the past 500 years is set to further deteriorate the natural environment. According to the World Resources Institute, by 2050, there will be a great mismatch in the demand for water and its availability in many countries, including India. Furthermore, between 2017 and 2024, six Indian cities were listed among the top 10 polluted cities in terms of air quality, according to IQAir. In many regions of India, agriculture and food production are already taking a toll due to the increasing extent of soil degradation. This continuous decline in air, water, and soil quality will impact human well-being and survival, especially marginalised communities. Protecting nature is therefore essential for the well-being of humanity.
However, nature must also be preserved for the countless non-human species who bear the brunt of our destructive tendencies. How then must we fight for non-humans?
Some of the solutions lie in the environmental ideologies that shape our position in relation to non-humans. The anthropocentric view is hierarchical—‘Man’ is considered above all or at the centre of the universe. The ecocentric view, however, has no clear hierarchy and is egalitarian. ‘Man’ is not above woman and other non-humans. Therefore, holding an ecocentric point of view is ideal for saving nature, as it places all living forms, including humans, on the same pedestal.
Who grows and gathers our vegetables and fruits?
Environmental ideologies also determine the value we assign to nature. The instrumental value of nature involves extracting and selling resources for direct economic benefits, such as the berries we collect, package, and sell in our supermarkets. Unfortunately, this instrumental value results in the overexploitation of nature, and is unsustainable in the long run. On the other hand, the relational value refers to the time we spend with nature and how we relate to it, beyond economics. For example, the act of gathering wild berries involves identifying the ones that are edible, observing when and where they grow, and collecting them for personal consumption. Thus, the relational value of humans and nature has both holistic and socio-cultural benefits.
However, it is the intrinsic value of nature that we should aspire to. It involves going beyond immediate monetary gains and the instrumental and relational values we attribute to nature. It emphasises the value that has no direct benefit for humans, but still calls for the admiration, respect, and preservation of nature. It is the realisation that wild berries are reproductive parts of trees, and also food for birds. This brings me to the first solution to fighting for nature—understanding that nature has an intrinsic value that goes beyond the value humans assign to it.
The second solution is one of awe and wonder. It requires a child-like curiosity to be kept alive, irrespective of one’s age—an attention to all creatures, great and small. One way to do this is to be outdoors as often as we can and develop a keen sense of observation of the creatures around us. Identifying, observing, and recording creatures is a great way to connect with and understand nature. The mobile phone—a tool that is now an extended part of our limb—can be handy for this purpose. Various apps, such as iNaturalist, eBird, and SeasonWatch, allow citizens to record and keep track of their observations. This citizen science data is also used by scientists globally to understand trends in the environment. The data from eBird, for instance, was used to produce the State of India’s Birds—a comprehensive report with insights into how bird populations are doing in the country.
Finally, I would like to emphasise our evolutionary history with other life forms. This history can be represented using a leafless, branched tree. Every species on Earth sits on the tip of a branch, and all species are connected to the tree’s trunk. Species seated next to each other on a branch suggest close relatedness. As humans sit next to chimpanzees on this phylogenetic tree, it indicates that we share a common ancestor with them, as illustrated by the node of the branch. Most importantly, the tree does not suggest that humans are in any way the pinnacle of evolution. Rather, we are as evolved as a sea urchin, a frog, a crow, or a banyan tree.
All three ways to connect with nature—realising nature’s intrinsic value, paying attention to it, and understanding its evolutionary history. But they are in no way exhaustive or the only way forward. It is important that each of us find our own way to foster a connection with nature. As long as we realise that our health is intricately linked with the planet’s health, we stand a chance in the future. Yet it is heart-wrenching to know that many non-human species that have evolved alongside us and shared this world with us for millions of years, are now walking into the darkness. Hopefully, that knowledge alone should prompt moral responsibility and inspire us to action.
Further Reading
Lupinacci, J. J. 2017. Addressing 21st century challenges in education: An ecocritical conceptual framework toward an ecotistical leadership in education. Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice2: 20–27. https://doi.org/10.5195/IE.2017.31.
Feature image: The Balaton Highlands, Hungary, at dawn
Environmental change is occurring on a larger scale than ever, seriously affecting the planet, as well as our society. This includes droughts, floods, loss of natural habitats, and pollinator declines, just to name a few on land. These global changes are becoming increasingly more severe and occurring faster than ever. And while understanding the present is not easy, predicting the future is a bigger challenge.
Developing realistic scenarios is one way to plan for an uncertain future, while another is to dramatically increase our flexibility and adaptive capability. Complex challenges, such as climate change, call for the integration of knowledge from actors across different backgrounds. From farmers to decision-makers and from scientists to artists, everyone can play a role in shaping a more sustainable future. And a diversity of ideas and experience is a good start for pre-adaptation: preparing ourselves (our families, our society) for the future—whatever it may bring.
This article shares our findings from one such strategic planning exercise, carried out in the Balaton Highlands of Hungary. The highlands—located on the northern side of Lake Balaton, Europe’s largest shallow lake—are a mosaic of forests, meadows, vineyards, agricultural areas, and small human settlements (where tourism, focusing on wine and recreation, is becoming increasingly important). The future of the landscape and its people will be heavily impacted by climate change. Temperature and precipitation directly determine which grape varieties (white in the present but maybe blue in the future?) or fruit cultivars (almond in the present but maybe fig in the future?) will be dominant, and which new species might invade or can be introduced. Dozens of olive trees, if not yet plantations, already enrich the view on this landscape.
Farmers, ecologists, designers and other stakeholders are increasingly involved in landscape futuring—experience-based speculations on the future that are grounded in science and illustrated with art installations. For this, multi-disciplinary thinking is crucial: ecologically sound, sustainable solutions cannot be realised until they are proven to be economically feasible and accepted by various actors in a cultural sense. Our exercise, therefore, included a literature survey, interviews with different stakeholders, highly interactive discussions with students, and a living lab experience. The latter involved inviting various local actors to participate in an open innovation ecosystem that integrated research and innovation through co-creation in a real-world environment (rather than an isolated lab).
We applied a special emphasis on education: if we are talking about future generations, it is only fair, logical, and useful to involve them. Based on earlier interviews with local farmers (as well as interviews with farmers in an Italian olive plantation), we identified the most critical issues and challenges related to the local effects of global change. During a week-long course, students and instructors worked together on three subtopics that had been identified earlier, focussing on visual, audio and food-related layers of the landscape. For example, we prepared food using only edible wild plants available in the area, including traditionally foraged wild plants (such as dog rose, Rosa canina). A closing workshop helped to discuss the preliminary outcome with a diverse group of players.
At the end of the week, students and instructors shared their results in a combined, immersive future landscape in three parts: a video and soundscape and foodscape installations. This exhibition was then offered as a provocation and used as an engagement tool for inviting local stakeholders to debate and discuss possible ecological futures. The landscape installation thus created a space for collaboration between ecologists, designers, artists, and local stakeholders to share knowledge and think together about the changing climate in the Balaton Highlands, and to explore possible actions towards pre-adaptation, preparing ourselves for a possibly risky future. This working methodology adhered to a critical (and speculative) design approach, wherein the artwork produced served as an embodied critique or commentary—specifically concerning issues of land use and climate change in this instance.
An art installation showcasing gastronomical futures
We were interested in how our mindsets changed after this immersive experience. One key finding was that economic considerations are unavoidable in landscape futuring, as real estate prices may exclude most local farmers from owning a piece of land. We concluded that mixed-crop agriculture (such as grape and olive) seems to be the best solution for dealing with climate-related uncertainty. We also noticed huge differences among farmers (and small, local communities) in terms of openness and flexibility. This experience helped participants think strategically, therefore helping with pre-adaptation for the future, and also making them engines of societal change.
Feature image: School at dusk by Umeed Mistry (Image from Ocean Image Bank)
The idea of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) seems simple: set aside sections of the ocean where human activities are restricted to allow marine ecosystems to recover and flourish. Over the past few decades, MPAs have become a cornerstone of conservation policy, with scientific studies demonstrating their role in rebuilding fish populations, preserving biodiversity, and improving ecosystem resilience against climate change. Global biodiversity targets reflect this confidence. Under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, over 190 countries have pledged to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, a commitment known as the 30×30 initiative.
Yet, for all the lofty ambition, a critical reality is often overlooked. Many of these protected areas exist in name only. They are what experts call “paper parks”—officially designated but lacking real enforcement, governance, or ecological benefits. The rush to meet conservation targets has, in some cases, incentivised the creation of large MPAs without the necessary resources to ensure they function as intended. The numbers are revealing. Although around 8.3 percent of the ocean is now under some form of protection, only 2.8 percent is effectively managed. That means, the vast majority of protected areas still allow fishing, shipping, and other extractive activities, often with little oversight.
This gap between conservation commitments and ground realities raises a fundamental question: is the focus on MPAs and percentage-based targets enough, or does marine conservation require a broader, more integrated approach?
Unintended consequences
Global conservation goals have been instrumental in rallying support and investment for marine protection. They create clear, measurable objectives that governments and institutions can commit to, driving funding and policy change. However, the pressure to meet targets can sometimes lead to unintended consequences.
Many governments, keen to demonstrate progress, have designated large MPAs in areas that are already low in commercial activity rather than prioritising regions under immediate ecological threat. In some cases, MPAs exist primarily on official registries, with little in the way of monitoring or enforcement. This is not a localised problem—studies suggest that nearly 80 percent of European MPAs fail to meet their conservation goals due to ongoing destructive activities such as bottom trawling.
Meanwhile, focusing conservation efforts primarily on designated MPAs means that other critical areas—the 70 percent of the ocean that falls outside protection—receive far less attention. Climate change, overfishing, and pollution do not stop at the borders of protected areas. The ocean is a vast and interconnected system, and its health depends on what happens beyond the boundaries of MPAs just as much as within them.
How do we tackle the matter?
First, we must move beyond the idea that conservation is only about setting aside protected areas. Marine conservation is much more than percentages. To ensure that the entire ocean is managed sustainably, stronger regulations, better enforcement, and integrating conservation into everyday ocean governance are vital.
A critical part of this shift involves Ocean-based Conservation and Environmental Management Strategies (OCEMS), a broader framework that embeds conservation principles across marine industries and governance. This approach acknowledges that protection should not be limited to specific zones but rather integrated into all human activities affecting the ocean.
Second, we must reform harmful subsidies and unsustainable industrial practices. Global governments still invest $22 billion annually subsidising fishing fleets and destructive marine activities, all paid through tax payers’ hard earned money. We all indirectly end up being a part of the great evil. Without tackling these harmful subsidies, MPAs risk becoming isolated refuges in an otherwise degraded ocean. Similarly, deep-sea mining is emerging as a serious threat to marine ecosystems with companies pushing for extraction rights in largely unexplored regions. Rather than waiting for irreversible damage, regulations must apply the precautionary principle and halt these activities before they escalate.
Finally, we must align economic incentives with conservation and shift from a shallow focus on percentages to deeper, outcome-based assessments. Too often, environmental protection is treated as a cost rather than an investment. We continue to undermine the economic value of ecosystem services. Accounting for these services can help us transition to a just and more reliable future.
Mechanisms such as Blue Bonds, which provide debt relief in exchange for conservation commitments, have already shown promise in countries like the Seychelles and Belize. Payments for Ecosystem Services could reward nations, businesses, and communities for maintaining healthy marine environments. If protecting biodiversity is more financially attractive than exploiting it, conservation will no longer be an uphill battle.
Declaring a stretch of ocean “protected” without enforcement or an impact assessment is equivalent to putting a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on an open hotel room door and hoping no one barges in. Real conservation requires an examination and reexamination of critical questions, including are marine species actually recovering? Is illegal fishing kept in check? Are people who depend on these waters seeing benefits? Without accountability, we risk expanding conservation in name only while ocean health continues to decline right under our noses.
Part of the problem is how we frame conservation. Environmental protection is too often treated as a grudging expense rather than an investment—akin to paying for a gym membership but never using it. Yet, marine ecosystems provide invaluable services, right from carbon sequestration to fisheries and coastal protection. If we started valuing these contributions within economic systems, conservation wouldn’t be seen as an act of charity, it would be accepted as common sense.
At the heart of it, conservation shouldn’t be about drawing imaginary lines around nature and hoping for the best. It should be about making sure that our interactions with the ocean, whether fishing, shipping, or even just admiring a sunset over the waves, are sustainable. Because the goal isn’t just to protect 30 percent of the ocean. It’s to ensure 100 percent of it can thrive for generations to come.
Feature image: The bag painting stall at ANET Open Day, 2025.
Located in the Bay of Bengal, India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands comprise 836 islands, of which 31 are inhabited. The Andaman Nicobar Environment Team (ANET), based in Wandoor, South Andaman, is a research and conservation initiative dedicated to protecting the unique biodiversity of this region and supporting sustainable coastal livelihoods. From coral reefs and mangroves to turtles, dugongs, and Indigenous knowledge systems, its work spans a wide range of ecosystems and disciplines.
Every year, ANET organises an Open Day—a popular event that welcomes students, researchers, families, and curious visitors to explore the campus and engage with the ongoing work. Through immersive exhibits, interactive games, and hands-on activities, guests gain a deeper understanding of the islands’ rich natural heritage and the efforts being made to conserve it. A day before this year’s event, the place was abuzz with anticipation and energy. Many hands and minds worked quietly and tirelessly to put the event together—one small thing at a time. A photo booth, videos, posters, performances, stalls with games, and more. The excitement was palpable.
We were all set to welcome visitors the next morning. This year, I was assigned to be at the bag painting stall. The tables were laid out with crisp, white canvas bags, tiny bottles of paint and brushes, and sea creatures meticulously carved out of potatoes! Then, we had an unexpected visitor: rain. I stood there a little defeated at the sight of such a downpour. But then they trickled in—excited little children with their hands linked, followed by their friends and siblings, and other kids pointing to the stalls, wide grins on their faces. Some had even dragged along their parents and grandparents, all patiently waiting in line for their turn.
The rain had barely dampened their energy. It wasn’t just the turnout that struck me; it was the way everyone approached the bag painting activity I was supervising. They were all childlike. Parents painted alongside their children, helping mix colours, offering suggestions, and sometimes just following the child’s lead. The usual roles of adult and child seemed to blur. They had immersed themselves in the task, and some took it upon themselves to fill every white space with vibrant colours on the bag. They painted unabashedly, unapologetically, sending brushes and paint and water flying from one side of the stall to the other. They painted outside the boundaries. Some were cautious though—they made the turtles look like turtles, trees like actual trees, and painted the water blue and the skies orange.
The natural world through the eyes of a five-year-old. If you look closely, you can see ecosystems and natural cycles, showing an inherent understanding even if a child has not yet learned the words to describe them.
What was the one thing that tied them together? I wondered as I handed out a paint bottle, a brush, a stamp.
It was the world as they saw it—deeply rooted in observation and endless questioning. Amid the noise and mess, I realised something significant: what I was witnessing wasn’t just art, it was a form of nature journaling, a process of recording, interpreting, and making sense of the world through direct engagement. While the children had no formal tools or journals, they were observing in real time, just like any researcher in the field. They were noting details, feeling textures, and imagining shapes of animals, trees, and ecosystems they had seen or hoped to see.
But what surprised me even more was the way they saw not just the familiar or charismatic species, but the ones that often go unnoticed. I spoke with one child who had painted an odd-looking, elongated blob-shaped creature that he referred to as keeda (meaning ‘bug’ in Hindi). His description matched that of a sea slug, and when I showed him a picture, he immediately identified it, explaining that they were common on the shore and “slimy”. To me, this wasn’t just about the species. It was an observation made in the intertidal zone which becomes exposed at low tide. He was aware of it, he recognised it, and even had a term for it. His recognition of the species wasn’t just linguistic—it was an understanding rooted in his experience of the shore.
As the event progressed, more children gathered at the stall, bringing with them new perspectives and ideas. I observed them closely, noticing the subjects they chose to paint. Some painted schools of fish, clustered together in tight formations. Others painted large, green sea turtles and tiny leatherbacks making their way to the ocean. They painted sea stars with all five limbs stretching out and stamped impressions of sting rays. The diversity of their subjects was striking, not just in the creatures they depicted, but in the relationships they portrayed between the animals and their environments.
A green sea turtle painted in its natural habitat—seagrass! The artist has also displayed empathy towards the natural world.
Yet another painting seared in my memory was that of a whale beside a scuba diver. The diver was painted minuscule in comparison to the whale, emphasising the enormity of the creature. This was a clear observation of scale and proportion, showing an understanding of the relative size of marine animals.
A scuba diver swimming beside a whale—the artist shows an understanding of scale and proportion.
In anthropology, this is understood as the way people construct meaning from their environment. The act of observation—whether through art, language, or other forms of expression—shapes how individuals and communities relate to the world. Anthropologists such as Tim Ingold have long stressed on the importance of close observation and engagement with the world, arguing that knowledge is formed through this direct interaction.
In the case of children painting at the stall, they were making sense of the natural world through their observations. The whale beside the scuba diver wasn’t just a whimsical image; it was a deliberate interpretation of scale, knowledge, and the relationship between humans and the marine world. Similarly, the schools of fish painted in tightly packed formations weren’t just a random choice; they mirrored the behaviour of fish in nature, where certain species tend to group together for protection or feeding. The turtles and sea stars were painted with remarkable accuracy too, reflecting an understanding of their shapes and behaviours.
The act of observing and documenting, through art or otherwise, is a fundamental part of how we come to understand the natural world. In that moment, the stall became more than just a space for painting; it became a space for knowledge-making, where individuals of all ages could connect with and express their understanding of the environment around them. As Ingold writes, we are all “making” in our own ways, crafting meaning through direct engagement and personal observation.
As the day wore on, the stall was still surrounded by eager faces. Kids huddled around, adding final touches to their paintings, unwilling to let go of the activity. As exhausted as I was by the end of it, I was still excited to see the last of the paintings. The rain may have delayed the start, but once the children and their families arrived, the stall came alive. It became a space for observing and reflecting on the world, where age and role dissolved into the simple act of looking and learning. And in that shared space, in that collective act of seeing and creating, something meaningful happened: an overwhelming display of the world through many eyes. So, listen—listen quietly, look, and let the world unfold.
Feature image: Landing and cleaning skipjack tuna on the beach
Nearly a century ago, eight fishers from Bitra rowed out to Veliapani. At a shallow channel where Veliapani’s sandy lagoon poured into the sea, they spotted three turtles swimming toward a large boulder, nearly the size of their boat. With harpoons in hand, they watched intently, waiting for the turtles to resurface for air, but they never did. To their astonishment, the boulder stirred; it was not a boulder but a massive, speckled grouper adjusting itself on the sandy bottom. “The grouper could feed the islanders for an entire month,” they thought. It took the strength of all eight men to haul the beast aboard. On gutting the fish, they found the very turtles they had set out to hunt—a double win!
Chalakkad Bitra chronicles this legendary tale in Pullichammam: Maha matsya (spotted grouper: a mighty fish). A resident of Bitra—the smallest fishing community in Lakshadweep, an archipelago of low coral atolls off the southwest coast of mainland India—he offers a glimpse into the lives of old fishers in his novel Odukkadhakal (stories of the odum1), recounting their heroic hunts and travels. These stories depict fishing traditions that predate the arrival of commercial tuna fishing in 1960, which pushed fishers from their familial nearshore waters into the open sea. In Lakshadweep’s folklore, groupers are revered creatures—sentinels of the sea, making men of those who dared catch them.
What was it afraid of?
On a recent dive inBitra, a large grouper darted across my view, scattering coral shrubbery in its wake. “What was it afraid of?” I wondered. I continued swimming along the contour of the reef while I counted squaretail groupers that had migrated there to spawn. The panic was palpable. Around me, more male squaretails scattered in frantic alarm. Females made a feeble attempt to seek cover from me, their bellies too swollen with eggs for an urgent response.
A year ago, this wasn’t the case; the squaretails when engaged in their feverish courtship, barely noticed my presence. They’d let me approach within arm’s reach, while I took notes about their sex lives on my slate. This year they were noticeably skittish. And it soon became clear why. Above us an engine revved, as a boat pulled up above the site. A small band of fishers dropped like shrapnel into the water. A breath was taken, and a skin diver drew close with a speargun in hand. Before I could react, the large squaretail I was observing was impaled on his speargun.
Male squaretail groupers defend their mating territories during spawning aggregations
For the past decade, I’ve been studying the ecology of spawning aggregations of squaretail groupers (Plectropomus areolatus) in the reefs of Lakshadweep. Spawning aggregations are extravagant displays of fish behaviour. Each year, when it’s time to spawn, adult fish leave their territories and travel kilometres across the reef to converge at a single location, drawn by a primal urge. Under the shroud of a waning moon, these chosen sites spring to life, as predictably as clockwork.
Year after year, I return with the squaretails, tallying them as they journey to spawn, noting their sizes, sexes, and peculiar mating rituals. By tracking trends in their numbers and differences in behaviour, I can keep a pulse on population health and detect subtle signs of distress. Back in 2013, when I first scoped out this aggregation site for my PhD research, it was a sight to behold—1,200 squaretail groupers milling in an area as vast as a hockey field. But over time, things have changed. The site that once teemed with life now sprawled before me, a desolate expanse. Squaretail numbers had dwindled. Mighty bucks no longer guarded reef territories. Females no longer roamed in grand processions.
Annual spawning aggregations of squaretail groupers are extravagant displays of fish behaviour
Eighty years after Challakad Bitra’s story, the currents of change are sweeping through island fisheries again, beckoning fishers back to reefs from the open seas. Their gaze is set on prized reef dwellers like groupers, destined for mainland markets. The quest for bounty, largeness, and top predator—hallmarks of an unbridled fishery—has already left an indelible mark on the itinerant squaretails. As I observed their meek, flighty demeanour, I couldn’t help but question their fabled status: what tales would be written about Lakshadweep’s groupers today?
“Groupers are attracted to the eyes”
One of the fishers in the story Pullichammam was Nallakoya’s father. Nallakoya fished like his father did before the arrival of the tuna fishery, reading signs in the weather, tracing constellations and trusting the moods of the sea to guide him. He had just narrated Parava mala a Jeseri2-Arabic ode to the flying fish, an open water fish, traditionally used as bait. Following its instructions, he divided a flying fish into seven parts and, without wasting a piece, caught six small paddletail snappers at the lagoon entrance, where we were anchored.
“Groupers are attracted to the eyes,” he said as he dropped the head of the baitfish into the water. We waited patiently for an hour before there was a familiar tug at his fishing line. Nallakoya had the sea in him, people said—a god-gifted instinct to fish. He scorned the modern anglers who used baitfish caught in the lagoons. The practice of chumming the waters with live baitfish was a technique borrowed from the tuna fishery, its practitioners now redirecting their focus towards the reef. “It’s reckless,” he muttered, his tone tinged with disapproval. “Yellow snappers (the baitfish) often slip away while groupers close in. Harvesting many live baitfish for one grouper is wasteful, when all that is truly needed is a fish head with eyes.”
Near the lagoon crest, I observed another traditional form of reef fishing: a group of elderly fishers hauled an olavadal—a traditional fishing net—into their boat. As it was pulled up, a chain of coconut leaves rustled, concealing a sly gill net beneath. “The whispering of those leaves underwater lures the fish. But unlike the modern fishers, we don’t rob them of their lives, we allow them to sacrifice themselves, and only those who are ready do,” he said, explaining the difference between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ fishing styles of the modern and traditional fishers. With every heave of the olavadal, large parrotfish—vital herbivores in coral reef ecosystems—spilled onto the floor, along with a few gravid squaretails that had sacrificed themselves.
Olavadal, a traditional fishing net comprising a gill net hidden beneath coconut leaves
Wastefulness was a growing point of conflict between traditional fishers like Nallakoya and younger modern reef fishers in Lakshadweep. I met some of the modern fishers just days earlier, resurfacing from a solemn dive amid a small flotilla of thonis3. Each thoni was manned by a single fisher that followed their free diving partner around in the water. Curious, I chatted with a pair of them during a surface interval between dives. The team had ‘trolled’ from the lagoon entrance; i.e, the boats had slowly tugged a snorkeler behind them to observe the reef underneath, pausing to explore promising fishing spots, before moving on. As we were speaking, I watched a squaretail emerge out of the water writhing on the blade of a speargun. Within half an hour six others joined its lifeless body by our feet in the thoni. Eight months ago, the young fishers had wielded their first spearguns. Today, they did this job full-time.
The young spearfishers referred to themselves as the kadalkkollakkaar—pirates of the sea. They had recently run into opposition from the traditional fishers in Bitra, who had deemed their practice destructive and took official action against them. “By law, the reefs are communal grounds, are they not? We are fishers too and should be allowed to fish anywhere,” the spearfishers had said when we met. Their words got to the nub of another point of conflict: reefs as commons. The reefs belonged to no one, yet belonged to each and every one, all at once. They were a shared heritage where generations past and present were now colliding.
Ever since this conflagration, the spearfishers felt slandered and chose to operate discreetly in uninhabited atolls like Veliyapani, or under the cover of night. “No one acknowledges the wastefulness of traditional fishing practices. Those nets catch everything in sight. Even the fish that no one eats,” they lamented. “Worse still, the nets can damage coral,” they continued. “We only take what we need, leaving the reef undisturbed,” they assured me. The crew were heading next to Veliyapani with a commercial fish-collection boat from the mainland. I wondered if they’d chance upon an aggregation site there. We exchanged numbers.
Shared knowledge
In my research, I find myself compelled to chronicle the unfolding narrative of the reef fishery in Lakshadweep, as the appetite for reef fish from mainland India surges. I find myself especially intrigued by the local wisdom surrounding reef fish within these fishing communities. The fishers with whom I’ve engaged appear to be coalescing into three discernible fishing groups: the traditionalists, a thinning bunch, who inherit their methods from ancestral wisdom; the modern reef anglers, attuned to the rhythms of the open sea, adapting methods from the tuna fishery; and the spearfishers, a recent addition, acquiring their knowledge through the endless seas of social media. Each group of fishers has their own distinctive blueprint of the reef, with each establishing their own footprint on the waters too.
The research team heads out to study spawning aggregations
Nallakoya and the traditionalists held sacred the select locations that aligned with enduring geomorphic features of the atoll—such as chaal, the lagoon entrance; kona, a reef promontory; pitti, a sandpit; bettikedi, the deeper waters of the lagoon. Each site bore a unique name, known to kin, perpetuated through tales like Pullichammam, chronicling their ancestral exploits. While the traditionalists remained loyal to certain locations, modern anglers and spearfishers were less discerning. Their sites were marked as nameless Northings and Eastings on handheld GPS devices, exchanged openly and traversed by all.
Limited by where they fished, the traditionalists felt the pinch, perceiving the biggest changes in their fish catches. “We know exactly when they’ve been here,” Nallakoya remarked, alluding to the nocturnal anglers whose flashlight-lit pursuits disrupt the sleep cycles of fish. “The fish, they cease their biting.” In my conversations with the fishers of Lakshadweep, I sense a melancholic parting of paths. Fathers, sons, uncles, and nephews cling to their own fishing ethos, rarely engaging in mutual dialogue. Were they to do so, they’d see how they sculpt each other’s access to the shared reservoirs of resources. Each carries within them jewels of wisdom, offering pathways to sustainable stewardship of the sea.
I pondered the interplay between this old and new local wisdom and my own scientific understanding of the squaretail groupers, contemplating where these three realms might intersect. I had shared my insights on fish spawning aggregations with Nallakoya and the spearfishers, clarifying a distinction between groupers and tunas, which was a common misunderstanding. While tunas were social creatures, always living in large shoals, groupers were solitary, only gathering sporadically to spawn. This made spawning groupers particularly vulnerable to fishing.
“We didn’t know these fish were laying eggs,” the young fishers had said in response. Nallakoya seemed surprised to hear that some of the squaretails I had examined were over 10 years old. I saw gaps emerging in our collective understanding of seasonality and breeding biology of these fish in the islands. Gaps I earnestly believed were crucial to fill together, to effectively conserve these magnificent fish. A few days later, my phone buzzed. A stream of photos of brown marbled groupers popped up on my screen. The spearfishers had stumbled upon another grouper aggregation site in Veliyapani. I showed it to Nallakoya. He said it was close to the spot where Challakad Bitra had located his story.
“Just like a fish laundry”
In Pullichammam, the grouper is dissected into 640 morsels, each salted and sun-dried, feeding fisher families for a month. Even its sturdy bones find new purpose, fashioned into knives to serve the fishers again. In 2022, after the weary veil of the COVID-19 pandemic had lifted, we strolled along Bitra’s shoreline in the gentle afternoon glow. We saw two familiar faces scaling a bounty of fish. Behind them, fishing lines were strung between wooden poles, where a solitary figure meticulously hung filleted fish to dry. “Like a fish laundry,” my colleague joked, as we watched them billow in the breeze.
Traditional craft of sundrying fish
Trade with the mainland had ceased for months. In response to the economic hardship facing the community, the Bitra panchayat4 initiated a bold effort to revive an ancient tradition: drying reef fish. Once a monsoon staple, the practice preserved both flavour and nutrients. Bitra, spared from rats and crows, had long led this enterprise, supplying dried fish to neighbouring islands. Such practices predated the rise of the pelagic tuna fishery in the 1960s, which later came to dominate the production and post-harvest fisheries landscape. As I walked along the lines, my gaze fell on rows of squaretails, their once-nimble forms now softly putrefying in the tropical heat. My colleagues busied themselves, packing boxes of dried fish to take home. In the tumultuous wake of the pandemic, as the world grappled with uncertainty, Bitra stayed afloat. The homecoming of spawning fish served as a beacon of hope.
At my desk, a map of Lakshadweep glows softly on my screen. It is adorned with a constellation of coloured dots that mark spawning grounds I’ve now monitored through underwater surveys, and promising locations suggested by fishers that are awaiting further exploration. With each turn of the season, new aggregation sites are being discovered as the fishery extends its grasp. These spawning sites, brimming with their promise of new life, can become crucial lifelines for island fisheries. Their temporal and location-specificity make management efforts concentrated, with benefits to the fishers and the ecosystem permeating far and wide, beyond the confines of the spawning arena.
In distant corners of the globe, spawning grounds have found guardianship under the aegis of the state or the stewardship of local communities. Across the Pacific and Caribbean seas, degraded spawning sites have even experienced a revival with minimal intervention—be it a sporadic fishing moratorium, modest catch limitations, or a communal rotation in harvest responsibilities—offering us glimmers of hope.
However, Nallakoya, the spearfishers, and I are bound together by a shared sense of foreboding. In the absence of urgent and concerted management endeavours, the groupers of Lakshadweep teeter on the brink of a perilous fate. A decade’s worth of tallies of squaretails on my spreadsheet reveals a disquieting downward trend. Spearfishers now find themselves stretching their breaths to capture fewer and more elusive fish within their shooting range, while Nallakoya lingers longer on his boat, amid a sea that seems emptier by the day. Meanwhile, the clamour for groupers from distant shores swells ever louder.
Will the fishers rally together to save the Maha Matsya of their lore? I find myself reflecting on Nallakoya’s words on that tranquil day in the lagoon. There is a difference, he said, between theft and sacrifice. Each leaves a distinct signature on the sea. I think I dimly see the difference, but I’m not quite sure. I often find myself transported back to that moment when I stood utterly spellbound, beholding my first encounter with the squaretail grouper spawning aggregation in the waters of Bitra. Amidst the hustle and bustle at the aggregation site, one male squaretail stood out—a titan amongst his kind, a squaretail grouper of formidable stature who captured my gaze and held it in awe. He staked his territory on the fringes of the site, near a weathered coral boulder nestled in the sand, much like the Maha Matsya. He allowed me to approach within arm’s reach, our gazes locked in a silent exchange, before carrying on with his spawning rituals.
For several years, I saw him in the same spot, and together we forged an unspoken connection in his frenetic world. With each passing year, he looked more weathered, progressively accumulating more battle scars on his body. Then, one year, he appeared with a hook in his lip. He wore it like a trophy. A battle was won, but he was tethered now to our world. The following year, I was in the water when a spearfisher swam down to the reef and speared him through the head, rising to the surface with his writhing body. Was he taken or did he use his agency to surrender to the fisher?
We live in a time when wildfires, floods, pollution, and degraded habitats are part of our daily reality. This reality significantly affects every species around us. The dominant view in global biodiversity science is that species are now disappearing at rates 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates. Given this pace, we are currently experiencing the early stages of the sixth mass extinction, driven by human activity.
In Vanishing Life on Earth, Professor Bimalendu B. Nath—science communicator and scientist with expertise in genetics and evolutionary biology—walks readers through Earth’s evolutionary history and highlights the intricate interdependence of species that has developed over millions of years. Placing the species we’ve lost in the context of their evolution over epochs emphasises that they aren’t just names in a museum catalogue. Instead, they are ancient lineages with unique geological, ecological, and historical significance.
Nath encourages readers to learn and reflect, prompting vital questions such as: why does biodiversity loss matter? What lessons have we learnt from the past? His holistic approach linking evolutionary biology with conservation policy adds depth often missing from popular science books. I look at it as the E-E-P trinity—integrating evolution, ecology, and policy to support the global “One Health” goal, which views human, animal, and environmental health as interconnected. Throughout the book, Nath also poses a question directly to the reader: what can we do to prevent more loss?
This book is especially suited for young readers, including high school students and undergraduates. It could also be a valuable science literacy resource for educators, journalists, conservationists, and non-specialist professionals in the sustainability or policy space.
Making science accessible
What sets Vanishing Life on Earth apart is Nath’s ability to balance science and storytelling—translating complex scientific ideas into accessible language. His infographics, fossil snapshots, and timelines enhance the reading experience, providing visual anchors that allow readers to trace evolutionary and extinction events more clearly.
(a) Photo of a fossil of Archaeopteryx, the bird-like dinosaur (that lived around 150 million years ago), discovered from (b) a stone quarry in Solnhofen, Bavaria (Germany) (Caption and image credit: Vanishing Life on Earth)
He begins with Earth’s earliest stages, long before life appeared, and guides the reader through the debates over whether life first sparked on land or in the sea. From there, Nath details the branching of species (or the diversification of life) and how geological calendars and fossil records act as evolutionary clocks to help us understand deep time.
For readers new to the subject, the book provides a foundational overview of major evolutionary events, from continental drift to past mass extinctions, explaining how natural forces such as volcanic eruptions, global cooling, and ice ages shaped species’ survival. Nath draws on popular culture references such as Ice Age and Jurassic World to make scientific concepts relatable. To underscore that evolution is not optional but essential for survival, he offers a playful analogy for natural selection: “Imagine a game of musical chairs, where nature controls the pace of the music!”
Geopolitical linkages
One of the book’s standout features is how it connects Earth’s natural history with geopolitical developments through case studies. This method offers a multidimensional perspective on how human actions—from colonial expansion and global trade to modern warfare—have reshaped ecosystems and contributed to biodiversity loss. For instance, the brown tree snake, an invasive species introduced to Guam following World War II, caused the extinction of several native bird species. Similarly, the cane toad in Australia, introduced initially to control agricultural pests, became a threat to native species instead.
The book excels at making complex topics such as the “Big Five” mass extinctions understandable to a general audience. Consider one of the most well-known cases: the dinosaur extinction. Rather than present the event with a single-cause explanation, Nath highlights evidence that points to a combination of factors, such as the massive Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions in western Indiaand the Chicxulub asteroid impact, when a roughly 10-kilometre-wide asteroid struck Earth in what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
(a) Schematic map of India showing the area of ‘Deccan traps’ in the Western Ghat region near Mahabaleshwar (b) View of ‘Deccan traps’ showing stacks of historical lava flow (horizontal layers of rocks) (Caption and image credit: Vanishing Life on Earth)
From mammoths to mynas, Nath chronicles the extinctions that coincided with the spread of modern Homo sapiens, including the dodo, passenger pigeon, Tasmanian tiger, woolly mammoth, Irish elk, and Japanese otter. More recent examples like the lionfish invasion in the Atlantic or the ecological disruptions caused by mynas in Hawaii reinforce a recurring theme: human interference, both deliberate and accidental, can irreversibly alter ecosystems.
Real-world relevance
The book reminds us that while Earth’s history spans 4.5 billion years, modern humans have only existed for about 200,000 years. Yet in this brief window, our activities have drastically altered the planet through deforestation, pollution, overconsumption of natural resources, and habitat destruction. Drawing from recent findings, such as estimates that over a million species are now at risk of disappearing forever, Nath highlights that extinction is not just a scientific issue anymore—it is a societal one. Despite the current challenges, this book builds hope through conservation success stories such as the recovery of the bald eagle, green sea turtle, and giant panda. These examples show meaningful change is possible when scientists, policymakers, and communities work together.
While Vanishing Life on Earth offers a well-rounded perspective on the topic, a few subtle additions could have enriched its depth. A short discussion on molecular and genetic tools used in assessing and protecting endangered species would have introduced another layer of interesting scientific relevance. Likewise, regional case studies—such as biodiversity hotspots like the Western Ghats or community-led conservation involving Indigenous knowledge in protected areas or Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs)—could have offered local context and models of biodiversity stewardship. These omissions, however, may be an intentional choice to keep the book accessible and broadly focused. Within its chosen scope, the book succeeds in delivering a timely and impactful message.
Overall, in an age of ecological amnesia, where each generation accepts a more degraded environment as normal, this book fosters not only ecological awareness but also emotional and ethical intelligence. These qualities, taken together, feel essential for reshaping our relationship with the natural world.
As the renowned evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once wrote,“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Nath’s book reminds us that this truth still holds—perhaps now more urgently than ever.
Further Reading
Gadagkar, R. 1997. Survival Strategies: Cooperation and Conflict in Animal Societies. Harvard University Press.
Kolbert, E. 2014. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Feature image: Luminous fungi in the forests of Sirsi, where I witnessed this magical phenomenon for the first time (Photo credit: Ashwini Kumar Bhat)
It was August 2020. My father and I were driving home from our ancestral village in Sirsi, located in the Uttara Kannada district in Karnataka, India. As we made our winding way through the forests of the central Western Ghats, the evening turned pitch dark and it started to rain. Suddenly, my father stopped the car in a dense part of the forest.
Cicadas screeched, frogs croaked, and I spotted fireflies. “Observe the trees,” my father said quietly. Minutes passed, and something like a coat of velvet on a leaf started to glow faintly—a teal green colour. In a short while, the entire tree bark was bathed in a soft green light! I was astonished to see it, and picked up a glowing branch fallen on the ground. It looked like a magical wand from a fantasy film or a lightsaber from Star Wars.
And on another tree, there were tiny mushrooms that glowed, different from the fungal mat I first observed. Soon, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I noticed that the whole forest floor was lit up. I whipped my phone out to take a photo, but it was invisible to the camera! Thanks to this wondrous encounter, I went down a rabbit hole trying to find out why some fungi evolved to glow.
Biochemistry, not magic
Some organisms, including fireflies, certain species of fungi, jellyfish, phytoplankton, and marine animals, naturally produce light as a result of an internal chemical reaction. In the case of fireflies and bioluminescent fungi, a compound called luciferin emits light when it reacts with oxygen and an enzyme called luciferase. This is referred to as ‘cold light’ because nearly all the energy released by the chemical reaction is converted into light (with an intensity ranging from 500–530 nanometres). Therefore, little to no heat is produced.
Molecular dating has shown that bioluminescent fungi—of which there are about 100 species—are 160 million years old. And they don’t all glow the same. Some have different colours, some glow all day, some have fruiting bodies (mushrooms) that glow, and some glow only at a certain life stage. In India, luminous fungi have been reported during peak monsoon from the Western Ghats across Goa, Kerala, Karnataka, as well as the northeastern states such as Meghalaya. Species include Mycena chlorophos in Goa and Karnataka, and Roridomyces phyllostachydis in Meghalaya.
Bioluminescent fungus as seen under a fluorescence microscope (Photo credit: Vanya Hegde)
There are several hypotheses for why fungi glow. It could be part of a circadian rhythm, such as with Neonothopanus gardneri, a species endemic to Brazil that glows brightly only at night. The light could serve to attract nocturnal insects, which then help to disperse fungal spores. This mechanism is reminiscent of the tactic employed by flowering plants to attract pollinators and facilitate seed dispersal. But not all fungi produce fruiting bodies, and many fungi react to darkness rather than the circadian rhythm of night and day.
But regardless of why bioluminescent fungi glow or whether it serves any purpose, they are an integral part of our culture and folklore, mainly as fantastical elements. For example, in my ancestral village, luminous fungi are called Kolli deva, meaning a ghost that holds a torch. In European stories, they are known as foxfire and associated with mischievous spirits in forests. And in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a 10th-century Japanese story, a childless bamboo cutter finds a three-inch girl inside a glowing bamboo stalk. She grows rapidly into a beautiful woman, setting impossible tasks for her numerous suitors, before ultimately revealing her celestial origins and returning to her home on the moon.
Fading light
My father, who grew up in our ancestral village, when returning home through the forest at night, sometimes used branches with bioluminescent fungi to light the way, if his torch’s battery was dead. But my grandmother says that these special fungi are rapidly vanishing. Where the whole forest floor once glowed, now it is just a small patch in the forest. According to other local elders, the fungi also don’t glow as brightly as they used to. Even in my own experience, there has been a stark difference from when I observed the fungi with my father in 2020 to the present.
These special fungi are on the verge of vanishing forever, unless we work towards saving them and their habitats (Photo credit: Ashwini Kumar Bhat)
Luminous fungi are often rare and found in specific microclimatic niches. They could, therefore, be bioindicators of a good, healthy forest with adequate rainfall. But these habitats are under threat from deforestation, climate change, and the subsequent extreme variations in rainfall patterns. This is worrying because fungi, in general, are a crucial part of our ecosystems. Several species of bioluminescent fungi are saprophytic, growing and feeding on dead or decaying organic matter such as wood. This makes them important carbon and nutrient recyclers. Thus, conserving luminous fungi includes the conservation of the entire habitat.
So next time, when you are in these forests, switch off every light and wait. You might just see the green glow on the forest floor. For my grandmother, that magic was a lived reality, while for me, it’s a reminder of how quickly such things can disappear. We cannot afford to lose these luminous fungi even before we have had a chance to understand them.
Further Reading
Oliveira, A. G., C. V. Stevani, H. E. Waldenmaier, V. Viviani, J. M. Emerson, J. J. Loros, and J. C. Dunlap. 2015. Circadian control sheds light on fungal bioluminescence. Current Biology 25 (7): 964–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.02.021.
Perry, B. A, D. E Desjardin and C. V Stevani. 2024. Diversity, distribution, and evolution of bioluminescent fungi. Journal of Fungi 11 (1): 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/jof11010019.
Feature image: A monarch butterfly with an ironweed plant
As a child, one of my most magical experiences was releasing a flutter of monarch butterflies. I remember watching them swirl around each other as they floated off to a wildflower meadow, their bright wings against the blue sky. I was connected to these butterflies specifically—we raised them in my first-grade class, watching them grow from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to winged insect. Together, we learned about this iconic species’ lifecycle and their important role in our ecosystem. In that moment of release, I got it. This beautiful insect matters deeply. I continue to think about the impact our actions have on this species and others like them. Experiencing personal connections to nature helps build a deeper appreciation for the world around us, encouraging us to take care of it and all the species that cohabit the Earth with us.
With striking black and orange wings, the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is one of the most iconic insect species in the world. It captivates us with its annual migration. Every fall in North America, millions of monarch butterflies brave the journey from Canada and the northern United States to California and Mexico. This multi-generation trip can span a distance up to 4,500 kilometres, a migration that is in fact crucial since they would not survive the cold, harsh northern winters. When spring returns and temperatures begin to rise again, the monarchs journey back from where they came, seeking milkweed-abundant breeding habitats. Monarchs are the only known butterfly species to undertake a two-way migration of this scale.
‘Flagship species’ are charismatic animals or plants that act as ambassadors for environmental causes and help raise awareness for conservation efforts. The iconic monarch butterfly is easily recognisable and can be considered a flagship species for the conservation of native pollinators. These other pollinators may not be as well known or as charismatic as monarchs, and therefore may not be prioritised in conservation efforts.
Fortunately, many pollinators can benefit from the representation and awareness that a flagship species can bring to issues like habitat destruction, herbicide and pesticide use, and the effects of climate change. In North America, 22.6 percent of native pollinator species are at risk of extinction. Species such as the rusty patched bumble bee (Critically Endangered) and Karner blue butterfly (Endangered) are negatively impacted by herbicide and pesticide use, as well as habitat loss. Without local conservation efforts, these species may not survive for much longer. But by championing monarchs, we also open the door to giving quieter, less visible but vital species a second chance at life.
A monarch butterfly with a milkweed plant.
Threatened or not?
Since the 1990s, monarch populations have decreased at an alarming rate. Research suggests that the eastern population has declined by up to 84 percent, whereas the western population has declined by up to 99 percent. Even with this rapid decline in numbers, the conservation status of monarch butterflies remains heavily debated. As of 2022, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the monarch butterfly as Endangered. Despite this endangered status, monarchs do not receive federal protections under the Endangered Species Act in the US. In December 2024, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that the monarch butterfly be listed as a threatened species under this act, which would grant the monarch special protections. This proposal would safeguard their habitats and recognise the loss of overwintering and breeding sites as a main driver of their population decline.
In Canada, monarch butterflies already carry an endangered status under the Species at Risk Act. With this designation, monarchs are protected from capture or killing on all federal land, such as national parks and nature reserves, within the country. The act also works for the preservation of monarch breeding habitats. So, long story short: what is the conservation status of monarch butterflies? It depends on who you ask.
Despite the debate over their conservation status, scientists agree that monarch populations are in trouble. As mentioned earlier, the threats driving their decline are similar to those affecting other pollinators: habitat loss, pesticide and herbicide use, and climate change. All these threats are anthropogenic, meaning human activity is causing population declines in these species.
Milkweed is at the heart of the monarch butterfly’s lifecycle. It is the sole habitat and food source for monarch larvae. But across North America, agricultural intensification means more land development, indiscriminate pesticide and herbicide use, and shrinking monarch habitat. Specifically in the midwestern United States, corn and soybean production are overtaking patches of essential milkweed.
From the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s, an estimated 860 million milkweed plants were removed to make room for agricultural production. One of the main methods of “weed” removal is the use of glyphosate herbicides, which do not affect the genetically modified monocrops the farmers grow. In killing any remaining milkweed or flowering plants in the area, herbicides eliminate food sources and suitable habitats for pollinators.
It’s also important to note that not all milkweed species are considered equal. While monarch butterflies prefer native species such as common milkweed, butterfly weed, or swamp milkweed, there are non-native milkweed species that cause more harm than good. Tropical milkweed, for example, does not die in the winter as native milkweed does, so monarchs may breed at the wrong time of the year, disrupting their migration patterns. Additionally, tropical milkweed may contain parasites such as Ophryocystis elektroscirrha, a single-celled protozoan, which can cause deformities or disease in monarch larvae, and impact other pollinators. With a loss of food plants and habitat and an increase in disease, the landscape is increasingly hostile to pollinator survival. It’s no wonder that so many are on the brink of extinction.
In the wintering grounds of Mexico and California, changing weather patterns add another layer of unpredictability for monarchs. Severe storms, wildfires, and drought, especially in California, have had an extremely negative impact on forests which not only support monarchs during the winter months, but also other pollinators. Birds such as black-backed orioles and black-headed grosbeaks feed on nectar, seeds, nuts, and berries, aiding in the pollination and seed dispersal of native plants and trees. Losing these species can have knock-on effects on the entire ecosystem.
These sites are also experiencing extreme temperature changes, leading to mass mortality events in monarch populations. Colder, wetter nights are causing the dew on butterfly wings to freeze, thus immobilising and killing the monarchs. Current research suggests that shifting weather patterns could make these overwintering sites uninhabitable by 2050. Adding to this, logging in Mexico’s oyamel fir forests is further fragmenting and shrinking the winter sanctuaries monarchs depend on.
What’s being done?
With limited federal regulations to protect the monarch butterfly population in the United States, local communities and non-profit organisations on both sides of the border have taken the reins for their conservation. In Mexico, over 560 sq. kilometres of land have been designated as monarch butterfly sanctuaries to protect overwintering sites, with most of this area being part of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in the state of Michoacán.
Several organisations such as Forests for Monarchs and Alternare are committed to replanting trees in overwintering sites to ensure that monarchs have safe and suitable habitats during their non-breeding season.They also work with local residents to build conservation awareness. Their programmes invite students of all ages to help with reforestation by visiting planting sites and learning about tree health, turning conservation into a hands-on experience. Engaging with local communities increases their connection to pollinators and the environment, fostering stewardship and increased action. Ultimately, protecting monarchs also strengthens the resilience of hummingbirds, white-tailed deer, and countless other species that share their habitats.
There is good news: recent studies have shown that eastern monarch butterfly populations are starting to increase again due to community conservation efforts. However, this is just the beginning, and there is more work to be done. Planting native milkweed remains one of the most effective ways to support the survival of monarchs, along with increasing the abundance of other flowering plants. These nectar sources will also support other pollinators. A pollinator garden—whether spread across a large yard or clustered in your balcony pots—creates lifelines for many species.
Even if you do not have the means to plant your own pollinator garden, supporting local conservation initiatives is a great way to aid in these efforts. Many municipalities are creating community pollinator gardens, bringing residents together over their love of nature. Avoiding the use of herbicides and pesticides is another great way to help pollinator populations thrive. If absolutely necessary, opting for more natural-based remedies over harmful chemicals is ideal.
Most importantly, an increased diversity of native plants and pollinators ensures a happy, healthy ecosystem. Our small, personal actions can have a real impact on monarch butterfly populations. Whether volunteering with local conservation groups or simply tending to pollinator-friendly plants at home, each step creates ripples. For me, it began with a first-grade butterfly release. For all of us, it can begin with an equally simple moment of care for nature.
Further Reading
Cornelisse, T., D. W. Inouye, R. E. Irwin, S. Jepsen, J. R. Mawdsley, M. Ormes, J. Daniels et al. 2025. Elevated extinction risk in over one-fifth of native North American pollinators. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122(14): e2418742122.
Lewandowski, E. J., and K. S. Oberhauser. 2017. Contributions of citizen scientists and habitat
volunteers to monarch butterfly conservation. Human Dimensions of Wildlife 22(1): 55–70.
Preston, S. D., J. D. Liao, T. P. Toombs, R. Romero-Canyas, J. Speiser and C. M. Seifert. 2021. A case study of a conservation flagship species: the monarch butterfly. Biodiversity and Conservation 30: 2057–2077.
Many of us strive to change our personal behaviour to decrease our environmental impact, such as by reducing energy consumption. Some of us are constantly thinking of ways to improve our habits, while others might do so less frequently—perhaps triggered by reading a relevant news article or watching a documentary. And for some, of course, it may not register at all.
Perhaps the biggest question everyone has no matter where one lies on this spectrum is this: how much can individual actions make a difference? That is just what I hoped to find out through an experiment I conducted at home. My results were surprising. And I’d like to share them with the hope that others are inspired to adopt some easy, environmentally-friendly habits, while also saving their wallets in the process.
I planned two separate trial runs of selective behavioural changes to reduce my electricity usage at home. The first was to reduce my air conditioning (AC) usage, which is no easy feat living in the humidity of Florida, and the second was to reduce my electric light usage. These are the primary sources of energy consumption in residential homes in the US, with air conditioning accounting for over 50 percent of electric usage per household, while lighting is about 8 percent.
We get our utility bill after we have already consumed the energy, which may cause many to not consider their daily usage in relation to the choices we make. To help make a proactive change with my AC usage, I looked at my current habits, the average consumer’s habits, and recommended energy saving settings. A study showed that the average thermostat cooling setting in North America is between 73–76℉ (or 22.8–24.4°C). This was right similar to my own settings, as I tend to keep it around 76℉ during the day and 73℉ at night. On the other hand, the US Department of Energy recommends keeping thermostats at home at a low of 78℉ (25.5°C) when in a cooling cycle.
The first step
Yikes, what had I gotten myself into? The recommended temperature sounded warm to me, with my personal comfort in question. But I stuck with the plan and reprogrammed my thermostat. And thus began my first 30-day trial run. The initial nights were a little uncomfortable. But this was short-lived, and a few days into the trial, I slept just fine.
Likewise, raising my thermostat from 76℉ to 78℉ in the daytime didn’t faze me at all. I typically work from home, so although I was around during the hottest parts of the day, the indoor temperature rarely crossed my mind. After the experiment ended, I reviewed my utility bill from the same period in the previous year and noticed a drastic decrease in electricity usage.
My daily average kilowatt-hour (kWh) usage over this period reduced by nearly 60 percent, from 19.93 to 11.83 kWh. Even better, my electricity bill dropped from $103.79 to $57.78—a decrease of around 56 percent. What’s more astonishing, this happened during an average 10-degree increase in outdoor temperature compared to the previous billing period. By turning up my thermostat by a few degrees, I not only reduced my carbon footprint, but also saved money—all while staying comfortable in my home.
A European study showed the average carbon emissions output from electricity consumption is 0.233 kg CO2eq/kWh (so for every kWh of electricity consumed, 0.233 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent is emitted). Based on this rate, my 30-day experiment reduced my carbon footprint by 52 kg CO2eq—a decrease of around 40 percent! These results were encouraging, helping me realise that simple changes to individual habits can indeed make a difference. With this as my motivation, I took it a step further with a next 30-day experiment, where along with keeping the thermostat at the recommended temperature, I was also going to turn off the lights when not in use.
Behavioural psychology
This new experiment was going to require a bit more effort than just changing the thermostat setting. I committed to three actions: ensuring I turned lights off when leaving a room, utilising more natural light by opening blinds, and keeping lights off when unnecessary. I thought this would be relatively easy, but this was where the psychology of behavioural change revealed itself.
During the first few days, I constantly caught myself forgetting to turn lights off when leaving a room or even leaving the house entirely. However, I made some progress with being more intentional about light usage, ensuring I kept them off when not in use. I started to notice that when I happened to leave a light on, I’d now get up and turn it off. In the past I probably would have just left it on until returning to that area later.
This still wasn’t quite enough to get the results I hoped for though. After returning from the grocery store one day to a well-lit house, I knew I needed to step things up. A few studies have demonstrated that environmental behaviours are frequently habitual, triggering automatic processes, which meant I needed some extra motivation to rewire my brain. A simple solution was to place brightly colored sticky notes near every light switch in the house. These helped remind me to flip those switches off.
Finally, while working from home, I started to take advantage of opening blinds throughout the house, especially in the office, and avoided using the overhead lights when possible. I even went to small lengths such as using my phone’s flashlight when running to the bathroom or kitchen. Ultimately, it really became something of a game to use as little lighting as possible, and no, I didn’t feel like I was walking around in the dark all the time.
After this second experiment ended, I looked to the utility bills for results. I had continued to maintain an AC temperature of 78℉ , so I wasn’t sure how much further reduction on my utility bill to expect. But I was greatly pleased to discover that my energy consumption had dropped an additional 22.4 percent, resulting in a further 5.5 kg CO2eq reduction in my carbon footprint!
After two months of trying to reduce my energy consumption, I felt buoyed by the fact that individuals can have a direct impact without having to do a whole lot. I would encourage people to think about their own habits and how they can make changes to reduce their environmental impact. It could start small, with raising the AC temperature by one to two degrees, for example. Or by turning lights off when leaving rooms, and maybe even gamifying it, especially for kids.
Some of these changes may be hard to initiate but the benefits are great. I have stuck with these new habits for many months now. They have led to a greater sense of doing the right thing, given me hope that the environment can be protected, and even helped save money every month.
Further Reading
Kopsakangas-Savolainen, M., M. K. Mattinen, K. Manninen and A. Nissinen. 2017. Hourly-based greenhouse gas emissions of electricity–cases demonstrating possibilities for households and companies to decrease their emissions. Journal of Cleaner Production 153: 384–396.
Ohnmacht, T., D. Schaffner, C. Weibel and H. Schad. 2017. Rethinking social psychology and intervention design: A model of energy savings and human behaviour. Energy Research & Social Science 26: 40–53.
Parker, D. 2013. Determining appropriate heating and cooling thermostat set points for building energy simulations for residential buildings in North America. Report published by the Florida Solar Energy Center.Accessed on September 3, 2025.
In a world where the effects of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss are increasingly evident, one must ask: how can we raise more environmentally responsible citizens?
Experts agree that the answer begins in childhood. This is a critical period when values and habits are formed—often lasting a lifetime. When children grow up connected to nature and understand the importance of conservation, they are more likely to adopt sustainable behaviours as adults.
Environmental education has long been used to raise awareness about ecological issues. However, its impact goes far beyond simply sharing knowledge. A child who learns to care for a plant, observe animal behaviour, or recycle used items may grow into an adult who makes responsible choices for the environment.
Why start in childhood?
Childhood is a formative stage in which values, beliefs, and habits take root. At this age, the brain is especially receptive to learning through exploration and interaction with the world. Early experiences with nature can shape a child’s empathy, creativity, and sense of responsibility.
Children who grow up surrounded by green spaces are more likely to form a strong emotional bond with the environment. This connection—formed through touching soil, watching insects, or planting seeds—can inspire future conservation-oriented behaviours.
However, not all children have access to forests or gardens. Many grow up in urban areas with limited green space. But environmental education does not need to rely solely on outdoor access. Even a walk to observe street trees or caring for a classroom plant can be meaningful. The key is to nurture curiosity and a sense of belonging to the natural world, regardless of setting.
Many countries have embraced this approach. In Sweden’s forest schools, children learn outdoors all year round as part of their daily routine. A typical day might include storytelling under trees, identifying local species or building shelters from branches. These activities develop practical skills, independence, and deep environmental awareness.
Costa Rica offers another model. Some schools have nature reserves on their campuses, where pupils can explore biodiversity firsthand. In Japan, pupils tend vegetable gardens and learn about seasonal cycles—integrating science, patience, and care.
These programmes strengthen children’s relationship with the natural world while also teaching valuable life skills. Such initiatives show that environmental education does not just raise awareness, it helps children grow into agents of change in their homes and communities.
Experiential education
Children learn best through experience. This is why hands-on activities—such as building a garden or observing butterflies—are so effective. These projects offer more than facts. They give children the chance to care for living things and develop a sense of wonder and responsibility.
Stories and games are also powerful tools. Eco-themed books like The Lorax and Greta and the Giants can make complex environmental topics easy to understand and relate to. Games such as WWF Together and Aqua: Biodiversity in the Oceans introduce ideas of biodiversity and sustainability in a fun way.
Technology is opening new doors. Apps like Seek by iNaturalist encourage children to identify plants and animals in their surroundings, even in urban parks. Augmented reality platforms such as Wildverse allow young users to learn about endangered species and ecosystems while playing immersive games. These tools help connect children to nature, even when access to wild spaces is limited.
Family plays a key role, too. Children are more likely to take action when their parents model eco-friendly habits—such as using reusable bags, saving water, or sorting waste at home. The school-family nexus creates a solid foundation for lifelong environmental awareness.
Does it really make a difference?
Many adults who lead environmentally-conscious lives often trace their passion back to early memories. Whether it was a school garden, a trip to a forest, or a conversation with a parent—these experiences planted a seed that later grew into action.
The growing wave of youth environmental activism around the world is proof that early education works. Many of today’s young leaders began learning about sustainability at an early age, either at school or at home. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg began her environmental journey as a child, learning about climate change in school. Leah Namugerwa from Uganda started tree-planting campaigns after participating in climate marches.
Stories of young changemakers are emerging from every continent. In India, Licypriya Kangujam advocates for climate action and disaster preparedness. In Colombia, Francisco Vera promotes environmental legislation through videos and campaigns. These actions often begin with a question asked in class, or a project completed in childhood. Clearly, when children are given the right tools and encouragement, they can become powerful voices for the planet.
Endless possibilities
Despite its benefits, bringing environmental education to all children is not always easy. Some schools lack the resources or training to run nature-based programmes. In some communities, daily survival takes priority over environmental topics.
However, creative and affordable solutions exist. Schools around the world are finding ways to teach sustainability using what they have—recycling materials, planting small gardens, or integrating conservation into everyday subjects. Digital platforms are also helping bridge the gap by offering free content and activities.
Inclusivity is essential. Environmental education must be flexible enough to fit diverse cultural, social, and geographic contexts. The goal is not perfection but participation—giving every child the chance to learn, explore, and care.
The key is adapting to each community’s reality and involving everyone—teachers, families, and local leaders. With collective effort, even the smallest school can grow big ideas.
Environmental education during childhood is one of the most effective ways to create lasting change. By fostering curiosity, care, and understanding, we prepare the next generation to live in harmony with the planet.
Whether through outdoor exploration, stories, games, or habits, children can learn that they are part of nature—and that their actions matter. If we nurture these values from the start, we will not only educate future citizens but also empower them to protect and heal the Earth.
Further Reading
Broom, C. 2017. Exploring the relations between childhood experiences in nature and young adults’ environmental attitudes and behaviours. Australian Journal of Environmental Education 33(1): 34–47.
Cheng, J. C.-H. and M. C. Monroe. 2012. Connection to nature: children’s affective attitude toward nature. Environment and Behavior 44(1): 31–49.
Wells, N. M. and K. S. Lekies. 2006. Nature and the life course: pathways from childhood nature experiences to adult environmentalism. Children, Youth and Environments 16(1): 1–24.
Feature image: Salar de Uyuni by Javier Collarte. Unsplash
Salar de Uyuni is located in southwest Bolivia. In a hidden part of the Andes lies the world’s largest salt flat. During the rainy season, surrounding lakes overflow and allow a thin layer of water to transform the salt flats into the world’s largest mirror.
Bird marketplaces are important sites for people to socialise, work and interact with birds—despite the deplorable conditions in which the birds are kept. Markets are usually structured, with rarer birds in the back and more common species displayed out front, and with a plethora of species being traded for different reasons. I hope to showcase these stories and highlight the complex web of species entangled in the songbird trade in Indonesia.
The Fire-tufted Barbet, a frugivore, is an unusual species that has found its way into the market. Its vibrant colours and distinctive whiskers may attract consumers. Still, the potential large-scale removal of these birds—which play a crucial role in seed dispersal in forested areas—from the wild could have severe ecological consequences, especially since the trade volume remains unknown. This underscores the urgent need for conservation efforts and a deeper understanding of the impacts of bird trade on ecosystems.
Black-headed Bulbul chicks squawk and chirp in the market. Chicks are easy to capture in the wild and have an appeal as being cute. They can hatch from eggs taken from nests or be ranched—a process where chicks are reared in captivity after being removed at a young age from the nests. Removal of chicks and eggs from the nests can negatively impact their population in the wild and the well-being of the chicks taken.
Owls are important portents among pet owners in Indonesia. Some research suggests that the demand for owls has increased since the rise of film franchises such as Harry Potter. However, this demand and increase are yet to be shown as significant. The Sunda Scops-owl makes for an interesting case study since many morphs and juveniles are sold. Consequently, it is difficult for people to identify individuals belonging to this species in the market. This includes members of civil society and law enforcement who form the frontline for species identification in wildlife trade.
A group of Lemon-bellied White-eyes fly around their cage. The white-eye family—specifically the Zosterops genus—is common in trade. Different species in this genus are often sold together as it is difficult to distinguish them from each other. Populations of species such as the Javan White-eye have crashed due to a high level of trade, resulting in lookalike species within the same genus getting subsumed into the trade.
Here, we can see another white-eye species, possibly a Sangkar White-eye, though it could also be Hume’s White-eye. Since the bars obscure the face, it’s difficult to assess the minute differences that differentiate some species. The loss of feathers on this individual’s shoulders is likely due to glue or rubber sap that is sometimes coated on the branches of trees to trap wild birds when they perch there—often attracted by pre-recorded bird calls. This adhesive is either removed with kerosene or oil, but the bird’s feathers get ripped out if it cannot be safely extracted from the trap. Perhaps as a result of stress (or other conditions), sometimes the feathers are still in the process of regrowing when the bird makes it to the market.
This final photo is slightly blurry, captured on film, and involves two important bird species in Indonesian human-bird relations, one is the cockrel (used in cockfights across Indonesia) and the zebra dove, the first documented species to be used in singing competitions in Indonesia. The zebra dove is commonly bred in captivity and used for singing competitions and is particularly popular in central Java. Even though it is bred in captivity and can be found in large numbers, the species is under pressure as birds are also caught in the wild to supply breeding operations.
Over the years I have read many books in which senior mycologists have expounded on the many virtues, fascinations, and wonders of fungi in an effort to win over the general public. After decades working on the science of fungi, they brought their work out of the dark recesses of botany journals and microscopy labs in university basements, and into books with catchy titles to show people, no—convince them, of the amazing significance and wonder beheld in this relatively unknown, massive grouping of organisms. The titles say it all: David Moore’s Slayers, Saviours, Servants, and Sex(2001); Nik Money’s 2004 Carpet Monsters and Killer Spores or comparatively directly titled 2024 text, Molds, Mushrooms and Medicines: Our Lifelong Relationship with Fungi; or Paul Stamet’s widely read Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (2005).
Then there is Merlin Sheldrake’s recent text, Entangled Life, which has captured the public’s attention at an astonishing level Moore, Money, or even Stamets could only dream about. The homepage for the book lists numerous awards and accolades, and includes rave reviews from other nature writers, journalists, and academics. Sheldrake has nearly 1 million followers on Instagram, where you can see videos of him eating fungi that have sprouted from his book (using a copy of his book as a growth medium), read about his various research publications and collaborations, and even purchase the microbially-rich Sheldrake and Sheldrake hot sauce, a fermented sauce which comes in packaging material grown out of fungal mycelium and hemp stalks. Entangled Life has been re-released as a coffeetable photobook, and is the basis for a documentary narrated by none other than Icelandic musician Björk.
We are truly in a fungal moment fueled by TV and film, media, books, and music about fungi. Interventions range from the whimsies of fermented hot sauce to the radical writings of Maymana Arefin, on how fungi and decomposition can inspire abolitionist futures and the collapse of linear capitalism. Why fungi, and why now? Have decades of environmental education paid off and people finally realise the awesome powers of these lifeforms? In fact, fungi keep us from literally drowning in dead material through decomposition. They nurture us as food and medicine. They clean our air, keep our trees alive, help us grow our crops, and not least, they are beautiful, wondrous living beings with which we share this planet.
While everything I have said about fungi is true, I wonder if there is something deeper, something a bit more troubling, going on in our collective human psyche when it comes to our newfound love and delight with things that go squish in the night. Have we given up on plants and animals? On the idea that we can save them or that they can resist the onslaught of environmental destruction we endure every day. Is there some sort of collective unnamed search going on for organisms that may outlast our environmental crises? Are we desperate to find somethings and someones that may be able to save us from ourselves because despite our best efforts, they seem more powerful than humans? Can fungi really save humanity???
This special issue of Current Conservation, its first dedicated to fungal conservation, will not attempt to answer the question about whether or not fungi are our collective saviours; I for one would never put the responsibility on another kingdom of organisms to do the work that we, humans, must do to take responsibility for our own actions and choices. A bit more humbly, our hope for this special edition is that it continues to make visible the many ways in which we, people around the world, continue to get to know fungi, to learn about them, to interact with them, and to discover how others do so and have been doing so for lifetimes.
Our special issue is an attempt to provide an overview of the many facets of the wide-ranging and rapidly growing field of fungal conservation. It includes two Feature articles, two Field Notes, a Photo Essay, two Perspectives, and a set of illustrations. We have authors and pieces hailing from 10 countries across six continents.
While the organisms are distinct and the species different, the themes of this special edition are much like those you might find in other issues of Current Conservation; for example, balancing the role of scientific discovery in pieces by Ellis and Drechsler-Santos et al., with that of joy in scientific work as experienced in rural Benin and told by Dramani et al. Løvaas highlights the role of women’s work and knowledge in ethnomycology in Zambia. Cantiero et al. point to the importance of including fungi in key international environmental conventions and strategies, and Barron et al. outline a new research agenda to bring together women’s livelihoods, ethnomycology, fungal conservation and access to reproductive health care in rural communities. Through their artwork and accompanying text, Pouliot and Shafie show us fungi through their eyes and help us appreciate the aesthetic and cultural presence of these amazing organisms.
And good news! This special issue is just a tasting menu of so much work happening now in fungal conservation. The articles include references to related work and future readings so you may continue to explore these topics further.
One theme that runs throughout all the pieces is that of visibility, but unlike previous mycological works trying to bring fungi into the light, the pieces in this special issue demonstrate that the relational values created among humans and fungi affect the very meaning of conservation itself, thus bringing a new form of conservation to light. Through fungi we learn about the role of aesthetics in conservation (Pouliot), about the importance of joy and care when doing conservation work (Løvaas, Dramani et al.), and about working in partnership with fungi to imagine new ways to protect and conserve areas without requiring high-tech monitoring systems and expensive labs (Ellis). Barron et al. argue that the link between basic needs for reproductive care go hand-in-hand with conservation in ways that have also been invisible until now. What this issue makes visible is that fungi can remake how we practice, plan, and understand conservation itself.
It was on the mist-covered slopes of the Serra Geral mountains that our journey began. Back in 2011, we were not looking for a rare species—we were just mycologists wandering through Brazil’s southern cloud forests, curious about the fungi hiding in the bark, branches, and soil of that unique ecosystem. What we found, however, would shape more than a decade of work and redefine our activities to include a lasting dedication to fungal conservation in Brazil.
Fomitiporia nubicola was, at first, a curious brown bracket (or polypore) fungus clinging to the trunk of Drimys angustifolia, a relict broadleaf tree that thrives in those foggy heights. Over the years, this fungus slowly revealed its secrets. We followed—season after season—often returning empty-handed, occasionally rewarded with a few elusive basidiomes (reproductive structures). We documented, collected, and monitored until, in 2020, we formally described it as a species new to science: Fomitiporia nubicola, the tapir’s bark polypore.
But that was only the beginning.
In 2022, with a conservation grant, our team at the MIND.Funga research group intensified field surveys across high-altitude areas in southern Brazil, hoping to find the species beyond its two known locations. We did not. And its absence spoke volumes.
The fungus’ apparent reliance on D. angustifolia, its extremely narrow range, and the ongoing threats to cloud forest ecosystems led us to reassess its conservation status. It became the first fungus in the world to be reclassified on the IUCN Global Red List—from Vulnerable to Critically Endangered. Being Critically Endangered means F. nubicola faces an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild—potentially within 50 years—if no conservation action is taken. If current threats—habitat loss, climate change, and lack of in situ protection—persist, the species could disappear entirely from nature in a single human lifetime.
Shared purpose
These highland landscapes are complex mosaics of grassland and forest, with cloud forests tucked into sheltered slopes. Both grassland and forests in the highest regions act as natural water reservoirs, with patches of peatland and cloud forest capturing moisture from rain and orographic clouds (formed when air is forced upwards by the topography of the land, typically mountains). These ecosystems feed springs that sustain life down stream. Among the twisted branches and moss-covered trunks, old-growth species such as Drimys angustifolia, Dicksonia sellowiana (a tree fern), and Araucaria angustifolia (the iconic Brazilian pine), hold stories from a distant evolutionary past.
The first time we stepped into a cloud forest, it felt like pure enchantment—mosses draping every surface, tree ferns from ‘the age of dinosaurs’, and ancient trees whose bark seemed to whisper stories of the past. It was magical, intimate, and timeless. Fungal conservation is often solitary work—underfunded and overlooked. Yet, in the foggy quiet of the cloud forests, accompanied by students, local guides, and park staff, we found a shared purpose. Our commitment grew not only from scientific interest, but also from the privilege of witnessing life in one of the most threatened and beautiful ecosystems of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot.
The cloud forests are marvels unto themselves. From the outside, their small, fragmented patches might seem unremarkable. But stepping into them feels like entering another world—damp, protected, and oddly warm, a stark contrast to the harsh winds and biting cold outside. In the summer heat, they offer a natural refuge; in the chill of the highlands, they wrap around you like a cloak.
It is no surprise that even free-ranging grazing cattle seek shelter in these remnants during sudden weather shifts—a local phenomenon known as viração. These animals, though part of the landscape for generations, have increased in number in recent years and now represent one of the greatest threats to the cloud forests by trampling and feeding on the understorey vegetation, altering the forest’s regeneration dynamics.
Many firsts
Currently, with conservation grants and vital support from the managers of Parque Nacional de São Joaquim—the only known location where the F. nubicola occurs—we are expanding our efforts. We are monitoring the species in situ to better understand its phenology, including the timing of reproduction, the length of the life cycle, and the conditions it needs to survive in the wild.
We are establishing Brazil’s first ex situ conservation programme for fungi by creating a living culture collection to safeguard the genetic diversity of threatened species, including F. nubicola. In the collections we store pieces and clones of individuals. We are especially interested in investigating how F. nubicola responds to different storage conditions, such as temperature, nutrient availability, and substrate composition. These studies will help us assess the short and long-term viability of cultures in ex situ conservation and evaluate their potential for future reintroduction into natural habitats.
We are particularly intrigued by F.nubicola‘s reproductive biology. How long do individual fungi persist on their hosts? Why do some basidiomes abort before maturing? In many cases, the trees hosting F. nubicola are already dead, and in cloud forests decomposition occurs vertically—fallen trees take years to hit the ground, but we are seeing those trunks fall, and no new ones are taking their place.
One individual we documented more than a decade ago is now dead. A dead tree was hosting this most remarkable basidiome—with evidence of potentially 20 years of sporulation—which has finally collapsed. That basidiome may have begun forming long before we first encountered it, and now it is gone. How many other individuals will follow it before we can fully understand the ecological requirements and life cycle of this unique fungus?
Further complicating the story, we suspect that the reproductive individuals of F. nubicola may only emerge on centenary trees—raising even more questions about forest maturity and fungal persistence. We are now developing experimental methods to estimate the duration of its life cycle and how spores survive and start the relationship with the host. How long does the host tree D. angustifolia live? What microhabitats does F. nubicola require? And why does its distribution seem so restricted?
Ex situ conservation is more than a safeguard—it is a strategy for the future. By preserving diverse genetic strains, we lay the foundation for potential translocation and reintroduction, should conditions ever improve. The timeline may span decades, but the groundwork is being laid. These are the most advanced fungal conservation efforts in Brazil.
Fungal conservation is still young in the country. But with every expedition into the cloud forests, every conversation in the field and lab, and every basidiome found or missed, we are building a legacy—one that recognises fungi as vital and imperilled, just like the forests they inhabit.
Further Reading
Alves-Silva, G., M. A. Reck, R. M. B. Silveira, F. Bittencourt, G. Robledo, A. Góes-Neto and E. R. Drechsler-Santos. 2020. The Neotropical Fomitiporia (Hymenochaetales,Basidiomycota): the redefinition of F. apiahyna ss allows revealing a high hidden species diversity. Mycological Progress 19(8): 769–790.
Costa-Rezende, D., T. Kossmann, M. Titton and E. R. Drechsler-Santos. 2022. An integrative approach for fungal conservation in southern Brazil. Oryx 56(1): 13. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605321001277.
Del Olmo-Ruiz, M., R. García-Sandoval, O. Alcántara-Ayala, M. Véliz and I. Luna-Vega.. 2017. Current knowledge of fungi from Neotropical montane cloud forests: distributional patterns and composition. Biodiversity and Conservation 26:1919–1942. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-017-1337-5.
Acknowledgement: This work was supported by the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund (project numbers: 202524755 and 232533272).
Feature image: The smooth cage (Ileodictylon gracile) is among the more bizarre fungal forms
Beyond forayers and foragers, fungi are attracting new fans from many fields. From bioengineers to fashion designers, an emerging league of mycophiles is delving into the depths of kingdom Fungi. Yet for many people, fungi are unnerving. Perplexing. They do things we don’t understand and upend ideas about how we order and make sense of nature.
In my book The Allure of Fungi, I pose the question: why are fungi regarded so differently to other forms of life? Understanding historical inattention to fungi is a good starting point, but bigger questions swirl around too. What defines life? Who defines beauty? How might fungal forms challenge the notion of ‘aesthetic nature’? It’s at the nexus of the science and aesthetics of fungi that interesting possibilities arise for their conservation.
Like Homo sapiens, a single fungus species can appear in many guises. Working out who’s who is just part of the fun. As a photographer, I try to reflect a fungus in its different outfits, not so much to classify it, but to convey its character and quirk. Beyond their extraordinary beauty, it’s the strangeness of fungi, their bizarre forms and bewildering habits that might make us question how they challenge ideas about aesthetics and charisma when it comes to valuing nature.
Images of beautiful species and places have been vital to conservation and the aesthetics of nature was an important driver of the early conservation movement. To be equipped with a backbone and warm blood (mammals), showy blooms (many plants) or a melodious song and colourful plumage (some birds) is to be deemed charismatic. Such organisms have been the focus of conservation. Bad luck if you happen to be a blobfish, stinkhorn or slime mould. The perceived picturesque qualities of a place were paramount to its protection or designation as a national park.
However, as ecological knowledge has grown the need to protect areas for their ecological value has also grown, creating a tension between aesthetics and science in conservation. If we prioritise charismatic appeal over ecology, we overlook places of higher ecological value but less aesthetic appeal. Fungi that rely on the conditions and ecologies of aesthetically undervalued habitats such as coastal scrub can find themselves in trouble, because despite ecological recognition, neither coastal scrub nor the fungi who live there are particularly charismatic by conservation standards.
The elfin saddle (Helvella crispa) is strikingly irregular in form
It’s hard to please everyone with the legion of considerations in conservation and land management decision-making. However, could our growing ecological knowledge affect our conservation aesthetics through increased understanding of what is vital to the future survival and resilience of species and ecosystems?
When charisma backfires
For many people, fungal forms are less familiar than those of plants and vertebrates. The unexpected or bizarre forms of fungus sporing bodies can either enthrall or repel those trying to make sense of fungi. Idiosyncratic sporing bodies such as those with eccentric forms, odours or habits sometimes appear ‘unbelievable’, inflating their ambiguity and potency. Beauty rather than bizarreness drives the aesthetics of nature. Yet these curious fungus forms can challenge us to reconsider traditional notions of beauty in nature.
The unassuming candlesnuff fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon) grows in clusters on decaying hardwood
Photographs and artistic impressions of fungi, along with conservation tools such as flagship species, all help put fungi in the spotlight. Yet beauty can also come at a price. What happens when an alluring fungus becomes a potential problem? Aesthetic pleasures in one place are invasive pests in another. The reputation of a fungus can slide from virtue to invader if it relocates or ecological concepts change. Mycorrhizal1 hitchhikers have expanded their ‘natural range’ as people ferry plants around the world, and the local fungi are not always pleased.
The accompanying photographs highlight beautiful and intriguing fungi from around the world. And two stories demonstrate the tension between aesthetics and changing ecologies. Take, for example, the alluring fly agaric (Amanita muscaria). This striking species is probably the world’s most familiar and photographed fungus. Shamans have sought this northern hemisphere fungus for centuries, and plantation forestry unintentionally introduced it to the southern hemisphere. For about a century, the fly agaric seemed happy to cohabit with its host trees in southern hemisphere plantations, parks and gardens. However, more recently in southeast Australia and in New Zealand, it has hooked up with native myrtle beech trees.
The fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) is arguably the world’s most familiar and photographed species
Once revered for its fairytale appeal, in Australia and New Zealand the fly agaric is toppling from its fungal pedestal and land managers now condemn it as a ‘regulated pest’. We do not yet know whether it displaces the myrtle beech’s native mycorrhizal fungus partners, but it is likely. What’s the concern? Loss of native fungi could not only diminish fungal diversity, but the myrtle beeches could become less tolerant of stress and disease. Weaker trees and fewer native fungal partners could compromise the overall resilience of these forests. Yet, as fungi become ever more popular among the public, the fly agaric’s fame surges. Its common and widespread appearance on social media, in shop windows and private collections of favourite fungus photos suggest its magnetic allure. The appeal of beauty and perhaps nostalgia for childhood stories that feature this beguiling fungus could overshadow the possible havoc playing out in the subterrain.
The orange ping-pong bat (Favolaschia calocera) is another fungal conundrum. Occurring naturally in Madagascar and parts of southern Asia, its range is expanding globally and it is settling in ruderal (disturbed) environments worldwide. Like the fly agaric, mycologists worry it’s displacing native fungi and dub it a ‘fungal weed’. However, unlike the fly agaric, which is limited to the distribution of its mycorrhizal partners, the orange-ping pong bat is a saprotroph that feeds on dead wood. In New Zealand alone, it grows on the wood of over 50 different tree species.
The stunning orange ping-pong bat (Favolaschia calocera) is now considered a fungal weed in many countries
There are benefits for a fungus in having a broad diet: eats wood, will travel. The orange ping-pong bat’s sporing bodies may be tiny, but its endearing appearance further complicates the scenario. Like the fly agaric, this fungus is irresistibly attractive, with the risk it might be collected by fungal enthu- siasts, who are then unwittingly contributing to its spread.
Both species highlight the challenge of negotiating aesthetics and ecology in conservation. As highly charismatic and highly mobile species, there’s a great need to understand their invasive potential and threat to native species. While handsome flagships can catalyse conservation, ‘charismatic invasives’ can hinder its success. Yet the endless forms most bizarre of the fungal kingdom are a reminder that they all arose for one purpose—each is an evolutionary improvisation for getting spores out into the world, to continue their existence, regardless of what Homo sapiens make of them.
Note: The ideas in this brief essay are discussed in more detail in Alison’s books, especially The Allure of Fungi and Underground Lovers.
Mycorrhiza refers to the mutually beneficial association between a fungus and the roots of a plant. ↩︎
Feature image: This painting blends mythology and nature, placing mushrooms alongside ancient Egyptian symbols. The use of gold leaf in the execution of this work enhances the connection to ancient knowledge and mystical forces.
In Ancient Egypt, queens and high priests sought ways to communicate with the gods and gain deeper insights into existence. One of their tools was psychedelic mushrooms, believed to alter perception and open portals to other dimensions. Historical evidence suggests that these mushrooms played a role in religious ceremonies, spirit communication, and even political decision-making.
Forouz Shafie reflects these ancient beliefs in her artwork, blending Egyptian symbols with natural elements like mushrooms to highlight humanity’s connection with nature. These paintings are not merely recreations of the past but representations of humanity’s eternal quest to understand the unknown. Just as the queens of Egypt sought hidden truths, modern societies continue to explore the mysteries of consciousness and existence. In this creative journey, reality and imagination merge, creating a space where ancient wisdom meets contemporary exploration.
This artwork connects ancient wisdom and nature’s mysteries. Hieroglyphs and mushrooms symbolise lost knowledge, echoing the belief that fungi were gateways to other realms in ancient civilisations.
I hadn’t been in Zambia long before I discovered that it is a mycophilic society. Getting into taxis in Lusaka, the capital, the drivers would ask me what brought me to the country. And I would respond: “I’m here because of the mushrooms. I’m here to interview the mushroom gatherers for my master’s thesis.” Every one of them would light up and say, “Mushrooms! I love mushrooms!”
Some taxi drivers would tell me that their grandmother, back in the village, used to pick mushrooms. They also explained that during the rainy season mushrooms can be bought in urban markets and purchased along the highways and roads. Indeed, driving up the Copperbelt Highway in Zambia, I would see women and children with bowls full of red chanterelles or suede brown milk caps, holding them up high towards the truck driver window.
During the course of my research, I learned a lot about the popular wild mushrooms in Zambia. Traditionally women have the role of mushroom gatherers and holders of knowledge about fungi and their local surroundings. They celebrate this knowledge as it brings them closer to their environments and their families. During my fieldwork with rural women, they told me they look forward to mushroom season every year. We leave our problems at home, they would say. Or as one woman put it, “If you take your problems with you into the forest, that is when you will meet snakes!”
Women are known to be the custodians of knowledge passed down from their mothers and grandmothers. Their eyes would light up as they recounted how the women in the family took them into the forest and taught them to tell the edible mushrooms apart from the poisonous ones. They shared how they teach their own children about mushroom gathering from an early age. The children love going out to hunt for mushrooms.
The children learn not only about edible and poisonous species, but also gain ecological awareness—which trees host what fungi, which trails are dangerous. They learn about the trees the mushrooms grow under, and about termite mushrooms so large that deer can be found underneath the cap, coiled around the stem. They learn to be aware of snakes so big the tall grass parts in their approach, and about the dangers of crossing the river due to crocodiles. They hear the stories grandmothers tell, the fairytales about mushrooms, and they come along as the women sing songs about them. These songs, fairytales, and foraging rituals weave cultural memory. They are oral libraries of ecological knowledge.
Food and medicine
Provisioning is another important role women maintain in rural Zambia, and one in which mushrooms play an important role. At the beginning of the rainy season that extends from November to April, food can be scarce. Being able to gather mushrooms at this time of year is important for food security in many African countries, as highlighted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
As people plant seeds for crops of cassava, potatoes, maize, and legumes, mushrooms are often the main subsistence food that helps them get by until the crops start to yield. Many long for all the varieties of flavour the different species have and the different preparations. Mushrooms are most often boiled with onions and tomatoes and eaten with nshima, a maize porridge. In rural villages they provide an important substitute for meat, which can be quite expensive. I was told that some mushrooms taste like fish, and some taste like meat. Women fondly talked about cooking Tente mushrooms with onions and tomatoes, the sweet smell wafting through the air in the village.
Young women growing up in rural Zambia also learn about mushrooms as part of the home medicine cabinet. Women spoke about three species they gather for healthcare purposes. The mushrooms are woody and dry already when picked and are soaked or burned to ash before they are ingested or applied topically and they are used for treating a variety of ailments, from earache and diarrhoea in children, to wounds, skin issues, anxiety, and women’s health issues.
During my fieldwork I did not ask whether women used these mushrooms for health issues because they didn’t have access to health services, or whether they used them in addition to the health services they could access at the rural health posts.
A Kaonde woman in the North-Western Province explained that some years ago during a stressful period of many problems with her family, she suffered from terrible anxiety. She would crush Kyowankunku mushroom, roll it into a cigar and smoke it, which she said really helped with her anxiety during that difficult time.
The WHO suggests that up to 80 percent of people in Africa rely on traditional medicine for their primary healthcare needs. Being able to gather and use traditional medicine contributes to the resilience of people who directly depend on the forest in many parts of the world. What is gathered in the forest is often the most available, accessible, affordable, and culturally acceptable form of healthcare.
Fragile economies
Miombo forests represent a vast ecoregion of tropical grasslands, savannas and shrublands covering much of central and southern Africa. These semi-deciduous forests are dominated by trees in the legume family from the genera Brachystegia, Julbernardia, and Isoberlinia.
In the miombo forests of Zambia, mushrooms are more than food—they are memory, medicine, and music. Women pass down fungal knowledge through song, storytelling, and daily survival. Yet with urbanisation and extractive industries such as mining and charcoal production, many forests are being bulldozed or burned. In many areas where women used to go, the forest is gone, and with it, the mushrooms.
Miombo forest trees are mainly chopped for fuel. Women in rural areas referred to the men who cut these trees as ‘charcoal burners’: they stack the trees in a pile and cover them with dirt before setting them on fire and letting them slowly smoke until the wood turns into bits of charcoal. When the charcoal has cooled, it is bundled up, transported to the highway and sold.
The goods of the forest present a gendered tension: charcoal production is often done by men, mushroom gathering by women. On my drive along dirt roads into villages to interview mushroom gatherers, I would see men riding their bicycles or mopeds in the opposite direction, with large charcoal bundles strapped to the back. Back on the highway, I would see women sitting side by side with the charcoal burners selling their product.
I would ask the women, what can be done about this? What can be done about the men cutting the trees for charcoal, the very trees that provide mushrooms you pick to eat, to sell? A sad sentiment would hang over the group, sighs and mostly silence, lowered voices. “We can’t do anything. We beg them not to cut the trees. Sometimes we shout at them. Some of them are our husbands. There is nothing we can do. They need to make money too.”
Mushrooms were always food and medicine in Zambia, but these days they also present an important source of income for the women who gather mushrooms during the Emerald Season—as the rainy season is called, characterised by lush green vegetation and high water levels in rivers—and sell them along the highways. With the ever expanding mining industry in Zambia, massive highways run through the country with trucks that carry heavy loads of copper, the country’s main export.
The irony is that as much as the copper transport truck drivers from the mining companies love to buy mushrooms on their drive up the Copperbelt Highway, they are also part of the problem. International companies own the mining operations and are constantly expanding into forested areas. In the wake of mining sludge, runoff, and deposits the size of mountains, the trees of the miombo forest are bulldozed, and the mushrooms with them.
Beyond biodiversity
For some, mushroom gathering has become nothing but a distant memory. As forests and lands disappear, people move to cities.
The women I talked to in the city only have faint recollections of mushroom gathering, and they are no longer able to pass on the knowledge between generations. Current fungal conservation logic centers on rare species lists and habitat maps. But this misses the human connection—the songs, stories, livelihoods that disappear silently. The food and medicine that vanish. Preservation must include cultural conservation, especially gendered and Indigenous practices.
What if fungal conservation was not just about rare species, but also about preserving this vital thread in the tapestry of human resilience? Fungal conservation is unlike animal and plant conservation—you cannot count mushrooms like you can count elephants, and fungi were, in fact, only understood to not be plants as recently as the late 1960s. Ectomycorrhizal mushrooms, the aboveground mushrooms we can see, often appear fleetingly, unpredictably, and depend on intact forest ecosystems. Yet they shape livelihoods, culture, and health in deeply rooted, though less visible, ways.
What if we preserved forests not only for the fungi themselves, but for the women who sing to them? In a world of measurable data, the value of mushrooms may be hard to quantify, but in the miombo, their worth is sung, tasted, and remembered. Fungal conservation is not just environmental. It is cultural continuity, economic survival, and medicinal resilience—and the women of the forest are its frontline stewards.
Global inequalities in access to, and quality of, public services disproportionately affect rural communities. These communities often rely more directly on their local ecosystems for their health, livelihoods, and climate resilience compared to their urban counterparts, thus exacerbating social exclusion and environmental exploitation. Rural communities are subject to increasing conservation-related pressures as national governments race to fulfil commitments to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—mainly to set aside 30 percent of the Earth’s surface as protected areas by 2030 (also known as the “30 by 30” initiative).
These efforts prioritise biodiversity “hotspots” and charismatic flagship species, overlooking less conspicuous but ecologically crucial resources. Fungi, for example, are essential for ecosystem functions, facilitating nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and habitat formation. They are also central to rural livelihoods, supporting food security and generating income. But both rural communities and fungi are on the margins, and risk further exclusion through conservation strategies focused narrowly on protected areas.
Future conservation will benefit from bringing the knowledge, strategies, and needs of rural communities and fungi in from the margins and towards the centre, to balance ecological integrity with support for cultural practices, and to meet social and economic needs. Our team has been developing an interdisciplinary research agenda to integrate studies on fungal conservation and sustainable use of wild fungal species with the provisioning of health services, particularly for sexual and reproductive health (SRH).
SRH services, development, and conservation initiatives remain largely siloed, despite growing evidence that when integrated, more effective outcomes become possible. Coupling research on wild species with efforts to ensure everyone has access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them is a novel approach to conservation. And it aligns with new fungi-inspired conservation advocating caring for abundant natures is as important as protecting rare natures.
Cross-sectoral connections
Our main research question is: how does integrating reproductive health services and sustainable fungal resource use improve community well-being and conservation outcomes? We are hoping to work in Zambia, and perhaps eventually extend our work to communities in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Benin. We are particularly interested in how traditional gender roles affect peoples’ lives with regards to collecting wild mushrooms and accessing health services, and how these topics may be taken together to inform gender-sensitive policy and practice. We wonder what sort of socio-economic and ecological synergies might emerge when integrating SRH services and fungal conservation? What challenges might arise?
We plan to examine how traditional mushroom gathering for self-provisioning and medicinal needs provides knowledge about sustainable use of wild fungal species, and how this can contribute directly to the underrepresentation of fungi in conservation science. We recognise there are connections between how we experience and perceive our health, livelihood, environmental and climate challenges, and that the connections are often acute in rural communities in low and middle-income countries. What is special about our approach is that we will use the connections between how communities perceive their interconnected challenges, and the solutions they have already identified between them, to co-create an integrated health, livelihood and environmental education programme using multi-sector messaging, with SRH and other health services, and delivered as part of a broader livelihood and conservation intervention.
Recent research highlighting the many benefits of this approach demonstrated that greater attention to community members and their self-expressed needs was essential to design effective programmes addressing health, environment, and livelihood needs. By developing culturally sensitive strategies that attend concurrently to these interrelated issues, we further gender equity in resource management by recognising women’s pivotal roles in conserving fungal resources and enhancing their access to SRH services.
Our work contributes directly to calls for the need for evidence on the impacts of projects integrating health, conservation and livelihood action to support work for policy change. It is designed to simultaneously address a range of UN Sustainable Development Goals: good health and well-being (SDG3), gender equality (SDG5), climate action (SDG13), and life on land (SDG15), by bringing together a transdisciplinary team of academics from the Global South and Global North, along with NGOs working locally and internationally (SDG17). This also increases awareness of the role of fungi in sustainable development (see also Cantiero et al. in this issue).
We use an approach called the Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) framework developed to bridge health, conservation, and sustainable livelihoods. Recognising fungi’s ecological and socio-economic roles in enhancing community resilience, ecological stability, and climate regulation, one of our key aims is to highlight women’s critical roles in maintaining traditional knowledge about wild mushrooms (see also Løvaas in this issue). This knowledge exemplifies how fungi are at a nexus between conservation and SRH, addressing household food and nutrition security, income generation, and community-centred solutions for environmental and social resilience.
Further Reading
Barron, E. S. 2023. Conservation of abundance: How fungi can contribute to rethinking conservation. Conservation and Society 21: 99-109.
Barron, E. S. 2015. Situating wild product gathering in a diverse economy: Negotiating ethical interactions with natural resources. In: Making other worlds possible. (eds. Roelvink, G., K. St. Martin and J. K. Gibson-Graham). Pp 173–193. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Muhumuza, R., G. Namanya, P. Orishaba, S. Uwimbabazi, G. Mateeka, A. Aine-omucunguzi, K. Lloyd et al. 2025. Connecting environment, health and livelihoods: how community experiences inform integrated programming in Rukiga District, Uganda. BMJ Global Health 8: e014406.
This year, Current Conservation and Anomalie Tattoo Co., a Bangalore-based temporary tattoo brand, teamed up to celebrate fungi through a tattoo design contest. We invited submissions from artists across South Asia, and received a number of wild, whacky, and wonderful designs. After a rigorous selection process by a panel of judges, we’re delighted to congratulate the five winners!
We’re deeply grateful to our myco-minded guest judges Prithvi Kini and Malavika Bhatia (aka M) for lending their time and expertise to the selection process. Above all, we thank everyone who participated for sharing their creativity with us!
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Scientific fieldwork often conjures images of solitude, sweat, and lots of insects, with maybe a few exciting discoveries along the way. For those of us working in fungal-rich forest habitats, the reality often encompasses all of that and more. In our case, it also includes celebrations.
Over the past year, we have been immersed in a research project on fungal conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa, looking at sustainability and implications for livelihoods. One of the project’s goals is to restore fungi-rich habitat in sacred and community forests by planting native trees that live in symbiotic relationship with fungi, called ectomycorrhizal trees. These fungi are not just essential for forest health, they are also deeply woven into the lives, diets, and cosmologies of local communities across West Africa.
By working closely with these communities, we have come to understand something essential, not only about fungi and forests, but about joy, resilience, and the power of celebration in conservation.
Our work is based in northern Benin, in a landscape shaped by farming, fires, and fragmentation of natural habitats. The forests are home to a remarkable diversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi, including edible and medicinal species. Restoration in these areas is not just a matter of planting trees, it involves reviving whole ecological networks, and honouring the people who know them intimately. While this work is grounded in science, it is also grounded in local practice. The real magic happened not in the controlled conditions of the nursery, but in the beautiful, messy, communal space of the field.
Celebrating restoration
It started small in Papatia village, comprising Fulani, Ditamari, and Baatonu ethnic groups. As community mobilisation dragged on, we began to worry about the level of motivation for our project. Sure, a few people were active, perhaps encouraged by the remuneration involved. The plan was to mobilise the local population around 8 AM every day to start filling bags with potting soil and installing firewalls around the transplanted seedlings.
In retrospect, we were going about it the wrong way by expecting to implement our protocol. We had arrived with our methodologies, but we were not really listening. One village elder, watching us linger until nearly 11 AM for work that was supposed to start at 9 AM, finally said, “This is not how things work here.”
He was right. Then, he showed up with Pastis, a locally popular alcoholic drink. Children began gathering around the nursery, followed by their mothers. They came chatting and laughing among themselves, curious and relaxed. A few women began to sing softly. Within minutes, the singing grew louder. Someone clapped along. We had not planned a party, but a party, it seemed, had found us.
Women had been mobilised, and they quickly organised themselves. As songs echoed through the trees, one group threw themselves into the restoration activities while the other got busy preparing food. Over the course of the project, these spontaneous celebrations became a recurring theme, which helped sustain momentum and motivation throughout the restoration process. At each new planting site, community members brought their own way of celebrating.
There were moments when we wondered whether we were there to restore the forest or to attend a festival in its honour. At first, we were not sure what to make of it. As researchers, trained in scientific method and measurement, we had our eyes fixed on our data: numbers of bags filled with potting soil, survival rates of planted seedlings, numbers of participants, and gender balance. With time, we found ourselves setting aside the clipboard and joining in the festivities.
It was the first time we had witnessed this in the context of habitat restoration activities. However, such practices are common in Benin during farming work. Communities, often organised in cooperatives, gather by the dozens in a member’s field to carry out the planned tasks collectively. While some focus on the work, others play drums or sing to motivate the group. We began to realise that these celebrations were not distractions, but rather a genuine source of motivation for our activities, even helping to increase the visibility of our project. Admittedly, some participants were more immersed in the festive atmosphere, but alcohol consumption was regulated and kept moderate. This aspect did tend to extend the duration of the work to longer than initially planned, and it required additional focus to avoid losing track of the data we needed to collect during the day, particularly survival rates. Most of the other data were usually collected at the end of the activities.
From a practical standpoint, the celebrations helped a lot. They brought people together across generations, inspired participation, and made everyone feel connected to the restoration sites. Hard work became something joyful. Even when the sun was merciless and the work physically demanding, people smiled and laughed.
Something more subtle was happening as well. These moments offered glimpses into the cultural dimensions of fungal knowledge, how these communities name, gather, cook, and value mushrooms. Women explained the songs they sang while working, which often carry messages of motivation and hope. These experiences showed us that cultural habits can in fact be the foundation of collaboration with local populations. Through their joy, people expressed a profound relationship with the land, one that has survived through generations.
Lessons for conservation scientists
There is a temptation in conservation work to treat community engagement as a box to be ticked, a stakeholder meeting here, a workshop there. However, policy frameworks, research collaborations, and project designs increasingly acknowledge that local communities are not just passive stakeholders, but active stewards of the landscapes they inhabit.
We recorded measurable indicators, but we also learned to listen to stories and attune ourselves to the emotional undercurrents that shaped these gatherings. What we witnessed during these activities challenged some of our own assumptions. The most powerful connections we experienced came from walking with villagers under a full sun, our hands still dirty from planting trees. Those moments taught us to rethink what counts as data.
In conservation science, we are trained to strive for measurable outcomes, to approach nature through the lens of management and protection. The communities we worked with taught us that conservation does not have to be serious. In fact, joy can be a strategy, one that builds stronger bonds between people and ecosystems, and that sustains engagement over the long, often difficult, arc of restoration work.
Incorporating festivities into restoration activities does not mean abandoning scientific rigour. It means broadening our definition of what success looks like. It means understanding that ecological resilience is deeply intertwined with cultural vitality. Restoration efforts that ignore the human dimension risk being shallow and short-lived.
While celebration may at first seem unrelated to ecological restoration, it can play a vital role in building trust and strengthening collaboration between researchers and local communities. Participating in shared moments dancing, eating together, exchanging stories beneath trees allows us to step beyond our roles as scientists. The success of restoration initiatives cannot always be fully captured by metrics like seedling survival rates or carbon storage. It is also reflected in more subtle but important outcomes, such as the quiet pride felt by local communities who took part in restoration efforts and now benefit from the ecosystem services provided by the restored sites.
In this way, restoration becomes not only an ecological process but a relational one about reweaving connections between people and their environments, and among community members themselves. Acknowledging and participating in these shared cultural expressions, including song and dance, is not a distraction from conservation. It can be a meaningful part of it.
Acknowledgement: We are grateful to the Darwin Initiative through the main project 30-020 granted to the University of Parakou, Benin.
You might have noticed lichens growing on trees, or rocks, or soil, in both rural and urban environments. These relatively small but beautiful organisms can be powerful bioindicators used to monitor, manage, and reverse environmental harm in the transition to a more sustainable future.
Lichens are sometimes referred to as ‘mini-ecosystems’. This is because they are not one thing but composed of at least two functionally different partners that coexist in regulatory balance. One partner—an alga or a cyanobacteria—is a primary producer, using photosynthesis to create sugars for food. The other partner—a fungus—is a consumer, harvesting some of this food production to meet its own energy requirements. The consumer fungus creates the structure of the lichen (the ‘thallus’), within which it protects the primary producer from harm, be that herbivores or excess light. Lichens are therefore created by fungi that have evolved this specialist mode of nutrition, and different lichens represent different fungal species.
A key feature of lichens is that they are very sensitive to ambient environmental conditions. When conditions are wet, they hydrate and become physiologically active. When conditions are dry, they desiccate and become physiologically dormant. They also absorb atmospheric nutrients to meet their mineral requirements. This ability to live independently of the soil, by accessing water and sequestering nutrients from the surrounding air, or rainfall, allows lichens to live in extreme habitats, such as on the surface of rocks, or attached to tree-bark as epiphytes.
Ecologically successful, lichens can be found from the tops of the highest mountains to the seashore, and from tropical rainforests to deserts. However, their intimate connection with the surrounding environment also creates a vulnerability. As well as allowing lichens to colonise into extreme habitats where few other organisms can survive, they are rendered extremely sensitive to changes in the wider chemical environment, including the effects of pollution.
The global pollution problem
Pollution—waste from human consumption unsustainably emitted—is not a new problem. Lead pollution from Roman metallurgy can be detected in peat and lake cores across northern Europe and is thought to have increased human mortality rates at that time. However, particularly since the industrial revolution, the environmental damage from pollution has accelerated. Pollution is now identified as one the major drivers of biodiversity loss and ecosystem harm worldwide, along with habitat loss, climate change, and invasive species.
Arguably, one of the planet’s greatest problems is nitrogen pollution. The invention of the Haber-Bosch process in the early 20th century allowed the industrial production of ammonia, including for chemical fertilisers that supply extra ‘reactive nitrogen’ (Nr) to remove key limits on plant growth, fuelling the ‘green revolution’. Despite clear success in feeding the global population, on average about only half of the Nr supplied as either natural (slurry) or industrial fertiliser is taken up by crops, with the rest leaked into the wider environment as air or water pollution.
This excess nitrogen kills sensitive species and simplifies ecosystems. It’s also a precursor to atmospheric particulate matters (PM2.5 and PM10) that are estimated to contribute to approximately 7 million excess human deaths annually, and overall results in a global economic cost estimated at US$200-2,000 billion per annum in terms of environmental remediation.
Can lichens help?
Lichens sequester nitrogen directly from atmospheric sources in solution or as dry deposition, and different lichen species are adapted to contrasting levels of nitrogen. On this basis, the types of lichen that are found at a given location can be used as bioindicators to assess how much nitrogen is present.
The sensitivity of some lichen species makes them excellent indicators of emerging ecosystem harm, measured as the point at which these lichens are negatively impacted by nitrogen.
For example, 1 μg of ammonia per cubic metre of air has been used to set a ‘critical level’ for monitoring and managing nitrogen air pollution in the UK and Europe (for context, the concentration around a poultry farm may reach up to 60 μg of ammonia per cubic metre of air). In this way, lichens can help to make invisible air pollution visible. As such, lichens are a powerful tool for citizen science and wider public education.
Research in many temperate regions (including Europe and North America) has helped to establish critical levels (concentration limits) and critical loads (deposition limits) around which to regulate and control nitrogen pollution. However, the nitrogen problem has swung towards the tropics. In South Asia, the Indo-Gangetic Plain in northeastern India is where global nitrogen pollution is accelerating most rapidly at 2–7 percent per annum based on trends for 2000–2015, and it already has among the highest concentration of ammonia globally.
The wider South Asia region is a biodiversity hotspot as well as home to approximately 1.9 billion people, posing the risk that if nitrogen pollution continues unabated then nature-based socio-economic structures could collapse. To address this problem, the UK Research and Innovation South Asian Nitrogen Hub (SANH)—which aims to reduce regional nitrogen pollution for the benefit of people and nature—sought to establish a robust set of critical levels and critical loads for the South Asian tropics, based around the use of lichens as bioindicators.
The deeper relevance of using lichens as bioindicators within South Asia is that they are also a commercially important non-timber forest product, being traded into the perfume industry, as well as having wider cultural value—as a source of food and medicine, and for ritual symbolic purposes.
New evidence
To better understand the sensitivity of tropical lichens to nitrogen, the SANH team generated a new experimental platform in which ammonia was released into a forest plot, creating high concentrations close to the source, and diminishing to background concentrations within 30–40 metres. Under close control depending on the weather conditions, it was possible to generate a predictable plume of ammonia along which lichens could be monitored, and into which lichens could be translocated, and their response measured.
Tested initially for a site close to Edinburgh in Scotland, with help from the Dilmah tea company, the experimental platform was recreated in an upland tropical forest in Sri Lanka. In a first ever direct comparison across temperate and tropical zones, the paired sites are now revealing how the combination of nitrogen dose and exposure period affect lichen physiology, and cause changes in lichen diversity for a tropical forest.
This research has several important repercussions. A benchmark SANH report, Nitrogen Pollution in South Asia: Scientific Evidence, Current Initiatives and Policy Landscape, reviewed 966 policy instruments operative in 2019 and concluded: “South Asian nitrogen-related policies are typically qualitative in nature and rarely set quantitative targets for reduction. Very few policies try to manage pollution in a measurable way.”
The new data generated for tropical lichens by SANH can be used—as has been the case in the UK and Europe—to provide the quantitative targets (critical levels and critical loads) around which the regulation and management of nitrogen can be formulated. However, nitrogen monitoring is also essential to achieve adaptable and goal-orientated nitrogen management.
Monitoring capacity is limited in South Asia, which has only 2 percent of the capacity delivered in the UK by the National Ammonia Monitoring Network, despite it being a region that is far larger and more geographically complex. Here again, the lichens can help. Having created a better understanding of the nitrogen response of lichens in the region (which species are more or less sensitive to excess nitrogen), they can be used as bioindicators to monitor nitrogen levels, and assist with mapping and managing nitrogen pollution in South Asia. To this end, the experimental studies paired between sites in Scotland and Sri Lanka are complemented by field-based monitoring of lichens for different climatic regions of the Himalayas, in Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan.
Lichens matter
There are about 30,000 species of lichen-fungi globally, contributing to the Earth’s extraordinary biodiversity. They operate in symbiosis as primary producers, providing food for animals that scale from mites to caribou. They create habitat structures for invertebrates, which in turn support bird populations. They sequester and process atmospheric water and nutrients, and the lichens with cyanobacteria can ‘fix’ nitrogen directly from the atmosphere, rather like the nodules of legume roots.
As described for this regional South Asian case study, lichens can be both commercially and culturally important. They are also vulnerable to habitat loss, to climate change, and to pollution. However, as demonstrated here for nitrogen, the vulnerability of lichens can be characterised and used to bolster our efforts to become more aware of and to reverse environmental harm.
Further Reading
Cape, J.N., L. J. van der Eerden, L. J. Sheppard, I. D. Leith and M. A. Sutton. 2009. Evidence for changing the critical level for ammonia. Environmental Pollution 157: 1033–1037.
De Vries, W. 2021. Impacts of nitrogen emissions on ecosystems and human health: A mini review. Current Opinion in Environmental Science and Health 21: 100249.
Sutton M.A., N. van Dijk, P. E. Levy, M. R. Jones, I. D. Leith, L. J. Sheppard, S. Leeson et al. 2020. Alkaline air: changing perspectives on nitrogen and air pollution in an ammonia-rich world. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal SocietyA 378: 20190315.
Conservation is at a critical juncture, as many acknowledge the need for a new paradigm that centres collaboration with living systems. And this new paradigm is increasingly recognising the role of fungi in shaping our world.
Fungi are the second most diverse group of species after insects, with an estimated total of 2.5 million species across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments. Fungi underpin all life on Earth, playing important roles in nutrient-carbon cycling, decomposition, and regeneration. Most plants depend on fungi for survival, and many animals rely on them for food and water. Fungi are also crucial for our food security, livelihoods, and the economy, supporting multi-billion dollar industries in edible mushrooms, antibiotics, biofuels, and even plastics and building materials. Coffee, bread, chocolate, and penicillin would not exist without fungi!
How can we leverage the power of fungi for effective change at the policy level? First, we need to understand where these organisms live. The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) is one of various organisations and initiatives focusing on the collection, monitoring, and conservation of soil microbial communities. Other initiatives include the African Microbiome Initiative, the Australian Microbiome Initiative, the China Soil Microbiome Initiative, SoilBON, the European LUCAS soil survey, the Earth Microbiome Project, the Global Soil Mycobiome consortium, and GlobalFungi.
This work, leveraged with a growing body of scholarship on fungal conservation science and social science, can make important contributions to a range of international policies and initiatives. Here we present an overview of a possible first set of interventions.
Fungi in the spotlight
Historically, fungi have been overlooked in climate solutions, biodiversity assessments, and conservation targets due to a lack of data and expertise, as well as a misunderstanding that they were plants rather than an independent kingdom with unique chemical and physical attributes. Fungal conservation efforts began slowly in the 1980s and 1990s with initial research on the impact of air pollution on mycorrhizal species (which form symbiotic relationships with plant roots) in Europe, the impact of deforestation on fungi in the northwestern US, and organisations being formed in Cuba and within the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The 2000s saw a more rapid change, with expansion to five IUCN specialist groups in 2005 and the Declaration of Cordoba in 2007, calling for effective conservation and sustainable use of fungi. Since 2015, there has been a significant increase in efforts to evaluate the extinction risk of fungal species through the Global Fungal Red List Initiative. Supported by the IUCN, newer organisations such as Fungi Foundation have called for an increased recognition of fungi as one of the three kingdoms of life critical for conservation (see Flora, Fauna, Funga initiative). As a consequence of this campaign, in 2024 the National Geographic Society even changed its definition of ‘wildlife’ to include fungi.
Nature-based solutions
With many fungal species at high risk of extinction due to habitat loss, climate change, and pollution, urgent recovery action, restoration, and protection of fungi are needed. Because of their intrinsic relationships with plants, animals, and humans, protecting fungi offers a wide variety of nature-based solutions to support plants, ecosystems, and human communities. There are a host of international agreements and programmes whose goals will be enhanced and better met by taking these points into consideration, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
Protecting and ensuring the sustainable harvesting of wild edible and medicinal fungi will contribute to the protection of biodiversity as suggested by the CBD, and to SDGs related to combating world hunger, providing work and economic security through responsible means, and managing nature in ways that benefit nature and people. Furthermore, mushroom hunting is often an important source of income for women in rural communities. Thus, ensuring the sustainable and equitable use of fungi also promotes gender equality, an important goal for the SDGs and the UNCCD.
Fungi can also be integrated as a nature-based solution to prevent and mitigate some threats related to climate change, farming, and pollution. More than 90 percent of plants—including trees and food crops—have mycorrhizal fungi associated with their roots through symbiotic relationships. This particular group of fungi helps plants efficiently absorb nitrogen, phosphorus, and other critical nutrients, while drawing carbon down into the soil. Mycorrhizae also improve plants’ capacity to absorb water from the soil and their resilience to drought. Soils store 75 percent of terrestrial carbon, and mycorrhizal fungi play a crucial role in keeping that carbon in the ground, which helps regulate the Earth’s climate—an important part of all the international agreements mentioned above. These fungi also support crop resilience against pests and diseases, and maintain soil health and stability.
Like combating climate change, responsible agricultural production and land management are also addressed within the SDGs, CBD, and UNCCD. While acknowledging that fungi are a major source of crop diseases and some are becoming invasive, SPUN believes their careful integration in sustainable farming can support larger crop yields and more nutritious foods, making them an indispensable tool to help us meet important aims related to food security and responsible production. Thoughtfully incorporating mycorrhizal fungi in agriculture can also reduce the need for fertilisers and pest control chemicals, consequently reducing pollution from runoff and improving water quality.
Protecting underground networks
A key priority for SPUN is identifying hotspots of diversity and endemism of mycorrhizal fungi to inform effective spatial planning, management, and protection, and to map the contribution of these fungi to carbon drawdown and climate mitigation. Additionally, SPUN has been partnering with other organisations, such as The Nature Conservancy, to implement more effective, evidence-based restoration and management practices, and priorities informed by data on mycorrhizal fungi diversity.
SPUN participates in international meetings, such as the recent 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. It’s also part of a group of experts leading the development of a Global Strategy for Fungal Conservation that closely aligns conservation and research strategies with the CBD Global Biodiversity Framework targets. This strategy will support mycologists, conservation practitioners, decisionmakers, and governments in integrating fungi into the implementation of the CBD targets.
At the core of SPUN is a network of external collaborators sampling mycorrhizal fungi worldwide as part of our Underground Explorers Program. This granting programme is designed to fuel high-quality mycorrhizal research from understudied regions around the world by providing funding, access to innovative technology, and knowledge sharing with local researchers. SPUN strives for open access to our data and knowledge products, while also ensuring prior consent and proper attribution to Indigenous peoples and local communities, for example through the use of “Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels” produced by the organisation Local Contexts.
We hope SPUN’s work can be an example of what can and should be done to integrate fungi into conservation policy and action, inspiring others to follow and effectively conserve all species on Earth.
Hawkins, H. J., R. I. Cargill, M. E. Van Nuland, S. C. Hagen, K. J. Field, M. Sheldrake, N. A. Soudzilovskaia and E. T. Kiers. 2023. Mycorrhizal mycelium as a global carbon pool. Current Biology 33(11): R560-573.
Feature image: A captive tusker is being given a scrub bath
“In the olden days, after completing timber work, the elephants were left unfettered in the forest, to forage with a long chain tied to one leg and a bell hanging around their necks, which helped us to track them later. Some elephants would cleverly turn the bell upside down and fill it with soil, preventing it from ringing,” recalls Devasikutty, a 70-year-old retired mahout from the Thrissur district of Kerala, India.
“Sometimes, they would grab the chain with their mouths and walk for kilometres, ensuring that no marks are left behind by the dragging chain. Only a trail of footprints would remain on the ground, making it difficult to locate the individual. We could easily mistake the tracks for those of a wild elephant. Elephants are highly intelligent and use tactics like these to escape work the following day. But they usually returned on their own at the time of feeding kanji (rice porridge).”
Despite bearing scars from an attack by the last elephant he cared for decades ago, Devasikutty speaks without resentment and with only reverence. His words reflect the deep, almost spiritual bond that some mahouts share with these beings. He views elephants as intelligent and emotional, capable of remembering those who have wronged them and punishing them later. For generations, mahouts have been custodians of a largely unrecognised body of traditional ecological knowledge (or TEK), built through years of observation, shared learning, and an intimate understanding of the lives of individual elephants.
The Kerala connection
The domestication of elephants in India can be traced back to ancient rock paintings dated around 6000 BC. The Rig Veda Samhita (circa 1500 BC) contains evidence of elephant domestication, including references to elephants as gifts, richly caparisoned elephants, elephants responding to commands, and even elephant keepers’ villages. By the 6th century BC, the capture and taming of wild elephants had become a sophisticated art.
Elephants lined up during Aanayoottu (“feeding of elephants”) ceremony held at the Sree Vadakkumnathan Temple in Thrissur, Kerala
Indian TEK related to elephant care was well developed long before the same began to take shape in the West. Ancient treatises like the Nakula Saṁhita detailed methods of capture, training, and husbandry, reflecting the role of elephants in warfare and their importance to kings. Among these, the Hastyayurveda (Ayurveda of elephants), attributed to Palakapya, remains one of the most well-known texts on elephant health. Structured as a discourse, it covers a wide range of ailments and treatments and continues to serve as a guide for traditional elephant healers even today.
Elephants have been woven into Kerala’s cultural identity, not only as working animals but as sacred and ceremonial figures. Traditionally owned by big landlords, captive elephants are now privately owned, coinciding with a shift in the primary type of work from timber extraction to use in religious festivals. Beyond the grandeur of decorated elephants surrounded by a sea of people during these ceremonies lies an age-old system of elephant care, deeply rooted in a blend of TEK and Ayurvedic principles. According to Dr. Sankaran, an Ayurveda doctor and second-generation elephant healer based in Thrissur, the dosage of Ayurvedic medicines administered to elephants is traditionally calculated based on principles outlined in Hastyayurveda. “It is generally considered to be 16 times the human dosage or adjusted according to the elephant’s body weight,” he explains.
Ethnoveterinary knowledge is gradually fading, as traditional practices are often perceived as anecdotal or informal when compared to modern veterinary science. However, rather than existing in opposition, these two systems have the potential to complement one another. For instance, the month of Karkidakam (17 July–17 August), which coincides with the monsoon season in Kerala, is traditionally set aside for rest and rejuvenation. After the physically demanding festival season, this period provides elephants with a much-needed break and a time for immunity-boosting treatments. The renowned Guruvayur temple houses around 37 elephants at a camp called Anakkotta (which translates to ‘elephant fort’), where these treatments are supervised by an expert panel of veterinary doctors—including an Ayurveda specialist—ensuring a thoughtful integration of TEK and modern science.
Ayurveda doctor and traditional healer examining an elephant (Photo credit: Dr. Sankaran)
Elephant whisperers
Ramakrishnan is an 80-year-old mahout who began his training at the age of nine. He attributes much of his knowledge to the time he spent with the Malayanmaar (forest-dwelling tribal communities). They taught him how to navigate the forest, tame wild elephants, and use traditional medicines—knowledge that he says was shared only after years of trust and close association. He recalls how close daily interactions enabled him to read subtle signs in an elephant’s behaviour.
In Ramakrishnan’s experience, “If we truly care about the elephant or have the necessary knowledge, we can detect illness by simply observing its drinking habits. For instance, if an elephant drinks half its usual amount of water in the morning, we might assume it’s because it is not thirsty or it ate water-rich foods such as plantain stem, watermelon, or orange. But if it happens a second time, we start getting concerned. After a while, we will try to offer water again. If the elephant still drinks less, we realise that something is wrong. We get to know it by observing changes in its behaviour, much like how we can discern if a close person is feeling sick or is in pain just by looking at their face.”
Reflecting on present day practices, he observes that this kind of intuitive understanding is becoming increasingly rare. In his view, the relationship between mahouts and elephants has grown more transactional over time. In the past, mahouts spent decades with a single elephant, forming lasting bonds; however, many now treat their role as merely a temporary job. Elephants are often reduced to decorative showpieces at festivals, valued more for their spectacle than for their sentience. Without genuine affection or a deep understanding of an elephant’s needs, he argues that the quality of care inevitably suffers.
Mahouts like Ramakrishnan have extensive knowledge of using locally available natural ingredients such as turmeric, coconut oil, ginger, neem leaves, salt, ghee, garlic, the touch-me-not plant, and asafoetida to treat common ailments. These remedies, recognised for their medicinal properties in Ayurveda, have long been passed down orally. But as traditional mahoutship declines and fewer youth see it as a viable or respected career, the continuity of this knowledge is at risk.
A mahout with his elephant at Anakkotta Elephant Camp
Today, captive elephants are more prone to health problems as they are frequently transported by lorry, made to stand for long hours, and receive inadequate rest due to the high demand for their presence at temple festivals. As a government veterinary officer explains, “Transporting elephants by lorry is never good for them. First, they do not get a chance to rest. Once a festival is over, they are loaded back onto the lorry and taken to another festival the next day. They have to balance and stand in the lorry, which prevents them from getting any sleep. An elephant is supposed to be taken for a procession only four days a week, but this guideline is often ignored. Also, it is recommended that elephants walk at least 20 km every day, but that has stopped since lorries came into the picture.”
Amid ongoing debates about elephant welfare, there is an urgent need to rethink what it truly means to care for these gentle giants. While modern veterinary science offers standardised protocols and diagnostic tools, it can sometimes overlook the depth of understanding that comes from years of close companionship, which is the kind of wisdom possessed by experienced mahouts. The future of elephant care lies not in favouring one system over another, but in creating synergy through a collaborative approach that combines ecological knowledge, scientific insight, and empirical observation. Such an approach will honour Kerala’s living heritage while adapting to the realities of a changing world.
Further Reading
Bist, S. S., G. Nair, J. V. Cheeran, K. Kutti Nayar and K. C. Panicker. 1997. Practical elephant management: A handbook for mahouts. Elephant Welfare Association.
Dubost J. M., E. Deharo, S. Palamy, C. Her, C. Phaekovilay, L. Vichith L, S. Duffillot et al. 2022. Interspecific medicinal knowledge and Mahout-Elephant interactions in Thongmyxay district, Laos. Revue d’ethnoécologie 22. https://doi.org/10.4000/ethnoecologie.9705.
Mazars, G. 1994. Traditional veterinary medicine in India. Revue Scientifique et Technique 13(2): 433-51.
Feature image: Young jaguar from a camera trap in the Mbaracayú Forest Nature Reserve, where a small, isolated population of jaguars persists in eastern Paraguay (Photo credit: Hugo Mbujagi, Ambrosio Javagi, Felipe Jakugi, Diego Giménez, and Jay M. Schoen)
Have you ever wondered why the jaguar crossed the dirt road? Or if the jaguar might use the road to move from place to place? Thanks to our recent analysis of jaguar movement published in Biological Conservation, we now know more about how jaguars move while resting, during local movements, or when exploring new habitats. These insights unveil clues for the species’ long-term viability.
Jaguars, the Americas’ largest feline predator, exist in high numbers in the core of their range– the heart of the Amazon Basin. However, as you move farther from this region, jaguar populations become highly fragmented and threatened by shifting land use practices, such as agricultural expansion, and retaliatory killings by humans seeking to protect their livestock. Small populations have existed in isolation for decades, particularly in the northern and southern edges of the jaguar’s range— roughly northern Mexico and the convergence of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, respectively. But the ongoing expansion of human-dominated landscapes exacerbates the existing fragmentation and also creates newly fragmented populations.
Any group of organisms in small populations isolated from others are subject to the detrimental effects of inbreeding and an increased likelihood of local extinction. This means that maintaining broad-scale connectivity between populations is crucial for jaguar conservation efforts.
Such efforts depend on models that predict how jaguars may move through complex landscapes, including the strong likelihood they will avoid non-natural areas, often referred to as “matrix areas”. Past research has indicated that due to the jaguar’s elusive nature and vulnerability to human persecution, they are unlikely to use their capacity for vast movement to move from one population to another, unless there is sufficient forest cover. Given the present-day situation of isolated jaguar populations separated largely by matrix areas, it seems unlikely that jaguars have remained connected or that they will be in the future. This prediction is supported by observed genetic isolation in the northern and southern parts of the jaguar’s range.
Industrial soybean processing facility in the Atlantic Forest region of Paraguay, with a remnant forest patch in the distance. Jaguars are unlikely to venture into or move successfully through these areas to connect with other populations. (Photo credit: Jay M. Schoen)
Not all hope is lost, however. Conservation organisations are working with local farmers and ranchers to balance human needs for food and economic opportunity with the jaguar’s, and other species’, need for forested landscapes. These efforts include restoration and reintroduction initiatives in previously agricultural areas. But how do we prioritise these areas and understand their potential for jaguar connectivity?
One crucial aspect is to recognise that not all types of movement are the same—whether for people, honey bees, or jaguars. While past research modelled jaguar movement by collectively pooling data from GPS collars, our recent study explores how jaguars respond to their environment depending on distinct behavioural states. We used a combination of machine learning techniques to split movement data into three behaviours: resting, local movement, and exploratory movement. We then modelled the complex and interactive relationships between environmental variables and behaviour-specific jaguar movement data.
In doing this, we uncovered unique relationships with the environment based on the behavioural state of the animals. Notably, for the purpose of connectivity, jaguars in an exploratory movement state were more likely to move through anthropogenic areas, low tree cover, and areas farther from dense tree cover. In the most fragmented parts of the jaguar’s range, we have knowledge about the specific areas separating populations and acting as a barrier to connectivity. Going forward, as conservationists prioritise the habitat of corridor areas, this insight on exploratory movements may help on-the-ground efforts strike a balance between human and wildlife stakeholders, so that all life has a chance to thrive.
And what about that jaguar on the dirt road? This analysis confirmed what many big cat experts know: cats are lazy. More precisely, carnivores like to use the path of least resistance to travel, especially for longer distances. Jaguars were particularly likely to use dirt roads while in the exploratory movement state. After all, why cross the road when it can help you reach your destination?
Original Paper
Schoen, J. M., R. DeFries and S. Cushman. 2025. Open-source, environmentally dynamic machine learning models demonstrate behavior-dependent utilisation of mixed-use landscapes by jaguars (Panthera onca). Biological Conservation302: 110978. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2025.110978.
Further Reading
Haag, T., A. S. Santos, D. A. Sana, R. G. Morato, L. Cullen Jr., P. G. Crawshaw Jr., C. De Angelo et al. 2010. The effect of habitat fragmentation on the genetic structure of a top predator: loss of diversity and high differentiation among remnant populations of Atlantic Forest jaguars (Panthera onca). Molecular Ecology 19(22): 4906–4921. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2010.04856.x.
Jędrzejewski, W., H. S. Robinson, M. Abarca, K.A. Zeller, G. Velasques, E. A. D. Paemelaere, J. F. Goldberg et al. 2018. Estimating large carnivore populations at global scale based on spatial predictions of density and distribution – Application to the jaguar (Panthera onca). PLOS ONE 13(3): e0194719. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194719.
Roques, S., R. Sollman, A. Jácomo, N. Tôrres, L. Silveira, C. Chávez, C. Keller et al. 2016. Effects of habitat deterioration on the population genetics and conservation of the jaguar. Conservation Genetics 17: 125–139. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-015-0766-5.
Feature image:A strong visual representation of the tensions between development, ecology, and conservation. Here, the city appears to be expanding, with construction and exposed soil as evidence of this growth. However, there is still a natural element visible: the green cover is made up of an invasive species, and beneath it, the white spots are flamingos.Photo credits: Nirjesh Gautam
While cities usually devour nature, some habitats such as the Najafgarh Lake stand defiant. A critical wetland ecosystem shared between Delhi and Haryana, the lake’s quiet rebellion is both moving and impossible to ignore. It supports a rich diversity of wildlife, particularly birds. However, due to ruthless urbanisation, municipal neglect, and public amnesia of natural heritage, the lake’s survival is in question.
Irrespective of the fact that it is unable to maintain itself on paper, Najafgarh Lake simply refuses to be erased from the geography. The lake has been constantly drowned in soil and concrete due to land reclamation efforts, but against all odds, it remains an essential habitat for numerous bird species, including the black-necked stork (classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List) and large flocks of flamingos, herons, cormorants, and egrets.
A pond heron stalks its prey in the slurry at Najafgarh Lake. Photo credits: Pragyan James Ali
A purple swamphen foraging among invasive water hyacinth. Photo credits: Pragyan James Ali
Black-necked storks are classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. Photo credits: Nirjesh Gautam
Against a backdrop of water contaminated with industrial effluents and municipal waste, birds persist—wading through the shallows, finding food, shelter, and roosting spots among the reeds and invasive plant species.
The confluence of an industrial and municipal drain, both flowing into Najafgarh Lake. Amidst the chaos, two trees stand—a babool (Acacia nilotica) and a non-native vilayati kikar (Prosopis juliflora). Photo credits: Nirjesh Gautam
This resilience, however, is not without its struggles. The wetland faces a complex governance challenge, as both Delhi and Haryana wash their hands off when it comes to conservation. As a result, the lake is treated as an expendable wasteland rather than a vital urban ecosystem.
A drain is being constructed on the Haryana side of Najafgarh lake. Photo credits: Nirjesh Gautam
Najafgarh Lake embodies the paradox of urban biodiversity, that is both fragile and unyielding. It is a place where adaptation meets adversity, where birds continue to nest in landscapes transformed by human agency, and where nature, despite being choked with pollutants, continues to nurture life. The lake is not just a waterbody, it is complex poetry written by nature itself.
A fisher navigating through the wetland—a quiet coexistence of nature and human industry. Photo credits: Pragyan James Ali
