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We’ve just had an epic win for our native animals, such as owls, goannas and eagles. And after years contributing to the scientific evidence on the wildlife impact of rodent poisons, it’s a day scientists like myself feared would never come.

This week, the federal pesticides regulator finally announced a ban on the sale of a type of rodent poisons called second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs).

This means that some commonly used rat baits will be taken off the shelf at supermarkets and hardware shops. These baits can have a devastating effect on native animals, which receive lethal or crippling doses when they eat poisoned rats and mice.

Let’s look at what these rodent poisons (or rodenticides) are, why they are lethal for wildlife, and why they needed to banned.

What’s wrong with “second generation” rodent poisons?

Rat and mouse baits are an essential part of everyday life – people use them without thinking. Most baits are anticoagulants, which stop the blood coagulating or clotting and cause animals to bleed to death.

The first over-the-counter baits (developed in the 1940s) used chemicals such as warfarin and coumatetralyl, and are the first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (FGARs). Notably, these chemicals break down relatively quickly, both in the environment and the livers of animals who consume them. For example, warfarin only lasts 35 days.

But as rats and mice developed resistance to these baits, second-generation anticoagulant rodenticide (SGARs) were developed. The active chemicals in these baits persist much longer in the tissues of the animals who eat them. They can last up to 217 days (brodifacoum) and 248 days (bromodiolone).

This means poisoned rodents move around with these persistent chemicals in their body until they die. And when predators such as owls or goannas eat them, these chemicals accumulate in their livers. The more rodents an animal eats, the higher the concentrations of chemicals that builds up. Eventually, this makes them sick, and often leads to death from poisoning.

When our lab starting working on this issue a decade ago, the problem was well known overseas but poorly studied in Australia. In our first review of the topic, we identified the need for stronger regulation of SGARs in Australia, noting many instances of wildlife exposure here. Australia was lagging behind other countries in awareness and regulation.

My then-PhD student Mike Lohr, now an independent researcher, undertook the first dedicated study on wildlife exposure in Australia. He found 73% of 73 Australian boobook owls were poisoned. We were alarmed enough look more broadly. Sadly, our work identified high rates of exposure and lethal poisoning in native reptiles and threatened carnivores. And colleagues have documented poisoning of many of our night birds, possums, eagles and even frogs.

Endless review had disappointing outcome

The science is unequivocal but Australia fell behind many countries in refusing to withdraw these products from sale to domestic consumers. A regulatory review due in 2015 was delayed multiple times. In the meantime, faced with a lack of action from the regulator, there has been a people-led “owl-friendly” movement, in which councils took action to educate citizens and retailers on the issue and encourage them to stop using SGARs.

In July 2024, I was part of a scientific delegation to Parliament House in Canberra to meet with politicians and the federal pesticides regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, to present our scientific evidence. The review was delayed another year, and finally released just before the end of 2025.

Unfortunately, it fell short of what many of us had expected. It relied on simple label changes and the use of tamper-proof bait boxes to present wildlife from being poisoned. It even suggested removing most of the less-harmful rodent poisons from sale because they lacked required bitter-tasting ingredients to be compliant. But it proposed no regulation of the dangerous second-generation poisons.

Our own research (currently under peer review), proves native wildlife is at risk of eating bait directly from tamper-proof bait boxes. We recorded up to 21 species of native wildlife interacting with bait boxes (investigating, feeding in close proximity or even with their heads in bait boxes). Furthermore, poisoned mice and rats are still being eaten by native predators as long as SGARs are being used.

Finally, Australia goes from laggard to leader

Unexpectedly, on March 10 2026, the pesticides authority announced that after consulting with states and retailers, SGARs sales would be suspended for a year, with regulatory controls put in place to prevent sale to consumers. SGARs will still be available to licensed and trained pest controllers.

This news is very welcome, however after the year-long suspension we need SGARs to be defined as a “restricted chemical product” (RCP). This means they can be removed from sale to consumers permanently, and only be accessible to commercial providers.

The removal of these toxic rodent baits from public sale will save countless native animals from suffering, and improve the outlook for many threatened species. First-generation rodent poisons and non-coagulant baits that are better for wildlife will remain available for home users.

And there are many alternatives to try first before reaching for those baits. These include cage traps, snap traps, electric traps, good hygiene practices and rodent-proofing. The owls and goannas will thank you.

Robert Davis, Associate Professor in Wildlife Conservation, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As a young boy, I had to contend with my grandfather’s compost heap. It was a veritable Vesuvius of foul-smelling, putrescible plant waste, a metre high and hidden behind a privet hedge.

We had placed all the weedy waste in it a year before. As we started the annual spring gardening day, the first area we had to clear was the now weed-covered and unsightly compost heap.

By the time we had cleared the weeds sprouting from it, half the day and most of our energy was gone.

We were doing everything wrong. But it’s not too late for you. You can learn from our mistakes.

Making compost is a cornerstone of sustainable gardening, yet few of us understand the great science behind it.

It all comes down to understanding the requirements of the bacteria and fungi that do most of the decomposing and the processes of cellular respiration. Here’s how to work with them, not against them.

Your compost’s little helpers

For the most part, plant material is broken down by bacteria and fungi, aided by worms, other soil organisms and microbiota.

However, there are different types of bacteria and fungi, and the rates they break down organic matter vary enormously.

Some will completely break down plant material into clean, high-grade compost in just six to eight weeks.

Others, as my grandfather and I saw, could not complete the job in a year or more.

That’s in large part due to the big differences between anaerobic and aerobic respiration.

What’s the difference?

Respiration doesn’t just mean breathing. Biologically, is the metabolic process by which cells break down the energy stored in organic molecules (such as sugar and fats) to release energy.

There are two types of respiration:

• aerobic respiration, which occurs when oxygen is available, and
• anaerobic respiration, which occurs when there is little or no oxygen available.

In our cells and those of larger plants and animals, both forms of respiration can take place.

But in some micro-organisms, only anaerobic respiration is possible.

Anaerobic respiration is an ancient metabolism that evolved early in the development of life on Earth, well before larger multi-cellular organisms existed.

The processes involved in anaerobic respiration are relatively inefficient. Its chemical reactions result in the incomplete breakdown of the food and plant waste; very little energy and heat are produced along the way.

For composting, that’s a problem.

It means the plant material breaks down very slowly. Worse, the temperature is so low that weedy contaminants can survive and germinate.

This explains why my grandfather’s compost heap failed to decompose after a year, grew so many weeds and was a slimy, smelly mess. The conditions inside the heap were anaerobic from the start.

We ended up being very good at spreading weeds around his garden.

Aerobic is better

Aerobic respiration, which evolved when oxygen was more readily available on Earth, consists of many linked chemical reactions that cause plant material to completely break down.

It produces almost 20 times more energy than anaerobic respiration and generates much more heat.

This high level efficiency produces a more rapid metabolism, which quickly breaks down plant material and the heat generated kills most of the weedy contaminants in the plant litter.

This results in lovely, clean compost.

So the key to good composting is to ensure conditions are right for aerobic respiration and for crucial aerobic bacteria and fungi.

It’s vital to provide oxygen.

My top tips are:

1. if you have a compost heap, ensure it is wide, long and low (which ensures a high surface area to volume ratio), and introduce air by dragging a hoe or rake through it
2. if you use a compost tumbler or container, then rotate or stir it often
3. keep the compost moist (but not wet) over the dry summer months
4. keep your compost warm over colder months by ensuring it gets some winter sunlight
5. add some “browns”, such as dry leaves, or shredded cardboard or paper; the carbon-rich browns, added to the high-nitrogen green waste, gives a better carbon to nitrogen ratio and results in better compost.

If your compost is happy, the heat will be high enough to kill most pest eggs and parasites, and may even kill worms.

Don’t add worms to aerobic compost unless you have a worm-friendly composting system; you may end up committing wormicide. Let worms enter the compost naturally.

Rarely, heat from aerobic compost can damage thin-barked trees. So if you’re spreading it around the garden, keep it 20-50mm from the trunks of your trees.

Compost systems and heaps need not be unsightly if you follow the rules for clean and rapid composting.

Aerobic composting is rapid and is neither smelly nor slimy.

The bacteria and fungi that generate your compost efficiently need air, moisture and warmth to be their best selves.

If you resolve to provide the right conditions, you are not only recycling efficiently but getting a product every good gardener wants and needs.

Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Every year, the world uses roughly 37 billion barrels of oil. Most is burned to power cars, trucks, planes, ships and other types of transport. For more than a century, this energy-dense hydrocarbon has shaped the modern world, from geopolitics to electricity systems.

But this dependence on oil for transport comes with clear vulnerabilities. Combustion engines burning petrol, diesel or gas worsen climate change. Oil accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions from fuel. Many countries rely on oil imports, which means oil has to be extracted and shipped long distances. Right now, oil prices are soaring after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil and gas is shipped. In response, governments may have to release strategic reserves, while stock markets have fallen and analysts are warning of sudden inflation.

As electric vehicles rise to 25% of new car sales globally, demand for oil as a fuel is expected to plateau and eventually decline. We can already see this in China’s very rapid shift to electric vehicles, trucks and bullet trains, which has slowed its oil demand growth.

This doesn’t mean an end to oil. We will likely need it as a raw material for useful products for decades yet. The International Energy Agency predicts petrochemicals will become the main driver of demand this year. Researchers have argued oil is likely to become increasingly important as a feedstock – and could become too valuable to burn.

Oil is far more than a fuel

Crude oil is an extremely versatile substance, able to be refined and separated into many different products. Two of these products – naptha and ethane – are the main feedstock for huge petrochemical industries manufacturing plastics such as polyethylene and polypropylene, synthetic fibres such as polyester, industrial solvents and cosmetics.

Oil is also essential for advanced materials such as carbon fibre, synthetic graphite and plastics embedded in electric vehicles, wind turbines, power electronics, insulation systems and grid infrastructure.

You might have seen this fact pointed out on social media to score points against environmentalists. But there are clear differences between burning oil for fuel – which can only be done once – and using it for materials that will stay in use for years or decades. Some of these materials can be recycled.

Oil used in this way is more like a mined product than a fuel. It is stored in products rather than immediately released as emissions.

Electrification is changing demand for oil

Electric vehicles charge their batteries with electricity, which is typically produced domestically. Electricity production, too, is shifting to clean sources – renewables, grid-scale batteries and digital energy management. These two trends should reduce demand for oil as fuel.

This isn’t a given. It relies on networks of EV chargers and new charging hubs for electric trucks and buses. The power grid has to be expanded and strengthened. Microgrids and community energy systems can boost resilience and cut demand for diesel generators in remote areas.

Other sectors will remain dependent on oil as a fuel for longer. While pure electric planes and ships are emerging, range limitations mean hybrid electric-fuel models are more likely to succeed until technologies improve.

Petrochemicals still cost the environment

While manufacturing plastics from oil does less damage to the atmosphere than burning it for fuel, it still comes at an environmental cost. Refining oil to make plastics accounts for 3.4% of the world’s carbon emissions as of 2019, and this is likely to rise significantly.

If petrochemical industries such as plastics expand as dramatically as predicted, it will intensify existing problems with plastic pollution, marine plastic and microplastics. Strong recycling and waste management can counter this, but only to a degree.

If oil shifts from fuel to feedstock, governments will have to amp up circular economy efforts to ensure products can be reused or recycled, boost recycling rates and avoid waste entering the environment.

In the longer term, we will need to look for alternatives to oil across its many uses. These could involve using pyrolysis to turn plastics back into oil so they can be used again, or looking to green chemistry approaches to convert biomass into feedstock.

What should we do?

Shifting away from using oil as fuel won’t happen overnight.

To soak up more renewables, power grid operators are adding energy storage and using digital tools and advanced control to maintain reliability and quality. This will be essential if transport is to go electric and petrol and diesel use is to fall.

The public EV charger network has to be widespread and reliable. Emerging very fast charge technologies could slash charging times. Allowing EVs to feed power back to the grid can help keep the grid stable and power prices reasonable – while rewarding owners.

Oil is not going to disappear any time soon. But over time, it’s likely to shift from a ubiquitous commodity sold at every service station to a more specialised role as a feedstock.

It will count as real progress on climate change if oil is no longer routinely burned as fuel. But if the oil industry simply shifts to petrochemicals, there will still be a significant environmental cost to pay.

Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian, Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Warning: some readers might find images in this article disturbing

We all know cats represent a major threat to native animals and birds. Australia’s 5.3 million domestic cats kill a total of 546 million animals each year in Australia. What’s less well known is allowing your domestic cat to roam outside exposes them to considerable danger – and the risk of a short life.

About two-thirds of all Australian cat owners have had a cat die while out roaming. The top risks are road traffic accidents, fighting and falls.

Our recent research review found keeping your cat at home at all times isn’t just good for wildlife – it’s much safer for your cat.

Losing a cat is tragic. But there are other risks too. Many owners rack up large veterinary bills while their cats are left with lifelong health conditions. Our review also found this situation is not unique to Australia, but reflects the global risk faced by free-roaming cats.

What are the risks?

Cameras mounted on collars provide a cat’s-eye view of the hazards roaming cats face. In one study of 55 free-roaming felines in the United States, 25% risked poisoning by eating or drinking while away from home – any substance could be hazardous. Nearly half (45%) crossed roads, 25% encountered other cats, 20% crawled under houses and 20% explored storm drains.

This isn’t just American feline bravado. When cameras were fitted to 37 cats in New Zealand, 59% drank away from home, 40% ate away from home, 32% crossed roads and 21% risked falling by climbing onto roofs.

Australian cats are no exception. In one study, 428 radio-tracked cats averaged 4.8 road crossings per day.

What are the outcomes?

If you’re a fan of The Simpsons you might recall the fate of their family cats: Snowball I and Snowball II died on the road, Snowball III drowned, Coltrane (AKA Snowball IV) fell to his death, and Snowball V is still with us. The reality is uncomfortably similar. Our review found that trauma – mainly road traffic accidents, fighting and falls – kills or injures many free-roaming cats globally.

In a recent UK study, road traffic accidents were the leading cause of death for cats aged less than one year old all the way to eight-year-old cats.

This aligns with European estimates, which suggest 18–24% of cats are struck by a car during their lifetime, with around 70% of those incidents proving fatal. Victims are often under five years old and predominantly male. Risks are higher for those not desexed, as they tend to roam wider and more frequently.

Love and status offer no protection. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s cat, Paddles, colloquially known as New Zealand’s first cat, died after being hit by a car in 2017.

The dangers extend well beyond road accidents. Roaming pet cats face serious infectious diseases, such as Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), and frequently engage in fights, often developing abscesses that can kill and require expensive veterinary treatment.

While it’s hard to quantify the instances of deliberate human cruelty to cats, there is global evidence for deliberate poisoning and injury to roaming cats, many of which die before receiving medical intervention.

In one study tracking 55 roaming cats in Western Australia over just eight months, two were poisoned, one lost a front leg in a traffic accident, one fractured two canine teeth in a fall, and two required veterinary treatment for fight-related injuries.

Drawing all these factors together, we estimated outdoor pet cats have lives at least 2–3 years shorter than the population of contained pet cats. Those that survive accidents or disease may have lifelong disabilities.

How can you reduce the risks?

The simplest way to protect your cats is to contain them on your property, just as Australians do with other domestic animals. Extensive advice is available on how to keep cats happy and healthy while contained.

Importantly, containment doesn’t mean keeping your cat indoors at all times. Backyards can be modified with fence-top rollers to prevent escape. Some owners enclose part of the yard to create a “catio” – an outdoor cat enclosure – allowing their cats to enjoy fresh air and sunshine while remaining secure.

Many cats can also be trained to walk on a harness or leash, making it possible to take them for supervised outings. A recent report from Norway found providing controlled outdoor access is often important for maintaining cat wellbeing.

Cats need to be entertained when in the house. They enjoy outside views, toys, scratching surfaces, above-ground climbing and sitting spaces, and opportunities for play. They are naturally solitary animals, so places to hide are useful.

If cats can’t go outside to toilet, they will need two indoor litter trays. Because cats are fastidious, trays must be cleaned frequently. In multi-cat households, provide one litter tray per cat, plus an extra. Place the trays in separate, quiet locations, and never beside the food bowl.

Responsible cat ownership

Australians love their cats. In 2019, roughly a quarter of Australian households owned a cat. By 2025, that figure had risen to a third. Over the same period, households reporting they kept their cats indoors rose from 36% to 48%.

Perhaps we are finally valuing our cats as we do our dogs and listening to Aussie songwriter and singer Eric Bogle’s sage advice:

Oh you who love your pussy be sure to keep him in. Don’t let him argue with a truck, the truck is bound to win. And upon the busy road don’t let him play or frolic. If you do I’m warning you it could be CAT-astrophic.

Mike Calver, Associate Professor in Biological Sciences, Murdoch University; Heather M. Crawford, Assistant researcher, Murdoch University, and Trish Fleming, Professor, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Countries worldwide have dramatically ramped up their climate policies over the past two decades. The number of climate measures has quadrupled since 2000, with some datasets showing a fifteen-fold increase.

Governments now deploy dozens of different policies simultaneously – carbon taxes, renewable energy subsidies, building codes, emissions standards, research funding, and more. They all work together, influence each other, and jointly affect emissions.

But when emissions drop (or don’t), how do we tell which policies deserve the credit? Which ones actually make a difference in any circumstances? That’s the challenge facing climate policy researchers today – and we’ve found a way to solve it.

Our new research analysed 1,737 individual climate policies across 40 countries over 32 years, and we identified 28 policies that consistently reduce emissions across diverse contexts. More importantly, we developed a new approach that could transform how researchers evaluate policies in any field where complexity keeps growing.

Old approaches

Traditional approaches to evaluating climate policies struggle with this new reality.

Some researchers study individual policies in isolation. This kind of research can be helpful, but it’s like judging a football player only when they’re playing solo, ignoring their teammates. The results – whether positive or negative – might not apply when the player joins a different team with different tactics.

Other researchers look at entire policy “packages”. To extend our football metaphor, this is like judging a whole team’s performance without identifying which individual players contribute most. Here, you know whether the team is winning or losing, but not why.

A high-profile 2024 study applied a different strategy: looking for sudden drops in emissions, then checking what policies were introduced just before. But even this approach risks missing policies that work gradually over time rather than producing dramatic immediate results.

The fundamental problem with analysing all policies simultaneously to see which ones actually work is that you quickly run into a statistical wall. Too many variables, not enough data. It’s like trying to solve an equation with more unknowns than knows.

A statistical filter

Our solution uses a statistical approach which is akin to a series of increasingly strict quality filters.

Think of it this way: when you have too many potential explanations for why something happened, you need filters to separate real effects from statistical noise. To do this, we use what statisticians call “Bayesian priors” – essentially, different sets of assumptions about how policies should behave.

Importantly, our approach doesn’t just pick one filter and stick with it. Instead, we look for policies that pass through multiple different filters. If a policy shows up as effective across different tests with different assumptions, we can be more genuinely confident that it works.

So which policies actually work?

Our conservative approach identified 28 climate policies with high certainty of emission reductions. These span a range of instrument types:

Carbon pricing and taxation (8 policies): Carbon taxes across sectors, emissions trading schemes, congestion charges and fossil fuel excise taxes all show robust effects, even when controlling for all other policies. This counters the claim that carbon pricing only seems effective because it’s usually accompanied by complementary measures.

Energy efficiency and standards (5 policies): Building energy codes, air emission standards, minimum energy performance standards and motorway speed limits consistently reduce emissions.

Renewable energy and research (11 policies): R&D expenditure on carbon capture, nuclear, hydrogen, energy efficiency and renewables, and planning for renewable expansion and auction schemes all reliably drive emission reductions.

Reporting and accountability (3 policies): Greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements across sectors show significant effects.

Subsidy reduction (1 policy): Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in transport reduces emissions.

Practical impact

To illustrate real-world implications, we modelled emissions in Portugal across four sectors: buildings, energy, industry and transport. If Portugal had implemented all 28 effective policies at maximum stringency since 2000, cumulative emission savings would total 538 Mt CO₂eq. This is equivalent to an entire emission-free year across these sectors for South Korea, whose economy is about six times larger than Portugal’s.

Country-specific analysis is vital, as it pinpoints clear, targeted opportunities. Germany, for instance, could enhance climate action through stricter motorway speed limits. Australia, Canada and Japan could significantly improve performance via higher fossil fuel excise taxes (taxes levied on manufacturers as opposed to consumers). Our analysis enables policymakers to identify the blind spots in otherwise ambitious climate strategies.

The star players

Our research shows that effective climate action doesn’t depend on finding one perfect solution. Multiple pathways exist, but some instruments prove more reliable than others – carbon pricing, taxation and investment in renewable energy research are the star players who will improve any team they join.

Countries like Sweden and Norway have successfully implemented all 28 effective policies (though with varying intensity), proving this approach is politically viable. But even climate leaders like Germany have blind spots, like the aforementioned motorway speed limits.

As climate policy continues expanding and pressure mounts to ensure it actually delivers results, this approach provides a powerful new tool. It helps policymakers avoid wasting resources on ineffective measures while identifying proven strategies that work across different contexts.

Beyond climate action

While our findings give policymakers a clear list of climate policies that actually work, the approach itself is just as significant.

Policy complexity isn’t unique to climate. Healthcare, education, financial regulation, social policy – in all these areas, governments keep adding new programs, new rules, and new incentives. Researchers everywhere struggle with the same question: which specific interventions actually work when everything’s tangled together?

Our filtering approach offers a template. When policies multiply, traditional evaluation methods struggle to keep up. This new approach lets researchers model everything simultaneously while maintaining statistical rigour: identifying what genuinely works in complex environments.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Xavier Fernández-i-Marín, 'Ramon-y-Cajal' Fellow, Universitat de Barcelona; Christoph Knill, Full Professor of Empirical Theories of Politics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; Markus Hinterleitner, Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Political Institutions, Université de Lausanne, and Yves Steinebach, Professor, University of Oslo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change and related disasters are driving millions from their homes. Now, a new UN initiative aims to put these very refugees to work offsetting the emissions of the world’s biggest producers.

Facing a US$7 billion (£5 billion) funding shortfall, the UN’s refugees agency has launched its Refugee Environmental Protection (REP) fund. The plan? To plant trees and install sustainable cooking stoves in camps, generating carbon credits to sell on the global market.

It sounds like a win for everyone: money for camps, jobs for refugees, and trees for the planet. But our research, carried out with our colleague David Harvie, suggests a darker reality. This is a system that generates questionable climate benefits, while locking refugees into low-wage labour to service the same economies that displaced them.

How the fund works

The fund aims to plant tens of millions of trees to offset carbon emissions elsewhere, while simultaneously providing employment for refugees and funding for UN refugee camps.

It uses donor funding to invest in tree-planting and clean cooking-stove programmes in and around refugee camps. (These cookstoves use electricity or burn liquefied petroleum gas rather than firewood – the cleanness refers to the fact that they’re considered safer for users because there’s less indoor air pollution, not because they are fossil-free).

The claimed carbon savings from these projects are then verified and registered as carbon credits to be sold to people or organisations who want to “offset” their own emissions. Revenues are used to replenish the fund, to improve the camp and finance new projects. Advocates also claim that clean cooking stoves will better protect women against gender-based violence, as they will have a reduced need to collect firewood.

The fund remains at a relatively early stage of development. Following pilots in Uganda and Rwanda, the UN plans to expand it to Brazil, Bangladesh, Kenya, Mozambique, Cameroon and Chad.

The impact on emissions

While the claims sound good, there are significant issues that mean the fund may well fail to reduce carbon emissions – and could possibly even increase them.

Many of the problems with schemes like these are now well known. The carbon credits industry’s self-regulation, combined with its lack of shared methodologies, undermines the credibility of its claims to reduce emissions. Key actors such as the multinationals that buy the credits or the landowners who generate them are also incentivised to overstate the climate benefits.

In addition, carbon credits rely on counterfactual estimates of what would have happened without the project. This is riddled with uncertainty, especially as climate change or reforestation can themselves alter how much carbon is saved.

These issues affect all carbon credits, even including the most rigorously verified – so-called gold standard-certified projects – which is the certification the UN’s fund will use.

The problem with planting trees

Most tree-planting schemes have very high failure rates, often seeing almost half the trees die in the first five years, while some can have mortality rates as high as 90%.

Poorly designed projects can also degrade soils, harm biodiversity and exacerbate water shortages. And as climate change increases the risk of wildfires, stored carbon could be released back into the atmosphere.

These problems have led many researchers to declare carbon offsets as false climate solutions that allow major emitters to continue polluting without any meaningful reductions. Indeed, much research has established that lots of carbon credits are effectively worthless.

The UN’s refugees agency has stated the fund “manages project risks according to high climate standards” and prioritises “measurable improvements in fuel efficiency and emission reductions.” It maintains that revenue is “transparently reinvested in community-driven projects”.

Who gets the carbon credit?

Refugees are paid to plant trees and assemble cookstoves, but the wages are extremely low. Comparable projects in Rwanda and Uganda suggest official wages range from around US$1.30 to US$5 per day, and are often less in practice.

By contrast, gold standard-certified reforestation credits typically sell for US$20–27 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent, 2025 prices. Using conservative estimates, the fund’s planned 20,000 hectares of reforestation could generate around US$3.2 million per year, or US$64 million over 20 years.

The UN frames the fund as a way to secure finance for refugee camps, but our analysis of the pilot projects shows a huge disparity between the value of the carbon credits and the money reaching the camps. For the 388,000 people across the three pilot sites, we estimate the US$3.2 million generated annually would contribute roughly 14% of current (insufficient) funding – and less than 5% what is required to provide adequate services.

While the money raised is a fraction of what’s needed to run the camps, the “value” created by refugees doing low- or unwaged labour goes beyond the direct dollar amounts. These credits have enormous strategic value for the buyers. By purchasing gold standard offsets generated by displaced people, major polluters gain a powerful social and environmental license to continue business as usual. That’s why much of the value appears to go not to the refugee workers, but to the companies buying the credits, and to the intermediaries who manage the transactions.

Much of the work involved in generating credits also comes from the use of clean cooking stoves. This labour is entirely unwaged, and is done primarily by women. Where gas is involved as a fuel for these stoves, the companies who provide it also benefit by securing a small but important market for their fuel. That’s one reason why exporting countries such as the US support clean cooking initiatives, even while opposing other climate measures.

The UN’s refugee agency rejects the characterisation of the fund as exploitative, framing it instead as a necessary “innovative financing” mechanism to plug a funding gap.

Ultimately, we worry the fund risks creating a form of climate maladaptation, where something seeks to respond to climate impacts but unintentionally increases vulnerability.

Similar to many aspects of the emerging green economy, the UN’s Refugee Environmental Protection fund risks making climate change worse while exploiting refugee labour. This perversely locks refugees into a green Sisyphean task: producing carbon credits that enable continued emissions, thereby worsening the very conditions that helped displace them in the first place.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Nicholas Beuret, Lecturer in Management and Ecological Sustainability, University of Essex and Matilda Fitzmaurice, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Human Geography, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In 2021, dozens of governments quietly agreed to stop using public money to finance fossil fuel projects overseas.

Their pledge – now known as the Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) – has helped drive a 78% reduction in public finance for fossil fuel projects among signatory countries.

What makes this especially striking is where the idea came from: a grassroots campaign in the UK initially targeting the government’s export credit agency.

With governments withdrawing from climate commitments, and some administrations – most notably Trump’s – tying them to security and trade deals, international climate cooperation is increasingly fragile. Yet the CETP stands out as a genuine success among a litany of failed international climate initiatives. My new research set out to understand what made it such a success.

Climate policy (and campaigning) is messy

Many assume that international climate commitments emerge from polite diplomatic negotiations, with small changes accumulating over time. The reality is far messier. Domestic and international climate policy is fiercely contested and victories are only ever provisional, with each settlement shaping the terrain for the next battle.

My research, based on interviews with campaigners and policymakers, shows that the partnership came about through a series of political confrontations – “battle-settlement events” in the academic lingo – moments when activists, governments and institutions clashed and new compromises emerged.

The CETP traces back to a UK grassroots campaign from 2017 onwards led by environmental and human rights campaign organisations including Global Witness and Oil Change International, partly inspired by a parallel European push targeting the European Investment Bank over its fossil fuel financing.

Campaigners initially pushed for a full fossil fuel phase out. However, they soon switched to a more strategic target: UK Export Finance (UKEF). They saw this as a more achievable battle that would provoke less resistance from industry and politicians.

UKEF is a government agency that helps UK companies sell goods and services abroad. It provides loans, guarantees or insurance to reduce the financial risk of exporting.

Campaigners built up evidence and pushed parliament to investigate. The resulting 2019 House of Commons committee report found that 96% of UK Export Finance’s energy sector support went to fossil fuel projects, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries, and called for a halt by 2021. Despite these damning findings, Theresa May’s government initially refused to budge.

So campaigners upped the ante. They drew attention to the contradiction between the UK’s climate leadership rhetoric and its public funding of fossil fuel projects linked to conflict and displacement overseas. Former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon weighed in to urge the UK to “recalibrate its export finance policy”, while activists from the climate campaign group Extinction Rebellion covered the Treasury in red paint to symbolise its claims the government was complicit in violence and suffering. People I interviewed who were involved at the time said this created “insurmountable pressure” on the government to act.

The Cop spotlight

The announcement in August 2019 that Glasgow would host a major UN climate summit transformed the campaign. The summit, known as Cop26, became an opportunity to both expose the gap between UK climate ambition and its export policy, and to use any domestic win as a launchpad for coordinated international action.

The government felt it too. The then prime minister, Boris Johnson, wanted to use the summit to cement his image as a climate-friendly conservative, and a restructured “Cop Unit” within the Cabinet Office had genuine agency to develop ambitious policy ideas and secure buy-in across government.

Though Cop26 was delayed until 2021 due to COVID, this gave campaigners more time to build internal support and sustain the narrative that the UK government was a “climate hypocrite” in reputable outlets like the Financial Times and The Times. Johnson’s government eventually conceded, announcing a unilateral ban on public finance for overseas fossil fuel projects in December 2020. Given that his government was simultaneously consumed by Brexit and internal power struggles, it was a massive achievement.

Glasgow and beyond

With the UK ban secured, attention turned to getting other countries on board. The Cop Unit used the UK’s diplomatic relationships to convince other governments to make similar commitments at Cop26, pointing to the UK ban as proof of concept.

On the conference floor, campaigners and UK officials played ambitious governments off each other in a spirit of friendly competition. Those I interviewed for my research noted that some countries signed up before fully understanding what was required, causing some delegations to get a shock when they realised.

As the summit closed, 34 countries and five public finance institutions signed the Glasgow Statement on aligning international public finance with climate change goals. Signatories to this statement, which would go on to become the CETP, included major fossil fuel funders like Canada and the US.

Walking the talk

Then came the hard part. Keeping up momentum meant regular meetings with signatories to troubleshoot implementation, while domestically the initiative had to survive an attempt by Liz Truss’s short-lived government to kill it altogether. That threat was repelled, and arguably strengthened the initiative by reinforcing signatories’ commitment.

Implementation remains uneven. Most signatories have ended or curtailed fossil fuel finance, and the CETP has cut between US$11.3 billion (£8.4 billion) and US$16.3 billion in annual public finance to fossil fuel production.

But the critical counterpart – scaling up public finance for clean energy – has lagged badly. The CETP’s own data shows clean energy financing actually fell between 2022 and 2023. The US has since exited under Trump and some signatories, including Italy and Switzerland, are still way behind on both stopping fossil finance and scaling up finance for renewables.

Yet the CETP’s impact is real. It has redirected tens of billions away from projects that would have locked in fossil fuel infrastructure for decades, and demonstrated that coordinated civil society pressure can shift both domestic policy and international norms. In a political environment where climate ambition is being systematically dismantled, that matters.

The partnership’s future is uncertain. But its journey – from a small UK campaign targeting export finance to a global coalition of governments – shows that domestic activism can still lead to ambitious and durable policy change.

Freddie Daley, Research Associate, Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Every summer, people living near the Mendenhall River in Juneau, Alaska, keep a close eye on the water level. When the river level begins to rise rapidly, it’s a sign that Suicide Basin, a small glacier-dammed lake 5 miles up the mountains, has broken through the glacier again and a glacial lake outburst flood is underway.

After nearly 15 straight years of ever-larger and more damaging floods in Alaska’s capital city, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is discussing an ambitious and expensive solution: create a permanent drain from the lake that would prevent it from reaching outburst stage.

The initial cost estimates for the project range from US$613 million to $1 billion.

Suicide Basin is just one example of a growing problem from glacial lakes that threaten communities around the world, particularly in the Himalayas and Andes, and is transforming Alaska’s landscape as global temperatures rise.

In a new study, colleagues and I documented the evolution of 140 of the largest glacial lakes in Alaska between 2018 and 2024. We found they are expanding about 120% faster on average today than they were from 1986 to 1999 – more than twice as fast.

Using ice thickness data to reconstruct the shape of the land beneath these glaciers, we found that these glacial lakes could become more than four times larger than they are today as the glaciers melt, increasing the potential for damage to downstream ecosystems and infrastructure from glacial lake outburst floods.

The hazards of glacial lakes

Glacial lakes, often the color of aquamarine gems and sparkling with icebergs, are common around the margins of glaciers around the world. Years of satellite images have documented a dramatic increase in their number, area and volume – a direct response to glaciers retreating as global temperatures rise.

Tenuously held back by moraines – the jumble of rock and sediment deposited by glaciers at their edges – or dammed by glacier ice, these lakes are anything but stable.

Between 1985 and 2020, ice-dammed lakes in Alaska alone broke through their barriers and drained more than 1,150 times. Alaska’s vast landscape and low population density means that the impact of these drainages on human infrastructure was fairly minimal, with a few notable exceptions, including Suicide Basin and Snow Lake, on the Kenai Peninsula.

However, the enormous amount of icy water rushing down rivers with each outburst can transform ecosystems, altering river channels through erosion and sediment deposition, tearing out trees and other vegetation, and damaging fish habitat.

A recent study found that glacial lake outburst floods from moraine-dammed lakes are occurring at an accelerating rate. In the steep, narrow valleys of the Himalayan Mountains, the impact of these events are acute: destroyed hydropower stations, roads and entire villages wiped away, taking hundreds of lives over the years.

More than 15 million people globally live in areas at risk of glacial lake outburst floods. Mapping where these lakes might form and expand can help people living downstream prepare. That’s what we did in Alaska.

Mapping Alaska’s expanding lakes

Glacial lakes can form in a variety of settings: on the surface of glaciers, in side valleys, and at the terminus, or toe, of the glacier. We found that the fastest-growing lakes are those at the toe, and in our work, we showed that many of these lakes reside in deep depressions carved by glacial flow.

We mapped these depressions – known as glacial-bed overdeepenings – by subtracting ice thickness estimates from surface elevations measured by satellites.

We found that more than 80% of the lake growth has occurred in the mapped basins, illustrating how this approach can help locate glacial lakes that are likely to form and expand in the future.

With this information, we found that existing glacial lakes in the region may ultimately expand fourfold, growing by as much as 1,640 square miles (4,250 square kilometers). A glacial lake at the terminus of Malaspina Glacier, the largest glacier by area in southeast Alaska, could expand to cover an additional 570 square miles (1,475 square kilometers) alone. That would create what would be the second-largest lake in Alaska.

As glaciers continue to retreat, new basins will be exposed, many of which could fill with water. In total, more than 5,500 square miles (about 14,200 square kilometers) of overdeepened basins exist in Alaska, pointing to a landscape that is going to look very different in the coming decades to centuries.

When a glacier terminates in a lake, the warmth of the water can speed up the ice’s melting, making the glacier flow faster, thin and retreat, thereby expanding the size of the lake. We found that glaciers that terminate in lakes are shrinking 23% to 56% faster than land-terminating glaciers.

The future as glaciers retreat

Future climate projections combined with sophisticated glacier models indicate that glaciers will cumulatively retreat by 26% to 41% by 2100, spelling the loss of 49% to 83% of all glaciers globally.

This is concerning for numerous reasons. Glacier mass loss is currently the largest contributor to sea-level rise. Melting glaciers also change the water quantity and timing of ice melt that feed major rivers, particularly Asian rivers such as the Indus and Ganges. And they create hazards, such as the outburst floods that originate from glacial lakes.

The landscapes that we know and love are transforming before our eyes, and with these changes come growing concerns about hazards.

Dan McGrath, Associate Professor of Cryospheric Sciences, Colorado State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Since the 1970s, the U.S. has lost billions of birds. We now know that those losses aren’t just growing – they are accelerating in places with intensive human activity, particularly where agriculture and expanding communities are changing the landscape.

Bird population declines have been closely linked to pollution, use of chemicals and physical changes to their habitats.

But human pressures on nature are not just continuing; they are increasing at an accelerating rate. Indicators of human activity, such as population growth, economic growth and transportation use, rose more rapidly after the 1950s, as did measures of environmental change, from atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to tropical forest loss.

In a new study published in the journal Science, my colleagues and I found that bird populations are responding in the same way: Their declines are speeding up, particularly in regions dominated by intensive agriculture.

It’s not just that there are fewer birds each year. In some places, each year brings larger losses than the one before.

Where bird populations are shrinking faster

Using data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey, we analyzed bird population changes for 261 species across the contiguous U.S. between 1987 and 2021.

We found that, on average, bird numbers declined by about 15% – for every six birds in 1987, there were only five three decades later. Nearly half of the species we examined showed significant population declines, with the strongest declines observed for the common grackle, the European starling and the red-winged blackbird.

The North American Breeding Bird Survey is one of the longest-running wildlife monitoring programs in the world. Since 1969, trained volunteers have counted birds along thousands of fixed routes across the U.S. and Canada during the breeding season, when birds are reproducing, nesting, laying eggs or raising young.

Because the survey spans decades, a continent and hundreds of species, it provides an unparalleled window into how bird populations are changing over time.

Most studies using this data focus on whether populations are increasing or decreasing. In our study, we asked a different question: Are those trends themselves speeding up or slowing down?

When we examined how the decline of birds evolved over time, a striking pattern emerged.

The losses were strongest in southern parts of the United States – a pattern consistent with previous research that linked bird declines to warm and warming regions. Many species have been found to struggle in hotter temperatures, or they shift their ranges toward cooler climates.

The Midwest, California and parts of the Mid-Atlantic region stood out as areas where bird declines are accelerating. Populations that were already shrinking in the late 1980s are now losing birds more rapidly than they did three decades ago.

These regions share a common feature: intensive agriculture. We measured agricultural intensity using indicators such as cropland area, fertilizer application and pesticide use around survey locations. Areas with higher agricultural intensity were more likely to have accelerating bird declines.

Why agriculture intensity can amplify decline

Modern agriculture transforms landscapes. Large cropland areas replace diverse habitats. Herbicides and pesticides used on farms reduce weeds and insects that many bird species depend on for food. Heavy machinery and reduced habitat diversity can limit nesting opportunities.

We cannot disentangle which agricultural practices are most responsible for the accelerating declines. Fertilizer use, pesticide application and land-use change often occur together. It is likely that multiple pressures interact to affect birds. However, studies have linked higher pesticide use to reductions in bird numbers, both directly through toxicity and indirectly through declines in insect prey. These findings suggest that chemicals may play an important role in amplifying population declines in agricultural regions.

We also found that agricultural intensity and temperature change may reinforce each other. Agricultural landscapes often lack shade trees, so they warm more than natural areas, potentially compounding climate-related stress on bird populations.

Why acceleration matters

Accelerating population declines are an early warning sign about birds’ well-being. A steady decline is concerning, but when losses grow larger year after year, it means the situation is getting worse faster.

Monitoring acceleration can help identify emerging hot spots before populations reach low levels, providing an early warning for conservation action.

Birds are more than just familiar backyard species. They help control insect pests, disperse seeds and regulate ecosystems. Because they are well monitored and sensitive to environmental change, they often provide an early indication of broader ecological shifts.

Nearly 40% of U.S. land is used for agriculture. How these landscapes are managed will shape the future for many birds, and farmers are thus at the forefront to address the biodiversity crisis. It’s also important to remember that agricultural workers themselves are the most exposed to the same chemicals that affect ecosystems, and a growing body of research has examined the health implications of pesticide exposure. Balancing food production, environmental sustainability and human health is a shared challenge.

Biodiversity responses to land management changes can occur quickly. So when habitats are restored or chemical pressures are reduced, birds and insects can return within years.

That potential for relatively rapid ecological recovery makes agricultural landscapes especially important. Our findings suggest that looking not only at how much biodiversity is changing, but also at how much those changes are speeding up, may offer a clearer picture of the pressures facing wildlife today.

François Leroy, Postdoctoral Researcher in Ecology, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Americans have a reputation for being bad at world geography, and the current U.S. administration is no exception, particularly when it comes to correctly identifying what is – and is not – part of the United States of America.

President Donald Trump’s April 2025 executive order “unleashing America’s offshore critical minerals” provides an example. It purports to “unleash” seabed minerals both within and far outside U.S. jurisdiction.

The minerals on the U.S. seabed are America’s. The minerals on the international seabed are not “America’s.” The administration plans to authorize companies to mine in international areas, nonetheless.

I have studied the international agreements and customary rules governing the oceans since the Law of the Sea Convention entered into force in 1994. The Trump administration’s attempt to unilaterally exploit the seabed resources of the global commons will severely undermine part of the rules-based international order that the U.S. built and of which it has been the main beneficiary.

The scramble for critical minerals

The U.S. has been trying to secure access to critical minerals that are essential for modern technology. These materials include nickel, manganese and cobalt for large batteries and copper for the power grid. All can be found on land, but some can also be found at the bottom of the sea.

Of particular interest are polymetallic nodules – agglomerations, typically smaller than a potato, containing manganese and other metals and found in the silt of the deep ocean floor. An Australian mining executive described these nodules as “an EV battery in a rock.”

The Clarion Clipperton Zone, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, contains one of the highest concentrations of polymetallic nodules. But whose nodules are they?

My ocean

In September 1945, President Harry Truman claimed for America a large part of the seabed extending from its shores, areas that, before Truman’s claim, were shared by the international community.

In reaction, countries around the world spent the next five decades hammering out a system to limit how much of the seabed that coastal countries could claim, and establishing rules that would govern the remaining shared areas of the oceans.

The resulting arrangement, finalized in 1994, gives countries that border the ocean authority over the resources in the water and seabed within 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) of their coasts, known as “exclusive economic zones,” and, for some countries, additional areas of seabed beyond that limit.

The United States enjoys one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones today. It includes an area totaling over 4 million square miles (10 million square kilometers) – larger than all 50 U.S. states combined – and an additional nearly 400 million square miles (1 million square kilometers) of seabed extending even farther offshore.

In those areas, the United States controls the exploitation and management of living and nonliving natural resources, including seabed minerals.

Our ocean

But exclusive economic zones were only one part of what the Law of the Sea Convention negotiators called a “package deal.”

The other part of the deal retains the remaining areas – approximately half of the planet’s seabed – for the international community. It’s known as “the Area,” and its resources are considered the common heritage of mankind. To prevent a free-for-all, no single country can authorize mining in the Area. Instead it is managed by the International Seabed Authority for the benefit of humankind as a whole. To date, the ISA has executed 31 contracts with countries and companies to explore the mineral resources in the Area.

One hundred and seventy-one countries have joined the Convention so far. However, the United States, despite being one of its primary architects, is the only industrialized nation remaining outside the treaty.

Nonetheless, the U.S. has long considered the treaty to reflect rules of customary international law. Where the Area is concerned, the U.S. respected the terms of the package deal – until now.

‘America’s’ offshore critical minerals

Trump’s offshore mining order relies on a U.S. statute enacted in 1980 as an interim measure pending completion of negotiations related to the Area. It authorized the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to license exploration and permit commercial recovery of polymetallic nodules on the seabed in areas outside U.S. jurisdiction.

When that 1980 statute was enacted, there was a spurt of commercial interest. The U.S. issued four exploration licenses. Two were relinquished in the 1990s. In the 30-plus years since the international community finalized the package deal, even the company holding the two remaining NOAA licenses – Lockheed Martin – has considered them largely worthless unless the U.S. ratifies the Law of the Sea Convention.

That changed in April 2025 when Trump, citing the 1980 U.S. law, ordered the NOAA to “expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction.”

A few days later, Canadian mining firm The Metals Company submitted an application via its wholly-owned subsidiary TMC USA to mine polymetallic nodules in the Area under U.S. unilateral authority. TMC USA touted its application for mining areas in the nodule-rich Clarion Clipperton Zone – in the middle of the Area – as a “world first”.

The International Seabed Authority condemned the move and reminded countries that “unilateral exploitation of resources that belong to no single State but to all of humanity is prohibited.”

Is that legal?

So, does the Trump administration’s plan violate U.S. international obligations?

The answer is maybe.

The U.S. is not a party to the Law of the Sea Convention, so it is not bound by the treaty. But scholars disagree on whether U.S. unilateral mining would violate obligations arising from rules of customary international law.

The United States is not the only player in this game. If any of the 171 countries that have subscribed to the treaty were to participate in or allow their citizens to participate in U.S.-authorized mining activity in the Area, they would violate their treaty obligations. Any other Convention partner could bring them before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, Germany.

Canada, home of TMC, could find itself in that position. So could many nations whose citizens or companies have worked with TMC. If those partners continued their work with TMC USA under U.S. authorization, their home countries could be exposed to legal action.

The Area is not a domestic source

In announcing an expedited seabed mining application process in January 2026, NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs mischaracterized polymetallic nodules in the Area as “a domestic source of critical minerals for the United States.”

To be clear, the United States has critical minerals on its land territory and within its area of exclusive seabed jurisdiction. It is beginning to explore those resources with an eye to possible future mining. These are domestic American sources of critical minerals – they are “America’s.” The minerals in the Area are not.

Yes, America needs critical minerals, but it should not undermine the system of international ocean governance – a system it engineered and from which it benefits perhaps more than any other nation – to get them.

Coalter G Lathrop, Senior Lecturing Fellow in International Law, Duke University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Animals are noisy. And their noises can travel a long way.

But making sounds can be a double-edged sword: it can help them communicate, sometimes over long distances, but it can also reveal them to predators.

In new research published in the Journal of Mammalian Evolution, my colleague and I studied how far the sounds of 103 different mammal species travel, and discovered some surprising patterns.

What’s more, these patterns hint at an overlooked impact humans may be having on our fellow creatures: not only changing their sonic landscapes through our own noise, but also changing the world their sounds are travelling through, with unknown effects.

What’s happening in the water?

In aquatic mammals, the relationship between the size of an animal and the farthest distance its call travels is simple. Bigger animals can be heard farther away.

On a perfect day in perfect conditions, the call of a blue whale (the largest animal in history) can travel up to 1,600 kilometres. Its (slightly smaller) cousin the fin whale can be heard over a similar distance.

These are the longest-travelling animal sounds ever reported.

What’s happening on land?

On land, the story is very different. Environmental factors are crucial to how far the sound of a terrestrial mammal travels.

Things that matter include the size of an animal’s home range (the area in which it lives and defends resources), whether a call is territorial (to defend against other animals), whether the environment is open versus densely vegetated, and if the animal is very social or solitary.

On a good day in the savannah, lions and elephants have sounds that travel 8km and 10km, respectively.

How does this work?

Our research is centred around the idea that your sound reveals you to predators, and that revelation leads to a higher risk of injury and death (potentially before you pass on your genes, and hence reducing what evolutionary biologists call “fitness”). This would be because the predator can more quickly locate its calling prey.

There is a delicate balance between using sounds to communicate and using sounds in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

If sound is revealed at the wrong distance, it may mess up the reason an animal uses the sound in the first place.

Animals that cannot adapt to changes in the sound environment may reveal themselves and be eaten, or may be unable to find their friends.

Where does this fit?

In the midst of human-induced environmental and species change, understanding how animals use sounds to communicate and find each other has become valuable to conservation. Many ecosystems are being cleared on land to make way for development and agriculture.

Our finding that land mammals in closed habitats have evolved to have relatively farther sound distances is important because of what happens when the environment changes.

If a possum has evolved in a eucalyptus forest, for example, and the forest is cleared, its sounds will travel farther (because there are fewer trees to muffle it). As a result, the possum may reveal itself to a predator when it doesn’t mean to.

This in turn means the animal’s call leaves it more exposed than it “should” in evolutionary terms. The animal may not have the same tools to escape predators that animals evolved for open environments do, and so may be more easily eaten.

What are humans doing?

Many species have reduced in body size due to things like harvesting activities and climate change.

It’s a well documented fact that many whale species have been getting smaller as a result of human whaling activities and environmental impacts.

Since 1981, for example, the length of northern right whales has become about 7% smaller. Among gray whales, animals born in 2020 are estimated to be 1.65 metres shorter than animals born in the 1980s.

Given our finding that larger body sizes mean farther-travelling sounds in aquatic mammals, smaller whales may not be able to be heard as far away.

This means that when smaller whales call to their friends or family members, their calls may not reach these individuals over the enormous distances the species travel.

What can humans change?

Our findings add a new dimension to our understanding of how humans are affecting animals, and may help inform future conservation decisions.

Do they mean anything in our everyday lives?

For one thing, they remind us to take a moment to listen to the world around us.

We might find out where an animal is. We might observe a new species.

We might even find a quiet space in the landscapes around us to sit and connect again with the world and ourselves.

Ben JJ Walker, Researcher, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In 1974, philosopher Thomas Nagel posed a deceptively simple question: “what is it like to be a bat?”. His point wasn’t really about bats. He was offering a provocative challenge about the limits of understanding another mind: no matter how much we try, we cannot access what it feels like to experience the world as another.

This might seem like an abstract philosophical puzzle. But it’s crucial when we consider the billions of animals in our care – whether in farms, laboratories, homes or zoos. We make daily decisions about their lives, from their environment, to separation from companions, to whether they are suffering. Still, we face Nagel’s problem. We cannot directly access their experience. We can only infer it.

For decades, animal welfare science has grappled with this challenge. But in a recent paper published in the journal Frontiers in Animal Science, we’ve developed a framework called the “teleonome” that provides a way forward – not by transcending the limits Nagel identified, but by understanding each species on its own evolutionary terms.

It’s hard to see the whole

Currently, when we assess animal welfare, we’re like mechanics checking individual car parts without understanding how the engine works.

Physiologists measure stress hormones. Behaviourists count how often animals move or vocalise. And veterinarians check for disease.

Each specialist produces valuable data. But what’s missing is a way to evaluate these data from the animals’ lived experience.

A horse might have normal cortisol concentrations, show no abnormal repetitive behaviour, and appear physically healthy. But it might still be chronically distressed by separation from its companions.

A chicken in a cage might produce eggs efficiently. But she might be suffering chronic frustration because she cannot scratch, bathe in dust, flap her wings, explore and nest – behaviours the cage makes impossible.

Enter the ‘teleonome’

The teleonome is an animal’s integrated system of perceptual, physiological, behavioural and emotional capabilities. It is shaped by evolution to enable adaptation, survival and reproduction.

Back to the bat. Its DNA doesn’t “contain” echolocation like a blueprint contains a house plan. What exists is an integrated auditory-brain-body-behaviour system that only emerges when genes encounter the right environmental conditions.

That’s the bat’s teleonome: not just the genetic potential, but the living, functioning survival system.

The teleonome operates through a continuous four-step process. It detects change, evaluates whether it’s a threat or opportunity, forecasts the best response and, finally, acts.

This isn’t conscious deliberation but an embodied system guiding physiology and behaviour across timescales from milliseconds to months.

Emotions are central to the teleonome. An animal’s feelings of fear, frustration, contentment, or curiosity are evolved mechanisms for prioritising what matters, guiding learning and coordinating adaptive responses. These emotions reflect welfare and also actively maintain it. Negative experiences stimulate animals to resolve problems; positive experiences prompt them to carry on their activities.

Of course, the behaviour of individual animals of the same species will vary. This can be explained by the “expressed teleonome”: genes provide biological potential, but lifetime experiences, current stress load, and environmental context shape expression.

The teleonome also recognises that animals need environments that offer what their bodies and brains evolved to anticipate, use and learn. A hen doesn’t just prefer to dust-bathe; she does so to keep her feathers and skin in good condition. Remove that opportunity and you disrupt the process, creating ongoing biological stress – even if the bird appears healthy.

Why this matters

The teleonome provides welfare science with a biological north star.

Instead of arguing whether enrichment is “necessary” or debating which behaviours matter most, we can ask: does this behaviour support the animal’s evolved way of functioning, and does the environment enable it?

This has immediate practical applications.

For separation anxiety in dogs, we can identify and even rank the events and contexts which, in combination, trigger distress. We can then design interventions that fully support, rather than override, evolved social systems.

For farm animals, it explains why productivity doesn’t equal welfare. Domestication creates animals that are highly productive, producing a lot of milk, eggs or meat, but that also suffer chronic stress because we’ve disrupted animal-environment relationships that evolved over millions of years.

Perhaps most importantly, the teleonome transforms the ethics debate.

Treating animals as “ends in themselves” isn’t just philosophy. Rather it means recognising what matters to them based on how they have evolved.

The teleonome provides the biological foundation for making welfare decisions grounded in the animal’s perspective, rather than human preferences or industry convenience.

We may never solve Nagel’s philosophical puzzle. But animals are not black boxes either. Understanding their teleonome gives us a practical guide for care: not just to keep them alive and productive, but to enable the lives their biology prepared them for.

Cristina Luz Wilkins, PhD Candidate, Department of Environmental Studies, University of New England; Amy Lykins, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of New England; Cathrynne Henshall, Post-doctoral Fellow, School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University; Melanie Fillios, Professor, Department of Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology, University of New England, and Paul McGreevy, Professor, School of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf region use the fossil fuels under their desert lands not only to make money, but also to make drinking water. The petroleum they produce powers more than 400 desalination plants, which turn seawater into drinkable water.

In the war that began on Feb. 28, 2026, with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, retaliatory attacks from Iranian forces have hit oil refineries and natural gas plants and disrupted tourism and aviation. Those attacks all hurt Gulf nations’ economies and their hard-won reputations for safety and stability.

But Iranian strikes have also already hit close to a key desalination plant in Dubai. Iranian strikes on March 2 on Dubai’s Jebel Ali port hit about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away from a massive complex with 43 desalination units that are key to the city’s production of more than 160 billion gallons of water each year.

And there has already been reported damage to the UAE’s Fujairah F1 power and water plant – though one of its owners says there was no damage and operations were not interrupted – and at Kuwait’s Doha West plant. In both cases, the reports seem to have stemmed from attacks on nearby ports or from falling debris from drone interceptions.

Saltwater kingdoms

The region’s monarchies are often described as petro-states, but they have also become what I call saltwater kingdoms, global superpowers in the production of human-made fresh water drawn from the sea. Desalination is part of the reason there are golf courses, fountains, water parks and even indoor ski slopes with manufactured snow.

All together, eight of the 10 largest desalination plants in the world are in the Arabian Peninsula. Israel’s two Sorek plants round out the list.

The countries of the Arabian Peninsula have about 60% of global water-desalination capacity. And plants close to Iran, around the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, produce more than 30% of the world’s desalinated water.

Roughly 100 million people in the Gulf region rely on desalination plants for their water. Without them, almost nobody would be able to live in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE – or much of Saudi Arabia, including its capital, Riyadh.

Sabotage of water supplies

CIA worries about attacks on Gulf region desalination plants date back to the 1980s. During Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, those worries became real.

After coalition forces began bombing Iraqi positions in January 1991, part of Iraqi troops’ response was to release millions of barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf. As the massive oil slick drifted south, U.S. and Saudi officials feared it was meant to sabotage desalination systems.

Workers installed protective booms to shield intake valves at major plants, especially the one that supplies much of Riyadh’s water. In Kuwait, Iraqi sabotage damaged or destroyed much of the country’s desalination capacity.

Kuwaiti authorities also turned to Turkey and Saudi Arabia to supply some 750 water tankers and 200 trucks to import an 18-ton emergency supply of bottled water. U.S.-supplied generators and mobile desalination units provided additional temporary relief, though the full recovery took years.

More recent threats

Fears of attacks on desalination plants resurfaced after Yemen’s Houthi movement launched drones and missiles at Saudi facilities at Al-Shuqaiq in 2019 and 2022 – though they did no lasting damage.

Iran’s weapons are far more numerous and sophisticated than the Houthis’, though, so if it attacked desalination plants, the damage could be significant.

There is an irony here: Iran’s capital city of Tehran has a water shortage crisis so serious that in 2025 the government reportedly considered relocating the drought-stricken capital to the coast. But Iran is less vulnerable to attacks on desalination, because its water supply relies instead on dams and wells.

Whatever else the war may be about, water could well become a major factor in the violence and leave lasting political scars. And if either side were to intentionally attack water sources or desalination plants, it would clearly be a human-rights violation.

This article was updated March 9, 2026, to reflect a statement from a company that is a partial owner of a desalination plant in Fujairah.

Michael Christopher Low, Associate Professor of History; Director, Middle East Center, University of Utah

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When a coastal carpet python was brought into a wildlife hospital in South East Queensland in August 2024, vets were confronted with something they didn’t recognise. The python had damaged scales, crusted lesions across its body and a mysterious fungal infection that defied explanation.

When the results from skin tests came back, they revealed snake fungal disease, caused by Ophidiomyces ophidiicola, an emerging fungal pathogen linked to snake declines overseas. This was the first confirmed report in free-ranging wild Australian snakes.

In our new research, we detail this finding and two more novel fungal pathogens detected in skin samples taken from sick reptiles. All three infections produce disfiguring skin lesions. Two of the three new threats were not previously known to affect wild reptiles in Australia.

This isn’t a welcome discovery. Australia is home to an extraordinary diversity of reptiles – the highest of any country. But many species are in decline, due to climate change, habitat loss, invasive species and urbanisation.

Fungal infections aren’t usually a problem for warm-blooded animals, as most fungi can’t survive our high body temperatures. But for ectothermic (cold-blooded) reptiles and amphibians, fungi can pose a devastating threat. Chytrid fungus has triggered an ongoing wave of frog extinctions – including in Australia. We must protect reptiles from similar threats.

What did we find?

We analysed skin samples from ten sick reptiles between April 2023 and September 2024. Each had mild to severe skin lesions. They included an eastern water dragon, two eastern bearded dragons, one eastern bandy-bandy snake, one white-crowned snake and five coastal carpet pythons.

In some cases, their infection was so severe it caused crusted lesions along the entire body, prevented normal skin shedding, and caused extreme emaciation and weakness. Tragically, many reptiles had deteriorated so badly that euthanasia was the most humane option.

When we tested skin samples from these sick reptiles, we found three fungal threats from the Onygenaceae family cropping up in new hosts or locations.

1. Ophidiomyces ophidiicola – commonly known as snake fungal disease. We detected it for the first time in free-ranging Australian wildlife, causing debilitating disease in three native Australian snake species.
2. Nannizziopsis barbatae – a pathogen already known to affect wild Australian lizards, and recently highlighted in water dragons in Queensland. We report its first global detection in a snake.
3. Paranannizziopsis spp. – detected for the first time in free-ranging Australian wildlife, causing disease in eastern bearded dragons and coastal carpet pythons.

Reptiles are vulnerable

As climate change boosts global temperatures, alters ecosystems and stresses wildlife, a dangerous combination emerges. Stressed animals become more susceptible to infection, and the fungi themselves become more widespread.

Losing reptile and amphibian species to fungal diseases is devastating. Reptiles play crucial roles in our ecosystems, quietly keeping pest populations in check and helping to maintain healthy landscapes.

In recent years, herping – the reptile equivalent of birding – has become more popular.

As interest has risen, so has public concern. The only reason we know about these fungal diseases is because observant community members noticed unwell animals and sought help. Early detection remains one of our most powerful tools for understanding and containing wildlife disease.

What can you do?

Citizen scientists, wildlife enthusiasts and members of the community can all contribute.

By recognising signs of illness, reporting sick animals and practising responsible behaviour around wildlife, Australians can help protect our reptiles from these emerging fungal threats.

Report sick reptiles to track disease spread

• If you see a sick reptile, keep your distance and look for brown or yellow crusty skin lesions, abnormal shedding, swelling, wounds that don’t heal or unusually lethargic behaviour.
• If it’s safe, take clear photos and record the location.
• Contact your local wildlife rescue group, wildlife hospital or vet.
• Submit sightings to local wildlife authorities or citizen science platforms such as iNaturalist.
• Early reporting helps researchers track and manage disease spread.

Never release pet reptiles

• Captive reptiles can carry pathogens which can be harmless to them but devastating to wild populations.
• If you can’t care for your pet reptile, contact an animal rescue organisation or registered rehoming group. Never release pets into the wild.

Observe responsibly

• Avoid handling wild reptiles. In many regions this requires specific permits.
• If you are an authorised and trained handler and must move an animal, ensure your hands and equipment are cleaned between animals and locations.

What’s next?

Our novel findings in free-ranging Australian reptiles from one region in Queensland suggests there may be a hidden crisis.

We’re now surveying reptiles more broadly to understand how widespread these fungal infections are, which species are most at risk, and what environmental conditions favour disease spread.

Left unmanaged, these fungal infections could spread to threatened reptiles such as leaf tailed geckos, blind snakes, earless dragons and Nangur spiny skinks with disastrous consequences.

Understanding these diseases and controlling their spread will be essential if we are to protect Australia’s remarkable reptiles.

Wildlife vet Dr Bertrand Ng contributed to writing this article.

Shelly Butcher, PhD candidate in Wildlife Disease, The University of Queensland and Laura Grogan, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Science, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In many parts of Europe, the common carp is a prized table fish. But the common carp (Cyprinus carpio) is arguably Australia’s most vilified fish. Nicknamed the “river rabbit” for its prolific breeding, carp is blamed for degrading rivers, lakes and billabongs.

Despite its popularity overseas, and among catch-and-release anglers and koi enthusiasts, carp in Australian rivers cause significant damage to aquatic plants, denuding the riverbanks and riverbeds when they feed.

In the 1960s, a European strain of carp entered Victoria’s Latrobe Valley and the Murray River near Mildura, believed to originate from a fish farm in Boolarra, in the south east of the state. This strain spread through the Murray–Darling Basin, prompting extensive research and attempted control programs, including the proposed cyprinid herpesvirus.

While debate continues over management, a question rarely asked is why carp was a strong candidate for introduction in the first place? For this, we need to take a two-thousand-year trip back in time.

Roman troops needed food

Common carp comprises two subspecies: the European form (Cyprinus carpio carpio) and East Asian form (Cyprinus carpio haematopterus). Historically, the former’s range extended as far west as present-day Vienna, along the River Danube and as far east as Central Asia and Kazakhstan.

Archaeological remains suggest carp were especially abundant where a breakpoint in the Danube’s gradient and its tributaries, the Morava, Váh, Hron, Drava and Tisza rivers, converged. For millennia, large permanent and seasonal floodplains provided ideal conditions for carp.

Two thousand years ago, after crossing the Alps and pushing north to the Danube, the Roman army established military bases between modern-day Vienna and Budapest. Across the river, Celts and Germans watched with gritted teeth and weapons at the ready. Although only 240 km long, the frontier needed four Roman garrisons to hold out. Around 20,000 legionnaires, accompanied by families, slaves and tradespeople, meant a population of more than 100,000. And they all needed food.

Fortresses upstream and downstream of the Morava River lined one of the Danube’s largest floodplains. Czech-Canadian fish biologist Eugene Balon argues this frontier marked the beginning of Western Europe’s enduring love affair with carp. Archaeological excavations of these forts have uncovered abundant fish remains, predominantly carp, supporting his hypothesis.

Carp becomes European fish du jour

Whether legionnaires carried carp back toward Rome remains uncertain, but by the early Medieval period, carp was steadily spreading westward. Evidence from monastic latrine deposits (poo, to you and me) has shown carp moving through what are now France, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg by the late 13th century. By 1400, carp was the fish du jour in Parisian cuisine. The “Carpocene” had arrived.

Canadian historian Richard Hoffmann has documented carp’s westward spread, as it followed sweeping changes to European riverine landscapes, especially the rise of water mills. From about 1000 CE, an energy revolution of sorts shifted grain milling and paper production from oxen to water power. Thousands of mill dams transformed free-flowing streams into ponds and races, disrupting habitats and effectively expunging the previously abundant trouts, salmons and sturgeons. These heavily modified riverscapes proved ideal for carp.

This growing dominance of carp in Western Europe coincided with the rise of Christianity and founding of monasteries. Carp domestication in China may date back thousands of years, but Western European aquaculture probably had its origins in 11th and 12th century France, through monasteries and the nobility.

Christian precepts restricted meat on holy days and Fridays, but fish and laurices (unborn rabbit) were exempt. Monastic ponds, perhaps initially adapted from drainage works, were soon stocked with local fish. Monasteries with their own ponds meant monks could harvest carp and other fish for fasting days.

The techniques of pond construction and fish keeping by the Normans in continental Europe made their way over the Channel with the Norman Invasion in 1066, and were adopted in England. Carp arrived around the mid-1300s, and English monasteries quickly embraced this hardy, tasty and fast-growing new fish on the block.

Carp’s transformation from a monastic delicacy to national favourite in England came in 1536 through Henry VIII. During the “Dissolution”, Henry closed more than 600 monasteries as part of the Protestant Reformation. These changes formed part of the wider political and religious manoeuvres of Henry in England, including his effort to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. Monastic wealth was redirected to the Crown, with lands and buildings commonly purchased by nobles and elites.

In England, fishponds became status symbols, with aristocratic owners keeping ponds for private use and sport. But as pond upkeep lost its appeal, many were leased to commoners who operated them as commercial enterprises. Fish, including carp, entered expanding markets, especially in fashionable London. By then, carp had spread across the Kingdom, outperforming other cultured species by growing faster and reaching market size years earlier.

Carp was now the most popular fish in England, widely recognised for its hardiness, and even appearing in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well (c. 1603–06), in which Parolles is compared to a carp that can survive in a pool of excrement. Fifty years before Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1653), carp was as familiar to the average English person as it had become on continental Europe centuries earlier.

Carp comes to Australia

Fast forward to mid-1800s Australia. Environmental destruction wrought by gold mining, especially in Victoria, was widespread. Acclimatisation societies were founded to introduce familiar “useful” species and “renovate” degraded ecosystems.

For those wanting a fish tolerant of heavily altered rivers, that provided sport, grew rapidly and was good eating, they had to look no further than carp. A fish that had once been on the outskirts of Western Europe, virtually unknown, was now an obvious candidate for introduction to the other side of the world.

The first carp arrived in Hobart on February 22 1858 aboard the Heather Bell and was released into Cascades Reservoir. And so began the story of carp in Australia.

This is an edited extract from Carp in Australia, by Paul Humphries and Katherine Doyle, published by CSIRO Publishing.

Paul Humphries, Associate Professor in Ecology, Charles Sturt University and Katie Doyle, Freshwater Ecologist, Charles Sturt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you follow media coverage of koalas, you could be forgiven for feeling confused.

Recent stories describe a “koala paradox”: endangered in the north of Australia, abundant in the south; genetically diverse in some regions, genetically depleted in others.

Koalas populations are often described simultaneously as being in crisis, or overabundant. These accounts attempt to capture the complexity of this species across different histories and geographic locations. But they also reveal a deeper problem with how we assess genetic risk in wildlife (the likelihood a population will go extinct because it has lost too much genetic diversity).

Our new research shows relying too heavily on genetic indicators – how genetic diversity and inbreeding are measured – can be misleading. And we found the koala to be a powerful case study for a much broader lesson in conservation.

The assumption we rarely question

Conservation often rests on a simple logic: a population crash – a rapid and steep decline in population size – reduces genetic diversity and increases inbreeding. Genetically diverse populations, meanwhile, are believed to be more resilient and less susceptible to decline.

This logic is not wrong, but it is incomplete.

It treats genetic health as static, rather than a dynamic outcome shaped by how populations grow or shrink over time. Koalas provide a useful test. Different populations have experienced very different histories; from extreme collapse followed by rapid recovery, to slower but ongoing decline.

What we found and what their DNA reveals

We analysed DNA from 418 koalas sampled across 27 populations in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. This allowed us to reconstruct their population history and size over time. We also examined how different genetic variants respond to population decline and recovery. What emerged was surprising.

Koala populations with higher genetic diversity, particularly those in northern Australia, tended to carry more harmful variants. They also showed declining population sizes. In contrast, populations that had passed through severe historical crashes but were now expanding, showed signs of genetic recovery.

This does not mean population crashes are harmless. They are dangerous and can be irreversible. But it does mean they are not always evolutionary dead ends.

Why recovery can start before diversity rebounds

The key lies in how DNA responds when populations grow rapidly. Generally speaking, when populations expand, recombination (the reshuffling of genetic material each generation) spreads new genetic combinations through the population. This breaks up inherited blocks of DNA and generates new genetic variation. In turn, this can increase a population’s ability to adapt, allowing numbers to grow faster than traditional genetic indicators might suggest.

In koalas, this process is clearly visible. As populations expand, genes are mixed and matched in new ways, creating new genetic variation. Many traditional genetic indicators fail to detect these changes. However, our analyses can reveal them.

This suggests genetic indicators of diversity can lag behind the true health of a population, and sometimes mislead conservation assessments. A population may appear genetically depleted if we rely only on these indicators, even while its diversity is quietly being rebuilt. Conversely, a population can look genetically healthy while its population size is actually becoming unstable, putting that diversity at risk over time.

Correcting a common misconception

Victorian koala populations are often portrayed as genetically compromised because they experienced an extreme population crash in the past. Our results show a more nuanced picture.

Victorian populations still carry the genetic signature of this extreme crash, when fewer than 1,000 koalas remained in the wild. However, many are now on a path to genetic recovery. At the DNA level, their genes are being reshuffled and new genetic variation is appearing. This represents the early stages of genetic recovery, not genetic collapse.

The greater long-term concern is for populations that are rapidly declining but still appear genetically healthy. If population size collapses, genetic diversity can be lost very quickly.

Why this matters beyond koalas

Our results suggest the picture for koalas is more nuanced than previously thought. Southern “inbred” populations are growing again and gaining genetic diversity, whereas northern populations are shrinking, regardless of how genetically diverse they appear today.

This matters far beyond koalas. Many threatened species have experienced population crashes, translocations or reintroductions (such as on French Island and Kangaroo Island) and rapid environmental change. If we judge their future using static genetic indicators, we risk getting the picture wrong, both about their risk of genetic decline and their chance of recovery.

What matters just as much is the direction a population is heading. Is population size rising or falling? Are new genetic variants appearing or disappearing? Is recombination boosting their evolutionary potential, or being choked by small population size?

Rethinking genetic risk

One of the most important messages from our study is this: low genetic diversity does not automatically imply high extinction risk. And high genetic diversity does not guarantee safety. Genetic indicators only make sense when we consider the population’s history, and whether its numbers are rising or falling. Without that context, even well-intentioned conservation decisions can miss the mark.

Koalas, so often used as symbols of the conservation crisis, offer something rare: direct evidence that genetic recovery is possible, and insight into how to detect it early.

If conservation genomics is to guide policy effectively, it must move beyond static genetic indicators. We need to start tracking where populations came from and where they are headed, not just where they are now.

Andrew Weeks, Associate Senior Research Scientist, The University of Melbourne; Adam Miller, Associate Professor, Genomics and Genetics, RMIT University, and Collin Ahrens, Visiting Fellow - Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mammals are not especially diverse. Roughly 6,800 mammal species are known to exist, compared with about 8,800 species of amphibian, 11,000 species of bird and 12,500 of reptile. Yet when most people picture biodiversity, they often think of charismatic mammals first: pandas, orangutans, elephants or tigers.

That visibility comes with scrutiny. Mammals are among the best-studied organisms on Earth – and among the most threatened. On the international inventory of the conservation status of species, more than one in four mammal species is classified as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.

Because they are so intensively researched, it’s genuinely rare for scientists to find and formally describe a new mammal species. The discovery of the olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina) made global headlines as the first new carnivorous mammal identified in the Americas in 35 years.

In 2017, DNA evidence revealed the world had not six species of great ape, but seven, when the Tapanuli Orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) was found to be distinct. It was the first new great ape species described in nearly a century.

Describing a new species is exciting enough. But identifying an entirely new genus is something else altogether. A genus is a taxonomic group covering more than one species, sitting one level above a species in the Linnaean taxonomic classification system, established by Carl Linnaeus. For example, in the scientific name Homo sapiens, Homo is the genus (or genera in plural).

There are only about 1,300 genera of living mammals worldwide. Discovering a totally new genus of mammal happens only a few times a year, if that; some stunning examples include Nagasorex, a distinctive shrew from Nagaland, India in 2025; Paucidentomys, a Sulawesi rodent in 2012; and Laonastes, a rock rat from Laos in 2005.

So, creating a new genus is a rare event and a real privilege. But that is exactly what we just have done – describing a new genus of a small gliding possum in Indonesian Papua.

Finding a Lazarus species

Our story begins with a single photograph.

In 2015, a plantation worker in Indonesian Papua (the western half of the island of New Guinea) caught an unfamiliar tree-dwelling marsupial and took several pictures. We cannot name him, as the location has to be kept secret.

He was part of a citizen science-based biodiversity monitoring project which asked plantation workers to photograph or record the sounds of wildlife they encountered during their work.

The large-eyed, brownish, furry creature, with unfurred ears, superficially resembled an Australian greater glider. But there were clear differences. The photos showed an obvious patagium, or gliding membrane, and a prehensile tail, furred to the top, except for a naked area on the lower side.

The animal did not match any known species from the island of New Guinea. When we examined the images, we realised it closely resembled a possum known only from a handful of fossil bones. These fossils, initially named Petauroides ayamaruensis, had been discovered decades earlier in archaeological sites in West Papua and more recently in Papua New Guinea.

The bones were from a small member of a group of Australian gliding possums called hemibelidines, or ringtail possums. Until recently, this lineage was thought to exist only in eastern Australia. But on the huge, biologically diverse island of New Guinea, there was no sign of its existence. Scientists presumed it had gone extinct around 6,000 years ago.

The photo was evidence this was not the case. What we were looking at appeared to be a “Lazarus species”: one that had vanished from the fossil record, only to reappear alive.

Other famous “Lazarus” examples include the Coelacanth, a large species of fish thought to be extinct for 66 million years until it was rediscovered off the South African coast in 1938.

Meet the new genus, Tous

To confirm our suspicions, we analysed the photographs and made careful comparison with the fossil teeth from Papua and new partially fossilised material from a different location in PNG. The size and shape of mammal teeth and their cusps are very important in distinguishing species. Our analysis of fossil and photographs strongly suggested these all referred to the same animal.

To confirm it, we drew on knowledge shared by local Indigenous landowners who have always known about this animal – it is sacred to some tribal groups in the region.

This confirmed the animal was not only a surviving individual of the fossilised possum, but distinct enough to require an entirely new genus, which we have named Tous.

“Tous” is a local vernacular term applied to this forest species, which is locally recognised as distinct from smaller gliders. During interviews with traditional landowners, elders identified the animal in photographs as “Tous wansai”, distinguishing it from other similar arboreal marsupials.

That makes this discovery exceptionally rare. Establishing a new genus means identifying a lineage that has been evolutionarily separate for millions of years.

In this case, the evidence suggests Tous is from an ancient branch of the possum family tree, one that once extended from Australia to New Guinea, and today survives in a small, vulnerable corner of the Papuan forests. Traditional knowledge indicates Tous roots in tree hollows in the tallest rainforest trees. Like Australia’s greater glider, it is vulnerable to logging.

Protecting the new species

It is this vulnerability that concerns us most. When we formally described Tous, we did not disclose the precise location the original photograph came from. We are unfortunately not able to identify the local Indigenous landowners for similar reasons. With its large forward-facing eyes, soft fur and prehensile tail, Tous is undeniably appealing to wildlife traffickers.

In an era of social media–driven wildlife trade, that appeal can be dangerous. Newly discovered species have sometimes been pushed toward exploitation almost as soon as they are announced. There were, for example, only 22 years between the rediscovery of the Javan rhinoceros in Vietnam in 1988 and its confirmed extinction because of poaching in 2010.

Protecting Tous will not be straightforward. We still don’t know its full range, but all evidence suggests it is restricted to a small region of New Guinea where lowland forests are under pressure from logging and agricultural expansion. Even in the photos, you can see logging debris and planted oil palm in the background. Local people told us it forms a pair and is monogamous, producing a single baby in a year. This likely low reproduction rate means it is especially vulnerable to hunting and habitat loss.

The knowledge that led us to this discovery came not only from fossils and photographs, but from local communities who have known this animal for generations.

If conservation builds on that knowledge, and if communities benefit from keeping wildlife alive rather than harvesting it, then Tous may have both a past and a future.

Erik Meijaard, Honorary Professor of Conservation, University of Kent; Kristofer M. Helgen, Adjunct professor, University of Technology Sydney, and Tim Flannery, Honorary Fellow, Australian Museum

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Before antibiotics and antiseptics, healers across ancient Egypt, Greece, and China reached for honey to treat wounds. Archaeological evidence shows humans have been harvesting and collecting honey for thousands of years – and for much of that time, we understood it to be more than just food.

Today, honey sits in most kitchen cupboards as a perfectly ordinary pantry staple. But honey has never entirely shed its medicinal reputation. And modern research shows us why: it possesses genuine antimicrobial properties, capable of killing or inhibiting a wide range of bacteria, including drug-resistant strains.

This matters now more than ever. Antimicrobial resistance – where bacteria evolve to survive drugs designed to kill them – is one of the defining public health crises of our time. Infections caused by these resistant microbes are becoming harder and more expensive to treat, creating an urgent need for alternative therapies.

Our new study, published in the journal MicrobiologyOpen, shows honeys from Australia’s native flora might be a big part of the solution.

What did we do?

We analysed 56 honey samples collected from more than 35 apiaries across New South Wales. Many samples came from landscapes recovering from the 2019–2020 bushfires. Most were derived from native Australian plants such as eucalyptus, leptospermum and melaleuca.

We tested the honeys against two common bacterial pathogens: Staphylococcus aureus (golden staph) and E. coli – both among the six leading causes of deaths associated with antibiotic resistance. For each sample we measured the minimum concentration needed to stop bacterial growth. The lower the concentration, the more potent the honey.

We also carried out comprehensive chemical profiling, measuring sugars, organic acids, amino acids, enzymes and a wide range of plant-derived compounds. Statistical and machine-learning analyses helped us identify which chemical features best explained antibacterial strength.

What did we find?

More than three-quarters of the honey samples stopped bacterial growth even when the honeys were diluted to 10% or less. This places Australian native flora honeys alongside some of the world’s most potent varieties.

The most striking factor was floral diversity.

Honeys from mixed floral sources – where bees foraged across multiple native plant species rather than a single species – were consistently the most antimicrobial.

This potency wasn’t due to any single compound but to a chemically rich combination.

Multiple bioactive factors – substances that have a measurable effect on living cells or tissues – worked together to inhibit bacteria. These included naturally produced hydrogen peroxide, plant-derived phenolic compounds (naturally occurring chemicals that plants produce as part of their own defence systems), and antioxidants.

When bacteria encounter honey, this combination acts on several fronts at once. The low moisture content draws water out of bacterial cells, while the acidity disrupts their metabolism. Hydrogen peroxide damages their cellular structures, and phenolic and antioxidant compounds interfere with their ability to function and reproduce.

The strength of mixed floral honeys may also reflect the health of the bees themselves.

Access to diverse forage keeps colonies well nourished. And healthier bees produce more biologically active honey as their enzymes help integrate and activate the plant compounds into a complex antimicrobial mixture.

What does this mean for antimicrobial resistance?

Honey won’t replace antibiotics for serious or systemic infections.

But for topical applications – chronic wounds, burns, or surgical site infections – it is a genuinely promising option. Because honey attacks bacteria through multiple simultaneous mechanisms, resistance is far less likely to emerge than with single-target drugs. Our team is now exploring these applications in more detail.

Australia is particularly well-placed to lead in bioactive honey production. Around 70% of Australian honey comes from native plants. These plants are found not only in forests but also across farmland, regional landscapes, and urban green spaces.

Our findings show that prioritising floral diversity over monoculture isn’t just good for ecosystems – it produces more potent honey. With the beekeeping industry under serious pressure from bushfires, floods, and now the varroa mite, protecting and restoring florally-rich landscapes is critical: for bee health, for industry resilience, and for expanding our natural antimicrobial toolkit.

In the meantime, the next jar of Australian honey you buy may just be doing more good than you realise.

Kenya Fernandes, Research Fellow, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wildlife trafficking is a global crisis impacting at least 4,000 species of plants and animals, including mammals, reptiles, birds, corals and rare plants.

A shocking case from 2025 involved the seizure of 3.7 tonnes of pangolin scales in Nigeria. These scales were believed to be sourced from more than 1,900 individual pangolins.

While this case was uncovered, many more remain undetected. These crimes aren’t just pushing species toward extinction, they’re also putting people at risk. Hunting, trafficking and handling wild animals creates opportunities for diseases to jump from animals to humans. Wildlife trafficking is therefore not just a conservation crisis, but a serious threat to public health.

In our recent paper published in Conservation Biology, we present a new method for tackling this global crime. It uses a tiny sample of air extracted from a shipping container – and the incredible power of a dogs’ nose.

Traffickers exploit shipping routes

People buy and sell a wide range of wild animals and their parts for many reasons, such as pangolin scales for traditional medicines, monkeys for exotic pets, or even porcupines for bushmeat.

Traffickers exploit global transport routes to move their products, with shipping containers in particular being ideal targets.

Containers carry up to 90% of the world’s cargo, meaning products can be easily concealed and blend into the high volume of container traffic moving through ports.

Despite this, on average only about 2% of containers are physically inspected due to resource limitations.

There are few wildlife specific detection tools, and wildlife crime is often considered a low priority. Combined, this means most trafficking slips through undetected.

Bringing the scent to the dog

To bridge this gap, we investigated air sampling as a way to screen containers for wildlife without opening them, damaging cargo, or disrupting port operations.

This work was part of a four-year project, undertaken in collaboration with the world’s third largest shipping company CMA CGM.

We designed a portable air extraction device that fits onto a standard container vent and draws air through a filter to collect a sample. The sample is then presented to a trained detection dog which can indicate whether the scent of specific wildlife products is present.

In our study, we concealed pelts from five big cat species – lion, tiger, leopard, snow leopard and cheetah – inside standard-sized shipping containers. The pelts were arranged to simulate smuggling scenarios, including being hidden inside cardboard boxes to increase concealment.

Our detection dog successfully detected the pelts with almost 98% accuracy when air was extracted from the shipping container. They did so even when the pelts were concealed, demonstrating that the scent can escape into the container airspace and be reliably captured.

Detection dogs are already widely used by customs and border agencies around the world, but their ability to screen sealed containers at scale is limited. Containers are often inaccessible, stacked high, or in environments that are unsafe for dogs.

Our approach brings the scent to the dog, allowing many more containers to be screened efficiently and safely.

While the study was conducted under controlled conditions, these early results are encouraging. Pairing detection dogs with air-sampling could dramatically improve the detection of illegally trafficked wildlife hidden inside shipping containers.

The air extraction device is low cost, portable and scalable, making it well suited for use in high-risk ports and border crossings worldwide. The method could also be readily adapted for detecting other forms of trafficking, such as drugs, increasing its appeal to border agencies.

Disrupting criminal networks

Further trials are planned to validate the effectiveness of this approach in operational port environments across a broader range of wildlife products.

We are also exploring machine-based detectors to analyse samples and support the future development of this project.

However, initial findings show the dogs still outperform these technologies, which currently remain our most effective approach.

Our goal is to give frontline agencies practical tools to fight wildlife trafficking.

Through applying science-based research in the field, we can bridge enforcement gaps and detect trafficked wildlife faster, allowing us to better protect threatened species and disrupt the criminal networks behind this devastating trade.

Georgia Moloney, Researcher, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Adelaide University and Anne-Lise Chaber, One Health Lecturer, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, Adelaide University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This week, images on social media showed global superstar Ed Sheeran alighting from the overnight train from Sydney into the decidedly utilitarian surrounds of Southern Cross Station in Melbourne.

In Australia for an international tour, the $700 million star chose to travel 11 hours overnight by train, rather than take a one-hour flight. Media stories speculating at his motive noted Sheeran’s wife, Cherry Seaborn, is a consultant in sustainability and encourages him to travel on public transport to save emissions.

Sheeran has also been open about his plan to buy land and “rewild” as much of the United Kingdom as he can, saying: “I love my county and I love wildlife and the environment.”

In a live touring industry built around tight schedules and frequent air travel, Sheeran’s decision may be a symbolic gesture, driven by a desire to reduce his carbon footprint.

Australia hosts hundreds of live events such as concerts and music festivals each year. In 2024 alone, the live entertainment sector drew more than 31 million attendances, including more than 14 million concertgoers. Across the country, more than 160 music festivals are staged each year.

Sell-out concerts at a huge scale, such as Sheeran’s, inevitably come with a major environmental footprint.

How large is the carbon footprint of major concerts and events? Where do those emissions come from? Is anything being done to reduce them; and why should the event industry care in the first place?

The emission impact of concerts and major events

Event footprints vary widely depending on their scale. This ranges from hundreds or thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions for conferences, to tens of thousands for large festivals and concerts, and hundreds of thousands or more for global mega-events such as the Olympic Games.

Estimates suggest emissions average around 5kg of CO₂ per attendee per day, though impacts vary considerably depending on travel patterns and the way events are designed.

There is no agreed global estimate of the total carbon footprint of concerts or major events globally. Most impacts are calculated on an event-by-event basis.

Music festivals in the UK, for example, are estimated to collectively generate more than 400,000 tonnes of carbon emissions each year.

That level of emissions is broadly comparable to the annual carbon footprint of more than 230,000 average passenger cars.

An event’s carbon footprint reflects the activities required to bring together and service the crowds. Carbon audits typically account for how audiences travel to the venue, where they stay, what they eat and drink, how the site is powered, and how waste is managed.

The key emission contributors

While public attention often focuses on artist travel and sound systems, evidence shows these are rarely the main drivers of emissions.

The largest contributor is audience travel. Multi-city concert analyses covering multiple large-scale international tours found transport by attendees creates 38 times more emissions than artist and crew travel, hotel stays and gear transportation combined.

Accommodation for major events typically contributes a secondary share of emissions, particularly when concerts attract interstate or international visitors requiring overnight stays.

Other emissions sources include food and beverage services, venue energy use and production, freight and touring logistics, and waste management. Each of those typically account for a much smaller share of total event emissions.

How are organisers and bands responding?

There is growing environmental awareness across the live music industry. In recent years, artists, promoters and venues have begun experimenting with ways to reduce the environmental footprint of their live events.

Much of this has focused on energy use and touring operations.

British band Coldplay, for example, reported that its Music of the Spheres world tour reduced direct touring emissions by about 60%, compared with its 2016–17 stadium tour. This was based on a show-by-show comparison, and verified by independent audits. Coldplay achieved this mainly by replacing diesel generators with battery-powered systems, using renewable energy, and redesigning freight and touring logistics, or even incorporating kinetic energy systems such as power-generating dance floors and bicycles.

Their tour also funded a large-scale tree-planting initiative; one tree for every ticket sold. The program has so far supported the planting of millions of trees worldwide.

Massive Attack also made headlines last year after staging the ACT 1.5 concert in Bristol, described as one of the lowest-carbon live music events ever held. It used battery-powered energy systems instead of diesel generators, plant-based catering, reduced freight logistics and offered incentives for low-carbon audience travel.

Where to now? The audience needs to change

While these efforts are encouraging, evidence consistently shows that even low-emissions concerts might achieve limited overall reductions unless audience travel behaviour also changes.

Industry guidance from Green Music Australia identifies fan transport as one of the largest remaining emission sources, and prompts organisers to experiment with public-transport incentives, venue selection and travel partnerships.

Technological improvements on stage are becoming increasingly achievable. But influencing how tens of thousands of people travel to events remains the hard bit.

Gestures such as Sheeran choosing the train over flying may appear symbolic, but symbols matter. They help make lower-carbon choices seem normal, and reinforce environmental values across an industry already confronting the impacts of climate change on live events.

A recent global analysis of more than 2,000 mass gatherings disrupted by extreme weather between 2004 and 2024 across several high-income countries around the world found that arts, cultural and entertainment events – particularly festivals and concerts – were among those most frequently affected by climate change.

Storms, heat and other climate-related disruptions are already altering event timing and financial viability across countries including Australia, the UK and the United States.

In other words, the live events industry is not only contributing to climate emissions; it is increasingly exposed to their consequences.

Efforts to reduce the emissions footprint of large events and concerts should become an core part of the broader adaptation challenges facing the events industry. Its very existence depends on stable environmental and climate conditions.

Milad Haghani, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in Urban Risk and Resilience, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Right now, Australia is undertaking the world’s largest removal of invasive ants. The goal: eradicate fire ants (Solenopsis invicta).

These aggressive South American ants are named for the burning sensation of their sting. They pose risks to many native species – and to human health.

Fire ants have made it to Australia nine times, arriving in cargo ships. Eight times, authorities were able to stamp them out early. But an infestation detected in Brisbane suburb in 2001 has now spread across more than a million hectares of South East Queensland.

Authorities have used broadcast baiting to tackle fire ants, releasing pesticides over massive stretches of land since 2001. This approach works for small outbreaks. But my recent research suggests it may actually be making it easier for fire ants to spread.

When large areas are baited, the result is an ecological vacuum. Competitor species are wiped out and hardy fire ant survivors can press forward.

Fire ants are a “weedy” species. They love environments heavily modified by human behaviour, such as roadsides, industrial areas and paddocks. When baits are laid on the edge of their infestation, competitors and predators are also decimated – and advancing fire ants find it much easier to survive.

What’s behind the current strategy?

Decades ago, researchers found a weak spot for fire ants. The biggest larvae act like a distributed stomach for the colony. They take solid food, digest it and transfer it as liquid to adult ants to eat.

Queensland authorities use two insect growth regulators (Pyriproxyfen and S-methoprene) to target this stage. These chemicals are infused into tasty corn grit and soybean oil. Once taken back to the nest by workers, these delicious treats are fed to the larvae, who spread the toxins by liquid feeding. Over a few weeks, the fire ant colony collapses.

To date, eradication using this method has succeeded only in areas under 10,000 hectares. Authorities have to treat the entire area multiple times to ensure no nest is missed.

Fire ants have predators and competitors

Evidence from the United States – where control efforts have been underway since the 1950s – suggests fire ants are not actually a superior competitor.

Instead, they thrive where native ants and invertebrates are found in lower abundance and diversity. They find it much harder to penetrate undisturbed forests with thick leaf litter, where competitors and predators can repel them or keep them in check.

To spread, new queens must leave the nest, mate mid-air and land in a vacant area to start a fresh colony. This is when fire ants are most vulnerable.

In suburbs and rural areas, new queens have to run the gauntlet of invertebrate defenders. Native species such as meat ants (Iridomyrmex species) and green-headed ants (Rhytidoponera metallica) are aggressive defenders of territory. Even the invasive coastal brown ant (Pheidole megacephala) is a fierce competitor. Spiders, lacewings, earwigs, birds and predatory beetles all find a slow-moving fire ant queen to be an energy-rich meal.

These defenders should be our key allies in the fight against fire ants. Unfortunately, the chemical baits are indiscriminate. Many other invertebrates eat the baits – including rival ant species and predators.

The problem of scale

At over 1 million hectares, South East Queensland’s infestation is 100 times larger than any area ever successfully eradicated. Covering this entire area perfectly and doing so multiple times is effectively impossible.

In southern US states, authorities tried broadcast baiting for decades before giving up. In Georgia, a massive baiting program at first seemed to have succeeded. But within 14 months, fire ants had returned, moving faster and at higher densities than native ants. In Florida, new infestations are almost always found in disturbed areas where competitors were removed.

Fire ant queens can survive baiting

While newly mated fire ant queens are vulnerable to predators, they are not vulnerable to baiting.

This is due to a biological quirk. After the mating flight, a newly mated red fire ant queen digs a hole and seals the entrance for up to four weeks.

During this time, the queen lives off her fat reserves while she raises her first batch of workers. If authorities drop baits during this time, the new nest won’t be affected.

Is a precision approach better?

There’s now no chance we can eradicate these ants using broadcast baiting.

A better option is to use a number of strategies for integrated pest management. These could include:

1. Targeting nests, not areas

When nests are found, they can be removed by injecting hot water into the nest, or by applying pesticides such as fipronil. These scientifically robust methods avoid the widespread collateral damage from broadcast baiting.

2. Using precision baiting

Insect growth regulators are very effective. We can avoid collateral damage with underground bait stations (similar to termite baits) or containers only fire ants can access.

3. Boost landscape resistance

Areas of thick leaf litter and shrub cover are natural resistance zones, home to fire ant competitors and predators. Protecting and enhancing defender habitat is crucial.

4. Assess emerging technologies

Researchers are experimenting with new control methods, such as using viruses as biocontrols, genetic tools and chemicals exploiting fire ant communication methods. These have to be rapidly assessed. If any prove safe, effective and scaleable, authorities could add these to the eradication toolkit.

Time to rethink

Eradication efforts aren’t working. As my research shows, broadcast baiting may actually pave the way for a more rapid spread.

The baiting program is becoming controversial. Some communities are not comfortable with the approach, causing tension, while organic farmers can lose their certification if genetically modified baits are used.

Changing approach could cut costs, avoid killing native competitors and predators and build public trust for this long-term fight. The first step is to realise if we fight against nature, we will lose.

Nigel Andrew, Professor of Entomology, Southern Cross University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A recent report on global tipping points warned that coral reefs face widespread dieback and have reached a point from which they cannot recover.

But in our new research, we show this might not be the case for some reefs if corals can gain tolerance to rising temperatures, or if we can cut greenhouse gas emissions and restore reefs with heat-tolerant corals at scale.

Nevertheless, the outlook likely remains bleak.

Coral reefs provide habitat for thousands of other species in tropical oceans. They deliver economic value through fisheries and tourism and provide shoreline protection from storm surges and extreme weather by dampening the impact of waves.

However, coral reefs are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Our study combines previously published assessments of climate impacts on different coral reefs and reviews the scientific consensus to examine how long reef structures could persist as climate change intensifies.

Ocean warming, acidification, darkening and deoxygenation all threaten the persistence of coral reefs. Ocean warming brings marine heatwaves, which are the leading cause of mass coral bleaching that has led to a global decline in coral cover.

Corals are animals that house microalgae within their tissues that provide sugar in exchange for nitrogen. When temperatures become too hot, corals expel these symbiotic microalgae, leaving behind white skeletons.

Ocean acidification reduces the ability of corals to build their skeletons through a process called calcification. Warming, darkening and deoxygenation can also reduce calcification.

Coral reefs are built by adding calcium carbonate, coming mostly from corals but also coralline algae and other calcareous seaweeds. But as the ocean’s pH (a measure of acidity) is reduced, processes called bio-erosion and dissolution act to remove calcium carbonate.

Our meta-analysis examined how climate change affects the calcification and bio-erosion of coral reefs and we then applied these results to a global data set of reef growth.

There is no scientific consensus on which organisms will build future coral reefs. We explore four most likely scenarios:

1. Present-day extreme reefs represent the future of coral reefs. These are locations where temperatures are already warmer, waters are becoming more acidic and oxygen has dropped to conditions similar to those expected at the end of the century. These reefs are dominated by coralline algae and slow-growing heat-resistant corals.

2. Presently degraded reefs take over future reefs. These reefs are dominated by bio-eroders such as sponges and sea urchins and have low coral cover.

3. Corals can gain heat tolerance to an extent that keeps pace with low to moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. Under these scenarios, only about 36% of global corals would be lost and there would be a moderate reduction in growth. These heat-tolerant reefs are dominated by faster growing corals with symbiotic microalgae that can evolve heat tolerance.

4. Reefs where restoration practices include using heat-tolerant corals that can then disperse to other regions. These restored reefs would have lower coral cover in remote regions lacking restoration or with unsuccessful restoration practices. This kind of reef restoration would need to cover half of global coral reefs to maintain net growth – an unlikely scenario.

We found coral reefs transition to net erosion under all scenarios, even under low to moderate greenhouse gas emissions, meaning they are dissolving or being eaten faster than they can grow. Only reefs with heat-tolerant corals could prevent this from occurring.

The next step for the scientific community is to determine which reefs can persist in the future using global efforts to combine information. The major issues is that we are missing measurements from large parts of the Pacific, and we do not know how deoxygenation or coastal darkening will impact coral reefs. The processes of reef bioerosion and dissolution are also poorly described.

Although the climate has been altered to the point of threatening the future survival of coral reefs, their fate is not doomed yet if we act now.

Another question is how long reef structures will persist after living corals are removed. We do not have an answer yet. It will take global efforts to rapidly obtain these measurements to better manage and protect coral reefs before climate change intensifies.

It is up to governments everywhere, including New Zealand, to better support these initiatives before it is too late.

Christopher Cornwall, Lecturer in Marine Biology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and Orlando Timmerman, Doctoral Candidate in Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many of our homes and workplaces were built for a milder climate that no longer exists. As Australia braces for more days above 40ºC and hot nights, many homes – especially older or poorly insulated ones – become unsafe as heat overwhelms the body’s natural cooling systems.

Wealthier households may be able to retrofit homes to stay cool using passive thermal techniques or air-conditioning more freely, but rising energy costs make this difficult for many people. Extreme heat hits everyone, but the burden falls most heavily on those with the least resources.

As bushfires become more frequent and fire season extends over longer, hotter summers, bushfire smoke adds another layer of risk. Houses relying on natural ventilation draw unsafe air inside, while poorly constructed homes allow smoke to leak indoors. In both cases, people are left without safe shelter – a basic human right

It would take decades to upgrade every home in Australia to protect against heat and smoke, particularly given the return on investment from housing is prioritised in a capitalist system over housing’s social role.

This means many people will increasingly need climate shelters – cool, safe public places such as libraries and communities centres where people can escape heat and smoke.

What is a climate shelter?

Also known as a climate refuge, clean air shelter, heat haven and resilience hub, a climate shelter is a public place providing temporary protection during extreme weather. Typically, these are existing facilities like community centres, libraries or even schools. When needed, they provide free access to air-conditioning, drinking water, power, Wi-Fi and other amenities.

The concept is gaining traction globally. In 2019, Barcelona – a city that has experienced record-breaking temperatures in recent years – established the Climate Shelters Network of shaded outdoor areas and indoor cooled spaces. The city aims for all residents to be within a five-minute walk of a shelter by 2030.

In China, underground air-raid shelters from the second world war have been repurposed as cooling centres. In Chongqing, many now operate as an “underground city” of cooler social spaces for activities such as eating the city’s famous hot-pot.

In the United States, climate disasters have long been linked to the design and management of cities. In Chicago, for example, heat deaths have resulted from power grid failure, prompting the establishment of “climate resilience hubs” to ensure communities have access to power with solar and battery storage.

What happens in Australia?

Necessity has forced Australia to become better at establishing emergency centres such as bushfire bunkers and temporary evacuation centres stocked with slabs of bottled water and rows of camp beds. But more preparation is needed for heat and smoke events that don’t meet the threshold for disasters.

People often turn to shopping centres, cinemas, fast-food restaurants (particularly those with indoor play spaces), or social clubs to escape the heat. But these commercial spaces prioritise consumption, not public health. In the ACT, allowing clubs to function as heat and smoke refuges has generated community concern about the harm from gambling.

In response, non-commercial refuges are stepping up. Libraries, community centres, and even places of worship have served as climate shelters in recent summers.

The Blacktown City Cool Centres program kicks into action when the temperature reaches 36ºC, alerting registered residents with a text message. The City of Melbourne offers a similar Community Cool Places program. In Eurobodalla, on the NSW south coast, seven volunteer-run Heat Havens opened in January this year, retrofitted with solar and backup generators. This keeps them operational during bushfires, a recent experience for residents.

Climate haven challenges

Climate shelters are still a new idea, with many programs in an early or pilot phase. This offers us opportunities to learn and improve. Common challenges include low awareness among vulnerable groups and concerns about their accessibility.

Climate shelters are needed most in low-income urban areas where there are typically fewer trees and therefore shade, which makes even a five-minute walk on an extremely hot and smoky day a challenge. Safe journeys also require accessible public transport.

Accessibility extends beyond physical distance. It must also consider the intersecting issues of social and cultural safety and comfort. This includes the needs of people with medical conditions, mobility issues or disabilities and their carers, those who require private space for religious observance, and people who cannot leave pets behind.

Crucially, the activities available at the centres – especially during long stays – will strongly influence whether people are willing to leave home and use them.

Operational challenges, such as opening hours and appropriate staffing to support people who may be unwell or in distress, all require thought.

In many cases, protection from bushfire smoke potentially requires building improvements and retrofits such as air locks, reliable backup power and high-quality air filtration. More research is needed to develop guidelines and evaluate the effectiveness of these climate shelters.

Creating climate-ready cities

Our research into Community Resilience Centres will identify best practice in establishing climate shelters to protect vulnerable people from heat and smoke. We will monitor air and temperature and ask communities to help us design guidelines and resources to address accessibility concerns.

Climate shelters will be increasingly crucial in cities which are far from “climate-ready”. But thinking of them as an option of last resort reduces the likelihood they will be used. We need to find ways to create shelters that offer welcoming cool havens that care for all residents.

Abby Mellick Lopes, Professor, Social Design, Faculty of Design and Society, University of Technology Sydney; Cameron Tonkinwise, Professor, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney, and Louise McKenzie, Postdoctoral research fellow, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The next time you stub your toe, get pricked with a needle, or have your fingers jammed in the lid of a piano, you might pause to consider the marvellous way our bodies are able to heal such injuries.

As soon as the damage occurs, a range of different molecules in our bodies are activated and begin their jobs. These work to stem any bleeding, patch up breaks in the skin, signal our immune system to keep the wound clean, and initiate the longer-term repair process.

One such molecule is known as bradykinin. It is shared by all vertebrates, including mammals, reptiles, birds and fish. But it is also present in the venoms of some wasps and the toxic skin secretions of some frogs. These apparent inconsistencies in the distribution and function of bradykinin have puzzled scientists for decades.

In a new study published in Science, my colleagues and I reveal why bradykinin is in some venoms and how it got there. The answer shines a light on what has, until now, been an underappreciated feature of evolution which suggests life is not so random after all.

A multipurpose molecule

Bradykinin serves several purposes in humans and other vertebrates.

It is activated at a site of injury where it makes local blood vessels leaky, allowing passage of other helpful molecules to the wound. It also activates local sensory nerves causing pain, which teaches us not to do whatever it is that we did again, and serves as a longer-term reminder to protect that area and let it heal.

After identifying large quantities of bradykinin over and over again in different wasp venoms (paper wasps, yellowjackets, hornets and more) I decided it was time to tackle this longstanding puzzle.

We analysed the genes that encode these bradykinins to investigate why they were in certain venoms and how they got there. This revealed a surprising answer.

Evolutionary doppelgängers

When we see two people who look indistinguishable, we might assume they are identical twins or at least closely related (because our genes play an important role in our appearance, and closely related individuals share similar genes).

The same is true for molecules.

When scientists see identical molecules, this often reflects shared ancestry. But, as we discovered, this is not the case for bradykinin.

Wasp venom and frog skin bradykinins are unrelated to vertebrate bradykinin.

Instead, they are evolutionary doppelgängers – they look the same, but have completely different genetic backgrounds. In many instances they are completely structurally identical, atom-for-atom.

And the plot gets even thicker. We discovered that bradykinin evolved independently at least four times in wasps and ants – and probably even more times in frogs.

A way to deter predators

For there to be another individual who looks exactly like you (but is otherwise genetically not closely related) somewhere out there in the world is not inconceivable – there are a lot of other people out there.

But if there were six or seven, you might start to wonder if some other force was at play. We investigated what was behind the repeated evolution of bradykinin doppelgängers in wasps and frogs.

We showed that bradykinin in each wasp venom exquisitely mimics the bradykinin of that species’ vertebrate predators. This suggests it evolved in response to predation.

When delivered in large amounts via a sting, the bradykinin in venom deceives the predator’s body into thinking it has sustained an injury, triggering sensory nerves and causing pain and sensitivity.

This is very useful for the wasp – and it’s one of the reasons why some stings feel like getting stabbed by a needle.

In a similar way, frog skin bradykinins also evolved to deter vertebrate predators.

Life is not random

The independent evolution of the same trait in unrelated organisms is known as convergent evolution. Bradykinin is one of an increasing number of examples where scientists are uncovering convergent evolution at the level of genes.

Together these examples have revealed the crucial – and previously underappreciated – role of convergence in the evolution of life.

Convergent evolution tells us that genes are more flexible and that the environment plays a greater role in shaping them than has been widely accepted.

It also tells us that the evolution of life is not a random, unpredictable muddle of improbable outcomes. In fact it is progressing in an ordered, constrained, predictable – perhaps even inevitable – way.

Sam Robinson, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As Israel and the United States strike Iran, global oil markets are on edge.

Oil prices have begun rising even before any disruption to supply. Oil traders are factoring in the possibility the Strait of Hormuz might close.

Roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil passes through this narrow waterway between Iran to the north and Oman and the United Arab Emirates to the south. One oil tanker has been bombed and traffic has all but halted. In global energy markets, the mere threat of interruption can push prices higher.

Oil isn’t like most commodities. Control of the energy-dense fuel shapes geopolitics. Three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries dependent on oil imports for cars, trucks and other uses. Controlling the flow of oil and, increasingly, gas, has long been used as leverage, from the oil shocks of the 1970s to Russia cutting European gas supplies in 2022.

Any serious disruption to tanker traffic in the Gulf would send shockwaves through global oil markets and threaten economic stability. Long queues have already been reported in Australia as motorists vie to fill up before possible price spikes.

As international tensions increase, nations from Cuba to Ukraine to Ethiopia are accelerating plans to reduce their oil dependence and boost energy security.

Half a century of oil leverage

The power of oil became obvious during the 1973 oil embargo, when major Middle East oil producers slashed supply in a bid to reshape US foreign policy. Prices quadrupled, economies stalled and energy security became a central political issue almost overnight. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have since coordinated supply to drive up prices.

Today, the mechanisms of control look different but the power created by oil dependence remains.

Even before US military action, sanctions on major producers such as Iran and Venezuela have cut supply and reshaped trade flows.

Current tensions near chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz introduce risk premiums into prices.

Oil markets are forward-looking, meaning prices reflect not only current supply and demand but expectations of what might happen next.

The strikes on Iran have seen prices of Brent crude – the global benchmark – trading around US$76 (A$107) per barrel, up from roughly US$68 (A$96) a few weeks earlier. Because prices are global, political instability anywhere can have economic consequences everywhere.

Who’s reducing dependence on oil?

In 2015, India blocked Nepal’s oil imports, triggering chaos. In response, authorities encouraged the very rapid growth of electric vehicles. Oil imports have begun to fall.

More recently, the Russia–Ukraine war and US strikes on Venezuela and Iran have brought new focus on reducing oil imports and bolstering domestic energy security.

In oil-dependent Cuba, US pressure has slashed the supply of oil. Blackouts are common and cars stay put. In response, authorities and businesses are importing 34 times as many Chinese solar panels as they did a year ago.

It’s not ideology driving this shift – it’s necessity. Electric vehicle imports, too, are soaring. “Cuba may experience the fastest energy transition in the world,” a Cuban economist told The Economist.

Why renewables change the equation

Unlike oil, solar panels and wind turbines can avoid being shipped through maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz. Renewables are not traded in the same globally centralised way. Power is generated locally and increasingly across many smaller sites.

Russia has long targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and power plants during the war. In response, Ukraine is ramping up renewables as fast as possible, as decentralised power generation is much harder to destroy. As a Ukrainian energy expert told Yale360, a single missile “could take out” a coal power station, while a wind farm would require 40 missiles.

Decentralised power is more resilient, meaning damage to one farm won’t collapse the grid.

Resilience through electric transport

Electrification of transport is a key plank of these new approaches to energy security.

Electric vehicles powered by locally-produced electricity reduce exposure to global oil markets. This thinking is visible in Ethiopia’s decision to ban new internal combustion cars.

China imports most of its oil – much of it from Iran. Beijing has been accelerating its rapid shift to electric vehicles. Last year, EVs made up 50% of new cars in China and 12% of the total fleet. China is increasingly using oil to make plastics, not for transport. Last year’s uptick in imports was due to stockpiling of huge volumes amid global uncertainty.

Australia’s exposure

Australia imports the vast majority of its refined fuels. We would have about a month’s worth of petrol before we ran out.

If wars drive up oil prices, pain at the petrol pump will flow through to freight costs, food prices and inflation.

While the EV shift is accelerating, Australia is slow by global standards. Even as electricity rapidly goes green, transport remains overwhelmingly dependent on foreign oil. That leaves Australia exposed.

Energy policy is security policy

Renewables do not eliminate geopolitical risk. Power grids face cyber threats. Critical mineral supply chains introduce new dependencies – and much of today’s solar panel, battery and EV manufacturing is concentrated in China.

But there is a clear structural difference. Decentralised systems are harder to manipulate through supply chokepoints. Solar panels, once installed, generate energy locally. The vulnerability shifts from ongoing fuel imports to upfront manufacturing dependence.

Oil has shaped global politics for decades because it’s transportable, globally traded and only a few countries have large reserves.

Reducing oil dependence is often framed as climate policy. But it is also vital to energy security and national security. Cutting oil use boosts resilience to shocks and reduces the leverage of other nations.

The Iran crisis may not lead to sustained price spikes. Supply may adjust. Markets may stabilise. But leaders will be rethinking the wisdom of exposure to globally traded oil in a volatile world.

Hussein Dia, Professor of Transport Technology and Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Petrol prices began rising even before the conflict in Iran drove oil prices higher. Australia imports around 80% of its fuel, which means prices can spike when geopolitical shocks ripple through supply chains.

As motorists face long queues in Australian cities, some will wonder whether it’s time to join the increasing numbers going electric to prevent hip-pocket pain.

Avoiding the weekly petrol fill-up is appealing. But the sticking point for many motorists has long been the higher upfront cost of an EV. As competition has increased, EV prices have fallen. Even so, most EVs still cost several thousand dollars more than a comparable conventional car.

Over time, cheaper running costs and less maintenance mean EV owners should recoup some of this money. But how long does it take? To answer this, I helped develop a public EV payback calculator, comparing five popular EVs with closely matched hybrid cars in the Australian market. Here, you can estimate how long it will take to pay back the price difference between EV and a conventional car.

It turns out the biggest factor is how you charge your EV. For drivers who rely on pricier public fast chargers, payback will take much longer. But drivers who charge mostly at home can see payback in a few years.

What makes EVs cheaper to run?

Battery electric vehicles are generally cheaper to run for three main reasons.

1. Electricity is typically cheaper than petrol or diesel per kilometre driven – especially when charging at home using off-peak grid power or rooftop solar. EVs convert energy to motion far more efficiently than internal combustion engines, so less energy is wasted as heat.

2. Maintenance costs are usually lower. EVs have far fewer moving parts, no oil changes, and less wear on brake pads, given regenerative braking does more work to slow the car – and recharges the battery. Over time, this translates into lower servicing bills. Early fears about battery degradation are vanishing, as batteries generally last longer than the lifespan of the car and last longer in the real world than during testing.

3. Running costs are more predictable. Petrol prices change daily, while electricity prices usually change more slowly. EV drivers able to charge at home usually choose to charge cheaply at off-peak times or off home solar.

These advantages are real. But they don’t mean EVs are cheaper for everyone in every situation.

How does the calculator work?

At present, the MG4 Excite electric hatch retails at roughly A$42,000 drive-away, while a Toyota Corolla hybrid costs about $40,000.

The question is how fast the EV’s lower running costs recover this gap (in this case, $1,900).

My EV payback calculator models three annual distances: 10,000km (light use), 15,000km (average) and 20,000km (heavy). It also tests three patterns of charging: mostly home charging, a mix of home and public charging, and mostly public fast charging.

The calculator models five vehicle pairs, reflecting the choice many Australians are weighing up: battery EV or hybrid combustion engine vehicle in the same size class and price bracket. This is a conservative choice, because hybrids tend to have lower running costs than traditional cars.

For each pair, the calculator takes the price difference and annual running costs, and then calculates how long it would take for the lower energy and servicing costs of the battery EV to recover the higher purchase price.

These are not predictions or financial advice. They are indicative comparisons using conservative, transparent assumptions.

What does this look like?

The payback time shows how long it takes an EV to recover its higher upfront price under different driving and charging patterns.

Shorter payback times mean savings accumulate quickly, while longer periods indicate the extra upfront cost lasts a long time or is never recovered.

Payback time is useful, but it helps to see what it means in annual savings. Here, the big takeaway is charging behaviour matters as much as the car itself. Charging mostly at home delivers consistent savings, while relying heavily on public fast charging shrinks or even erases the advantage.

Home charging at off-peak times might cost 20 cents a kilowatt-hour, while the same charge at an ultrafast public charger might cost 60c/kWH. For a car with a 60kWH battery, that means a charge could cost A$12 at home or $36 at the public charger.

This means EV affordability is partly a question of charging access and electricity prices, not just sticker price. The economics are shaped less by the badge on the bonnet than by the charging pattern.

Payback time isn’t the only consideration. Many buyers also consider safety features, performance, convenience and likely resale value. But this shows whether an EV is cheaper to run and whether it repays its premium quickly are not the same question.

Home charging makes the biggest difference

When charged mostly at home, all five EVs save money on running costs when driven the typical 15,000km a year. In some cases, savings are large enough that payback arrives well within the typical ownership period of around ten years.

The clearest EV examples are the MG4 Excite and BYD Atto 3. These two battery EVs have moderate upfront premiums, and energy costs are meaningfully lower than hybrid equivalents. Under baseline assumptions, the MG4 can pay back in 3–5 years and the Atto 3 in 5–8 years. Payback is faster for higher-mileage drivers. This shows a lower upfront premium matters as much as efficiency.

Reliance on fast chargers can wipe out savings

Once charging shifts towards more expensive public fast chargers, the running-cost advantage narrows and payback takes longer. This is particularly visible when EVs are compared against efficient hybrids, which already have lower fuel costs.

That does not mean EVs are “bad”. It means more expensive public charging can eat up much of the running-cost advantage, especially when petrol prices are low. For prospective EV drivers without access to home charging, it’s worth checking the cost of nearby public chargers.

What does this mean for you?

My calculator shows EVs save most money and recoup their premium fastest when charging happens mostly at home, especially for people who drive more. But when motorists rely heavily on public fast charging, payback is less certain.

As Australian drivers consider going electric to save money – and end reliance on imported fuels – the key is not to focus only on the sticker price. It’s more useful to think through where you will charge your EV most of the time and estimate the costs and savings from doing so.

Hussein Dia, Professor of Transport Technology and Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As many Australians prepare for the Labour Day long weekend, you might be watching the price at the fuel bowser with more trepidation than usual.

The crisis in the Middle East has caused global disruptions to energy and liquid fuel markets. And we are feeling it in Australia.

Shipping in the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the only sea passage from the oil-rich Persian Gulf to the open ocean, has come to a virtual standstill, sparking a global oil price rise of about 10%. And the risk of Middle Eastern energy infrastructure becoming military targets has also raised the prospect of reduced production.

So, what does this mean for Australia?

Prices rising

Australia imports roughly 90% of its liquid fuel (refined petrol and diesel). This means world crude oil prices have a direct impact on our pump prices.

In Australia, analysts say petrol prices could jump by around 40c a litre, meaning the cost of filling the tank would be about $24 for a 60 litre tank.

Airfares are also affected, because jet fuel is directly linked to crude oil prices. Prices could rise by 10–20%, and even more for long-haul international flights, which use more fuel.

Is Australia buffered from oil price spikes?

The short answer is no. As an importer of liquid fuel, Australia is highly susceptible to oil prices spikes, meaning global shocks flow directly to the pump. There is no liquid fuel market to regulate, so the only protection we have as importers is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which monitors exploitative retail behaviour.

The ACCC can intervene to prevent price gouging and unconscionable practices, but it has no power over the market. Therefore, it cannot insulate consumers against normal market increases.

There is also the possibility that oil supplies will run low. The International Energy Agency (IEA) requires countries keep a stockpile of oil to be used where global shocks cause a shortage. However, Australia’s current emergency strategic fuel reserve is “non-compliant”, and has been since 2012. At the start of 2026, Australia has an estimated 36 days of petrol, 34 days of diesel and 32 days of jet fuel. This is the largest stockpile Australia has had in 15 years, but it still may not be enough.

If our fuel supply slows and the government declares an emergency, priority must be given to critical services such as essential works, the defence force and national security, over public distribution. Based on this, the prediction is that reserves could cover 26 days of usual petrol demand, 25 days of diesel consumption, and 20 days’ worth of jet fuel.

What about gas and electricity prices?

Australia produces a lot of gas (especially Liquid Natural Gas or LNG), and our domestic east coast gas prices are linked to global LNG export prices. This is because gas producers want to sell gas at the highest prices, and these are generally found on the export market. Because of this, a significant percentage of gas produced annually in Australia is sold internationally to countries like South Korea, Japan and China. In the first half of 2025, roughly 93% of LNG produced in Australia was shipped overseas.

Where global LNG prices rise, exporters can charge more overseas and this puts upward pressure on domestic gas prices, even when supply levels have not changed. If Australian gas generators increase the wholesale price of gas because of a global spike in prices, domestic gas and electricity prices also go up.

Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up the international price of LNG because traders expect tighter supplies. Since the Middle East crisis began, LNG prices have soared by about 12%.

How can Australia respond?

Since 2023, Australia has a mandatory gas code in place to reasonable domestic gas prices and supply on the east coast. It imposes a price cap of $12 per gigajoule, good-faith negotiation rules, and transparency obligations on producers.

But this code is not a full shield – if LNG prices surge dramatically, domestic gas prices may still rise within the “reasonable price” threshold. Nonetheless, domestic consumers on the east coast are better protected than previously.

In addition, Australia still has the Domestic Gas Reservation Mechanism, which allows the government to trigger export controls in the event of a domestic shortfall. It has never been triggered and it has a lead-in time, but it is possible.

The government has also proposed a gas reservation policy, set to take effect in 2027. It will mean suppliers of gas in the east coast market must not enter into wholesale supply contracts where the gas price exceeds a reasonable price.

How will this gas reservation policy work?

Under the scheme, gas exporters will need to demonstrate they have met domestic supply obligations before LNG export approvals can be granted. They will also be required to set aside 15–25% of production for domestic supply.

The overall aim is to increase domestic gas availability and reduce reliance on volatile export pricing. Once implemented, the reservation policy combined with the mandatory gas code will help to insulate Australian consumers from price spikes like those currently triggered by the Iran conflict.

However, the reservation policy will only apply to a fraction of total supply and cannot fully insulate against a prolonged global increase in pricing. There’s no easy answer, and more fuel price hikes are likely.

Samantha Hepburn, Professor of Law, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you care about sustainability, buying something as simple as a pillowcase can feel surprisingly hard.

Search for “sustainable sheets” and you’re flooded with familiar and tantalising promises: silky, bamboo, vegan, antimicrobial, breathable, organic. The language sounds reassuringly scientific and ethical, suggesting comfort, health, and environmental responsibility all wrapped up in one product.

The problem is that, in textiles, these words rarely mean what consumers think they mean.

The fashion industry is full of greenwashing, with brands using language to manipulate consumers.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s 2023 sweep into greenwashing claims identified textiles, garments and shoes as one of the most problematic sectors.

As textile researchers, we spend a lot of time unpacking product descriptions that look authoritative but often conflate different fabric components (fibre, yarn, fabric construction and finishes) into a single performance or marketing claim.

In one recent example, it took us more than 20 minutes to decode what was being sold as a “regenerated silk” fibre.

If two textile academics struggle to decipher a product description, the problem isn’t consumer literacy. It’s the way the information is being presented.

The case of the ‘silky’ pillowcase

Silky pillowcases have been heavily marketed as wellness products that will reduce wrinkles, prevent acne, and keep hair smooth and tangle-free. The promise is that a simple switch can quietly improve your life while you sleep.

In functional terms, there is some truth here. Smooth, “silky” fabrics like satin exhibit properties that are beneficial for skin and hair.

But “silky” isn’t a fibre at all.

Silk is the only naturally occurring filament fibre (meaning it is long and continuous), and most commercial silk comes from the Bombyx mori caterpillar.

Other common filament fibres are polyester and rayon (also known as viscose, which is often marketed and sold as bamboo), which are manufactured by extruding liquid polymers through spinnerets and solidifying them into long, continuous fibres.

When filament fibres are spun into yarns and woven in a satin structure, the resulting fabric is incredibly smooth.

The promises of wrinkle reduction and curl preservation being sold as features of a silky pillowcase cannot be completely attributed to a specific natural fibre’s biology. These claims are just as much as result of simply weaving smooth filament fibres into a satin weave – thus there is the exact same mechanism at work in polyester satin pillowcases that make no sustainability claims at all.

For example, bamboo is often presented as the sustainable middle ground between silk (often prohibitively expensive) and polyester (plastic) as bamboo is plant-based, fast-growing, and natural.

To make bamboo feel silky, the plant material is dissolved and extruded into viscose, a regenerated fibre, a process that strips away the original fibre structure entirely, along with many of its associated properties, such as being antimicrobial.

Conventional viscose/rayon production involves dissolving wood, bamboo or other cellulose using carbon disulfide, a chemical with health hazards, especially for exposed workers.

And while rayon is often marketed as “sustainable” because it comes from renewable resources such as trees and bamboo, old-growth forests are still often harvested to produce it.

‘Silkiness’ is vastly different to silk

At this point, the confusion isn’t just understandable — it’s structural.

Consumers are being asked to make complex ethical and sustainability judgements using language that collapses fibre, yarn type and fabric construction into a single sensory promise.

In other words, “silkiness” arises from a combination of fibre type, yarn and fabric construction, rather than whether a fibre is natural or synthetic.

This is why three very different fibres – silk, polyester and rayon – can all be turned into satin pillowcases that may feel remarkably similar, while carrying completely different environmental, ethical and end-of-life consequences.

Polyester comes from petrochemicals and releases plastic microfibres every time it’s washed. And unless rayon comes from a certified source, there’s a risk old-growth forests were harvested for the wood pulp feedstock.

By focusing on how a fabric feels, brands can imply a product inherits the cultural value of silk – luxury, smoothness, naturalness – even when the fibre itself is fossil-fuel derived or heavily chemically processed.

5 questions to ask

When assessing a sustainability claim in clothing or textiles, consumers can start with simple questions, such as:

1. What’s being highlighted and what’s being left out? Marketing often draws attention to a single fibre, plant or property while avoiding details about blends, chemical processing or finishes.

2. Where does the advertised claim come from? Is it from the fibre itself, the yarn, the fabric construction, or a surface treatment? Comfort words like “silky” or “breathable” can come from any of these.

3. Are scientific terms being used precisely or suggestively? Words like antimicrobial, organic, biodegradable and regenerated sound technical, but in clothing they’re often undefined, loosely applied and rarely backed by scientific testing.

4. What design choices shape end-of-life? Small amounts of blended fibres or elastane can prevent composting or recycling entirely, regardless of how sustainable the product claims to be.

5. What isn’t visible on the label? Finishes, coatings, sewing threads, dyes and trims are rarely disclosed, yet they materially affect durability and disposal.

Time for change

In Europe, a digital product passport on all items from 2027 will require companies to disclose not only fibre type, but also chemicals and processes used in production.

To protect consumers, it’s time Australia followed suit.

Rebecca Van Amber, Senior Lecturer in Fashion & Textiles, RMIT University and Pia Interlandi, Associate Professor of Creative Practice, School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Melting ice is an emblem of climate change. For sea ice, the Arctic has been grabbing most of the headlines for its truly alarming rate of decline. But recently Antarctica has followed suit.

Around ten years ago everything changed. After decades of stability and within just a few years, an ocean area nearly the size of Greenland suddenly became sea-ice free. At first, scientists thought this could be a blip, but now it is described as a step change, with large ocean areas remaining ice free ever since.

This has dramatic consequences for the marine life of Antarctica. The ice decline was so sudden it challenged most existing computer models of the Southern Ocean and its ecosystems. Models tend not to predict step changes very well. Likewise, due to the sheer seismic suddenness of ice loss, the boots-on-the-ground fieldworkers could not scramble fast enough to document how the loss of sea ice was affecting the plants and animals living here.

Our 2025 study looked at ice loss from a different perspective. We used satellite imagery to pinpoint the exact wavelengths of light that are reflected from the upper ocean back into space.

Just like landscapes can be classified, we divided the ocean into distinct “seascapes”, based on the wavelengths of light that they reflect. This tells us about the phytoplankton – the tiny drifting planktonic algae that support the rest of the food web. Changes in light reflections indicate how much phytoplankton is present and also which types of species are present.

Surprisingly, we found that large and remote expanses of the Southern Ocean actually increased from very low concentrations of phytoplankton to more moderate levels. Nearly 70% of the Southern Ocean now has, on average, more phytoplankton since the ice declined around ten years ago.

This increase in food supply might sound good. But sea ice supports unique marine ecosystems, and in many ways. For example, it provides nooks and crannies for shelter and nursery. Sea ice also nurtures hotspots of food, supporting large algae called diatoms that are easily eaten and passed up Antarctic food chains.

Diatoms are a key food source for Antarctic krill, shrimp-like crustaceans which also need sea ice as a nursery habitat. Krill in turn are the food source for penguins, whales and other marine species, as well as being the target species for an important fishery valued in hundreds of millions of dollars.

Winners and losers

Krill do not seem to be benefiting from the increases in phytoplankton after the dramatic loss of sea ice. Instead, gelatinous filter feeders known as “salps” associate with the ice-free seascapes that have increased in size.

Salps are a colonial, barrel-shaped group of species that pump water through their transparent bodies, filtering out even the smallest phytoplankton. They are more nutritious than most jellyfish, but much less carbon rich than crustaceans such as krill, who help in the storage of carbon at depth.

A study by another team sheds more light on what was happening. They showed that the step-change in sea ice marked a sudden shift in phytoplankton composition. Suddenly, a group of tiny phytoplankton called cryptophytes started increasing.

Salps act like marine vacuum cleaners that can rapidly and efficiently remove even these small cryptophytes from the water. It looks like the recent low ice era has changed large expanses of ocean from having too little food even for salps into that sweet spot – not super-rich but just good enough for these vacuum cleaners to thrive.

These studies are just starting to map how the “new-normal” low-ice era is reshaping Antarctic ecosystems. Salps are not fished commercially, do not appear so important in storing carbon, and support different types of food chain. Any long-term shift in the relative dominance of krill and salps will have far-reaching ramifications for Southern Ocean ecosystems and their role in nutrient cycling.

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Angus Atkinson, Professor of Marine Ecology, Plymouth Marine Laboratory; Bob Brewin, Associate Professor, Earth & Environmental Science, University of Exeter, and Victor Martinez Vicente, Principal Investigator, Bio-optical Oceanography, Plymouth Marine Laboratory

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

More than 110 million acres of land across the U.S. are protected in 806 federally designated wilderness areas – together an area slightly larger than the state of California. For the most part, these places have been left alone for decades, in keeping with the 1964 Wilderness Act’s directive that they be “untrammeled by man.”

But in a time when lands are experiencing the effects of climate change and people are renewing their understanding of Indigenous knowledge and stewardship practices, protecting these places may require action, not inaction.

New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness, where the Chihuahuan Desert converges with the Rocky Mountains, was the first to receive a formal wilderness designation in 1924. Now, all but six U.S. states contain wilderness. In Minnesota, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness protects more than a thousand lakes and several hundred miles of streams. In Florida, the marshes and saltwater bays of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness are home to flamingos, manatees and alligators.

These diverse ecosystems are the country’s most protected lands, where human activity is severely restricted. Federal regulations exclude resource extraction such as logging and mining; developments such as the building of roads and structures; low-level overflights by planes and helicopters; and mechanized equipment such as chain saws. People can walk, ride horses, canoe, fish and camp temporarily in these areas, but that’s about it.

Yet, research my colleagues and I have conducted indicates that this approach can make it difficult to address two of the biggest challenges facing wilderness.

First, the dominant American ideal of wilderness – as wildlands that flourish best in the absence of human management – conflicts with the growing understanding that many wilderness areas were and remain part of the ancestral homelands of Indigenous peoples, who in fact tended those lands for thousands of years.

And second, as climate change and other ecological stressors affect wilderness, some forms of human intervention could help sustain the very ecological qualities that led to these areas being so strictly protected.

Indigenous influence on landscapes

Many wilderness areas have long histories as homelands where Indigenous peoples lived, hunted and gathered.

In Alaska, the Inland Dena’ina people marked vast trail networks by physically modifying trees, including by scarring bark and cutting limbs. Many of these marked trees can be found within Lake Clark National Park, two-thirds of which is designated wilderness.

In Washington’s Indian Heaven Wilderness, Northwest tribes gathered to pick and then burn the area’s huckleberry fields, a practice that increased the abundance of both plants and berries.

In the Southwest, Indigenous peoples bred six species of agave plants to be more palatable than wild agaves; researchers have found four of these domesticated species in six wilderness areas.

These lands may seem wild to some, but as Indigenous ecologists Robin Wall Kimmerer and Frank Kanawha Lake observed in 2001, “Every landscape reflects the history and culture of the people who inhabit it.”

Ecological stressors intensify

The Wilderness Act’s strict rules are not able to protect wilderness areas in the U.S. from new and unprecedented ecological stressors.

For instance, many wilderness areas are experiencing uncharacteristically severe wildfires. These events are a result of climate change, fire suppression and the prevention of traditional Indigenous forest management practices, including burning. Together, those forces have resulted in large-scale disruptions of historical cycles of fire, in which wildfires were often more frequent but less severe.

Scholars recognize prescribed burning as an effective strategy to protect forests from catastrophic fires, though it remains controversial in wilderness as human intervention. Government policy allows lightning-ignited wildfires to burn in federal wilderness areas in certain circumstances, but most of these fires are still suppressed – a human intervention that is widely accepted.

In California’s Sequoia-Kings Canyon and John Krebs wilderness areas, recent intense wildfires have killed unprecedented numbers of giant sequoias, a species that historically thrived because of more frequent, less-intense fires. The 2020 Castle Fire is estimated to have killed between 7,500 and 10,600 large sequoias – or 10% to 14% of all sequoias in the Sierra Nevada – many of them in wilderness.

In New Mexico’s Dome Wilderness, repeated intense fires have killed entire forests, transforming these lands into shrublands. Models indicate that up to 30% of forested landscapes in the Southwest are vulnerable to this type of change.

The absence of fire can also be a problem for wilderness ecosystems. In the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, researchers anticipate a significant decline in the area’s pine-dominated forests unless fire is reintroduced – with the potential for these forests to disappear within 150 years.

Helping fire resume its natural role on the landscape – through prescribed burning or letting natural fires burn, overseen by firefighters and land managers – isn’t easy. Tree-ring histories and archaeological, paleoecological and ethnographic records show that frequent burning of resting areas and campsites by the Anishinaabe people along commonly traveled waterways helped create the Boundary Waters’ open red pine forests. But the wilderness-protection group Wilderness Watch says that prescribed burning by federal land managers today constitutes “a prime example of humans imposing their will on Wilderness to try to create managers’ desired conditions rather than allowing nature to shape the area.”

And fire isn’t the only concern. A combination of climate change, invasions by a nonnative fungus called white pine blister rust and outbreaks of mountain pine beetles have led to whitebark pines’ listing as a threatened species. An iconic tree that can live between 500 and 1,000 years, whitebark pines are common in high-elevation wilderness areas in the West, where they provide key habitat and food for wildlife, help regulate snowmelt and reduce soil erosion.

For the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, whitebark pines are culturally significant, with their seeds serving as an important traditional food. The tribes have declared they feel a responsibility “to do all that we can to ensure the survival of this beautiful and ancient tree,” and developed a restoration plan for the Flathead Reservation in Montana, which includes the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness. But in federal wilderness, their approach – active tending through prescribed fire and replanting – would likely not be allowed.

Reimagining federal wilderness management

Within tribal wildernesses, Indigenous nations honor spiritual connections between people and the land through relationships of reciprocity, as seen in the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness. There, members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are guaranteed the right not only to use the resources by hunting and fishing but also to connect with the landscape through cultural, spiritual and religious practices.

In recent years, managers at several federal wilderness areas have worked to include tribes in decisions about how these lands are stewarded. In California, a 2021 agreement gives the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria a voice in the management of native tule elk at Tomales Point, most of which is part of the Phillip Burton Wilderness. In 2024, after pressure from the tribal community and others, the National Park Service began removing a 2-mile-long fence that prevented the tule elk from roaming freely and introduced new signs and interpretive programs that incorporated traditional ecological knowledge.

The long-debated question of how to best steward wilderness is increasingly urgent. In addition to its “untrammeled by man” provision, the Wilderness Act also says wilderness areas should be “protected and managed so as to preserve (their) natural conditions.” So the question remains whether people should leave small slices of nature entirely alone, even as humans alter the conditions of the planet, or whether some careful actions could help protect these precious places for generations to come.

Sean Parks, Jonathan Long, Jonathan Coop, Serra Hoagland, Melanie Armstrong and Don Hankins contributed to this article.

Clare E. Boerigter, Wilderness Fire Research Fellow at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Rocky Mountain Research Station, United States Forest Service

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A new three-part factual drama, Dirty Business, highlights the murky world of the English water industry. This Channel 4 docudrama follows the lives of two concerned citizens from Oxfordshire in south-east England: a retired police detective called Ash Smith and a retired university professor called Peter Hammond, who is an expert in deciphering patterns in big data sets. Together, they have been investigating sewage discharges into their local river for more than a decade.

The series spotlights their struggles to get information from their water company about releases of untreated sewage, and for the Environment Agency (EA) to take their concerns about pollution seriously. Interwoven with their accounts are tragic stories of several families whose lives have been turned upside down through exposure to contaminated water.

During a beach holiday in Devon in 1999, for example, eight-year-old Heather Preen died after contracting a deadly strain of E coli. The cause of the outbreak was not identified and a verdict of misadventure was returned by a jury. However, several others who visited the beach that day had also contracted that specific strain of E coli, making causes such as food poisoning unlikely. Elsewhere in England, the series shows rivers depleted of life and discoloured with sewage.

Water bills are increasing by as much as 47% to improve the failing infrastructure. Customers are angry that some of their money is servicing the debts of the water industry. Meanwhile, reports point to large profits for some water firms.

Dirty Business captures the sense of anger and frustration felt by many people.

As a water pollution scientist with more than 25 years’ experience, I worry about the lack of corporate and political accountability across this sector. That includes financial accountability, accountability for human health, nature and water security.

England’s water industry has been privatised since 1989. As such, water company boards exist to make money for their shareholders.

Many water companies have been fined millions of pounds for polluting discharges, failure to maintain infrastructure and withholding evidence from investigative authorities. However, critics have argued that these fines have been built into the business model, as dividends are not related to environmental performance. The water industry is also now lobbying government against further regulation and fines.

Between 2019 and 2024, water companies in England discharged sewage for a total of 16.3 million hours. This is equivalent to sewage being constantly released from one pipe for more than 1,850 years.

Profit drives pollution

Since privatisation began, water companies in England have paid out an estimated £76 billion in dividends to shareholders while accruing approximately £56 billion in debts. Dirty Business highlights not only what went wrong with the water industry, but the tactics used to deny, deflect and distract from its poor environmental performance.

I have studied the disinformation and misinformation by water companies with Hammond, a professor in computational biology. Our peer-reviewed article in the journal Nature Water highlights how companies maintain their profits by controlling the narrative and influencing the regulatory process.

Our study involved analysing water company communications – including company websites, social media, evidence given to parliamentary committees and public reports. We compared their strategies with a list of 28 tactics commonly used by tobacco, alcohol, fossil fuels and chemical industries to distract from serious environmental and human health issues.

We found that the English water companies and their sponsored lobbyists appeared to be using at least 22 of those tactics to deny, deflect or distort the facts. This results in the delay of civil, regulatory and political scrutiny.

Investigations ongoing

Since 2021, the EA in England has been conducting its largest ever criminal investigation into the water industry – which is still ongoing after five years. The House of Lords has been investigating the industry regulator, Ofwat. There are several other ongoing judicial reviews and civil court cases against several water companies.

A new government watchdog, the Office of Environmental Protection (OEP), has been conducting investigations into the financial and environmental regulators of the water industry. It concluded that “there have been failures to comply with environmental law by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the EA and Ofwat relating to the regulation of network CSOs [combined sewer overflows]”.

CSOs are overflow pipes which discharge untreated sewage into rivers and coasts at times of increased rainfall. These are permitted under certain conditions by the Environment Agency, such as exceptional rainfall, to prevent sewage backing up our drains.

But many swimmers, surfers and other concerned citizens have noticed these CSOs discharging sewage even on days when there was little or no rainfall.

An independent water commission set up by the current government has recommended “a complete overhaul of England and Wales’ water sector” and suggested merging Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and parts of the EA to create one new regulating body. Frustratingly for many, this commission was not given the scope to look into the pros and cons of bringing water back into public ownership.

The UK government halved the EA’s environmental protection budget from £170 million in 2009-10 (following the banking crisis) to £76 million in 2019-22.

Since 2009, the water industry has been left to police its own pollution incidences through a process known as “operator self monitoring” – whereby water companies are responsible for carrying out their own environmental monitoring. Evidenced by whistleblowers, the documentary portrays the shock and frustration within the EA to the rolling back of regulation by senior management.

Dirty Business illustrates how corporate greed and the fundamental lack of governance and regulatory oversight across the nation’s water industry allowed this sewage crisis to happen – at the cost of environmental and human health, and our future water security.

Alex Ford, Professor of Biology, University of Portsmouth

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

After a dry 2025 with the UK’s warmest summer on record, winter 2026 delivered something very different: rain for 50 days in a row in parts of Devon and Cornwall, one of the rainiest seasons on record and only 80% of average sunshine.

Scientists have given this a name: climate whiplash.

Climate whiplash describes rapid swings from one type of weather extreme to another, most commonly from really persistent drought to really persistent wet weather. Globally, such swings have increased in recent decades. Shorter-term whiplashes over a few months have become roughly a third to two-thirds more frequent, while year-to-year swings have increased by up to a third.

In Europe and the UK these swings tend to be driven by the jet stream, a fast-moving body of air higher up in the atmosphere. This winter, it was sat across the south of the UK and moved fast, blowing wet and windy weather from the northern Atlantic.

Weather often moves in “systems” – large rotating masses of similar air – and these systems effectively bump into one another like billiard balls. This winter, however, a large block of settled weather stayed in place across Europe. This acted like a barrier, causing the wet weather carried by the jet stream to slow down across the UK.

Will the UK whiplash back into drought?

Predicting what the UK’s summer will look like months in advance is challenging. Seasonal forecasting does exist, but it can’t tell us if it will rain on a particular day in July. What it can do is estimate the likelihood of certain weather trends – such as hotter or drier conditions – developing over the course of a season.

These forecasts are getting better. Under certain conditions, by May, scientists can now anticipate an increased risk of heat extremes in Europe that summer. Other research suggests that combined heat and drought extremes can sometimes be forecast one to two months ahead.

Early indications for summer 2026 suggest that the UK will probably experience slightly drier than average conditions in early summer, with an added risk of extreme heat. That does not make a hot, dry summer inevitable. But it would be consistent with climate whiplash.

More broadly, climate projections suggest that the UK and much of Europe are likely to experience more of these “flipflop” weather patterns – persistent dry spells followed by months of downpours, or vice versa – as the world warms. Although a wet winter does not automatically lead to a dry summer, the jet stream is a key driver in all of our weather throughout the year.

Why this matters

Policy is still largely designed around averages, yet the weather is behaving less and less like an average year. If the UK is heading for an era of sharper swings between flood and drought, policymaking and adaptation systems will need to catch up.

Take housing and insurance, for example. Flood Re, the government’s reinsurance scheme that keeps flood cover affordable, is only eligible for houses built before January 2009. Since then, more than 100,000 new homes have been built-in high-risk flood areas – homes that may face rising premiums just as extreme rainfall increases.

In addition, we know that 80% of houses in the UK overheat in the summer. Many properties will be doubly vulnerable: too wet in winter, too hot in summer.

Climate whiplash also threatens food security. Fields can be waterlogged when planting yet too dry and dusty as crops approach harvest, lowering the yields that are produced. Transport networks are similarly exposed: some rail lines were submerged during winter floods, only a few months after a summer drought caused lines nearby to buckle as the underlying soil dried up.

These events are signs of systems – from insurance to infrastructure – being tested by weather swinging between extremes harder and faster than ever.

The UK prepares for these risks through a process set out by the 2008 Climate Change Act, which requires regular assessments of how climate change will affect the country. Every five years the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee produces a risk assessment which the government must respond to.

The next assessment, due later in 2026, will land after a year of extremes. If the UK is indeed entering its whiplash era, the question is whether adaptation plans will keep up.

Chloe Brimicombe, Postdoctoral Researcher, Climate Science, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

All animals need to eat to survive, grow and reproduce. To do so, they also need to avoid being eaten. This is a big challenge for many of Australia’s native mammals, because when they search for food, they must also escape the attention of introduced predators, namely, feral cats and red foxes.

Tragically, many have been unable to overcome this test of survival, becoming one of the 40 native mammal species driven to extinction since European colonisation.

But what happens if we reduce the numbers of introduced predators? Do our surviving native species think there is less risk of being the next meal for a cat or fox? How do they respond? And how might we tell? With peanut butter balls, of course!

A deadly game of hide and seek

Natural environments contain predators and prey engaged in a deadly game of hide and seek, and – from the prey’s perspective – a landscape of fear. The extent to which the two groups are aware of each other and able to respond (hunting vs hiding and escape) varies across time and space. Prey might perceive some areas as a riskier proposition, such as more open habitats or times when predators are most active. They therefore reduce their activity to minimise the likelihood of being eaten.

But avoiding being eaten comes at an energetic cost. It may mean preferred areas or times to feed are reduced, which in turn limits rates of growth, reproduction and survival of prey species. Prey animals are constantly weighing up this tradeoff of risk vs reward as they go about their lives.

Tasty treats can assess risk appetite

We can’t know for sure how much animals fear being eaten, but we can assess it indirectly, through their willingness to eat. In our recently published study, we measured how much food animals don’t eat as a indicator of their fear of being eaten. The more food they give up, the greater the risk of predation those animals are assumed to perceive. These experiments are made easier by the fact many mammals are mad about gobbling up peanut butter.

French Island has long been fox free, but had thousands of feral cats. In 2010, authorities began a feral cat eradication, which made it a perfect place for our research.

Importantly, we were able to start our experiment prior to an eradication program of feral cats, which began in 2010 on French Island, Victoria. This means we were able to measure changes in long-nosed potoroos and eastern barred bandicoots habitat use and foraging as cat numbers and activity fell.

So, on fox-free French Island, we placed balls of peanut butter, rolled oats and golden syrup into trays with soil and dug them into the ground, ensuring they were below the soil surface. We did this in more open grassland areas (likely riskier habitat, with less cover and protection from feral cats) and more densely vegetated areas (less risky habitat, due to increased cover).

We used camera traps to measure how often potoroos and bandicoots visited these feeding trays to dig up the tasty treats, and how much of the peanut butter balls they left behind in different habitats and at different periods throughout the ongoing feral cat eradication program.

When feral cats are away, native animals play (more)

As the number of feral cats on French Island was reduced, potoroos and bandicoots used both open and closed habitat types more frequently, and they increased their activity, giving up less food over time. This suggests bandicoots and potoroos do recognise feral cats as a threat, and are able to fairly rapidly change their habitat use and foraging accordingly.

Aside from the obvious benefits of fewer feral cats killing and eating potoroos and bandicoots on French Island, our study suggests there may be substantial benefits for native wildlife — namely increased access to habitats and foraging opportunities — even before the ultimate longer-term goal of cat eradication can be achieved.

Our study’s results are encouraging. Outside the safe havens of invasive predator-free islands and fenced sanctuaries, feral cats are notoriously hard to eradicate from large areas, and there is a constant threat of their return.

To change this, new and more effective ways to control and eradicate feral cats are needed. But until then, reducing and keeping feral cat numbers lower, while also carefully managing habitats to benefit wildlife, can still give native animals the helping hand they need to survive.

We would like to acknowledge that this work was led by former Deakin University Honours student, Te Ao Marama Eketone, and it occurred on the unceded Country of the Bunurong/Boonwurrung peoples.

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Amy Coetsee, Threatened Species Biologist, The University of Melbourne; Anthony Rendall, Lecturer in Conservation Biology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, and Duncan Sutherland, Deputy Director of Research, Phillip Island Nature Parks; Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you stand beside Seven Creeks in Victoria or Spring Creek in Queensland, they might seem small and unremarkable. But these creeks flow into the mighty Goulburn and Condamine Rivers, and punch far above their weight.

Small headwater creeks, at the beginning of a river network, act as the first source of water for bigger rivers. Headwaters deliver the first cool winter flows and the large seasonal pulses of water that trigger fish migration, setting the river’s rhythm. But they’re also the first to suffer from drought, heatwaves and water captured by thousands of small farm dams.

As the rivers of Australia’s largest system, the Murray-Darling Basin, experience a hotter and more variable climate, their headwaters are at the forefront of change.

This year, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is reviewing the basin plan. The plan sets sustainable, legally enforceable limits on water usage, and rightly identifies climate change as a central challenge. Yet its new discussion paper pays surprisingly little attention to the vast network of smaller tributaries that feed the basin’s larger rivers.

We need attention on these “forgotten” rivers and streams, which are increasingly central to the survival of the Murray-Darling Basin as a whole.

The Basin’s blind spot under climate change

The discussion paper focuses on the big-name river systems in the basin, such as the Darling (Baaka) River in the north and heavily regulated rivers in the south such as the Murray, where big dams, barrages and diversions shape almost every drop of water.

This omission reflects how the original plan was conceived, and then in released 2012. Environmental priorities were defined around “priority assets”, such as major river reaches, internationally protected wetlands and refuges for wildlife where environmental flows were expected to deliver measurable ecological benefits.

This made sense when pressure from agricultural water extraction was the major threat. But this leaves out a huge part of the basin’s story.

Threading through the Basin are thousands of kilometres of small, so-called “unregulated” rivers and headwater streams. Historically, they were assumed to be relatively healthy because big dams were absent. But climate change is overturning that assumption. With declining rainfall and hotter temperatures, even small reductions in runoff can dramatically affect their flow.

Worse still, thousands of small farm dams scattered across the landscape are reducing how much water flows through these waterways. More of these streams are now ceasing to flow for the first time, or remaining dry for longer. Climate change is amplifying every existing stress on smaller rivers.

If we are serious about preparing the basin for climate change, we can no longer overlook the springs and creeks which feed the system. These rivers are not peripheral – they’re central to its resilience.

How the warming climate is changing streams

Headwater streams may be small, but they form the ecological backbone of the basin’s rivers. These upper tributaries are biodiversity hotspots, supporting insects, frogs, fish and riverbank species dependent on regular flushes of water and cool, shaded habitats.

When these streams dry out, warm up or fragment into pools, these delicate ecological processes are disrupted. The effects stretch far downstream. Climate change is pushing these streams into more extreme boom–bust cycles, with longer, hotter dry periods punctuated by short bursts of intense rainfall. In small catchments, these shifts affect the entire flow regime: low flows become lower, and flooding becomes less reliable or arrives at the wrong time of year.

Headwater streams are known to be highly sensitive to changes in flow. Under a drier climate these disruptions will intensify.

Can these changes be managed?

We can adapt to some degree. Rules limiting pumping from rivers during low flow periods, and better oversight of farm dams, can help keep water moving during crucial dry periods.

But when rivers are high, it’s a different picture. When river are full or even break their banks, it’s great for aquatic life. Fish move and breed, habitat is refreshed, nutrients moved downstream and wetlands rejoin the system.

Unregulated rivers lack the infrastructure, such as dams or barrages, to create or shape the big replenishing flows that ecosystems rely on, and climate change means these may simply happen less often.

If smaller rivers stop sending these floods downstream, larger rivers lose an essential part of their ecological rhythm.

Why this matters for the whole basin

What happens in the smaller creeks and rivers has a big impact. These small streams set the baseline conditions for the entire Murray–Darling system – from water quality and temperature to the timing of flows. When they falter, the effects are felt downstream.

The 2026 Basin Plan Review offers us a chance to revisit its original assumptions. Focusing on major rivers once addressed the dominant sources of environmental decline, but under climate change, risk is no longer confined to those places.

If the basin loses its headwaters, no amount of downstream engineering can compensate. Bringing these “forgotten rivers” into climate planning isn’t optional — it underpins our environmental, cultural and economic future.

Avril Horne, Research Fellow, Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne; Nick Bond, Professor of Freshwater Ecology and Director of the Centre for Freshwater Ecosystems, La Trobe University, and Robert Morden, Researcher in Hydrology and Ecology, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A growing number of new housing developments feature a little known but powerful bit of tech: smart rainwater tanks.

That’s where the rainwater tank next to each house is fitted with a little computer to open and close a valve that releases water. Software can tell the valve to open to let some water out when, for instance, a storm is coming and you don’t want the tank to overflow. Or, it can keep it closed when you want to capture rainfall to boost household water supplies.

Our research is investigating new ways to network smart tanks together. When the tanks are part of a network, a computer program can keep track of what every tank is doing, and which ones need to release water and where.

Our project is implementing this smart rainwater tank technology to protect and restore stream habitats for platypus in Monbulk Creek, east of Melbourne.

We aim to scale up this ecologically-informed approach so it can be used anywhere, regardless of what species needs to be protected.

Tanks for platypus

Our project, known as Tanks for Platypus, focuses on using a network of smart water tanks in Monbulk Creek to support local platypus populations.

Once widespread across Melbourne and surrounds, the iconic platypus is now listed as vulnerable in Victoria.

Reasons for this decline include urbanisation, changes to stream flows and habitat fragmentation and loss.

Platypus require water flow conditions that support waterbugs (their main food source). They also need space to swim and hide from predators.

The Tanks for Platypus project involves offering eligible residents in the Monbulk Creek catchment a free smart rainwater tank.

We aim to use these networked rainwater tanks and three urban lakes to provide more natural flow conditions for platypus. When finished, this smart rain grid will be distributed across both private and public land with the cooperation of local residents, schools and businesses.

What we did

We have developed a new algorithm that manages how water is released from tanks into waterways, to improve the habitat for platypus and other aquatic life in Monbulk Creek.

We surveyed the creek in detail and simulated flow to map creek habitat. We mapped how much habitat is underwater and where water is deep enough for a platypus to be fully submerged under different flow conditions.

We can now use this information to guide our stormwater release and storage algorithms. For example, when water is not deep enough for platypus to feed and hide, our algorithm requests releases from the rainwater tanks.

During dry periods, supplementing creek flow with water releases from these tanks could significantly improve habitat conditions for platypus.

At times, just 1 megalitre per day (less than half an Olympic swimming pool) can increase available habitat by more than 10%.

This makes the water available when it’s needed and reduces the risk of flooding due to tanks overflowing during rain.

In fact, our algorithms can calculate how much water the tank should release before a storm. This means the tank ends up almost full after a storm, keeping rainwater available for residents.

Where to from here?

We are now investigating how our designs and findings in Monbulk Creek can be applied more broadly, including in high-density housing and new urban developments.

One ecological objective might be, for instance, to reduce incidents where water gushes from overflowing tanks into waterways, eroding streambeds and banks, and potentially disturbing native species. Another might be to boost water levels in local creeks or lakes during dry periods.

Algorithms could be programmed to meet these needs, as well as others such as providing water from the tank to the household water for toilet flushing and garden watering.

And those lucky enough to live near a waterway with platypus will also know they are doing their bit to look after a unique part of our Australian wildlife.

Kathryn Russell, Research Fellow, Urban Stream Geomorphology, The University of Melbourne; Alison Miller, Visiting Fellow, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne; Darren Bos, Senior Research Fellow (Knowledge Broker) School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne; Rhys Coleman, Honorary Researcher, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne, and Tim D Fletcher, Professor of Urban Ecohydrology, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Where are you at most risk when a flood or bushfire strikes? You might think it’s at home. But in reality, the most dangerous time is when you leave and jump in your car. Many flood and bushfire deaths are linked to vehicles, often driven by people evacuating late.

One of the clearest examples comes from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, in which 173 people lost their lives; 35 of those deaths occurred during evacuation, with many on the road.

What is going through people’s minds as they try to escape? We don’t have to guess – many self-recorded evacuation videos are publicly posted on social media. We analysed hundreds of these videos from around the globe to get a better understanding of how people end up in these dangerous situations.

We found many people either evacuated late after realising the situation was more dangerous than they first thought, or drove back to defend their property. They thought they were doing the right thing in trying to flee to safety – only to find the roads were far more dangerous than they expected.

How risky are roads during bushfires?

When disasters escalate rapidly, the decision to leave can become one of the most crucial moments people face.

Between 2010 and 2020, bushfire deaths in Australia often occurred on the road rather than at the fire front. An analysis found 33 of 65 bushfire deaths during this period were vehicle-related, many during late evacuations.

More recently, an ABC program documented survivor accounts from Black Saturday, including firefighters, people who defended their properties and those who took to the road in the final minutes.

One firefighter’s account, in particular, captures how quickly conditions can change on the road. At first, nothing about the drive appeared unusual.

when I drove up over the top of the hill down into Kinglake, there was nothing untoward. It was just a normal hot day […] a bit of smoke around.

But within minutes, the road environment changed completely.

so I do a U-turn, and there was a wall of smoke. I’m thinking, where did that come from? All of a sudden, […] You can’t see. It was pitch black. As we’re driving, the sides of the roads were igniting.

The risk of conditions changing is not confined to a single event or location. It is a recurring and ongoing feature of bushfire emergencies in Australia.

How dangerous are roads during floods?

Floods present a different kind of threat, but the risks on the road can be just as severe.

In Australia, nearly half of all flood fatalities are associated with vehicles, most commonly when people attempt to drive through flooded roads, crossings, or causeways.

This is not unique to Australia. A study of flood fatalities in Texas, covering the period from 1959 to 2009, shows around 80% of flood deaths with known circumstances were vehicle-related.

These deaths often occur when drivers underestimate water depth or flow speed, assume the road ahead is still passable, or follow other vehicles into floodwater. This can quickly lead to vehicles stalling, being swept away, or trapping occupants in fast-moving water.

What people experience inside a vehicle

To gain a first-person view of what actually unfolds on the road in these situations, we analysed hundreds of self-recorded evacuation videos.

On bushfire-affected roads, conversations inside vehicles revealed uncertainty as conditions changed quickly. Many drivers showed fear and stress – some prayed, while others tried to stay calm for their families.

Videos show people caught in intense heat and heavy smoke, struggling with poor visibility and concern over falling trees or bursting tyres. Some said they were struggling to breathe while others decided to stop or turn around.

Conditions appeared hazardous even for firefighters. Conversations between drivers and passengers often reflected the complexity of the environment and a lack of certainty about what to do.

Some drivers travelled with their windows open and suddenly realised how hot the air was.

Drivers struggled with visibility and some cases showed families expressing extreme distress. Parents comforted their children and sometimes sang to them.

On flood-affected roads, drivers showed signs of distress and intense emotion, often reflected in swearing and expressions of regret, or praying.

They sought reassurance from the actions of others, reflecting an “if they can do it, we can too” sentiment. Extreme cases showed water entering the vehicle, causing the vehicle to become unstable or dysfunctional, with water levels reaching the windshield.

Some drivers could not make it through and were forced to escape.

Importantly, these flood and fire videos only represented those who managed to escape and survive.

The best way to stay safe

In our analysis of these flood and fire videos, we found a recurring theme – surprise. People found themselves in a very different situation to the one they imagined when they began driving.

Driving on roads affected by floods and fires is risky, and the situation can escalate very quickly. Flash flooding is aptly named: torrential rain can trigger floods in just minutes. Bushfires, too, can intensify quickly

The clearest advice remains to avoid these situations altogether by evacuating early. But if you do find yourself in a vehicle on a fire-affected road, existing Country Fire Authority guidance can make a critical difference to survival.

Stop when it’s no longer safe to continue, park well off the road and away from vegetation if possible. Stay inside the car with windows and doors closed, turn off vents and air conditioning, get below window level and protect yourself from radiant heat using woollen blankets or clothing.

In floods, if rising water traps your vehicle, get out early and move to higher ground. As a last resort, climb onto the roof.

Ultimately, the safest option is to avoid hazardous driving wherever possible. Because once you’re on the road, it may already be too late.

Sara Fazeli, PhD Candidate, UNSW Sydney; Milad Haghani, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in Urban Risk and Resilience, The University of Melbourne; Moe Mohammad Mojtahedi, Senior lecturer, School of Built Environment, UNSW Sydney, and Taha Hossein Rashidi, Professor of Transport Engineering, UNSW Sydney