One in three Australians says they are lonely. To be lonely is to feel a lack of adequate social connection. Loneliness is about feeling disconnected from others or unable to form the kinds of relationships people need to feel seen and supported.

It’s often shaped by displacement, uncertainty, exclusion and the quiet absence of meaningful connection. Being lonely isn’t good for us. It’s linked to poor health, wellbeing and lower workplace productivity.

Loneliness is on the rise. So too is another type of loss – loss of nature. People feel more remote from the natural world.

In our new research, we sought to understand if we could tackle both problems at once. Would people feel less lonely if they spent time in nature with strangers?

To answer this, we set up an eight-week course for 37 people. All began as strangers. All felt lonely. All had experienced real challenges in their lives. They met and walked through parks and wetlands and alongside rivers and coastlines. As the weeks passed, our participants felt less lonely and more connected to nature. Many told us about feeling a sense of belonging for the first time. Nature was vital, as one participant told us:

in nature, nobody judges you. It felt safe, gentle, calm… Nature didn’t ask questions. It allowed me just to be

The balm of nature

Our project is an example of nature-based social prescribing, an emerging approach that connects people to social activities such as group walks, gardening or time spent near water. Social prescribing is based on the idea that health is influenced by social and environmental factors, not just clinical ones.

To create our program, we asked 37 people from Many Coloured Sky, a support service for LGBTIQA+ refugees and people seeking asylum in Melbourne, to participate and help design an eight-week program.

Each of our participants had a diverse sexual and gender identity. For them, loneliness was often felt acutely. Even after they escaped persecution and arrived in a safer country, they faced a long and uncertain process to settle in and build the life they want.

Participants met in groups of six to 12 people, to build trust and familiarity. Each group was supported by two facilitators.

Every week for eight weeks, our participants met in a natural setting in Melbourne, from Yarra bushland to the wetlands of Port Phillip Bay to city parks. Here, they gardened, shared meals, walked slowly and mindfully, watched birds and flying foxes and sat together to share stories and reflect on these experiences.

Our participants talked about these parks and rivers as spaces where they could feel safe without being questioned or judged. They told us natural environments created space for their senses and for connection to other people to emerge without pressure.

Over time, the program began to work. Our participants reported feeling less lonely and more connected to nature. For some, it was profound. Their loneliness went from severe to moderate. Overall, the program lowered loneliness for the participants and they felt more connected to nature.

As one told us:

I have finally found my community, my chosen family and a place I hope to call home.

Many participants described feeling calmer, more peaceful and more confident in nature. They felt better able to speak in groups and more able to navigate the city and its vast spaces. These small but meaningful changes can often be overlooked. But they matter. They are part of how belonging takes shape.

For some, nature also carried resonances of the past. Trees, rivers and coastlines carried sights, scents and sounds which reminded participants of home – even though the plants and animals were different. Here, nature acted as a bridge between past and present.

Much more than just being outdoors

Bringing strangers into the outdoors seems almost too simple a solution to loneliness. But it works.

Broader research shows spending time in nature can support wellbeing and reduce loneliness.

Our program was designed to encourage interaction as much as possible. Our participants led conversations, helped shape the activities, shared food from their cultures and gradually built trust within the group.

Urban nature is powerful

Urban parks, forests and grasslands as well as lakes, rivers and seas are vital environmental assets for Australian cities.

Our research points to the importance of preserving these spaces as a key way to allow city residents to spend time in nature.

To get the most out of these spaces, it’s important to ensure the right infrastructure exists. This includes accessible walking and cycling paths, seating areas and comfortable gathering spaces able to support social connection and community life.

Nature can’t solve loneliness. It’s entirely possible to be lonely in nature. But when combined with community, care, and time, it can act as the space where connection becomes possible.

Sometimes, a meaningful change can begin with something as simple as laughing and talking while walking under the gum trees by a river.

Nerkez Opacin, Senior Research Fellow in Nature and People, The University of Melbourne; Katherine Johnson, Professor and Dean of School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, and Sarah Bekessy, Professor of Urban Ecology and Biodiversity, Industry Laureate Fellow, The University of Melbourne; RMIT University

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

I’m a proud Yorta Yorta and Barapa Barapa man, an Indigenous astronomer and a trainee ecologist.

When I look at the night sky, I don’t just see stars. Instead, I see an ancient knowledge system that has guided people, culture and Country for tens of thousands of years.

But that knowledge is now at risk. In many of our towns and cities, the stars are increasingly hidden behind a haze of artificial light. And that light pollution is threatening a unique way of understanding the world.

A ‘living classroom’

The night sky is a living classroom, at once a calendar, map, lore book and weather forecast.

Indigenous Elders share this knowledge with younger people – often outdoors, on Country, beneath the stars.

They may start by talking about constellations, which have helped guide Indigenous Australians for millenia.

One example is the Wangel or “long-necked turtle” constellation. Various Indigenous communities looked to this constellation, based on the bright orange star Pollux, to know when it was time to travel and gather for different ceremonies. This may be because the bright orange star reflects the turtle’s orange colouring.

Another is the Djurt or “red-rumped parrot” constellation. This constellation is based on the Antares star which appears bright red with a blue halo, resembling the parrot’s red and blue feathers. This constellation guided communities to spots where food was abundant, such as grasslands that were full of seeds.

Constellations also hold lore, or rules, that guide sustainable practices. For example, when the Otchocut or “Murray cod” constellation appears in the night sky, we do not hunt Murray Cod. This is because it becomes visible when the rivers are warm and the fish are breeding, typically between October to November. Similarly, when the red-rumped parrot constellation appears, that means the parrot is breeding and therefore cannot be hunted.

The stars may also provide weather forecasts, but only if you have the knowledge and observation skills to understand them. For example, a star that twinkles and appears bright blue suggests a storm is coming. And if a cluster of stars twinkle quickly, it may mean the wind will become stronger.

Stars and songlines

The routes laid out by the stars are often connected to songlines. Songlines, sometimes known as dreaming tracks, are cultural pathways that connect traditional sites. Songlines also act as “drop pins” that indicate where important resources, such as waterholes and food, may be.

A well-known example is the Seven Sisters dreamtime story, which recounts the journey of seven sisters that ultimately become part of the Taurus constellation. For some Indigenous communities in central Australia, the Seven Sisters serve as a kind of celestial map. This is because the seven stars roughly mirror the location of seven waterholes.

The threat of light

As our cities grow, light pollution from streetlights, floodlights and buildings is spreading. As a result, it’s increasingly rare to see dark nights and starry skies near urban areas.

For Indigenous communities, this has a direct cultural impact.

Light pollution makes it near impossible to connect with the stars, and therefore share Indigenous sky knowledge with younger generations.

Light pollution also affects culturally important species. In Barapa Barapa culture, the microbat is a men’s totem and the nightjar is a women’s totem. Both are nocturnal animals that rely on darkness, so artificial light makes it harder for them to survive.

Beyond culture, light pollution has widespread ecological impacts, affecting how animals grow, behave and breed. Research suggests light pollution can stop clownfish eggs from hatching, shrink the brains of spiders and disorient threatened seabirds such as petrels and shearwaters.

It can also negatively affect human health. Research shows artificial light – particularly from LED lights and electronic devices – may trigger sleep and mood disorders and certain cardiovascular problems.

So, what can we do?

The good news is, we can each help reduce light pollution by making simple lifestyle changes. Here are some ideas:

• turn off outdoor lights whenever you’re not using them
• use lightbulbs with a lower brightness and warmer colouring
• choose light designs that direct light only where its needed
• close curtains and blinds at night to stop indoor light from spilling out
• during festive times such as Christmas, opt for daytime decorations instead of outdoor lights.

We can also better regulate the use of artificial light outdoors. Currently, Australia does not have any regulations around light pollution. But countries such as France have substantially reduced their light pollution levels by regulating what kind of lighting people can use and install.

Together, stronger regulation and simple lifestyle tweaks could help us tackle light pollution. And that’s key to keeping Indigenous sky knowledge alive.

Kai Lane, Traditional Owner Representative and Trainee Ecologist, Indigenous Knowledge

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

Bottom trawlers extract one-quarter of the world’s fisheries catches by weight and raise significant ecological, economic and social concerns. Given that, you’d think there would be an answer to basic questions in fisheries: how many fish species are being caught, and what are they?

In reality, though, bottom trawling is often proceeding blindly.

Bottom trawling is widespread and problematic. Gears operate by dragging large weighted nets across the ocean floor (some as wide as a 45-storey building is tall), sweeping up most of the life they encounter along the way and destroying habitat.

Hundreds of thousands of bottom trawlers operate all over the world, often dependent on subsidies, implicated in human rights violations and exacerbating climate change.

We lead a conservation team called Project Seahorse, dedicated to ensuring there are more fish in the ocean in healthier ecosystems. We focus our work on securing healthy populations of seahorses — and to save seahorses, we have to save the seas.

By far the biggest threat to seahorses is their incidental capture in bottom trawls. As such, seahorses provide an index of the tremendous intensity of bottom trawling.

It was while developing a briefing on bottom trawl impacts that we realized no one knew the actual tally or diversity of fish getting caught up in nets. So we set out to provide an answer and in so doing unveiled more about the pressure bottom trawling is placing on marine species, ecosystems and fisheries worldwide.

Endangered species

Our research was anchored in tedious work as our co-authors took a deep dive into studies and reports hosted on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) document repository, supplemented by an ad hoc exploration of additional literature.

The FAO is an intergovernmental organization that, among other things, collates worldwide fisheries data. We extracted more than 9,000 reports of fish species in bottom trawl catches, spanning from 1895 to 2021.

The first of our worrying findings is that a huge number of species are affected. We documented around 3,000 different fish species in bottom trawl catches but our modelled estimates suggest the true number could be double that.

Our data also showed that bottom trawls extract all or most species in some fish families. These include both the ocean’s most nutritious and commercially critical fish, such as jacks and croakers, and rare, distinct fish such as giant guitarfish and plough-nosed chimera.

Our second discovery is that many of the species we documented are already known to be of conservation concern. Among those on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List, about one in seven are classified as threatened or near-threatened with extinction. Bottom trawling was also cited in threat assessments for two-thirds of those species.

Insufficient data

Our third finding was that there is limited information on the conservation status for many of the fish caught in bottom trawls. About one-quarter of the species we recorded were listed as “data deficient” or “not evaluated” by IUCN, meaning their conservation status is essentially unknown.

People tend to focus on the threatened species, which certainly need our attention; seahorses among them. However, we also need to be concerned about the species in trawls that lack conservation assessments, which may also be faring badly.

Finally, we found that many species are not even being recorded. Our database includes relatively few records of smaller demersal species (animals that live near the bottom of the sea), with fisheries often just lumping them together as “various” or “trash fish.”

As many fish are so often overlooked or ignored in catch records, we often don’t actually know what bottom trawlers are catching. When species are not recorded, we lose critical information about biodiversity, population status and ecosystem impacts, not to mention the loss of resources that people depend on for food and livelihoods.

Bottom trawl fisheries should be required to demonstrate that they are ecologically, economically and socially sustainable before being considered acceptable. As it stands, the burden of proof falls on those trying to demonstrate harm — not on the industry causing it. This needs to be reversed, paying full attention to all the fish in the nets.

Sarah Foster, Program Leader, Project Seahorse and Senior Researcher, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia and Amanda Vincent, Professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia

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

Indonesia plans to build a “giant sea wall”, more than 500 kilometres long, to defend Java’s north coast from rising sea levels.

The proposal includes a large lagoon behind the colossal concrete wall, raising significant questions about the feasibility and cost of such a giant project.

Indonesian civil society groups say the sea wall could prompt more sand mining, degrade mangroves and affect livelihoods of fishing communities. There are fears the project will worsen existing ecological destruction caused by industrialisation. While desperate to avoid flooding, these groups don’t see a wall as the solution.

Indonesia is significantly affected by climate change, often in the form of severe and regular floods.

So, what is the best way to respond?

What is Indonesia proposing?

The sea wall plan has been framed as a flagship economic project on Java’s north coast. It will cost at least US$80 billion and take decades to build. Construction is planned to start in September 2026.

The sea wall will be overseen by several government agencies and subject to scrutiny from Indonesia’s Corruption Commission (KPK). Whether such scrutiny will be effective is an open question.

The massive cost is slated to come from provincial and national budgets, along with public-private partnerships with countries such as the United Arab Emirates. There are concerns about who will foot the large bill for long-term maintenance of the sea wall.

The rising sea

Indonesia has a long history of managing flooding by building infrastructure such as canals and dykes, reclaiming land, and deepening or straightening rivers. But such solutions often either exacerbate the problem or are only a stopgap measure before sea-level rise overtakes subsiding land.

Indonesian media and academics are pressing for a different strategy. This would include consultation with affected communities, integrated coastal management, wastewater upgrades and river cleanup, so the future lagoon does not become a low-oxygen moat behind a wall.

For Australia, Indonesia’s closest neighbour and a key strategic and economic partner, how Jakarta manages this project will shape regional security. Historically, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) has closely collaborated with its Indonesian counterpart (BAPPENAS) on infrastructure such as water projects.

Failing to consult properly with Indonesian stakeholders could lead to political fallout, while inaction might lead to food insecurity as vast tracts of rice fields become saline. Both create a less stable Indonesia, something Canberra wants to avoid.

A island under pressure

On the north coast of Java – the world’s most populous island and the economic heart of Indonesia – flood risk is driven by land subsidence and land use.

Subsidence (the gradual sinking of land), and related coastal erosion in Java is common. It is caused by a range of factors, such as excessive and unregulated groundwater extraction, building load, mangrove deforestation, the construction of seawalls, and increases in soil moisture.

In our recent research, we show the way different levels of government communicate these problems change how people understand these messages, potentially undermining imperatives to reduce groundwater extraction.

What does the evidence show?

Recent modelling suggests offshore structures can reduce storm surge heights in some locations, but outcomes varied by location and the local underwater environment. These types of coastal adaptation projects have historically been sites of political argument and corruption.

Our ongoing work with Indonesian researchers in three villages in Kendal, central Java, shows how flooding defences such as seawalls, raised roads, and home grants can partially address the risk, but not solve it.

Grants of around A$2,000 helped some households lift floors, walls and roofs, but rarely covered the full cost. Poorer families sometimes declined once they understood the co‑financing burden.

Meanwhile, raised roads and flood walls channelled water into nearby low‑lying homes. This reshaped livelihoods, neighbourhood interactions and community dynamics. We also recorded saltwater intruding onto productive land that had previously avoided regular tides.

In short, works that don’t also address the causes of subsidence can redistribute harm and entrench inequity. They can also affect one of the stated reasons for building the giant seawall: addressing Indonesia’s food security.

Can this sea wall work?

The best question is not “wall or no wall”, but if it is possible to construct as giant sea wall that works as intended.

If it is possible to regulate and enforce groundwater extraction, clean rivers, and design coastal works with local communities, the unintended consequences of flood infrastructure can be minimised.

With those reforms, Java’s giant sea wall could be a useful part of a wider adaptation portfolio. Without them, it risks becoming an expensive folly.

We would like to thank Rusli Cahyadi and Yogi Setya Permana (Indonesian National Institute of Research and Innovation - BRIN), and Muhammad Lukman Arifianto and Lukman Hakim (The University of Queensland) for their feedback on this article.

Correction: This article originally stated the wall would be constructed from cement, rather than concrete.

Zane Goebel, Associate professor, Indonesian Studies, The University of Queensland; Sonia Roitman, Associate Professor in Development Planning, The University of Queensland, and Udiana Dewi, Research Fellow, University of Sydney

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

Australians should be eating more healthy and nutritious foods – but that likely won’t happen unless they’re also cheap, easy to transport and store, and simple to prepare.

Sardines fit the bill – they’re packed with healthy oils and calcium and have less mercury than bigger fish – and they’re increasingly appearing on menus at bars and restaurants (often served still in the can).

But while Australian sardines (Sardinops sagax) make up more than 25% of Australia’s total fisheries production, most of the sardines served in Australia are imported. Almost all Australian sardines are fed to tuna sold for export, used as fishing bait or in processed aquaculture feed and pet food.

This is a problem because it is depriving Australians of a nutritious, cheap and local food source.

My new paper, published in the journal Frontiers – Aquatic Food Systems, outlines a different vision that would see more local sardines on Australian plates, while also reducing emissions and boosting small, local fisheries.

Drawing on public consultations on the management of a proposed sardine fishery in Tasmania, I found strong support for local sardines to be used for food (for humans, not fish). Achieving this, however, will require overcoming several food system challenges – including boosting demand.

But what if I don’t like sardines?

That’s OK!

Everyone has different tastes, and this isn’t about forcing people to eat sardines.

But it’s worth noting the foods we like are determined by a range of factors including culture, marketing and experiences.

For example, Atlantic salmon was not popular in Japan until Norway launched its “Project Japan” strategy in the 1980s and ‘90s to create a new market for its surplus farmed fish. In Japan, Atlantic salmon went from a food to avoid to a sushi staple.

Closer to home, lobsters were once considered a “poor man’s food” until their relatively recent rebranding as a luxury product.

Clever rebranding and marketing could help boost demand for local sardines among Australians. But to really make a difference, several other challenges also need to be overcome.

Policy change

For the companies that harvest seafood, and governments that design management plans and policies, the most important things about fisheries are long-term biological sustainability and maximising economic returns.

Unfortunately, whether or not the product is boosting nutrition for Australians is currently considered “out of scope”.

So even though local sardines are super nutritious, they won’t end up on Australian dinner tables if it’s not profitable.

Changes in policy could help, though.

For example, small and medium-scale fishers need secure and stable fishing rights to ensure they can get loans to buy boats, fishing gear and processing equipment.

Large-scale enterprises don’t face the same financial constraints. At present, though, the larger enterprises interested in the sardine fishery would likely process sardines as aquaculture feed rather than human food.

So, one way to help get more local sardines onto Australian dinner tables is to consider how government agencies that manage fishing rights can provide longer-term, secure and consistent fishing rights to smaller fishers.

Establish clear and reliable markets

Fishers won’t fish for local sardines on any meaningful scale unless clear and reliable markets have been established.

Government could help small fishers explore new local markets for Australian sardines, such as public institutions.

Increasing the availability of sardines in residential aged care, for example, would support the recommendations of the recent aged care royal commission, which highlighted the need to improve food and nutrition given that 40% of aged care residents in Australia are malnourished.

Supporting fishers to supply residential aged care would help create new markets and certainty. It would also reduce the amount of imported seafood supplied to residential care food service kitchens. Governments could, for instance, act as a broker to connect aged care providers with fishers to develop contracts.

Supplying more local seafood, such as sustainably managed sardines, would be a climate-positive choice too. They have much lower greenhouse gas emissions, compared with other marine or terrestrial protein sources, and fewer food-miles than imported products.

Despite their value, fisheries are also often not recognised in key food policies and strategies.

People tend not to think of fishers as food producers and they don’t get the same levels of support as other food producers.

For example, the harvesting of wild fishery resources is not eligible for Tasmania’s AgriGrowth Loan Scheme. Under this scheme, the Tasmanian government provides low-interest loans to Tasmanian farm businesses and agri-food businesses.

It would help if state government departments – such as health and natural resource departments – took a joint approach to finding ways to get more local sardines on Australian plates.

A triple win

Developing a fishery that aims to meet demand for food, alongside ecological and economic targets, will also help ensure the fishery remains small.

This will reduce pressure on natural resources, as the volume of catch needed to meet that demand will likely be smaller than a larger fishery developed to meet demand for fish feed.

Sardines will probably never be as popular in Australia as they are in Portugal or Morocco.

However, replacing even some ultraprocessed foods in Australian diets with sardines would be a big win for health, small-scale fishers and the environment.

Anna Farmery, Associate Professor, the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, University of Wollongong

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

Long before sunlight sustained life on the surface, Earth’s internal heat powered the deep-sea vents where scientists believe life began.

The immense reservoir of heat inside Earth keeps the planet geologically active. But it can also be very useful to humans. Geothermal energy represents a huge and largely untapped source of clean electricity available around the clock. The concept is simple: drill wells down to the heat and use heated water to drive turbines to make electricity.

As the world grapples with a major fossil-fuel energy crisis, governments and companies are looking for alternatives for a more secure future. After decades of development, geothermal is now ready for prime time.

Until recently, geothermal was limited to areas where heat was close to the surface – think geysers and volcanoes. But new deep drilling techniques are revolutionising the sector, opening up access to superhot rocks at temperatures above 350°C.

Our collaborative research with the Clean Air Task Force, a research nonprofit organisation, provides the first global overview of superhot rock geothermal potential, showing how much of this energy is available – even in regions with little or no volcanic activity such as Australia.

Why look to geothermal?

Unlike wind or solar, geothermal can produce power steadily, unaffected by weather or day-night cycles. It can also be built much faster and more cheaply than nuclear power. For countries looking to build cleaner energy systems, this combination is hard to ignore.

Conventional geothermal plants produce power in more than 40 countries. Iceland gets almost a third of its electricity from geothermal, while the United States and Indonesia have the largest installed geothermal capacity.

But geothermal is a minor player globally, providing only around 1% of renewable electricity generation.

That’s likely to change rapidly. Next-generation geothermal removes many earlier limitations. The International Energy Agency forecasts that it could rapidly become a major source of clean power, provided the industry can cut costs as solar, wind and batteries have done.

US researchers estimate geothermal could supply up to three times as much power as nuclear within 25 years.

More than two dozen countries are working to build more next-generation geothermal power. This is likely to accelerate. Superhot geothermal pioneers include Iceland, New Zealand, the US, Japan, China and several European Union nations.

What does next generation geothermal look like?

Older drilling techniques required months to drill the wells. The new technologies make this much faster, at up to 30 metres an hour.

New geothermal technologies make it possible to drill into much deeper and hotter parts of the crust than ever before.

Drillers can now reach depths of 5 kilometres to target superhot rocks, whose temperatures can exceed 350°C. Still newer methods could reach depths of 10km.

Under extreme heat and pressure, water at these depths changes into a supercritical fluid. In this form, it can carry up to ten times more energy than either steam or liquid water.

If every litre of water carries much more energy, geothermal becomes much more powerful – and scalable. Researchers estimate tapping 1% of the world’s superhot rocks could meet global electricity demand eight times over.

Better drilling technologies have another benefit – access to these superhot rocks in a far wider variety of settings. You don’t need to drill near active volcanoes any more.

But superhot geothermal also has challenges. If not carefully managed, wells can lose flow, pressure or temperature over time. But if well-managed, superhot systems could operate for 30–50 years at costs comparable to wind-generated electricity.

Where could it work in Australia?

The technology isn’t totally new to Australia. Small geothermal power plants have been trialled, and underground heat is used to heat pools.

Large areas of Australia have strong potential for geothermal heating and electricity generation, according to assessments by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Australian Geothermal Association and Geoscience Australia.

Preliminary estimates by the Clean Air Task Force indicate tapping 1% of Australia’s superhot rocks would provide the equivalent energy of 3 billion barrels of oil or 20 times the nation’s electricity use as of 2021.

Across parts of Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia, superhot rocks are likely to be at depths of 4–8km, meaning they should be reachable with new technologies.

As a major mining nation, Australia has vast experience in subsurface exploration, world-leading geoscience research and strong engineering and technical capabilities.

The clear overlap between geothermal and Australia’s existing capabilities means scaling up the industry could also provide jobs for workers leaving fossil fuel industries.

Why hasn’t it happened yet? Upfront costs and uncertainty.

Deep drilling is still relatively expensive, and predicting target temperatures at depth remains difficult. To date, there hasn’t been enough private investment to kickstart large-scale geothermal. Some promising resources in remote areas such as the Great Artesian Basin would require new transmission infrastructure.

Recent progress in countries such as the US, China and Germany show these challenges can be overcome.

Tapping Australia’s deep geothermal resources could unlock new sources of net-zero-emissions electricity for homes, industry and transport, as well as hydrogen production, data centres and critical minerals processing.

What would need to happen?

If Australia is serious about a cleaner and more secure energy future, it’s worth looking at the advances in deep geothermal.

The first step would be to create a new Australian roadmap for deep geothermal energy. This would bring together recent advances in drilling and subsurface exploration, support pilot projects, and encourage collaboration with global leaders.

If this succeeds, the heat that has powered Earth for billions of years could help protect its future.

Juan Carlos Afonso, Associate Professor of Geoscience, University of Tasmania and Heather Handley, Senior Curator of Geosciences, Museums Victoria Research Institute; Monash University

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

CSIRO has told staff it will cut 92 positions in its environment unit – just days after the Australian government boosted funding to the national science agency by A$387 million.

Our scientific colleagues have told us roughly a third of CSIRO’s climate modellers will lose their jobs – between four and six roles out of about 15 scientists. These cuts come on the back of decades of slow but steady reductions in funding in the same area. This threatens Australia’s ability to do its own climate modelling at a time when the United States has drastically cut its climate science program.

The cuts pose a direct threat to Australia’s climate model, known as ACCESS (Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator). It’s the only global climate model developed in the southern hemisphere.

If ACCESS funding is reduced, Australia will have less ability to model how climate change will affect us. That means less ability to forecast how threats such as sea-level rise will play out and plan how we adapt.

What’s at stake?

Our scientific colleagues have been told these plans include cutting roughly a third of the approximately 15 scientists who look after ACCESS – a foundational climate program that few people know about.

A climate model is a computer simulation of Earth’s climate system. It might sound abstract, but its findings are extremely important to all of us.

Global climate models such as ACCESS began as scientific tools to study Earth’s changing climate. But they have become much more than that. These sophisticated models have become vital for policymakers who have to take critical decisions at global, national and local levels.

The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement – in which the world agreed to hold global warming as close to 1.5°C as possible – was built in large part on predictions made by climate models, one of which bears the “Made in Australia” trademark – the ACCESS model.

CSIRO has developed and run this climate model for several decades, even as budgets shrank. Ten years ago, major funding cuts significantly reduced Australia’s global climate capabilities until they were globally marginal. These capabilities had taken many decades to build and grow.

Now the loss of these scientists means we face the threat of losing the capability of having an Australian global climate model altogether, alongside our credibility in international climate modelling efforts.

What’s climate modelling for?

While we experience yet another cut to climate modelling, climate models elsewhere, especially in the European Union, are being upgraded to answer ever more complex and detailed questions. Questions that we need to answer here too. They include:

• how do we ensure our climate adaptation strategies are sound and will not further fuel the cost-of-living crisis?
• how will the changing weather affect our ability to reach net zero in Australia, the Indo-Pacific region and globally?
• how might sea-level rise be locally distributed and interact with changing local weather conditions to amplify flooding?

Without a well-supported ACCESS, we are at grave risk of not being able to answer these questions in Australia.

This threat to our sovereign capability seems short-sighted. Australia has long collaborated with overseas scientists and agencies and used their data. But this is becoming less certain.

In the US, cuts to climate research threaten climate modelling efforts there. Geopolitical tensions and future election outcomes in other nations could mean decreased willingness to share scientific data, including information about future climates.

An Australian climate model?

ACCESS is the only global climate model developed in the southern hemisphere.

Our soils, landscapes and vegetation are unique. So too is the weather and climate that shape them.

Crucially, these factors are very different to those in the northern hemisphere. Models built in Europe, such as at the UK Meteorological Office, naturally focus on processes that affect European climates. The same is true for other regions and nations.

So who, if not us, is going to build and sustain a global model with Australia squarely in mind?

International collaboration at risk

Beyond our own shores, Australia has been an active member of the international community collaborating to provide projections of our future climate since the 1990s.

In the past, we were recognised as a scientific powerhouse. This reputation enhanced our credibility at negotiating tables all over the world, none more so than at the annual United Nations climate talks, the next edition of which will be co-chaired by Australia.

Losing the ability to properly contribute our global model to future UN-led climate assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will undoubtedly diminish our standing as a nation well beyond the climate science community.

But make no mistake, it will affect that community, too. We speak to the next generation of climate scientists every day when working with students and research fellows. Worryingly, more and more of them ask whether there is a future for them here. The answer used to be obvious. It no longer is. The threat of brain drain will become a reality.

All this makes today an important day for Australia. Are we going to follow those nations that are decreasing the funding for climate science? Or will we join those investing in developing the scientific capabilities that allows their citizens and governments to plan with confidence?

We still have a choice.

The CSIRO response

In a statement, a spokesperson for CSIRO said it will retain its climate science capability and continue to provide the data, models and scenarios needed to support decision-making in Australia and internationally.

They said CSIRO is making “essential strategic research shifts” to focus its efforts on where it can deliver the greatest national impact. “To achieve this sharpened focus, we are exiting research where we lack scale to achieve significant impact, or areas where others in the sector are better placed to deliver.”

The changes affect some roles that were previously connected to the ACCESS program, the spokesperson said.

“As the ACCESS modelling system matured from a development program into an operational national capability, CSIRO worked with partners to transition responsibility for its ongoing stewardship into sustained national research infrastructure through the establishment of ACCESS‑NRI which now supports and maintains ACCESS as open research infrastructure,” they said.

Christian Jakob, Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century, Monash University; Andy Hogg, Professor and Director of ACCESS-NRI, Australian National University, and Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Deputy Director, Engagement and Impact, The ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century, Australian National University

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

Since March, the world has watched live as a humpback whale lay stranded on a sandbank in German waters, far from the North Sea.

The stranded humpback whale was found in poor health, tangled in fishing gear with telltale cuts from a ship strike on its back. He was given the name Timmy.

Early attempts to rescue Timmy failed. As the weeks dragged on, public interest in his plight increased. The question was what to do. German politicians, animal welfare groups and concerned citizens debated euthanasia or rescue.

Despite experts pointing out Timmy was not well enough to be rescued, two millionaires reportedly chipped in €1.5m (A$2.4 million) to have him moved onto a barge filled with water, pulled by tugboat to the sea off the coast of Denmark and released on May 2. Just days ago, Timmy was found dead.

This story illustrates a clear principle – when it comes to an animal enduring suffering, we need to put their welfare first.

How did Timmy get stranded?

When a humpback whale becomes stranded, it’s usually a sign of poor health rather than poor navigation. Either way, the moment a whale becomes caught on a beach, the survival clock starts ticking.

For Timmy, the clock started in March when he was first found stranded off Germany’s Baltic coast. An excavator and dredger was used to free Timmy at least twice. The whale later became stranded again, many times.

During Timmy’s weeks-long strandings, people could watch on a 24-hour livestream. His plight is believed to be a unique case globally, as a large whale stranding multiple times in different places under constant observation. The German Oceanographic Museum described the situation as “uncharted territory”.

There were many concerns raised about Timmy’s welfare while stranded and during the rescue attempt. He was caught in low-salinity water, likely causing skin deterioration. His body weight likely crushed his internal organs – whales live in water and have likely never felt their own weight in air before. The whale was also vulnerable to sunburn.

Vocalisations – low-frequency sounds made by the whale – were heard while he was in the barge and being manoeuvred back into the sea. Unfortunately, we do not understand what these meant.

Given he was a mammal like you and me, it is possible Timmy was in pain. Large toothless whales such as humpback whales are known to have nerves like ours.

Was the rescue for humans – or for Timmy?

From an animal-welfare and ethics point of view, efforts to rescue Timmy were a bad idea. The whale was in very poor health. As a wildlife scientist, my view is that euthanasia was the kindest option.

Moving Timmy onto a barge would have likely caused him further pain and suffering. It’s no surprise he died not long after the rescue effort, given his already poor condition.

In fact, the rescue effort shocked marine scientists. Stranding experts from the International Whaling Committee described rescue efforts as “inadvisable” on grounds of animal welfare and human safety.

So why did it go ahead? Authorities allowed this to happen, perhaps feeling the weight of public opinion. Many people wanted to see Timmy released. As a whale expert, I can understand why people wanted to see this whale free. But it was never going to be simple.

Lessons not learned from Free Willy

For me, Timmy’s story reminded me of the film Free Willy, which was based on the true story of an orca named Keiko kept in captivity. In reality, Keiko was not suitable for release.

In the film, Free Willy is freed after caring humans mount a daring rescue and the orca swims happily away. But in real life, Keiko was freed at a cost of about A$28 million, failed to adapt to life in the wild, and died the following year.

You can see the parallels with Timmy. For both Timmy and Keiko, large sums of money were spent relocating whales with little chance of success.

Imagine if we used those funds for broader marine conservation, rather than two individual animals?

Like everyone, I cared about Timmy – we all did. But the reality is that humans placed Timmy and Free Willy in their respective positions, be it entanglement in fishing gear (Timmy) or capture from the wild (Free Willy). Both were our responsibility.

When it comes to an animal enduring suffering, let’s make sure it is welfare – not our human desire to play saviour – that is the first priority.

Vanessa Pirotta, Postdoctoral Researcher and Wildlife Scientist, Macquarie University

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

Stored in an open-air warehouse in tropical Darwin, Australia, are dozens of trays containing cylindrical cores of rock. They are from drill holes bored hundreds of metres below the surface by mineral exploration companies decades ago.

Some of these cores at the Northern Territory Geological Survey are mudstone – a type of sedimentary rock formed from hardened seafloor mud. The companies that drilled these cores were largely unaware that within these mudstones were fossils of microscopic organisms buried on the seafloor of an ancient inland sea that covered much of northern Australia over 1.5 billion years ago.

As our new study, published today in Nature, shows, these fossils are crucial for addressing a longstanding puzzle about the major evolutionary leap that led to all complex life on Earth: the origin of eukaryotes.

Small but complex

All life on Earth can be placed into one of two types which are fundamentally different at the cellular level.

Prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) have simple cellular organisation and are mostly single celled. Eukaryotes – including all animals, plants, algae and fungi – are very different. They have much more complicated cells featuring a nucleus and other specialised structures such as organelles which perform specific jobs.

The eukaryotic revolution transformed the planet. It led to the rise of animals and, eventually, to us. Based on observations from the genes of living organisms, it is now widely agreed that the last common ancestor of all living eukaryotes resulted from the symbiotic union of (at least) two prokaryotic microbes: an archaeon and a bacterium.

The first evidence for eukaryotic life comes in the form of these fossils of single-celled organisms. They show a level of cellular complexity not seen among prokaryotes, but common in eukaryotes.

Eukaryote fossils can be found around the world in rocks dating back at least 1.5 billion years. The fossils of the Northern Territory, the oldest of which date back to 1.75 billion years ago, are the oldest currently known eukaryote fossils globally.

But the ancient world in which early eukaryotes evolved remains shrouded in mystery. And so many fundamental aspects regarding their nature are unknown.

Oxygen – friend or foe?

Many types of bacteria can live and grow in places without oxygen. But nearly all eukaryotes alive today use oxygen for their survival. That’s because aerobic respiration – breaking down food using oxygen – provides the vast amounts of energy that complex life demands.

But the idea that oxygen has always been beneficial for all eukaryotes has come under fire in recent years. This follows the surprising discoveries of enigmatic eukaryotes that can thrive in conditions without oxygen.

There is also mounting evidence from the geological record that when eukaryotes were first evolving, oxygen was likely much scarcer. This means oxygen-free marine habitats would have been the norm. Collectively, these observations have called into question the assumption eukaryotes have depended on oxygen since their inception.

Genetic studies of living microbes belonging to groups considered closest to the ancestors of the first eukaryote can offer key insights into eukaryote ancestry. But only the fossil record can tell us about long-extinct lineages. And only geology can offer a window into the kind of world these organisms lived in.

More than 12,000 fossils

For our new study, we crushed up samples of the mudstone cores stored in Darwin, then dissolved them. We identified more than 12,000 fossils by analysing the organic residue left behind by this dissolution under a microscope.

We also studied the mudstones the fossils were preserved in to better understand what the environment was like when the sediments were deposited. This offered insight about the habitats in which these eukaryotes lived. And by analysing the chemistry of these mudstones, we could determine whether oxygen was present in the ancient seawater.

Our results show that eukaryote fossils were found in environments ranging from coastal mudflats to the open sea. But they were present only in samples deposited in oxygenated settings. Samples from oxygen-free environments contained only simple, prokaryotic forms.

This suggests that even the oldest known eukaryotes that lived on Earth 1.7 to 1.4 billion years ago were dependent on oxygen. These data lend support to a long-held hypothesis that oxygen played a key role in driving the evolution of early eukaryotes.

Resolving the drivers and context of the major evolutionary leap represented by early eukaryotes is one of the major outstanding questions in the life sciences. Ongoing studies of these enigmatic, ancient microfossils will no doubt tell us more about our own origins – and our place in the cosmos.

Maxwell Lechte, Research Associate in Geobiology, University of Sydney and Leigh Anne Riedman, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara

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

From butterflies to blue whales, corals and worms, Earth is home to an incredible diversity of animals. How all of these animals evolved from earlier, simpler ancestors is one of the most exciting stories in the history book of life on our 4.5 billion-year-old planet.

A new study, published today in Science Advances, adds crucial information to this story. Led by Scott Evans, assistant curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the American Museum of Natural History, it draws on rare 567-million-year-old fossils to show animal evolution may have started far earlier than previously thought.

Ancient life on the seafloor

Long before life on land or even fish, Earth’s seafloor was home to large and complex animals.

Some of these soft-bodied and strange animals were shaped like pancakes. Others were more like soft tubes or spirals that pressed into the mud.

We call this time, from about 635 to 538 million years ago, the Ediacaran Period. Do animals from this period represent our ancient ancestors before the Cambrian explosion, which produced most of the basic groups of animals we know today? Or are they failed evolutionary experiments?

To help us answer these questions, we divide the Ediacaran fossil record into three broad chapters: the Avalon, White Sea and Nama assemblages. Each represents a distinctive community of Ediacaran animals that tend to appear in different times and environments.

These chapters help scientists track how early animal life changed from mostly deep-water organisms that were stuck in mud to more diverse shallow-water communities that included animals.

The Avalon assemblage is the oldest chapter, dominated by simple yet strange deeper water organisms. The White Sea assemblage is the middle chapter. It is characterised by larger, more varied animals, including forms such as the famous Dickinsonia, a ribbed, oval organism a bit like a quilted placemat. The Nama assemblage comes last and includes some of the earliest animals with hard shell-like parts.

Combining fossil hunting with geological detective work

The team behind the new study combined fossil hunting with geological detective work. They collected and photographed fossil-bearing rocks from the remote Mackenzie Mountains in Canada, compared the fossils with other Ediacaran organisms, and studied nearby rocks to reconstruct where and when these animals lived.

Remarkably, several of the fossils, with frond-like forms, segmented and quilted bodies resembled those from the White Sea assemblage. That matters because the White Sea animal community was previously best known from famous sites in Russia and Australia.

The new fossils show that similar communities had also reached the deep waters of Laurentia, the ancient continent that included much of present-day North America.

In early animal evolution, a few million years can matter. The fossil-bearing rocks appear to correlate with nearby layers dated at about 567–566 million years old.

If that correlation is correct, this makes the community considerably older than the classic White Sea assemblage, which is usually placed at about 560–550 million years ago. Their discovery pushes back the timing of some important early animals, including mobile forms such as Dickinsonia.

It also dramatically changes the environmental picture.

White Sea-type fossils are usually associated with shallower marine settings. But these rocks suggest the Canadian animals lived in a deep-water slope environment. Together, that implies these early animal communities were both more geographically widespread and more environmentally flexible than previously recognised.

That raises an intriguing question. Did early animal ecosystems first develop far offshore, in deeper and perhaps more stable marine settings, before later becoming common in shallower seas?

Blurring the boundaries

The discovery matters because it blurs the boundaries between the classic Ediacaran “chapters”. The Avalon and White Sea assemblages may not represent a clean handover, with one world disappearing and another suddenly replacing it.

Instead, the new Canadian fossils suggest overlap: Avalon-style frond-like organisms and more diverse White Sea-style animals may have shared the darkness and lived together in similar deep-water settings.

That makes early animal evolution look less like a sudden switch and more like a gradual ecological expansion. Animals were experimenting with new body shapes, new ways of living on the seafloor, and perhaps new ways of moving and feeding.

The roots of modern animal diversity may therefore lie in a long, uneven process that began in deeper marine environments far from the warmth of the Ediacaran sun, and before many animal groups became common in shallower seas.

A broader evolutionary idea

The study also raises a broader evolutionary idea.

Environments help shape life. A soft-bodied animal living on a quiet, deeper seafloor faced different challenges from one living in shallow water affected by waves, light, currents and shifting sediment. Those pressures can influence which body shapes and behaviours are useful and are passed on.

This is where the idea of convergent evolution can become helpful. Convergent evolution is when unrelated organisms evolve similar solutions to similar problems like wings in birds, bats and insects, or streamlined bodies in fish, dolphins and extinct marine reptiles.

In this sense evolution is repeated problem-solving under changing environmental rules over billions of years.

The same broad solutions, tubes, fronds, flattened bodies, may have been tried repeatedly as early animals explored the seafloor.

Over deep time, life can look uncannily inventive. But it’s shaped by the relentless testing ground of Earth itself.

Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, Curtin University and Anthony Clarke, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University

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To the untrained eye, the Florida scrub ecosystem isn’t much to look at. Scattered in patches around coastal and inland Florida, the scrub landscape is dominated by shrubs and short oaks, all growing out of sandy soil.

“Scrub” is truly an apt name for it.

But this habitat is home to a number of unique plant and animal species, including the threatened Florida scrub-jay, the only bird found only in Florida.

The list of specialized scrub animals grew longer this spring when I officially named – and found in the wild – a species of moth unique to the Florida scrub.

I’m an evolutionary biologist and entomologist, serving as curator of entomology at the University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Natural History. In March 2026 I, along with my collaborators, Scott Wehrly and Jeff Slotten, published an article in ZooKeys describing this new moth from the Florida scrub.

I colloquially refer to it as the “Florida sack-bearer,” but it’s formally known as Cicinnus albarenicolus, Latin for “white sand dweller.” The name “sack-bearer” indicates that it belongs to a small family of moths known as Mimallonidae whose caterpillars make sacklike cases that they haul around, kind of like the way a hermit crab carries around a shell. There are just over 300 sack-bearer species, with only six, including our new one, known from North America.

The discovery

The recent publication of our scientific paper was the first time the scientific community learned of the moth’s existence, but it is the culmination of more than a decade of work.

I have been studying sack-bearers throughout my professional career, which started as an undergraduate at Cornell University, where I worked in the Cornell University Insect Collection. It was in this collection that a small sample of sack-bearer moths collected in Florida, with a chunky body and pink-hued wings spanning about 1.25-1.5 inches (3-4 centimeters) – medium size for a moth – caught my eye.

I began to wonder whether perhaps this moth was a separate species of sack-bearer, because it looked quite different from the more beige-colored Melsheimer’s sack-bearer that is common all over the eastern United States, including Florida. But I did not yet have enough data to substantiate my theory.

Then as a graduate student at the University of Florida, I delved into learning more about sack-bearer evolution. Whenever I had a free moment, I spent time in the field looking for wild individuals of the still-unnamed Florida sack-bearer. But still, no luck.

Then I spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Even though I was primarily working on a completely different group of moths, I had not forgotten about the Florida moth. And there, in the Smithsonian collections, I found a single specimen of a Florida sack-bearer from 1960.

Fortunately, it was a recent enough specimen to yield a good DNA sample. This allowed me to get the final piece of information that I was looking for: a DNA sequence to confirm that this moth was distinct from its relatives.

The genetic results were unequivocal: The Florida species was clearly distinct, thus confirming my long-held suspicions that this was a new, undescribed species of moth. This was the final piece of information I needed to start writing the paper formally describing and naming the new moth.

Encounter in the wild

As excited as I was to describe a new species, I feared that the moth might already be extinct, since no recent specimens existed and the Florida scrub habitat is highly degraded, down to about 10% of what ecologists estimate was present prior to European settlement.

But I contacted various moth collectors in Florida to see whether anyone had seen this moth recently, and to my surprise one of them had. The co-authors on the Zookeys paper, Jeff Slotten and Scott Wehrly, helped me discover a small set of specimens from the 2010s and 2020s that Scott had collected. This discovery, in late 2025, allowed me to add some new specimens to the paper and update the text reporting this newly discovered collection of more contemporary samples of Florida sack-bearers.

Knowing that all sightings of this moth occurred between March and May, I traveled to Florida in April. I was hoping to see it for myself and learn more about its active times, habitat requirements, diet, mating habits and other aspects of its biology – all still completely unknown. Since the recent specimens were all male, I set the goal to find a female, which would be the first one seen in over 60 years. Finding a female would also be an opportunity to collect eggs.

On April 18, 2026, I traveled to a new site that I had scoped out back in grad school, and sure enough, at 8:49 p.m., I found a female at my specialized moth light trap. This female was followed by two others, and I was able to collect eggs. Hopefully this summer these will yield a bunch of caterpillars so my colleagues and I can observe the moth’s full life cycle and learn more about this elusive insect.

What makes the Florida sack-bearer so special?

Without knowing more about it, it’s challenging to articulate what this moth’s larger role in the ecosystem might be. And that is precisely why this discovery is important.

One possibility that is already becoming clear is that this species may be an excellent indicator of Florida scrub health and how different forest management techniques affect the scrub ecosystem. My recent field work indicates that this particular moth may be thriving in areas experiencing more recent and frequent prescribed burns, but this hypothesis needs further study. My hope is that studying this moth will give a better sense of how to manage scrubs in order to protect this and other species with similar habitat requirements.

The evolution of the Florida sack-bearer also remains a puzzle. Just how did it get to Florida in the first place? White sand scrubs are thought to be older than yellow sand scrubs of Florida and are formed from ancient sand dunes. Perhaps the Florida sack-bearer is an ancient relic of a time when Florida was very different from today.

By studying this moth and its distribution in the state, we may better understand how sack-bearers arrived in North America from Central and South America millions of years ago.

What’s in a name?

In total, only 19 specimens of the Florida sack-bearer were known to me at the time of its formal description. Only three of those were collected after 1964, and those all came from locations near Ocala, Florida. The other 13 specimens are from just five white sand scrub habitats scattered across peninsular Florida. While the news that the moth persists in at least a couple of places is welcome, sites that supported this moth back in the 1960s may no longer have enough scrub habitat due to substantial habitat loss.

It’s possible that this moth has been discovered just in time to realize it’s at risk of going extinct. But my hope is that by naming this rare moth, our team has enabled conservationists and legislators to fight for its protection.

Ryan St Laurent, Assistant Professor of Biology, University of Colorado Boulder

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

Political debates about the future of forests in Sweden and the EU are reaching an impasse. Producing more wood comes at the expense of nature and the storage of carbon within trees and soils. Conserving and restoring more forests may limit commercial wood production.

But it is important for both economists and conservationists to recognise how these forests support reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus). This species evolved in conjunction with the natural dynamics of boreal forest ecosystems in northern Fennoscandia – an area covering the Scandinavian peninsula, mainland Finland, Karelia and the Kola peninsula.

Boreal forests are coniferous woodlands that encompass most of the northern regions of the planet. These cold regions tend to be scarcely populated.

In northern Sweden, boreal forests play a critical role in the livelihoods and cultural practices of the Indigenous Sámi people, especially reindeer pastoralism. Sámi reindeer-herding communities hold grazing, customary and Indigenous rights to these forests and other areas.

Reindeer herders and their herds are usually divided into winter groups to graze with their herds as efficiently as possible. While each Sámi reindeer herding community has its own ecological conditions and decision-making processes, intact boreal forest ecosystems enable reindeer to survive snow periods when food sources are in short supply.

The wellbeing of reindeer that evolved in northern Fennoscandia is linked to the health of boreal forests. Ground lichens and hanging-tree lichens are a major part of reindeer’s winter diet. These lichens thrive in forests associated with a high influx of light and limited availability of nutrients that the northern climate and recurring forest fires have historically created.

Forest degradation

But in northern Fennoscandia, about 90% of forests have been managed – mostly by a few state and private organisations – using rotation forestry to increase wood production. This involves cutting down almost all trees in an area, intensely disturbing the soil, then replanting trees close together. This has radically transformed these forest landscapes since the 1950s.

While increasing wood production, intact boreal forests and the valuable ecosystems associated with them have been lost. There are also now fewer forest fires. This results in dense, young forests that don’t support healthy growth of lichen and movement of reindeer herds.

When food is scarce and fragmented, the wellbeing of reindeer is threatened. The 71% decline in the area of lichen-abundant forests over the last 60 years is compounded by climate change. The increased rainfall on snow, for example, contributes to the creation of ice formations that block reindeer from accessing the remaining ground lichens.

This has consequences for Sámi reindeer herding communities. Their workloads get more intense and they have to resort to emergency feeding of (grain-based) reindeer feed in corrals.

As economists and conservationists argue about production versus restoration and conservation, the wellbeing of reindeer and its importance for Sámi livelihoods and cultural practices is being neglected. Meanwhile, the situation for reindeer will get even worse unless forests are managed in ways that support reindeer.

Production, restoration and conservation

EU-initiatives like the nature restoration law (including legally binding targets for restoring degraded ecosystems) and regulation on land use, land use change and forestry (including carbon-removal targets) could help reverse this trend.

My colleagues and I recently showed how those EU-initiatives align with the wellbeing of reindeer, and that working in tandem with reindeer herders could deliver multiple benefits.

Forest restoration that supports the wellbeing of reindeer includes well-planned, high-intensity thinning of trees to “open up” dense forests. Removing logging residues, such as twigs and branches, can further support ground lichen growth.

Prescribed burning to deplete nutrients followed up with manual scattering of lichen fragments (so called lichen transplantation) can restore lichen-rich, open forests. The large-scale removal of dense areas of non-native lodgepole pine trees that limit grazing and movement of reindeer herds is also critical.

Restoration efforts like these can be rolled out across managed forests to accommodate reindeer pastoralism while maintaining wood production.

Forest conservation efforts include protection schemes that connect fragmented lichen-rich areas. Such old, natural forests support biodiversity and store much more carbon than managed forests.

But conservation schemes must be flexible enough to allow for continued use by Sámi reindeer herders and allow for the thinning of areas that have become too dense for grazing.

Reindeer depend on intact boreal forests. Sámi reindeer herders hold rights to these lands and have specialist knowledge about reindeer. They know where and how to restore degraded forests and conserve ecosystem values to support their wellbeing. Collaborating with Sámi reindeer herders in forest management is therefore critical. But success hinges on effectively involving Sámi reindeer herding communities and other reindeer herders.

David Harnesk, Associate Professor, Sustainability Science, Lund University

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