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This animal is on the edge of extinction. Trump just fired the people trying to save it.

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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Keepers at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia prepare to send black-footed ferrets to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in 2011. | Cliff Owen/AP In the open grasslands of South Dakota, not far from the dramatic rock formations of Badlands National Park, lives one of the continent’s cutest, fiercest, and rarest animals: the black-footed ferret.  Black-footed ferrets, weasel-like animals with distinctive dark bands around their eyes and black feet, are ruthless little hunters. At night, they dive into burrows in pursuit of juicy prairie dogs, their primary food source. Without prairie dogs, these ferrets would not survive.  From as many as a million ferrets in the 19th century, today there are only a few hundred of these furry predators roaming the Great Plains, the only place on Earth they live. That there are any black-footed ferrets at all is something of a miracle. In the 1970s, scientists thought black-footed ferrets were extinct, but a twist of fate, and an unprecedented breeding effort led by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, brought this critical piece of the prairie ecosystem back from the brink.  This success — one of the greatest of any wildlife revival program — is now at risk.  Earlier this month, as part of the Trump administration’s purge of federal employees, Tina Jackson, the head of the FWS’s entire black-footed ferret recovery program, was fired. FWS also fired two other permanent staffers who were involved in keeping captive ferrets alive at the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center, the nation’s main breeding facility. Those cuts amount to more than a quarter of the center’s permanent, non-administrative staff, Jackson said. The center also has a vacant biologist position that Jackson said may not be filled. The staff changes imperil the tenuous success of ferret recovery and the very existence of these animals, several experts including current and former Fish and Wildlife Service employees told Vox. Critical funding has been restricted, too: Two organizations that rely on federal money for ferret conservation on public and tribal lands told Vox that funds for this work were frozen. Experts who have spent decades trying to save black-footed ferrets say these impacts threaten the broader prairie ecosystem. Efforts to conserve ferrets and their prey sustain this important American landscape, a home for insects that pollinate our crops, plants that store carbon in their long roots, and streams that provide us with fresh water.  “Right now, the recovery of the species is dependent on captive populations,” said Jackson, who started her role with the Fish and Wildlife Service last spring, after more than two decades with Colorado’s state wildlife agency. “Without people to take care of those captive populations, we will potentially lose the species. The hardest thing is to think about them blinking out on our watch.”  Send us a tip Do you have information to share about the US Fish and Wildlife Service or other government agencies? Reach out to Benji Jones at benji.jones@vox.com, on Signal at benji.90, or at benjijones@protonmail.com. Job cuts impair finely tuned ferret breeding Few species demonstrate the power of conservation quite like the black-footed ferret. In the late 1800s, there were as many as a million living among prairie dog colonies in the plains, as far north as Saskatchewan and as far south as northern Mexico. But in the 1900s, extermination programs bankrolled by the US and state governments started killing off prairie dogs, which were viewed as pests that competed with cattle for forage.  These government-sanctioned exterminations collapsed prairie dog populations, in turn devastating black-footed ferrets. Without prairie dogs, ferrets had nothing to eat. Around the same time, fleas began spreading plague — yes, plague — in the Great Plains. That killed even more prairie dogs and ferrets, both of which are highly susceptible to the disease.  By the late ’70s, ferrets had vanished, and scientists considered them extinct.  But in the fall of 1981, a dog named Shep changed everything. Shep, a ranch dog in Wyoming, brought a carcass of a small mammal to his home near the northern town of Meeteetse. His owners didn’t recognize the animal and took it to a taxidermist, who identified it as a black-footed ferret. The carcass ultimately led wildlife officials to a nearby ferret colony — the last known one on Earth, home to about 130 animals.  With that, the extinct black-footed ferret was officially brought back from the dead. But just a few years after Shep’s discovery, all but 18 ferrets had died from plague and other threats. So with the specter of extinction looming once again, wildlife officials took them out of the wild and into captivity.  With those 18 ferrets, the Fish and Wildlife Service, along with Wyoming state wildlife officials, launched a captive breeding and recovery program in the late ’80s, determined to keep the species alive. The goal of the program, among the first of its kind in the country, was to breed ferrets under human care before eventually releasing them back into the prairie landscape. In a way, it was the reverse of the government interventions that had initially helped push the ferrets toward extinction. The bedrock of this program is the Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center near Fort Collins, Colorado.  The center breeds most of the black-footed ferrets in the US today. It’s a painstaking process that involves carefully pairing individuals to make sure their babies will boost the population’s limited genetic diversity. (Officials use a genetic registry called a “studbook” to figure out the best pairs.) Remarkably, the center has also led groundbreaking efforts to clone black-footed ferrets that died decades ago. The cloning program, which is the first of its kind, is another way to inject new genetic diversity into the population to ensure its survival.   The ferret center is also critical for the survival of ferrets once they’ve been released. Researchers condition the animals for life in the wild — running them through what is essentially a predator bootcamp. Workers put the ferrets in outdoor pens with burrows and introduce live prairie dogs, typically once a week, for them to kill. After about 30 days, ferrets that have passed bootcamp muster get the okay to be released into the wild. “The importance of the captive breeding center to the survival of the species is pretty huge,” said Steve Forrest, a biologist who’s long been involved in black-footed ferret conservation.  The recent job cuts will hamper the center’s breeding and training efforts, experts told Vox. The two technicians who were terminated cared for captive ferrets, which involved raising kits, preparing food, and observing them during preconditioning. Jackson, meanwhile, was the connective tissue across a wide range of partners, including the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the nonprofit environmental group Defenders of Wildlife, which are all working to conserve black-footed ferrets. She led budget and staff meetings and made sure the breeding center had what it needed to keep running, Jackson said. The Fish and Wildlife Service did not respond to a request for comment. With funding on ice, wild ferrets may face a more severe threat of plague Breeding black-footed ferrets is only half the challenge. The next step is making sure they survive once they’ve been released into the wild.  The main threat they face there is still plague, which is relatively common among prairie dog colonies in the Great Plains. It’s also a minor threat to humans. So across many of the more than 30 sites where ferrets have been reintroduced, workers from a range of organizations kill fleas in prairie dog burrows and vaccinate wild-born ferrets against plague. Captive-born animals are vaccinated before they’re released. This approach works, but it’s labor-intensive and costly: technicians have to treat burrows and trap wild-born ferrets across thousands of acres, year after year.  The bulk of funding for this work comes from the federal government, and much of that money is currently on ice. In the Conata Basin of South Dakota — home to the world’s largest wild population of ferrets — efforts to rid the landscape of plague are funded in part by the US Forest Service and the National Park Service, according to Travis Livieri, executive director of Prairie Wildlife Research, a nonprofit. That funding is currently frozen, Livieri said, adding that treating burrows typically starts as early as April. “If we’re not able to do plague mitigation, it’s very possible that over the course of three or four or five years we could lose the wild ferret population,” a current Fish and Wildlife Service employee told Vox. (The employee requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.) “Having a disruption in established plague mitigation programs is really problematic and an existential threat to wild black-footed ferret populations.” Some federal funding for tribal nations to conserve black-footed ferrets has also been put on pause, according to Shaun Grassel, CEO of Buffalo Nations Grasslands Alliance (BNGA), a Indigenous-led conservation group, and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. Last year, BNGA won a $1.1 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit that routes both private and federal funding to environmental groups. The money was to help several tribes, such as the Cheyenne River Sioux, kill fleas, monitor ferrets, and oversee their reintroduction into the wild. At least half of that grant is funded by federal dollars, Grassel said, and now the whole thing is frozen.  “A freeze in certain federal funds will keep tribes from implementing their plague mitigation work,” Grassel said. If the freeze lasts much longer, “several tribal biologists are likely to lose their jobs,” he continued, “because all tribal work is funded by some grant program or another.” The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. What’s especially frustrating to people involved in ferret conservation is that funding and staff resources were already limited heading into 2025. “So much conservation work is happening bare-bones right now, so when cuts come in there’s nothing left to cut,” Jackson said. “There’s no fat on the bones.” And the sorts of dollar amounts for this work — for wildlife conservation, overall — are almost imperceptible compared to other federal line items. Last year, the budget for the entire Fish and Wildlife Service, which works to conserve all endangered plants and animals, was roughly $4 billion. That’s less than 3 percent of what the Department of Transportation spends, for example. Livieri says conservation practitioners are also working to make it cheaper, such as by using more innovative insecticides.  Concerned employees at the Fish and Wildlife Service are now scrambling to keep black-footed ferret work moving forward, the current employee told Vox. One idea is to bring in staff from other departments to care for ferrets at the breeding center, they said.  Yet the national coordination that the Fish and Wildlife Service provided will be hard to maintain without Jackson and uncertainty around funding. A number of meetings on the calendar will likely be canceled, Jackson told me. Plus, the Service is supposed to carry out a federally mandated five-year review of the black-footed ferret’s conservation status soon, which Jackson was meant to lead. It’s unclear who will now do that.  “It’s literally a matter of life and death [for these animals],” the current employee said. “We’re just trying to figure out how to keep the lights on.” People within the conservation community are deeply concerned about the fate of endangered species under the Trump administration. But if there’s one thing that gives them hope for animals like the black-footed ferret, it’s the dedication they see in their colleagues. “If at one point in this remarkable journey [of the black-footed ferret], somebody just decided that this isn’t worth it, they could have gone extinct,” the current employee said. “But there have always been enough people who care, and we’ve soldiered on. It could have failed so many times, but enough people cared that it didn’t.” 

In the open grasslands of South Dakota, not far from the dramatic rock formations of Badlands National Park, lives one of the continent’s cutest, fiercest, and rarest animals: the black-footed ferret.  Black-footed ferrets, weasel-like animals with distinctive dark bands around their eyes and black feet, are ruthless little hunters. At night, they dive into burrows in pursuit […]

A black-footed ferret in a wildlife carrier.
Keepers at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia prepare to send black-footed ferrets to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in 2011. | Cliff Owen/AP

In the open grasslands of South Dakota, not far from the dramatic rock formations of Badlands National Park, lives one of the continent’s cutest, fiercest, and rarest animals: the black-footed ferret. 

Black-footed ferrets, weasel-like animals with distinctive dark bands around their eyes and black feet, are ruthless little hunters. At night, they dive into burrows in pursuit of juicy prairie dogs, their primary food source. Without prairie dogs, these ferrets would not survive. 

From as many as a million ferrets in the 19th century, today there are only a few hundred of these furry predators roaming the Great Plains, the only place on Earth they live. That there are any black-footed ferrets at all is something of a miracle. In the 1970s, scientists thought black-footed ferrets were extinct, but a twist of fate, and an unprecedented breeding effort led by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, brought this critical piece of the prairie ecosystem back from the brink. 

This success — one of the greatest of any wildlife revival program — is now at risk. 

Earlier this month, as part of the Trump administration’s purge of federal employees, Tina Jackson, the head of the FWS’s entire black-footed ferret recovery program, was fired. FWS also fired two other permanent staffers who were involved in keeping captive ferrets alive at the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center, the nation’s main breeding facility. Those cuts amount to more than a quarter of the center’s permanent, non-administrative staff, Jackson said. The center also has a vacant biologist position that Jackson said may not be filled.

The staff changes imperil the tenuous success of ferret recovery and the very existence of these animals, several experts including current and former Fish and Wildlife Service employees told Vox. Critical funding has been restricted, too: Two organizations that rely on federal money for ferret conservation on public and tribal lands told Vox that funds for this work were frozen.

Experts who have spent decades trying to save black-footed ferrets say these impacts threaten the broader prairie ecosystem. Efforts to conserve ferrets and their prey sustain this important American landscape, a home for insects that pollinate our crops, plants that store carbon in their long roots, and streams that provide us with fresh water. 

“Right now, the recovery of the species is dependent on captive populations,” said Jackson, who started her role with the Fish and Wildlife Service last spring, after more than two decades with Colorado’s state wildlife agency. “Without people to take care of those captive populations, we will potentially lose the species. The hardest thing is to think about them blinking out on our watch.” 

Send us a tip

Do you have information to share about the US Fish and Wildlife Service or other government agencies? Reach out to Benji Jones at benji.jones@vox.com, on Signal at benji.90, or at benjijones@protonmail.com.

Job cuts impair finely tuned ferret breeding

Few species demonstrate the power of conservation quite like the black-footed ferret. In the late 1800s, there were as many as a million living among prairie dog colonies in the plains, as far north as Saskatchewan and as far south as northern Mexico. But in the 1900s, extermination programs bankrolled by the US and state governments started killing off prairie dogs, which were viewed as pests that competed with cattle for forage. 

These government-sanctioned exterminations collapsed prairie dog populations, in turn devastating black-footed ferrets. Without prairie dogs, ferrets had nothing to eat. Around the same time, fleas began spreading plague — yes, plague — in the Great Plains. That killed even more prairie dogs and ferrets, both of which are highly susceptible to the disease. 

By the late ’70s, ferrets had vanished, and scientists considered them extinct. 

But in the fall of 1981, a dog named Shep changed everything. Shep, a ranch dog in Wyoming, brought a carcass of a small mammal to his home near the northern town of Meeteetse. His owners didn’t recognize the animal and took it to a taxidermist, who identified it as a black-footed ferret. The carcass ultimately led wildlife officials to a nearby ferret colony — the last known one on Earth, home to about 130 animals. 

With that, the extinct black-footed ferret was officially brought back from the dead. But just a few years after Shep’s discovery, all but 18 ferrets had died from plague and other threats. So with the specter of extinction looming once again, wildlife officials took them out of the wild and into captivity. 

With those 18 ferrets, the Fish and Wildlife Service, along with Wyoming state wildlife officials, launched a captive breeding and recovery program in the late ’80s, determined to keep the species alive. The goal of the program, among the first of its kind in the country, was to breed ferrets under human care before eventually releasing them back into the prairie landscape. In a way, it was the reverse of the government interventions that had initially helped push the ferrets toward extinction.

The bedrock of this program is the Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center near Fort Collins, Colorado. 

The center breeds most of the black-footed ferrets in the US today. It’s a painstaking process that involves carefully pairing individuals to make sure their babies will boost the population’s limited genetic diversity. (Officials use a genetic registry called a “studbook” to figure out the best pairs.) Remarkably, the center has also led groundbreaking efforts to clone black-footed ferrets that died decades ago. The cloning program, which is the first of its kind, is another way to inject new genetic diversity into the population to ensure its survival.  

The ferret center is also critical for the survival of ferrets once they’ve been released. Researchers condition the animals for life in the wild — running them through what is essentially a predator bootcamp. Workers put the ferrets in outdoor pens with burrows and introduce live prairie dogs, typically once a week, for them to kill. After about 30 days, ferrets that have passed bootcamp muster get the okay to be released into the wild.

“The importance of the captive breeding center to the survival of the species is pretty huge,” said Steve Forrest, a biologist who’s long been involved in black-footed ferret conservation. 

The recent job cuts will hamper the center’s breeding and training efforts, experts told Vox. The two technicians who were terminated cared for captive ferrets, which involved raising kits, preparing food, and observing them during preconditioning. Jackson, meanwhile, was the connective tissue across a wide range of partners, including the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the nonprofit environmental group Defenders of Wildlife, which are all working to conserve black-footed ferrets. She led budget and staff meetings and made sure the breeding center had what it needed to keep running, Jackson said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service did not respond to a request for comment.

With funding on ice, wild ferrets may face a more severe threat of plague

Breeding black-footed ferrets is only half the challenge. The next step is making sure they survive once they’ve been released into the wild. 

The main threat they face there is still plague, which is relatively common among prairie dog colonies in the Great Plains. It’s also a minor threat to humans. So across many of the more than 30 sites where ferrets have been reintroduced, workers from a range of organizations kill fleas in prairie dog burrows and vaccinate wild-born ferrets against plague. Captive-born animals are vaccinated before they’re released. This approach works, but it’s labor-intensive and costly: technicians have to treat burrows and trap wild-born ferrets across thousands of acres, year after year. 

The bulk of funding for this work comes from the federal government, and much of that money is currently on ice. In the Conata Basin of South Dakota — home to the world’s largest wild population of ferrets — efforts to rid the landscape of plague are funded in part by the US Forest Service and the National Park Service, according to Travis Livieri, executive director of Prairie Wildlife Research, a nonprofit. That funding is currently frozen, Livieri said, adding that treating burrows typically starts as early as April.

“If we’re not able to do plague mitigation, it’s very possible that over the course of three or four or five years we could lose the wild ferret population,” a current Fish and Wildlife Service employee told Vox. (The employee requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.) “Having a disruption in established plague mitigation programs is really problematic and an existential threat to wild black-footed ferret populations.”

Some federal funding for tribal nations to conserve black-footed ferrets has also been put on pause, according to Shaun Grassel, CEO of Buffalo Nations Grasslands Alliance (BNGA), a Indigenous-led conservation group, and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. Last year, BNGA won a $1.1 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit that routes both private and federal funding to environmental groups. The money was to help several tribes, such as the Cheyenne River Sioux, kill fleas, monitor ferrets, and oversee their reintroduction into the wild. At least half of that grant is funded by federal dollars, Grassel said, and now the whole thing is frozen. 

“A freeze in certain federal funds will keep tribes from implementing their plague mitigation work,” Grassel said. If the freeze lasts much longer, “several tribal biologists are likely to lose their jobs,” he continued, “because all tribal work is funded by some grant program or another.”

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

What’s especially frustrating to people involved in ferret conservation is that funding and staff resources were already limited heading into 2025. “So much conservation work is happening bare-bones right now, so when cuts come in there’s nothing left to cut,” Jackson said. “There’s no fat on the bones.”

And the sorts of dollar amounts for this work — for wildlife conservation, overall — are almost imperceptible compared to other federal line items. Last year, the budget for the entire Fish and Wildlife Service, which works to conserve all endangered plants and animals, was roughly $4 billion. That’s less than 3 percent of what the Department of Transportation spends, for example. Livieri says conservation practitioners are also working to make it cheaper, such as by using more innovative insecticides. 

Concerned employees at the Fish and Wildlife Service are now scrambling to keep black-footed ferret work moving forward, the current employee told Vox. One idea is to bring in staff from other departments to care for ferrets at the breeding center, they said. 

Yet the national coordination that the Fish and Wildlife Service provided will be hard to maintain without Jackson and uncertainty around funding. A number of meetings on the calendar will likely be canceled, Jackson told me. Plus, the Service is supposed to carry out a federally mandated five-year review of the black-footed ferret’s conservation status soon, which Jackson was meant to lead. It’s unclear who will now do that. 

“It’s literally a matter of life and death [for these animals],” the current employee said. “We’re just trying to figure out how to keep the lights on.”

People within the conservation community are deeply concerned about the fate of endangered species under the Trump administration. But if there’s one thing that gives them hope for animals like the black-footed ferret, it’s the dedication they see in their colleagues.

“If at one point in this remarkable journey [of the black-footed ferret], somebody just decided that this isn’t worth it, they could have gone extinct,” the current employee said. “But there have always been enough people who care, and we’ve soldiered on. It could have failed so many times, but enough people cared that it didn’t.” 

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Don’t Think Too Hard About Gum

When you chew gum, you’re essentially gnawing on plastic.

At the turn of the 20th century, William Wrigley Jr. was bent on building an empire of gum, and as part of his extensive hustle, he managed to persuade the U.S. Department of War to include his products in soldiers’ rations. His argument—baseless at the time—was that chewing gum had miraculous abilities to quench thirst, stave off hunger, and dissipate nervous tension. But he was right: Scientists have since found that gum chewing can indeed increase concentration, reduce the impulse to snack, alleviate thirst, and improve oral health.Perhaps that’s why people around the world have had the impulse to gnaw on tacky materials—roots, resins, twigs, blubber, tar made by burning birch bark—for at least 8,000 years. Today, gum is again being marketed as a panacea for wellness. You can buy gum designed to deliver energy, nutrition, stress relief, or joint health; scientists are even developing gums that can protect against influenza, herpes, and COVID. Ironically, this new era of chewing gum is manufactured with a distinctly modern ingredient, one not usually associated with wellness: plastic.By the time Wrigley began his business venture, Americans had grown accustomed to chewing gum sold as candy-coated balls or packaged sticks. The base of these chewing gums was made from natural substances such as spruce resin and chicle, a natural latex that Aztecs and Mayans chewed for hundreds if not thousands of years. Unfortunately for 20th-century Americans, the chicozapote trees that exude chicle take a long time to grow, and if they are overtapped, they die. Plus, cultivated trees don’t produce nearly as much chicle as wild trees, says Jennifer Mathews, an anthropology professor at Trinity University and the author of Chicle. In the 1950s, chicle harvesters began struggling to meet demand. So gum companies turned to the newest innovations in materials science: synthetic rubbers and plastics.Today, most companies’ gum base is a proprietary blend of synthetic and natural ingredients: If a packet lists “gum base” as an ingredient, that gum most likely contains synthetic polymers. The FDA allows gum base to contain any of dozens of approved food-grade materials—substances deemed either safe for human consumption or safe to be in contact with food. Many, though, are not substances that people would otherwise think to put in their mouth. They include polyethylene (the most common type of plastic, used in plastic bags and milk jugs), polyvinyl acetate (a plastic also found in glue), and styrene-butadiene rubber (commonly used in car tires). The typical gum base contains two to four types of synthetic plastics or rubbers, Gwendolyn Graff, a confectionery consultant, told me.Everything we love about gum today is thanks to synthetic polymers, Graff said. Polyvinyl acetate, for example, strengthens the bubble film. “If you blow a bubble, and it starts to get holes in it and deflate, that’s usually an indicator that it doesn’t have polyvinyl acetate,” Graff said. Styrene-butadiene rubber creates a bouncy chewiness that makes gum more likely to stick to itself rather than to surfaces like your teeth. Polyethylene can be used to soften gum so it doesn’t tire out your jaw. Gums with only natural polymers “can feel like they're going to fall apart in your mouth,” Graff said.Plastic gum, though, also falls apart, in a way: Gum chewing has been linked to microplastic ingestion. In a study published in December, U.K. researchers had a volunteer chew on a piece of gum for an hour, spitting into test tubes as they went. After an hour of gum chewing, the saliva collected contained more than 250,000 pieces of micro and nano plastics—comparable to the level of microplastics found in a liter of bottled water. In a study presented at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society (which has not yet been peer-reviewed), a graduate student’s saliva contained elevated microplastic levels after she chewed several commercially available gums, including natural ones. The research on gum chewing and microplastics is still limited—these two papers effectively represent analysis of just two people’s post-chew saliva—but gum chewing has also been correlated with higher urine levels of phthalates, plastic-softening chemicals that are known endocrine disruptors.Scientists are still learning about the health impacts of microplastic ingestion, too. Microplastics find their way into all kinds of foods from packaging or contamination during manufacturing, or because the plants and animals we eat absorb and ingest microplastics themselves. As a result, microplastics have been found in human livers, kidneys, brains, lungs, intestines, placentas, and breast milk, but exactly how our bodies absorb, disperse, and excrete ingested plastic is not very well studied, says Marcus Garcia, who researches the health effects of environmental contaminants at the University of New Mexico. Some research in mice and cultured cells hint that microplastics have the potential to cause damage, and epidemiological research suggests that microplastics are associated with respiratory, digestive, and reproductive issues, as well as colon and lung cancer. But scientists are still trying to understand whether or how microplastics cause disease, which microplastics are most dangerous to human health, and how much microplastic the body can take before seeing any negative effects.The answer could affect the future of what we choose to eat—or chew. Ingesting tiny plastic particles might seem inevitable, but over the past 10 years or so, Americans have grown understandably fearful about bits of plastic making their way into our food, fretting about microwaving food in plastic containers and drinking from plastic bottles. Gum has, for the most part, not triggered those worries, but in recent years, its popularity had been dropping for other reasons. In a bid to reverse that trend, gum companies are marketing synthetic gum as a tool for wellness. Just like Wrigley, they are betting that Americans will believe in the power of gum to soothe nerves and heal ailments, and that they won’t think too hard about what modern gum really is. For anyone worried about swallowing still more plastic, after all, gum is easy enough to avoid.

A marine biologist discovered something incredible in a beer bottle on the seafloor

This story was produced in collaboration with The Dodo. One morning this week, Hanna Koch was snorkeling in the Florida Keys when she came across a brown beer bottle on the sea floor. Koch, a marine biologist for Florida’s Monroe County, picked up the bottle, planning to carry it with her and later toss it […]

This story was produced in collaboration with The Dodo. One morning this week, Hanna Koch was snorkeling in the Florida Keys when she came across a brown beer bottle on the sea floor. Koch, a marine biologist for Florida’s Monroe County, picked up the bottle, planning to carry it with her and later toss it out.  Through her dive mask, Koch peered inside to make sure it was empty.  That’s when she saw an eyeball.  “There was something staring back at me,” Koch told me.  It wasn’t just one eyeball, actually — but dozens. Inside the bottle was an octopus mom with a brood of babies. “You could see their eyes, you could see their tentacles,” Koch said in a recent interview with Vox and The Dodo. “They were fully formed.” Instead of taking the bottle with her and throwing it away like she initially intended, Koch handed it to her colleague, another marine biologist, who carefully placed it back on the sandy sea floor. Based on the images and video, Chelsea Bennice, a marine biologist at Florida Atlantic University, said the animal was likely a species of pygmy octopus — making this whole encounter even cuter.  On one hand, it’s hopeful to find life — an octopus family! — living in rubbish. “One man’s trash is another octopuse’s nursery,” as University of Miami environmental scientist Jennifer Jacquet told me when I showed her the photos. Her graduate student, Janelle Kaz, said it’s actually not uncommon for octopuses to take up residence in beer bottles. “They are highly curious and opportunistic,” Jacquet said.  But it’s also a reminder that, as Florida ecosystems decline, there are fewer and fewer places for wildlife to live. Overfishing, pollution, and climate change have devastated near-shore habitats in the Keys — and especially coral reefs — in the last few decades.  The irony, Koch told me, is that she runs a state-funded project in Monroe County to create “artificial reefs:” structures, often made of concrete, to enhance the habitat for fish, lobsters, and other sea creatures. And she was actually snorkeling that morning to figure out where to put some of the structures.  “This octopus found artificial habitat to make its home,” Koch said. “I was just like, ‘Wait momma, because I’m going to put out some better habitat for you — something that someone can’t pick up and throw away.’”

Sea Lion Bites Surfer Amid One of the Worst Outbreaks of Domoic Acid Poisoning That California Wildlife Rescuers Can Remember

Sea lions, dolphins and birds are sick and dying because of a toxic algae bloom in Southern California—and animal care organizations are overwhelmed by the scale

Volunteers with the Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute in Santa Barbara, California, rescue a sick sea lion that's likely suffering from domoic acid poisoning. David Swanson / AFP via Getty Images It started as a normal surf session for RJ LaMendola. He was roughly 150 yards from the beach in Southern California, riding the waves and enjoying the peaceful solitude. But the situation quickly turned violent when a sea lion emerged from the water and charged at LaMendola. The 20-year surfing veteran tried to remain calm as he frantically paddled back to shore, but the sea lion was behaving unusually—“like some deranged predator,” LaMendola wrote in a widely shared post on Facebook. The sea lion made contact, delivering a hard bite on LaMendola’s left buttock that pierced through his wetsuit. “Never have I had one charge me, especially at that ferocity, mouth open,” LaMendola tells the Ventura County Star’s Stacie N. Galang and Cheri Carlson. “It really was out of, like, a horror movie.” Eventually, LaMendola made it back to the sand and drove himself to a nearby emergency room. After being treated, he contacted local wildlife authorities. The most likely explanation for the sea lion’s abnormally aggressive behavior? The creature was probably suffering from domoic acid poisoning, which results from toxic algae blooms. Across Southern California, authorities are grappling with one of the worst outbreaks of domoic acid poisoning they’ve ever seen. Dozens of sea lions and dolphins have been affected by the condition in recent weeks, reports the Los Angeles Times’ Summer Lin. Birds are also turning up dead, according to the Los Angeles Daily News’ Erika I. Ritchie. At least 140 sick sea lions are being cared for at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, per the Los Angeles Times, because they have a 50 to 65 percent chance of surviving if they receive treatment. Roughly another 45 are being cared for at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, reports the Los Angeles Daily News. SeaWorld San Diego has rescued another 15 this year, reports KGTV’s Jane Kim. Other sea lions have been found dead on area beaches. “This morning, we had three calls within 30 minutes of daylight breaking,” Glenn Gray, CEO of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, told the Los Angeles Daily News on March 18. “That’s the magnitude of it.” Members of the public are being urged to report any sick, distressed or dead animals they find on the beach. Beachgoers should also stay away from the animals and give them space. David Swanson / AFP via Getty Images Dozens of dolphins, meanwhile, are washing up dead or close to death on beaches. Veterinarians are euthanizing the dolphins, because they rarely survive domoic acid poisoning, per the Los Angeles Times. “It’s the only humane option,” says John Warner, CEO of the Marine Mammal Care Center, to the Westside Current’s Jamie Paige. “It’s an awful situation.” A similar outbreak occurred in 2023, killing more than 1,000 sea lions. But officials say this year is shaping up to be worse. The harmful algae bloom started roughly five weeks ago. During a bloom, environmental conditions cause microscopic phytoplankton to proliferate. Some species of phytoplankton produce domoic acid, which then accumulates in filter-feeding fish and shellfish. Marine mammals become sickened when they eat the affected fish and shellfish. (Humans can also get sick from eating contaminated fish, shellfish and crustaceans.) In marine mammals, symptoms of domoic acid poisoning include seizures, lethargy, foaming at the mouth and a neck-craning behavior known as “stargazing.” Biting incidents—like the one LaMendola endured—are rare, but sickened animals have been known to behave aggressively. “The neurotoxin is crippling and killing sea lions and dolphins,” says Ruth Dover, managing director of the nonprofit Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute, to the Ventura County Star. The bloom likely started when cold water from deep in the Pacific Ocean rose to the surface in February. Now, it also appears to be spreading closer to the shore. Researchers are monitoring the bloom, but so far, they have no indication of how long it will last. Authorities say toxic algae blooms are getting worse and happening more frequently because of climate change, agricultural runoff and other human-caused factors. This is the fourth straight year a domoic acid-producing bloom has developed off Southern California, as Dave Bader, chief operating officer of the Marine Mammal Care Center, tells KNX News’ Karen Adams. “We don’t know what the long-term impacts will be for having so many consecutive years of this toxic bloom,” Bader adds. “But [dolphins are] a sentinel species. They’re telling us about the health of the ocean, and when we see marine life dying, and we’re seeing it in increasing levels with more frequency, the ocean’s telling us something’s off.” The ongoing outbreak is taking its toll on Southern California veterinarians, volunteers and beachgoers. The incidents are particularly heartbreaking for lifeguards, who typically comfort dying dolphins—and keep beachgoers away—until authorities can arrive. Members of the public are encouraged to report any distressed, sick or dead animals they find on the beach. And, more importantly, they should leave the animals alone. Authorities say pushing a sick creature back into the ocean will likely cause it to drown. Dolphins also become especially agitated when they’re out of the water and people are around—to the point that they can die from fear. “People need to leave them alone and not crowd around them,” Warner tells the Los Angeles Times. “Selfies kill animals, so use your zoom, and stay away.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Deep Sea Mining Impacts Still Felt Forty Years On, Study Shows

By David StanwaySINGAPORE (Reuters) - A strip of the Pacific Ocean seabed that was mined for metals more than 40 years ago has still not recovered,...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A strip of the Pacific Ocean seabed that was mined for metals more than 40 years ago has still not recovered, scientists said late on Wednesday, adding weight to calls for a moratorium on all deep sea mining activity during U.N.-led talks this week.A 2023 expedition to the mineral-rich Clarion Clipperton Zone by a team of scientists led by Britain's National Oceanography Centre found that the impacts of a 1979 test mining experiment were still being felt on the seafloor, a complex ecosystem hosting hundreds of species.The collection of small "polymetallic nodules" from an eight-metre strip of the seabed caused long-term sediment changes and reduced the populations of many of the larger organisms living there, though some smaller, more mobile creatures have recovered, according to the study, published in Nature journal."The evidence provided by this study is critical for understanding potential long-term impacts," said NOC expedition leader Daniel Jones. "Although we saw some areas with little or no recovery, some animal groups were showing the first signs of recolonisation and repopulation."Delegations from 36 countries are attending a council meeting of the U.N.'s International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica this week to decide whether mining companies should be allowed to extract metals like copper or cobalt from the ocean floor.As they deliberate over hundreds of proposed amendments to a 256-page draft mining code, environmental groups have called for mining activities to be halted, a move supported by 32 governments and 63 large companies and financial institutions."This latest evidence makes it even more clear why governments must act now to stop deep sea mining before it ever starts," said Greenpeace campaigner Louise Casson.While few expect a final text to be completed by the time the latest round of talks ends on March 28, Canada's The Metals Company plans to submit the first formal mining application in June.On Friday, delegates will discuss what actions should be taken if an application to mine is submitted before the regulations have been completed.TMC said at a briefing last week that it had a legal right to submit an application at any time and hoped that the ISA would bring clarity to the application process.TMC says the environmental impact of deep sea mining is significantly smaller than conventional terrestrial mining."You just have to move a lot less material to get the same amount of metal - higher grade means better economics, but also means lower environmental impacts," said Craig Shesky, TMC's chief financial officer.(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Saad Sayeed)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

In the hills of Italy, wolves returned from the brink. Then the poisonings began

Strict laws saved the country’s wolves from extinction. Now conservationists believe their relaxation could embolden vigilantesHigh on a mountain pass near the town of Cocullo in central Italy lay six black sacks. Inside were nine wolves, including a pregnant female and seven youngsters – an entire pack. They had eaten slabs of poisoned veal left out a few days earlier, dying over the hours that followed, snarls of pain fixed on their faces.Three griffon vultures and two ravens were also killed, probably alongside more animals that went into hiding, dying out of sight. Poison creates a succession of death, spreading through entire food chains and contaminating land and water for years. Continue reading...

High on a mountain pass near the town of Cocullo in central Italy lay six black sacks. Inside were nine wolves, including a pregnant female and seven youngsters – an entire pack. They had eaten slabs of poisoned veal left out a few days earlier, dying over the hours that followed, snarls of pain fixed on their faces.Three griffon vultures and two ravens were also killed, probably alongside more animals that went into hiding, dying out of sight. Poison creates a succession of death, spreading through entire food chains and contaminating land and water for years.The incident in 2023, was described as “culturally medieval” by national park authorities. “It was a bad day for the whole team,” says Nicolò Borgianni, a vulture field officer with Rewilding Apennines, who still remembers what a beautiful May day it was when the animals perished: alpine flowers poking through the grass and snow still dusting mountain peaks on the horizon from the 1,300-metre viewpoint. “But there are many cases like this one.”The bags containing nine wolves poisoned in Cocullo. No one was prosecuted for the deaths. Photograph: HandoutLike all poisoning events in this area, no one was prosecuted. The corpses were disposed of and life moved on. Now the ground is grubbed up from wild boars digging their snouts in the dirt looking for bulbs to eat.Downgrading wolf protection is a misguided decision. It offers no real help to rural communitiesIn the 1970s, wolves were on the brink of extinction in Italy, but thanks to strict protections and conservation efforts, there are now more than 3,000 of them. In many areas of Europe, farmers are having to learn to live alongside wolves again as they return to places they have been absent from for hundreds of years – and many are concerned that they prey on livestock. The story unfolding in this small valley in Italy is being repeated all over Europe. “Farmers feel abandoned by government, so they solve their problems on their own,” says Borgianni.From March 2025, the EU is relaxing its protections from “strictly protected” to “protected”, which means if wolves are perceived as a threat to rural communities, states can organise culls. Poisonings such as the one in Cocullo will remain illegal, but conservationists fear the relaxation of protections will empower vigilantes.Angela Tavone, a communications manager from Rewilding Apennines, is worried this will create more “chains of death” like the one two years ago. “Groups of farmers can feel more free to act against wolves because of the change in the EU law,” she says.Angela Tavone and Nicolò Borgianni inspect a horse skull. Photograph: Luigi Filice/The GuardianWhoever killed the wolf pack in 2023 failed to keep wolves away. Months later, another pack moved in. Nearly two years later, on that same spot, there are half a dozen wolf droppings, some just a few weeks old. The pack’s territory overlaps with mountain pastures used for cattle and sheep in spring and summer. Wild boar makes up most of the wolves’ diet here, but you can also spot hairs from cows or horses in the droppings. Borgianni estimates about 10% of their diet is livestock. One pack monitored by scientists in the region appeared to be eating closer to 70% during winter.Vultures are often the sentinels of a poisoning event. The Apennines has the highest number of GPS-tagged vultures in a single population, so observers know something is wrong if their tags stop moving. “If you investigate, you find these incidents,” says Borgianni. They are social animals and up to 60 birds can feed on a single carcass, so dozens can be wiped out quickly. Since 2021 the Rewilding Apennines team has picked up 85 carcasses across all species.An Apennine wolf pup carrying part of a red deer in Abruzzo, Italy. One poisoning event can kill a whole pack. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/AlamyPredator poisoning is an issue across Europe – and the world – but we know little about the extent of it, because animals generally die out of sight. Farmers say these apex predators threaten their livelihoods – and resolving the conflicts is complex.Down in the valley, Cristian Guido’s family farm and restaurant Il Castellaccio back on to fresh mountain pastures. Twenty years ago, when he started farming, there were not many wolves around. Two nights ago, CCTV cameras captured a pair of wolves wandering through the yard. Guido can sometimes hear them howling from the woods by the farm.Cristian Guido at his family farm and restaurant. Photograph: Luigi Filice/The GuardianFrom May, his 90 sheep go up into the hills every day to fatten on the succulent grasses, and come down in the evenings. One day last October, 18 of them didn’t come back. Guido believes wolves were to blame, perhaps chasing the sheep off a cliff.I find wolves beautiful, but I keep asking for help. It is just not possible to keep them awayThere was no evidence they had been killed by a wolf (there often is not) so he got no compensation. Now, when he takes his animals up in the morning, he doesn’t know if they will all come back. “I fear that will happen again,” he says.He is not alone. “Other farms suffered the same loss,” he says. In the past few years, half a dozen dead wolves have been hung up by roads and bus stops by people protesting at their return.“I find wolves beautiful, but I keep asking for help. It is just not possible to keep them away. And I’m aware if you shoot them, you will get more and more damage,” he says. Guido believes protections for wolves should not have been downgraded, but that farmers must be given more support.The bones of a horse in ⁨Cocullo⁩, ⁨Abruzzo. Photograph: Luigi Filice/The GuardianThis would include making compensation easier to claim and quicker to be distributed. There should be more support for farmers constructing wolf-proof fences near their properties, he believes.Research this year looking at wolf-farmer conflicts in northern Greece found wolves were often scapegoats for deep-rooted issues, such as financial challenges, poor government policies on protection of livelihoods, a changing climate, lack of services and rural depopulation. “Our findings emphasise that while wolves impact farmers, economic and policy-related factors play a greater role,” the researchers concluded. The study found fair compensation schemes were essential for coexistence.These findings are echoed by a coalition of NGOs, including BirdLife Europe, ClientEarth and the European Environmental Bureau, which say that instead of providing support for farmers living alongside wolves, the EU has allowed them to be culled. “Downgrading wolf protection is a misguided decision that prioritises political gains over science and will further polarise the debate,” say the NGOs. “It offers no real help to rural communities.”Virginia Sciore is a farmer with 150 goats grazing on pastures in the Morrone mountains. Since 2018 she has lost five goats. “You can see in the eyes of the goats they are terrified – something happened in the mountain,” she says. Sometimes, she finds a collar or tuft of hair, but usually they disappear without a trace, so she doesn’t claim compensation. “I don’t know if it was a wolf,” she says.“The majority of farmers don’t believe in coexistence,” Sciore says. “They have stories about wolves that have been imported. They want to believe these things. People are angry and it’s projected on to the wolf.”Virginia Sciore has lost five of her 150 goats since 2018. Photograph: Angela Tavone/Rewilding ApenninesThe conflict over wolves comes amid a wider shift away from environmental protections across Europe. Last year, EU leaders scaled back plans to cut pollution and protect habitats after angry protests from farmers, as a law to restore nature was turned into a political punching bag. “It’s a low moment historically to face this issue,” says Tavone.The Cucollo incident was a turning point for the Rewilding Apennines team. In response, they created their first anti-poison dog unit. A malinois dog called Wild – who at six months old is still in training – will, in the coming months, sniff out potential poisoning incidents.As spring approaches, so too does the most dangerous time for poisoning events, as farmers look to protect young and vulnerable livestock. Catching poisoning incidents quickly is key – and Wild will help with that. Those fighting to protect wildlife are increasing their efforts. “The war is still going on,” says Tavone.The mountains around Cocullo⁩. As spring approaches, poisoning events usually spike as farmers try to protect young animals. Photograph: Luigi Filice/The Guardian

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