Philippa Kaur

Humanity and some of the world’s most charismatic wildlife are on a collision course in the oceans.The world’s merchant fleet — from oil tankers to bulk cargo carriers and container ships — has doubled in size in just 16 years to more than 100,000 vessels, according to United Nations figures (see ‘A fast-growing fleet’). Between 2014 and 2050, shipping traffic is expected to rise by up to 1,200%1.These numbers, combined with data on where shipping networks overlap with the movements and aggregations of marine animals2,3, together with assessments of the effects of ship strikes on certain marine species, present an increasingly alarming picture. They suggest that ship strikes could be helping to drive the population decline of many animals, leading to profound effects throughout their ecosystems, for instance by altering biogeochemical fluxes4.

Source: UNCTAD

Yet compared with other threats to marine biodiversity, such as climate change and pollution, the problem of ship strikes harming wildlife is tractable. Various technologies and approaches are increasingly enabling surveillance of both ships and wildlife. Global regulation of the shipping industry has already been established to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. And various schemes to reduce strikes have proved effective in some locations for certain species.What’s needed now are four changes. First, researchers require better data on where, when, how often and for which species strikes are occurring. Second, there must be greater engagement with the problem, both from the shipping industry and the public. Third, regulations should be brought in to either reduce ship speed in certain areas or reroute vessels; and finally, there must be monitoring of adherence to such restrictions. With these changes, there is no reason why this problem cannot be addressed.Tip of the icebergCollisions between ships and ocean animals are hard to quantify because they are not systematically recorded, and can go unnoticed when large vessels are involved. Carcasses can sink before they are observed.Numerous lethal strikes have been documented worldwide in the past 100 years or so, often by scientists using eyewitness accounts or by direct observations of floating, dead animals2,3. Researchers have been warning of the impacts of global shipping on whales for nearly two decades5. And for some species, research has established the importance of ship strikes relative to other threats. A 2019 study, for instance, showed that, alongside entanglement in fishing gear, ship strikes are a leading cause of human-induced mortality for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis)6.

An acoustic monitoring buoy.Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

By collating information dating back to 1877 on what species have been struck by vessels, a 2020 study identified more than 75 marine species as being at risk of harm from strikes2. The marine megafauna — whales, sharks, sea turtles and other organisms with a body mass of 45 kilograms or more — top the list. These ocean giants spend most of their lives at the surface3, travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres across ocean basins and often aggregate in coastal and continental-shelf areas7.The list includes some of the most endangered animals: 60 are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species2. More than one-third of those listed are threatened with extinction. For the other 15, there are insufficient data to make an assessment.
UN high seas treaty is a landmark – but science needs to fill the gap
Studies on ship strikes so far, however, are not comprehensive and have drawn on data collected only from particular areas and only for some species. According to conservative estimates based on deaths of three whale species in four US study sites, for example, ships kill more than 80 whales a year in an area measuring roughly 800,000 square kilometres8. Yet for other species, data on the number of deaths and the location of collisions are missing. Reports of strikes tend to focus on a few species that are most likely to be seen floating when dead, such as whales, dolphins and turtles. But the majority of marine animals, and all cartilaginous fishes (sharks, rays, skates and so on), sink when dead and so will not be observed2.A 2022 study co-authored by two of us (F.C.W. and D.W.S.) attempted to assess the global impact of collisions on whale sharks (Rhincodon typus), a species that sinks quickly when dead3. The findings are concerning. Satellite data that tracked the relative positions of whale sharks and vessels show that 92% of the species’ use of horizontal space and nearly 50% of its vertical space use overlaps with shipping routes. Strikes could explain why the population is continuing to decline even though mortality caused by fishing has been reduced.In short, various lines of evidence indicate that existing records of ship strikes — and the estimates made so far of the impact of collisions on marine life — represent the tip of the iceberg for current and future harms of the shipping industry to marine biodiversity.Data on demandFortunately, the tools and key players needed to collect and analyse data across ecosystems and jurisdictional borders — and to develop mitigation strategies — already exist.Various international projects are already collating and distributing data on where animals are and how they move through the ocean. These include platforms that rely on surveys, such as the Ocean Biodiversity Information System; animal-tracking databases such as Movebank; and tools that predict animal distributions on the basis of sightings and assessments of habitat suitability, such as AquaMaps.Likewise, shipping information can be obtained from providers of Automatic Identification System data, which use satellites to track vessels, as well as from ocean-monitoring initiatives such as Global Fishing Watch and from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

A shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus) with satellite tags in the Pacific Ocean.Credit: Mark Conlin/Alamy

Using such data, whale experts and other researchers have already started to pinpoint high-risk areas2,3 (see Supplementary information). Our work on whale sharks showed that one is the Strait of Hormuz between the United Arab Emirates and Iran, through which about one-third of global maritime-traded oil passes each year (see go.nature.com/47kjric).For many species, this information is not yet available. Also, data collection is often patchy and disparate, with animals being tracked only in part of their range, and various data-gathering approaches being used in different areas.Governments, industry and philanthropic and other organizations can help to fill the gaps by bolstering pre-existing projects. Various mobile-phone app and web-based initiatives are leading the way with technology-powered mapping and analysis. For instance, the Whale Safe tool uses various measures, including public whale sightings, to help establish voluntary speed restrictions and other actions to reduce the risk of strikes. The use of low-Earth-orbit satellites to monitor large marine animals from space — currently an untapped technique — could provide researchers and other stakeholders with near-real-time, actionable data for high-risk areas9.But efforts must be scaled up, with those involved in local and regional projects facilitating the establishment of similar initiatives in other parts of the world, particularly in the global south. Existing efforts to connect projects and partners associated with the ocean will be key. Since 2021, for instance, the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development programme has been connecting people and organizations concerned with the role of kelp forests and seagrass beds in storing carbon, among many other issues.Increased engagementIn the past few years, it has become increasingly common for commercial shipping companies to disclose their environmental, social and governance goals in publicly available sustainability reports. Although nine of the ten largest shipping companies address whale strikes as an area of concern in their reports, the degree to which companies take action on this issue varies widely. Also, to our knowledge, none of these sustainability reports explicitly mentions megafauna other than whales.In 2007, the International Whaling Commission launched a long-term initiative to collect and analyse information about reported whale strikes: the Global Ship Strikes Database. With greater engagement from shipping companies, port authorities and industry partners, a centralized database of strikes could be built for all affected species. As well as protecting marine wildlife by helping ships to avoid collisions, such a database could bolster companies’ reputations in an increasingly eco-conscious world, and lessen disruptions to shipping operations.

Hong Kong’s container terminal is one of the largest in the world.Credit: xPACIFICA/Redux/eyevine

Currently, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), a treaty that ensures ships registered by signatory states comply with minimum safety standards, requires that all ships engaged in international voyages keep an on-board record of navigational activities and incidents relevant to safety. Adding wildlife collisions and near misses to this reporting could enable information to be collected in a comprehensive ship-strikes database. Another measure could require particular ships to have marine megafauna observers on board. (This already happens on vessels conducting seismic surveys, for example, to ensure that the noise from underwater soundings is minimized when whales are nearby.) On the rare occasions on which animals remain lodged on a ship’s bow, strikes could even be recorded by port authorities.
What whale falls can teach us about biodiversity and climate change
Ways to record ship strikes without direct human involvement are being developed, including forward-facing and thermal-imaging cameras, infrared and thermal sensors and underwater echo sounders to image animals. Technology developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts uses a camera the size of a shoebox and an artificial-intelligence (AI) algorithm to help ships detect and avoid whales10. (The algorithm is trained to identify whether a whale is present; if so, the program sends a signal to the ship’s operator so they can slow down or change course.) Also, the shipping industry is increasingly using advanced autopilot systems based on AI and deep learning11. In principle, hazard-detection systems on autonomous vessels could be trained to identify marine megafauna, log incidents and implement any necessary evasive manoeuvres.Conventions and treaties that are already in place to increase industry and public engagement in ocean-environment issues could help with all this. But instruments such as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty (a framework adopted earlier this year to tackle biodiversity loss on the high seas) must explicitly address the issue of ship strikes. Currently, there is no mention of this in the treaty.Shipping regulationsThe best way to reduce strikes is to separate ships from wildlife. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is a specialized UN agency responsible for worldwide shipping regulations. Through SOLAS, the IMO can reroute ship traffic to avoid collisions with a floating object or to ensure that areas crucial for some species’ feeding or reproduction at particular times of year are avoided.Permanent or seasonal traffic diversions around wildlife areas have proved hugely effective2. For whales, even minor routing changes in high-risk areas have led to substantial reductions in strikes. For instance, in the Bay of Fundy off Canada, moving a shipping route eastwards by just 4 nautical miles (7.4 km) in 2003 reduced the risk of vessels colliding with North Atlantic right whales by 90%12.

A whale shark (Rhincodon typus) thought to have been scarred in a collision with a vessel.Credit: Claudio Contreras/Nature Picture Library

Several studies and reports show that, in places where ships cannot be rerouted, speed reductions can lower the risk and the lethality of a strike2. In 2008, voluntary and mandatory speed limits of 10 knots (18.5 km per hour) were applied in certain areas along the US east coast. In the first 5 years after implementation, there were no records of ships striking North Atlantic right whales either inside or within 45 nautical miles of these areas13. Studies incorporating emissions show that speed restrictions can bring other benefits. In a 2019 study, decreasing speeds by as little as 10% lowered the risk of ships striking whales by 50%, reduced underwater noise by 40% and cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 13%14.Despite the evidence that rerouting and speed reductions mitigate ‘ocean roadkill’, restrictions on ship routes and speeds remain disparate and uncoordinated, just like data collection on marine animals. A global, IMO-mediated treaty mandating maximum average speeds — and rerouting to ensure ships avoid areas of high collision risk — could be one of the easiest ways to protect wildlife from ship strikes. In fact, regulations introduced this year to ameliorate the effects of climate change from shipping, such as the IMO 2023 Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index and the Carbon Intensity Indicator, already stipulate lower speeds for certain vessels.A cloud-based, open-data portal could facilitate the establishment of up-to-date, dynamic policies by integrating data on animal and ship movements, risk maps, geo-referenced strike reports, current spatial protections and relevant maritime features into a single mapping resource. This would be similar to HUBOcean, which brings diverse data sources together on one platform to enable scientific collaboration, industry transparency and regulation. Crucially, data could be made available to all stakeholders, from government agencies and non-governmental organizations to academic researchers and industry partners.Monitoring adherenceOnce regulatory changes have been relayed to industry, adherence to speed and route restrictions could be monitored at a national level using data from Automatic Identification Systems. Ship owners, shipping companies and port authorities could also help to ensure regulatory compliance. Financial penalties could be used to discourage speeding or encroachment in no-go zones. In principle, subsidies, tax breaks and other forms of governmental financial support aimed at environmental objectives could be used to reduce ship strikes on marine megafauna.Because governments are unlikely to act without sufficient public pressure, a global ‘wildlife-safe’ shipping eco-certification scheme could be crucial. Similar to NOAA’s ‘dolphin-safe’ tuna-can labels — which aim to signal compliance with US laws and regulations around tuna fishing operations — this would help to increase consumer awareness of the problem and enable informed choices. Scaling up the success of voluntary certification programmes, such as Friend of the Sea’s Whale-Safe label, alongside its certification of seafood from sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, would greatly increase the visibility of this issue.Loss of the ocean’s largest animals will have major unforeseen consequences for the health of the seas. Making ship strikes a higher priority globally is one immediately achievable way to help to conserve the world’s most vulnerable and iconic marine species. More

Europe’s fisheries are catching yellowfin tuna at unsustainable levels, scientists say.Credit: Marty Melville/AFP/Getty

It is a heart-breaking litany. As the world warms, its oceans are acidifying — they have become 30% more acidic during the industrial era. The area covered by low-oxygen marine ‘dead zones’, which are almost devoid of life, has more than quadrupled1 since 1960. By 2025, the amount of plastic in the seas is expected to total 150 million tonnes2. Even now, only 3% of the ocean is strongly protected by marine reserves.None of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is on track to be achieved by 2030, as Nature has been reporting in this series of editorials. But progress on a few, including the 14th goal — to conserve and sustainably use the oceans — has actually been going backwards since the 2015 UN summit at which the SDGs were agreed.SDG 14 comprises ten targets and pledges intended to address acidification, pollution, overfishing, biodiversity loss and other ocean ills. Three are on track, and two others are progressing, albeit too slowly to be achieved by the deadline. The remaining five have either stagnated or regressed. This failure is not for want of talking or pledging. In 2020, under the auspices of a High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (the Ocean Panel), co-chaired by Norway and Palau, 14 coastal states committed to 100% sustainable management of their waters by 2025. By the end of 2022, 17 countries, accounting for more than 40% of the world’s coastal zones, were covered by this pact.
UN high seas treaty is a landmark – but science needs to fill the gap
In February 2022, meanwhile, France hosted representatives of more than 100 countries at a historic ocean summit in Brest. A number of attendees vowed to join a plan to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, to adopt new laws to safeguard marine life in waters beyond national ownership, and to end illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, a term that covers a gamut of unsustainable practices that cost the global economy up to US$50 billion a year.It’s not a lack of knowledge that’s stopping words being translated into actions. In 2018, the Ocean Panel commissioned a two-year review of available intelligence on ocean threats and opportunities, from some 250 experts around the world, closing many existing gaps. That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement — there’s a need for better regional data on fish biomass, for instance, which could help efforts to determine where and how to protect stocks.But the one gap science alone cannot fill is a lack of leadership, something that is most evident in the disturbing misalignment of promises and action from self-proclaimed ocean champions. In June, Norway announced new permits for offshore oil and gas drilling worth $18.5 billion, and proposed opening some 280,000 square kilometres of its waters to deep-sea mining, a nascent industry that risks wreaking havoc on poorly understood ocean ecosystems. Similarly, France, also the host nation for an upcoming UN Ocean Conference in 2025, is opposing a measure to exclude a destructive fishing practice called bottom trawling from marine protected areas in the European Union.The EU itself seems to be operating two sets of policies. Successes it has chosen to highlight include a 37% decrease in fishing pressure — a measure of the extent to which a stock is being exploited — and a 22% increase in fish biomass in its waters between 2005 and 2020. This contrasts sharply with its actions elsewhere; it has been fighting conservation measures in the Indian Ocean that would curb chronic overfishing of yellowfin tuna. French and Spanish ships harvest up to one-third of tuna in these waters with the aid of fish-aggregating devices — large floating structures made of wood or plastic that attract fish, including juveniles, and are associated with unsustainable fisheries.
Protecting the ocean requires better progress metrics
Other big maritime nations — China, India, Brazil and Russia — are facing major challenges in achieving SDG 14. But none has held itself up as an ocean leader. Conversely, Chile’s government is making strides. It has designated 41% of the country’s waters for protection, and, last year, the government proposed (albeit unsuccessfully) to revise the constitution, in part to bring in broader ocean-management measures, including more stringent controls on coastal salmon farming.There’s still time to turn the ship around. Key to this will be the implementation of measures to hold nations accountable for their promises, for which Nature and others have previously advocated. This, in turn, needs better progress metrics. In this respect, researchers can and are playing a crucial part3. There’s also a need to finance help where it’s needed. According to one analysis, implementation of SDG 14 will require an extra $150 billion a year4. But implementing some SDGs will make funding available for others. Ending harmful fisheries subsidies, for example, should free up between $22 billion and $35.4 billion a year5.Much of the extra funding required for SDG 14 has already been negotiated through other forums, such as the UN’s Green Climate Fund. And last December, as part of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, nations agreed to raise at least $200 billion a year by 2030 from public and private sources to fund biodiversity protection, both on land and in the water.This isn’t just about dewy-eyed sentiment for our beautiful blue planet: the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people depend on the oceans and the life they sustain. There’s much that scientists can do to achieve ocean sustainability. But to get SDG 14 back on track for 2030, world leaders must stand by the promises in their rhetoric. More

Freshwater biodiversity in China’s upper Yellow River is once again under threat, this time from the planned Heishan Gorge hydraulic engineering project. This follows the construction of multiple reservoirs along the Yellow River basin since the 1950s. Local governments should learn from the past and assess the project’s potential ecological impacts before going ahead.
Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests. More

In a remote national park on Australia’s most southwestern tip, a lone radio tower stands above a quiet wetland. Every five seconds, it collects signals from a few dozen young tortoises hiding out beneath the glassy waters. The tiny tortoises don’t journey far, but researchers are tracking their every move. The fate of a species — one of the most endangered in the world — might depend on these data.There are fewer than 70 adult western swamp tortoises (Pseudemydura umbrina) living in the wild in two small wetland reserves north of Perth, Australia. These spots are all that remains of the creatures’ native habitat, and they are drying out, owing to rising temperatures and a reduction in rainfall. So, in August last year, scientists selected 41 juvenile tortoises from a captive-breeding programme in a zoo and released them into this national park, some 330 kilometres south of where the tortoises are naturally found. The aim is to see whether the animals can tolerate cooler climates, and whether this new habitat might ensure the species’ future as the planet warms.This experiment is part of a series of closely monitored field trials testing one of the most controversial strategies for saving a species — a concept called assisted migration. The tortoise is thought to be the first vertebrate to be moved beyond its historical range because of climate change.Nicki Mitchell, a herpetologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, is leading the project that is trying to save the tortoise. Her team is now on their fourth trial of releasing captive-bred tortoises into selected wetlands to test the potential of assisted migration, also called assisted colonization. It’s a high-stakes strategy — and one that researchers have long debated. “It is a demonstration project for the world, and we particularly want to make sure there are no perverse outcomes,” Mitchell says.Conservation biologists and land managers have long resisted the idea of assisted migration, mainly because introduced species could become invasive pests, carry diseases or upend existing ecosystems. Few places know the risks better than Australia, which has waged war against cane toads, rabbits and other invasive species that people purposefully introduced to the continent in ill-fated schemes.But attitudes towards assisted migration are slowly shifting as conservationists realise just how fast the climate is changing. Several projects are in the works, only a step or two behind the swamp tortoise experiments. Researchers in eastern Australia are testing plans to move critically endangered pygmy possums, which are threatened by increasing temperatures and droughts, and scientists in Hawaii are relocating seabirds to higher ground, to protect them from rising seas that are fast destroying their nesting habitat.

Hayley Bates hopes to transfer mountain pygmy possums to lowland environments.Credit: Tamara Dean

Those leading the charge are urging their peers to confront difficult decisions head-on, lest more species go extinct. And as a first test, the swamp tortoise trials are in the spotlight as researchers wait to see whether the project proves successful. Early results suggest that the juveniles are growing as expected, but the researchers say it’s still too early to reach a conclusion; in a previous trial, the tortoises failed to thrive in another southern location that had looked good on paper.“What changes perception more than anything,” says Lindsay Young, a conservation biologist working in Hawaii on the seabird project, “is establishing a precedent for having done it successfully.”Nowhere to goFor a species at the forefront of research and conservation, the swamp tortoise is an unassuming creature. No bigger than a human hand, they have dark, plain shells and spend the wetter months in shallow ponds. When those dry out during the heat of summer, the animals settle under bushes and logs, entering a dormant state called aestivation until the rains return.This rare and elusive tortoise was presumed extinct when it was first described from a museum specimen in 1901. Half a century later, in 1953, it was rediscovered in the wild. But the tortoise has nowhere to go. The last fragments of its known wetland habitat on the outskirts of Perth are now fenced in, surrounded by the expanding city and drying out despite efforts to pump water into them. Predators, poachers and wildfires also threaten the tortoises’ existence.
Invasive palms and WWII damaged an island paradise. Could fungi help to restore it?
The strategy of assisted migration is not a new one. It was first proposed in 1985, but it has not seen widespread use. Barely a dozen species of tree, lichen and butterfly have been moved to cooler climes because of foreseen changes to their climatic niche. Many more have been shifted to avoid predators, pathogens or human construction — which are more immediate, localized threats than climate change.Shifting a species within its known range or restocking wild populations with captive-bred animals is common practice in conservation. But assisted migration oversteps ecological boundaries and makes many conservation scientists feel uneasy. “It’s an enormous thing for conservation to do, to change the range of a species to keep it alive,” says Kylie Soanes, a conservation biologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia.Nevertheless, Mitchell sees trialling assisted colonization as a better alternative to watching the last remaining captive populations of an iconic species dwindle to extinction.Mitchell hatched the idea to shift the tortoise south with Gerald Kuchling, a herpetologist at the Western Australian government’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, and principal scientist of the department’s swamp tortoise recovery team. Given the tortoises’ rarity, the researchers had to devise methods of predicting where suitable wetlands for the tortoise were likely to occur two decades from now, on the basis of wetland hydrology, local climate projections and the tortoises’ physiology1. That modelling, which screened more than 13,000 locations, led the researchers to one spot: an area in the southwest corner of Western Australia with plenty of seasonal wetlands, two of which would become the site of the first assisted colonization trial in 2016.The team released a dozen captive-bred tortoises at each southern site as part of the trial and, at first, it looked like a good move. The introduced tortoises, which had small radio transmitters glued to their shells, grew as well as their northern kin2. In 2021 a bushfire destroyed 90% of the tortoises’ original habitat. But then data started trickling in from the next trial, which involved releasing another 48 radio-tagged juveniles in 2018.The results, published in May3, suggest that the tortoises released in the southernmost wetland basked less and grew more slowly than did those in their home haunt. The wetland, the researchers discovered, was fed by a chilly stream and it rained there more often than it did in the creatures’ home habitat. That meant that the introduced tortoises were less active; which might have impeded their growth.

The western swamp tortoise is Australia’s rarest reptile.Credit: Matthew Abbott/New York Times/Redux/eyevine

Despite those results, Mitchell says the 2018 trial still yielded important insights about how swamp tortoises spend their days, thanks to custom-made data-loggers glued to their shells that gauged when the animals were basking in the shallows and when they were submerged deep underwater. “None of that was known because they’re an incredibly cryptic species,” she says. “You very rarely observe them in the wild.”Past and current trials have been approved on the proviso that the team can monitor the tortoises closely, recapture them and return them to Perth Zoo. “Which is why we’re aiming to find every animal we can, as often as we can,” says Mitchell, whose team did recapture the tortoises that were released in the first few trials. The tortoises are unlikely to become invasive or encroach on other threatened species, she adds, because they grow so slowly and eat only small aquatic insects and tadpoles.But monitoring is arduous and expensive, and the cost of the field work is draining the researchers’ remaining funding. Mitchell and her team of graduate students and volunteers are continuing their data collection until at least the end of 2023 with financial support from World Wildlife Fund Australia.Despite her hopes for the project, Mitchell says that assisted colonization won’t be suitable or feasible for every species at risk. “There are millions of species,” she says, “and we’re not going to get to many of them.”Climate concernsSean Williamson is one conservation biologist eager to see how the programme delivers. Based at Monash University in Melbourne, he’s been watching its progress from afar. He says Mitchell’s research has kindled cautious interest among conservation biologists about whether assisted migration could work for other egg-laying reptiles, such as green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas), which nest on low-lying islands throughout the tropics.
Expeditions in post-war Colombia have found hundreds of new species. But rich ecosystems are now under threat
Williamson, like all of the researchers Nature spoke to, is wary of the risks that assisted migration poses. But, when faced with losing an “unfathomable” number of species to climate change, he says conservation biologists should consider every tool at their disposal, including assisted migration.Researchers are exploring this option with a population of mountain pygmy possums (Burramys parvus). In the wild, these palm-sized possums are marooned in the highest reaches of the Australian Alps, in a fragmented area totalling less than 7 square kilometres. The possums survive winter by hibernating under a blanket of snow. But with less snow and fewer moths to eat in drought years, the possums are living on the edge in their current habitat.Yet, fossil evidence suggests that their ancestors lived in lowland rainforests 25 million years ago4. So researchers built a facility near Lithgow, Australia — some 500 km from where the animals are usually found — to test whether modern possums could survive in the same environment as their forebears.Hayley Bates, a biologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and her colleagues moved 14 possums in 2022 from another facility to open-air enclosures with artificial rock walls and nesting boxes that mimic the animal’s home boulder fields. “So far, they’re doing pretty well,” she says.The possums have started breeding, which suggests they can adapt to lower elevations with occasional snow. Bates says seeing the possums breed is an important milestone in the project, which is built on a decade of field work to understand the species. The long-term plan is to release the possums into a series of small, fenced enclosures in the bounds of the wildlife sanctuary where the breeding facility is built.Any potential releases into outdoor fenced sites are still another 5 to 10 years away, and hinge on many more experiments with captive-bred possums, to work out what they might eat in their new home, and how they fare with unfamiliar predators.Meanwhile, in Hawaii, Young and her team at the non-profit organization Pacific Rim Conservation based in Honolulu, where she is the executive director, are working to save seabird species that aren’t yet critically endangered, but nest on the edge of low-lying islands. Rising seas and storm surges are already wiping out countless nests, Young says, and hurricanes have erased some of Hawaii’s northwestern atolls. These threats will only intensify as the planet warms.

Conservation biologist Lindsay Young collects a black-footed albatross.Credit: Eric VanderWerf/Pacific Rim Conservation

Pacific Rim Conservation is working to make sure enough black-footed albatross (Phoebastria nigripes) chicks survive to sustain future populations. In 2017, the team began relocating weeks-old chicks from Hawaii’s northwestern atolls to Oahu, an island on which black-foots don’t usually nest.Operating under state and federal permits, Young and her colleagues housed each chick in its own A-frame shelter at the new nesting ground, a state park, some 225 km from their usual breeding spot, and hand-fed them fish milkshakes until they fledged5.It will be a few years yet before the relocated black-foots reach maturity and possibly begin breeding at their new nesting site, alongside other seabird species. Being long-lived birds that feed at sea, the albatrosses aren’t expected to become invasive or impinge on other land-dwelling species, Young says.Unpredictable risksFor a long time, some conservation scientists said that assisted colonization wasn’t an idea their peers should even be discussing. However, a survey conducted from 2016 to 2021 in Hawaii suggests that attitudes are changing, particularly among wildlife managers who realise their past inaction and their unwillingness to accept risk might have led to some extinctions. This is especially palpable on small island nations where species are hemmed in by rising seas.
Protecting monarch butterflies’ winter home could mean moving hundreds of trees
“We’re just on the front lines here,” says Melissa Price, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, who conducted the survey6 of 22 conservation practitioners. Scientists who are normally cautious are now considering making bold moves to save some Hawaiian species from disappearing, which “tells me how dire the situation is”, she says.Some researchers who once opposed assisted migration are reconsidering their stance. Mark Schwartz, a conservation scientist at the University of California, Davis, says he has become more accepting of assisted colonization now that he has seen researchers working methodically to assess the risks of moving species, such as with the western swamp tortoise.“But that doesn’t mean that I don’t deeply worry about our capacity to do it right,” Schwartz says. That’s why he and other researchers are calling for the establishment of global standards on assisted colonization to guide its responsible implementation7.Other researchers and organizations are ambivalent. In a statement outlining its position to Nature, the Ecological Society of Australia says that moving species into new habitats is expensive and risky, making assisted colonization a ‘last resort’ option in conservation planning. But the society acknowledges that as climate change worsens, “we may have to turn to assisted migration more often”. It also says that cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and halting habitat loss are the two best ways to safeguard against extinctions.Ali Chauvenet, an ecological modeller at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, says that there are many tools available to help in making decisions about assisted migration. These include modelling techniques to estimate the possible impact on ecosystems and risk-assessment frameworks to judge the likelihood that an introduced species will become invasive, or survive in a new place.

Black-footed albatross chicks were moved to Oahu, Hawaii, to establish a nesting colony there.Credit: Lindsay Young/Pacific Rim Conservation

Invasive-species biologists tend to oppose the idea because of what could go wrong. One study tried to compute the consequences of assisted migration and the likelihood of its success8. In a model simulation, it found that there is a good chance of saving selected species with assisted migration, but a recipient ecosystem might lose nearly half of its species on a rare occasion. However, the model simulated assisted migration in an artificial ecosystem of just 15 species. “It’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen,” Chauvenet says.Despite some researchers warming to the idea of assisted colonization, there are major regulatory hurdles to moving species into new areas, says Lesley Hughes, an ecologist at Macquarie University in Sydney. Government agencies, at least in Australia, rarely recognize assisted migration — or any interventionist action — as a valid option in threatened species recovery plans, according to a review9 of 100 plans that Hughes conducted in 2018. Since then, there has been some progress, she says, “but it’s at a glacial pace”.In the past few years, the US National Park Service and Parks Canada have both enlisted the help of researchers to develop frameworks and evidence maps10 on assisted migration. And in June last year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced proposed changes to the US Endangered Species Act that would make it easier for conservationists and wildlife officials to consider assisted migration as a conservation tactic, say researchers.However, the thought of moving species across ecosystem boundaries raises questions about who gets to make those decisions and draw those lines. Indigenous people, for example, have long been excluded from conservation circles, says Jacqueline Beggs, an invasive-species biologist at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who is of Ngāti Awa descent.“There’s going to be a lot of deep conversations required,” Beggs says, “to think our way through the issues, particularly from an Indigenous perspective.”A colder homeThe swamp tortoises’ wintertime wetlands are, for now, brimming with water. But come December or early January, they will dry out, at which point the tortoises will hunker down and aestivate. Before then, Mitchell and her team will ramp up their monthly monitoring to fortnightly welfare checks — to save any radio transmitters from falling off during the juveniles’ growth spurt. But there’s nothing to stop the tortoises from getting picked off by predators or waddling out of range.The animals could get some help from the authorities. In October, Australia’s Commonwealth government added the swamp tortoise to a priority list of the top 110 threatened species and included moving the tortoise to southern climate refugia as an action item. Mitchell hopes the federal government will supply funding for the project; then her team could hand over the reins to a locally based team that could monitor the tortoises’ movements, growth and survival.To keep costs down, Mitchell’s team are exploring other monitoring approaches besides radio tracking, such as measuring traces of DNA the tortoises leave behind and tracking the sounds they make using underwater hydrophones.One big question for the future is how well the tortoises can reproduce in colder climates. Mitchell says it could be another 10–15 years before any of the juveniles released last year reach breeding age — if they survive in their new home that long. For the shy, slow-growing swamp tortoise, there simply aren’t any quick answers to these burning questions. More

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A growing agricultural sector is one of the greatest global threats to wildlife. But an analysis shows that in Costa Rica, diversified farms — which host a variety of crops, as well as plants that emulate natural habitats — could help to stem the loss of some forest birds1.

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Caroline Giuglaris was inspired by student demonstrations around the world against climate change.Credit: Joly Victor/ABACA/Shutterstock

After starting my PhD in biophysics at the Curie Institute in Paris in October 2020, I was startled by the amount of waste that comes out of a laboratory: sterile packaging, excess chemicals that can’t be reused and all kinds of plastic containers. And I became more aware of this issue thanks to the School Strike for Climate, in which secondary-school students, inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, skipped Friday classes to participate in demonstrations demanding climate action.In 2020, my department (130 scientists across 13 teams) launched an internal sustainability initiative called the Green Physics Lab, which I asked to join. I decided to deepen my knowledge of academia’s environmental impact. The more I dug into the topic of sustainable research, the more passionate I became. I started to realize that the waste that my lab produced was only one small part of its carbon emissions — a concept that the initiative had not yet addressed. All those pipette tips were just the tip of the iceberg.In 2021, I discovered the work of Labos 1Point5, an international academic collective that aims to reduce the environmental impact of research. This group gathers resources and develops tools to help scientists to reduce their carbon footprints. As a result, I decided to take on a challenge with Jean de Seze, a labmate in my PhD programme. Could we measure our department’s carbon footprint and set our lab on a trajectory that was compliant with targets set out in the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which describes the impact of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels?We are not experts in carbon accounting and have not yet investigated other environmental impacts such as biodiversity pressures, pollution or water use from our lab activities, but we did our best to follow the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a tool that has been adopted by many governments and industries, with our limited resources. You can do it too. Here is an overview.Start by assessing your carbon footprint …I started by collecting information about our existing footprint by looking at energy consumption, a list of lab purchases and travel details. I then converted these data into a standardized metric, known as carbon dioxide equivalents.The first tranche of data collection was difficult, because we had no idea who had access to the numbers or who was willing to help. For instance, it took us a few months and help from our department director before the facility-services office gave us heat- and electricity-bill data. And we had to earn the trust of the head lab manager before we could access the database containing information on purchases and travel. There were many discussions on how to analyse travel data while complying with data-protection regulations. Since we first collected those data, we’ve gained our colleagues’ confidence and now know who to contact for help, which makes things easier.To estimate the lab’s final footprint, I multiplied consumption by CO2 conversion factors that I found in the literature1 and in the Labos 1Point5 database2 for emissions of purchases. This can be done using a spreadsheet.Another useful option is entering all the data into Labos 1Point5’s open-source online tool. We found that our department released into the atmosphere the equivalent of 4 tonnes of CO2 for each person per year.… but don’t dwell too much on the detailsRefining a carbon-footprint estimate is very time-consuming. We first focused on obtaining a rough assessment for our team. We then shared our results with our colleagues and broadened our analysis to include the whole department.We identified key elements that contributed greatly to our footprint, and started thinking about how to reduce their impact. In most labs, the main emissions are related to purchases (especially biochemical reagents), energy consumption and air travel. We found that, in 2021, consumables accounted for 44% of the department’s emissions (total purchases made up 69%), heating and electricity accounted for 20% and air travel accounted for 6% — at that time, travel for international conferences was still curtailed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first recommendations were to encourage teams to share chemicals and stocks to reduce purchases, and to raise the freezer temperatures to reduce electricity consumption.Broaden your baseTo deepen our impact, we needed to make our results known to the department. Our first discussions with the lab director last January were broadly positive.Those on the leadership team helped us when they could, but they warned us that some of our proposals would be hard to implement. Indeed, current institutional policies (which are changing) usually do not take carbon emissions into consideration. For example, they might favour the cheapest option for longer travel, which is often by air.After several months of gathering and analysing data, we presented our results at our department’s weekly seminar. The response was overwhelmingly positive, especially from the younger people. After that seminar, we reached a critical mass of 25 volunteers, whom we organized into four working groups: electricity and information technology, travel, purchases and plastic and waste. Each group had two tasks: to improve the estimate of our current carbon footprint, and to propose rules to reduce it in the future. There is also a communications group that works with the department to facilitate guideline implementation.Jean and I now lead the Green Physics Lab. We have monthly meetings at which we share our hurdles and progress and debate ideas, and I have integrated the working groups’ results into the bigger picture.Get into actionFor the first steps you take, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are many resources online to help you, including Labos 1Point5, My Green Lab and the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework. In our lab, we aim to reduce our use of consumables by testing the suitability of reusable glassware for common items, and we use tubes made of plastics constructed from renewable biomass materials. We have also reduced our use of sterile plastic for non-sterile tasks.The department’s largest suppliers now deliver orders twice per week for everyone, instead of several times per day for each team. Each month, volunteers run a bike-repair workshop to encourage people to reduce carbon emissions on their commute by cycling to work. With the department director, the Green Physics Lab members agreed on a lab policy to encourage people to raise freezer temperatures from –80 °C to –70 °C. A few teams in the department, as well as others at the institute, are testing this.This side project is not part of my PhD work, and in 2021, it was mainly a weekend task. But I am now fortunate to be funded by my lab for the extra work, equivalent to two days per month entirely dedicated to the Green Physics Lab, on top of my PhD grant.Set a targetQuantifying your current carbon emissions is good, but how will this translate into the future? Set short- and long-term goals, and assess your progress often. We proposed an ambitious plan to halve our emissions between 2021 and 2030. We also wrote a ‘green statement’, which was debated and voted on by the lab council, to formally acknowledge the need for an environmental transition in our workplace. We can now refer to this statement when we advocate concrete actions.For instance, one proposal that we are debating is using trains instead of planes to travel in France. We aim to implement this policy by 2025, and hope to put more stringent rules into place between 2025 and 2030.Communicate, communicate, communicateI try to update our department members on our progress frequently, to keep the buzz on sustainability in their heads. We also organize sustainability challenges and workshops and share interesting articles on the subject. We will hold our first symposium on sustainable research in October.We know that some of our proposals, such as reducing air travel and switching −80 °C freezers to −70 °C, are, understandably, not popular. Having an open discussion on the pros, cons, feasibility and constraints can help to reach an agreement. And we found that having senior researchers in the group on our side helped us to convince others to get on board.Finally, external communication is paramount. Since we have started this journey, we have realized that many labs are further along in this process than we are, but information on their carbon footprints, data usage and the initiatives that they have adopted can be hard to find. I try to promote our work at conferences and seminars — even when they are unrelated to sustainability — with posters and talks.Celebrate small successesYou will probably meet a lot of resistance, refusal or, worse, deadly silence, during this journey. Celebrate every bit of progress that you make. Don’t be too hard on yourself if the world is not ready for your green ambitions. More

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