this film was created with the goal of inspiring nuance in whatever stance you take on animals in the captivity of zoos & aquariums.

to watch the full short film, please click here.

after a century of hard-fought controversy over invasive varieties such as toxic and flammable eucalyptus trees, shoreline-enveloping ice plants, and the unstoppable pampas grass dominating everything else, it seems residents of america’s most biodiverse state have had enough. but for indigenous cultures, this latest trend in gardening is old news. 

native societies have lived in california for thousands of years, gathering and propagating native plants for food, medicine, crafting material, and cultural practices. as the environmentally destructive side of western agricultural practices becomes increasingly impossible to ignore, even state legislators have turned to traditional ecological knowledge for best sustainability practices in environmental planning.

“native peoples are able to now tell their own stories,” says nicholas hummingbird, whose popular classes on indigenous knowledge are offered through his native plant-focused instagram. “not be seen as victims of a genocidal past, but show what we have always been capable of.” 

in lecture halls, in the greenhouse, and on zoom, the students of hummingbird and other indigenous teachers not only learn how to care for native plants, but how to build a reciprocal relationship with nature.

diego cordero: a native plants nursery for the tribe, by the tribe

before the curtain fully closes on the california summer, heatwaves turn the valley of santa ynez into a frying pan, toasting the landscape and residents with temperatures over 105 degrees fahrenheit. several times a week, diego cordero turns his back on the santa barbara ocean breeze and makes an hour-long commute to the santa ynez band of chumash indians reservation to check on the native plant nursery where he works.

“i can’t miss a day of watering with brutal heat like that,” says cordero, “i’ll lose a bunch of plants.” cordero is the lead environmental technician for syceo, the santa ynez chumash environmental office, where he works with a small team to monitor, manage, adapt, and restore the natural ecosystem on the reservation. 

while many native plant nurseries exist across california, cordero says the nursery on the santa ynez reservation is “a little bit different.” instead of focusing on plants with ornamental value, aka pretty enough to put in your lawn, he often works in collaboration with the tribe’s cultural office, focusing on plants that the tribe would historically use in every-day life. plants are provided to members of the tribe on a suggested donation basis.

“even if the plants aren’t endangered, they’re hard for people to get to,” says cordero, who says that many of the most sought-after native plants are native to wetland habitats, which are often now the sites of california’s major cities. according to the california water quality monitoring council, 90% of california’s wetlands are now lost. other popular plants are grown in grassland habitats, where according to the 2016 textbook, “ecosystems of california,” 90% of the native plants have been replaced by non-native or invasive varieties. 

as climate change continues to alter the natural landscape on the reservation, members of the tribe can look to the nursery on the santa ynez reservation for a healthy, well-managed stock of their most culturally significant plants. medicinal plants, such as the cold-remedying yerba mansa, are available for those with experience using medicinal plants. juncus, also known as black rush, can be dried and woven by basketweavers. blue dick, which cordero describes as a slow-to-propagate, but “pretty little plant,” grows a garlic-like bulb, known as a corm, which is delicious when roasted and served as a historically significant source of starch.

to keep the wealth of knowledge of native plants flowing to the next generation, the santa ynez chumash environmental office runs several educational programs throughout the year. for the homework club, a youth education program in collaboration with the tribal learning center, cordero and other team members teach kids about the native plants and ecosystem on the reservation through scavenger hunts, art projects, and hands-on workshops. the environmental office coordinates with the culture department for activities at camp kalawashaq, a children’s environmental summer program, and hosts chumash earth day celebrations, and reservation clean-up events. 

cordero sees the resiliency of the tribe mirrored in his favorite class of plants, native grasses. he says the secret to these plants’ survival is in the depth of their roots, which can go up to 12 feet deep to seek out any traces of moisture in the soil, allowing them to survive long periods of drought. 

“it’s literally a deep-rooted existence,” cordero says. despite hardships, “eventually the rains do come.”
 

gerald clarke jr.: an artist living between two calendars

the fruit of the prickly pear ripens in spring, peppering the desert landscape of southern california with its magenta flesh. in the summer, the plump green pods of the honey mesquite tree are ready for picking. in the fall, rich, starchy california black oak acorns tumble from their canopy. 

gerald clarke jr., a member of the cahuilla band of mission indians and two-time elected tribal official, has fond memories of gathering edible plants throughout the year with his two daughters and making traditional dishes. “it’s really a plant calendar,” he says, explaining that the cahuilla tribe would follow the annual growing cycles of edible plants across the diverse landscape of southern california, gathering plants intentionally to ensure a plentiful supply year after year. 

but as a professor of ethnic studies at uc riverside, clarke says he follows the plant calendar in addition to an academic one. this balancing act is one he has long practiced: before teaching indigenous culture and history, he shared his sculptural and conceptual art practice with college students as head of the art department at northeast texas community college and assistant professor at east central university. 

clarke’s art focuses on indigenous themes, blending multimedia methods of weaving, sculpture, and painting. but due to the scarcity of native plants in natural environments, clarke says he doesn’t employ traditionally-used native plants in his art. “if i’m going to go out and gather plants, i want it to be for something vital to my subsistence, you know?” he says. “i don’t want to use the forest to make art. i don’t like to cross those boundaries.”

into his classes at uc riverside and art studio alike, he carries the weight of indigenous history. “native plants and native history are inherently interlinked. the organized genocide of the environment and our people are one and the same,” says clarke. his students not only learn a comprehensive curriculum on tek, a popular shorthand for traditional knowledge, but the importance of applying this knowledge correctly. clarke and other scholars say well-intentioned policies often ignore the diversity of california’s ecosystems: what works in one environment could harm another. 

“fire is a great example i always share with my students,” clarke says. studies have shown that before colonial settlement in the 1800s, indigenous tribes regularly practiced cultural burning as a method of forest management, contributing to an estimated 4.5 million acres of california that would naturally burn each year. but after colonization, a zero-tolerance fire suppression policy took over, leaving the forest underbrush to become the kindling fueling the deadly megafires of recent decades. 

only since the spring of 2022 has state legislation begun to clear the way for prescribed burns to manage this crisis, but historical cultural burning practices are not necessarily the same thing. indigenous activists say that seasonal timing, methodology, and post-fire management derived from tek are more effective at restoring biodiversity and ecological health. 

clarke’s students are angry, and he loves it. “they’re like, ‘why didn’t we know that?’ there’s a hunger for the truth, not the romanticized history we’ve been taught since kindergarten,” he says. in the classroom, he strives to uplift his students to action. 

“if i just focused on the things that we’ve lost, i think that’s a depression we’d never recover from. instead, i focus on the miracle that we’re even still here,” he says. 

nicholas hummingbird: activism in the garden and on zoom

in a zoom class in early december, a powerpoint slide shows a young boy gently smiling at the just-gathered acorns cupped in his palms. his father and instructor of the class, nicholas hummingbird, named him tuhui, which means a drop of rain in the samala language, historically spoken by indigenous tribes in southern california. 

“it only takes a drop of rain to germinate a seed, for a seed to seek out more water,” hummingbird says. “but the promise of that seed is a new beginning, a new future.” 

in his popular online classes on native plants, hummingbird’s students can pay on an affordable sliding scale to take two-hour online classes on a broad range of topics, spanning from the minutiae of tending to native plants in your own backyard, to indigenous uses for california native plants. through his instagram @california_native_plants and @_native_hummingbird, hummingbird sells and ships seeds to students who live in the state and occasionally offers in-person cooking classes with the native plants that he gathers with his son.

“my job as an educator is to take what i’ve learned, and make it accessible to anybody and everybody so that we are on equal footing,” says hummingbird, whose lessons are not only drawn from his lived experience as an indigenous person but also his background in native plant management in both national park service and private native plant nurseries. while building hahamongna native plant nursery in pasadena, california, hummingbird grew his reputation as a teacher and horticulturist, leading a team of volunteers to sustainably and responsibly propagate native plants with habitat restoration in mind.

even with these successes, hummingbird found these experiences bittersweet, opening his eyes to the widespread mismanagement of native plants. in his classes, hummingbird pulls no punches: his students not only learn how to grow seeds, but how to spot ignorance and manipulation. “money is the incentive, not a better environment,” he says. “people with good intentions can cause catastrophes when they’re not given context or the right information.”

to offer his students a deeper understanding of his culturally-driven techniques for responsible plant propagation, hummingbird’s lessons weave the complex relationship between the historical genocide of indigenous people, habitat loss, and climate change. “when you have a concept of the past, you know what has been lost,” he says, referencing the widespread biodiversity loss in california due to single-crop agricultural practices, or landscaping with invasive plants that decimate native plant populations. “do we double down on the arrogance of settler colonialism and try to make failed practices work?”

while there is some knowledge he won’t share out of respect for his community, he hopes his work informing the greater non-native public can contribute to a “better, more livable” future.

“at the end of the day, i’ll take what i’ve learned, and give it to the next generation,” says hummingbird. he compares teaching to walking down a path together, with no experts and only mutual learning. “even if my footsteps only go so far, yours can then continue on that journey.”

the model is the first of its kind to factor in animals’ resting periods, allowing gps data to more accurately reflect the large amount of time wild cats are not walking from one location to another. other models can’t account for these periods, making this one ideal to give a clearer picture of the actual lives of feline predators.

“compared to other movement models, this model allows the animals to stay still,” said jun yan, a professor of statistics at uconn, in a virtual interview. “only a small portion of their life is spent moving.” 

the model is a “highly technical thing,” said thomas meyer, a professor in the department of natural resources and the environment, in a telephone interview. he emphasized the complexity behind factoring in resting periods, and explained that it is helpful in learning more about feline predators.

“you can’t manage something you don’t understand,” meyer said.

applying a new model

meyer is using the new model to study mountain lions across the country. it has allowed him to learn about how the species is affected by the changing seasons. he once hypothesized that mountain lions are impeded by adverse conditions during winter months. but his analysis of gps data with the new model yielded a surprise: the cats move the same distance in the winter despite harsher conditions.

he explained that researching mountain lions is important because they significantly benefit their ecosystems. species like deer, elk, and sheep would overpopulate and overgraze the land if mountain lions were not there. adequate research ensures that conservationists can take the steps necessary to best protect mountain lions and keep ecosystems balanced.

“apex predators are the keystone to keeping ecosystems healthy,” meyer said.

tracy rittenhouse, an associate professor in the department of natural resources and the environment, is incorporating the new model into her research on bobcats in connecticut. she is working with the connecticut department of energy and environmental protection (deep) to track and analyze bobcat populations in the state.

she is on year six of a project that involves tracking bobcats in connecticut using gps collars. she recently joined forces with the research team that includes yan and meyer to incorporate the new statistical model into her research.

in her original experiment design, the gps collars on the bobcats recorded and transmitted the animals’ locations once every four hours. to track the cats’ resting periods in accordance with the new model, the collars now record their locations every five, 10, or 15 minutes.

rittenhouse said that the model “changes our understanding of energy budgets,” as it will allow her team to learn more about how often the bobcats stay still and expend less energy.

her team is waiting to retrieve a few more gps collars before it starts analyzing the data. the collars are supposed to fall off the cats at the end of the research period, but rittenhouse will have to retrieve the ones that failed to do so by re-trapping the bobcats and manually removing the collars.

once they have recovered the collars, rittenhouse’s team will spend about a year or two analyzing the data, then write three to four papers worth of conclusions, she said. the results will be directly applicable to deep’s bobcat conservation strategies.

a meeting of the minds

“collaboration with deep is foundational to everything i do,” rittenhouse said. “that’s the applied ecologist in me.”

meyer’s and rittenhouse’s research on feline predators is collaborative in nature. meyer works with a biologist from panthera, a worldwide wild cat conservation organization. additionally, the development and implementation of the advanced tracking model brings together experts in both ecology and statistics.

“this particular line of research calls for mathematical firepower that basically no ecologists have,” meyer said.

the statistical model that enables this advanced research is the culmination of years of problem solving, said yan. he explained that the ability to account for resting periods is a breakthrough in statistics that allows for a model to better encapsulate the natural movement of animals.

“it’s been 10 years,” yan said. “we finally have a not perfect, but reasonable and practical, solution to this problem.”

as vallejo-marin spoke to the harvard scholars in late 2021 about his goal to use a vibrating source to conduct a controlled study on the characteristics of pollination in different species of bees, an eager hand shot up in the audience. the hand belonged to noah jafferis, ph.d., a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university of massachusetts. jafferis felt that he could help vallejo-marin achieve his goal by using a completely novel bio-robotic bee to replicate certain types of pollination in experiments. vallejo-marin’s first thought was one of skepticism, as the two researchers come from entirely different scientific backgrounds, but the more they talked, the more they realized that their interests seem to intertwine perfectly.

in march 2022, within months of meeting each other, vallejo-marin and jafferis secured an $840,000 grant from the human frontier science program, an organization that promotes international interdisciplinary research related to living organisms.

“this is one of the best pieces of news that you can receive as a scientist,” vallejo-marin said, with excitement in his voice. “grant writing and getting funds in science is a very difficult process where there is a lot of chance, luck, and being in the right place at the right time.”

vallejo-marin’s biology lab in scotland is filled with the deafening sound of buzzing, which shakes the entire room with high-pitched vibrations. the source of this buzzing becomes clear as vallejo-marin walks over to a large tank in the corner of the lab, looking affectionately at the hundreds of yellow and black insects flying and landing on artificial flowers. the focus of this lab is buzz pollination, which is a fairly rare and under-researched type of bee pollination that is vital to the health and fertilization of over 20,000 plant species and crops across the globe.

“buzz pollination is used on many different plant species, including a number of crops that humans rely on for food sources such as tomatoes and blueberries,” vallejo-marin said. understanding how bees do it and which species do it could improve agriculture and help explain the importance of protecting rare species to maintain bee biodiversity.

not all bees buzz… pollinate

only certain bees can buzz pollinate, and only certain plants can be pollinated in this way. most bees pollinate by landing on flower petals and passively collecting pollen in the hairs on their bodies, which is then spread throughout the area as they fly. however, when the right kind of bee lands on the right kind of flower, the bee will contract the muscles in its thorax and start actively producing vibrations that make the entire flower shake. this motion causes the pollen grains inside to bounce back and forth and eventually shoot out of the flower.

“you can see a shower, almost like a jet stream of pollen coming out of the flower,” vallejo-marin said. “this happens in a fraction of a second, and it takes less than a hundred milliseconds for the bees to shake free thousands and thousands of pollen grains.”

the main challenge that vallejo-marin has faced throughout his research is determining the morphology of buzz pollinators. this information would allow him to decipher what enables buzz pollinators to biologically pollinate in this way, compared to species of bees that cannot produce buzz vibrations. 

“we know very little about what makes a bee buzz a certain way, whether it’s size or speed or ecology or a combination of all of those factors,” vallejo-marin said. he has found that it is extremely difficult to replicate the incredibly fast vibrations that a such a tiny insect produces on a flower. this is where dr. noah jafferis comes in, and this is where bee research will take a turn into the unknown.

creating the prototype

jafferis has been interested in bio-inspired microrobots since he was in graduate school at harvard university, where he helped develop a winged microrobot that was able to fly like a bee and simulate some of the aerodynamic aspects of insect flight. 

“the wings in those robo-bees were powered by piezoelectric actuators that bend back and forth, similar to the muscles that pull a bee’s wings back and forth,” jafferis said. “i realized that these same muscles also produce the vibrations for buzz pollination, and my microrobots may be able to help in mario’s research.”  

piezoelectric actuators are mechanical devices that take electrical energy and convert it directly into linear motion with high speed and force. unlike larger robotic mechanisms, these actuators would be able to vibrate the body of the micro-robotic bee with extreme accuracy and precision while still maintaining the weight and size of an actual bee. although the robo-bee pollinators are currently just prototypes, jafferis is confident that he will be ready to begin the coding process in the near future. 

over the next year, vallejo-marin will be using biomechanical equipment to analyze the buzz patterns of different bee species in his lab, even attempting to put tiny monitors directly on the bees to measure their movements during buzz pollination. 

“there is a variety of information that mario will be measuring, such as the frequency and amplitude of the vibrations in buzz pollination, which i can plug directly into our robo-bees and tell that to vibrate with the same frequencies and amplitudes,” jafferis said. 

but, what can these robotic bees actually tell researchers that living bees cannot, and how would the data influence bee conservation and crop production? 

bio-inspired robots have been utilized to study the behavior and anatomy of many animal species in recent decades, and their use is only growing as they are able to provide novel information that scientists have never before been able to retrieve.

“biomimetic robots enable us to control individuals in experiments, and we can pinpoint differences in the behaviors of live animals, which we cannot do in any other setting,” said david bierbach, a bio-robotics researcher, in a 2021 press conference at the university of konstanz.

jafferis believes that robotics could be the key to achieving detailed analyses of buzz pollination, illustrating how a bee’s characteristics affect their ability to buzz and what types of vibrations are most effective for pollination.

“we can’t tell an actual bee, ‘hey we want to see what happens if you let go of one of your feet,’ but with a robot we can,” jafferis said. “we can tell the robots to vibrate and grab flowers and do things in different ways that a bee is not doing on its own.”

the need for bees

bees are in a current state of worldwide decline, and their biodiversity is suffering in a way that may lead to the complete extinction of certain rare species in the near future.  

“we fear bee decline,” said michael roswell, ph.d., an entomologist at the university of maryland. “with 4,000 species of bees in the united states and 20,000 species on earth, we expect that some will be doing better than others at any given time, but we’re certainly afraid that many rare species are doing worse and worse.”

roswell published a study in april 2022 that highlighted the importance of rare bees in plant-pollinator networks. he and his team were able to show that less common species, many of which were buzz pollinators, often fertilize plants that more common species do not pollinate at all. roswell believes that vallejo-marin and jafferis’ study would expand his research in a way that could help to target bee conservation efforts towards the buzz pollinators that are most in need of protection and that are needed most by their ecological environments.

“we are trying to use this project as a platform to help people realize that not all bees are the same and that different bees do different jobs,” vallejo-marin said. “it is important to maintain the biodiversity of bees so that not just one or two species are doing well, because every species is vitally important.”

if the robotic bees are able to successfully replicate buzz pollination, they may be able to aid in sustainable methods of crop production as well.   

“if one bee species is suffering, the robots could tell us if there is another species that can fill in and pollinate these vital crops instead, or if we need to focus all of our resources on the conservation of that species,” jafferis said.

the researchers are optimistic that they will eventually be able to pair the optimal bee with the optimal crop, which would not only supply humans with an effective and environmentally conscious method of crop fertilization, but would also help bees to strengthen their populations in areas with bounties of plants that match their pollination styles.

over the next three years, vallejo-marin and jafferis will be working toward these sizable goals, combining their expertise to create a groundbreaking interdisciplinary device that may be able to positively influence bees, humans, plants, and the environment as a whole.  

“it is hard to work with bees and not fall in love with them,” vallejo-marin said. “they are such charismatic creatures, and once you care about them you will care about them forever.”

shadows cover the path to the river, protecting us from the scorching sun. i feel the sweat running down my back as i readjust the basket under my arm. skirting a big branch, beds of clay, and lines of rock, we arrive at our destination: a flat patch of grass overlooking the river — perfect. with picnic blankets spread and the eno set up, i hop into the hammock and look up.

the water oak on each end of the hammock leans at the perfect angle to cover the space around me with a cool shade. i watch the branches above me, each twisted in its own unique way. they looked almost like the towering branches i would climb as a child when my babysitter took me to a local park. i’d climb a magnolia tree, take home its white blossom as a prize, and watch it wither away on my bedside table.

my daydream doesn’t last. i hear a loud, “omg josh, stop!” there are four teenagers horsing around near the river. one, a girl, is pushed into the water. she quickly finds herself in the middle of the river. the current is strong and fast-flowing and she is pulled away. i jump out the eno, and with my friends, we run to the river, to a point where we might be able to reach to her.

i see a protruding branch from a tree. i grab it, break it, and carry it to the river’s edge. along with my friends, we stick it out just in time. the girl grabs it, and manages to stumble out onto the rocks near the river, safe.

after thanking us, she returns to her friends. i crawl back into my eno, exhausted. i look up at the branches above me again — this time with a new appreciation for them. this tree that i am lying under must have seen so much: children clambering up, teenagers breaking its branches, and adults slumbering in hammocks. and so, as the music from our speaker begins to play again, i silently thank this tree.

the university of mississippi recently joined the worldwide efforts to save honeybees and prevent pollinator extinction by becoming a pollinator friendly campus. as part of this campus initiative, umfs recently became home to the university of mississippi beekeeper club‘s honey bee hives.

club president katelyn pennington and staff advisor douglas sullivan-gonzalez reached out to field station director scott knight in 2019 to use part of their land for their 3 hives. knight said he was happy to help. the hives now reside on part of the 800 acres of land in an old yam field.  

“i love having students, helping with projects, and facilitating that,” knight says. “it’s really rewarding to inspire folks and getting them to come out to the field station, enjoying the property and using it.”

the field station benefits the bees by avoiding the use of insecticides as well as providing a pollinator garden full of wildflowers. the bees, however, are not the only ones benefiting from their new home. knight said he believes the bees have positively impacted the field station by pollinating their facility’s plants as well as teaching him the importance of pollinators and the dangers that come with their decline. 

“we are losing pollinators all over the world,” knight said. “there is a lot of debate as to why. it could be insecticide use or other pollutants that we are not even aware of. habitat loss is usually a factor in any animal that is beginning to disappear, and then there is a mite that is a problem for bees.”  

the um beekeepers have been tending the hives at its new location for one year, but the field station has been involved in pollinator research for about 5 years now. for instance, david wedge from usda natural products laboratory said his hives were at the field station to conduct research on natural mite repellent. he had read that the oil from mint leaves could be used as a natural repellent of mites, so the field station helped wedge in his experiment by planting mint and assisting with data collection. 

the beekeeper club is focused more on learning the art of beekeeping, but also play an active part in saving the bees. sullivan-gonzalez said he started um beekeepers organization when students heard he had hives and showed interest in learning about the hobby of beekeeping. he said the best way to help pollinators is to plant trees, shrubs and plants. 

“pollinators in general within the insect world have diminished drastically, and their loss represents a fundamental threat to the food chain,” he said. 

this new relationship between the umfs and the um beekeepers has made it possible to reduce the threat in a small way and move scientists closer to solutions. the field station has provided the trees, shrubs and plants needed to support pollinators, and it has allowed um to educate others on pollinator issues through hands-on experience.  

ultimately, this relationship has allowed the university of mississippi to become an important part of the global effort to save the bees. 

but what garneau is really scouting for is roadkill. 

when coming upon a flattened porcupine or lamentable roadside squirrel, garneau pulls over. grabbing her smartphone, she opens up inaturalist, a social network that allows users to map and share global observations of biodiversity. she enters data into her device, noting the date, time, species, weather, road type, location, habitat surrounding, and more. snapping a picture, she uploads her photo to numerous studies taking place on the app. in recent years, her observations, and those of other citizen participants, have been added into global wildlife connectivity and roadkill long-term surveys. some of those projects include inaturalist’s global roadkill observations project and adventure scientists wildlife connectivity project, and squirrelmapper. 

the global roadkill observation study’s more than 15,000 international contributors have identified 3,641 species of roadkill globally. species from the crab-eating fox in cumaral, columbia to a black copper rat snake hin yung, thailand were documented with research-grade identifications. this plethora of global wildlife documentation, which garneau contributed to 227 times, will be used by scientists around the world to understand important conservation questions. the study’s page emphasizes that they are collaborating with “organizations globally to record roadkill observations as both evidence of a species occurrence and of wildlife-vehicle conflict.” 

as her prolific contributions suggest, garneau is not new to the rising world of road ecology. she has been studying and documenting roadkill since 2008. her awareness of the questions surrounding road ecology started from an education standpoint. she is one of several researchers in the area with projects that focus on roadkill patterns; others include dr. erika barthelmess at st. lawrence university and dr. tom langen at clarkson.

“i found a need in my courses, students were curious,” garneau said. “it is a good project to learn about wildlife using roadkill as an index of species abundance in the region. it helps students gain skills in animal id and spatial analysis using geographic information systems (gis). it also has the potential for community engagement and service learning.” 

garneau recalled the first launch of her initial wildlife monitoring study. 

“a former student had mentioned she rarely sees virginia opossum near suny plattsburgh during school, while in the albany region she sees a lot,” garneau said. “we were discussing dr. erika barthelmess’ roadkill research paper and commented on how interesting it was that opossum were common roadkill in st. lawrence county, in contrast to their rarity in clinton/essex county during our roadkill surveys since arriving at suny.” 

with the help of her students and dr. curt gervich, an environmental planner and fellow suny-plattsburgh professor, they commenced a survey of workers in the region who are on the roads for their jobs. school bus drivers, delivery drivers and mail carriers filled out the forms. the team started mapping for opossum hotspots. 

over the years, as the project developed, garneau went through trial and error to find a way to keep all of the data together. at first she used a handheld gps and camera to document specimens while adding relevant information to a huge excel sheet. as this became increasingly cumbersome, she then moved onto epicollect, a data-gathering smartphone platform. eventually, she even created her own project using the epicollect app. featured on npr, the epicollect project, titled roadkillgarneau, successfully documented garneau’s findings, as well as other contributors spanning the globe. in fact, in the early stages of the app project, an austrian professor reached out to translate the roadkillgarneau project, and use it in his classroom and research in austria. 

unfortunately, the app project has not been active since 2019 due to smartphone technology rollouts not keeping pace with the app code. garneau was discouraged by the issues outside of her control, but did not stop the research. instead, garneau switched to the inaturalist app, which contributes daily observations from a global network of citizen scientists. 

“(data gathering) got a lot easier with the help of inaturalist participation,” garneau said. “opossum are now one of the top roadkill species logged on my daily drive to work. the increase in frequency of opossum roadkill in essex and clinton counties likely reflects an increase in abundance –– indicating resident populations that are reproducing. we are continuing to pursue contributing factors to this trend. perhaps they are capitalizing on regional land-use changes, including on urban and agricultural habitat. it also offers us an opportunity to mitigate wildlife losses by informing the public and engaging with local organizations.”

garneau sees her roadkill research as a practice of citizen science, a new and growing field of research helping create new scientific knowledge through the collaboration of citizens in scientific research. 

according to garneau, “scientists have learned to understand the value of community participation for engagement, as well as to grow the scope of observations of particular species of interest.”

this is an important step toward helping communities understand the value of science. according to a 2015 analysis, “the direct involvement of the public in research projects ensures that they are less concerned about the findings and purpose of science as well as exposing them to the scientific process. this has the potential to combat the public skepticism of science when confronted with debates in areas such as climate change.”

beyond aiding different scientific circles with essential research, citizen science is having a tangible effect in increasing public safety and conservation impact.

a 2020 article from the journal of nature conservation found that citizen science platforms are helping to mitigate roadkill collisions on european roads. the authors found that the rise in platforms allowing citizens to report roadkill has the potential to increase public participation in both traffic safety and nature conservation. the study notes, “volunteers contribute significantly to collecting data on species that are not typically recorded in official databases.”

research like this supports that everyday citizens can have a direct impact. as of the 2015 analysis, “the term ‘citizen science’ is increasingly appearing in peer reviewed journals, indicating the wider use and acceptance of this term.” now, garneau has noticed a rise in citizen science app usage, even in her non-scientific circles.

pandemic-fueled boredom may have led to an increase in families wanting to identify the backyard birds they have been seeing more of. or, maybe people are beginning to see tangible effects of climate change in their hometowns, and they want to help in any way possible. or, perhaps more and more educators, like garneau, are introducing these growing technologies into their classrooms so students can feel a part of the change. 

want to try citizen science yourself? if roadkill doesn’t suit your interest, you can document the animated birds in your backyard, catalog the critters running around at your local park or search for mollusks in nearby water bodies. plant species can also be documented. turn citizen science into a family weekend outing or a unique date idea. there are a myriad of projects to discover and impacts to be made.

lips was camped out in the costa rica rainforest, alone, for a year and a half. her shack was nestled in a remote village atop a mountain bordering panama. each night, she plucked every frog she spotted up from the jungle’s tapestry of flora and swabbed them. 

“you’re walking down this beautiful trail, and you hear the birds and see a hummingbird sleeping on the branches. and you look up and there’s a frog sitting on a leaf, and you walk over there, and you pluck it off the leaf,” lips says.

that was in 1993. when lips returned just three years later, she couldn’t hear the croaking of toads or frogs splashing in streams. their environment was “dead silent.” lips noticed that the number of frogs in the region was  down 90% by 1996. initially, lips blamed everything, from her headlamp to the weather. but when she spotted dead frogs everywhere, she sensed she was front-row to the world’s next environmental calamity.

lips shipped 50 lifeless frogs back to a veterinary pathologist in maryland who confirmed her greatest fear… thousands of frogs were dying at the hands of a mysterious killer. 

a viral villain

it wasn’t until the late 1990s when researchers like lips discovered that frogs in australia and panama were dying by the masses. the silent killer wasn’t an elusive predator or a toxic food source. rather, a virulent fungus was swiftly eradicating species in one fell swoop. amphibians were dying at the hand of batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.

the fungus—called bd for short—is so lethal because it invades amphibians’ porous skin, which the animals use to breathe and drink water. the viral villain destroys the skin’s proteins and devours the remaining amino acids. infected animals become lethargic and experience organ failure in a matter of weeks.  

like the most vicious of diseases, bd doesn’t play favorites: it annihilates frogs young and old, wiping out amphibians across the globe. some amphibians can resist or tolerate bd, but 695 species are vulnerable. and 90 species already have disappeared, while 500 others have sunk into a steep decline, with few projected to recover.

“it’s so widespread. it’s not specialized or anything. it’s huge, it’s just a terrible generalist disease. and that’s what makes it terribly lethal,” lips says.

stopping bd’s killing spree

after her bombshell discovery, lips dove headfirst into understanding and advocating for “one of the largest losses of biodiversity.” in the 25 years since, bd’s killing spree hasn’t slowed down, and neither has lips. 

“there’s so many ways to think about karen and all the different things she’s done. i think one is her curiosity, and her ability to just persist, that she cared so much about this,” says margaret krebs, who led a leadership academy with lips.

lips tracked the global spread across six continents to find that human activity is pushing an amphibian death wish to all corners of the earth. the amphibian meat and pet industries allow bd to travel, leaping off of the back of one frog to the next.

though the virus poses no direct health threat to humans, the global destruction of frogs has devastating consequences. a decrease in the frog population causes an uptick in insects like flies and mosquitoes, who spread deadly diseases including malaria and pose a danger to human health. 

“there are indirect effects on human health… as soon as the frogs disappeared, there’s about a 10-year increase in the number of malaria cases in costa rica and panama,” lips says.

currently, wild populations raging with bd cannot be cured on a global scale. for now, researchers say that the best step is to prevent the fungi’s further spread. in 2009, lips left the south american rainforest for the bureaucratic jungle to promote policy that would prevent the further spread of bd.

“because she saw her study and research sites destroyed by this disease, she realized she was going to have to jump in and get her hands dirty in the policy world to try to deal with it,” says peter jenkins, an environmental lawyer who petitioned government agencies alongside lips for preventing the import of infected amphibians who might bring bd. 

bd is already present in the united states, and the u.s. fish and wildlife service is actively monitoring its spread. yet, in march 2017, the agency ceased consideration of a 2009 petition to ban all amphibian imports unless they were bd-free. 

lips argues that although bd is already in the united states, other harmful variants could make their way into the country without the proper testing that is not presently in place. studies show that the even deadlier african and brazilian strains of bd could hybridize with the original bd strain. 

in 2013, researchers identified b. salamandrivorans, known as bsal. its name aptly translates to “salamander-devouring,” as from 2009 to 2012 the fungus eliminated dutch fire salamander populations by more than 99%. a 2016 ruling banned the import of 201 salamander species. however, if the bsal-infected species were already in the u.s. before the ban went into effect, interstate transport of the species is legal. 

salamanders are indicator species, the frontline voice to determine if an environmental catastrophe is looming. often referred to as a “canary in a coal mine,” they serve as an early warning system for an ecological decline that will inevitably impact humans. spotting a two-lined salamander living under a rock at a stream is a sign of good water quality. the absence of woodland salamanders in a forest is an ill omen.

“(north america) has more families, more species of salamanders than anywhere else in the world. we safeguard the salamanders of the planet,” lips says. “and so if this salamander chytrid gets here, we’re going to expect to see massive infections, die-offs, and impacts just like we saw with bd.”

when the scientist returned to the remote patch of cloud forest the next summer, all of the amphibians had vanished. not only the tree frogs were gone, but also the toads and the stream frogs. the streams were eerily silent and empty. the mysterious 1993 disappearance of the amphibians would change the course of the scientist’s life and unveil a global ecological disaster. 

the scientist was karen lips, an ecologist now working with the university of maryland’s biology department. she has dedicated her life to the study and preservation of amphibians. she returned to the research site in the summer of 1996 to a forest devoid of amphibian life. lips observed no obvious change to the habitat to explain the 90 percent decline of all the local frog species in such a short time span. 

by the time she returned to the u.s. that september, she was ready to present an argument to the scientific community that her costa rica site had experienced an enigmatic amphibian decline. enigmatic amphibian declines are mysterious mass disappearances of amphibians that occur without any obvious change to their environment. lips had been reading reports about the mysterious disappearance of amphibian populations around the world since she was a grad student. her research would eventually help reveal the culprit: an invasive microscopic fungus called batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or bd.

bd spreads between ecosystems infecting amphibians when the fungus’s spores pass from the water into an unsuspecting amphibian’s skin. the fungus will then kill the creature over the course of two weeks by disrupting the animal’s electrolyte balance and reducing its number of lymphocyte immune cells. once the amphibian is dead more spores grown in the dying creature will be released through the skin into the environment to infect more animals completing the pathogen’s life cycle. 

peter jenkins is an environmental lawyer who worked with lips to advocate for u.s. government action against bd and its more recently discovered variant bsal. jenkins explained the threat bd poses to the amphibian world by drawing a parallel to the pandemic currently being faced by humans saying bd is “like coronavirus for amphibians but worse.” 

lips witnessed the devastation wrought by bd before she figured out what was killing her beloved amphibians. there were no frogs left to study so she would have to get creative to find the source of the decline. she compared the loss of her amphibians in southern costa rica to a previous mass disappearance to the north of her site and made a startling inference. lips hypothesized that the collapse of the amphibian populations was sweeping through central america like a wave. so, in order to gather evidence for the theory, she would have to get out in front of this wave. 

lips moved on to a new location in panama where amphibians were still abundant called fortuna. on her first visit, she cataloged 40 species. when she returned in december of 1996 she encountered her worst fears. the frogs were dying. population numbers were down in many of the area’s streams and many of the frogs she and her team were finding were unhealthy or dead. many even died in the hands of researchers.

this time however lips and her team had bodies to examine. eventually, scientists determined that the frogs were being killed by a microscopic fungus. joyce longcore, an associate research professor at the university of maine, soon discovered the bd fungus while studying a dead specimen from the u.s. national zoo. longcore and her colleagues also found the fungus on a dying frog from australia. when taken together the data showed that bd was decimating amphibian populations globally though more research was obviously needed. 

lips and her team continued that research over the following years. in 2004 they documented the collapse of yet another amphibian population this time in central panama. lips was stuck in the u.s. at the time but her graduate students diligently stepped up their efforts so they could gather as much data as possible before the epidemic wiped out the frogs.

lips said, “it was frustrating to be trapped at school while ‘my’ frogs were dying in panama—after all those years of work and all those transects, i would miss the actual epidemic. but i knew that while my field team documented the devastation, my responsibility was to tell everybody in the larger community what was happening and what it meant.” 

in more recent years lips has shifted her focus from fieldwork to public advocacy. in 2009 she teamed up with the defenders of wildlife to petition the u.s. fish and wildlife service to better regulate the pet trade in order to prevent the spread of bd in the u.s. the usfws ultimately shelved the project after it became clear that bd was already present in the domestic pet market and could not be blocked from the country.

however, a bd variant able to infect salamanders known as bsal has not been found in north america. the urging of lips and other advocates got the usfws to ban the import of 200 salamander species in 2016 to protect america’s salamander species from bsal transmission. the u.s. has more native salamander species than any other nation. lips hopes to spare them the fate of her green tree frogs.

lips is hopeful that the pandemic will bring needed attention to and the plight of amphibians saying: “if we can prevent the next covid we can also save the frogs [and salamanders] at the same time.” in the coronavirus age, she is now championing the concept of “one health:” that human, wildlife, and environmental health are all linked and must be managed collectively.