Long known to be the peaceful close relative of humans, scientists have discovered that the endangered bonobo is more complicated than previously believed.
A new study has observed male bonobos acting aggressive more often than male chimpanzees within their own communities. The researchers also found that more aggressive males of both species had more mating opportunities.
“Chimpanzees and bonobos use aggression in different ways for specific reasons,” said lead author of the study Maud Mouginot, a Boston University anthropologist, in a news release from Cell Press. “The idea is not to invalidate the image of bonobos being peaceful — the idea is that there is a lot more complexity in both species.”
Earlier studies had looked at aggression in both bonobos and chimpanzees, but this was the first to use the same methods of comparison for the two species’ behavior in the field.
“I think earlier studies did not really try to quantitatively compare the two species. There are papers on chimpanzee’s aggression, and few on bonobo’s aggression, but the methods used do not allow us to directly compare those studies (they have different methods or it is too unclear),” Mouginot told EcoWatch in an email. “Only one study did this (Surbeck et al. 2017), however, they used different methods [in] the field. For the chimpanzees they used group follow (e.g., following a group the entire day) and all day focal follow (e.g., following one individual and recording all their behaviors), for bonobos they used group follow and 10-min focal follow. Because those methods were different, we decided to use data that used the same method on the two species (all day male focal follow).”
The study, “Differences in expression of male aggression between wild bonobos and chimpanzees,” was published in the journal Current Biology.
The research team examined male aggression rates in three communities of bonobos at Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve, as well as two communities of chimpanzees at Tanzania’s Gombe National Park.
The team looked at a dozen bonobos and 14 chimpanzees, tracking one individual at a time for a whole day, noting the frequency of their aggressive interactions, who they were with and if they engaged in physical contact such as pushing and biting or chasing their adversary.
“You go to their nests and wait for them to wake up and then you just follow them the entire day — from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep at night — and record everything they do,” Mouginot said in the press release.
Overall, the researchers found male bonobos to be aggressive more often than chimpanzees, engaging in three times more physical aggressions and 2.8 times as many aggressive interactions.
Male bonobos were almost only aggressive toward other males, while chimpanzees were apt to be aggressive toward females. Aggression by chimpanzees was more likely to involve male “coalitions” — 13.2 percent compared with one percent of bonobo aggressions.
“Male chimpanzees form coalitions for within group fights but especially for territory defense (which include border patrols or sometimes, killing raids). When one male fights another male from his group, he is taking the risk of losing an important coalitionary partner which would have helped for territory defense. Therefore, this might affect their ability to efficiently defend their group against other groups,” Mouginot told EcoWatch.
The researchers believe coalitions may be one of the reasons aggression is not as frequent among chimpanzees. When groups of males fight, there is the potential for more injuries. And if the fighting is within their own community, it could weaken the ability of the group to fend off other groups.
This isn’t an issue for bonobos since most of their altercations are one-on-one. They are also not believed to be territorial and have never been known to kill one another.
More aggressive males of both species had greater mating success.
“Male bonobos that are more aggressive obtain more copulations with females, which is something that we would not expect,” Mouginot said in the press release. “It means that females do not necessarily go for nicer males.”
This was surprising for the researchers to see within bonobo communities, since they have a social dynamic where females frequently outrank males.
“I don’t think females are specifically attracted to more aggressive males. First, by acting aggressively against other males, more aggressive males may manage to push away other males and then spend more time with females. Second, males are aggressive toward other males but avoid acting aggressively against females. One study (Surbeck et al. 2012) shows that more aggressive males spend more time affiliating with females,” Mouginot told EcoWatch.
In the future, the research team would like to compare the aggressive behavior of other groups of bonobos and chimpanzees to see if that behavior varies between subspecies and communities.
“I’d love to have the study complemented with comparable data from other field sites so we can get a broader understanding of variation within and between species,” Mouginot said in the press release.
Bonobos are listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as endangered. They are only found in forests located below the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Despite their threatened status, Mouginot said there are things people can do to help these rare primates from disappearing altogether.
“People can help by learning about bonobos, spreading their knowledge and sharing the critical situation in which bonobos are. They can also follow local or international associations such as BCI (Bonobo Conservative Initiative). They can make donations to those associations or to research centers to help pursue research which helps to maintain reserves and protect the bonobos too,” Mouginot told EcoWatch.
Bonobos are threatened by illegal hunting, agriculture and development, but Mouginot remains optimistic.
“The future of bonobos is very uncertain. They are endemic to one country (the Democratic Republic of Congo), which makes our ability to save them harder. They are losing their territory over farming and villages, they are also victims of poaching. The IUCN estimates that there are only 15,000 bonobos left, however, they are so remote in the rainforest that it is hard to get an exact count. Nevertheless, I don’t think we should lose hope,” Mouginot said. “Reserves, such as the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve and many others, help to protect the species. Research also helps by improving our understanding of bonobos and by helping building reserves.”
The United Kingdom installed nearly 6,000 new public electric vehicle (EV) chargers in the first three months of this year — a record number — in the race to accommodate the influx of battery-powered cars.
The quarterly figures were provided by Bristol-based data company ZapMap and published by the UK’s Department for Transport.
“I think there is a coming together of two things,” said Ben Nelmes, chief executive of EV thinktank New AutoMotive, as The Guardian reported. “Some of the barriers have been mitigated. And the private sector has woken up to the opportunity.”
Nelmes pointed out that local councils had gradually been taking advantage of charger installation grants provided by the central government.
Roughly 1,500 of the new installations were rapid chargers, which can charge a car in under an hour.
At the end of April, the UK had 61,232 EV charging points at 32,697 charging stations, ZapMap said. That’s a 45 percent increase in total chargers since April of last year.
Nelmes said the recent expansion of charging infrastructure in the UK had brought public charging stations to areas that had been historically underserved, reported Electrek.
Higher interest rates have affected the sales of some major EV companies like Tesla and BYD in China, The Guardian reported.
The share of total car sales in the UK that are EVs has plateaued at 15.5 percent in 2024, following earlier fast growth.
Some people who are in the market for a new car have expressed concern about EV range or lack of adequate charging stations. The UK is addressing the issue by increasing the number of chargers, especially in areas where demand is high.
In a survey conducted by the Electric Vehicle Association last year, just six percent of England’s EV owners said they had range anxiety fairly or very often. Occasional, rare or a complete lack of range anxiety was reported by 94 percent of those taking the survey.
More than half of London’s 15,000 black cabs are hybrid-electric with range-extending internal combustion engines, reported Electrek. Most of the city’s biggest minicab and taxi services have committed to using fleets that are fully electric by next year.
The amount of charging stations and individual chargers varies greatly by region in the UK. London is the best place to own an EV for the number of chargers, with 221 per 100,000 people. Off-street parking can be hard to come by in the capital city of approximately nine million, so EV owners must rely on public charging stations.
Northeast England is the fastest growing region for the number of chargers per person, with the southwest part of the country in second place. Northern Ireland had the least number of chargers in the UK with just 29 for every 100,000 people.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced a ban on the selling and distribution of lab-grown meat in the state, the first law of its kind in the United States.
With the ban, DeSantis said he would be saving beef from the “global elite,” reported BBC News.
“Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” DeSantis said in a press release from the State of Florida. “Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef.”
The press release said the state was “taking action” in response to what it referred to as a goal by the World Economic Forum to force people to eat cultivated meat and insects.
“While the World Economic Forum is telling the world to forgo meat consumption, Florida is increasing meat production, and encouraging residents to continue to consume and enjoy 100% real Florida beef,” the press release said.
Arizona, Alabama and Tennessee are looking at similar initiatives, BBC News reported. The U.S. first approved lab-grown meat in 2022.
According to the World Economic Forum, cultivated meat can serve as a more environmentally-friendly and efficient source of food for an expanding global population.
Lindsay Cross, a Florida State Representative of the Democratic Party, referred to the ban as “anti-business and contrary to how we’ve tried to market Florida as a place of free enterprise. We should have more choices for our consumers,” reported The New York Times.
Cultivating meat involves removing cells from live animals and feeding them proteins, salt, fats, sugars, amino acids, vitamins and minerals and allowing them to multiply in large tanks. The meat product produced can then be made into standard shapes, like sausages and patties.
Wilton Simpson, Florida’s agriculture commissioner, said in the press release that the ban was necessary to protect “the integrity of American agriculture” and called cultivated meat “a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity.”
The edible insects lobby has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to include insect products like mealworms and protein powder made from crickets in its safe ingredients database, BBC News reported.
DeSantis said with the new law he was “fighting against an ideology that ultimately wants to eliminate meat production in the US and around the globe.”
Cultivated meat company Good Meat said in a post on X that it was “disappointed” by Florida’s new regulations.
“In a state that purportedly prides itself on being a land of freedom and individual liberty, its government is now telling consumers what meat they can or cannot purchase,” wrote Good Meat, as reported by The Hill. “The law is a setback for everyone: Floridians who deserve the right to eat whatever safe and approved meat they want; Florida’s technology sector, innovators and entrepreneurs; and all those working to stop the worst impacts of climate change.”
The range of venomous snakes could look a lot different globally by 2070, according to a new study. Climate change is leading to habitat loss, which is likely to push venomous snakes into new regions.
An international research team, led by professor Pablo Ariel Martinez of the Federal University of Sergipe, studied data on 209 venomous snake species from around the world. The ranges of some venomous snake species could double by 2070, according to the study, which was published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.
“Climate change is expected to have profound effects over the years. We are talking about consequences such as the loss of biodiversity and changes in the poisoning patterns of humans and domestic animals,” Martinez said in a statement.
The west African gaboon viper (Bitis rhinoceros) could see a 251% increase in habitable range by 2070, followed by a 136% potential increase for asp vipers (Vipera aspis) and a 118% potential increase for horned vipers (Vipera ammodytes).
However, not all venomous species will see an increase in range. Several species — including green bush vipers (Atheris squamigera), rock vipers (Montivipera xanthina), hognosed pit vipers (Porthidium nasutum), and pygmy copperheads (Austrelaps labialis) — are expected to lose more than 70% of their potential range, which would also affect the snakes’ native ecosystems.
In addition to analyzing the future distribution of different venomous snakes, the researchers reviewed which countries are likely to see an influx of venomous snakes as well as what areas of the world will be more vulnerable to venomous snake bites.
According to the findings, countries including Niger, Namibia, China, Nepal and Myanmar may see a rise in the number of venomous snake species in their countries, as the snakes may migrate from neighboring countries. But the greatest losses of venomous snake species and their habitats are likely to occur in South America and southern Africa.
The researchers also predicted that southeast Asia and Africa — especially Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, India and Thailand — may become the most vulnerable to increased conflicts between humans and the snakes. That’s because these regions, which can be important for agriculture, could also become more suitable for snake habitats amid climate change. In particular, flooding events can push snakes closer to human communities as they seek dry places, and this can increase risk of snake bites.
“As more land is converted for agriculture and livestock rearing, it destroys and fragments the natural habitats that snakes rely on,” Martinez and co-author Talita Ferreira Amado, of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, told The Guardian. “However, some generalist snake species, especially those of medical concern, can adapt to agricultural landscapes and even thrive in certain crop fields or livestock areas that provide food sources like rodents.”
The study authors stressed that climate change is leading to increased habitat loss for these snakes, and the results threaten snakes, ecosystems and public health.
“Our research shows that when venomous snakes start showing up in new places, it’s a wake-up call for us to start thinking about how we can keep ourselves and our environment safe,” the study authors said, as reported by The Guardian.
Earlier this year, Arizona lawmakers sued the Biden administration over the newly created Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument — arguing that the establishment of national monuments should be state matters and calling the move a “land grab.” Now, the Hopi, Havasupai, and Navajo Nation, whose ancestral lands overlap with the national monument, have intervened in the case and joined with the federal government to protect the area.
“Even if the Tribal Nations and federal government share similar goals and legal positions in this litigation, the United States cannot adequately represent the Tribal Nations’ sovereign interest,” the tribes’ intervention stated.
The nearly one-million acre national monument protects areas tribes called home before being forcibly removed by the federal government, as well as places where tribal citizens hunt, pray, and gather foods and medicines. The area is also important for wildlife migration routes and potential burial sites.
If successful, Arizona’s lawsuit would open Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni to more economic development, and specifically, livestock grazing and uranium mining. Currently, there is only one uranium mine in operation within the boundaries of the national monument. The lawsuit argues that limiting mining of uranium around the Grand Canyon will make the U.S. more dependent on acquiring it from foreign countries for energy purposes.
Arizona’s lawsuit is focused specifically on the Antiquities Act. Passed in 1906 to protect areas of scientific and historical significance, President Biden used the act to create Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni after decades of Indigenous advocacy focused on protecting the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. According to Arizona, the national monument ties up too much land, impacting revenue generation that could affect funding for schools as well as the economies of small towns in the area who have also joined in the suit against the federal government.
“Under the constitution, Congress is the policy making branch of government that decides how federal land is used,” Kim Quintero, a spokesperson for the Arizona Legislature. “Not presidential edicts.”
“When you think about Baaj Nwaanjo I’tah Kukveni and the creation of this monument, it’s an immensely important place for the tribal nations,” said Mathew Campbell, a member of the Native Village of Gambell in Alaska, and legal counsel for the Havasupai Tribe and the Hopi Tribe. “The tribes fought very hard for the establishment of the monument and are here to defend it.”
Last year, a federal judge in Utah dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by states challenging the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante—two national monuments recently-created through the Antiquities Act with strong tribal ties. In that case, District Judge David Nuffer held that the Antiquities Act gives the president authority to create monuments and that the courts have no power to dispute it. That case is now in appeal.
But Kim Quintero of the Arizona Legislature says their case is different. She cites a 2021 lawsuit where a group of commercial fishermen challenged President Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act that protected around five-thousand miles of ocean floor off the coast of New England, and put a ban on fishing.
While the Supreme Court declined to review the case, Chief Justice John Roberts indicated interest in looking at the size of monuments writing that “the scope of the objects that can be designed under the Act, and how it measures the area necessary for their proper care and management, may warrant consideration– especially given the myriad restrictions on public use this purely discretionary designation can serve to justify.”
Quintero says the Arizona Legislature is banking on the Supreme Court taking the case. If successful, she said there will be other avenues for tribes to utilize in protecting the area.
“Tribal members, like other members of the public, can petition Congress to pass laws to protect areas of federal land they believe should be protected,” said Quintero.
Nine conservation organizations including the Grand Canyon Trust, Center for Biological Diversity, and Sierra Club have signed on to protect Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni. “The conservation groups are very much following the lead of the tribes,” said Michal Toll, staff attorney for the Grand Canyon Trust. “These are their ancestral homelands.”
Mathew Campbell said it will likely take months before the intervention is ruled on by the court and years before the lawsuit is settled.
Native plants support pollinators by providing nectar for hummingbirds, native bees, butterflies, moths, bats and others. They support other wildlife by providing critical habitat and essential food.
Native plants have evolved for survival and tend to be more naturally adapted to local growing conditions. Due to deep roots that withstand long periods of dry weather, they are drought-resistant and require little or no watering after they are established.
Since native plants adapt to their ecosystem’s soil, whether it be poor or fertile, they can survive from what nutrients are available without the aid of fertilizer.
Native plants in the U.S. are under threat from habitat loss, construction, overgrazing, wildfires, invasive species, bioprospecting — the search for plant and animal species from which medicinal drugs, biochemicals and other commercially valuable material can be obtained — and climate change.
Benefits of Native Plants
A butterfly feeds on a native coneflower in a pollinator garden of the East Decatur Greenway in Decatur, Georgia. Thomas Cizauskas / Flickr
Native plants are indigenous plant species that evolve naturally on land or in the water, and are an integral piece of thriving ecosystems, providing critical habitat for insects, birds, mammals and other animals that form an interconnected web of mutually beneficial interactions.
They have a host of other benefits — something one might consider when it comes to what is grown in the yard.
A front yard featuring native plants instead of a lawn. California Native Plant Society / Flickr
They require much less maintenance by using less water. According to a study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2017, one-third of water for residential use is for landscape irrigation. Because of native plants’ deep root systems, they don’t just require less water, but it makes them drought tolerant, and slows down the flow of water that in turn helps prevent soil erosion, flooding and surface runoff that can lead to the pollution of waterways.
The root system acts as a filter for pollutants. Silver birch, yew and elder trees have been found to trap up to 70 percent of particulates in the air.
An ancient yew tree forest in the UK. Matthew J Thomas / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Native plants will save you money on fertilizer, since they adapt to the nutrients in the soil, whether depleted or nutrient rich. They also don’t need pesticides, having developed natural resistance over time.
In terms of climate mitigation, they sequester carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to help mitigate climate change.
Impacts of Non-Native and Invasive Plants
To those not aware, non-native plants, and invasives (which is what non-natives are called after they rapidly grow and spread over large areas) look pretty innocuous, but they wreak havoc on the ecosystem.
Invasive plants arrived with colonization. According to a 2020 study, researchers quantified 65 plant species, subspecies and varieties that have been lost forever in the wild since Europeans arrived.
Invasive plant species aggressively compete with native species, and typically outcompete them, leading to potential extinction of not only the native plants, but the animals and their habitats, as well as food sources.Some non-native plants produce chemicals in their leaves or root systems that inhibit the growth of other plants around them, which results in reduced biodiversity, increased erosion and genetic alterations of native species through hybridization.
Invasive plants affect water availability and damage soil nutrients, by decreasing water flows and reducing the transportation of nutrients. This can also increase runoff and create erosion.
A monarch caterpillar on a native showy milkweed plant. Jim Wadsworth / California Native Plant Society / CC BY 2.0
Invasive plants also affect human health by providing habitat for vectors of disease. For example, Japanese barberry was introduced into the states in the late 1800s as an ornamental plant. Now it exists across 30 states and forms dense thickets that are favored by deer ticks that cause lyme disease.
Besides competing with invasives, native plants over the last several decades have been up against several other conditions that threaten their existence. The following are some of the major concerns.
Climate Change
Higher temperatures cause native plants to experience heat-related stress, which causes higher water demand. Higher amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere promote growth of invasive plants that box native plants out of their spaces.
More than 70 native plant species can be found on the 19 acres surrounding the Piedras Blancas Light Station on California’s central coast. Bureau of Land Management
Bioprospecting is the search for useful products derived from plants, animals and microorganisms that can be developed further for commercialization. Some examples include the poppy seed for morphine and the white willow tree that helped develop aspirin.
Often, this doesn’t just result in what is called biopiracy — which involves the appropriation of plants and cultural knowledge, where corporations use Indigenous people to locate biological material that has a medicinal purpose, then bring it back to the lab and patent it as their own invention without proper compensation or acknowledgement. It also can deplete resources from overharvesting native species that could lead to local extinction. Medicinal plants are especially vulnerable to this.
Native Plant Restoration Projects
There are several native plant restoration projects across the country. Here is a small selection.
Part of the Sustainability in Prisons Project, this environmental partnership between the Institute for Applied Ecology, Department of Corrections and the Bureau of Land Management provides unique and meaningful ecological activities to incarcerated men and women with the goal of restoring sagebrush habitat in the great basin region through a multi-state grow out initiative.
Based in Framingham, Massachusetts, as one of the nation’s first plant conservation organizations, the Native Plant Trust saves native plants in the wild, grows them for gardens and restorations and provides education initiatives on their values and uses.
This community-led watershed restoration organization in California, restores and conserves ecosystems on the Mattole River. One of their projects is to produce native plants through collecting seed from a mix of locally adapted native plants throughout the Mattole Watershed and King Range National Conservation Area and are grown at their Native Plant Nursery and Native seed farm.
California-based Back to Natives promotes the use of locally native plants as well as habitat restoration and preservation by providing service learning and volunteer-based habitat restoration programs. They also design, install and maintain locally native landscapes for homeowners and businesses with all proceeds supporting their environmental education and habitat restoration programs.
This O’ahu-based nonprofit educates residents of Hawai‘i and visitors to the Pūpūkea Marine Life Conservation District about the importance of this special area’s marine life and protected status. In an effort to help reduce erosion and sedimentation at Sharks Cove, they started the Native Hawaiian Plant Coastal Restoration Project.
Over the course of two years, 3000 volunteers helped restore 100,000 native plants (10,000 trees and 90,000 herbs and shrubs) to five sites in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
Native Plant Sanctuaries
Since many native plant species are at risk because of habitat destruction, invasive species and climate change, many have set up plant sanctuaries to help preserve and protect these species by providing a protected area for growth.
There are several throughout the United States.
For example, Maine is home to a wildflower reservation that is open to the public and contains 100 wildflower species over 177 acres. Hobbs Fern Sanctuary in New Hampshire has 250 acres filled with 40 varieties of native ferns. In Vermont, there is a bog sanctuary on 41 acres with boardwalk access, and in Pennsylvania the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources creates 35 secret sanctuaries across the state.
Since then, the USDA’s Forest Service created a policy (FSM 2070) in 2008 designed to combat invasive species and mitigate the impacts of climate change and maintain healthy forests. The policy stipulates that native plants will be the first choice in revegetation for restoration and rehabilitation of native ecosystems, where native plant communities might not regenerate naturally on their own.
Other legislation has been state by state.
In Maryland, the senate passed House Bill 322, which compels Homeowners’ Associations (HOAs) and other organizations to allow “low-impact landscaping” such as rain gardens, native plant gardens, pollinator gardens and xeriscaping in subdivisions. The law also forbids an HOA from requiring yards consisting of turf grass.
The bill was led by a homeowner in Howard County who experienced harassment from her neighbors and her HOA over planting a pollinator garden. The HOA hired a law firm to force her to replace it.
In 2017, New Jersey adopted a bill that requires the Department of Transportation and other authorities to use native plants on roadway landscapes.
In Hawai’i, Act 233 was passed and requires that, whenever possible, Hawaiian plants known to occur on a particular island will be used for landscaping in that particular place, and shall be sourced from that same island.
The silver sword is endemic to the island of Maui, Hawai’i and listed as threatened on the IUCN red list. Vince Barnes / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Several other states declared proclamations for native plant month.
Overall, though, it is said that at-risk plants have less conservation funding and legal protection than animals in the country. Plants are also only safeguarded on federal lands, not private.
What Can You Do to Help?
Volunteers work to help native plants grow at the Native Seed Farm in Irvine, California on March 27, 2019. Paul Bersebach / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Within a thicket of the Big Cypress National Preserve, established a half-century ago to protect the marshes and sloughs here that make up a vital part of the Florida Everglades, a series of wells extracts oil from more than two miles underground.
The oil field is situated deep within a pine forest of the preserve — the first in the country — which channels more than 40 percent of the water flowing into Everglades National Park and shelters iconic and imperiled species like the fabled ghost orchid and Florida panther, the official state animal. The wells penetrate thousands of feet beneath an underground aquifer, an important drinking water source, and draw up oil from the so-called Sunniland trend, a reserve stretching across southwest Florida from Miami to Fort Myers, although most of the reserve is situated beneath Big Cypress.
For decades, oil production has endured in this corner of the fragile Everglades, a watershed that spans much of the peninsula and is the focus of a $21 billion federal and state restoration effort, one of the most ambitious in human history. Big Cypress is among some 10 percent of federally protected lands nationwide where the government owns the surface terrain while private entities retain the mineral rights underneath.
“Big Cypress National Preserve is very sacred to us,” said Talbert Cypress, elected chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, a federally recognized tribal nation located in the Everglades. “We have a lot of ceremonial grounds that have been in Big Cypress National Preserve, burial grounds, places where we gather our traditional medicine. So just seeing that sort of damage in a place that really matters to us a lot, it’s sad to see it.”
Now the Miccosukee, longtime environmental stewards in Florida who notably helped steer stringent water quality standards for their sacred “river of grass,” have a plan for phasing out oil drilling within Big Cypress.
The tribe has joined with WildLandscapes International, a nonprofit land conservation group, to engineer a multimillion-dollar deal with the Collier family, which owns the vast majority of the mineral rights beneath the preserve. If the agreement is finalized, the family would give up the mineral rights associated with some 465,000 acres to the federal government.
“Unfortunately I cannot share. It’s under a non-disclosure,” said David Houghton, director of WildLandscapes International, when asked about the details. “The deal includes all the lands that the Colliers own the mineral rights on, minus what they currently have under lease.”
The proposal comes amid interest in expanding oil exploration and development within Big Cypress, even as rising global temperatures associated with fossil fuel emissions represent yet another threat to the Everglades, a watershed responsible for the drinking water of some 9 million Floridians. Most recently a Texas oil and gas company submitted a permit application to the National Park Service for two new sites within the preserve.
“We think we’ve got a deal here. We don’t know that, but we think,” Houghton said. “We’ll get a number, and that number either will work or it won’t — and I think it will.”
Liquid tar
The Everglades are Florida’s most important freshwater resource. The watershed spans central and south Florida, encompassing the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee, sawgrass prairies to the south, and Florida Bay. It includes several federal- and state-protected lands including the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Big Cypress National Preserve, and Everglades National Park. Various efforts over the last century to drain the Everglades, the largest steered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have made modern Florida possible and left the river of grass drastically altered.
Inside Climate News
The Humble Oil and Refining Company, a predecessor of Exxon Mobil, discovered oil in Southwest Florida in 1943, after the governor and cabinet at the time offered a $50,000 reward to those who first found oil in the state.
Today, Florida is responsible for less than 0.04 percent of the nation’s oil production, according to a report the Conservation Economics Institute, a nonprofit research organization, prepared for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The industry employs fewer than a thousand members of the state’s workforce and accounts for $25.4 million or 0.0002 percent of its gross domestic product. A separate study by the American Petroleum Institute concluded the oil and natural gas industry contributes nearly $22.1 billion to the Florida economy and supports nearly 266,800 jobs.
The vast majority of the state’s oil production occurs in the Panhandle, according to the Conservation Economics report. The two oil fields within Big Cypress, Bear Island and Raccoon Point, together were responsible for 585 barrels a day in 2020, about one-seventh of the state’s daily total. Oil was discovered at Bear Island, which is located partially within the preserve, in 1972, before the preserve was established, and production began a year later. At Raccoon Point, southeast of Bear Island, oil was detected in 1978. Production began in 1981, and the field was expanded in 1992.
Big Cypress was established in 1974. Two years later, the Collier family, for whom Collier County, where a large portion of the preserve is situated, is named, conveyed 76,790 acres to the National Park Service to help create the preserve, with the family maintaining the underground mineral rights. The Colliers can trace their family tree to the early 20th century advertising magnate Barron Gift Collier, at the time the largest landowner in Florida. In 1996, the family conveyed an additional 83,000 acres to the National Park Service to expand Big Cypress. Today, Big Cypress encompasses more than 700,000 acres, including much of the western Everglades.
In 2003, the federal government agreed to purchase the Colliers’ mineral rights for $120 million, but the purchase fell through. At the time, various appraisals valued their mineral rights beneath Big Cypress, the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, and Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge at between $5 million and $475 million.
The oil here is of the heavy-sour variety, with a consistency of liquid tar, according to a website of the Collier Resources Company, which manages the family’s mineral holdings. When refined, the oil is used in auto, aviation and diesel fuels, lube oils, and asphalt. Edward Glab, director of the Global Energy Security Forum in the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University, characterized the oil as not high-grade or worth a lot of money. Multiple phone calls to the Collier Resources Company were not returned.
“To me it makes no sense drilling for oil anywhere in the Everglades,” Glab said. “It just doesn’t because the reserves are simply not going to be there to justify that sort of investment.”
“It’s a lot of trouble for something that’s not producing a ton of oil, and it’s not like premium-grade oil. It’s like machinery oil, the kind used for heavy machinery,” said Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. “For us, when we see the amount of work that goes into the extraction, the damage that they do, it doesn’t seem worth it.”
Acidizing rather than fracking is more likely to be used in Florida to extract oil because of the state’s geology, which is characterized by porous limestone that harbors underground aquifers, according to the Conservation Economics report. Acidizing involves injecting the oil-bearing rock formations with a mixture of acid, water, and other chemicals, dissolving the formations and allowing the oil to flow more easily to the well. Some 93 percent of the state’s population depends on groundwater for drinking water, far more than any other state in the nation.
Wastewater from such techniques can contain pollutants and threaten the groundwater, although the Collier family says multiple precautions are taken throughout the drilling process to protect the sensitive environment here, according to the Collier Resources Company website. For instance, to safeguard the aquifers, a series of steel casings and thick layer of cement surround all oil-producing wells. At the well sites a limestone pad is constructed with a berm around it to prevent stormwater runoff from carrying pollutants into the environment. The pads also include a liner to protect the groundwater. The Collier family website also says water sampling has revealed no evidence of groundwater contamination.
But spills have occurred. A spill at Raccoon Point in October 2018, caused by corrosion in a production well, released 2,000 gallons of wastewater mixed with oil. The operator at the time, under lease with the Collier family, said the fluids stayed within a bermed area, and most of the fluids were recovered, according to a Florida Department of Environmental Protection report.
“There’s just so many potential damages that can happen here, and when it’s such a small amount of oil that’s being produced it does not make economic sense,” said Evan E. Hjerpe, executive director of the Conservation Economics Institute and author of the report. “It’s kind of an antiquated or artifact of previous times, and it would benefit the public much greater to move forward without having these potential risks going on.”
“The reason we survived”
For hundreds of years, the Miccosukee people hunted, fished, and held religious ceremonies among the soaring cypress swamps and sweeping sawgrass prairies of Big Cypress. During the First and Second Seminole Wars, in the first half of the 19th century, they were pushed deep within the watery wilderness and found sanctuary on the tree islands scattered here.
Raccoon Point (pictured) together with Bear Island were responsible for 585 barrels of oil a day in 2020, about one-seventh of Florida’s daily total.
National Parks Conservation Association / LightHawk
“We have a mother-child relationship with the Everglades because it helped us survive the removal era as well as the termination era, and so without it we would not exist as a sovereign entity. We would have either been annihilated or removed to the West,” said Curtis Osceola, chief of staff for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. “Our land is the reason we survived. It is the reason why we’re here, and so we have a duty to the land that once protected us. And so that’s what it is to be Miccosukee, is to serve and protect the lands of our environment.”
Today, most of the 600-member tribe lives on tribal lands within Everglades National Park, although some 100 to 200 Miccosukees, members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and other Native people of Miccosukee and Seminole heritage live in 15 villages within Big Cypress. About eight of the communities, as well as a school, are situated downstream from Raccoon Point, raising concerns that spilled oil could flow in their direction, affecting surface water and the underground aquifer, which some residents have tapped with residential wells. Osceola said back when Big Cypress was established and the Collier family maintained the underground mineral rights, the Miccosukees were left out of the negotiations.
“Part of our culture tells us that the land should rest, and those fluids beneath the land should go undisturbed. That includes natural gas, oil, things like that,” he said. “So the extraction of oil is a very unnatural act.”
Oil drilling within Big Cypress is the latest environmental issue the tribe has taken up. After the federal government sued the state in the 1980s over water pollution in Everglades National Park and the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, the Miccosukees got involved in the issue as defenders of the river of grass. The litigation led to a monumental state cleanup effort, which remains in progress today.
The tribe’s pending deal with the Colliers would halt all future drilling within Big Cypress, although existing production could continue at least for now. The agreement likely would upend a plan for two new sites in Big Cypress that Burnett Oil Co. Inc., an oil and gas company based in Fort Worth, Texas, is pursuing.
In 2017 and 2018, Burnett, under a lease with the Collier family, conducted an off-road seismic survey of 110 square miles of Big Cypress. The survey involved applying vibrating plates to the ground and sending seismic signals deep beneath the surface to map potential oil. To access the remote area, 33-ton vibroseis trucks were used. The hefty vehicles sank into the soft, water-soaked soils, leaving deep ruts, consequential in an ecosystem where the boundary between land and water is blurred and inches of elevation can mean vast differences in habitat. The effort also harmed slow-growing mature dwarf cypress trees. As many as 500 of the trees were cut down to allow the trucks to move through the area, according to a 2023 report by the National Parks Conservation Association.
Six years later the landscape has not recovered, the report said. The survey left lasting scars including soil compaction and deep twisting furrows, and almost none of the felled cypress trees has shown signs of regrowth. The National Parks Conservation Association wants the National Park Service to compel Burnett to replant the trees and address the other problems. Burnett did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The two new sites Burnett is proposing would be similar to the one at Raccoon Point, according to the company’s permit application to the National Park Service. The document says the project is designed to minimize environmental impacts and avoid historical, cultural, and archeological resources, including Miccosukee and Seminole areas.
If the National Park Service were to approve Burnett’s plan, that would contradict the Biden administration’s demonstrated commitment to confront climate change, said Christina Reichert, senior attorney in the Florida office of Earthjustice, a nonprofit litigating environmental issues.
“It doesn’t match up to the promises that we’re hearing and the focus that this administration should be having on fighting the climate crisis. This would be creating brand new fossil fuel infrastructure in a time where we need to be transitioning away from that,” she said. “Wetlands are carbon sinks. One of the things they do is absorb carbon from the atmosphere and store it. So it doesn’t make sense to destroy wetlands and then build fossil fuel infrastructure.”
Hjerpe of the Conservation Economics Institute said closing an oil well can be difficult and costly, sometimes making it more advantageous to continue operating the well even when the oil is not of the highest quality. He said it is possible Burnett’s lease agreement with the Collier family mandated exploration plans or focused on increasing new development.
“When you see the path forward, and there’s certainly potential for a buy-out of your minerals and buy-out of your operations, then it completely makes financial sense to make sure that you are heavily invested in the area and that you keep producing and illustrating the value and increasing the value of your operations,” he said.
Climate change associated with fossil fuel emissions is poised to have a big impact on the Everglades. Rising temperatures will increase evaporation, stressing the watershed that already is pressured by explosive population growth and development. The hotter temperatures also will lead to precipitation changes, raising concerns about whether the water management infrastructure here, some of the most complex in the world, is up to future challenges.
The agreement involving the Miccosukees, Colliers, and WildLandscapes International includes three phases. Under the first phase, completed last year, the Collier family sold 11,141 acres, including the mineral rights, to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and South Florida Water Management District. The second phase, focused on the mineral rights beneath Big Cypress, still faces several steps, said Houghton of WildLandscapes International.
“The way the deal is set up we have a floor value, and if the appraisal meets that or above then the Colliers are obligated to sell,” he said. “If the appraisal is below, the Colliers could get out.”
If the agreement moves forward, Congress would appropriate the funding, which could take a few more years. The money would come from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a federal program that puts earnings from offshore oil and gas leasing toward land conservation. The third phase involves land near Everglades City, a small town outside of Big Cypress.
Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, said future plans go further. Eventually the tribe wants to stop all oil drilling within Big Cypress for good.
“Florida is going to need more freshwater, more drinking water, and we don’t have that without the Everglades,” he said. “It matters to everybody in Florida.”
This story was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
April signaled the beginning of blistering heat for much of Texas. And while the summer heat is uncomfortable for many, it can be deadly for the people incarcerated in Texas’ prison system where temperatures regularly reach triple digits.
With another sweltering summer likely ahead, on April 22 prison rights advocates filed a complaint against Texas Department of Criminal Justice executive director Bryan Collier, arguing that the lack of air conditioning in the majority of Texas prisons amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
The filing came from four nonprofit organizations who are joining a lawsuit originally filed last August by Bernie Tiede, an inmate who suffered a medical crisis after being housed in a Huntsville cell that reached temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. Tiede, a well-known offender whose 1996 murder of a wealthy widow inspired the film “Bernie,” was moved to an air-conditioned cell following a court order but he’s not guaranteed to stay there this year.
Last month’s filing expands the plaintiffs to include every inmate incarcerated in uncooled Texas prisons, which have led to the deaths of dozens of Texas inmates and cost the state millions of dollars as it fights wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits.
The plaintiffs ask that an Austin federal judge declare the state’s prison policy unconstitutional and require that prisons be kept under 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Texas jails are already required to keep facilities cooler than 85 degrees, and federal prisons in Texas have a 76 degree maximum.
Between June and August last year, the average temperature was 85.3 degrees — the second hottest on record behind 2011. And this year does not look to be much cooler. The most recent winter season ranked warmest on record for the contiguous U.S., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Scientists have found that climate change has resulted in more severe and longer lasting heat waves. In the last decade, Texas has experienced over 1,000 days of record-breaking heat, compared to a normal decade.
In the hot summer months, those concrete and metal cells can reach over 130 degrees, formerly incarcerated Texans said during an April 22 press conference. Legal representatives hope to prove those conditions are unconstitutional.
“What is truly infuriating is the failure to acknowledge that everyone in the system — all 130,000 prisoners — are at direct risk of being impacted by something that has a simple solution that has been around since the 1930s, and that is air conditioning,” attorney Jeff Edwards told reporters. Edwards was the lead attorney in a 2014 prison rights case that cited the nearly two dozen Texas prison inmates who died from heat stroke over the previous two decades. That case culminated in a settlement, where TDCJ agreed to install air conditioning at the Wallace Pack Unit near College Station.
About two thirds of the inmates housed across TDCJ’s facilities live in areas without air conditioning. Advocates and inmates’ families have long fought to cool prisons in a state where summer temperatures routinely exceed triple digits and pose dangerous conditions to inmates and correctional officers.
Although the state has not reported a heat-related death since 2012, researchers and inmates’ families dispute those statistics. A 2022 study found that 14 prison deaths per year were associated with heat. Last year, a Texas Tribune analysis found that at least 41 people had died in uncooled prisons during the state’s record-breaking heat wave.
Health problems that have been linked to excessive heat include renal diseases, cardiovascular mortality, respiratory illnesses and suicides, Julie Skarha, a epidemiology researcher at Brown University who authored the 2022 study, told reporters on Monday.
Skarha said while death certificates may not list heat strokes — a condition when the body can no longer control its temperature — as the official cause of death, her research indicates that many prisoners have died from heat-related causes.
“Heat deaths haven’t magically stopped,” the lawsuit states. “TDCJ has simply stopped reporting or admitting them after the multiple wrongful death lawsuits and national news coverage.”
TDCJ spokesperson Amanda Hernandez declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying the agency does not comment on pending litigation. But she emphasized that the department has been adding more air conditioning units since 2018.
“Each year we’ve been working to add cool beds, and we’ll continue to do so,” she said.
She also pointed to the departments’ “enhanced heating protocols” which are activated from April to October and include providing ice water to inmates and allowing them to purchase fans and cooling towels from the commissary.
Lawyers argue that these mitigation tactics are insufficient to combat the state’s sweltering temperatures. To survive the heat, incarcerated people report having to flood their toilets or sinks and lie down in the water on the cell floor to try to cool their bodies, the lawsuit states.
“This isn’t an unpredictable event,” said attorney Erica Grossman, who is one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs. “It gets hot every summer, and much like every other building in Texas — including buildings that have animals — we cool the building.”
TDCJ staff who work in the facilities are similarly impacted by the heat, said Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law and LBJ School. The excessive heat invades all aspects of life in prisons: Staff must do physical work in heavy uniforms in the heat; the heat results in more violence among those incarcerated; and it leads to more use of force against prisoners, she said.
The TDCJ states on their heat mitigation protocols that staff are “encouraged to increase their water intake” during the hot summer month and are allowed to wear cooling towels and dri-fit compression shirts.
New research Skarha has conducted found that the number of assaults that occur in prisons without air conditioning increased as much as five times during summer months compared to that number in climate-controlled facilities.
Prison rights advocates say the state could easily fund air conditioning units across its prisons but has simply been unwilling to do so. During the last legislative session — when the state recorded a record surplus — the House proposed spending $545 million to install air-conditioning in most of the prison facilities lacking it. But the final budget did not include any money dedicated to air conditioning.
The House also passed a bill requiring prisons to be kept between 65 and 85 degrees, which is required already in jails and most federal facilities. But the bill failed in the more conservative Senate.
“We have the resources. We just seem to not have the compassion to do it,” Rep. Carl Sherman, D-DeSoto, said during the press conference. Sherman was one of the authors of the bill that would have regulated prison temperatures.
The Legislature did allocate approximately $85 million for “additional deferred maintenance projects,” in Texas prisons, and TDCJ is using that money to pay for air conditioning units. Hernandez estimated that those dollars will provide air conditioning for an estimated 10,000 inmates.
Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
