Category: conservation

Colossal and Trump administration cooperate to sequence and store DNA of endangered species

June 28, 2026 • 10:15 am

Carl Zimmer and Catrin Einhorn are the authors of a new article in the NYT about our old friend Colossal Biosciences, which you’ll remember as the outfit in Texas that has promised to “de-extinct” the woolly mammoth, the thylacine (marsupial “wolf”), the dodo and the moa, after having claimed that they’ve already de-extincted the “dire wolf”.

As I’ve written at length here (and in an article in the Boston Globe), Colossal has not de-extincted anything. It simply edited 14 genes in a gray wolf cell, and then put that cell into the nucleus of a domestic dog egg. What came out were three slightly tweaked gray wolves, white in color and, Colossal says, larger than  normal wolves. But 14 changed genes in a genome of about 20,000 protein-coding genes, and having 2.5 billion DNA bases, does not turn a gray wolf into a dire wolf. Their response was that a dire wolf is anything that you think resembles a dire wolf, no matter how much. That is disingenuous.

I lost respect from Colossal when they decided to double down on their claim that they’ve brought something back from extinction, which they surely have not.  And their claims that they will release these things into the wild—their ultimate aim—is ridiculous. The three faux white dire wolves (I doubt the original was even white) are kept secretly on an enclosure somewhere in the West, with only a few toadying journalists or donors allowed to visit them.

Likewise, Colossal’s promise to give us woolly mammoths by 2028 is unbelievable, for they won’t be able to put an engineered Asian elephant egg into the endangered Asian elephant, much less produce a creature that has more than a minute fraction of mammoth DNA. On top of that, Colossal says their aim is to release these faux mammoths on the tundra, which won’t happen, and that when they do so, it will help with global warming since the furry elephants’ trampling on the permafrost will prevent release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, ameliorating global warming.  Gullible donors like Paris Hilton, Tiger Woods, and Tom Brady have swelled Colossal’s coffers by $400 million, and it’s now worth, notes the article below, more than $10 billion.

I think that when Colossal realized it couldn’t make good on its de-extinction promises, it started investing in other projects.  One of them is described in this article in the NYT (click below or find it archived here). What they propose to do, with the promised help of the Trump administration, is save the DNA from endangered species.  Now this project has its good aspects, for if Colossal sequences a lot of new genomes and publishes the sequences (which it promises to make public), we could learn quite a bit about evolution. And the American taxpayer doesn’t have to foot the bill for any of it.  But Colossal has no experience in “biodiversity banking” of this sort, even though nonprofit conservation organizations like the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has been doing it for over half a century (Colossal is decidely a for-profit company). The San Diego noprofit has in fact created clones of black-footed ferrets, a highly endangered species, from biobanked material, so at least it has something useful to show for its efforts.

Further, if Colossal is doing this for “de-extinction” purposes, and will retain sole possession of the material, as it will do, then it is preventing other organizations or scientists from using what is “banked.” The U.S. government has no business partnering with such an enterprise.  I don’t worry about de-extinction because that is (pardon the pun) a dead issue. But the concentration on biobanking may, as the authors note, “erode support for on-the-ground conservation,” which mainly involves saving existing habitat and keeping humans from destroying new habitat.

A few quotes from the article, which, as science journalism should, maintains a neutral viewpoint while emphasizing both pros and cons:

The Trump administration and a company that is promising to bring long-gone animals back from extinction announced a partnership on Thursday to preserve cells, tissue and DNA from threatened and endangered species.

The company, Colossal Biosciences, said its goal was to store samples from every animal and plant protected under the Endangered Species Act, which includes more than 2,300 listings worldwide.

As more species face the risk of extinction, scientists see such biobanks as a critical backup. But concerns are also growing that the rise of genetic engineering and efforts to revive extinct species will erode support for on-the-ground conservation, which often requires protecting habitat from drilling, mining and other development.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration has been rolling back protections on land and water, including through actions to weaken the Endangered Species Act, in favor of expanded oil and gas exploration, commercial fishing and other economic activities.

“This partnership brings together the scientific expertise of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the ingenuity of the private sector to develop new tools that can help recover species, preserve critical genetic resources, and strengthen the future of wildlife conservation,” Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said in a statement.

Under a memorandum of understanding, Colossal and the Fish and Wildlife Service will collaborate to identify high-priority actions, and the government will provide a list of which species it wants to prioritize.

Well, I’d prefer that a consortium of scientists decide which species should be prioritized, and I’d prefer that the material be given to the San Diego Zoo organization rather than to Colossal, which will have sole use of the material and is a for-profit organization. The agreement is supposed to run for five years, and that Colossal gets to keep all the samples it collected with its own funding, equipment, or personnel”, which means pretty much all the samples.

Colossal has been busy doing other stuff, too:

After beginning its de-extinction efforts, Colossal branched out into biobanking. In February, the company announced a partnership with the United Arab Emirates to build what it calls a BioVault in Dubai, intended to store cell and tissue samples from more than 10,000 species.

Why Dubai? Why not store all the material in one place? Who knows? And they clone pets!

[Colossal] currently gets revenue from cloning pets and horses through a company it acquired last year, and claims to have future sources of revenue from licensing technology it develops for its de-extinction projects.

The article notes some criticism of Colossal’s proposal, too (I’m not quoting the criticism of the “de-extinction” endeavors, which the article also mentions):

But some conservation biologists expressed worries about depending so much for the long-term guardianship of precious samples on a private company.

“It seems like a bit of a risk for the U.S. government to place biomaterials in a for-profit company that doesn’t have a very long track record,” said Oliver Ryder, a conservation geneticist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which operates a storage effort called the Frozen Zoo that has been preserving cells for about 50 years.

and

Gabriela Mastromonaco, chief science officer at the Toronto Zoo, called the U.S. plan laid out in Thursday’s announcement hugely ambitious.

“To collect every threatened and endangered species, that is a massive endeavor,” she said. “That means tracking, trapping, immobilizing, and getting your hands on a lot of animals.”

She expressed concern that the initial announcement was short on planning details that would be standard in many other nations.

. . . Dr. Mastromonaco of the Toronto Zoo said the announcement left many questions unanswered, such as how Indigenous communities would participate in decisions about the program and the rules for who gets to use the samples for research. She said she was addressing these questions herself as Canada develops its own plan for biobanking wild species.

and

Concerns that genetic engineering would replace critical conservation work heightened when Mr. Burgum, the interior secretary, celebrated the company’s announcement on X, writing that “the marvel of ‘de-extinction’ technology can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.” The Fish and Wildlife Service is part of the Interior Department.

Colossal executives emphasize that their efforts are intended to add to conservation strategies, not supplant the important work of protecting habitat.

I guess Colossal needs government cooperation since that’s required to collect DNA samples from endangered species. But if Colossal is dong this “for public good and impact” as Colossal CEO Ben Lamm has said, why do they retain the sole right to use the material? Even if it’s collected by Colossal, the permission to do so has to come from the U.S. government, and we should not be entangled with a private, for-profit company that will store material only it can use.

I see Colossal as having provided some valuable knowledge, but also largely as a pack of grifters, making promises they cannot keep and distorting what they have done.  In my view they should stick to cloning Fido and Fluffy for rich pet-owners who want to “de-extinct” their postmortem pets.

h/t: Don

More on Colossal’s futile efforts to “de-extinct” ancient giant birds

May 20, 2026 • 10:15 am

After announcing that it would “de-extinct’ the Woolly Mammoth, and that it had in fact “de-extincted” the Dire Wolf, the company Colossal Biosciences is now making big noises about its effort to bring back extinct big birds: the giant moas of New Zealand (driven extinct by humans around 1300 AD) and the dodo of Mauritius (also killed off by humans in 1662). These are big birds (dodos weighed from 20-40 pounds, moas, of which there were nine species, from 55 to 600 pounds), and this fact alone makes it hard to de-extinct them.

But, as with the “woolly mammoth”, the concept of bringing back extinct species is impossible given our current technology, and saying that you can is grossly misleading.  And that’s for several reasons (the indented bits below are mine):

1.) You need the DNA of the extinct species if you’re going to create a simulacrum of it by injecting bits of the extinct animal’s DNA into the genome of a modern relative.

2.) You need to know what the DNA segments you have actually do in the animal, and how sequences differing between it and the donor genome can produce an animal with some traits of the original species. Where are the “big genes” in a mammoth, for example?

3.) Species are not “de-extincted”: what happens is that a living relative is genetically engineered by putting in a few bits of ancient DNA to create a “partial hybrid” that superficially resembles the ancient species. This involves finding and inserting a few bits of ancient DNA that you think will make the donor species look more like the extinct one. For example, I think fewer than 20 genes were engineered into a gray wolf genome to make the “dire wolf”. These included both dire wolf genes and mutant genes of modern dogs inserted into a gray wolf genome. The tweaked embryo was then implanted in a domestic dog. It’s important that you (and the press) realize that the ancient species is not brought back; what we get is a modern species that looks a bit like the ancient species. (See my post on the “dire-ish wolf” here.)

4.) There are problems with rearing the “tweaked” (I won’t call it “de-extincted”) species.  We cannot artificially inseminate elephants with elephant genomes that have been engineered for hairiness and bigger tusk. We don’t have the ability to do this (though we might in the future), the embryos might not develop properly, and the mother is unlikely to take care of them. This is why Colossal has spoken of using “artificial uteruses” to rear the tweaked “mammothy” elephant.

5.) For giant birds like the dodo and moa, you need to be able to rear the tweaked species—presumably adjusted to be larger than its surrogate relative—in big eggs. Because those eggs don’t exist, they have to be made somehow. This week Colossal announced the creation of 3-D printed eggshells that could be used to contain a chicken embryo that develops to term.  But of course hatching is one thing, and rearing is another. What mother will rear a tweaked “dodolike” bird.  The closest relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon, a bird considerably smaller than the dodo (the pigeon weighs about a pound). The closest living relative of the moas is the tinamou, which weighs about as much as a big chicken: five pounds max.  Rearing such birds to maturity is a serious problem, even if they were full dodos or moas rather than tweaked pigeons or tinamous.

6.) Colossal has announced that a crucial part of “de-extinction” is “rewilding”: releasing the tweaked animals back into nature to restore their niche.  This is one of the most questionable parts of the whole enterprise.  The tweaked hairy elephant, for example, should be released on the tundra (and in groups of individuals, which is yet another problem, as you need to engineer more than one hybrid). That tundra doesn’t exist in the form it did in the past, and, of course, the tweaked hairy elephant has to have all genes necessary to seek out and use the food that a real woolly mammoth would eat, as well as genes for preferring as a mate others of its kind. It has to be able to survive extreme cold. We don’t know what genes these are! All we have are DNA sequences.

An example of the problems is Colossal’s announcement that it had “de-extincted” the Dire Wolf. It hadn’t: it engineered a gray wolf with about 20 inserted genes taken from both wolves and domestic dogs, producing a whitish wolf that seems a bit larger than gray wolves.  Three of these creatures were made. Not only were they not released in the wild, but they are sequestered in a secret and tightly-controlled fenced area that is off limits to all but selected journalists.

All the brouhaha, then, is misleading. We don’t get extinct species back, we may not even get “tweaked” species back, and they are very unlikely to ever see the wild again. I discussed many of these problem in an op-ed last year in The Boston Globe (archived here). See also the New Scientist article below.

Because Colossal has misled the public—they originally said they’d de-extincted the dire wolf, then retracted that claim, then reinstated it, saying that if it looks like a dire wolf, it is a dire wolf—each time they accomplish something they tout it as a huge advance towards real de-extinction. After all, they have to keep their rich investors and the public happy.

The latest Colossal announcement, which came through the mail, is that of their developing an artificial chicken eggshell. The problem is (see below the fold) that this has already been done by others some time ago. A further problem, of course, is that this is only a minor issue in the problem of putting dodo-like or moa-like embryo in an artificial egg. Here’s Colossal’s announcement, and note the emphasis on “de-extinction”:

BREAKTHROUGH: De-Extinction Just Got Its Egg
Step inside the beginnings of life as Colossal Biosciences hatches live chicks from our new artificial egg.
This huge advancement is foundational to our de-extinction of the South Island giant moa, whose eggs were around 80x the volume of a chicken’s. No living bird could possibly hatch one. So we built an artificial egg that will.
Watch a real chick embryo develop inside the artificial egg. Get a full breakdown of every feature. And see how this breakthrough is opening new doors for avian biotech research and bird conservation.
You’ll want to see the ending.
Meet the Colossal artificial egg. Nature spent millions of years perfecting the original. We just made our own, and hatched some beautiful and healthy chicks.
Here’s how it works:
🥚 Egg-shaped frame: a lattice shell that gives the whole system its structure and protection.
🌬️ Colossal membrane: the secret weapon. A bioengineered, gas-permeable layer that matches a real shell’s oxygen transfer, so O₂ flows in and CO₂ flows out exactly the way nature does it.
👁️ See-through build: the largely transparent design that lets us watch development in real time. This is critical for research and for de-extinction, where visually confirming milestones and the gene-edited traits we’ve put back is everything.
📏 Modular scale: the platform will stretch to fit eggs of any size, including the South Island giant moa egg, roughly 80x the volume of a chicken egg.
Extinction doesn’t have to be the end. And this is just the beginning.
Avian de-extinction is getting wild.

Here’s a breathy, chest-thumping video, accompanied by triumphant music, making it seem that the problem of de-extinction is on the way to being licked:

This is an achievement, of course, but to me it’s not a substantial step towards getting back moas and dodos. as it’s not that new.

And of course the press has picked it up, but this time they are careful to quote Colossal’s many critics as well as its chief propagandist, Ben Lamm. The Times of London talks about the eggshell as a step in resurrecting moas, using emus as surrogate moms. Click headline below to read:

Excerpts from The Times piece:

Colossal Biosciences, a Texan biotechnology firm, has developed a shell-less system it says is capable of supporting a bird embryo from early development through to the point of hatching.

So far the device has been used to produce baby chickens. The end goal, the company says, is to deploy a much larger version to resurrect the moa, whose eggs were about 80 times the volume of a farmyard hen’s.

. . . . So far the device has been used to produce baby chickens. The end goal, the company says, is to deploy a much larger version to resurrect the moa, whose eggs were about 80 times the volume of a farmyard hen’s.

. . .Eventually, the hope is that emu cells can be edited, introducing genetic changes that would make any resulting animal more moa-like. The hurdle then would be where to grow an embryo. According to Colossal, the eggs of the South Island giant moa were roughly eight times the volume of an emu’s. No living bird would be large enough to play mother to it.

This is where the artificial egg would come in. Colossal says the device could be scaled up, allowing embryos of much larger birds to develop in a controlled chamber. It claims this could remove the need for a living surrogate mother and make it possible to incubate embryos at sizes no modern bird can manage.

But they quote critics!

. . .Critics say such claims need careful handling. To recreate a mammoth, for instance, Colossal plans to alter the genetic code of an Asian elephant.

Even if that succeeds, sceptics argue the result would not truly be a mammoth, but an elephant engineered to have some mammoth-like traits, such as shaggy hair and extra fat reserves.

The same issues apply to the moa. The project, which is being backed by Sir Peter Jackson, the film director behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, plans to compare ancient DNA from the extinct species with living relatives such as emus and tinamous to work out which genetic features helped make a moa a moa.

Well, there’s the rub! But Ben Lamm is always around to give the necessary donation-promoting optimism:

Ben Lamm, chief executive of Colossal, said: “Restoring species like the South Island giant moa isn’t just about reconstructing ancient genomes and editing [primordial germ cells, which eventually become sperm or eggs] — it requires building an entirely new incubation system where no surrogate exists.”

He added: “It’s a major milestone for Colossal and a foundational technology for our de-extinction toolkit.”

Again, I’m not saying that the artificial egg is not of any value. I’m just saying that insuperable problems remain with bringing back moas (or dodos).

Here’s a tweet that Matthew sent me, which called my attention to a New Scientist article that, mirabile dictu, strongly criticizes the de-extinction program as a whole:

Colossal says its "artificial egg" will help it bring back the moa, which had larger eggs than any living birds 🧪But it's really just an artificial eggshell, and even clingfilm will work – sort of – as an artificial eggshell. Plus there's the yolk problem…www.newscientist.com/article/2527…

— Michael Le Page (@mjflepage.bsky.social) 2026-05-19T12:19:10.242Z

The article at New Scientist can be found by clicking on the screenshot below, or finding it archived here:

A few Q&As from the piece:

Is this the first-ever artificial bird egg?

Colossal does use the term “artificial egg” in its press release, but it is really just an artificial eggshell. Either way, it isn’t a first – in fact, it’s possible to remove chicken eggs from their shells and hatch them from anything from plastic cups to cling film. However, the survival rate is usually low because, without an eggshell, the developing chicks may not get enough oxygen. A number of teams around the world have been working on more sophisticated so-called ex-ovo approaches.

How much better is it than cling film?

Colossal claims its silicone membrane is better than existing ex-ovo methods because it allows oxygen through at the same rate as a chicken eggshell and doesn’t require additional oxygen. However, it hasn’t released any experimental results to back this up. “I would love to see what the numbers are on efficiency,” says Ben Novak of non-profit wildlife conservation group Revive & Restore. “How many of these chicks hatch versus how many don’t?”

Colossal doesn’t publish much of the data that would enable scientists to see exactly what it did, which genes it used, and what the results are. Three more issues:

Does this mean we could create a giant artificial moa egg?

Even if Colossal’s approach does work well for chicken eggs, it won’t necessarily work for larger eggs. Larger eggs might need shells with different properties because of their lower surface-area-to-volume ratio, but this could probably be solved by tweaking the permeability of the membrane. Making a big egg also requires more than just a big eggshell. Moa eggs were up to 24 centimetres long and 18 cm wide, so they contained a lot more egg white and yolk than the eggs of living birds. Adding more egg white should be relatively straightforward. Chickens have been successfully hatched in the egg white from turkeys, says Novak, which suggests it won’t matter much what animal’s egg white is used.

How much better is it than cling film?

Colossal claims its silicone membrane is better than existing ex-ovo methods because it allows oxygen through at the same rate as a chicken eggshell and doesn’t require additional oxygen. However, it hasn’t released any experimental results to back this up. “I would love to see what the numbers are on efficiency,” says Ben Novak of non-profit wildlife conservation group Revive & Restore. “How many of these chicks hatch versus how many don’t?”

What about the extra yolk required?

That’s more of a problem. Each egg yolk is a single cell, meaning ostrich yolks are the largest single cells found on the planet. To make a yolk larger would require penetrating the cell membrane and injecting more yolk, says Novak, which would likely cause the cell to burst. So it might be necessary to somehow enlarge the cell membrane so it can hold the extra yolk. Which is probably doable, given enough time, effort and money.

And the $64,000 question (and answer):

If all the problems with making really big eggs are solved, could we then bring back the moa?

Absolutely not. The big problem is that DNA breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces over time, and all nine species of moa went extinct around 600 years ago. It’s never going to be possible to get a complete, working copy of a moa genome and produce a living animal genetically identical to any of the extinct species. Even the human genome wasn’t completed until 2023.

. . . . Is this what Colossal aims to do with the moa?  [i.e., tweaking existing species with a few gene edits]

Colossal hasn’t revealed its plans, but based on what it did with grey wolves and “woolly mice”, its aim will likely be to tweak a few genes in the emu to create something a bit like the moa in appearance, even if that means making genetic changes not present in the moa genome. Five of the 20 gene edits made to the grey wolves were changes not found in the dire wolf genome, for instance. Nic Rawlence at the University of Otago in New Zealand doesn’t think Colossal is close to achieving even this for the moa. “The development of a genetically engineered emu and calling it a moa for no good conservation or ecological reason, but rather an ecotourism venture, is still a long way off,” says Rawlence. Nor is the idea of bringing back the moa universally welcomed, he says. “There is widespread Māori and public opposition in Aotearoa New Zealand.”

Grok agrees with all this when I asked it the question below:

From Grok:

Question I asked it: Will Colossal be able to bring the moa and the dodo, that is, “de-extinct” them?
Grok’s answer:
No, not in the sense of resurrecting the exact extinct species—but Colossal Biosciences could plausibly create moa-like and dodo-like engineered proxy birds (genetically modified versions of living relatives) within the next 5–15 years, assuming continued progress. True de-extinction (reviving genetically identical copies of the original species) is not possible with current or foreseeable technology.

There’s more at New Scientist, but you can read it at the link or the archived link. I hope I’ve shown that Colossal is engaged in misleading the public (and I can’t help but think it knows this, since it de-emphasizes the “tweaking” part), and that you’ve learned some of the problems with its “de-extinction” claims.

Below the fold I’ve put Grok’s answer to my question about whether previous workers had reared chicken eggs using artificial “shells” previously. The answer is “yes,” though Colossal’s expensive shell is more sophisticated. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of Grok’s answers, but of course it tells you how to investigate them.

h/t Pyers.

Click below to read more:

Continue reading “More on Colossal’s futile efforts to “de-extinct” ancient giant birds” →

This just in from Colossal Biosciences: Wolves eat meat!

March 25, 2026 • 12:30 pm

I’ve often criticized Colossal Biosciences for their overblown science, which includes pretending that they’ve resurrected the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus), when they’ve only created grey wolves (Canis lupus) with a few gene edits that make them white (real dire wolves probably were not white!) and a bit larger. Three of these edited wolves have been released at a secret location, and Colossal has pronounced them to be dire wolves even though they’re they’re not dire wolves. In fact Colossal has admitted they haven’t “de-extincted” dire wolves—and yet they pretend otherwise. It’s a squirrelly business, but they need to keep attracting and keeping donors.

On tap: their promise to “de-extinct” the woolly mammoth, which will in fact not be a wooly mammoth but at best a hairy Asian elephant. And they say that they’ll get a population of these creatures going on the tundra within eight or so years.  I wouldn’t bet on it!

This morning I got an announcement that the three dire wolves in captivity have eaten an animal—a dead deer! Surprise!

Here’s the announcement:

Did you know most wolf hunts end in failure? 
Wolves look like perfect hunters, but in the wild they actually fail nearly 9 out of 10 hunts. So how do they ever get good at it? In our latest video, narrated by Colossal’s Manager of Animal Husbandry Paige McNickle, we explore how wolves actually learn to hunt, and see the dire wolves Romulus and Remus face a messy milestone as they try to figure out how to skin, tear, crunch, and share a whole deer.
Will the young dire wolves be successful? The answer might surprise you.
When I said the whole thing was ridiculous, Matthew (another critic) responded, “Exactly. “Look, Homer, they are just like our pet dog!”
Note the videos showing a bunch of white “dire wolves” chasing buffalo. I don’t think that can be real, as they made only three dire wolve, and they aren’t penned in where the buffalos roam.Note as well that they are showing gray wolves, not dire wolves.  And of course they’ll eat a wolf carcass, for “dire wolves” are just tweaked gray wolves, and they are going to eat a deer carcass if they get it.  This deer was (I hope) killed before presented to these mutants.The YouTube notes.

Narrated by Paige McNickle, Colossal’s Manager of Animal Husbandry, this episode also gives you a close look at the continuing development of our young dire wolves, Romulus and Remus. They’ve already taken down small prey, and they’re continuing to learn the essential behaviors of being wolves. To help them develop more skills, the dire wolves are given a whole deer carcass. This is an important milestone in their development, as they learn how to skin, tear, crunch, and share a full prey animal.

This is undoubtedly meant to keep the public excited and, more important, keeping the donors satisfied and bringing more $$ in.  But what is the purpose showing these gray wolves learning to be gray wolves? They’ll never be released into the wild! I suppose you could say that this shows how gray wolves not born into a pack can learn various behaviors. But that has nothing to do with dire wolves.  To me it’s a big yawn in the service of Mammon.

And where is the third “dire wolf”—Khaleesi? Is she getting dog food somewhere?

Social Justice wrecks the Sierra Club

November 14, 2025 • 10:00 am

This happens over and over again. It happened with the Southern Poverty Law Center. It happened with the ACLU. It happened with the Audubon Society. And now it’s happening with the Sierra Club. What is happening? An organization with a narrowly defined but admirable mission cannot resist the ideological Zeitgeist, and embraces social justice precepts that are not universally accepted. The organization becomes riven with controversy, and it erodes, becoming damaged. (This also happened with Scientific American, remember?)

The NYT from a week ago tells us how this is happening to the Sierra Club, which has lost money and membership after deciding to branch off into Social Justice Warriorism. Read about it by clicking the headline below, or find the article archived here for free.

I’ll put the upshot under bold headings, which are mine. Indented bits come from the article:

Why the club was good. 

The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 to protect the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, but it grew into a giant of American environmentalism.

It helped expand national parks, keep dams out of the Grand Canyon and establish Earth Day.

In 2016, the club was at the height of its success, leading what many in the green movement consider the most successful environmental campaign put on by anyone in the 21st century: “Beyond Coal.”

Its secret was focus, according to activists involved. The club put its energy behind the single, measurable goal of closing all of the country’s 500-plus carbon-spewing, coal-fired power plants. Armed with more than $120 million from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, they used lawsuits, petitions and protests to convince regulators and utilities that coal plants were too dirty and expensive to keep operating.

The move to social justice:

During Mr. Trump’s first term, when the Sierra Club was flush with donations, its leaders sought to expand far beyond environmentalism, embracing other progressive causes. Those included racial justice, labor rights, gay rights, immigrant rights and more. They stand by that shift today.

. . .It drove away longtime volunteers who loved the club’s single-minded defense of the environment, by asking them to fully embrace its pivot to the left. Some even felt they were investigated by the club for failing to go along. Many hard-core supporters felt the Sierra Club was casting aside the key to its success: It was an eclectic group of activists who had one, and sometimes only one, cause in common.

The club hired Mr. Jealous, its first Black executive director, that year to stop that slide, but his tenure accelerated it as accusations of sexual harassment, bullying, and overspending piled up.

The club became one in a string of “resistance” groups from Mr. Trump’s first administration that arrived at his second already exhausted from liberal infighting.

“It’s almost like uprooting a sequoia and converting it into an ax handle,” said Aaron Mair, a former board president.

Things got worse:

At the same time, the club asked its supporters to agree with positions farther from the environmental causes that had attracted them in the first place.

It issued an “equity language guide,” which warned employees to be cautious about using the words “vibrant” and “hardworking,” because they reinforced racist tropes. “Lame duck session” was out, because “lame” was offensive. Even “Americans” should be avoided, the guide said, because it excluded non-U. S. citizens.

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the group called for defunding the police and providing reparations for slavery.

The club even turned on its own founder, John Muir, with Mr. Brune saying the environmental icon had used “deeply harmful racist stereotypes” in his writings about Native Americans and Black people in the 1860s.

You  can see part of the language guide below and a link to the whole thing, which is simply ludicrous.

They even came down on Israel:

In 2022, a group of union members asked the Sierra Club to “follow [its] values of antiracism and justice” and cancel sightseeing trips it operated in Israel, in protest of the country’s treatment of Palestinians.

“Palestine is an environmental issue from our standpoint,” Erica Dodt, the president of the Progressive Workers’ Union, which includes Sierra Club employees, said in an interview. “People are a huge part of our environment.”

The club postponed the trips. But Sierra Club officials said the club heard a backlash from donors including Mr. Bloomberg, the major funder of “Beyond Coal” who also gave to humanitarian causes in Israel. His staff declined to comment. The Sierra Club said he is still a donor.

Within days, the Sierra Club reversed itself and announced more trips to Israel.

If Palestine is part of the Sierra Club’s remit, and that includes “people” because humans are “part of the environment,” then there is nothing that does not become part of the Club’s mission!

The outcome: the Club lost members and money. and membership fractured:

The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.

Its political giving has also dropped. Federal campaign-finance records show $3.6 million in donations from the Sierra Club during the push to defeat Donald J. Trump in 2020, but none as Mr. Trump stormed back to the presidency in 2024.

And this year, as the Trump administration returned better organized and better prepared than in its first term, the Sierra Club was the opposite. While Mr. Trump boosted coal power, canceled wind farms and rolled back pollution limits, the club was consumed by internal chaos, culminating when the board fired its executive director, Ben Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.

Here’s the NYT chart showing the decline in “champions” (volunteer helpers or people the club endorses, but see below for the decline in membership), as well as the rise in expenses, which are now higher than donations:

They surveyed the members, who aren’t happy:

In late 2020, the club surveyed its dues-paying members, its most hard-core supporters. The members said they supported racial justice, but when asked to choose among priorities they ranked climate change first, and racism tied for last.

More than half of members also said they were worried that the club’s shift toward social justice “will detract from its core mission of protecting the environment” and alienate conservatives, according to a copy of the survey obtained by The New York Times.

Well, it already has detracted from its core mission, which is always the problem. Once again we see an organization flaunting its virtue when it should be institutionally neutral except for issues affecting its core mission. But it was not like that, and lost out.

Then culture began permeating the organization, with allegations of sexual misconduct arising. In response, the Club instituterd a system to “discipline its volunteers”, and some volunteers got investigated without even being told why.  The deficit continued to increase and they chose as Executive Director Ben Jealous, who ran the NAACP and “promised employees to make the Sierra Club ‘the most progressive and inclusive employer in the movement, if not the nation.'”.

That, of course, is the kiss of death. Jealous fired 10% of the staff but also hired several “longtime associated as high salaries,” something that smacks of nepotism. Two of those salaries were over $300,000, which is simply ridiculous for the Sierra Club. Its “champions” declined by 60%, and dues-paying members were down by 27% from 2021. Even Jealous himself was accused of sexual harassment, and left the organization:

Is the Sierra Club moving away from Social Justice and back to its core mission? Don’t be ridiculous. Since Jealous left, the Club has shown no signs of reverting to its focus on strictly environmental issue:

In recent weeks, supporters who clicked on the group’s website for “current campaigns” were presented with 131 petitions, some out of date, like calls to support clean-energy funding that Mr. Trump has already gutted, or to support a voting-rights bill that died in 2023.

Patrick Murphy, the club’s current board president, who has helped lead the group since 2020, said in an interview that he could not name any decision he regretted.

“I have a hard time pinpointing how I believe we should have made different choices,” Mr. Murphy said. “And I’m happy with where we are today.”

It’s amazing that in the face of the Sierra Club falling apart, Murphy sticks to his guns. Seriously, they should adopt an institutional neutrality policy, which I think would make the group hew to what it’s good at. But they won’t, and they’ll learn their lesson the hard way.

Finally, here’s a bit from Nellie Bowles’s latest TGIF in The Free Press. The Sierra Club has an Equity Language Guide!

My favorite part: The Sierra Club put out the Sierra Club’s Equity Language Guide. It tells staffers to avoid words like lame. Fine. But it also tells them not to celebrate clean energy jobs unreservedly because fossil fuel jobs are more likely to be unionized, so maybe we’re pro-coal now. Maybe we’re sort of a coal lobbying shop, actually. The Sierra Club’s Equity Language Guide says not to use the words vibrant or hardworking because they have racial overtones (I’ve never heard that one. Seems kinda racist.). And then there’s this list of words to avoid, which, for an activist organization, is really hard. Especially when trigger itself is a trigger word, triggering them into a new dimension of triggerdom.

Imagine explaining this to the guy who lives in a cabin in Yellowstone and whose job is to check water levels in creeks.

Que sera, sera.

More unsubstantiated assertions of indigenous “science” in New Zealand

September 17, 2025 • 11:20 am

Predator Free NZ (“PFZ”, and “NZ” is New Zealand)  is apparently a science-oriented trust whose goal—a worthy one—is to keep non-native predators, such as the common brushtail possum, out of New Zealand, as they destroy native wildlife and have other bad effects on the ecosystem. (The possum, for example, destroys native New Zealand birds and carries bovine tuberculosis, and it’s a constant battle to destroy them).  But, like apparently all science in New Zealand, the organization is getting infiltrated with indigenous “ways of knowing” and “lived experience”, which in the case at hand appear, at they so often do, not to be based on real science at all. Real science means you use data to test a hypothesis, not simply adduce “lived experience”.

A Kiwi who apparently gets PFZ’s newsletter sent me a copy that started this way, already showing, by the profusion of Māori words, that there lies danger ahead. (Although there are some translations, they don’t mention that “Aotearoa” is the Māori term for “New Zealand”):

Kia ora NAME REDACTED,

It’s Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. For the 50th year, Aotearoa is coming together to celebrate te Reo Māori. Learn some kupu (words), set your tārore (traps) and keep protecting our manu (birds) and other taonga species.

Keep an eye on our instagram this week; we’re learning some sayings featuring native manu with Hēmi Kelly from Everyday Māori.

And this newsletter links to an article that touts trapping predators using the Māor lunar calendar, a method for which there’s no evidence at all. There are three links given at the end of this article, but they are not scientific references: they’re simply expositions of the Māori lunar calendar, with a few undocumented assertions about when to trap based on the moon. In other words, there’s no “science” as we conceive of “modern science.”

Click on the headline below to read the piece:

The article shows 30 phases of the Māori lunar calendar, and says that the author (Cam Speedy) knows that these phases are associated with hunting and fishing.  But experience is not science.  A quote from Mr. Speedy:

As a hunter, I have always recognised similar distinct patterns when night shooting. Sometimes, there is just nothing doing; other times, there are critters there, but they are very shy or just too fast. Sometimes, it’s simply all on – critters everywhere that hold in the light.

It is the same with fishing – fishing is more productive at ‘bite time’ – when the moon is directly above, especially when that happens at dawn (Tangaroa phase) or dusk (Tamatea phase).

Deer are also more active at ‘bite time’. With over 40 ‘deer roars’ under my belt, I now plan my roar trips to coincide with the end of the third lunar quarter (start of the Tangaroa phase) – when hind cycling and stag activity is much higher – and I make sure I’m looking over hot spots at ‘bite time’.

As I began applying maramataka [JAC: lunar calendar] principles to my predator trapping, my diary notes started to speak for themselves – for example, the serviced traps were fresh for the ‘Tangaroa’ moon phase (seven to 12 days after the full moon) and out-performed other traps.

. . .I have consistently found that traps serviced a day or two before the Tangaroa phase catch more pests.

If you also start to layer in weather influences (most critters stay home during cold, wet stormy periods to re-emerge once the weather fronts clear), take note of and follow wider seasonal patterns in animal behaviour (eg., mating, breeding and dispersal) and understand seasonal diet changes, you will transform your trapping success.

And indeed, Mr. Speedy might be right, but there are no data supporting his assertions. He calls this approach “holistic”—always a red flag in these type of articles.  As my correspondent emailed me:

As far as I can find with search engines, this is an article with no evidence base to it at all – even CHatGPT agress (below).  Given that many of the species we target (mustelids and, regrettably, hedgehogs) have not been in New Zealand for more than 150 years, and have been seen as an existential threat to wildlife for a far shorter time, it’s a bit rich to claim centuries of experiential learning!

And so my correspondent asked ChatGPT the question below, followed by the answer:

Does maramataka improve pest trapping?

The bot’s response (bolding in the last paragraph is mine):

Yes, maramataka, the Māori lunar calendar, can play a role in improving pest trapping, especially in agricultural or ecological contexts.

Maramataka is based on the phases of the moon and the positions of other celestial bodies, and it dictates the best times for planting, fishing, hunting, and other activities. Some people believe that certain phases of the moon, as well as specific days in the lunar cycle, can influence pest behavior. For instance:

  1. Feeding and Activity Cycles: Some pests may be more active or easier to trap during certain lunar phases. For example, it is believed that during the waxing moon (when the moon is growing in size), pests such as rats or insects might be more active, making them easier to catch or trap.
  2. Moon Phase and Tides: In some cases, particularly in coastal areas, the moon’s phases can affect the behavior of pests that are tied to tides or certain weather patterns. For example, high tide during a particular lunar phase might affect the movement of certain pests in coastal areas.
  3. Cultural Knowledge: In Māori culture, there’s a deep understanding of how animals and pests behave in relation to the moon’s phases. Traps or hunting methods are sometimes planned around the maramataka to align with times when pests are most vulnerable or more predictable.

In short, while there’s no definitive scientific proof for maramataka’s direct effect on pest trapping, the knowledge embedded in the lunar calendar could help guide better timing and more effective pest management practices based on natural patterns observed over centuries.

“It is believed,” “might”, “no definitive scientific proof”: all these are euphemisms for “this isn’t science but guesswork.” So not only has Kiwi science been infiltrated by the “sacralization of the oppressed,” but apparently so has ChatGPT, which hedges its answer into meaninglessness.

eBay sells prohibited items made from endangered species

August 3, 2025 • 8:53 am

I am reporting this here simply to show that eBay is selling cowboy boots made from sea turtle, which is a prohibited item made from endangered species skins. I keep reporting these items to eBay, and they keep saying they have decided they are okay. (Sellers often disguise sea turtle as “sea alligator” or “sea turtle print,” but I know sea turtle when I see it, having looked at several of these boots over the years (needless to say, I don’t own any).  Here are two of my reports to eBay which were rejected. I tweet them to both @eBay and @askeBay.

And their decision? SELLING SEA TURTLE IS OKAY!:

Here was their response to the boots above, which were guaranteed to be sea turtle and in fact labeled as such:

eBay used to accept my complaints and take these items off sale, but now they simply sell them. I guess that, for them, the lure of their cut is greater than their care for endangered species.  I do not know how to proceed further except to complain to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which I’ve done without results.  So I’m putting up this post just to complain that eBay is violating the law by selling prohibited items, and that those items are made from endangered species.

Here is the law regarding the sale of sea turtle leather, taken from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

Saving Ecudadorian land for wildlife (including my frog)

August 1, 2025 • 9:25 am

Reader Lou Jost, a naturalist and evolutionist who works at the Dracula Reserve of Ecuador’s EcoMinga Foundation, just sent me this Facebook post put out by an Ecuadorian province a few years ago. It features MY frog, Atelopus coynei (it’s got a Wikipedia page, too), so it’s a bit self-aggrandizing of me to post this, but in fact the species is critically endangered and I want it saved.  There are surely other undescribed and endangered species on the property (here’s a new tree frog discovered and described by the tem on the reserve.)

The story of the frog, how it got my name, and how it seemed to have gone extinct, but, Lazarus-like, was discovered by Andreas Kay decades later in Chinambi, Carchi, Ecuador, can be seen here.

Isn’t it a beaut? I suspect that its colors indicate that the frog is aposematic, i.e., toxic or dangerous to eat or touch. (The photo is by the late Andreas Kay courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Click photo below go to the FB post:

Lou adds this:

The province is proud to be the only place in the world where your frog survives. It is one of the fruits of our work trying to raise awareness for the rare species of our reserves.

Our  president, Noboa, is firing massive numbers of public employees from ministries he doesn’t like, and closing or re-organizing them so he can do what he wants. Last week he placed the ministry of the environment into the ministry of energy and mining, and this is expected to make it harder for us to fight our main threat in the Dracula Reserve, mining.

There is at least one population of A. coynei outside our reserves. It was the first one that Andreas Kay found. We tried to buy it but the property was apparently involved in drug trafficking and arms dealing, and this scared us too much to deal with it. Maybe someday we or others will be able to protect this population too. We also continue to search for more populations using eDNA. Meanwhile we are monitoring our own populations and they are doing well. Each individual can be identified by their back pattern, so we can keep track of many of them.

If you want to donate to the reserve to save not only the frog, but tons of rainforest wildlife, Lou gave me this information:

Thanks Jerry, the Orchid Conservation Alliance is a US charity that can accept donations for us, and give tax credit for the donations. Donors should specify that their support goes to EcoMinga’s Dracula Reserve (which protects your frog)

I hope some readers can cough up a few bucks for the Reserve!  Any amount will help.

photo by Juan Pablo Reyes and Jordy Salazar/EcoMinga