Editor’s note: “There is an ambitious plan to ‘protect’ Northern California’s Plumas National Forest from wildfires. Their plans were aimed at making communities safer and forest stands more ‘resilient’ to drought, insects, and other climate-driven disturbances. Community protection was the first priority, forest resilience the second. The urgency of imminent wildfire caused the Plumas Forest officials to pare down the environmental analyses required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Instead of conducting full environmental impact statements, with scrutiny of cumulative impacts and years-long public comment periods, officials used less rigorous environmental assessments. Work on at least 70,000 acres was fast-tracked under emergency declarations, which eliminate public objections. NEPA processes that would normally take as long as seven years took an average of about 20 months. Forest Service officials have held few public meetings and refused to provide basic details of the project with reporters.”
Why the forests needs dead trees. Dead trees are not “wood waste.” They provide vital energy and habitat for the whole forest ecosystem. Those who want to remove dead trees from the forests are depriving the forest of what it needs to live and thrive. Here’s how that works.
Are the tools to blame?
But a primary contention of active management skeptics like DellaSala is that applying the same tools that caused the problems in the first place is illogical.
“That’s circular reasoning,” DellaSala says. “You can’t ignore the consequences, the collateral damages to ecosystems, the amount of emissions put into the atmosphere from logging to contain natural disturbances.”
He and his colleagues question the broad application of these tools. They say that thinning, for example, is often used as an excuse to take out larger, more valuable trees for commercial logging, when these trees should be left behind because of their importance in biodiversity and carbon storage. Old-growth trees not only anchor ecosystems, but are often the most resistant to climate-driven shocks like fire, drought and beetle infestations.
“When we do active management, we choose which trees die, which ones remain, and we probably have it mostly wrong,” says Diana Six, a forest entomologist and professor at the University of Montana who collaborated on two recent articles with DellaSala. Removing resistant trees means that their genes won’t filter down to the next generation, she adds, potentially setting up even greater vulnerabilities later on.
“Natural fires are as essential as sun and rain in fire-adapted forests, but as humans encroach on wild spaces, fear, arrogance, and greed have shaped the way that people view these regenerative events and given rise to misinformation that threatens whole ecosystems as well as humanity’s chances of overcoming the climate crisis.
Scientist and activist Chad T. Hanson explains how natural alarm over wildfire has been marshaled to advance corporate and political agendas, notably those of the logging industry. He also shows that, in stark contrast to the fear-driven narrative around these events, contemporary research has demonstrated that forests in the United States, North America, and around the world have a significant deficit of fire. Forest fires, including the largest ones, can create extraordinarily important and rich wildlife habitats as long as they are not subjected to post-fire logging.
The federal government has recently rolled back protections on more than half of our national forests, opening the door to widespread logging. These industrial operations replace biodiverse forests with flammable tree plantations, often sprayed with glyphosate, which kills soil microbes and dries out the land. The result? Drier forests, more intense fires, and greater threats to people, homes, wildlife and the ecosystems that sustain us.”
Proforestation: The case for leaving trees alone. How do you save a rainforest?
Leave it alone. “Unless or until we can match that natural complexity, we’re always going to be a step behind what nature is doing.”
In 1994, for example, the Forest Service issued a study finding that the agency’s successful elimination of wildfires for more than a century was actually killing the sequoia groves and threatening their survival. The old “monarch” sequoias were slowly dying off, and new sequoia seedlings and saplings were almost completely absent, resulting in a “massive failure of sequoia reproduction.” The study found that, in order to maintain stable or increasing populations, giant sequoias depend specifically on high-intensity fire in patches, noting that the “giant sequoia is what is known as a ‘pioneer species,’ requiring canopy-destroying disturbance to complete its life cycle.”
“While some ponderosa pine stands historically burned at frequent intervals that reduced fuels, and today have higher density and are burning more intensely than in the past, this does not apply to most plant communities in the West. Indeed, it doesn’t even apply to many ponderosa pine stands.
Nearly all the fire-dependent plant communities in the West, including aspen, sagebrush, juniper, fir, spruce, hemlocks, cedars, and even many pines, have very long intervals between wildfires of decades to centuries. They are not “overly dense” and naturally accumulate biomass over time, thus burning as “intense, large wildfires.” Even if it were practical, fire suppression has had little influence on these plant communities.
In other words, most wildfires in the West are burning at absolutely normal conditions under their ecological regimes.”
The ultimate cause of our large fires is climate warming. Solutions proposed by agencies and politicians like thinning forests and even prescribed burning ultimately fails when there are extreme fire weather conditions. In some cases, this kind of “active forest management” can even enhance fire spread. For instance, one review article found that protected landscapes where logging is prohibited, like parks and wilderness, tend to have lower severity blazes compared to lands where logging and other “active management” is permitted.
The myth and reality of Indian burning landscape management
Logging doesn’t prevent wildfires, but Trump is trying it anyway. The Agriculture Department is opening more than 112 million acres of federal forests to logging in a misguided bid to prevent fires and boost timber production.
Forest management approaches promoted as “resilience,” “restoration,” “fuel reduction,” and “forest health” often degrade natural systems and reduce carbon stocks.
Over the past few years, many decisionmakers and forest managers have increasingly called for “active management” of natural forests — human intervention via mechanical thinning and other forms of commercial logging and road building — in response to increasing wildfires, beetle outbreaks, and intense storms. Many activists oppose these methods, saying they do more harm than good. For instance, actions that seek to suppress naturally occurring wildfires may make those fires more intense when they happen.
But active management activities have scaled up in response to economic drivers, misinformation on natural disturbance processes, and more climate-driven extreme events that trigger large and fast-moving fires.
“Active management” via mechanical thinning and overburning has type-converted this dry pine forest in the Santa Fe watershed to a weed-infested, overventilated savannah where remaining trees are exposed to blow down (Photo: D. DellaSala)We have published dozens of peer-reviewed articles and books on the impacts of active management on natural disturbance processes in forests. As active management begins to take on an even bigger role, conservation groups frequently call upon us to submit testimony, legal declarations, and science support. Meanwhile our key findings are often neglected by well-intended researchers who promote widespread active management but do not fully acknowledge the dramatic and often cumulative ecosystem consequences.
The active management activities we are most concerned about include:
Clearcut logging of live and dead patches of trees, especially over large areas.
Mechanical thinning of large trees via commercial removal.
Too-frequent burning of forest understories, especially of logging slash in dense piles that cook soil horizons and encourage weeds.
Post-disturbance logging that removes biological legacies (e.g., large live and dead trees) and damages natural processes and soils.
Construction of major road networks that alter forest-hydrological connections, some of which are supposed to act as firebreaks.
Active management impacts depend on the intensity of removals, frequency and duration of impacts, and scale (site, landscape, ecoregion, biome) that often combine with the natural disturbance background in exceeding disturbance thresholds that degrade ecological integrity. Such practices have been widely accepted on at least three continents — North America, Australia, and Europe — where our research has been exposing severe impacts.
What Are the Ecological Costs of Active Management?
As we’ve shown in our recentstudies, scaling up these types of activities comes with severe costs to natural ecosystems. The impacts of active management can even approach the effects of deforestation as they ramp up in application and intensity.
In the United States, this is especially apparent in relation to the recent executive orders that President Donald Trump announced under the rubric of a national timber emergency, cloaked in wildfire prevention. Even some progressive states, like California, have taken drastic measures to log vast areas with minimal environmental reviews in response to wildfires. Canada and European nations also have been driving up the active management rhetoric.
We used a series of case studies that demonstrated substantial negative and prolonged impacts of active management on a broad suite of ecological integrity indicators (including soil integrity, species richness, forest intactness, and carbon stocks) relative to more natural areas (reference sites). Active management, we found, is particularly consequential in high conservation value forests such as old-growth forests, intact watersheds, and complex early seral forests (“snag forests”) that follow severe natural disturbances but are rich in biodiversity. Such forests collectively play a pivotal role in maintaining ecological integrity while serving as natural climate solutions.
Natural disturbances are part of the necessary cycle of renewal and aging that has occurred in forests for millennia. There are well-documented patterns of forest rejuvenation following natural disturbances, even the severe ones, although we acknowledge that climate change is interacting with logging in a way that’s altering forest dynamics in places where forests may not come back on their own.
Natural disturbances create a pulse of biological legacies that sustain forest ecosystems for decades, including dead trees, surviving shrubs, fallen logs, and other structures that are associated with complex early seral forests and are not replicated by forest management. Many species, including some rare and threatened ones, are dependent on these legacies. The post-disturbance environment places the pioneering stage following a disturbance on a trajectory to old growth and then back again to the early stage when naturally re-disturbed.
We describe this process as “circular succession.” Active management can disrupt the natural flow of forest trajectories by breaking the cycle between rejuvenation and aging of forests such that forests never become old again (as in industrially logged landscapes).
Repeated thinning operations also remove key elements of stand structure such as large trees that are important habitats for a wide range of forest-dependent species. Often the large trees are relatively fire resistant and contain important adaptations such as epicormic branching near the crowns that allow the tree to survive and post-disturbance sprouting.
Our studies in Australian and western North American forests demonstrate that activities like commercial logging of large, old trees that are intended to reduce the severity of subsequent wildfires may have the opposite effect and increase fire severity and fire spread.
Similarly, there are cases where too-frequent prescribed burns on a site can alter the ecological condition of forest ecosystems in ways that, in the event of a subsequent wildfire, lead to significantly impaired forest regeneration and ecosystem type conversions to savannahs. This ostensibly is already underway in low productivity dry forests of the southern Rockies, which face a hotter, drier, and more frequent fire environment from natural and prescribed fires that together are ostensibly retarding forest renewal in places.
Active management may also increase the risk of high-severity wildfire by creating drier conditions that shift fuel types and fuel distributions, increasing fine fuels that dry quickly, while over-ventilating forests from the unravelling of intact canopies that otherwise buffer forests from high wind speeds associated with fast moving flames (as in the photo above).
Similarly, the construction of roads and firebreaks (chronic and cumulative disturbances) fragment landscapes and wildlife populations, paving the way for invasive species, and increasing the risk of human-caused ignitions (such as arson or accidental burns).
Impacts like these highlight the importance of understanding the overall disturbance burden in an area that accumulates from the combination of large tree logging, over-burning, livestock grazing, off-road vehicles, and road building, in addition the natural disturbances running in the background. Disturbance burden is a key issue that we highlighted in our recent research paper that is often neglected in active management circles.
An additional problem with active management is that tree removal or retention based on forestry prescriptions, particularly old growth or young trees establishing after disturbance, may reduce adaptation potential that would otherwise occur via natural selection that favors surviving trees better suited to the novel disturbance regimes resulting from climate change and insect outbreaks.
Simply put, foresters do not consider the genetic adaptations that are so crucial to forest persistence over time.
When Is Active Management OK to Use?
We acknowledge there will most certainly be cases where active management is a necessary part of ecological restoration practices that seek to improve ecological integrity and follow the internationally accepted precautionary principle (do no harm to native ecosystems).
Some examples include the control of invasive species that have colonized natural forests; removal of livestock and feral animals; replanting forests with native species where there has been natural regeneration failure or ecosystem type shifts underway; obliterating roads to increase connectivity and hydrological functions; upgrading culverts to handle storm surge; and reintroducing extirpated and keystone species (such as beavers).
However, other kinds of active management — like commercial thinning in high conservation value forests — may inadvertently accelerate degradation of these critical ecosystems with perverse impacts on biodiversity and carbon stocks. And while there are certainly cases where light-touch thinning (below-canopy, noncommercial) or prescribed fire alone can reduce high severity fire effects, the efficacy of tree removal in a changing climate is dependent on many factors, including extreme fire weather that is increasingly overwhelming treatment efficacy.
What’s Needed to Avoid Degradation?
Our precautionary approach to active management also underscores the significance of completing protection efforts that set aside large, representative protected areas (such as 30×30 and 50×50 campaigns) which, at a minimum, can serve as reference areas to gauge the efficacy and impacts of active management.
As we state in our research, this can be done using standardized metrics to assess the degree of degradation in comparison to reference sites along a continuum of relative loss. However, it must be understood that a complete assessment of active management on high conservation value forests, particularly attempts to recreate the later stages of succession, may not become realized for decades, if not centuries. Importantly, in some areas, reference conditions free of industrial activities and fire suppression may no longer exist and thus semi-natural areas may have to suffice as the reference for restoration.
We suggest that decisionmakers and managers invest in research that expands the understanding of natural disturbance regimes in forests, the effects of active management on ecological integrity (ecological restoration vs degradation), and that supports adaptive management strategies that are consistent with ecological integrity and conservation biology principles.
The bottom line: Active management needs a proper cost-benefit analysis to minimize trade-offs, lest the treatments may be much worse than the problems they seek to resolve. Our research daylights the expanding active management footprint while creating science support for decision-makers to choose more prudently on behalf of maintaining or restoring integrity and for activists to push back when policy is inconsistent with conservation science principles.
Although a superpower, the U.S. is under constant invasion — we’re not talking humans here but meek-looking plants and animals that have caused ecological havoc. Take, for instance, the tiny, nocturnal coqui frogs (Eleutherodactylus coqui) in Hawai‘i that arrived from Puerto Rico in the 1980s and are now terrorizing the islanders with their deafening “ko-kee” calls that can be as loud as a motorcycle engine. With numbers in Hawai‘i now surpassing those in Puerto Rico, the frogs have scrubbed the forest floor and treetops of vital pollinating insects, toppled property prices in prime real estate markets, and are hurting tourism.
“Prevention is the most effective and cost-efficient way of preventing those impacts that we know that nonnative species can have,” said Wesley Daniel from the U.S. Geological Survey.
A starting point is figuring out which of the thousands of species imported into the country are most likely to become invasive. So that’s what Daniel and his colleagues did. The findings from their recently published study identified 32 legally traded nonnative vertebrate species in the U.S. that have the highest risk of becoming invasive species, harming not just the environment but also human health.
European starlings, introduced to the U.S. sometime towards the end of the 19th century, have today established themselves across much of North America, displacing many native bird species. Images by (left) PierreSelim via Wikimedia Commons and (right) Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
“We’ve identified a subset of species that we think are potentially problematic if they’re released into the wild, and that gives us an opportunity to think critically about legal importation of those species,” Daniel told Mongabay. “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is taking our list and considering those species for further review.”
The researchers sifted through an initial list of nearly 10,000 species by looking at data from the Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS), a database maintained by USFWS that records all wildlife imported into the U.S. and those in the pet trade. They narrowed their list down to 840 species based on how similar the climate is in their native range to that of the U.S. and its territories.
Then, multiple experts, based on what they knew about the species, scored each species on how well it can establish itself, how well it can spread, and its potential impacts. In the end, 32 species — 22 reptiles and nine fish — stood out as “high risk” in the ranked list of vertebrates that can become invasives. All these species are currently legal to trade in the U.S.
The reptiles include venomous snakes such as the puff adder (Bitis arietans), zebra spitting cobra (Naja nigricincta) and forest cobra (N. melanoleuca) — all native to Africa — responsible for snakebite deaths and injuries in their native range. Others include four species of tree-dwelling snakes and three constricting snakes, which share similar ecological traits with known invasives such as the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) and Burmese python, respectively. Predatory monitor lizards (Varanus spp.) also featured on the list.
“We don’t need more monitor lizards; there’s plenty down here that already escaped captivity,” Daniel said, referring to the spread of the Argentine black-and-white tegus in Florida. These lizards, originally sold as pets, escaped captivity and became established in Florida’s Everglades in the 2000s, causing widespread damage, including eating alligator eggs, threatened gopher tortoises and even agricultural crops. The state has since spent millions to remove them, and the lizards are now considered a prohibited species to own in Florida and Georgia.
The nine fish species identified as high risk for becoming invasive are those that are either traded as pets or in aquaculture. Many are already considered invasive species elsewhere, such as the common bream (Abramis brama), from Europe, and ornamental fish like the blood-red jewel cichlid (Hemichromis lifalili), native to the Congo Basin.
(Left) Argentine black and white tegus, were first brought into the U.S. for the pet trade, but a few escaped captivity and became established in Florida’s Everglades causing widespread ecological damage, including eating American alligator eggs and the threatened gopher tortoises. (Right) The blood-red jewel cichlid is a common aquarium fish. the study identifies it as a ‘high-risk’ species that could become invasive in the U.S. Images by (left) Gustavo Fernando Durán via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) and (right) Hectonichus via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Although no birds, mammals or amphibians were considered high risk, the study identified 54 bird, 11 mammal and one amphibian species as medium risk.
“Wildlife trade is a massive and underestimated threat to many species, but also poses a threat to species in the country it is imported to,” wildlife trade researcher Alice Hughes from the University of Hong Kong, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay by email. She added that in addition to the species themselves being a threat, they can bring in pests and pathogens that affect native species.
“This study explores the magnitude of the potential threat [and] reinforces what we know about the risks of importing wildlife,” Hughes said.
The list of high-risk species provides a starting point for agencies such as USFWS to dive deeper into the specific risks they pose, and restrict or regulate their import by adding them to injurious wildlife listings. Daniel said USFWS is already using the list the study’s authors prepared to assess each of the high-, medium- and low-risk species individually. The state of Arkansas is also studying the list of high-risk fish to develop new regulations.
“We hope other tribes and territories and states can also get on and look within their jurisdiction where there could be risky species, and start making some of those own decisions about policy,” Daniel said.
Spoorthy is a Mongabay staff writer based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, who covers wildlife issues and an array of other topics. Previously as an independent journalist covering science, environment, and more, she reported feature stories, personal essays, and news articles for outlets ranging from Hakai to Audubon, BioScience, Scientific American, Nature, Science, Deccan Herald, The Open Notebook, The Print and others.
Banner image: Puff Adder, a venomous snake from Africa, topped the list of vertebrates with the highest risk of being invasive in the U.S. Image by Christiaan Viljoen via iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0).
Editor’s note: “President Donald Trump has been pushing the U.S. to barrel ahead on deep-sea mining. The country plans to permit mining in international waters under an obscure U.S. law from 1980 called the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act(DSHMRA), which predates the Law of the Sea treaty. Congress wrote the law to serve as an ‘interim legal regime’ — a temporary way to grant mining licenses until the United Nations-affiliated regime took shape.
A main point of contention is that, according to the U.N. treaty and the DSHMRA, the international seabed is designated the ‘common heritage of mankind.’ In other words, the nodules legally belong to all people living on Earth today as well as future generations. The treaty declares that any profits from exploiting that heritage be distributed across nations, not just reaped by one country, in a benefits-sharing agreement that treaty signatories are still hashing out
The French diplomat slammed the Trump administration’s executive order, issued on April 24, that directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) to fast-track seabed exploration and commercial mining permits in both U.S. waters and ocean areas beyond America’s jurisdiction — commonly called the high seas..”
Invoking national security to justify private sector economic development is a tired cliché. And yet, in a troubling twist, a Canadian company is invoking U.S. national security to obtain an exclusive license from the U.S. government for a deep-sea mining venture for critical minerals in international waters—and it appears to be working.
Companies leading the push to launch deep-sea mining under a U.S. license are foreign-incorporated entities with no operational footprint—and no meaningful supply chain commitments to it. The timeline for commercial production remains uncertain and subject to indefinite delays due to technical, financial, and regulatory hurdles.
Far from offering strategic value, this initiative is best understood as a speculative venture propped up by shifting political winds. Deep-sea mining is not the answer to a mineral security crisis—it’s a solution to a problem that does not exist.
At the very least, ask for a 60 day extension to the public comment period because of the crucial nature of the proposal. But also express that you strongly oppose consolidating the exploration license and commercial recovery permit process.
Mining in international waters without global consent carries enormous reputational, legal, and financial risks. It could trigger investor pullout, international condemnation, and logistical nightmares. We can make sure it’s simply not worth the cost.
Despite everything, I left Jamaica feeling positive. Progress might be slow, yet things are moving in the right direction. But we can’t afford complacency. This meeting made clear just how fragile international governance really is. Loopholes and silence are letting corporate interests push the system to its limits.
At the same time, I saw how much influence we still have. Scientists, youth, Indigenous leaders, and civil society are shifting the conversation. The pressure we’re building is working — we have to keep going.
Join us in protecting what should never be plundered in the first place:
“We’re too late to know what today’s ocean without oil and gas drilling, whaling and overfishing would look like. We can stop this next great threat before it starts, and save one of the planet’s final frontiers — and the amazing life that lives there. Tell the Interior Department: Don’t mine the deep sea.” https://environmentamerica.org/center/articles/is-the-u-s-going-to-start-deep-sea-mining/
Donald Trump has brought the world together against the U.S. with this dangerous unilateral action.
The deep sea, the planet’s most expansive and least understood ecosystem, remains largely unexplored. Yet while the deep sea may seem a dark and distant space, events underwater directly impact our lives, from essential services like climate regulation to fisheries and the marine food web. While scientific understanding of this realm is nascent, a new industry is rapidly emerging driven by the demand for rare metals essential for batteries, microchips and AI: deep-sea mining.
In the past three years, more than 38 nations have voiced support for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, a rapid pace by the standards of multilateral lawmaking, and the equivalent of one new country signing on per month. This progress marks a major shift from just a few years ago, when states were either supportive of mining, reluctant to take a position, or were simply uninformed.
The triggering of a treaty provision known as the “two-year rule” by the nation of Nauru in 2021, intended to accelerate deep-sea mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction, brought increased attention and scrutiny to the activity. Nevertheless, some private actors are pushing for the granting of applications for commercial deep-sea mining of minerals like copper, nickel and cobalt, despite significant concerns from global leaders, the scientific community and the public at large.
This divergence between scientific understanding and prevailing narratives came into sharp focus at the recent annual meeting of the International Seabed Authority (ISA). There, nations gathered to discuss matters profoundly consequential for the future of the deep ocean. However, there also seemed to be a broad understanding that a strong regulatory framework based on science, equity and precaution must be in place before an informed decision can be taken, and that no mining activities should commence in the meantime.
Moving forward, it’s imperative that we actively counter misinformation, significantly invest in scientific research, and, in the interim, take concrete measures to ensure that deep-sea mining activities do not commence in the absence of clear science, robust regulations, sufficient safeguards, and equity.
Here are the three main myths about deep-sea mining:
‘Deep-sea mining will provide an economic boom and promote global peace and security’
The primary justification for exploiting the seabed rests on a dubious economic premise: that mining’s financial gains will somehow outweigh its environmental costs. Yet, the economic case for deep-sea mining is tenuous at best, and expert indications suggest the burdens will far outstrip any tangible benefits. Deep-sea mining is an inherently capital-intensive endeavor, demanding massive amounts of upfront investment to take part in a high-risk, burgeoning industry. Developing and deploying specialized machinery capable of operating thousands of meters below the surface, under immense pressure and in corrosive conditions, presents unprecedented engineering challenges. The costs associated with exploration, environmental impact assessments, research and development, and then the actual extraction, processing and transport of minerals from such remote and hostile environments are projected to be staggering.
Some argue that deep-sea mining could bolster supply chain security for critical sectors such as defense, transportation, construction and energy. Given the vital importance of these industries to national security, the seabed’s mineral resources become intrinsically linked to the economic futures of nations like the U.S., which view them as a means to diversify mineral access: the majority of such mineral extraction occurs in regions like Africa, South America, Indonesia and Australia, and the supply chains for many of these critical minerals are currently dominated by geopolitical rivals like China, further intensifying the scramble to mine the deep.
However, it is naïve to think that deep-sea mining would address or alleviate global geopolitical tensions. If anything, the pursuit of unilateral deep-sea mining seems more likely to exacerbate fraught international relations, with the consequences spilling over to the global legal order more broadly. Countries should instead consider investing in a more circular economy, responsible sourcing and refining, encouraging innovation to be less metal-dependent, and developing multilateral frameworks to promote responsible and equitable international cooperation for critical metals and minerals.
A glass octopus, a nearly transparent deep sea species whose only visible features are its optic nerve, eyeballs and digestive tract. Image by Schmidt Ocean Institute (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
‘Deep-sea mining will reduce or alleviate the environmental impact of terrestrial mining’
Another justification is that we will be able to move away from many of the environmental and social ills of terrestrial mining. While it is true that terrestrial mining has caused massive deforestation and led to severe human rights abuses in areas like the Democratic Republic of Congo, the idea that shifting mining activity to the sea will ease the pressure on land-based operations is misguided.
As deep-sea competitors arise to challenge the establishment of terrestrial mining, the increased competition will only serve to expand the global footprint of resource extraction and encourage operators to cut corners to stay competitive. When mining activity accelerates, the environmental and social harms produced are likely to follow, leading to an increasingly untenable situation where biodiversity is wiped out and the planet’s capacity to provide ecosystem services depleted. In this scenario, it is local communities and Indigenous groups in the Global South who will suffer most as they become dispossessed of the resources needed for survival, like forests for fuel and fish for food.
While the recovery and restoration of former terrestrial mining sites is possible, with governments increasingly mandating multiyear rejuvenation and rehabilitation projects, the situation in the deep sea is vastly different. Deep-sea recovery is limited and extremely slow on human timescales. Moreover, current scientific knowledge indicates that any restoration effort there would be difficult and cost-prohibitive, if not impossible.
Moreover, the environmental footprint of deep-sea mining activities, particularly for polymetallic nodule extraction — where a single mining project will involve extraction over a very large spatial area spanning thousands of square kilometers — will far exceed the footprint of terrestrial mining, which usually involves a very small and targeted area. If deep-sea mining were to alleviate or replace terrestrial mining, there would need to be multiple of such extraction projects — which would be disastrous for the marine environment and the planet.
The ISA is currently debating how to factor environmental externalities into contractor payments, as harm to these common heritage resources shouldn’t burden society. The requirement to compensate developing countries with large terrestrial mining industries for lost earnings, funded by ISA revenues, suggests the entire exercise could result in a net negative benefit.
A deposit of polymetallic nodules in the Pacific Ocean. Image by Philweb / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
‘Deep-sea mining is necessary for the energy transition’
The need for metals to power the energy transition is largely overstated by deep-sea mining advocates. Their arguments often cite expanding demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy, both cornerstones of the energy transition that currently require large supplies of rare-earth metals and minerals to craft the infrastructure needed to generate and store renewable power. For these advocates, deep-sea mining is presented as the sole means to access adequate supplies of crucial transition minerals.
However, these arguments are built on the false premise that demand for transition metals will continuously rise alongside our demand for energy. Advances in battery chemistry are already helping to reduce demand for cobalt, and circular solutions like recycling can further reduce our reliance on virgin metals obtained through mining, thereby challenging narratives that we are facing an unavoidable mineral deficit unless we turn to the deep seabed.
So, given the high costs and severe environmental risks, why then pursue deep-sea mining? This activity threatens unique deep-sea ecosystems and could irrevocably alter ocean health, impacting life on land. Scientists warn of irreversible damage from sediment plumes, habitat destruction and noise pollution to ecosystems formed over millions of years. Without sufficient baseline data, predicting or mitigating these risks is impossible, mandating caution under the precautionary principle.
Finally, the numbers also do not add up, which means financing deep-sea mining is akin to investing in a financial scam. If we are serious about tackling the unprecedented and existential threats that we are now facing, destructive activities like deep-sea mining surely cannot form part of the equation. It is therefore heartening to see many global leaders and governments voicing their concerns and calling for a pause or moratorium on deep-sea mining.
Pradeep Singh is an ocean governance expert at the Oceano Azul Foundation and holds degrees from the University of Malaya, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard Law School.
Banner Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2019 Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration. Public Domain
Editor’s note: The folly of controlling the rivers. “What will those who come after us think of us? Will they envy us that we saw butterflies and mockingbirds, penguins and little brown bats?” – Derrick Jensen Or will they despise us because we built dams which kill butterflies and mockingbirds, penguins and little brown bats?
China’s already vast infrastructure programme has entered a new phase as building work starts on the Motuo hydropower project.
The dam will consist of five cascade hydropower stations arranged from upstream to downstream and, once completed, will be the world’s largest source of hydroelectric power. It will be four times larger than China’s previous signature hydropower project, the Three Gorges Dam, which spans the Yangtse river in central China.
The Chinese premier, Li Qiang, has described the proposed mega dam as the “project of the century”. In several ways, Li’s description is apt. The vast scale of the project is a reflection of China’s geopolitical status and ambitions.
Possibly the most controversial aspect of the dam is its location. The site is on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo river on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau. This is connected to the Brahmaputra river which flows into the Indian border state of Arunachal Pradesh as well as Bangladesh. It is an important source of water for Bangladesh and India.
Both nations have voiced concerns over the dam, particularly since it can potentially affect their water supplies. The tension with India over the dam is compounded by the fact that Arunachal Pradesh has been a focal point of Sino-Indian tensions. China claims the region, which it refers to as Zangnan, saying it is part of what it calls South Tibet.
At the same time, the dam presents Beijing with a potentially formidable geopolitical tool in its dealings with the Indian government. The location of the dam means that it is possible for Beijing to restrict India’s water supply.
This potential to control downstream water supply to another country has been demonstrated by the effects that earlier dam projects in the region have had on the nations of the Mekong river delta in 2019. As a result, this gives Beijing a significant degree of leverage over its neighbours.
One country restricting water supply to put pressure on another is by no means unprecedented. In fact in April 2025, following a terror attack by Pakistan-based The Resistance Front in Kashmir, which killed 26 people (mainly tourists), India suspended the Indus waters treaty, restricting water supplies to Pakistani farmers in the region. So the potential for China’s dam to disrupt water flows will further compound the already tense geopolitics of southern Asia.
Background layer attributed to DEMIS Mapserver, map created by Shannon1, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Concrete titans
The Motuo mega dam is an advertisement of China’s prowess when it comes to large-scale infrastructure projects. China’s expertise with massive infrastructure projects is a big part of modern Chinese diplomacy through its massive belt and road initiative.
This involves joint ventures with many developing nations to build large-scale infrastructure, such as ports, rail systems and the like. It has caused much consternation in Washington and Brussels, which view these initiatives as a wider effort to build Chinese influence at their expense.
The completion of the dam will will bring Beijing significant symbolic capital as a demonstration of China’s power and prosperity – an integral feature of the image of China that Beijing is very keen to promote. It can also be seen as a manifestation of both China’s aspiration and its longstanding fears.
Harnessing the rivers
The Motuo hydropower project also represents the latest chapter of China’s long battle for control of its rivers, a key story in the development of Chinese civilisation.
France 24 report on the construction of the mega dam project.
Such struggles have been embodied in Chinese mythology in the form of the Gun-Yu myth. This tells the story of the way floods displaced the population of ancient China, probably based on an actual flooding at Jishi Gorge on the Yellow River in what is now Qinghai province in 1920BC.
This has led to the common motif of rivers needing human control to abate natural disaster, a theme present in much classical Chinese culture and poetry.
The pursuit of controlling China’s rivers has also been one of the primary influences on the formation of the Chinese state, as characterised by the concept of zhishui 治水 (controlling the rivers). Efforts to control the Yangtze have shaped the centralised system of governance that has characterised China throughout its history. In this sense, the Motuo hydropower project represents the latest chapter in China’s quest to harness the power of its rivers.
Such a quest remains imperative for China and its importance has been further underlined by the challenges of climate change, which has seen natural resources such as water becoming increasingly limited. The Ganges river has already been identified as one of the world’s water scarcity hotspots.
As well as sustaining China’s population, the hydropower provided by the dam is another part of China’s wider push towards self-sufficiency. It’s estimated that the dam could generate 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year – about the same about produced by the whole UK. While this will meet the needs of the local population, it also further entrenches China’s ability to produce cheap electricity – something that has enabled China to become and remain a manufacturing superpower.
Construction has only just begun, but Motuo hydropower project has already become a microcosm of China’s wider push towards development. It’s also a gamechanger in the geopolitics of Asia, giving China the potential to exert greater control in shaping the region’s water supplies. This in turn will give it greater power to shape the geopolitics of the region.
At the same time, it is also the latest chapter of China’s longstanding quest to harness its waterways, which now has regional implications beyond anything China’s previous dynasties could imagine.
The Deep Green Resistance Annual Conference will make its East Coast debut this year in Philadelphia. This is an opportunity to build our movement with activists who may have been unable to attend our previous conferences on the West Coast. Your conference ticket includes all meals, overnight accommodations (beds are limited, so some people may be on couches or floors), great workshops and discussions, and a chance to talk to Derrick Jensen in an intimate setting.
Friday will include dinner and some fun ice-breaker activities. Saturday programming will begin in the morning with a presentation by Lierre Keith and continue through Sunday with talks and workshops by active DGR members, supporters, and board members. Presentations will be live-streamed when possible.
The weekend’s focus will be on:
Deeper strategic thinking and analysis about the health and progress of our movement.
Next steps for DGR’s organizing and educational efforts.
Envisioning yourself as an active participant in DGR’s essential work.
We’ll also have nightly campfires with songs, stories, and snacks.
We cannot extend our stay in the main space past Monday morning August 4th, but if you want to stay an additional day, you can be accommodated in a camping area nearby. Bring your camping gear if that sounds fun!
Tickets are on a sliding scale. Our real costs per participant will be about $200/person. No one is turned away for lack of funds. Please consider paying a bit more if you are in an upper-income bracket, and a bit less if you are in a lower income bracket.
In this society, we tend to forget that lower income people have much less disposable income for extras of any kind than do higher income people. So what ends up happening is that lower income people actually end up subsidizing the participation of higher income people at events where everyone pays the same price to attend.
Suggested amounts are listed by income, but you are the best judge of what you can afford. Please pay what you can, and if you can’t pay, you are very much still welcome to attend.
If you want to support this event, please consider making a Donation in either your name or a loved one’s honor. We have people who want to attend but need help.
Speaking at a media briefing to raise awareness on the importance of accountability when such maritime disasters occur, Anita Perera, Campaigner for Greenpeace South Asia, said that when a team visited Mannar on June 19, they noticed a significant number of plastic pellets even after one round of cleanup operations. “The Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) is responsible for cleaning up the oil spill, but so far, they haven’t communicated their response to expedite the cleaning of nurdles or the oil spill. This isn’t an isolated incident but a result of deeper structural failures in how we are governing our oceans and environmental safety. These are critical ecosystems, and there are people(and all of the other species) whose daily livelihoods would be affected as a result of such disasters. We need to hold these companies accountable for such incidents,” she underscored.
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka is once again facing a significant marine environmental crisis, as tiny plastic pellets, commonly known as nurdles, have begun washing ashore along the island’s northern coastline. This time, the pollution is linked to the sinking of the Liberia-flagged container ship MSC ELSA 3 off of Kerala, India. The unfolding incident has triggered fears of a repeat of the X-Press Pearl disaster in 2021, the worst maritime disaster to have occurred in Sri Lanka, significantly impacting marine ecosystems and coastal communities.
According to the Indian Coast Guard, the MSC ELSA 3, carrying 640 containers including hazardous cargo, sank on May 25, roughly 38 nautical miles off the Kerala coast. The cause was reportedly a failure of its ballast system. Indian authorities confirmed the vessel was loaded with an estimated 85 metric tons of diesel and 367 metric tons of furnace oil, in addition to at least 13 containers of dangerous substances such as calcium carbide. All 24 crew members were safely rescued by Indian Coast Guard and Navy teams.
While Indian authorities were able to initially contain an oil spill, the environmental fallout soon escalated. Plastic nurdles released from sunken containers began appearing on beaches in southern India, and by June 11, ocean currents driven by strong gusts of southwest monsoon winds carried them toward Sri Lanka’s northern shores, raising serious concerns among marine biologists and local communities.
Plastic nurdles washed ashore on Sri Lanka’s northern coast. Image courtesy of the Marine Environmental Protection Agency (MEPA).
Fresh environmental fallout
“We’ve begun cleaning efforts and are evaluating coordinated response actions,” said Padma Abeykoon, additional secretary at the Ministry of Environment. With strong monsoon winds forecast for the coming days, she noted that ocean currents may bring even more pollutants ashore.
According to Abeykoon, Indian authorities had alerted Sri Lanka about the possibility of debris from the sunken vessel drifting toward its shores, depending on ocean current patterns. The plastic pellets first arrived on the northern islands and reached the Mannar coast within a day, continuously washing up along Sri Lanka’s southern-facing beaches.
One of the earliest reports from Sri Lanka came from Lahiru Walpita, a birdwatcher in Mannar, who observed the nurdles during his routine early morning seabird monitoring. “On June 12, I noticed strange white pebbles scattered across the Mannar beach. A closer look revealed they were plastic nurdles, something I sadly recognize from the X-Press Pearl spill,” Walpita said.
Walpita initially assumed the rough seas had opened up a remnant of X-Press Pearl, but as he discovered 20 25-kilogram (55-pound) bags of nurdles strewn across a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) stretch of beach in Mannar, he realized something was wrong. Out of these, only two bags were damaged, and others were in perfect shape, Walpita told Mongabay.
Walpita also observed crows and an egret investigating the pellets but hadn’t consumed them. “However, seabirds, like little terns and bridled terns, feed off the ocean surface while in flight and I fear they could mistake these pellets for food as they have little time to observe,” he warned. The breeding season for these species, especially on tiny islands nearby in Adam’s Bridge Marine National Park, runs from May to September, and Walpita fears the nurdle invasion could disrupt their reproductive cycles.
The process of cleaning nurdles along Sri Lanka’s northern coastal area commenced soon after the marine disaster but the strong monsoonal winds are expected to push more nurdles toward the Indian Ocean island’s beaches. Image courtesy of the Marine Environment Protection Agency (MEPA).
Temporary fishing ban
Meanwhile, Indian authorities imposed a temporary fishing ban within 20 nautical miles of the MSC ELSA 3 wreck to mitigate risks from hazardous cargo. One of the most concerning chemicals on board was calcium carbide, which reacts violently with water to release acetylene — a highly flammable and potentially explosive gas — and produces caustic substances harmful to marine life.
Adding to the urgency, Indian authorities are battling another maritime emergency just two weeks after the ELSA 3 incident. On June 7, the Singapore-flagged container ship MV Wan Hai 503 caught fire following multiple explosions, approximately 88 nautical miles off the coast of Kerala. The vessel, carrying more than 2,128 metric tons of fuel and numerous containers with hazardous materials, poses a potentially greater environmental risk than ELSA 3. As of June 18, Indian Coast Guard reports indicated that the fire was under control. The drifting vessel has since been secured and successfully towed away.
The Singapore-flagged MV Wan Hai 503, the second ship that caught fire off the south Indian coast of Kerala, occurred just 15 days after the sinking of the MSC ELSA 3. Image courtesy of the Indian Coast Guard via X.
Nurdle spill
The nurdles are highly persistent in the marine environment, as they can absorb toxic chemicals and enter the food chain, posing a risk to marine life and potentially humans as research on the aftermath of X-Press Pearl disaster proves.
The parallels of these disasters with the X-Press Pearl disaster are striking. The 2021 incident released billions of nurdles into the Indian Ocean, contaminating beaches for months, killing marine organisms and disrupting fishing livelihoods. One silver lining is that a lot of research was conducted following the X-Press Pearl disaster, and this can be informative in tackling the ongoing episode of the nurdle pollution, Gunasekara said.
Even today, Sri Lanka is fighting for adequate compensation, with legal proceedings dragging on in international courts. The echoes of that catastrophe now serve as a grim warning: Unless stronger regional protocols and maritime safety measures are enforced, the region could be doomed to repeat history.
Malaka Rodrigo is a naturalist with an IT background that took environmental journalism in 2007 to follow his belief ‘conservation through awareness’. He won many awards for his work and writes extensively on biodiversity, wildlife, oceans, water, climate change and environmental issues.
Banner image: The Liberia-flagged vessel MSC ELSA 3, carrying 640 containers including 13 with hazardous cargo, together with almost 85 metric tons of diesel and 367 metric tons of furnace oil sank on 25 May, off of Kerala in southern India. Image courtesy of the Indian Coast Guard.
