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A thunderstorm in the sky in Melbourne, Australia. Image by Jeren Tran/Getty Image
The Coming Pollen Storms
noēma magazine, august 21 2024
What does the climate crisis feel like in your body? It’s easier to imagine it in the form of large-scale, dramatic events: settlements swept away in floods, towns torched in wildfires. But for many of us it will make landfall in a multitude of more intimate ways.
Image by Bat Conservation International
Subterranean stronghold
biographic, april 17 2024
The first time he stared down the humid mouth of Nakanacagi Cave, on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu, Sanaila Tawake’s hands shook. He’d heard many stories about this place, its entrance half-hidden between mossy limestone boulders in a tract of old-growth dry forest on the island’s mountainous spine. That day, at twelve years old, he’d finally convinced an uncle to take him inside.
Inage by Merewalesi Yee
managed retreat? Please, not yet
hakai magazine, july 26 2023
Salt water is already seeping through gardens, under homes, and among the headstones on Serua Island, Fiji. As climate change rolls on, and as the sea level continues to rise, this low-lying island off the southern coast of Viti Levu, one of the country’s two largest islands, seems like an obvious candidate for relocation efforts—and its inhabitants the latest face of climate refugees. Fiji’s national government has offered its support to help the island’s 100 or so inhabitants move. Yet almost all are choosing to stay put.
Image by Rob Rickman
“the forest is so much more than money”: Q+A with fijian carbon project ranger jerry lotawa
mongabay, 12 september 2023
“I think that if we cut down the forest it would be for money, but if we leave the forest be it’s for the sake of the forest rather than money, because our life is in the forest. At the moment, the money [from the carbon project] comes every few months, but we get things from the forest every day: fresh air, fresh water, pork, bees, prawns … My grandfather was thinking about the forest not just for him, but for all our ancestors and for future generations, and that’s when he decided that we would do carbon trading instead of allowing logging.”
Image by NZ Department of Conservation
the race to save the pekapeka-tou-poto, New Zealand’s unique bat
atlas Obscura, 14 september, 2023
“I remember getting a really big feeling of excitement when we first brought the traps down,” says Macdonald. “You could hear [the bats] running around, and it sounded like dripping water—it’s a really strange sound. And when you get the net down to the ground and you have a look at them, they pile up in the corners together, and they’re all chirping and yelling at each other. It’s actually madness.”
Image by Reutes/Alamy Stock Photo
Preparing for a Storm the Ni-Vanuatu Way
HAKAI MAGAZINE, 27 MARCH 2023
Mango flowers and hornets’ nests might seem strange bedfellows for meteorological satellites, but on Futuna Island, a craggy volcano at the eastern edge of the archipelago of Vanuatu, they play a critical role in helping local people predict extreme weather. “When the mango tree flowers early—before October—we know there will probably be a cyclone,” says Manuel Nawairea, a resilience officer for the humanitarian agency CARE International who was born on Futuna but now works on neighboring Tanna Island. “We also look at where the hornet builds its nest. Most of the time, it’s up in the trees, but when there’s a cyclone coming, it will build at ground level.”
Monkeyfaced bat [Pteropus rayneri], Bougainville. Image by Steve Richards
Wildlife Wins When Western Science and Traditional Knowledge Work Together
hakai magazine, 9 March 2023
When conservation scientist Junior Novera was growing up in Mapisi Village, on a bend of the Sinamut River in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, he’d never heard the term conservation. There were sacred sites, treasured species, and complex rules governing people’s interactions with nature. But it wasn’t until he left the island for university and attended an intensive course with the Wildlife Conservation Society that the concept—as defined by Western science—became clear.
A whale and her calf do a double breach off the coast of Niue. Image courtesy of Oma Tafua.
SMALL ISLAND, BIG OCEAN: NIUE MAKES ITS ENTIRE EEZ A MARINE PARK
MONGABAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2022
When Niueans are babies, their parents traditionally take them down to the seashore and throw them in the water so they learn to swim, Mona Ainu’u told Mongabay. That’s more important in Niue than most places. The country’s 260-square-kilometer (100-square-mile) land area is a single chunk of coral jutting out of the South Pacific Ocean; its closest neighbor, Tonga, is some 600 kilometers (325 nautical miles) away. With so little solid ground, the ocean also needs to be home.
Taramea hunters, Rarotonga. Image by Kōrero O Te ‘Orau
young māori divers hunt invasive crown-of-thorns starfish to save coral reefs
mongabay, 15 july 2022
Every Saturday, a group of Cook Islands Māori youth slide into scuba gear, grab sticks from the ironwood trees (Casuarina equisetifolia) growing along Rarotonga’s beachfront, and head to the reef surrounding the island. Their mission: To dive for invasive taramea (crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci).
Image by David Fleetham
how pacific islanders fared under lockdown
hakai magazine, 23 march 2022
In Solodamu, a village on the craggy northern coastline of Fiji’s densely forested, sparsely populated Kadavu Island, Suliasi Lau looks back at the COVID-19 lockdown of early 2020 with a note of nostalgia. “It was a beautiful time,” he says. “We couldn’t go to the shops because of the pandemic, but we could go fishing for free. We had a huge supply of greens like taro leaves, bele, and lettuces, and there were plenty of root crops—taro, yams, and cassava.”
Image of Tarawa Atoll, Kiribati by European Space Agency
WHEN HOME IS STOLEN: STORIES FROM THE FRONTLINES OF CLIMATE MIGRATION
LANDSCAPE NEWS, 1 NOVEMBER 2021
“When your land starts to erode, lots of things erode with it: the traditions, the stories, the histories, the burial grounds of your loved ones, the spiritual connection,” says Tiatia-Seath. “And the livelihood, too: as one would pass on a home to their children, much of that land has been passed through the generations, and there’s mana [prestige, status, spiritual power] around it.”
Image by Monica Evans
In New zealand’s deep south, Māori landowners make money by keeping their forest intact
Climate Home News, 16 October 2020
“We need intergenerational ability to make change,” said Gibbs. “So my grandkids need to be able to decide what’s best for that whenua [land] – especially because from an Indigenous worldview, it’s not ours! We’re only looking after it for the next generation. And if we train our kids right, then they’re making good decisions and looking after it for the next generation, too.”
Image by Fernando Flores
The Brazilian Cerrado: the upside-down forest on the frontlines of agriculture
Landscape News, 25 August 2020
“Nobody was paying attention to savanna and grasslands; nothing that had small trees, twisted trees, ugly trees – in their opinion,” says ecologist Giselda Durigan, an associate professor at São Paulo State University and Campinas University, of when she began her career over three decades ago. “But I lived in the transition zone between the Cerrado and tropical forest, and I began to pay attention to these neglected ecosystems.”
Image by Mark Russell
biodiversity boon for niue, the world’s first ‘dark sky nation’
Mongabay, 25 march 2020
For residents of “the rock” — the affectionate name Niueans call the 261-square-kilometer (101-square-mile) coral slab they live on — marine and terrestrial reserves are a familiar concept. But a sky sanctuary? “When we first started talking about it, everyone thought we were a little bit odd,” said Niue Tourism CEO Felicity Bollen. “They couldn’t quite come to terms with why we were so excited about this, because they just take this sky for granted, because it’s never been anything else.”
Image by John Holmes
Māori management techniques might help struggling birds
Hakai, 6 March 2020
Once a year, a group of Māori families used to moor their boats beside a steep, craggy island in New Zealand’s Marlborough Sounds and clamber through thick scrub in search of the deep, earthy burrows of sooty shearwater seabirds they call tītī. “You’d have to be really, really keen—you’d be on your hands and knees most of the way,” says Glenice Paine, a member of one of those families. But it was worth it, she says: the fattened chicks people pulled out of those burrows were highly prized for their dark, oily meat.
Image by Monica Evans
will a massive marine protected area safeguard cook islands’ ocean?
Mongabay, 19 september 2019
At certain times of the year, Puna Rakanui’s grandfather used to travel to a favorite fishing spot and return with his canoe full of decapitated tuna. “He would tell us kids, ‘When you take fish out of the ocean, you must give something back,’” Rakanui said. “So he would chop the head off the tuna, tie a rock to it and sink it. To feed the fish. ‘That’s for tomorrow,’ he’d say.”
Image by J. Scott
searching for the rare kākerori bird in the cook islands
landscape news, 1 august 2019
It takes a few days for me to track down Ian Karika. Each time I call, he’s out in the bush, on the southeastern slopes of the volcanic cone of Rarotonga, the largest landmass in the Cook Islands. And even though I can clearly locate on my map the Takitimu Conservation Area (TCA) where he works, I can’t figure out how to get there: there are no street addresses but rather a myriad of unnamed dirt tracks snaking inland from the single tarseal road that rings the island. My phone is refusing to go online, so Google Maps isn’t an option either.
Image by Monica Evans
A Māori community leans on tradition to restore its forest
mongabay, 17 December 2018
It’s early morning in Ruatāhuna, a remote valley deep in the Te Urewera forest on New Zealand’s North Island. Puke Tīmoti and Hemiona Nuku are dragging a deer carcass down a steep hillside, ready to tie onto their horse and take back to Tīmoti’s home on the flatlands below. High up on the ridgeline, the ubiquitous morning mist slowly clears to reveal slopes of dense temperate rainforest cupping a thin sliver of settlements, marae (Māori meeting grounds) and pasture surrounding the upper reaches of the Whakatāne River.