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Quick Look
News
California Department of Fish and Wildlife | WCB Approves $80.4 Million for Wildlife Connectivity, Salmon Recovery, Biodiversity and Public Access Projects
Grist | In the Smoky Mountains, a volunteer effort aims to document every species — before it’s too late
World Economic Forum | Plastic Pollution and Biodiversity: a Global Overview
European Union | Attitudes of Europeans towards biodiversity
Research
Exploring rewilding as a potential design approach to improve urban biodiversity: A systematic review of the literature | Landscape and Urban Planning
Biodiversity loss will decrease the future creditworthiness of nations | nature ecology & evolution
Landscape efficiency frontiers for biodiversity, climate mitigation, and net economic value | Science
Changing sea ice cover led to marine biodiversity shifts in the Late Quaternary | nature earth & environment
Radical Ecology
The Institute of Social Ecology | Land and Liberation: 2026 Summer Intensive Conference
Democratic Socialists of America | Whose Power? The Ecosocialist Fight Against Data Centers and Big Tech
Have you read the latest Eco Update?
News
California Department of Fish and Wildlife | WCB Approves $80.4 Million for Wildlife Connectivity, Salmon Recovery, Biodiversity and Public Access Projects
“The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) approved $80,450,797 in grants for 23 projects across 16 counties to protect biodiversity, restore wildlife habitat and expand public access to nature. The board met today at the California Natural Resources Agency headquarters in Sacramento. Among these, seven projects advance the California Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier Future, restoring floodplains, improving stream function and enhancing habitat for coho salmon, Chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Projects also include investments in wildlife corridors, wildfire resiliency, wildlife-oriented recreation and butterfly pollinators.”
Grist | In the Smoky Mountains, a volunteer effort aims to document every species — before it’s too late
“Hollinger, Boggess, and the others in the group call themselves the Gang of Retirees in Search of Life’s Diversity, or “GRISLD.” Not all are retired — Boggess is beginning a teaching job at Warren Wilson College in the fall — but they share a habit of spending hours moving deliberately through remote corners of the park, documenting species few people will ever see. Connected through a listserv and their keen interest in the Smokies’ rich biodiversity, the group quietly contributes to a long-running project called the all taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, conducted in partnership with the park.”
World Economic Forum | Plastic Pollution and Biodiversity: a Global Overview
“Every year, an estimated 130 million tonnes of plastic waste are unmanaged or improperly discarded, polluting soils, waterways and seas. While efforts continue to promote a circular economy and pursue a global plastics treaty, far less attention has focused on how plastic pollution affects biodiversity and the ecosystem services that underpin economies and human well-being. This report addresses that gap.”
European Union | Attitudes of Europeans towards biodiversity
“Almost all Europeans recognise the importance of halting the loss of biodiversity as a matter of responsibility, well-being, support for long-term economic development and tackling climate change. More than half now think the EU should restore nature and biodiversity to repair the damage caused by human activities. Awareness of the EU’s Natura 2000 network of protected areas is also increasing, with 42% saying they have heard of it.”
Research
Exploring rewilding as a potential design approach to improve urban biodiversity: A systematic review of the literature | Landscape and Urban Planning
Abstract:
Urban biodiversity continues to decline under rapid urbanization. Although biophilic design and green–blue infrastructure have strengthened nature integration into cities, planning and design practice often prioritizes human-centered service delivery and overlooks process-led recovery. Rewilding addresses this gap by foregrounding ecological autonomy, succession, and trophic complexity, yet its urban translation remains limited. This review therefore examined how rewilding could be operationalized as a design-oriented strategy in cities. An evidence-to-design roadmap was proposed to link rewilding logics, biodiversity aims, and urban planning and design, with a dual-level protocol adopted: 1) a macro-level scientometric overview of 1184 records (1990–2025) to locate urban rewilding studies within the broader literature; and 2) a micro-level PRISMA-guided synthesis of 103 spatially explicit studies coded by rewilding pathway (active/passive), targets, spatial and temporal scales, data, methods, and spatial variables. Macro mapping indicated that urban-related studies were late-emerging and weakly consolidated. Micro synthesis revealed pathway differences: passive studies primarily traced vegetation and landscape trajectories, while active studies employed suitability and connectivity modeling for intervention screening. Urban studies remained scarce (N = 9), with passive studies dominant and connectivity analyses particularly common, focusing on vegetation, birds, and planning-oriented targets. Building on these patterns, this study derived a four-level framework comprising design intent, strategic planning, tactical methodology, and operational application, translating rewilding into staged, scalable decisions aligned with urban planning and design workflows. This review positioned rewilding as a process-centered complement to conventional landscape design approaches, offering an actionable pathway for embedding biodiversity regeneration within urban systems.
Biodiversity loss will decrease the future creditworthiness of nations | nature ecology & evolution
Abstract:
Biodiversity loss and deforestation are increasingly recognized as systemic economic risks. Yet, their implications for financial markets remain poorly understood. Here we study how biodiversity and ecosystem service loss affect financial risk for the world’s largest asset class, sovereign debt. Environmental degradation undermines the natural foundations of economic activity, reducing productive capacity and the ability of governments to service debt. Currently, sovereign credit ratings ignore these risks, meaning that markets may be mispricing, mismanaging and misallocating US$83 trillion of financial assets. We incorporate biodiversity risk into sovereign credit assessments by extending S&P Global’s methodology to include scenarios for future tropical timber, wild pollination and marine fisheries services across 23 countries, representing 5.5 billion people. A partial ecosystem collapse scenario increases annual debt servicing costs by US$49 billion in India, equivalent to 2.4% of median post-tax income, and by US$70 billion in China. Across countries, additional annual interest payments could reach US$162 billion, nearly reaching the US$200 billion per year target for conservation support under the Global Biodiversity Framework. Angola, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar could face gross domestic product losses of more than 15% by 2030. Our results suggest that financial markets are systematically underpricing nature-related risks, with consequences for public finances, nature and financial stability.
Landscape efficiency frontiers for biodiversity, climate mitigation, and net economic value | Science
Abstract:
National governments and multilateral institutions face difficult challenges reconciling biodiversity, climate, and economic development goals. We integrated spatial biophysical and economic data with optimization methods to develop sustainable landscape efficiency frontiers that show maximally feasible combinations of biodiversity conservation, land-based climate mitigation, and net economic value from agricultural crops, livestock, and forestry production. We applied this approach in 146 countries and found large potential gains in biodiversity, climate, and economic development from improved land use and land management. Summing national-level results shows the potential to increase climate mitigation by more than 200 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalents (>20% increase) or net economic value by more than US$350 billion (>80% increase), without loss in other objectives.
Changing sea ice cover led to marine biodiversity shifts in the Late Quaternary | nature earth & environment
Abstract:
Today, the sea ice cover is rapidly declining in the Arctic Ocean. While major changes in the Arctic marine ecosystems are starting to appear, the full implication of a changing Arctic ecosystem is not well understood. Here we show, using sedimentary ancient DNA metabarcoding to document marine eukaryotic communities, that higher diversity is recorded in a warmer, sea ice free Labrador Sea compared to when this region is sea ice covered. Changes in diversity and communities happen slower than the rapid climate warming of Greenland Interstadial 8 (ca. 38,000 years ago) and the Bølling period (ca. 14,700 years ago). Surface ocean conditions, rather than atmospheric warming, exert control on the marine eukaryote community and diversity. Our observations from the paleoclimate record suggest that when sea ice further decreases under global warming, the (sub-)polar marine ecosystems will change drastically, and feedbacks to the carbon cycle and climate system become very likely.
Radical Ecology
The Institute of Social Ecology | Land and Liberation: 2026 Summer Intensive Course
The ISE’s summer intensive has started but you can still register to attend the remaining sessions virtually! Register here
Democratic Socialists of America | Whose Power? The Ecosocialist Fight Against Data Centers and Big Tech
“Join the Ecosocialism Transition Committee, DSA organizers, socialists in office, and others, to discuss the fight for a working class ecosocialism! This call will address the deeply felt and growing opposition to data centers and DSA’s current chapter work on the issue. We will also explore the common roadblocks, tactics, and strategies which that work shares with other vital areas of DSA’s Ecosocialist chapter work, like resistance to polluting and community-destroying industries, base-building initiatives, as well as building green infrastructure under the ongoing Building For Power Campaign! This will be followed by a discussion-based call, in July, on the broad sweep of DSA’s Ecosocialist work, the formation and goals of the Ecosocialism Commission, and becoming a member.”
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