National Park Service photo

Traveling from West Texas to the East, I was surprised to see armadillos in Tennessee. When did they move into Tennessee? Turns out they arrived in central Tennessee around 2007.1 The nine-banded armadillo was first recorded in Texas in 1849 and did not cross the Mississippi until the early 1940s. This makes it a relative newcomer to the United States. Apparently, the armadillo has expanded about ten times faster than what is expected of mammals, and since 1849 it has expanded all the way to Illinois and east to the Carolinas.2

Range of the armadillo in 1995.3

The armadillo with its armored shell, claws, and pointy nose, has been difficult to categorize since early times. Early Spanish explorers in the 1500s, gave it the name, “armadillo” which means in the Spanish literal translation, the “little armored one”. In Central Mexico, the Nahuatl (one of the largest Indigenous tribes in Mexico) term for the animal was ayotochtli/ayotochin, literally “turtle or tortoise-rabbit,” from ayotl for “turtle” and tochtli or tochin for “rabbit”.4

In its Linnean classification, it is a mammal, then among mammals it is in the superorder, Xenarthra made up of armadillos, sloths and anteaters— a perhaps surprising association. Within the superorder, he sole surviving order for armadillos is Cingulata, comprised of armadillos and some of its extinct relatives. Within the order, there are only two families, and within one of those families, Dasypodidae, there is only one living genus, and within that genus, only one species is present in North America — the Nine-banded Armadillo, or long-nosed armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus.5 However, in 2024, a DNA study concluded that the nine-banded armadillo is actually made of four genetically distinct species (not subspecies).6

Since the armadillo is a relative newcomer, Indigenous stories about the armadillo come from South America. A Mayan origin story tells of an underworld deity who turns his footstools into armadillos who jump up and knock over two visiting deities, then scamper away to be the progenitors of all armadillos. This story crosses over many Indigenous societies in the Southern Hemisphere where armadillos who live in underground tunnels, play a role in the underworld.7

This is a classic Mayan representation of an armadillo, from Yaxha, Guatemala. Note the bands of repeating triangles on the shell, the claw-like feet, leafish ear, and downturned nose.8

Regulating the migrating armadillo in the United States

There is a patchwork of regulations covering the trade or possession of live and dead armadillos. Given the migration rate and range of the armadillo, you might expect the National Park Service to have some federal regulation of the armadillo, but instead, armadillos are regulated differently from state to state. Only when the Lacey Act is applied, does federal law apply9 which covers the interstate trade in armadillos if the state criminalizes it. States regulating the armadillo have three approaches: trade, hunting and pest designation.

Trade. Texas Parks & Wildlife Code § 63.103(a) provides that no person may sell or possess for sale a living armadillo, with exceptions for zoos, permitted educational and research institutions, and dealers reselling to those buyers. Subsection (d) authorizes a peace officer with probable cause to seize the animal and hold it for rabies or other communicable-disease observation, release it if clean, and destroy it if diseased; at the expense of the violator (subsection e). In state law, this violation is a Class B misdemeanor. However, Texas permits commercial dealers to possess, transport, purchase, sell, import, and export dead armadillos. Georgia regulates armadillos similarly: it is unlawful to possess live coyotes, armadillos, groundhogs, and beaver with exceptions for scientific research, wildlife exhibition and rehabilitation.10

Hunting. There are no hunting seasons for armadillos in Texas, North Carolina, — Georgia, or South Carolina—hunting is permitted year-round. In North Carolina it is a nongame species with no closed season or bag limit; nuisance animals may be trapped during the November–February regulated trapping season or taken under a depredation permit. Georgia affirmatively makes armadillos fair game, regulating that it is unlawful to take nongame wildlife except coyotes, armadillos, groundhogs, beavers, and a short list of others.

Pest designation. Louisiana notably names armadillos as "outlaw quadrupeds" alongside feral hogs and coyotes. Hunters with permits may take them year-round during legal shooting hours. Landowners or their agents can take them at night during legal shooting hours. On private property, armadillos may be taken with repeating shotguns holding more than three shells and from a moving land vehicle.11

Florida designates nuisance wildlife where any landowner may take nuisance wildlife, or authorize another to do so, by any method not on the prohibited list. No Gun and Light at Night Permit is required for armadillo, wild hog, coyote, or commensal rodents. Nuisance wildlife if captured alive must be euthanized within 24 hours.12

Designating the armadillo as nuisance wildlife, as a pest or allowing hunting with no seasons or limits means not only are armadillos unprotected, they are targeted for extermination. They are on no state endangered species list, or international list.

The Pet Trade

Armadillos are regulated as wildlife, but as pets (if not against wildlife law) they are regulated by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). Texas is one of the few overtly public-health-driven wildlife provisions in the country, and it is aimed at rabies in a commercial sale context.

in addition to rabies, nine-banded armadillos are naturally infected with Mycobacterium leprae (leprosy) and have been identified as the source of zoonotic transmission of leprosy in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. A CDC survey of 645 southeastern armadillos found 16.4% with serologic or PCR evidence of infection, and 42.3% of 52 human patients from the same region carried one of two genotypes associated with armadillo.13

Meanwhile the documented exposure pathway — hunting, handling, butchering, and eating the animal — is legal, unlicensed, and mostly unlimited with regard to killing armadillos in the states discussed above. So nothing regulates the conduct (hunting, handling, butchering or eating armadillos) that actually transmits the organism.

Here is a starting point for checking the requirements for keeping an armadillo as a pet or if it is permitted at all in each state:

Armadillo pet regula tion by state.14

Since the armadillo was designated by the Texas Legislature as the state small mammal in 1995, it is only right to allow it to be kept as a pet. Quoting the law, the armadillo “possesses many remarkable and unique traits, some of which parallel the attributes that distinguish a true Texan, such as a deep respect and need for the land, the ability to change and adapt, and a fierce undying love for freedom.”15 Having some of the tenacious characteristics of Texans: However, that said, while it may be kept as a pet, live armadillos cannot be sold in Texas.

Final thoughts

Armadillos are literally fair game. They have no protections, state or federal, or even protections for methods of killing. They may or may not be regulated by animal cruelty statutes which do not regulate depredations. They could be pets, but as wildlife, keeping them as pets would either require a permit, or an exception in some states. They are actually pretty docile creatures, with the exception of their random jumping when startled.

The armadillo defies not only biological clarity with its classification and new DNA analyses, but is subject to a state by state assortment of legal approaches to its management that is unclear based upon its classification. Given the armadillo is not truly an invasive species, brought by humans, but expanded naturally into newer regions in North America over the past 150 years, many of these regulatory mechanisms may be a regulatory misfit, meant for the purpose of regulating predators, invasive species and dangerous animals.

Long live the armadillo.

Rabies, or hydrophobia, has been a feared (and rightly so) horrific viral disease, that up until the turn of the century had no cure. If you read Ole Yeller, and the heroic acts of the family dog to save them from a rabid wolf, sacrificing himself for the family, you will feel the agony of rabies.1 Rabies is the basis of the plot of modern biohorror movies, like 28 Days Later (2002)2 and Quarantine (2008)3 to name just a few of many.

Rabies remains today the most lethal disease known to man and this author is not aware of any other disease for which—once the disease is declared—modern medicine has offered no tangible improvement.4

During the Iraq War, a biologist who received her biology degree from MIT, was arrested in Afghanistan and had plans in her purse to develop a rabies-chicken pox chimera as a biological weapon. (She was convicted in 2010 and is serving an 86-year sentence, but for attempting to shoot and kill federal officers.)5

Trends in Rabies

A published study done in 2022 showed there were reports of rabies in 54 states and territories, for a total of 3,579 animal rabies cases. Six states accounted for 50% of the cases: Texas (395 [11.0%]), Virginia (337 [9.4%]), Pennsylvania (329 [9.2%]), New York (267 [7.5%]), North Carolina (264 [7.4%]), and California (241 [6.7%]).6 Of the cases, 90% came from wildlife: bats (1,218 [34.0%]), raccoons (1,014 [28.3%]), skunks (660 [18.4%]), and foxes (269 [7.5%]). The remaining 10% or so of cases came from domestic animals and were from cats (222 [6.2%]), cattle (42 [1.2%]), and dogs (50 [1.4%]).7

Researchers claim that rabies was introduced to the New World through colonists and settlers bringing dogs and dogs with rabies.8 (The incubation period for rabies is 21-80 days; but once symptoms appear there is usually only 7-10 days before death,9 which makes it a good candidate disease to travel across the Atlantic Ocean and spread.) In 2007, the CDC declared the elimination of rabies in dogs, which was a huge milestone made possible by cooperation with state and local governments in vaccination and tagging.10

A Laboratory Accident

March 29, 1977, Jerome Andrulonis, a bacteriologist working for the state of New York’s Public Health Department, contracted rabies while conducting a federally supervised experiment in a N.Y. State laboratory. The experiment was to develop method of inoculating wildlife against rabies.11

Jerome was one of only three people known in recent time to have survived rabies after symptoms appeared. He and his wife sued the federal government and the manufacturer of the faulty equipment that leaked the deadly rabies virus during the experiment. This is an interesting case for many reasons, and procedurally, it is interesting because he has sued the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a statute that allows a harmed individual to recover damages from the federal government where there is gross negligence. The State of New York had liability even though the plaintiff was an employee of the state and estopped from suing the state because he was mandated to use workers’ compensation insurance for his damages; because the federal government cross-claimed New York for their role in the accident. Further, the vaccine manufacturer was also liable for a defective product. Because there is no federal tort law, there is only state law in tort, the Federal Tort Claims Act applies the appropriate state tort law, in this case, New York. Further, New York law uses the negligence model where the court apportions the percentage of fault to each of the defendants, including New York, so the court had to determine who was liable and to what extent?

The federal district court assessed damages at $6,424,641 (including $2,417,238 for future custodial care), apportioned 30% United States, 65% NYSDOH, 5% Lilly/Thompson. After a 5% ($321,232) reduction for Lilly/Thompson and a $125,000 credit for the other settling defendants, the United States was primarily liable for $5,978,409, recovering 68.42% (65/95ths) from the State.12

Unfortunately, it was reported that Jerome Andrulonius was so injured by the rabies infection that he was unable to understand his win.

But the federal government and New York appealed the award. After failing to reverse the award at the Federal Circuit level, New York petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the award. The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded back to the lower court. The U.S. 2d Circuit federal court reconsidered the case in accord with the U.S. Supreme Court instructions and reinstated the judgment. New York petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court a second time and this time, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari— making this case one that was not settled until 1992.

The proper Bluebook citation for this entire case would be a challenging question on a law school legal writing exam:

Andrulonis v. United States, 724 F. Supp. 1421 (N.D.N.Y. 1989), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 924 F.2d 1210 (2d Cir.), vacated sub nom. New York State Dep't of Health v. Andrulonis, 502 U.S. 801 (1991), prior opinion reinstated, 952 F.2d 652 (2d Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 505 U.S. 1204 (1992), subsequent appeal, 26 F.3d 1224 (2d Cir. 1994).

What happened in the laboratory?

Laboratory accidents are among the most frequent pathways of exposure for highly dangerous pathogens. Before the biological safety laboratory standards were established, highly dangerous viruses and bacteria were handled without safety standards. In 1974, the CDC published Classification of Etiologic Agents on the Basis of Hazard, which first established levels of containment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began working on the Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL) manual in the 1980s and borrowed the laboratory biosafety levels established for experiments with recombinant DNA in 1979.13 The BMBL Manual was published in 1984 with safety standards for levels of pathogens based on their infectiousness, lethality and exposure pathways.14

According to the New York Times, this is what happened in the laboratory accident:

In preparation for the virus-coating experiment, Dr. Debbie asked Dr. Baer to prepare a solution of highly concentrated rabies virus. It was this virus that was used in the experiment.

In the laboratory, Mr. Andulonis worked with an apparatus that used a stream of air to suspend the tablets while a solution of the powerful rabies virus was sprayed onto them.

But the apparatus was not airtight, according to the evidence in the trial. When the solution was sprayed inside the apparatus, some of the virus escaped into the laboratory, and Mr. Andrulonis inhaled it.

His rabies inoculations did not work. The rabies virus made direct contact with his olfactory nerve, traveling the short distance from the nose to the brain without ever coming into significant contact with the antibodies in his blood.15

The lack of biocontainment and safety equipment and facilities is shocking, even for 1977. The federal government was relying on the one question in the case that made their decisions for the experiment all “discretionary” giving them a defense. This test is to protect government employees from the consequences of every day decisions made based on policy, for example. The court in this case used this test to find the government liable in this case: “In sum, the discretionary function exception insulates the Government from liability if the action challenged in the case involves the permissible exercise of policy judgment.” The government argued it was a policy decision not to disrupt the experiment to have a good federal state relationship, which the court rejected finding no stated policy. Whereas, conducting an unsafe experiment was not a discretionary act.

In another case decided by the 9th Circuit in 1983, from acts by the military in the 1950s, the federal government conducted a bioterrorism experiment using the bacteria serratia marcesens, in city-wide dispersals of the bacteria in several cities including San Francisco, California. These experiments were classified, and the bacteria was selected for the experiment due to its color that could make it easily detectable (red). The military in selecting this bacteria believed it was completely harmless to humans, but in anerobic conditions (closed up in a body after surgery without oxygen, for example) could be deadly.16 In fact, eleven people in a San Francisco hospital all developed infections from this bacteria, who had surgery there. One man, suffered a fatal infection and the family sued the federal government almost 20 years later when the experiments were declassified. In Nevin v. United States17 the court found that under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the choice of the selection of the bacteria was a discretionary act, thus the government was not liable for these experiments.

Different federal courts can have different statutory interpretations, and unless it is resolved in a case accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court, these different interpretations may stand.

Final thoughts

Laboratory biosafety for dangerous pathogens has changes dramatically, not only with the standards that are now implemented but with a regulatory framework that encompasses individuals with access, containment levels and safety protocols for each experiment. Strictly enforcing these protocols and standards with the increase in work with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, is imperative. Now, not only are accidents tracked by CDC, but “near misses” are also required to be reported so that lessons can be learned to prevent future accidents. Laboratory exposures can still happen. Rabies testing of humans is limited to special public health laboratories and no commercial laboratories.18 Working or manipulating the live rabies virus or handling infected animals generally requires Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) or Animal BSL-2 containment, complete with engineering controls like certified biosafety cabinets and sealed centrifuge rotors.19 This provides a sealed compartment for working with the virus. Comparing this to the unsafe conditions of the Andrulonis case, is heartbreaking.

Biosafety has to always be a primary consideration every time one walks into the laboratory.

The FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee met on Thursday and Friday, July 23-24, 2026, convening to consider whether seven peptides should be made available more widely.1 Six of the seven received a green light, so to speak.

This committee is subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) which requires the composition of the Committee to be non-federal employees, and to be open to the press and subject to the Freedom of Information Act for all documents.2 It is a standard way of conducting business for the federal government where outside professional and expert opinions are needed, but they are advisory, only.

A Very Brief History of the FDCA

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, was enacted to meet the outrage from food tampering and hidden ingredients in drugs, like opium and alcohol,3 but perhaps mostly driven by the outrage from Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle. This book was supposed to expose poor working conditions of immigrants, but instead, its depiction of the shocking practices of food processing and canning in Chicago, led to outrage about food safety.4 The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act was enacted in 1938, to protect the public from adulterated or misbranded foods, drugs, devices and cosmetics, triggered by a poisoning event of an antibiotic that killed 100 people.5

A Very Short explanation of a Peptide

We are already acquainted with the famous GLP-1 drugs for obesity and insulin,6 which are peptides.

A peptide looks like a chain of beads with each bead being an amino acid and the chain a peptide bond between each one. A peptide is a relatively short chain of 2-50 amino acids. A protein is much longer, complex and folded. The chain of beads has a nitrogen group at one end and a carbon group at the other.7

The science and lack of science

Peptides are promising as we have seen with GLP-1 for obesity. Others claim to help with “enhancing muscle strength, boosting the immune system, reducing inflammation, and helping the body heal from injury.”8 They are promising, but yet there is no science showing their efficacy, a requirement for drug approval by the FDA. Neither is there any science or evidence showing they are dangerous or have side effects that would warrant concern. More research is needed.

But in the meantime, The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sec. Kennedy, has argued they should be made available to the public without unnecessary hurdles.9

Legal issues between Peptides and Public Access

Peptides are not illegal, but not available for human consumption. Peptides can be purchased for “research use” in a kind of gray market, that likely knows these peptides are being purchased for consumption. Sec. Kennedy has argued that making peptides available through FDA processes would eliminate the risk these mail order “research purposes” peptides pose.10

Compounding pharmacies exist to compound drugs that are needed but not FDA approved, or approved in the amount of the dose, for example. Compounding pharmacies have to follow best practices and ensure that the process and product is sanitary. The materials that are available to compound are approved on the bulk drug list, Sec. 503A of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.11

Here are the seven peptides and their claims considered by the Committee:

• BPC-157: Recommended for inclusion; proposed to treat ulcerative colitis.

• KPV: Recommended for inclusion; proposed for wound healing and reducing inflammation.

• TB-500: Recommended for inclusion; proposed to promote wound healing.

• MOTS-c: Recommended for inclusion; proposed for insulin resistance, obesity, and osteoporosis.

• Epitalon: Recommended for inclusion (7-4 vote); marketed for insomnia and longevity.

• Semax: Recommended for inclusion (8-5 vote); promoted for migraines and neurological conditions.

• Emideltide: Rejected (6-7 vote); had been under review for opioid withdrawal and chronic insomnia.

The seventh peptide, “emideltide” was rejected, citing "potentially dangerous downstream consequences," according to one Committee member. It has the potential to be addictive and that was enough to tip the vote against it.12 The FDA staff were reported to have been opposed to all of them on the list for lack of scientific evidence.

The Committee is expected to review five more by the end of February 2027.13

New Regulations for Peptides

As mentioned earlier, GLP-1 is a kind of glucagon peptide, but one that has been FDA approved as a drug. This process begins with testing for safety on laboratory mammals, or in simulated computer models (planned exclusively in the future) to see if it is safe. An LD50 might be established, that is, how much of the drug can cause 50% of the test population to die, as a way to standardize safety against all other drugs using the same measure. If the drug passes the safety testing, it is then tested in the laboratory for efficacy — does it really do what it claims for obesity? If it passes this level of testing then it can be tested on humans for safety and then efficacy. There are often setbacks along this regulatory pathway, and many drugs never make it to the end.

The development of GLP-1 as a very commercially successful drug and the recent consideration of these seven peptides being approved for the first time for the Bulk Drug list, indicates there will likely be more drug applications in the future. So today, the FDA published new protocols for testing peptides in the drug approval process.14

Final thoughts

There is an interesting dynamic here that has peptides available with a prescription from a compounding pharmacist which could dampen the gray market or perhaps later, a black market for peptides; making it safer for everyone.

It is unfortunate that adverse events are not reported for bulk drugs. In FDA approved drugs, it has always been an incredibly useful way to monitor new drugs that are released after years of testing.

Finally, the Committee makes a recommendation and it is still up to FDA to publish it as a proposed rule and then take comments before it becomes law.

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Photo credit: https://www.evotec.com/solutions/drug-discovery-preclinical-development/modalities/peptides

Lightning has been regarded as a powerful sacred force by humans since the beginning of time, and often attributed to a deity (e.g., Zeus, Minerva). When someone is struck by lightning, rightly or wrongly, it is often thought of as a divine act of judgment.1 So it is not surprising that when it came time to attribute liability for damages from lightning, liability could not be attributed to “Acts of God”. The theory took root as a legal principle in tort law.

How lightning works

Lightning begins with static electricity in the clouds from water and ice rubbing against each other. These charged particles are positive and negative. The positive particles move up and the negative ones move toward the ground, resulting in a release of the energy by making contact with the earth —- seen as lightning, heard as thunder. The light waves of the lightning are about a million times faster than the sound waves of the thunder, so you can estimate the distance of the lightning roughly by every four second between seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder, is equal to one mile. 2

What is the risk of being struck by lightning?

The most common way to describe the risk of being struck by lightning is one in a million chance.3 But where you are can shift that probability.

Worldwide, about 240,000 people are struck by lightning each year, and about 90% survive; however, many sustain long term neurological, cardiac or other injuries.4

States with the highest numbers of people struck by lightning (based on long-term National Weather Service data):

1. Florida

2. Texas

3. Colorado

4. North Carolina

5. Georgia

6. Tennessee

7. Alabama

8. Pennsylvania

9. Ohio

10. New York

Florida has, by far, the most lightning strikes, it is often called the “Lightning Capital of the United States.” This could be due to the almost daily thunderstorms in Florida and high humidity in the atmosphere, as well as the prevalence outdoor activities.5

Then there is the myth that lightning never strikes the same place twice. It apparently comes from the belief that someone would not suffer the same misfortune twice. However, scientifically, it is just not true. Lightning seeks the shortest path to the ground and reaching tall and isolated structures is the most common pathway. For example, the Empire State Building is struck about 25 times each year, and the Eiffel Tower, about ten times.6

So far this year, there have been five deaths from lightning strikes in the United States (2-Florida; 1-Wisconsin; 1-Illinois and Utah-1). This is significantly below the usual 10-20 deaths by this time of the year.7 Overall, lightning deaths are down from the past 30-50 deaths to 10-20 because of the increase in technology and the ability to warn those when exposure is a risk.

The “Act of God” limitation of liability and assumption of risk

In 1939, a landmark case, Central Georgia Electric Membership Corp. v. Heath,8 held that while lightning was an Act of God, the fact that it traveled through a house through an electrical system design that was faulty led to the conclusion that the utility-defendant had a duty to keep their customers safe — hence, there was liability for that damage. The court opined, “When the lightning struck the main line of the defendant it was an act of God; but permitting it to travel across the lateral wire into the room occupied by the plaintiff, instead of arranging so that it would be conducted into the ground, was not an act free from human agency.”9

Up until the 1970s, lightning was primarily treated as this '“Act of God” for which there could be no liability. However, from the 1970s to 1995, courts would attribute some liability if the defendant had assumed the risk of their exposure to lightning.

In 1995, the case, Maussner v. Atlantic City Country Club,10 a golfer was struck by lightning. The golf club argued that it was an Act of God for which no one could be liable. However, the court found that when lightning is foreseeable (as it was in this case), the golf club has a duty to exercise reasonable care by taking steps to prevent golfers from being exposed to lightning risk, including shutting down the golf course, monitoring storms and having appropriate shelter, for example. The courts began to look at foreseeability and the duty to monitor for storms was largely due to the development of better science and technology for predicting and tracking storm and lightning data. This coincides with the date that doppler radar became fully available across the United States.11 It was adopted by the National Weather Service in 1942 and by 1959 the National Weather Service was installing its nationwide weather monitoring system. The next generation radar systems of NEXRADs, were developed using doppler that improved on ordinary radar by detecting movements within storms. The NEXRAD system gave it accessibility and increased refinement of the data so that predictive duties arose.

So after 1995, not only golf courses, but governments, schools, outside events and sports events have a duty to keep their participants safe through monitoring storms and taking precautionary steps to prevent exposure to the risk. It also weakens the assumption of risk defense, if there are expectations of warnings and predictive monitoring of weather-inducing lightning.

Lightning strikes as well as other weather disasters, like floods, freezes and extreme heat events have also become predictable enough to create a duty to warn. Current litigation against Camp Mystic and local government, involves the “Act of God” defense, despite the National Weather Service warnings to evacuate that were ignored for hours according to the pleadings.12

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The Endangered Species Act notably marked its 50th year, December 28, 2023; and I wrote about it here.1 It is known as one of the most effective environmental statutes in protecting the environment and can halt development projects, if they trigger the prohibitions of the Endangered Species Act.

There are two major parts of the Endangered Species Act — Section 4 describes how to list a species as endangered or threatened, the two statutory statuses for a species. Section 7 requires consultation by any federal agency if they anticipate projects affecting endangered or threatened species; and Section 9 prohibits any one within the jurisdiction of the U.S. from trading in endangered or threatened species or parts, or to “take” an endangered or threatened species. “Take" is defined as to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.2 At least until September 14, 2026, when the federal government wants to make final the removal of this definition of “take” from the regulation which further explains the statutory definition.3 Since 1975, the defintion of “take” has included any significant environmental modification or degradation which has such effects. . . included within the meaning of `harm'.4

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in 1995, that this definition of “harm” was a reasonable one on the part of the U.S. EPA, and so upheld the regulatory definition. In the recent proposal to change the rule published July 14, 2026, the Department of Interior explained as part of their reasoning in rescinding the definition of “harm” was because it was “outdated” and they like Scalia’s dissent in the 1995 opinion, better than the majority opinion. Because we cannot cherry pick the dissent we like better to recognize as the law of the land, surely they did not mean this. Upon a further read of the logic they apply to this, in essence is that because this case (1995 case) was decided using the methods of a case that was overruled (Chevron), it must mean that this case must be overruled, too. (Despite the U.S. Supreme Court opinion specifically writing that the overruling of Chevron does not mean cases decided applying Chevron methods were now overruled, that is the logic that was used.)

So why does it matter about the definition of “harm”?

It is the definition of “harm” that means to also destroy the habitat of an endangered or threatened species. The proposed withdrawal of the “harm” definition will no longer prevent development projects that destroy the habitat needed for an endangered species or threatened species to exist. For example, the endangered bird in the 1995 case could not live if the only tree it nested in was killed. Common sense tells you that the bird cannot nest, it cannot produce another generation and it becomes extinct. The common sense administration just lost its common sense, here.

Oddly, they seem to have conflated the regulatory definition (an Executive Branch function) with the statutory definition (a Legislative Branch function). “Harm” is one of the words in the statutory definition of “take” which is still law. The 1995 opinion speaks to the interpretation of the word “harm” in the statute, which of course, cannot be rescinded by the Executive Branch.

Response to rescinding the regulatory definition of harm was immediate

Several organizations immediately sought judicial stays to prevent the Executive Branch from acting on rescinding the rule. A stay in this case is simply to ask the court to stop the Agency from taking action until the court reviews the legality of its action. While the agency has taken administrative steps consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act, it must also explain why it is basically reversing itself from its previous decision in 1975. Whether saying it is “outdated” or that Scalia’s dissent sounds better to us, is a sufficient basis to reverse the agency’s previous course of action, is something the judiciary would determine, consistent with case law.

Scalia’s dissent

The agency would like to use the Scalia dissent from the 1995 case which suggests that “harm” must be intentionally directed to an individual of that species. This does not include its habitat.

Looking back at the ESA

A study in 2019 found that 99% of the listed endangered species have been saved from extinction.5 That is not a bad result for a federal environmental program. In 1975 the definition of harm included avoiding the destruction of the endangered or threatened species’ habitat, which is the rulemaking that followed from the year the statute was passed in 1973.

Common sense tells us that Congress was likely thinking that the habitat of an endangered or threatened species was key to its survival when it required consultation before a project destroyed its habitat. The U.S. Supreme Court has not been reluctant to apply common sense in its analysis.6 It is hard to see how that is “outdated”. Re-drafting the rule as a proposed rule could still be done and comply with the Administrative Procedure Act. It would still require a justification for the agency reversal so that would not change the legal process or the 60 days for the rule to be final.

The common sense administration should return to common sense on this rule.

The Endangered Species Act notably marked its 50th year, December 28, 2023; and I wrote about it here.1 It is known as one of the most effective environmental statutes in protecting the environment and can halt development projects, if they trigger the prohibitions of the Endangered Species Act.

There are two major parts of the Endangered Species Act — …

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I found fascinating, The Name of the Rose (1986), a murder mystery drama based on the book by the same name written by Italian author Umberto Eco. The plot of the mystery murders was based on a (spoiler alert) toxicology problem and a book.

I want to note, here, that this movie along with The Da Vinci Code (2006), and Angels & Demons (2009) inspired me to write a movie script and cast, direct and produce the movie, Blood Vow (2018) (which you can see on Amazon Prime at https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Vow-Victoria-Sutton/dp/B0GYNZPJG4 ).

But back to The Name of the Rose — I do not want to spoil the movie for you, so I will just say it has something to do with Monks who wrote in a book, and everyone who read the book seemed to die. I was disappointed to learn this interesting toxicology murder plot was not based on a true story. But I have since learned there is a true story that involves poison books, but with a purpose to save lives, rather than to end them.

In 1874, Dr. Robert C. Kedzie,1 created a book entitled, Shadows from the Walls of Death: Facts and Inferences Prefacing a Book of Specimens of Arsenical Wall Papers.2 His book was an advocacy product meant to demonstrate the deadly nature of a product of the industrial revolution — mass produced paint used for wallpapers and fabric. The book was a collection of different types of wallpaper using the vivid paints, Scheele’s Green. Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented copper arsenite paint that rendered rich greens, yellows, and violets at an affordable price.3 Kedzie believed that the slow descent into madness of those confined to bedrest was due to the chronic inhalation of the dust from the arsenic-laden wallpapers of the bedrooms.

Dr. R. M. Kedzie, who served on the Michigan Board of Health in the 1870s, explains his unique strategy for raising awareness in the preface to Shadows from the Walls of Death. Originally printed in a run of one hundred copies, only a half-dozen of which remain due to recipients fearfully destroying their copies, the book is contaminated by the very substance under indictment. That is, to eradicate the poison, Kedzie chose to archive its vehicle. “[T]o call attention to this source of danger, and to assist persons in detecting these dangerous colors in wall paper, the State Board of Health Directed me to prepare specimen books of such dangerous wall papers. . . . The wall papers in this book all contain arsenic.”4

Kedzie produced 100 copies of these books and sent them out to libraries. Once the recipients realized the deadly potential for the books they were destroyed. The last book was only sealed in 1998, and the four remaining copies are sealed from public access. We can still see the book through a digital copy which is available at these footnotes (see footnotes 3 and 4).

The mechanism of copper arsenite poisoning

Arsenic is risky because it bioaccumulates in the body, meaning it is not eliminated from the body but is stored and accumulates eventually reaching deadly levels.5 The toxicological mechanism is to interfere with the production of ATP, the source of energy for cells, and shuts down the ability for cells to function. The results of this is liver, kidney, nervous system damage, resulting in death. If you want to read more details of the graphic death from arsenic, see this article.6

According to an environmental consulting firm in the UK, dealing with Victorian Era wallpapers can have some rare poisonings with arsine gas, the most deadly form of arsenic,7 producing molds:

In some rare cases, specific mould species that grow on damp wallpaper can metabolise arsenic compounds into arsine gas, a colourless, highly toxic vapour. This process was first identified in 1891 by the Italian chemist Bartolomeo Gosio, who demonstrated that the combination of arsenic pigments and mould growth could generate a poisonous gas capable of causing severe illness or death. Although such conditions are uncommon in modern buildings, poorly ventilated or water-damaged interiors containing historic wallpapers can still create a comparable risk environment.8

The deaths of four children in Great Britain were first diagnosed as Diphtheria, but eventually attributed to the newly green wallpapering of their nursery.9

Final thoughts

When major public health exposures like this one — both the wallpapers themselves and the book of them produced by Kedzie—would have resulted in federal regulation, it was still too early in our administrative law history to address these risks.

Scheele’s Green was under scrutiny for its deadly properties by 1860 and was phased out by 1900.10 Air quality was not regulated until 195511 and consumer products like wallpapers were not regulated until 1972,12 and even that regulation is limited to recalls for unsafe products.13 Indoor air quality is not regulated by the federal government. However, the removal of lead paint is regulated by U.S. EPA,14 but not the removal of arsenic-laden wallpaper!

Around the turn of the century, the risks of chemicals and metals were still being discovered. Contaminated vaccines for children led to the passage of the Biologics Control Act of 1901,15 which was followed by the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1906, and the FDA. So the period when deadly wallpapers were sold and installed ended before an institution to capture and protect the public from its risks existed. The tort litigation system for individuals harmed by defective products was at least one mechanism to protect the public from such risks.

If a wallpaper was created today, with a copper arsenite paint, it would be regulated by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), that requires any new chemical (like copper arsenite) to demonstrate safety through scientifically conducted safety testing.16 (Because copper arsenite was used as a pesticide, today it would also be regulated by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA); but we will limit this to wallpaper uses.)

However, the existence of these wallpapers in Victorian Era homes is still a real risk, and falls into a regulatory gap that poses a real risk of death. The buyer of such a home is limited to the age old property doctrine, “buyer beware”. However, if you are purchasing a house with the risk of having arsenic containing wallpapers, there may be a disclosure requirement for any “defect” that is a safety hazard, but each state has its own language and disclosure requirements. This leaves the tort system as the public health risk system which may be totally inadequate given a case is brought due to damages, and in this case the damages may be death.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Langdon_(franchise)

When American colonists renounced British tea in the 1770s, they faced a practical problem alongside their political one: what to drink? One answer grew wild along the coastal plain from Virginia to Texas. Yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria), the only indigenous plant containing caffeine,1 had become a beverage tradition in the Southeast for well over a millennium before any colonist thought to boycott anything.2

The story of Yaupon’s brief career as a patriotic substitute for Chinese tea, set alongside Philip J. Deloria’s reading of the Boston Tea Party in Playing Indian (1998),3 reveals two parallel modes by which revolutionary-era Americans drew on Native America to define themselves against Britain — one material, one symbolic, and both dependent on Indigenous peoples whose actual presence the new nation was simultaneously working to erase.

An Indigenous Beverage Tradition

Long before European contact, southeastern peoples — the Timucua, Guale, Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, Catawba, Chickasaw, Choctaw and others — cultivated, traded, and consumed Yaupon. Archaeological evidence carries the tradition deep into the pre-contact past: residue analysis of ceramic beakers from Cahokia, hundreds of miles beyond Yaupon’s natural range (see map below),4 indicates that the leaves moved along extensive trade networks by the eleventh century.5 The drink Europeans encountered was not a casual refreshment but a beverage embedded in ceremony, diplomacy, and social order. Spanish sources called it cacina or cassina, after the Timucua term; among Muscogean speakers it was asi; English observers, noting the dark liquor produced by roasting and boiling the leaves, called it the “black drink.”6

There is early European documentation. Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, who accompanied the French expedition to Florida in the 1560s, depicted Timucua leaders in council consuming cassina from shell cups — an image later engraved and circulated by Theodore de Bry.7 John Lawson, surveying Carolina in the first decade of the eighteenth century, described Yaupon use among the coastal tribes in A New Voyage to Carolina (1709) and noted that English settlers had already taken up the habit.8

The Scientific Naming of Yaupon

In ceremonial contexts, the black drink functioned as a purifier: consumed in quantity before councils, ball games, and warfare, it was sometimes followed by ritual vomiting. That ceremonial practice, that was practiced with a great volume of tea, was what inspired the unfortunate scientific name.9 Some would say, it had a serious blow to its commercial value. When William Aiton formally classified the plant in 1789 as Ilex vomitoria, he codified a European misreading of Indigenous ceremony verses a plant’s actual properties into Linnaean taxonomy, permanently.10

Coastal colonists in the Carolinas learned preparation methods (parching the leaves, sweating them, brewing the infusion) directly from Native neighbors from whom they traded for the tea and adopted the drink into their daily life. By the early eighteenth century, Yaupon was being harvested commercially along the Carolina coast and even exported to Europe, where it was sold under tradenames like “Carolina tea,” “South Sea tea,” and “Appalachina.”11

Liberty Teas and the Boycott Economy

The Townshend Duties of 176712 and the Tea Act of 177313 made tea a political statement. Non-importation agreements and non-consumption pledges made abstention from East India Company tea a public demonstration of patriotic allegiance, but also created an immediate demand for substitutes for tea.14 Colonists brewed “liberty teas” from whatever the local ecology had to offer: raspberry leaf, loosestrife, sage, sassafras, Labrador tea in the North.15 In the South, Yaupon held a decisive advantage over all of these. It was the only substitute that actually delivered caffeine.

During the Civil War, Union blockades pushed southern households toward the “black drink,” Yaupon. It was not until the 1880s that tea production was considered a viable agricultural possibility, despite trying to grow tea without success from the 1700s.16 This made it all the more important to make use of Native American developed Yaupon tea. Into the Twentieth Century, the North Carolina Outer Banks communities, continued as a small industry, the harvesting and production of Yaupon tea.17 Today, several universities are experimenting with Yaupon as a pathway to developing a tea growing industry in the south, without attribution to the traditional ecological knowledge that led to their ultimate experimentation and likely commercialization of it. (That’s a biopiracy story for another time.)

The Boston Tea Party

While southeastern Native American tribes had provided the tea substitute that fueled the resistance to the taxed tea of the East Indian Tea Company, the American resistance in the north was dressing up as the most original American possible — Native Americans. In Philip Deloria’s book, Playing Indian (1998), Deloria opens his first chapter with the night of December 16, 1773, when Boston's Sons of Liberty, faces darkened with soot and lampblack, draped in blankets, brandishing hatchets and whooping in what they took to be Mohawk fashion, boarded three East India Company ships and destroyed 342 chests of tea.18 The dress was not accidental, Deloria explains, that it was clearly a costume and not an attempt to look authentic, but its symbolism was that of fierceness and the savage, other. The colonists rejected British identity but had no American-formed identity to replace it and so borrowing from the most original of Americans was an answer. In the European imagination, the Indian stood for the American continent itself — aboriginal, free, natural, and categorically not British. The dress and performance as Indian was not hiding their identities so much as taking on the identity of Indians for a night for the ideological act of resistance.

Three years later, in the Declaration of Independence, in the list of grievances against the British, the colonies included the complaint that the British had “endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, (emphasis added) whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”19

Final thoughts

Native Americas are depicted as savage in the Boston Tea Party, later memorialized in the Declaration of Independence as the colonists point to the British for their complicity in creating conflict between Native America and the colonies. The convenient use of the fierce fighting reputation of the Mohawks in their Boston Tea Party political performance of resistance was duplicitous and a useful borrowing. Yet, it seems the colonists’ greatest weapon for resistance was trade between the Colonists and Native America through the trade of Yaupon tea, where Indians negotiated trade deals and business transactions that could be described as sophisticated negotiations20 — anything other than savage. Even if I may have slightly overstated the role of Yaupon in bolstering the American Revolution, it must still be said that Yaupon tea provided a kind of fuel for the resistance in performance, symbolism and substance, courtesy of Native America.

Happy 250th Anniversary, America.

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A regulatory change that has been largely unnoticed by the newsmedia, is the recent Department of Education decision to change the definition and scope of what is a “profession” for purposes of receiving education loans to pursue it. The American people in general would probably be shocked to learn that the Department of Education decided that nursing (among others) would no longer be a “profession”.

What is a profession?

Profession has been defined by law, when it usually requires a license. Those practicing without a license are usually subjected to civil or criminal penalties in order to protect the public who trust those from a particular profession. You may have to be part of a guild to be among those who are recognized professionals in that field.

Over the years, professions have come and gone. One of my favorites, is the profession of “pricking” which became very popular beginning in 1530 and a professional guild was created to protect the integrity of the profession. Pricking was the art of identifying the “Devil’s mark” on the body, for evidence in a witch trial.1

What is a profession for purposes of student loans?

Although a profession can be defined by state law, it can also be defined by federal regulation that is part of the student loan process.

On January 30, 2026, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking from the U.S. Department of Education proposed new regulations to define a profession for purposes of determining the amount of student loans that would be allowed.2 The Department of Education (U.S. DOE) took the legislative language in the Big Beautiful Bill which was identical to the U.S. DOE regulatory definition, and decided to narrow it, on May 1, 2026. They decided that only certain degrees in eleven fields qualified as “professional” degrees:

Pharmacy (Pharm.D.)

Dentistry (D.D.S. or D.M.D.)

Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.)

Chiropractic (DC or DCM)

Law (L.L.B. or J.D.)

Medicine (M.D.)

Optometry (O.D.)

Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.)

Podiatry (D.P.M., D.P., or Pod.D.)

Theology (M.Div., or M.H.L.)

Clinical Psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.)

This is critical because it changes the amount of federal loans that a student can borrow for the degree. For a professional degree they can borrow $50,000 annually and $200,000 in aggregate; whereas, a graduate degree student can borrow only $20,500 annually and $100,000 in aggregate. So if your degree is not among the eleven designated by U.S. DOE, then you will be subject to the loan limits for graduate degrees.

On May 21, 2026, six associations filed suite against the Department of Education to stop implementation of the new regulation. These associations represent the fields of advanced practice nursing, therapy, public health, and education. They were seeking to stay the implementation of the NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) that had not been completed, yet it was set to become effective on July 1, 2026.

The court found that at least six substantive changes were made to the statutory definition without completing the rulemaking process. The statutory definition included requirements to finish the requirements of the degree, that a profession usually required licensing before practicing in the field which were consistent with the existing rule. However, in addition to these the changes included this one, odd, addition, described by the court, here:

Superimposed on these proposed definitional requirements for “professional degree,” the NPRM added another requirement, explaining that a degree is not a “professional degree” “when the degree leads to employment where the employee must be supervised by another professional who has, as required by their license and degree, more education, training, and qualifications than the person being supervised.”3

While they could change the rule if they completed the regulatory legal process of the Administrative Procedure Act, allowing at least sixty days for notice and comment, they did not complete that process. Their reasoning, the court noted, was somehow because the bill was not passed in time for them to conduct a full regulatory change process that they must have implicitly waived the regulatory timing requirement. That one would defy all previous case law on the requirement that Congress says what it means, and implications are not law.

Further, even if the U.S. Department of Education followed the Rulemaking process correctly, they still cannot make a rule that goes beyond the statutory language, and in this case, Congress defined what is a profession, leaving little, if any, room for expanding that definition.

On June 24, 2026, the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia granted a stay for the implementation of this rule that was to go into effect on July 1, 2026. While this is good news for the professions of nurses, architects and engineers, the Department of Education could still appeal the stay.

Final thoughts

The U.S. Department of Education has recognized there is a problem with student debt. The unintended consequences of their solution to reducing student loan debt, by killing the ability to produce more nurses, for example, in a field that is badly in need of them, is far worse than the problem they think they are fixing.

The Department of Education should probably go back to the drawing board on the student loan dilemma, and consider that it probably cannot be solved by redefining professions in an absurd way.

A federal district court in Massachusetts has granted an injunction for the Association of National Park Rangers, and others, against the Secretary of Interior’s implementation of a directive that resulted in the removal of interpretive signs that did not conform with an Executive Order signed by President Trump in March 2025. The court has ordered that the signs be replaced, in a nationwide order.1

All of this is in the context of the celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

How far can the President go to implement policy?

Executive Orders are directives from the President to direct how they will organize and implement federal law and regulation through the Departments and agencies. These are places where Presidential policy can be implemented where it is not contrary to federal law. Regulation can be shaped as well, but must be within the scope of a statute with power granted to make those regulations from Congress.

The President signed an Executive Order entitled, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” in March 20252 The stated purpose and policy of the directive to federal departments and agencies is seeking to move from previous policy to that of the current Administration with this purpose:

Section 1. Purpose and Policy. Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed. Rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe.3

Examples and planned actions in the Executive Order are those that a President can make within that Administration. Further down in the body of the Executive Order is a caveat that all this must be done in conformance with applicable law.4

So what happened between signing the EO and implementing the EO?

The litigation was brought by these parties: National Parks Conservation Association; American Association for State and Local History; Association of National Park Rangers Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks; Society for Experiential Graphic Designers; and Union of Concerned Scientists in response to the removal of selected interpretive signs and exhibits at several National Parks. The Park at Independence Hall, depicting the lives of some of the slaves kept at President Washington’s home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was particularly at issue with a directive in the E.O.. The Executive Order specifically named that National Park for “improve[ment]” of the “infrastructure” but in implementing that directive, there was a removal of nonconforming exhibits in such a way the existence of the topics were erased all together.5 Here is the language of the E.O.:

Sec. 3. Restoring Independence Hall. The Secretary of the Interior shall provide sufficient funding, as available, to improve the infrastructure of Independence National Historical Park, which shall be complete by July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.6

To the dismay of historians in general, nine of about a dozen poster-style exhibits about the life of the slaves in this location which was President George Washington’s home when Philadelphia was the capital of the United States, were simply removed from the wall leaving huge gaps between the posters. The objective evidence of this erasure could not have been more obvious and symbolic.

Soon after the E.O. was issued, the City of Philadelphia sued the National Park Service to stop the removal of the exhibits in Philadelphia January. In February, the Federal District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled that the National Park Service granted the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction (to stop any further removals) and ordered that the federal government must restore the exhibits. It is not a good sign, when the judge begins their opinion with a quote from Orwell’s novel, 1984. They wrote:

"As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984 now existed, with its motto 'Ignorance is Strength,' this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not."7

The Law on National Park Exhibits

The court looked at several factors to determine if the National Park Service could be stopped at least temporarily while the case was decided over a period of months or more. Passing the hurdles of jurisdiction and process, the court asked whether the action of the agency was “arbitrary and capricious” and two actions fell strongly against the DOI. In Administrative Law, courts have said that agencies must give a reason for reversing policy, some reasoned analysis—change of facts, discoveries, etc., but here the court found that simply citing to the Executive Order was not sufficient reason. The court also asked if there had been such a change in public opinion that this kind of exhibit was not longer wanted, and citing from the plaintiff’s facts, the court dedicated a lot of space in the opinion to the public opinion poll find that to the contrary, the public wanted to know more about the history, good, bad and ugly:

Plaintiffs provide a 2026 Pew Research Center survey reporting that sixty-six percent of all U.S. adults believe it is “extremely or very important to publicly discuss [both] the country’s historical successes and strengths” as well as “the country’s historical failures and flaws.” See Andy Cerda, Majorities of Americans Say It’s Important to Talk About the Country’s Historical Successes and Failures, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Jan. 26, 2026), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/01/26/majorities-of-americans-say-itsimportant-to-talk-about-the-countrys-historical-successes-and-failures (hereinafter “Pew Research Study”). This opinion cuts across race, age, and educational background, with the majority of each demographic group surveyed supporting the presentation of an unbiased history. 8

Thus, the action was “arbitrary and capricious.” The court also asks whether the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in the full trial, and one of those factors is whether there was any law violated. The court found there was a likelihood of success for the parties given the failure to procedurally change the regulation and the violation of one of the applicable National Park Service statutes, itself.

There are several statutes that were part of the analysis of the legal framework for National Park interpretations and exhibits. The organic statute (the one that describes the scope of authority of the department) is always consulted first and from there further statutes can be applied. The Centennial Act was specific as to the use of “high quality” interpretive exhibits and the statute was specific about what that meant, as cited by the court’s opinion:

Congress then provided clear instructions for what qualifies as “highest quality.” Section 100803 of the Act explains that the Secretary may undertake a program of regular evaluation “to ensure that [interpretation and education programs] . . . reflect different cultural backgrounds, ages, education, gender, abilities, ethnicity, and needs.”7 54 U.S.C. § 100803(2).9

When Congress speaks through legislation, the Executive Branch cannot alter that even if policy has changed. Because Congress speaks for the people, legislation prevails over Executive Branch directives.

Why the Massachusetts order was different

The Federal District Court in Massachusetts order is applicable nationally, thus making it a sweeping order. The court made a finding of actions taken by the National Parks Service, and here, they cite to specific examples of the targeting of Native American tribal history:

Defendants have also removed multiple interpretive materials dedicated to Native Tribes and describing the atrocities committed to their communities, such as: • A sign at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming explaining the complicated history of Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a key member of an early Yellowstone expedition who had participated in a massacre of Native Americans. • Signs at Acadia National Park in Maine describing the importance of Cadillac Mountain to the Wabanaki people to their culture and heritage. • Portions of displays at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona characterizing settlers, cattle ranchers, and tourists as negatively impacting the land for their own benefit and describing how the federal government claimed Tribal land to establish the park. 10

Final thoughts

There were many ways this could have worked and the Presidential policy of patriotism could have been effectively incorporated into the National Park Service interpretation. There were clearly elements of some of these examples of interpretive exhibits that were based on policy priorities of the prior Administration; however there are clearly examples of collaborative interpretations with historians and actual historical documentation. Interpretation without hiding the past would have furthered the goal of patriotism and would have provided a fresh interpretation. The most essential part of these interpretations would be for the National Park System to work in consultation with those most knowledgeable about these histories.

A golden opportunity in the Golden Age was missed.

Ranchers have long opposed the grazing of bison with cattle on federal grazing lands that are public lands leased to ranchers. They fear diseases and their main objective is making a profit from their cattle. These competing interests have put the bison at risk, and in May, the ranchers got what they have been asking for.1

The BLM denied the lease for seven allotments of federal grazing land for bison on May 8, 2026. The American Prairie Association has asked for a stay of that decision from the DOI Board of Appeals.2

There are competing interests, cattle ranchers, who fear the possibility that bison will infect cattle herds with brucellosis, since bison are subject to the same disease as cattle in this case. Efforts to test bison caused so much stress that many died so a plant to test representatives from breeding herds was instituted. This risk of disease is the basis for pointlessly shooting them, as well as wild game hunters who find it sporting to shoot a bison, grazing in a field. The National Forest Service has rented out Yellowstone to cattle ranchers over the summer, and trucked in cattle which means they slaughter bison who are grazing in those lands. The NFS has been repeatedly petitioned to review this action but has persisted.3 Native Nations with traditions in bison hunting also kill them in conformance with their treaty rights, but some of this may need to be limited to ceremonies in years of low survival of bison, like these last few years.

The bison is the ultimate survivor. It should have gone extinct during the Pleistocene Era when other large mammals succombed to the change in environment and the advent of homo sapiens and spear hunting, but it survived. The modern species bison bison replaced the two ancestral species, Bison priscus and Bison antiquus, that were bigger and slower than today’s bison, Bison bison.4 Part of its ability to survive may be because of its cross species ability to breed (introgressive hybridization), which led researchers to see if bison were truly pure genomicaly in the top three of the seven strains in North America. Of the three top strains, none were found to be pure and were infused with cattle DNA.5

There are about 30,000 bison that are roaming wild while the balance of about 470,000 are farmed. It is important to keep wild bison in order to evolve naturally in their environment. Yellowstone is home to one strain that is the focus of recent regulatory action to preserve.

This regulatory dichotomy seems to have led DOI to a decision exclude only the “wild” bison from federal grazing lands because they do not meet their definition of “livestock production”. A comment from DOI on this decision to a news media outlet argues they are confident in their interpretation of the Taylor Grazing Act:

“While we do not comment on pending litigation, the Bureau of Land Management’s decision was firmly grounded in federal law and a thorough review of the administrative record,” the spokesperson wrote. “The agency determined that American Prairie’s bison operation does not satisfy the statutory requirements for a federal grazing permit under the Taylor Grazing Act because the herd is managed primarily for conservation purposes rather than livestock production.”6

The Yellowstone Bison Herds

There are two distinct herds distinct population segment (DPS) for the Yellowstone bison.of bison in Yellowstone National Park, and there are two subspecies: the Plains bison [ Bison bison bison ] and the wood bison [ Bison bison athabascae ].7 Both had devastating losses this year the worst since 2008.8 On December 22, 2022 thirteen bison were killed just outside Yellowstone National Park by a freight truck, some of the herd needing to be euthanized.9 The lack of food drove them out of the park to areas where they are subject to being shot where it is legal to shoot them.

Although advocacy groups were successful in extending the protected range beyond the borders of Yellowstone National Park, it did not prove broad enough. So the petitions of non-profit advocacy organizations to the U.S. Department of Interior triggered a response from DOI to undergo a status review to see if the plains Bison should be protected as an endangered species. The US DOI has recommended that it be protected but whether it is threatened or endangered, two different standards under the Endangered Species Act, should be the questions resolved in the review currently underway until June 4. 2023.10

The Yellowstone bison herds are the last of the wild bison and the U.S. DOI has an opportunity to designate it appropriately as “endangered”. But instead, they have decided to pursue a policy to do just the opposite and exclude wild bison from grazing on federal grazing lands, as they have always done, increasing the pressure on their survival.

Co-management of wild bison on federal lands.

Co-management of all distinct bison herds with Native Nations is long overdue and Yellowstone National Park should be currently consulting with Native Nations with bison traditions, in accordance with Pres. Biden’s Executive Order on Jan 21, 2021, and specific consultation protocols developed under that guidance.

Some practical solutions already underway include farming bison. Commercializing bison meat has ensured the continuity of many bison herds. (You can now buy ground bison by the pound in most grocery store chains.) Like elk, it was also commercialized and a market was created for elk meat, which ensured survival of elk.

As domesticated farm stock, bison and elk are regulated by USDA. Meat inspection is voluntary, done by FDA. However, if it is sold commercially it has to be inspected in accordance with the Federal Meat Inspection Act, as an exotic, or “non-amenable species,” 11 Regulating bison falls to the FWS and USDA and FDA depending upon their status.12

Both elk and bison that are wild are regulated as “wildlife” which falls under the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, when wild, or equivalent state agencies. In 2000, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service petitioned to classify bison as a wildlife species in need of conservation.13 The US Fish & Wildlife Service can provide bison through a surplus distribution program for tribal and intertribal requests, based on several statutory authorities including the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.14 Wild bison can and does become “livestock production” from these government activities to hunting bison and for its use as food.

Final thoughts

The action is being appealed within the Department of Interior, and the parties must go through all the procedural steps available to them in the agency before seeking the review of a federal district court (ripeness and exhaustion doctrines). If the DOI Appeals board affirms the action of the agency, then the parties may move to federal court. Then the action by the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management once before a federal district court, will likely be found to be a rulemaking. A rule is a government action that has a “future effect”,15 and so is very broad. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, a rulemaking requires a notice and comment period of at least 60 days, and for the agency to consider the comments. It does not have to act on the comments but procedurally, it must follow these steps before imposing a rule on those affected by it.

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[This article includes excerpts from an article I wrote here for May 14, 2023 about the effort to list the bison as an endangered species. You can read it here:

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NAGPRA, or the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, is a law that requires human remains of Native Americans to be returned to their families and Tribes, and criminalizes the trade of human remains of Native Americans. The statute also requires repatriation of some sacred objects or objects of cultural patrimony that were “collected” under certain circumstances. The remains of Native American children who were taken from their families and died in the custody of the Carlisle Indian School staff, and buried on the grounds of the school are at issue in this case.

I wrote in February 2024 about the case filed by the Winnebago Nation against the U.S. Army for failure to comply with NAGPRA in the return of the remains of two children buried in the Carlisle Indian School cemetery, a U.S. Army property.1 The title, “A Chance to Right Wrongs” served to predict the choice missed by the U.S. Army in continuing to refuse to comply with NAGPRA and demand that tribal nations follow Army policy which required a living descendant to claim the remains — and if they died as children they have no descendants. The cruel irony of that policy apparently raised no moral or ethical red flags for the U.S. Army. Too clever, by far.

One has to wonder what the lone dissenting Judge Rushing was thinking by saying, the U.S. Army agreed the human remains should be returned, “they merely dispute how.”2 Perhaps he had not thought through the paradox of “how” the U.S. Army thought that should happen.

Who is managing the Carlisle Indian School cemetery?

The U.S. Army has an office called the Office of Army Cemeteries to manage military cemeteries. Here is their description of the Carlisle Indian School cemetery, which they call “The Carlisle Barracks Main Post Cemetery”:

The Carlisle Barracks Main Post Cemetery was established in 1880 after the opening of the Carlisle Barracks Indian Industrial School in 1879. According to current historical research, at least 187 Native American and Alaska Native children died while attending the school and were interred at the Carlisle Barracks Main Post Cemetery, not including Unknowns. Military members and their families were also interred at the cemetery. The Office of Army Cemeteries (OAC) oversees the Carlisle Barracks Main Post Cemetery, including administrative support and cemetery operations. The Carlisle Barracks Directorate of Public Works provides daily care and maintenance for the cemetery.3

Unlike other military cemeteries, the Carlisle Indian School was not a cemetery. It was a school managed by the U.S. Army in their building and property, during a time that the U.S. had just transitioned from the status of “at war” with Indian Nations to ending that status. The policy of the United States was “kill the Indian, save the man” in their cruel methods of assimilation of children as young as 3 years old.4 This historical context makes it seem all the more strange to leave this cemetery in the care of the U.S. Army.

How did the court find that NAGPRA applies to the U.S. Army?

The underlying case turned on one of the criteria in NAGPRA, that must be met to trigger the repatriation obligations of the statute. That is whether the Carlisle Indian School cemetery is a “holding or collection”. In order to answer that question, the U.S. Army argued this case was like another case about the burial place of Jim Thorpe that was a family and tribal conflict at the time of his death. But the court was asking another question—whether the city was a “museum” within the meaning of NAGPRA.5 Despite this being a different question, the district court relied on it, but the appeals court wrote:

Thorpe turned on whether Mr. Thorpe’s gravesite qualified as a “museum” under NAGPRA, id. at 262–63; see 25 U.S.C. § 3001(8) (defining “museum”), and thus presented a legal question different from the one we confront. But the district court found its reasoning instructive. . .6

The facts were such that the court added that NAGPRA was not intended to apply to family disputes about the burial place of a deceased relative. The court held:

The district court dismissed the Tribe’s action for failure to state a claim, concluding that the Act requires repatriation only of previously excavated remains and not of remains buried in cemeteries. We disagree. As alleged in the Tribe’s complaint, the boys’ buried remains are subject to the Act’s repatriation obligation as part of a “holding or collection” under the Army’s control. We therefore vacate the judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings.7

The court addressed the “holding” part of “holding or collection” by finding that “a cemetery that serves, in the Army report’s own words, as ‘a repository for the remains of Indian School students,’ J.A. 50, would seem to qualify as ‘something that holds.’ ” 8

The Fourth Circuit found that NAGPRA applies to the U.S. Army and the Carlisle Indian School cemetery.

Final thoughts

The federal government defended the U.S. Army against the application of NAGPRA to the remains of Native American children who were mostly there against their families wishes, in the context of a policy period in the United States that supported the genocide of Native Americans, and barely at the end of declared war against Native Nations. Not more than a couple of years ago, state governments challenged the Constitutionality of a statute that was also meant to correct the wrongs of the past in Brackeen v. Haaland (2023).9 This law was also intended to reverse the inappropriate adoptions of Native American children through forced removals from their homes, in a misguided policy of assimilation.

This entire waste of tax payers money to defend the indefensible in both cases, suggest that the next time the U.S. Dept. of Justice hires attorneys, they should seriously consider applicants with Federal Indian Law courses on their law school transcripts.

Fluorine is the most reactive element on the periodic table, and it has also resulted in reactivity in public opinion.

Fluoride, an ionic form of fluorine, has been the subject of controversy and conspiracy, because of the federal requirement to add it to the public drinking water systems. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sec. Robert Kennedy, has said that. “Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”1 Several states began to take action on their own without waiting for the federal government to act. Both Florida and Utah have passed state laws restricting its use. Nebraska and Louisiana both proposed legislation in 2024-5 that passed in one house and failed in the other. Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and all saw bills introduced that died in committee or were just not acted on before the end of the legislative session.2

Fluoride does not kill bacteria like chlorine, another added chemical to the public water system, but it contributes to bone and teeth growth and maintenance.3 Advertisements for toothpaste told us fluoride prevented cavities.

Advertisement images from many sources, dated in the 1970s.

In a recent report from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Toxicology, they comprehensively considered the toxicological effects of fluoride. They followed a cohort of over 10,000 people to age 80, and determined that it did not have negative effects on intelligence,4 despite the spin given to that report by those who are opposed to adding fluoride to the water. It is true, that as the founder of the field of toxicology is quoted as saying, “the dose makes the poison.”5

Recent litigation

Interest groups seeking to limit fluoride in public drinking systems, petitioned EPA to regulate fluoride under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). EPA is petitioned all the time to regulate or do something, which is part of the administrative regulatory process. EPA may ignore those petitions or they may act on them if it is within the scope of their statutory authority. EPA declined regulate fluoride and when the decision was reviewed by a U.S. District Court, the court felt that EPA was not considering new research, and set a new trial to consider it.

In May 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, vacated the district court’s decision and remanded for abuse of discretion. The district court abused its discretion after the first bench trial by commandeering the case, which indicates the court went beyond the parties’ issues as they framed them. When the district court set a new bench trial on facts the parties had not requested, the appeals court found that to be going too far and violated the principle of parties presentation.6

This is also a story about why courts should not be analyzing scientific studies that would be the basis of regulations. In this case, the court wanted EPA to look at a study done in 2025, that was a meta-analysis. These studies simply examine all studies that have been done on the subject, in this case the risks of fluoride, and come to a conclusion based on all of the studies. This can be unreliable, as the methodology and quality of the work in each study will vary. This can lead to false conclusions, too.

A good example of EPA relying on a meta-analysis was its study of electromagnetic fields from high voltage powerlines in 1987. I was in the Office of Science and Technology Policy as a Senior Environmental Analyst, and was one of the reviewers. It was a meta-analysis study of a couple dozen studies that were all inconclusive. However, because many of them proposed the research pointed to cancer caused by proximity to powerlines, the conclusion of the meta-analysis report was that therefore, EMF from power lines must cause cancer. So a composite of uncertain conclusions cannot result in a certain conclusion, and that was one of the problems with the study.7

All this is to say, meta-analysis studies can be helpful in identifying needed areas of study, but can be very misleading if not properly analyzed. The court had directed EPA to consider this in finding fluoride posed an unreasonable risk in drinking water.

Adding Fluoride to Public Drinking Water

The U.S. Public Health Service recommended adding fluoride to public water systems, first, in 1962.8

Some regions simply have high fluoride levels in groundwater. Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado in the arid Southwest and southern Great Plains is where fluoride leaches from volcanic and granitic rock and concentrates in slow-moving groundwater. This is consistently the highest-fluoride region in the country and aligns with the global pattern, since elevated naturally occurring fluoride in groundwater (>1.5 mg/L) is prevalent in western North America among the world's high-fluoride regions. The "localized pockets" tier (South Carolina, Virginia, and parts of the upper Midwest) captures areas with known but more scattered occurrences.

Fluoride-adding water systems serve 67% of the U.S. population.9 Among nearly 8 billion person-months of data from fluoride-adding systems during 2016–2021, only 0.01% exceeded the EPA's 2.0 mg/L secondary standard. A standard set at 1.5 mg/L would mainly force treatment in naturally high-fluoride areas (defluoridation), not end community fluoridation, whereas pushing the limit well below 0.7 would be what actually curtails added fluoridation.10

Final thoughts

General background levels of fluoride make standard setting difficult, because the Safe Drinking Water Act does not require reduction of naturally occurring background levels of contaminants to be treated, but the statute does require disclosure to the public. If the contaminant is regulated under TSCA as toxic pollutant, then defluoridation would be required in high fluoride areas. The benefits of fluoridation would have to be weighed against the risks, and right now, studies are inconclusive about the effects of fluorine. However, a recommended standard of 1.5 mg/L would mainly affect only those areas with background levels of fluoride; whereas a standard of 0.7 would be needed to actually begin to limit existing fluoridation statistics for public water system treatment. The cost to reduce contaminants is exponential for each increment of reduction, and so this standard could get very expensive very quickly. In the meantime, while more study is done, a standard of 2.0 mg/L would be a good start, with only 0.01% of systems exceeding that standard. We would have a process to study for its effects, and a cost effectiveness factor that would financially effect far fewer public water systems, while still providing a standard of safety.

Ebola has returned to Africa and this time, the World Health Organization declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on May 17, 2026. In the last notable outbreak of 2013-14, it was not declared a PHEIC for almost a year, when many of the same factors existed that would make it one. I will share the algorithm for determining whether you have a PHEIC under the International Health Regulations and discuss how this happened.

This algorithm is typically used to determine when a member Nation should notify WHO of any outbreak or case. These factors are also considered when WHO considers whether a PHEIC should be declared. The Director General in his remarks on May 19, 2026 said this, “This is the first time a Director-General has declared a PHEIC before convening an Emergency Committee. I did not do this lightly.” 1

The Director-General appointed an Emergency Committee on May 20, 2026.

The mechanism to declare a PHEIC was created in the International Health Regulations that became final in 2005. This regulation had been in development for some years, but there is no doubt that the 2003 SARS outbreak in China (when China failed to report the novel respiratory virus) gave momentum to completing the binding regulations. Since that time, nine official PHEIC declarations have been made, three of them for an Ebola outbreak in Africa:

• 2009-2010, H1N1 (”Swine Flu”) Influenza Pandemic

• 2014 - present, Poliomyelitis

• 2014-2016, Western Africa Ebola Epidemic

• 2016, Zika Virus Epidemic

• 2019-2020, Kivu Ebola Epidemic (Democratic Republic of the Congo)

• 2022-2023, COVID-19 Pandemic

• 2022-2023, Mpox (Monkeypox) Epidemic (Clade II)

• 2024-2025, Mpox Epidemic (Clade I)

• 2026-Present, Ebola Epidemic [Ituri Province (Congo) & Uganda]

So what was different about this outbreak? First there was a lot of criticism for the slow response from the West to the outbreak in 2013. The problem is always framed as “what is the risk to Europe?” rather than what can we do to help contain the people in Africa. This political cartoon captured that public perception:

From, Adnan I Qureshi, “West Saharan Response to Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic,” chapter in Ebola Virus Disease: From Origins to Outbreak (Elsevier, 2016).2

The Director General’s rush to declare a PHEIC even before the committee was convened showed this urgency he felt existed but he also could have felt pressure from the past foot-dragging.

The stated reason was for all of the factors in the PHEIC algorithm. Naming this as factor number five, the Director General stated that the Bundibugyo virus (the rarer strain of the three strains of Ebola), unlike the other two Ebola-Zaire strains, does not have a known vaccine or therapeutic.3 (However, during the 2013 outbreak, there was no known vaccine; however there was an experimental one, discussed below, approved for experimental use only after the PHEIC declaration. In addition, there was a different Director General, Dr. Margaret Chan.4)

The slow response in 2013

I wrote in Feb 2025 about the slow response of the West to the Ebola epidemic in Western Africa in 2013. A PHEIC was not declared until 2014. There was another outbreak in the DRC (Congo) in 2018-2019, that was complex and difficult and for that, another PHEIC was declared.5 Since that time there have been minor outbreaks, but not until this week, has any of these risen to the third PHEIC declaration.

The first vaccine used for Ebola was in 2014 in Western Africa during an epidemic, there. I will excerpt that article here (you can read the entire article here at this footnote).6

Growing Vaccines in Plants—ZMapp

ZMapp is a therapeutic that was developed as a rapid response to Ebola in the 2013-2014 epidemic. The World Health Organization and the western hemisphere was slow to respond to the epidemic emerging in three of the countries of western Africa (Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia). But once Ebola began to spread beyond Africa, the efforts to develop a vaccine and therapeutics accelerated their development. Exacerbating the situation, there was an intense distrust among the people of west Africa of western countries profiting from a vaccine as well as a distrust of their own corrupt governments.

Meanwhile, over the course of years, hundreds of U.S. scientists had been engaged in research for a vaccine or “cure” for Ebola.

The reproduction of cells in the tobacco leaf had been an ongoing research process already for about a decade. When the opportunity arose to apply this urgent need to develop antibodies to Ebola, the company, ZMapp was successful with this biotechnology process. A company in Kentucky was hired for the growing process, Kentucky Bioprocessing, a subsidiary of Reynolds America, experts in tobacco cultivation.

Although ZMapp had not been tried on any human subjects, it was determined to meet the experimental use category (EUA) of FDA for use on Ebola patients in October 2014. The World Health Organization also determined it met the requirements through its emergency use in public health emergencies protocol, Monitored Emergency Use of Unregistered and Investigational Interventions (MEURI). ⁷

A brief account of the course of the Ebola epidemic in west Africa is given in a book by Michael B.A. Oldstone and Madeleine Rose Oldstone, in Ebola’s Curse, 2017:

At this Doctors Without Borders center where Khan now awaited help were others infected with Ebola and also gravely sick. Yet, the center had barely enough ZMapp for three or four persons. Despite his eminence, Dr. Khan was not told that ZMapp was available. The choice of which patients received ZMapp lay primarily in the hands of a team at the Canadian company that made ZMapp and members of Doctors Without Borders at the Kailahun treatment center. But they were not the only decision makers. Also involved were representatives from the World Health Organization, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health. Despite the danger of progressive disease as time passed, the health officials deliberated while considering that neither the antibody’s therapeutic effectiveness nor its side effects were known. In the end, they decided not to tell Khan about ZMapp or ask if it could be used on him. Instead, the ZMapp was transported to Guinea where two Ebola-infected victims were treated: a volunteer American physician, Kent Brantly, and a volunteer American health worker, Nancy Writebol, both from Samaritan’s Purse charity. Later a priest, Miguel Pajares, from Spain was also given ZMapp. The first two survived but the priest died.

The WHO approved ZMapp in the 2018-19 Kivu Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under the MEURI protocol. However, the newer drug, REGENERON, was purportedly more effective than ZMapp and in August 2019, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s national health authorities, the World Health Organization, and the National Institutes of Health announced ZMapp would no longer be used to treat Ebola because REGENERON was said to be much more effective. REGENERON was developed in response to the COVID-19 need for therapeutics, was the first drug to be approved by the FDA as an approved treatment for Ebola, October 2020.

Final thoughts

The urgency with declaring the Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda by the Director General before a committee could even be appointed, seems to have turned on the one key different from the previous outbreaks — because it is the rarer strain of Ebola, which has no vaccine or therapeutic.

But when the rest of the world asks if they should be concerned about Ebola reaching them, the answer may be “yes” or a PHEIC may never be declared and Africa might never get the help they need.

_________________________________________________________________________

May 25, 2022 I wrote the first unintended consequences article, and wrote one each week from then on. I had about 25 subscribers and about 41 views on my first article. Thanks to all of you I have about 500 subscribers and as many as 5,000 views every week. This marks the four year anniversary and thank you for going on this journey with me.

The prediction of a coming Ice Age was first published in an article in 1956 Science magazine, after research about what caused the past ice ages, led the researchers to predict another one would be coming.1

I will share a personal story with you which I do not often do, but since I was at the U.S. EPA at a pivotal time in history with the first introduction of climate change research and the first Framework Convention on Climate Change led by the United States, it may be worth sharing. I had just graduated with a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences, with risk communication as my special dissertation area of expertise. As a political appointee of Pres. George H.W. Bush, I was assigned to what we called the “policy shop” as a communications specialist. It was my dream job. I remember one day cleaning up the media room, and there was a documentary on The Coming Ice Age, and I thought this should be useful given the discussion about global warming, right? I was told it needed to go to storage. I was confused at first, but I got the messaging. Even though we knew there was a coming Ice Age, to talk about it would muddle the message about global warming.

In an interesting turn, just this month, former Vice President, Al Gore, talked about a coming Ice Age in Europe, at the Conference of Parties meeting (COP30) on the Global Climate treaty. The COP30 also just revised its predictions for global warming, discrediting the extreme predictions of the warming models, saying the warming will likely be more in the moderate range of the model prediction. They reduced the 4.5 degrees C to 3.5 degrees C predicted warming for the worse-case-scenario.2 But do not celebrate too fast — the moderate range selection is also because the IPCC found that the lower level model predicting 1.5 degrees C rise, has largely been determined to be too low. (The models typically used three predictive levels, a low level, a moderate and an extreme/worse-case-scenario level, accounting for the uncertainty in the factors that are used to run the model about things we have to guess about.)

This is not to say that Al Gore has changed his position on global warming, just that he has introduced the complicating factor of a coming Ice Age, that had not been discussed in this context. Global warming might even prevent an Ice Age altogether was some of the wisdom. However, more to the point, he was trying to say that there will be regional differences — some regions will get warming, some regions will get cooling.

The Science

The “ice age” mechanism is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — the system that includes the Gulf Stream and pulls warm tropical water north. A June 2025 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that in an intermediate emissions scenario, greenhouse gas-driven warming would not be able to outweigh the cooling impact of an AMOC collapse. As you see in this diagram, the warm (red) streams collapsing would be overwhelmed with the cooling (blue) and more cooling would result.3

In that model, one-in-10 winters in London could see cold extremes approaching -20°C, and winter extremes in Oslo could plummet to around -48°C. The "State of the Cryosphere" report says AMOC may be en route to collapse because of ice melt and water warming, with impacts including cooling of Northern Europe faster than 3°C per decade, "with no realistic means of adaptation."4

In a fortunate turn of events for Europe, it appears that global warming may slow the coming ice age from 50,000 to 100,000 years from now.5

But there is still an unclear picture even with a review of 34 climate models. A 2025 Nature study examined the future stability of AMOC in 34 climate models and found an AMOC collapse this century was "unlikely." Research published in Nature Geoscience in 2025 found AMOC would experience "limited weakening" of 18-43% by 2100 even in a very-high emissions scenario.6

Then there are also predictions of a coming “mini Ice Age”.7

Climate change vs. global warming

Climate change would seem to be a better description but it misses the messaging of warnings about warming. From the historical record, climate change was first discussed in science in 1956, global warming in 1975. Thereafter, global warming dominated the messaging, but in the 2000s, climate change began to replace global warming to describe the complexity of regional changes.8

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was consistently the same since its formation in 1988. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was the first treaty which started the many treaties and protocols that followed. The three panels of the IPCC — science, policy and economics — have consistently met to develop consensus reports on these topics, and they have maintained their original name reflecting “climate change.”

Final thoughts

Climate change is complex and messaging with a message so simple that it leaves out critical parts of the problem has probably led to a distrust of government and science. This has probably also contributed to the political polarization of the issue, where it is seen as black and white —when it is mostly gray. Thirty years of the world’s meetings on climate change predictions, targets and timetables, it has been a demonstration of unprecedented cooperation on trying to understand a global phenomena and potential threat. Adjusting climate models to reflect vast amounts of data collected over the past decades is exactly what should be happening. Further, maybe more discussion about the complexity of the predictions should become more frequent. Then extremist ideas, like geoengineering would be much easier to see how misguided they are.9

It is a complex issue and for decades it has been too simple, creating distrust and too focused on reducing energy use which is directly related to annihilating the economy. More discussion about adaptation and mitigation and less about dropping the global GDP to levels of economic ruin, might even lead to more efficiencies in energy useage and more unified minds in a global approach to the phenomena based on these realities.

Cruise ships are enclosed environments, high density populations of humans and weeks of exposure. Add to that, their worldwide or regional contact with cities giving hours of exposure to any virus or bacteria that can be collected from a range of ports in increments of time. This real-life experiment has created a specialty area of study.

Galveston is a major port for cruise ship embarkations and debarkations and as such, it has attracted researchers who specialize in cruise ship viruses and bacterium, to the University of Texas-Medical Branch (UTMB). This has helped us understand the frequent outbreaks of sickness on cruise ships has been due to norovirus.

One virus that would not have been a candidate for a cruise ship virus, is hanta virus. Its form in the United States is zoonotic, that is, it is transmitted from animals to humans. The respiratory infection has a high mortality rate, too — up to 50% infected with the Americas strain will die.1

The first patient was diagnosed with what turns out to be a hanta virus strain that is communicable from human to human and explained why a number of people (that number is unclear) became infected. Further, the cruise ship, named the MV Hondius, had departed from Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1, 2026 with more than 140 passengers where this strain of the virus (Andes) is endemic.2 As of May 8, 2026, three have died, consistent with its high mortality rate.3

Previous investigations of the hanta virus

The first time there was a diagnosed outbreak of hanta virus in the United States, it started out as a “mystery illness” and a person would show symptoms of respiratory distress and three days later they were dead. No one knew what the disease was, and it was causing panic. The outbreak occurred in the Four Corners region on the Navajo Nation reservation. It was reported as the “Navajo disease” by at least one news outlet and some stores in the region banned Navajo people from entering them. You might guess this was 1860? But no, this happened in 1993.

The CDC sent a team of epidemiologists to investigate this mystery disease but were stumped as to what was killing people. It was not until the Elders were consulted, did they learn that the Elders knew from where it came.

It has been a wet spring following a few years of drought and the pinenuts were especially fruitful. The deer mice eat pinenuts and so the populations of deer mice exploded,4 increasing the chances of exposure to humans. The young couple who were the first victims of the virus, had gone to a cabin where they were exposed to deer mice droppings.

There is a reason the Elders say that if you see a mouse run across your clothing, burn your clothes. When mice are frightened they often urinate which would contaminate the clothing with the hanta virus which is spread through feces and urine. Dr. Lori Alvord, the first Navajo surgeon, explained this entire case in her book, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing (2000).5 She shares these traditions like clothes burning, and other ways of knowing about these outbreaks.

When epidemiologists and public health officials met with Navajo Elders, drawing on Navajo oral history, they described two previous occasions when an unknown disease had emerged that killed community members: 1918 and 1933. In each of these years, unusually wet springs had preceded the emergence of these outbreaks, and the wet conditions produced abundant pinenut growth. According to Navajo tradition, mice inhabit the nocturnal and outdoor world and humans the daytime and indoor world, and the two should not mix or sickness and death may occur.6

What this traditional knowledge did was answer the ecological and predictive question: what conditions produce these outbreaks. The elders noted comparable deaths recounted in their oral history, observing that similar disease presentations would occur after periods of "excess" — years of excess rain, excess vegetation, and consequently excess rodents — and this critical information guided the scientists to look into rodent-borne infections.7 The virus was isolated and identified by scientists, but it was the combination of these two world views of science that solved the “mystery disease”.

The case is an example of why ecological surveillance matters and why long-memory community knowledge is a legitimate scientific resource alongside biomedical investigation.

Meanwhile in Argentina

The Argentina government officials have said that the Andes hanta virus strain has not been found before in the port city where the cruise ship originated. However, there is ample evidence from this distribution map8 that it is only less likely to be there than other regions. (Ushuaia is located on the southern tip of Argentina.)

The World Health Organization should send anthropologists, not just epidemiologists to Argentina and if they have not already done so, begin talking with Elders from the Indigenous tribes and communities of Argentina.9 If we have learned anything from the Navajo Nation investigation of hanta virus, it is that all forms of knowledge can help solve the problem that otherwise may remain a mystery. While the virus has been identified, a patient zero has not been identified nor the route of infection that appears to have originated in Argentina with the Andes strain. Learning the conditions for this as well any ecological conditions that increased the risk of exposure to the Andes strain would be invaluable.

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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Safe Drinking Water Act and how we may still get water that is below acceptable standards — because it is better than no water at all. That is a summary of the policy for the small public water systems regulatory environment.

So let’s say you take matters into your own hands and buy a water filter for your home. Water filter systems that filter all water coming into your home usually use a filtration, disinfection and ion exchange and result in nice, clear water.1 You can buy filtered or purified or distilled water by the gallon at your supermarket, but we have recently learned all bottled water is contaminated with microplastic particles. 2 We can also choose a pitcher with a filter that claims to filter a list of contaminants. Brita, a well known water filter company, are certified to filter these contaminants, including:

• Chlorine and chloramine

• Lead (Brita Elite only)

• PFAS (Brita Elite only)

• Microplastics (Brita Elite only)3

So what’s the harm in contaminated drinking water ?

From the beginning of time, humans were in search of clean drinking water, but population density was low enough to prevent contamination beyond the usual parasites. When boiling water became a tool in safe drinking water, around the Fifteenth Century, B.C., less illness from drinking water resulted.4

The CDC estimates that at least 1.1 million people in the United States get sick every year from germs in drinking water — about 1 in every 300 people. Legionella is the leading cause of outbreak-linked illness, followed by other pathogens like Pseudomonas, norovirus, Giardia, and Campylobacter.5 The Brita pitcher filter does not remove microbes, bacteria or amoebas.6

Nearly one-third of Americans are exposed to some unregulated contaminant in drinking water, with 27% of public water systems having chemicals linked to health issues.7

Who regulates water filters—EPA? FDA? CPSC?

None of them.

The Environmental Protection Agency (FDA) does not regulate home water filters. They regulate water up to the point of entry into a home (and at the exit point as it leaves the home). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only regulates devices that make medical claims, not claims of purification. So it would seem the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) would be the obvious choice? The answer is again, no. It is a common misperception that the CPSC approves consumer products before they can be marketed but that is not the mission of CPSC. They can create standards although this is often a third party role, but they are best at receiving complaints and negotiating recalls of products found to be unsafe. In 1975, the CPSC was contacted by a company proposing to produce a water filter about whether CPSC would regulate it. CPSC outlined how they would not regulate it. They also pointed out there were no existing regulations that would require it of any agency.8

So when Brita claims to be “certified” —who is doing the certification?

Third party organizations develop standards for the removal of contaminants from water and then certify those filters for having met those standards. So although there is no government regulation, these certification organizations create a standard of reliability for products. The most common third party certification for a product category is probably “UL approved” electrical products meaning they meet the third party standards of safety.9 (I have observed a frequent lack of this certification on many electrical products I have purchased through Amazon.com. Having come to expect some assurance of safety from this certification, this reminds me that it is a third party voluntary standard.)

Here are the three certifying organizations for water filters:10

The NSF (National Sanitation Foundation) sets the main standards — like NSF/ANSI 42 (taste, chlorine, particulates), 53 (health-related contaminants like lead and cysts), 58 (reverse osmosis), and 401 (emerging contaminants).

The WQA (Water Qualify Association) also certify filters against those same NSF/ANSI standards.

For example, a Brita filter elite, is certified by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) working with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for the removal of lead. So the standard certified here, is NSF/ANSI Standard 53 for lead reduction.

Only if a water filter company makes claims that are fraudulent or misleading would an agency intervene. In the case of fraudulent or false advertising claims, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would have authority to pursue enforcement of false advertising claims.

I will see you in court, Brita

The civil court system is also available to pursue harms resulting from products. A consumer has sued Brita for the costs of the $15 Brita pitcher filter they purchased believing it would remove the contaminants to a detectable level. (Because technology has increasingly made detectable levels lower and lower, the FDA was forced to rethink its “zero” tolerance of carcinogens requirement set in the FDCA, called the Delaney Clause.)11

In Brown v. The Brita Products Company, the named consumer, Nicholas Brown, claimed that he believed the Brita filter would remove all detectable contaminants and he would not have spent $15 on the Brita pitcher filter had he known that it simply reduced the contaminants.12 The Ninth Circuit, applying California Consumer Protection law, concluded that a person could not reasonably expect a $15 water filter to remove all contaminants harmful to health. The Ninth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals, affirmed the U.S. District Court’s decision to dismiss without leave to amend.13

Final thoughts

Knowledge is the best defense to protecting us from contaminated water. Knowing what your water filter will and will not do, and that there is no federal agency to provide oversight for its contamination beyond the Safe Drinking Water Act standards, and fraudulent claims of water filter companies advertisements, is also useful. It is ironic with all of the federal budget designed to protect us from harms, filtering contaminants from water is not one of them. From boiling water to Brita filters, we are still on that quest for safe drinking water.

It sounds like science fiction, but microbes that have adapted to consuming steel and iron as food sources, as well as substrate for growing producing damage is part of evolving life in the industrialization of the environment.

The emerging field of astrobiology studies extremophiles on Earth as a way to consider what kind of organisms might exist in extreme environments. These organisms exist in extreme heat (hyperthermophiles), extreme cold (psychrophiles), extreme acidity (acidophiles), extreme alkalinity (alkaliphiles), extreme pressure (piezophiles) and other extreme conditions as you can see from the chart produced by x.com below:

The phenomenon is called microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC), also called biocorrosion or microbially induced corrosion. While not all the microbes involved are technically “extremophiles” in the strict sense, several extremophilic species (acidophiles, thermophiles, halophiles, and piezophiles) play important roles. Here is the basic phenomenon.

The basic phenomenon

Biocorrosion occurs when microorganisms colonize metal surfaces, form biofilms, and either directly consume iron as an energy source or produce metabolic byproducts (acids, sulfides) that dissolve the metal. Because every surface exposed to the environment is also exposed to microbes, microbial corrosion causes trillions of dollars in damage globally each year. Some estimates attribute roughly 10–20% of corrosion-related industrial incidents to MIC, though confirmation practices remain inconsistent.1

Sulfate-reducing bacteria and archaea (SRB/SRP) are the most studied group. They thrive in anaerobic conditions and reduce sulfate to hydrogen sulfide, which reacts with iron to form metal sulfides and pits. Recent research has shown some SRB perform "electrical MIC" — directly pulling electrons from metallic iron even without organic electron donors, leading to progressive oxidation.2

Acidophiles (extremophiles) exist at very low pH. The bacteria, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans has been shown in laboratory studies to accelerate corrosion of carbon steel by 3–6× the rate of acidic water alone at a pH of 2, by oxidizing iron. In some conditions, this bacteria was even more damaging to stainless steel mass than sulfate-reducing bacteria by an order of magnitude.3

Real consequences

2015

A leak at Southern California Gas Company’s (SoCalGas) Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility occurred on October 23, 2015. The facility is located 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley. It consisted of approximately 114 storage injection and withdrawal wells that were drilled from 1939 to 2014, at the time of the leak.4 It took almost six months to find and stop the leak of natural gas.

The official investigative report found this to be the cause:

the direct cause of the leak was a rupture of the seven-inch intermediate casing due to microbial corrosion. The corrosion, in turn, was caused by the presence of: (1) groundwater accessing the surface casing from outside the well bore and (2) carbon dioxide (a component of natural gas) seeping through the seven-inch intermediate casing which nourished the formation of the microbes, adding to the corrosion. 5

2000

In August 2000, in Carlsbad, New Mexico, an underground steel pipeline failed at a section crossing the Pecos River where it was supported by a steel bridge. The pipeline was owned by El Paso Natural Gas Company. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the incident that resulted in the deaths of 12 people who were camping near or under the bridge. The report found the pipeline failed due to thinning walls due to corrosion which was caused by bacteria:

Anaerobic bacteria were present in all deposit/corrosion product samples, and aerobic bacteria were present in 9 of 11 samples; sulfate-reducing bacteria were detected in 18 of 22 individual tests (10 of 11 samples), and acid-producing bacteria were detected in 10 of 22 individual tests (7 of 11 samples). 6

2006

A pipeline leak in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in March 2006 and owned by British Petroleum, was an extensive leak of 200,000 gallons of oil. The investigation of the leak concluded that it was induced by microbial corrosion:

Based on our analysis to date, we believe that internal corrosion, induced by microbial activity, caused the pipe to deteriorate at the point where it failed on March 2 – a low section in a caribou crossing. Typically, operators control this type of corrosion through a combination of cleaning pigs and biocide injections. The cleaning pig is usually necessary to deliver the biocide to the pipe wall and to disperse active bacteria colonies. 7

Final thoughts

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA/USDOT) regulates pipeline safety and promulgates regulations to that end. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) can also become involved where any incident involves transportation (bridges, in this case). States also manage permitting and pipeline safety.

The oil and gas industry has been addressing this problem for years, and the entire market for biocides has been built on understanding the corrosive microbes in the oil fields.8 These microbes are present in underground water.

As these cases are analyzed and more research is done on these extremophiles, it should be considered as a cause whenever there is a pipeline failure. However, it is still very difficult to tell the difference between microbial corrosion and chemical corrosion, which makes addressing the problem more difficult. In the meantime, we cannot underestimate the power of microbes in being creative with adapting to new food resources. Neither can we underestimate the extent of damage that has been caused or will be caused in the future by the destruction of steel and iron infrastructure of roads and buildings which make up the skeleton of our civilization’s body.

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Living in the United States, we have a lot of confidence that regulations are protecting us from health risks. In particular, we feel confident that our drinking water supplied through oversight of the U.S. EPA and each of their counterpart state agencies is reliably safe. However, it is significantly more unreliable than you might think, and given it depends on the weather, water run off, natural filtering and a host of other contaminant and toxin treatments, as well as the infrastructure that carries it to each home, it should not be so surprising that the quality can vary to the point of being downright dangerous while still operating as a permitted public water supply.

The Safe Drinking Water Act was enacted in 19741 in the height of responding to the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. A cluster of federal environmental statutes were passed by Congress in the 1970s: The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (signed in 1970);2 the Clean Air Act of 1970;3 the Clean Water Act of 1972 (a major amendment to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948);4 the Endangered Species Act of 19735 and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. Pres. Nixon (a Republican), created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with a reorganization plan in 1970, reassigning components of other departments to the U.S. EPA. This was increasingly necessary to implement this new interest in addressing environmental protection and preservation at the federal level. This is still the authority on which the U.S. EPA is operating today.

Back to the Safe Drinking Water Act: There were major amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1986 and 1996. I would also note that a major amendment was also in 2001 when in the wake of 9/11 credible threats to threats of terrorist to our water supply prompted additional security measures including physical boundaries and cameras to monitor the safety of the water supply —arguably just as important as the contaminants and toxins that were increasingly being regulated.6 Then in 2018, Congress passed more amendments to address the risks of cybersecurity in water systems. Notably, the first cyberattack on a water system was in 2013.7

Compliance with the SDWA (2023)

72% of active public water systems (107,559) had no reported violations in 2023. Nearly 28% (40,982) were reported to have violated at least one drinking water standard. Crucially, 4% (6,045 systems) violated a health-based standard — meaning a contaminant was detected above allowable limits.8 20% of systems (29,703) failed to meet at least one monitoring or reporting requirement, meaning information about what contaminants were present was late, incomplete, or not submitted at all.9

In 2023, 5,018 systems (3.4%) were designated as enforcement priorities in at least one quarter, and the vast majority — 93% of those — were small systems serving 3,300 people or fewer. EPA and state agencies initiated formal enforcement actions at 2,398 systems and informal actions at 27,149 systems. That year, 24,819 systems corrected violations and returned to compliance.10

Violations by type of all PWSs (EPA graph)

You might want to check your own water supply which has a nice graphic display of compliance.11

Most public water systems, classified in the SDWA as small and large are 80% small. A small public water system (PWS) is classified as less than 10,000 users. The small classification has sub-classifications: those serving 3,301 – 10,000 persons, those serving 501 – 3,300 persons, and those serving 500 persons or fewer.

In the 1996 Amendments to the SDWA, one of the changes was to allow variances for small public water systems, such as when they were unable to meet the standard for a water contaminant. This can be explained by a simple cost-benefit analysis— the cost of reducing contaminants is typically exponential, that is the last 5% makes up 90% of the total cost of contaminant reduction, for example. So the alternative is no water, so a system that gets all but 5% for example, is the best benefit for the cost. That is how we maintain water for everyone in the U.S.. That is also why it may not be as safe as you think.

I asked a Claude.ai version to make this chart showing the percent of arsenic removed from the water vs. the cost of removal, using several methods of removal. The distinctive hockey-stick pattern emerged showing the greatest expense was roughly the last 5%. This is the same pattern for other toxins.

The cost of arsenic removal from drinking water

Perceptions of the safety of drinking water

There appears to be no ongoing year to year study of the perception of the safety of the drinking water supply, but a composite study of a group of research studies on the issue indicated that confidence in the water supply is falling.12 Looking at specific factors, it appears that about 37% of the articles indicated trust in the water supply. 13

Incidents like the Flint, Michigan neglect of the drinking water quality affecting a low income region in April 2014 further deteriorated the trust in the institutions that were charged with overseeing water quality.14

How we measure up worldwide

In 2022, 73% of the global population (6 billion people) used a safely managed drinking-water service.15 However, 296 million people take water from unprotected wells and springs; and 115 million people collect untreated surface water from lakes, ponds, rivers and streams.16

A shocking 505,000 deaths each year are attributed to microbiologically contaminated drinking water. Parasites, microbes and bacteria causing diarrhea. Cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio contribute to this number.17

Final thoughts

It is difficult to rank nations based on their safe drinking water, given the laws and standards are different; however, the United States generally has very safe water.

The 1996 Amendments to the SDWA made public information about the water system a major step in transparency which engenders trust. The report you receive each year with a report on your water quality is a requirement set by the SDWA. You are required to receive this Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) no later than July 1 of each year.18 Transparency is one of the elements of building trust in government. However, the increasing number of enforcement actions may indicate more violations or it could be an effect of more enforcement.

You may look at your glass of water a little differently, now.

An Ecological region of the Páramo Santurbán1

As the Rights of Nature Movement gains momentum, courts are adding to the jurisprudence of how to interpret Rights of Nature from existing legal documents. Legislatures are drafting new laws to recognize those Rights of Nature. I wrote about this growing Movement in the U.S.,2 and I thought it worthwhile to take a look at the Movement in international law. I saw a Movement that is definitely growing in momentum.

The graphic below shows the rate of growth of tribunals around the world extending laws or decisions to recognize the Rights of Nature in a growing body of law tracked since 2019 by the Ecojurisprudence Tracker.3

The most significant ruling in international law was in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on May 29, 2025. Prior to this opinion, the United Nations General Assembly, 15 Resolutions and 20 Reports were issued by that legislative body of the United Nations pertaining to acknowledging and recognizing the rights of nature in various forms. (The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is a creation of the Organization of American States but cooperates with the United Nations.) So in May 29, 2025, the Court considered the Rights of Nature in the context of a case brought based on Climate Change treaty obligations. That opinion included the most concrete articulations of the Rights of Nature of any international case, to date. This Court also has international jurisdiction over 30 states, meaning this advisory opinion has far reaching impact.

Because of that impact, you can expect to see application of these principles in member Nations.

We have that first case. The first was the application of these principles to a Court in Columbia. The Administrative Court of Santander (Columbia) declared that the Santurbán Páramo (river ecosystem) as an entity is subject to rights to protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration under the responsibility of the State and the communities that inhabit it and depend on its environmental services, which implies, among other legal consequences, priority protection, legal representation, right to restoration and proactive precautionary measures. the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development is responsible for exercising guardianship and legal representation of the rights of the Santurbán Páramo and its transition or buffer zone. Within three months of notification of this ruling, the Ministry must design and establish the identification of ecologically or strategically important transition zones to conserve the water resources that supply the municipal aqueducts, which in turn are supplied by the Santurbán Páramo.4 In addition to the Court’s action, the Legislature banned all but small scale mining permits in the region as well.5

Even before this sweeping interpretation that affects 30 nations, the State of Mexico, one of the 31 states of Mexico, amended their state constitution to recognize the Rights of Nature. On April 22, 2024, the legislature of the State of Mexico approved amendments to Articles 5 and 18 of its state constitution, recognizing nature and biodiversity as subjects of rights. The amendment states that:

Nature or biodiversity, endemic and native species are subjects of rights, which are granted, protected and promoted by the Constitution and the laws of the State of Mexico, at the same level as human rights.

While this is just one state in Mexico, there are other countries within the Western Hemisphere taking similar steps, like Ecuador which was the pioneer in adopting recognition of the Rights of Nature into their law. Article 71 of the Ecuador Constitution reads that nature:

has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes. 6

German Courts find Rights in Nature

The regional court, Erfurt, Germany during the “diesel gate” cases involving German automobile manufacturer, BMW, the court found that “person” could also be an “ecological person” in European Union law.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights (Art. 51 (1)) and in particular Art. 2 and Art. 3 (1) in conjunction with Art. 37, establish inherent rights of nature, the court opined. They said that:

. . . these fundamental rights are by their nature applicable to nature or individual ecosystems — i.e. ecological persons. It can be left open whether in the present case nature as such or individual ecosystems (particularly) damaged by exhaust gases require protection. The Charter gives rise to the comprehensive right of ecological persons to have their existence, preservation and regeneration of their life cycles, structure, functions and development processes respected and protected.7

The finding of Rights of Nature in European Union law by Germany opens the door to other Nations in the EU finding the same result.

How is this different from other environmental protection opinions?

Traditionally, rights are interpreted as those affecting human rights, such as the destruction of the environment or climate change damages. To do so, requires demonstrating how failing to protect a body of water would have detrimental effects on human health. Whereas, in this building of a Rights of Nature framework, the ecosystem has intrinsic value that deserves protection and preservation.

The extension of “person” to include ecological person was a successful approach to interpretation of European Law, but the history of the interpretation of “person” in the U.S. Constitution is not likely to follow that same path. Concepts of extending rights or even recognition of pets as “persons” or at least more than property have not succeeded so far, although they are often the emotional center of divorces as much as children might be. The fact that attempts to recognize a fetus as a “person” under the U.S. Constitution has thus far failed,8 does not predict that would be a successful pathway for recognizing Rights of Nature as persons. However, legislative efforts continue to grow in the United States and from momentum evident in international law, the U.S. may not be far behind.