Her hands crusty with dried mud, Ukrainian Vira Rozhko pauses from the Sisyphean effort of cleaning her flooded home to leaf through a family photo album.

Water has destroyed many of the images, though some still show scenes of joyful, long-gone memories.

“At least I saved something,” says Ms. Rozhko, her voice drained of emotion, as she stands in the ruins of the house her parents built in a low-lying district of Kherson.

Inside, the air is still infused with the fetid stink of damp and rot after a cleaning team from the local Ukrainian charity Lighthouse of Revival shoveled most of the mud from the floors and hacked away the waterlogged lower half of each wall.

What remains are a few mud-smeared personal possessions and plenty of anti-Russia anger that is shared in the region, which flooded when Russian forces are believed to have blown up the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, 40 miles upstream.

The early June blast in southeastern Ukraine – detected by seismic sensors in Europe – unleashed some four cubic miles of water. On top of the destruction, the resulting torrent swept up industrial pollutants and deposited them in flooded homes, agricultural lands, and environmentally delicate estuaries close to the Black Sea.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

River silt dries on the seat of a car parked at the flood-damaged house of Volodymyr Burykin in Kherson, Ukraine, July 27, 2023.

Within days, the United Nations warned of “severe, long-term impacts” that are likely to “cast a dark shadow over the country for decades.”

But in the short term, regional residents’ biggest challenges are twofold: a massive cleanup and a severe shortage of drinking water.

Too much or too little

Parts of Kherson and scores of farming villages on both sides of the Dnieper River are still coping with the surge of water that for a time submerged them. But other cities like Nikopol – a pipe- and steel-producing town 75 miles upstream from the dam, on the shore of the former Kakhovka Reservoir – have endured severe water shortages for 1 1/2 months, as the reservoir drained and Russia targeted pumping stations.

Though 115 miles apart, both cities remain on the riverine front line, under frequent Russian bombardment. Yet each area’s residents have had to deploy different coping mechanisms to get through an event that transformed their lives – either too much water, or too little – even as global attention to the dam crisis dissipates.

“You can see what our ‘favorite liberators,’ the Russians, brought to us,” says Ms. Rozhko, referring pithily to Moscow’s false justification for its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, to “liberate” Ukrainians from Nazis. “How many people and children have died? We never thought this could be happening.”

The flooding is a second shock of the war for the southern city of Kherson, which was occupied by Russian forces for eight months last year, until November. Near-daily bombardment continues from Russian positions across the river, including at least 17 reports of shelling in the region Sunday that left seven people dead.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainians look through racks of free clothes in a market run by the local charity Lighthouse of Revival, as residents cope and clean up after extensive flooding in Kherson, Ukraine, July 27, 2023.

“When the Russians left, we celebrated because the house was not damaged,” recalls Ms. Rozhko. “Then this [flooding] happened. ... Most neighbors suffered the same thing; now they have nowhere to go,” she says, of those who can’t rebuild.

“My house is at least standing – although it has no walls,” she says. “All the furniture is gone. Only holes are left.”

Fixing those windows and roofs and caring for residents across the Kherson region is Lighthouse of Revival, which organizes cleanup teams and runs regular distribution of essentials to residents of the city and remote villages targeted by Russian shelling.

The aid group hands out food and water, hygiene kits and kitchen sets, and mattresses and clothing. It started work in Kherson soon after the Russian invasion, but suspended activities during the occupation when volunteers began getting kidnapped.

SOURCE:

NASA, Institute for the Study of War

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Early eye to winter

Vadym Danyk, co-founder of Lighthouse of Revival, says Kherson residents now face two challenges: faltering interest from foreign donors, as the flood falls from the headlines; and the fact that so many homes remain uninhabitable, with winter not that far off.

“Everybody understands what that means,” says Mr. Danyk. “Some people have only their walls. Some people have nothing. Those with walls don’t know how they will live in winter – people forget about this very fast.”

More than 50 people volunteer for the charity, and donors have so far provided sufficient food and humanitarian supplies. But the volunteers pay for their own fuel, and the need is vast – especially in remote villages.

Most relief agencies are “too afraid to deliver aid to forest villages, because the shelling is constant,” says Mr. Danyk.

The villages “don’t have civilization at all: no water, no electricity,” he says. His volunteers provide generators for use in wells, to pump water, as well as jerry cans and basic medicines.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainians receive a distribution of water, food, and pet food from the local charity Lighthouse of Revival in Kherson, Ukraine, July 27, 2023.

“We are just making temporary repairs,” Mr. Danyk says of efforts to seal open windows and patch wrecked roofs. “Permanent repairs are useless work, because of all the bombing and shelling. At least we can save the buildings, but not to live in for winter.”

Even getting to winter is a challenge for some Kherson residents, in a city where Lighthouse of Revival, for example, has ensured that no more than 50 people gather at distribution points at one time, because the cluster of cell phone signals can trigger Russian shelling.

“It is literally Russian roulette,” says Mr. Danyk.

At one such mobile distribution point, residents were lining up recently for bottles of water and food packets to last each family for a week.

“The shelling is constant – it’s really coming every night,” says Oleksandr Ustenko, wrapping his arms around his son, Stanislav, while waiting for a water ration. “We just sleep and cover our son; it’s all we can do to protect ourselves.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Oleksandr Ustenko and his son Stanislav wait to receive water, food, and pet food distributed by a local charity, Lighthouse of Revival, in Kherson, Ukraine, July 27, 2023.

He says aid levels have dropped by half since the peak of the crisis. When asked if the distributions are “critical” to his family’s survival, he is unequivocal: “Yes.”

From sea to desert

The situation is different but no less dire far upstream in Nikopol, where the shoreline disappeared as the reservoir emptied in June, and officials were forced to truck in supplies of water, with support from across the country. Non-potable water finally began flowing in city pipes again in late July.

“This was a sea, but now it is a desert,” says Alla Syrotenko, the deputy head of Nikopol’s military administration, as she walks toward an overlook in the city’s Old Town, which is frequently targeted.

Where water once was, there is now a sandy reservoir bottom. Rising up five miles to the southeast are the towers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia controls.

The plunging water levels will affect lives for decades, officials estimate; boats and barges alike are stuck in mud, along the Dnieper River and its tributaries. It took the Soviet Union six years to complete the colossal dam project in the early 1950s, which provided electricity and water for irrigation for much of the southern region.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Vegetation begins to grow among docks stuck in mud at a private marina now emptied of water in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, July 28, 2023. Ukrainians are coping with dramatic changes to their landscape after the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, which emptied the mileslong reservoir behind it.

“This was very scary, honestly,” says Olena Deynega, whose view of a busy marina now is of no more than docks settled into silt and a padlocked gate. She just changed the door of her house, which was damaged by two recent shell blasts.

“The children used to come and swim. Now there are a lot of dead fish, so there are flies in the house,” she says. “We used to go to the dam and hear the sound of seagulls. It’s all gone now.”

City workers set up 41 distribution points for water for bathing and laundry and 17 points for drinking water for 200,000 people in the Nikopol district, says Ivan Basyliuk, head of the Nikopol City Council. With the help of Unicef, some 20,000 to 22,000 liters (5,300 to 5,800 gallons) of bottled water were supplied each day.

One government project already underway aims to restore the estuary by pumping water from the upstream city of Zaporizhzhia. There are also plans to rebuild the dam, though on a scale more suited to Ukraine’s modern needs – not the mammoth Soviet-era requirements of the original project.

“If this happens, we will have this sea again,” says Mr. Basyliuk.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Elena Deynega stands at the gate of her house near a marina without water, after the emptying of the reservoir, in Nikopol, Ukraine, July 28, 2023. Officials say water is being restored to Nikopol and other areas this week via a pipe that taps into the lower water level of the Dnieper River, which still flows through the former lake basin.

Tabulating losses

As the region looks forward to recovering its prewar environment and way of life, the loss of estuaries is one issue. Vast numbers of trees have also been destroyed.

Helping to tabulate an eventual reparations claim against Russia is Olha Musatkina, the head of Nikopol’s Department of Ecology, whose ability to thoroughly assess the environmental costs is still constrained by the war and safety issues.

Drinking water was still available as the reservoir emptied, says Ms. Musatkina, so Russia kept targeting the pumping station until it stopped.

“Your day started with the question: How do I get water? It was like a quest,” recalls Ms. Musatkina.

“Those who fixed the pumps, under shelling and at night – these people are heroes. ... It shows we are strong, and won’t give up.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.

In California’s Mojave National Preserve at the peak of summer, the desert’s iconic Joshua trees rise from a dusty landscape. The spiky Joshua tree evokes strong reactions: weird, unique, whimsical – and more often than not, a reference to Dr. Seuss. It’s also a plant at risk.

The calm quiet of the desert belies its dangerous, unrelenting heat. In the northeast corner of the vast Mojave preserve, that heat fed the York wildfire that started July 28 and, two weeks later, had scorched more than 93,000 acres of prime Joshua tree habitat. Scientists are still assessing the damage, but the York Fire was twice the size of one from three years ago that killed more than a million Joshua trees. The trees grow nowhere else on the planet but here in Southern California and part of Nevada.

“The unfortunate thing is that Joshua trees are very susceptible to fire,” says Sasha Travaglio, a spokesperson for the National Park Service, which oversees Joshua Tree National Park and the nearby preserve, which actually holds many more trees than the beloved park. The plant’s pulpy trunk is fast fuel for flames, “and so usually when they burn, they do die.”

One massive event, like the York Fire for instance, could mean the plant’s devastation. But there’s hope in efforts to keep that from happening.

Experts, through trial and error, are trying to ensure the plant’s long-term survival, says Sierra Willoughby, supervisory park ranger for the Mojave preserve. “Trying to go in there as human beings to replant things can be really tough here. ... There’s no guidebook about how to restore a Joshua tree forest. It’s something that you have to experiment with.”

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

Supervisory park ranger Sierra Willoughby points out features of the eastern Joshua tree, Aug. 8, 2023, inside the Mojave National Preserve in California.

A distinctive plant

The Joshua tree, which is actually a yucca plant, is wholly unique to the high deserts of Southern California and part of Nevada. The Mojave preserve’s 1.6 million acres nestle up against the Nevada border, and span three of North America’s four major deserts. The eastern Joshua tree that grows in the preserve is distinct from its western cousin, which lives farther south in Joshua Tree National Park.

This is where Bob Oviedo picnics in the desert sun of Joshua Tree National Park with his two small dogs. “It’s amazing that there’s so much growth here in the desert, with the heat that we have here,” says Mr. Oviedo, who lives about 45 minutes away in Palm Desert. He stopped in the park after a work trip nearby.

The park is so beautiful, he says, that he doesn’t want to waste a single chance to appreciate it. “You have a variety of trees and bushes and cactus here. But it’s mainly the Joshua trees that are very pretty, and they stand out.”

The eastern and western plants have subtle, but essential, differences. Each depends on its own specific species of yucca moth for pollination; both species thrive in similar habitats, but not the same ones. If they could survive on each other’s turf, they probably already would, says Lynn Sweet, a research ecologist with the University of California, Riverside. They look different, too: The trunk of the western plant grows 4 or 5 feet before it branches, and looks more like a tree. The eastern species grow branches closer to the ground in a V shape – although both species can grow quite large.

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

Bob Oviedo picnics in Joshua Tree National Park with his dogs, Aug. 7, 2023, in California. Mr. Oviedo stops in the park about 10 times a year.

And they share a name rooted in folklore. The most popular theory is that Mormon migrants named the plant for the biblical Joshua, whom they saw reflected, with arms stretched upward to the heavens, in the yucca’s unique shape.

Learning from past fires 

The eastern Joshua tree is struggling for survival at the Mojave preserve’s Cima Dome, a rounded granite mountain west of the York Fire. A 2020 wildfire at the dome consumed 1.3 million Joshua trees, leaving large swaths of scorched earth. “We’re going to have a different forest here now,” says park ranger Mr. Willoughby. 

Climate change is driving the plants – which require some water, and thrive in climates that run both hot and cold –  to higher elevations. The dome area offered prime habitat, but Joshua trees do not grow back once they fully burn. The ground sloths that once spread the Joshua tree seeds to this relic forest have been extinct for thousands of years. Small mammals are mostly responsible for the plants’ modern migration, which means seeds travel short distances and stay close to areas with lots of vegetation. Human intervention is especially needed where the landscape is completely charred and Joshua trees are too far gone to regenerate on their own.

Today, a forest of blackened Joshua trees is the backdrop for sporadic, budding life. The smell of smoke still wafts from the plants’ burnt fibers. In some places, clusters of baby Joshua trees sprout from shrubs or from the roots of other plants that burned and toppled over. 

Ty O'Neil/AP

Joshua trees burn in the York Fire, July 30, 2023, in the Mojave National Preserve, California.

The preserve’s two vegetation technicians are managing an effort to plant 4,000 eastern Joshua tree sprouts in the dome burn area. The sprouts are raised from seed at the Lake Meade National Recreation Area in Nevada, and then transplanted and monitored by hundreds of volunteers in multiday camp-outs on the preserve. Nearly 1,900 trees have been planted so far. Sixty to 70% of those have not survived. 

Tentative recovery

Nearly 5,000 feet above sea level, off an unpaved access road that winds into the Cima Dome burn scar, blackened Joshua trees stretch as far as the eye can see. This is prime habitat for the plant, and where re-wilding has had sporadic success.

A cylindrical wire cage protects a small green sprout. “This is the only one that’s still green and viable,” says Mr. Willoughby. “All the other ones are dead.” Five other cages, placed about 30 feet apart, wrap around failed plantings. But in the trial and error of re-wilding, even these failures have value. “By far, it was very clear from the data that you needed to have the plant protected from predators like rodents, or that they were just going to get eaten alive.” Uncaged transplants had even smaller chances of survival. 

Nature brings its own slow recovery, too, though it may come with a new, less dense, trajectory. “Visually it just looks like utter devastation, and it’s barren for a long time,” says ecologist Dr. Sweet. “But we also know that there are new shrubs. ... Some of those are able to re-sprout; some of the trees are able to re-sprout. So things can recover as long as conditions continue to be reasonable.”

Drought and changing temperature patterns make that recovery more difficult, threatening not only the iconic Joshua tree forests, but also the desert ecosystem. “They hold a variety of plant communities, a variety of animal communities,” says Dr. Sweet. “They’re also hosting a whole biota underground that we can’t see. And those are actually functioning to store things like carbon, which is really important globally.”

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

A baby Joshua tree grows in previously scorched earth in Mojave National Preserve, California, Aug. 8, 2023.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife agency, in March, declined to list Joshua trees as endangered species, saying the threats to the plant didn’t rise to the level needed for that designation. California, however, passed the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act a few months later, stepping up protections for that species by prohibiting its unauthorized export, import, or sale anywhere in the state. 

“Natural sculptures”

August in Joshua Tree National Park brings high heat, and low season. This is where the Mojave and Colorado deserts come together, where beige rock formations frame desert vegetation, which adds shades of brown and muted green. There are no bright colors here – only the bright sun, which drives reptiles and rodents underground and into shadowy crevices. 

The conditions force visitors and locals alike “to respect the ecosystem,” says park ranger Ms. Travaglio, talking among Joshua trees atop the park’s Black Rock Campground – one of the plants’ healthier habitats. “We can’t control it. It can kill us. And we have to be well prepared, well educated, and aware while we are either recreating or living in the desert.”

It takes a moment for small creatures to make themselves known – but stand still long enough, and the chittering of life grows audible, if not visible. A lone bird hops inquisitively a few feet away. Twitch to grab the camera, and the bird is gone. 

The heat is not ideal, says Grazia Giordano, who is visiting from Milan. But the Joshua trees are “amazing. They look like natural sculptures; they are like in a plastic pose ... and creating such a magic picture of the land.” Visitors to the park this time of year – many of them European – say they’re willing to brave the harsh, dry heat for an experience they won’t find at home. 

Joshua trees grow slowly, about an inch a year, and live upward of 100 to 200 years. That longevity brings peace to artist Shari Elf, who runs a shop in the town of Joshua Tree called Art Queen.

“When I look at an older one, I’m moved to think about how old it is. ... And I respect that,” says Ms. Elf. “I think about all of the decades or ages they’ve been through, witnessing all of us, and me, and my little petty problems. And they’ve seen it all. They stand tall and strong.”

Heavy drops of a tropical downpour are still falling when students at Venustiano Carranza Garza public elementary school head out for recess on a recent afternoon. Everyone’s playing together – throwing balls, playing tag, and linking arms – underscoring a rule laid out by the school principal, Carlos García Roblero: No one should be left out. 

That may sound like a Utopian goal (or a standard “Play nice!” instruction), but the mantra goes far beyond the schoolyard. 

More than 41,000 migrants from everywhere from Venezuela and Haiti to Cameroon and Uzbekistan were detained in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula in 2022. Migrants are often en route to the United States, seeking work, security, or simply a better future. While most migrants want to keep moving north, many are forced to take a pause once they arrive in Mexico as they apply for visas, try to get an appointment with U.S. officials, or consider seeking asylum here. As regional migratory patterns shift to include more families, schools like this one that make it a priority to teach any child interested in learning can be a haven.

Mr. García Roblero’s mission to give all children equal opportunity is rooted in his four decades of teaching in this rural state of Chiapas, experience educating across language barriers in Indigenous communities, and desire to listen to and connect with students in what he calls the “classroom trench,” despite his growing leadership role.

“When children come to my school, I don’t label whether they are foreigners or not,” says Mr. García Roblero. “I always tell my teachers that education is a challenge. ... But you are going to move the world with what you can and how you can – despite the obstacles.”

Overcoming suspicion 

Born in 1964 in Siltepec, a municipality nestled in the breathtaking peaks of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, Mr. García Roblero moved with his mother to Tapachula as a baby. His mom was a live-in domestic worker for a family of teachers. Mr. García Roblero was welcomed into the family like a bonus brother and son. And the love of reading and learning he gained in that home laid the cornerstone of his future career. 

Mahé Elipe/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Principal Carlos García Roblero talks to a teacher in the doorway of a classroom at the Venustiano Carranza Garza elementary school in Tapachula, Mexico.

At the age of 10, he learned to type, and years later, he graduated from the Escuela Normal Fray Matías de Córdova in Tapachula. Following the Mexican Revolution, these “normal schools” promoted rural teacher-training programs known to focus on equality and social transformation – and drew aspiring teachers from some of the most impoverished parts of Mexico.  

His first years as an elementary school teacher took him back to the Sierra Madre, to a community where he recalls children came to school with only a small pile of tortillas and chile peppers for lunch. He later became the principal of a school in the Indigenous Tulijá Tseltal Chol region where 90% of the students spoke only Ch’ol and faced extreme economic hardships. 

“Since I have been in contact with children, I have been with vulnerable groups,” says Mr. García Roblero.

Thanks to these experiences, the Venustiano Carranza Garza stands out as an inclusive space today. There were 190 students enrolled this past academic year, with about 70% from outside Mexico, mainly Guatemala, Honduras, and Cuba. Midyear, he welcomed 27 Haitian students. Despite speaking almost no Spanish, they learned to read in months, he says with delight. 

The dynamics of migration mean that many children are only in Tapachula briefly, an argument many Mexican school officials use to exclude them from formal education. But a short time frame can’t override the responsibility of teachers to act on behalf of children, Mr. García Roblero says. 

As the number of migrants and asylum-seekers has grown in recent years, so, too, has xenophobia. “Suddenly locals are suspicious, less open; they’re critical of migration,” says Karen Pérez, the Tapachula coordinator for the Jesuit Refugee Service. 

The student body is also made up of Mexican children with physical disabilities and those who have never attended school or have been expelled from other institutions for behavior or learning differences. They’re all welcome at this school, which is located near the historic city center and runs for four hours in the late afternoon.

“It has been a challenge to work here, but it enriches you,” says Yaneth Pérez Castellanos, who has taught under Mr. García Roblero for the past three years. “The children don’t say, ‘Oh, she’s not the same as me.’ ... All the children support each other.” 

Good laws, bad practices

Mexico’s Constitution guarantees education as a right of all children. And as of 2015, school enrollment is mandatory and can’t be conditioned on documentation, nationality, or migratory status. But in practice, many schools fail to comply, says Rosalba Rivera, coordinator for migrant children at the Institute for Women in Migration.

Mahé Elipe/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Students play in the schoolyard during recess.

Rucelda Martín López knows this well. Originally from the Guatemalan department of San Marcos, she’s lived in Tapachula for 10 years. Her oldest son lost a year of schooling when they first moved to the area because schools kept insisting, “No documents, no enrollment,” she recalls. 

“He watched the other children going off to study and felt sad he couldn’t do the same,” says Ms. Martín López. That ended when she found Mr. García Roblero’s school, where three of her children currently study.

“Especially in the southern states, school officials will deny inscription to migrant children,” says Ms. Rivera. “Sometimes, a little out of unawareness and a little out of fear, parents leave and resign themselves to the fact that their child was not accepted into the school.”

The tendency toward exclusion can overwhelm Mr. García Roblero. “It’s a crime committed against childhood,” he says.

Despite being Mexican by birth, Verónica Crisostomo Gómez’s daughters were denied an education because their mother, a Guatemalan, lacked the needed paperwork. Since they met Mr. García Roblero, things have changed. “Now, every day at 12 o’clock, the girls say, ‘We’re going to get ready to go to school,’” Ms. Crisostomo Gómez says with pride. 

Shortly before recess on a recent afternoon, Mr. García Roblero watches students carefully rehearse the escolta, a practice of escorting the Mexican flag during official celebrations. In most schools, this is reserved for only the most outstanding students. 

“In my school, anyone who wants to can participate,” says the principal. “Here, someone from Guatemala has proudly carried the flag,” he says. “Nobody complains, and the child is happy.”

Jason Thomson

Sessile oak trees stand in a pocket of temperate rainforest on the north coast of Cornwall, England, in May 2023. They thrive in woodlands along the western coasts.

Stepping across the threshold, it is as though you’re entering another world. 

Beneath the canopy of great oak trees, different from those you might normally find in an English woodland, ferns unfurl their fronds amid a smattering of wildflowers. A brook murmurs across well-worn rocks. Time seems to slow, and you could be forgiven for imagining you’ve awoken in a scene from The Lord of the Rings.

In fact, these temperate rainforests were a deep source of inspiration for author J.R.R. Tolkien, among others. But it is only recently that their significance has started to gain wide recognition, and efforts are now afoot to save what slivers remain, not only here in the United Kingdom, but in all parts of the world where they still exist.

“Whether it’s Game of Thrones and a reference to all those misty rainforest scenes, or the knights of King Arthur, traveling through forests dripping with lichen, they really are a part of our cultural heritage,” says Rob Stoneman, director of landscape recovery at The  Wildlife Trusts, an umbrella organization for 46 charities throughout the United Kingdom promoting the protection and restoration of nature. “And yet there’s really hardly any left.”

Fully 20% of Britain’s land surface is thought to host the right kind of climate for temperate rainforest, and yet a mere 1% is actually still covered by this luxuriant habitat. That statistic is perhaps less surprising when seen in the context of this country being one of the most nature-depleted on the planet, having experienced centuries of logging, development, and conversion to other land uses. 

Jason Thomson

Ferns interspersed with wildflowers carpet the floor of some temperate rainforests on the north coast of Cornwall, England.

But the importance of these woods stretches far beyond nostalgia and a connection with the myths and legends that pervade the past. Globally, they also represent a key pillar in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. 

The steaming jungles of the tropics are what most people’s minds turn to when they hear the term “rainforest,” and the importance of those ecosystems merits their prominence in the popular psyche, with more than half of all species on Earth estimated to live within their bounds. Yet temperate rainforests harbor their own kind of unique biodiversity. 

Perhaps most important is their bewildering array of lichens and mosses, ranging from the visually astonishing string-of-sausages lichen, with its intricate draping branches, to the internationally important, like the white script lichen, found nowhere on the planet outside of Scotland’s rainforests.

And on at least some measures, temperate rainforests may even outmatch their tropical counterparts in importance.

“Often we talk about the value of trees in terms of their carbon storage,” says Eleanor Lewis, outreach manager for the Woodland Trust in southwest England, “but temperate rainforests have almost a double whammy: They don’t just have carbon stored in the trees themselves, but because of all the epiphytic growth, these other plants living on the trees are also storing carbon, so you have an increased impact.”

You will see trees coated with mosses and lichens, often to the extent that the bark beneath is barely perceptible. Ferns appear to erupt from the branches – and even, on occasion, you can spot a sapling of one tree species apparently emerging from the upper reaches of another. All of these are epiphytes, plants that use the structure of others to support themselves.

And it is not just in this profusion of growth that temperate rainforests may trump the tropics. Whereas the soils of tropical rainforests are often nutrient-poor, those in more temperate climes tend to have thick, dark soils, rich in nutrients and organic matter. 

Because of this, in terms of their carbon storage capacity, “on a hectare-by-hectare basis [tropical rainforests] pale in comparison to the world’s temperate and boreal rainforests,” says Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at Wild Heritage, a California-based nonprofit that works to protect primary forests – areas that have been mostly undisturbed by logging.

“I think we really need to scale up the level of protection and restoration in these areas, otherwise we have so much to lose,” says Dr. DellaSala, who also compiled the 2011 book, Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World. “And yet I’m still hopeful that there’s enough time to do this before we start to really get to the point of accumulating catastrophic climate and biodiversity losses.”

Indeed, there are bright spots. The Tongass National Forest in Alaska, for example, is billed by some as the world’s largest remaining intact temperate rainforest, spanning some 17 million acres. The vast majority of the original trees have escaped the chainsaw, and there are efforts afoot to transition away from any logging of the primary forest. 

Jason Thomson

This fragment of temperate rainforest, called Dizzard Wood, clings to the Cornish cliffs and tumbles down to the water's edge where it meets the Atlantic Ocean, in Cornwall, England, in May 2023.

In Scotland, home to one of the last significant bastions of a kind of temperate rainforest that once blanketed the Atlantic coasts of Europe, organizations came together in recent years to create the Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest, aiming to see the habitat thrive again. A similar group – the South West Rainforest Alliance – sprang up in March to protect and expand pockets of temperate rainforest remaining in English counties such as Cornwall and Devon.

Throughout the whole of Britain, another promising sign is £38 million (about $48.4 million) in recent funding from Aviva, the insurance company, as part of its carbon reduction strategy. This money is being given to The Wildlife Trusts specifically to establish new areas of temperate rainforest.

This idea of establishing new tracts of rainforest is one part of a three-pronged strategy being adopted to tackle the decline of these crucial ecosystems, according to Ms. Lewis of the Woodland Trust. The other steps are to tackle the threats that face existing forests: both directly, and by means of advocacy to bolster their legal protections.

“Ultimately, protecting what we’ve already got, and restoring it to make sure it’s in the best condition possible, is absolutely crucial,” Ms. Lewis says.

One of the most pernicious problems is overgrazing, often by sheep or cows, which prevents the emergence of any fresh saplings, either to replace trees that fall due to natural causes, or indeed to allow a rainforest to start spreading outward. To tackle this, exclosures can be erected, delineating areas where the livestock cannot tread, usually by erecting physical barriers. 

Yet under-grazing can also be troublesome, enabling certain plants to thrive and crowd others out. So some groups are using GPS-enabled collars, which deliver a series of audible notes, increasing in pitch, as an animal approaches a pre-defined virtual fence – and a mild electric shock, similar to that delivered by an electric fence, if the threshold is reached. A mobile app enables boundaries to be redefined easily to adjust the grazing intensity and duration for any given area. 

Another deep-rooted problem that is already being widely tackled is that of invasive species, perhaps none more troublesome than the rhododendron. Efforts are afoot in many areas – such as projects in Wales managed by Celtic Rainforests – to deal with the non-native plants.

And then, there is climate change. Temperate rainforests are defined by certain characteristics, most notably being persistently sodden places. But if that changes, say, to a climate where the rainfall is compressed into winter deluges, followed by hot, dry summers, it is unclear whether these delicate ecosystems could survive.

On that issue, hopes appear to hinge largely on global efforts underway to stabilize temperatures by curbing emissions of heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere. 

“These woodlands, they’re our natural heritage,” says Thomas Murphy, an environmental scientist at the University of Plymouth, whose research focuses on native woodland restoration. “The more we think about us being part of the planet rather than just a species that exists alongside nature, the more we should appreciate that these places are our resources. For many thousands of years our ancestors really valued these woodlands.”

Editor's note: A sentence about the Tongass National Forest has been updated to allow for the fact that there are varying definitions of the largest temperate rainforests.

Reuters

Muslims in Niger gather for prayer at the great mosque in the capital Niamey, August 11.

In mid-July, anti-corruption activists in Niger brought together judges, lawmakers, military officials, and citizens for three days. Their goal: refine legislation promoting transparency in public affairs, notably in terms of defense and security. Less than a week later, the military overthrew the elected government of President Mohamed Bazoum.

The coup brought a swift response from other West African nations, which are still weighing an option to intervene with force. Yet in Niger, pro-democracy activists see the need for a different kind of force. They are determined to show that, if a democratic government falls by either the threat or use of arms, it should be restored by rebuilding integrity and trust in society.

Such civic traits are missing in Niger’s military, which, according to Shérif Issoufou Souley of the Nigerien Association for the Fight Against Corruption, has a history of “unaccountability, opaqueness and lack of communication with civilians.” The proposed reform legislation was meant “to promote good governance and tackle corruption ... so that the military and civil society can work hand-in-hand” on democracy and development, she said at a conference in May. 

The meeting in July was probably not the singular trigger for the coup. Prosecutors are still investigating a scandal in military procurement. Yet the gathering did focus on two aspects of governance that scholars say are essential to preventing coups.

The first is honest and open government. The countries along the southern band of the Sahara known as the Sahel are among the world’s poorest and most corrupt. “In each country recently taken over by generals, corruption hollowed out civil administration and undermined politicians’ credibility,” wrote Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, in The New York Times on Monday.

That points to the second factor. The “vibrancy of civil society groups,” says Sebastian Elischer, an expert on sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Florida, is a key variable in whether coups succeed. “Where civil society groups manage to rally the population to demand a return to democratic civilian rule, juntas depart from power,” he wrote in The Conversation last week.

This influence of civil society has been broadly evident in Africa. In Sudan, for example, an outbreak of fighting between the two generals who led a coup in 2022 has not deterred the pro-democracy movement. A report by the United States Institute of Peace last week noted that “young people across the Sahel are leading the most courageous initiatives to counter the speech, reintegrate former combatants back into communities, and provide relief to those suffering the most in the war in Sudan.”

On Sunday, Islamic scholars from Nigeria coaxed an agreement from Niger’s coup leader, Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani, to meet with West African leaders. That shows both the influence of civilian groups and the public pressure on the general to listen to Niger’s reformers. Rebuilding trust and the country’s democracy start with such listening.