Quick Key Facts
- Global species populations have declined by an average of 69% since 1970.
- The Endangered Species Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1973 and has saved 99% of the species it protects from extinction.
- At least one-third of plants and animals in the U.S. are threatened with extinction.
- Habitat loss, low genetic variation and other human impacts like pollution, wildlife trafficking, agriculture and development, and climate change are major drivers of endangerment and extinction.
- The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) maintains the international “Red List” of endangered and threatened species.
- Scientists warn that the loss of plant and animal species due to climate change could cause an “extinction domino effect.”
The Endangered Species Act
To understand what “endangered species” means, it’s important to unpack the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which followed the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966, the first piece of federal endangered species legislation. Enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1973, the ESA states that the federal government has a responsibility to protect endangered and threatened species. They must also protect the areas or regions necessary for the survival of the threatened species, called “critical habitats.”
The ESA set forth definitions of both “endangered” and “threatened” species. As stated in the Act, endangered species are “any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range,” and threatened species are “any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.” Species in both categories are called “listed species,” and can become “delisted” if they are no longer endangered or threatened.
It’s important to note that species can be listed as endangered at the state, federal and international level. They are managed under the ESA if they are listed at the federal level, but many states have their own versions of endangered species laws too.
How Are Species Protected Under the Act?
Species listed as threatened or endangered species then get protections by the federal government. They are protected from trade, sale and “take,” which prohibits anyone to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct” with these species, as well as interfering with breeding and behavioral activities in their critical habitat.
Three major provisions included in the Endangered Species Act lend it strength:
- Citizen suit provision. Members of the public — whether individuals or public interest groups — can petition to have a species listed as threatened or endangered, ensuring that federal agencies are taking action.
- Critical habitat provision. Agencies must protect the lands and waters that a species needs to survive and recover. When a species is listed, a critical habitat is also designated so a recovery plant can be drawn up.
- Consultation provision. Federal agencies have to avoid doing anything that jeopardizes protected species, including “adversely modifying” their critical habitats.
Ultimately, the ESA has been very successful. By some estimates, it has saved 99% of the species it protects from extinction.
How Do Species Get ‘Listed’ Under the Act?
A status review is conducted by the USFWS and NOAA to determine whether a species warrants protection under the ESA by giving it one of these designations. It’s a lengthy process for a species to get listed. It’s supposed to take only two years, but on average it takes about twelve. “Candidate” species — that is, those petitioning to become listed species — have to qualify for protected status under the ESA based on several factors.
If any of the following five factors are met, a species must be listed as endangered or threatened, according to NOAA:
- Present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range.
- Over-utilization of the species for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes.
- Disease or predation.
- Inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms.
- Other natural or manmade factors affect its continued existence.
Every five years, a review must be conducted of listed species to determine whether the criteria for the recovery plan set forward have been met. Now, more than 1,300 species are protected (or “listed”) as either endangered or threatened under the ESA in the United States.
The ‘Red List’
While the Endangered Species Act focuses on protection at the national level, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) maintains the international “Red List” of endangered and threatened species. The IUCN compiles information on animals, plants and fungi from more than 100 countries and regions, and evaluates their risk of extinction. By their latest count, more than 44,000 species are threatened with extinction worldwide. This includes 41% of all amphibians, 37% of sharks and rays, 36% of reef-building corals, 34% of conifers, 27% of mammals and 13% of birds.
Red List Categories
The Threatened Species list identifies those listed as Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN) or Vulnerable (VU). Evaluations are based on five criteria: population reduction rate, geographic range, population size, population restrictions and probability of extinction. Population reduction is measured over 10 years, or three generations.
Geographic range considers the “area of occupancy” or a species, and the “extent of occurrence” — or the smallest area that could encompass all the sites that the species lives in. Smaller numbers are usually indicative of a threatened population. Lastly, “population restrictions” is a combination of population number and area of occupancy.
Species are categorized by threat level based on the five evaluated criteria, ranging from “least concern” to “extinct”:
- Least concern. There is no concern about population numbers. Human beings, pigeons, houseflies and domesticated cats and dogs would all fall under this category.
- Near threatened. The species might not be currently threatened, but will likely fall under that category in the future.
- Vulnerable species. High risk of becoming extinct in the wild.
- Population reduction rate: 30-50%
- Geographic range: Extent of occurrence is under 20,000 square kilometers, and area of occupancy is under 2,000 square kilometers.
- Population size: Fewer than 10,000 mature animals.
- Population restrictions: Restricted to under 1,000 mature individuals, or area of occupancy is under 20 square kilometers.
- Probability of extinction: 10% within 100 years
- Endangered species. Very high risk of becoming extinct in the wild.
- Population reduction rate: 50-70%
- Geographic range: Extent of occurrence is under 5,000 square kilometers, and area of occupancy is under 500 square kilometers.
- Population size: Fewer than 2,500 mature animals, or if the population has declined by 20% or more within five years or two generations.
- Population restrictions: 150 mature animals
- Probability of extinction: 20% within 20 years or 5 generations
- Critically endangered species. Extremely high risk of becoming extinct in the wild.
- Population reduction rate: 80-90%
- Geographic range: Extent of occurrence is under 100 square kilometers, area of occupancy is under 10 square kilometers.
- Population size: Fewer than 250 mature animals, or if population has declined by 25% or more within three years or one generation.
- Population restrictions: 50 mature animals
- Probability of extinction: 50% within 10 years or 3 generations
- Extinct in the wild. Includes plants that only survive in cultivation, or animals only in captivity. The term also encompasses species that are only surviving outside of their historic range.
- Extinct. There are no known individuals of the species remaining.
How Do Species Become Endangered?
Take the passenger pigeon, for example. These birds used to fly by the thousands overhead in North America but not a single passenger pigeon remains. The cause of their extinction is twofold: many were shot by humans for sport and food, and their forest habitat was cut down to build cities and plant farmland in a rapidly expanding America. They are a prime example of how human intervention can damage a species to the point of extinction — even one that once comprised 25-40% of the total bird population in the United States.
A passenger pigeon stamp on a National Wildlife Federation stamp sheet in 1966. Kevin Dooley / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
Loss of Habitat
Extinction and endangerment can also happen, however, outside of human intervention. Glaciers melt after an ice age, pushing out plants and animals that can’t adapt to new conditions. A volcano can erupt and kill off an entire species. Think of the dinosaurs, who lost their habitat during the Cretaceous period when an asteroid struck the Earth. The debris sent into the atmosphere prevented light and heat from reaching the ground, and the dinosaurs were unable to adapt to this different climate. Their populations became endangered, and eventually extinct.
Increasingly, however, human activity is the reason for habitat loss. We clear enormous amounts of space for housing, agriculture and industry, leaving it inhospitable to the creatures who once lived there. When huge swaths of rainforest in South America are razed (or “deforested”) to create grazing space for cattle, the entire habitat that a species depended on is destroyed, contributing to decreases in their population. Such destruction has indirect impacts as well — while a species might not have been directly impacted by this loss, they might have depended on another impacted species as a food source, now leaving them without the necessary resources to survive.
Loss of Genetic Variation
Genetic variations allow species to adapt to changes in their environment. Without variation, species don’t develop resistance to disease or other threats, putting them at greater risk of extinction. Inbreeding prevents new genetic information from entering the gene pool, so disease is much more common and deadly within the group. Cheetahs, for instance, went through a period of inbreeding during the last ice age, so they don’t have as much genetic variation. As a result, fewer cheetahs survive to maturity than other species. Human causes like overfishing/overhunting can reduce the number of mature individuals that can breed, contributing to inbreeding.
A cheetah at Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Ray in Manila / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
Other Human Impacts
Extinctions have historically occurred during the five mass extinction events throughout the planet’s history, which were largely the result of natural causes. However, extinction is now occurring at a rate 1,000-10,000 times faster due to humans. Through travel and trade, humans introduce new diseases to species by spreading pathogens to new locations, and also introduce non-native species to areas where they are not meant to live, therefore altering food chains and possibly pushing out other native species. As we encroach upon the habitat of wild animals, species are at greater risk of death by car collisions and hunting too.
Pollution and Toxicity
Toxins released into the environment by humans, including pesticides, can contribute to the threatened status of species. Bald eagles were heavily impacted by DDT, which was used on farms as an insecticide and then washed into waterways where it poisoned fish. After eagles ate the poisoned fish, they began laying eggs with thin, fragile shells that cracked before the babies could hatch. Since DDT was banned in 1972, bald eagle populations have bounced back.
The introduction of trash and plastic into ecosystems by humans — especially in our oceans — can also harm species. It’s estimated that 100 million ocean animals are killed as a direct result of plastic each year.
Wildlife Trafficking and Removal From Habitats
Wildlife trafficking involves the illegal trade, smuggling, poaching, capture or collection of wildlife that’s protected, endangered or managed. It’s the second biggest direct threat to species, following only habitat destruction. The IUCN found that 958 species are at risk of extinction due to international trade. African elephants, for one, are heavily trafficked for their ivory tusks to make products like jewelry and chess sets. Consequently, fewer than 420,000 of these elephants remain of the 1.2 million that once lived in 1980.
Climate Change
Given the expansiveness of climate change and its impact, it’s no surprise that it’s a major threat to biodiversity. By 2050, some biologists estimate that 25% of plants and animals will be extinct in the wild as a result of climate change. Warmer temperatures are altering habitats and leaving species without places to breed and find food, disrupting seasonal cues for migratory animals, and causing sea level rise to damage coastal ecosystems, among many other impacts. In 2010, phytoplankton populations had dropped 40% since their 1950 levels, and rising sea surface temperatures were identified as the cause. Losing this key species that consumes carbon dioxide and produces oxygen during photosynthesis would be devastating to ocean health.
What Are the Most Endangered Species on Earth?
Animals
Amur Leopard
Only about 100 amur leopards are left in the wild, surviving only in the far east of Russia and northeastern China. Although their populations have stabilized — rising from 30 individuals in the 1970s to roughly 100 now — they have been considered “critically endangered” since 1996. They are primarily threatened by poaching for their spotted fur, habitat loss and lack of prey. Their prey base isn’t sufficient to sustain big populations, and so to help the leopards, local deer and hare species need to be protected from hunting as well.
African Forest Elephant
Once listed together with African savanna elephants, African forest elephants are now considered separately. These critically endangered elephants are found in thirty-seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and are mainly threatened by poaching and habitat loss to agricultural development. Their ivory tusks are highly valuable, and are a main reason why these elephants are poached. However, even if poaching stopped now, it would take a long time for populations to recover, since elephants reproduce slowly. Between 1928 and 2021, their populations declined more than 80%. Now, only 415,000 individuals exist in the wild in about 25% of their historic range. African forest elephants are important agents of seed dispersal. Many seeds they eat — some too large for other animals to ingest — remain intact after digestion, and thus spread to other areas while the elephants roam.
Black Rhino
Black rhinos were heavily poached between 1960 and 1995 — largely for their two horns. Their population consequently dropped by an astounding 98%, but they’ve made a large comeback since then due to conservation efforts. They are still critically endangered, and around 6,000 exist in the wild today in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Cross River Gorilla
A Cross River gorilla at the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon. Julie Langford / CC BY-SA 3.0
While they are very difficult to study given their habitat and wariness of humans, it’s estimated that between 200 and 300 Cross River gorillas are left in the wild. They live in the montane forests and rainforests of Cameroon and Nigeria in an area about twice the size of Rhode Island. This region has been increasingly encroached upon by humans, clearing their forest habitat for agriculture or raising livestock.
Javan Rhinos
Once found across southeast Asia, only one wild Javan rhino population of seventy-five individuals exists in Java, Indonesia inside the Ujung Kulon National Park. Their population has risen from about thirty in the 1960s, but they are still critically endangered and the most threatened of the five species of rhinos. Given their tiny population, their lack of genetic diversity through inbreeding is a cause for concern about their long-term survival. The invasive Arenga palm is a big reason for their downfall — it continues to threaten the rhinos as it overtakes the park and alters their historic habitat. Rising sea levels from climate change also threaten their geographic region, as does the threat of tsunamis and volcanos from Anak Krakatau nearby. Poaching for the rhino’s horns has historically been an issue as well and remains so.
Tigers
All subspecies of tigers — the Malayan, Sumatran, South China, Indochinese, Bengal, and Amur tigers — are either endangered or critically endangered. Three subspecies of tigers are already extinct. The South China Tiger is the most critically endangered of all. With no sightings in the last thirty years, it’s considered extinct in the wild, although 150 remain in captivity. Malayan tigers have an even smaller population, with only 80-120 mature individuals remaining in the wild in the forests of Malaysia. Sumatran tiger populations are of great concern as well — there are only about 400 left in the wild on the island of Sumatra: the only place left where elephants, orangutans, rhinos and tigers live together in the wild in a delicately balanced ecosystem. As apex predators, tigers play a crucial role in maintaining the balance of ecosystems. Currently, only 4,500 total individuals remain in the wild.
Hawksbill Turtle
One of only seven species of marine turtles, the hawksbill turtle is critically endangered. Since the 1990s, 80% of its population has been lost, leaving only between 20,000 and 23,000 in all of the world’s major oceans. Hawksbills are often bycatch in large-scale fishing operations, and are poached for their beautiful shells (known as “tortoise shells”) to make jewelry and other valuables — the IUCN estimates that millions have been killed within the last hundred years for their shells. Habitat destruction is another key factor. Their nesting grounds are heavily influenced by coastal development, and climate change is impacting the coral reefs that they feed on. These turtles are very important to the functioning of marine ecosystems, especially maintaining the health of seagrass beds and coral reefs.
Vaquita
This small porpoise only lives in the Gulf of California off of Mexico. The vaquita is critically endangered — but more than that, it’s the world’s rarest marine mammal and most endangered cetacean. Currently, only ten individuals remain. These creatures are highly susceptible to entanglement in the gillnets used to fish shrimp and finfish, and it’s still a victim of bycatch fishing for totoaba, although it’s illegal.
Kākāpō
The kākāpō is a fascinating nocturnal, flightless parrot native to New Zealand, and it almost went extinct. Habitat loss and the introduction of invasive species by European settlers like rats, stoats and cats — which were especially detrimental, given that the bird doesn’t fly and hadn’t adapted to mammalian predators — were major drivers of its population decline. Only about 250 are alive today, according to New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, but the species has seen some growth in recent years thanks to the efforts of Kākāpō Recovery.
Plants
When we think of endangered species, we might think only of animals, but plants are also in danger of extinction. Similarly to captive animals, some plants exist only in cultivation now, like the Middlemist Red (the rarest flower on Earth), the Franklin Tree and the Wood’s Cycad. Among the many listed by the IUCN Red List, these are three of the most highly threatened plant species.
Western Underground Orchid (Rhizanthella johnstonii)
The species Rhizanthella johnstonii occurs in Western Australia. Fred Hort / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
This orchid is considered crucially endangered in its native Australia with only fifty remaining individual plants. It lives its whole life underground and relies on a specific kind of mycorrhizal fungus to survive. Habitat loss is a big reason for its decline, particularly for agriculture. Drought has impacted species that it depends upon for nutrients, as has the invasion of weeds and compaction of soil by humans, particularly when hunting for it.
Texas Prairie Dawn Flower
Texas prairie dawn flowers. Carolyn Fannon / Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Formerly known as Texas bitterweed, this plant was renamed by school children in an attempt to improve negative attitudes towards it during conservation efforts. Now dubbed the Texas prairie dawn flower, this extremely rare annual wildflower is only found in the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain in the Fort Bend, Gregg, Harris and Trinity counties of Texas. Harris County — the home of Houston — is rapidly developing and contributing to the destruction of the flower’s habitat.
Ceroxylon quindiuense (Quindio Wax Palm)
Colombia’s national tree, the Quindio Wax Palm, is native to the montane forests of the Andes in both Colombia and Ecuador. Its endangered status arose after deforestation and agriculture began encroaching upon its territory. The palms’ seedlings die in the hot sun or are eaten by other creatures, so they aren’t able to reproduce outside of a forest. Wax palm forests are important to the survival of the yellow-eared parrot, among other species.
Fungi
Even though we often can’t see them, fungi are a crucial component of our lives. They are in everything, from the water we drink, the ground under our feet and the air we breathe. According to National Geographic, about 168 mushrooms have been assessed as threatened worldwide.
White Ferula Mushroom
White ferula mushrooms. tripsis / Flickr / CC BY-SA 3.0
This extremely rare mushroom is only found north of the island of Sicily in an area of less than 100 square kilometers. Their critically endangered status is due largely to overharvesting — as a gourmet food item, two pounds of white ferula sells for fifty euros.
Why Should We Protect Endangered Species?
Once a species is gone from the Earth, there is no way of getting it back. Protecting natural biodiversity has benefits we can predict, and some that we can’t. No one creature exists in a vacuum, but is connected to a large, delicate web of all species. Losing one species has a great impact on the balance of that web, especially when we lose a “keystone” species that helps hold the whole system together.
Protection of Food Chains
Species depend upon one another to survive. Since one species is a source of food for another, losing one can be disastrous to countless others, sending a ripple of disturbance down the food chain. We can see examples of such “trophic cascades” — that cascading effect of species loss down the food chain — throughout history. From the late 1800s to the 1920s, wolves in Yellowstone National Park were hunted nearly to extinction. In response, the populations of elk and deer they once preyed upon exploded, and decimated aspens and other trees that held stream banks together and supported birds. Insect populations burgeoned without their avian predators. Wolves were listed as endangered in 1974 and their recovery was thus mandated under the ESA. After wolves were reintroduced in the park in the 1990s, these decimated food chains recovered. The loss of apex species — the largest predators at the top of the food chain — like Yellowstone’s wolves is especially harmful. Because they tend to live longer and reproduce at slower rates, it also takes longer to recover their populations.
Scientists warn that the loss of plant and animal species due to climate change could cause an “extinction domino effect” of “co-extinctions,” which occur when one species dies out because it depended on another, causing subsequent extinctions down the food chain. In the worst-case scenario, this could kill off all life on Earth, according to a recent study from Flinders University in 2018.
Maintaining Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services
Balanced ecosystems are important. They provide us with crucial ecosystem services like flood regulation, water purification and nutrient cycling, which won’t function as well without all native species. California sea otter populations, for example, dropped in the 19th century from unrestricted hunting. The otters used to eat purple sea urchins, which eat kelp. Now, urchin populations have grown in the absence of otter predators, meaning they consume more kelp. Kelp forests provide important ecosystem services — like protecting the coast from storm surges and absorbing climate-warming carbon dioxide — but are less successful as their population diminishes.
Pollinators also provide vital ecological benefits. Over the past several decades, pollinator populations have been declining in North America. As of 2020, seventy species of pollinators including bats, birds and insects are listed as threatened or endangered. An estimated 75% of leading food crops depend on pollinators to grow — our entire food system depends on them. About 300 species of fruit depend on bats to get pollinated, including mangos and bananas. All pollinators face different threats, like imported diseases, invasive species and shrinking habitats, especially if patches along their migration routes are too fragmented. Pesticides pose another significant danger to pollinators. These toxins impact reproduction or harm the health of bees during direct contact. Additionally, insects and other animals could be beneficial to farmers as biological controls to keep pests in check. If we lose these species, we will rely even more heavily on synthetic chemicals to replace this service.
Preservation of Knowledge
Plants and animals also provide us with resources, like materials and new types of medicine. They’ve helped us create anti-cancer agents, blood thinners, pain killers and antibiotics, including penicillin, which was derived from a fungus. In all, 50% of the 150 top prescribed medicines were originally derived from plants and animals. Biodiversity presents us with the opportunity for new ways of feeding and sustaining our growing population, but by losing species to extinction, we lose that opportunity to innovate.
Loss of Livelihood
Whale-watching tourists in the Pacific Ocean off Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on March 8, 2022. Troy Mai / Flickr
Biodiverse communities are a source of income for many communities. Taking fishing communities, for example; if the fish they depend on are overfished to extinction, these people won’t be able to make any money. Biodiversity also has recreational value, providing us with opportunities for watching species like whales and birds, hiking on trails full of natural beauty, and more. The wildlife tourism industry is a multi-billion dollar sector, and the loss of species means the loss of major aesthetic value in these places, meaning tourism-centric economies will suffer.
Takeaway
Endangered species protection is a complex and intersectional issue. Species become threatened or extinct in a lot of different ways, some more indirect than habitat loss or poaching. Thus, to meaningfully address extinction risks, we must also consider climate change, our food systems and agricultural practices, and pollution.
Legislation is one of our strongest tools in fighting extinction, with the Endangered Species Act being a highly successful example. The whooping crane is a famous success story: the tallest bird in North America suffered from loss of habitat and hunting. In 1941 when it was listed as endangered, there were only twenty-one individuals left in its population — but after being listed as endangered in 1970, it now has more than 500. Other influential pieces of legislation throughout history include the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940 and the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.
The Endangered Species Act turns 50 years old in 2023, but it and other legislation that protects endangered species are constantly under threat. Under the Trump administration, the ESA was stripped of vital provisions, ultimately paving the way for development, oil and gas drilling, and mining in critical habitats of endangered species. Although the Biden administration has begun restoring protections under the Act, these actions remind us that legislation is a powerful tool in preventing harm to threatened species: one that can be taken away under leadership that neglects environmental conservation. To protect endangered species and their habitats, it’s crucial that we vote for individuals who prioritize legislation related to environmental protection and large-scale action against climate change.
The post Endangered Species 101: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on EcoWatch.
https://www.ecowatch.com/endangered-species-facts-ecowatch.html
Stewart Brand, who popularized the “blue marble” photograph that changed humanity’s perspective on the fragility of the Earth, points out that Californians and Europeans use half the energy of the typical American, without losing any quality of life. This quote comes from Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, Restored Wildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary, and Brand is also the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog.
Post and share Earth911 posters to help people think of the planet first, every day. Click the poster to get a larger image.
The post Earth911 Inspiration: Half The Energy and Doing Just Fine appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/inspire/earth911-inspiration-half-the-energy-and-doing-just-fine/
Green Living
Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Project Repat Is Saving US Jobs & T-Shirts From Landfills
Project Repat, founded by Ross Lohr and Nathan Rothstein, had prevented more than 11 million T-shirts from landfills while bringing some sewing work back to the United States when we talked with them in 2019. They’re still going strong. Tune into a classic conversation as Earth911’s Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Rothstein about the inspiration behind Project Repat and the massive changes in U.S. T-shirt manufacturing over the past 30 years. After migrating to Mexico, T-shirt printing jobs have gone overseas and few American companies still make them.
Project Repat has a better idea: turn old shirts into keepsake quilts hand-sewn using T-shirts sent by customers. Instead of tossing a T-shirt in the donation bin, it can be turned into a part of a memorable and snug quilt. Love a sports team? Make a quilt of the team T-shirts and jerseys you’ve purchased over the years. Want to remember a school or a company where you worked? In all likelihood, you have the makings of a Project Repat quilt. Reasonably priced based on the size, Project Repat takes your order and receives your shirts by mail, then turns them into fleece-backed quilt.
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Editor’s note: This epsiode originally aired on October 7, 2019.
The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Project Repat Is Saving US Jobs & T-Shirts From Landfills appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/podcast/earth911-podcast-october-25-2019-saving-us-jobs-and-t-shirts-from-landfills-with-project-repat/
Every wildfire starts small. The problem is that by the time most are detected, minutes have already passed and, under increasingly common conditions driven by a warming climate, a fire can grow beyond any tanker truck’s capacity to contain. The gap between ignition and coordinated response currently averages around 40 minutes. Firefighters have long understood the math: a spoonful of water in the first second, a bucket in the first minute, a truckload in the first hour. The XPRIZE Wildfire competition is an $11 million global effort to prove that autonomous systems, including AI-enabled drones, ground-based sensor networks, and space-based detection platforms, can collapse that window to 10 minutes. Our guest is Andrea Santy, who leads the program. She came to XPRIZE after nearly two decades at the World Wildlife Fund, where she watched conservation projects fall to wildfire. That experience sharpened her understanding of the stakes: wildfires are now the leading driver of deforestation globally, having surpassed agriculture. In places like the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and parts of tropical East Asia, a single fire can eliminate species found nowhere else on Earth. In cities, it can destroy entire neighborhoods in hours. On January 7, 2025, Santa Ana winds drove flames through Pacific Palisades and Altadena, destroying more than 16,000 structures, killing 30 people, displacing 180,000 residents, and generating between $76 billion and $130 billion in total economic losses from a single event. Annual U.S. wildfire costs, when healthcare, lost productivity, ecosystem damage, and rebuilding are included, are estimated between $394 billion and $893 billion. XPRIZE announced the five autonomous wildfire response finalists just over a year after the LA fires: Anduril, deploying its Lattice AI platform with autonomous fire sentry towers and Ghost X drones; Dryad, running solar-powered mesh sensor networks that detect fires at the smoldering stage; Fire Swarm Solutions, coordinating heavy-lift drone swarms that can deliver 100 gallons of water autonomously; Data Blanket, building rapidly deployable drone swarms for real-time perimeter mapping and suppression; and Wildfire Quest, a team of high school students from Valley Christian High School in San Jose who used multi-sensor triangulation to locate fires that can’t be seen from monitoring positions, solving the literal over-the-hill problem that any fire detection system faces.
The conversation covers what the finalists demonstrated during semi-final trials at 40-mile-per-hour winds, why the decoy fire requirement — distinguishing a wildfire from a barbecue, a pile burn, or a flapping tarp — is one of the hardest AI classification problems in the competition, and how autonomous systems would integrate with existing incident command structures. Santy is direct about where progress is lagging: the testing is ahead of the regulations. Autonomous drones operating beyond visual line of sight and coordinating with manned aircraft in active fire emergencies require FAA frameworks that don’t yet exist at the necessary scale. There’s also the deeper ecological tension — the growing scientific consensus that many fire-adapted landscapes need more fire, not less, and that indigenous fire stewardship practices developed over millennia have a place alongside autonomous suppression technology. One XPRIZE finalist is already working with an indigenous community in Canada to pilot their heavy-lift drone system in a remote area where that community is exploring how the technology fits their land management approach. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s FY 2026 budget proposes eliminating Forest Service state fire capacity grants, cutting vegetation and watershed management programs by 30%, and zeroing out $300 million in forest research funding — maintaining suppression spending while gutting the prevention and detection infrastructure that could reduce what there is to suppress. The engineering, Santy says, has arrived. Whether the institutions can move at the speed the crisis demands is the harder question.
You can learn more about XPRIZE Wildfire and follow the finalists at xprize.org/competitions/wildfire.
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Interview Transcript
Mitch Ratcliffe 0:09
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today.
Fire season is coming, and we’re going to dig into how new technology may catch and contain fires in the first few minutes after ignition. There’s a saying among firefighters: you can fight fire in the first second with a spoonful of water, in the first minute with a bucket of water, and in the first hour with a truckload of water. The problem is that by the time most wildfires are detected, minutes have already passed, and in those minutes, under increasingly common conditions, a fire can grow beyond any tanker truck’s capacity.
On January 7, 2025, hurricane-force Santa Ana winds drove flames through Pacific Palisades and Altadena in Los Angeles, and in a matter of hours, more than 16,000 structures were destroyed. Thirty people were killed, and 180,000 residents were forced to flee. The total economic losses are estimated to be between $76 billion and $130 billion from a single fire event. And that was just one week in one city. In 2025, the U.S. recorded more than 61,500 wildfires that burned nearly 5 million acres, leading to annual U.S. wildfire costs of between $394 billion and $893 billion when you factor in the cost of healthcare, lost productivity, ecosystem damage, and the expensive task of rebuilding entire cities.
So there’s an identifiable gap in the current best practices, which take roughly 40 minutes from ignition to deliver a coordinated response. What if you could cut that to 10 minutes, when only a few buckets of water could extinguish a threat? And what if autonomous systems — AI-enabled drones and ground-based sensor networks — could detect a fire, distinguish it from a prescribed burn, and suppress it before getting a human on the radio?
That’s the challenge behind the XPRIZE Wildfire program, an $11 million global competition now entering its final year, and our guest today is Andrea Santy, the program director leading it. Andrea came to XPRIZE after nearly two decades at the World Wildlife Fund, and before that she spent time at the Smithsonian Institution, leading conservation and academic programs.
On January 29 — just after the one-year anniversary of those LA fires — XPRIZE announced the five finalist teams advancing in the autonomous wildfire response track of the competition. They include:
Andruil, a defense technology company deploying a Lattice AI platform with autonomous fire sentry towers and Ghost X drones that watch for fires at the moment they break out;
Dryad, a German company running solar-powered sensor networks that detect fires at the smoldering stage;
Fire Swarm Solutions, a Canadian team coordinating heavy-lift drone swarms that can carry 100 gallons of water autonomously to the point where a fire begins;
Data Blanket, building a rapidly deployable drone swarm system for real-time perimeter mapping and suppression; and
Wildfire Quest, a team of high school students from Valley Christian High School in San Jose who partnered with two aerospace companies to use multi-sensor triangulation to locate fires that cannot be seen from monitoring locations — because, after all, a lot of fires happen just over the hill.
A separate track of the competition, the space-based wildfire detection and intelligence program, includes 10 finalists from six countries who are heading to Australia in April for their own finals. Those teams will have one minute to detect all fires across an area larger than a state, and 10 minutes to deliver precise reports to firefighting decision-makers on the ground.
We’re going to talk with Andrea about what the finalists demonstrated during live trials, why the decoy fire requirement is one of the hardest AI classification problems in the competition, and how these autonomous systems would actually integrate with existing wildfire incident command structures. We’ll also dig into the tension between suppression technology and the growing scientific consensus that many landscapes need more fire, not less, and whether indigenous fire stewardship practices have a place in this conversation.
You can learn more about XPRIZE Wildfire at xprize.org/competitions/wildfire. Can autonomous drones and AI-driven sensor networks actually detect and suppress a wildfire in less than 10 minutes? Let’s find out right after this brief commercial break.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Welcome to the show, Andrea. How are you doing today?
Andrea Santy 5:34
I’m doing great, Mitch. Thanks for having me.
Mitch Ratcliffe 5:34
Well, thanks for joining me. We’ve had XPRIZE leaders on the show a number of times, and you do such interesting work. You announced the finalists just at one year after the catastrophe in LA. How did that reshape the urgency and direction for the XPRIZE Wildfire competition?
Andrea Santy 5:34
It definitely focuses a more intense light on the competition and the need for these solutions. Climate change is driving more intense, more frequent wildfires all around the world, and so I think the urgency was already there. But when you have a disaster at the scale and scope of the LA fires, it absolutely changes the way that everybody thinks about wildfires.
Mitch Ratcliffe 6:04
What’s the realistic timeline for these technologies in the competition to potentially start changing the way that we fight fire and the outcomes of those fires?
Andrea Santy 6:14
So I’ll start by saying we were in LA when the fires started. XPRIZE has a lot of LA-based staff, and we’re originally LA-based, and we were having our staff meeting — so our entire staff was there. We knew from our prize that it was going to be very high risk, and so we were in touch with fire chiefs as the fires were starting. We were able to go out and see where the fires had gone through the Palisades and part of the city — basically 24 hours after it had happened.
It really, I will just say, definitely had a huge impact in terms of being able to see a landscape, communities, homes, schools, and businesses that had been devastated. A lot of the technology being integrated with these solutions can be deployed almost immediately. I think that as the fire agencies begin to get their hands on more of this technology, we’re going to have a hopefully relatively quick uptake. Cameras, sensors, satellite data — a lot of this is already being deployed. So we’re looking at how quickly and under what conditions it can help improve our detection. And then we have other components that I would say are going to have a longer timeline to full deployment.
Mitch Ratcliffe 7:56
It sounds like part of the problem, then, is just knitting all this together. Does that also apply to areas outside of major cities? Do we have the resources to do this on a nationwide basis?
Andrea Santy 8:10
Yeah, absolutely. We’re doing our testing for our space-based competition in Australia, so we’re looking at how you detect fires over vast areas from satellites as quickly as possible and deliver that information down within 10 minutes, with 15-minute updates. For our autonomous track, we’re testing in Alaska — so it will definitely be a real-world scenario where we can understand the capabilities of these technologies in forested areas, in really vast terrain, and under different environmental conditions. Part of why we’re working with these partners is because they’re great partners, but it also allows us to validate this technology under real-world, challenging conditions.
Mitch Ratcliffe 9:03
So how does the wildfire strategy change when this technology is in place? You’ve already mentioned that the climate crisis is accelerating the size and pace of these fires. Is the goal to suppress more fires earlier so that available resources can be deployed to those that actually break out? What’s the big-picture change in policy here?
Andrea Santy 9:26
XPRIZE really decided to double down on early detection and autonomous response, and we have two tracks. I’ll talk about the detection piece first because it’s digestible for everyone. Every wildfire starts small. They don’t start as a huge catastrophe — they start small, often in pretty remote areas. Sometimes they burn really fast, sometimes slower, depending on the conditions. But if you can address a wildfire at its very smallest phase, essentially post-ignition, that gives you the best chance to address it — either through autonomous suppression systems or through your fire service. If you have more eyes, ears, and noses on the landscape, the better your chance of getting that alert as soon as possible, which allows the fire service to decide how to prioritize their resources.
The second component we’re advancing is autonomous detection and response. Sensors and cameras handle the detection; the autonomous response system deploys, verifies there is a fire — that it’s not a barbecue but an actual wildfire that needs suppression — and places suppressant fully autonomously. That’s what we’re going to be testing in Alaska: can they execute this full end-to-end system? Is the technology integrated? Will it reach the scale and scope of the challenge and the geography? Because 1,000 square kilometers — which is our testing area — is roughly the size of San Antonio, Texas. The teams will have to find multiple fires and demonstrate persistent monitoring and persistent response. Imagine having a fire starting in a ravine: if you can get something out there in minutes, your chance of knocking it down — even just deterring the spread enough that firefighters can arrive — we hope will be a game changer.
Mitch Ratcliffe 12:13
We’re talking about autonomous drones. But one of the things that happened in the LA wildfire was that Santa Ana winds were so extreme, fixed-wing aircraft couldn’t fly. Can a drone perform in those conditions?
Andrea Santy 12:27
During our semi-final testing, our team traveled the world to observe these solutions in action. While not at scale, each of the five finalists was able to demonstrate that they could detect a fire, navigate to it, and suppress it fully autonomously over a small area. Coincidentally, relatively strong winds followed us — nothing like the Santa Ana winds, but we had 40-mile-per-hour winds pretty consistently during testing. It was odd, but it was helpful in terms of validating the technology.
Because you don’t have a human pilot, it’s not that helicopters and planes can’t fly — it’s that they can’t fly in that type of wind without putting a human at risk. This approach removes at least that human element. It’s going to continue to be a challenge, but many of the drones have a relatively high wind tolerance, and as the technology improves, the systems themselves are providing the input to stay balanced.
Mitch Ratcliffe 13:54
These systems are also being combined with sensor networks. Can you talk about how those are being deployed?
Andrea Santy 14:01
Some teams are really focused on ultra-early detection by deploying a sensor network — many, many sensors connected through a mesh network — allowing small, distributed sensors across a large area, which gives you great coverage. All of the different teams are competing under the same scenario, so we’ll get to see which technologies work under which conditions. There’s no single silver bullet that works in every condition, every geography, and every forest type. We’re also working on a pilot phase post-competition so the teams can continue to test and deploy, gaining even better understanding. Building trust with fire agencies — so they know what the technology can do under critical situations — is really important.
Mitch Ratcliffe 15:24
Do the fire agencies participate in these trials as well?
Andrea Santy 15:28
Absolutely. We have partners from different fire agencies in Australia — we’re doing our testing with the Rural Fire Service of New South Wales, which is a testing partner. Many of our judges come from different fire agencies across the United States and around the world. From the beginning, that was really an ethos we set forward — making sure this was done hand in hand with the fire agencies.
Mitch Ratcliffe 15:59
You’ve mentioned decoy fires. I’m curious how the trials will incorporate them. You mentioned barbecues — are you going to have people setting up small fires to lure the competition’s sensors?
Andrea Santy 16:11
I can’t say too much because testing hasn’t happened — I can’t give away the secret sauce. But yes — the teams do know they will have decoys and will need to ensure their technology ignores them. It can be anything from something flapping in the wind that resembles the color of fire all the way to barbecues or pile burns — anything that would confuse the technology.
Mitch Ratcliffe 16:52
And that could happen any day of the year. Really interesting. One of the most compelling things about the competition is the breadth of sources of ideas and the range of approaches — including even a high school team from Valley Christian High School in San Jose. What does that diversity tell us about where wildfire innovation will actually come from?
Andrea Santy 17:15
At XPRIZE, we believe that ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, and I think XPRIZE Wildfire really demonstrates what that looks like. We had teams from over 55 different countries enter the competition. We currently have six countries represented through our finals teams, and the range spans from Valley Christian — a high school team — through universities, startups, and all the way up to major industry. That truly spans the whole spectrum.
What I really love about our competition is that for many of the teams, this is both a company and a passion. Wildfires happen in so many places, and so many teams have been personally impacted. The high school team talked about growing up in areas where wildfires are a constant presence — they are very cognizant of the need for these solutions. Something remarkable: one in six Americans live in an area of wildfire risk, and 25% of Californians.
Mitch Ratcliffe 18:57
It’s a very tangible problem for so many of us, particularly in the West. And the smoke from fires in Canada is now familiar on the East Coast — it’s changed the very shape of life. This is a great place to take a quick commercial break. We’ll be right back.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s return to my discussion with Andrea Santy. She is Program Director of XPRIZE Wildfire — a competition headed into its final year with two groups of finalists vying to win shares of an $11 million prize to help commercialize their technologies.
Andrea, the autonomous competition requires teams to detect and suppress a high-risk wildfire in a 1,000-square-kilometer area — roughly the size of San Antonio — and do it within 10 minutes, while ignoring decoy fires. That’s four times faster than current best practices. Have any of the teams met that benchmark yet in the trials?
Andrea Santy 19:57
As I mentioned, the five teams advancing to finals all demonstrated they have end-to-end solutions to autonomously detect, navigate, and suppress a fire. Our semi-final testing was at a much smaller scale, and while some teams did it in less than 10 minutes, this finals competition is at a very large scale — and it is going to be challenging. Every XPRIZE is very audacious. We really want to push the limits, but we’re very confident we’re going to have a team that can do it. Still to be seen, but that is what finals is for.
Mitch Ratcliffe 20:42
Absolutely. It’s great that we’re testing in such diverse settings. Australia and Alaska seem very different. Is that actually the case, or are wildfire conditions globally roughly the same?
Andrea Santy 20:59
Very different. In Alaska, it will be wildfire season, and we’re testing in an area of much lower risk. The vegetation is different. The geography is different. The fuels — the plants and trees — are different. In Australia, the teams will be arriving as it comes out of summer and goes into fall, which means we don’t actually know exactly which specific days we’ll test, because the Rural Fire Service has to execute prescribed burns when it’s safe. We have a two-week testing window, with five planned days of testing, and approximately 20 fires of varying sizes that the teams will need to identify under different conditions and vegetation types.
Mitch Ratcliffe 22:11
Let’s talk a bit about the space-based prize. Lockheed Martin is adding a million dollars for the teams that can demonstrate the fastest and most accurate detection. Is detection turning out to be the harder technical problem — or is it the transition from detection to action, that coordination piece we talked about?
Andrea Santy 22:40
Lockheed Martin is supporting the autonomous wildfire response track — which we call Track B. The autonomous track requires teams to detect, navigate, and suppress, with all teams using drones. There’s a lot of different detection technology, from sensors that detect particulates up to cameras, and sensors and cameras mounted on drones.
Getting that detection into these autonomous response systems is really the step change — having something that communicates without human intervention, with drones that can fly under wind conditions and navigate to the right location, confirm there’s a fire, and then suppress it accurately. The teams will be testing on a moving fire — not a barrel of fire, but an actual fire that will be dynamic and small-scale but moving. That’s really challenging and requires quite a bit of system training. During semi-finals, accurately hitting the target was one of the harder challenges.
Mitch Ratcliffe 24:43
As you talk about it, it sounds like the transition from detection to addressing the fire appropriately — choosing the right suppression mechanism — is something you’ll continue to work on.
Andrea Santy 24:58
The teams are definitely still working on their systems. They have until June to have all of their systems working. Yeah, it requires a lot of different components.
Mitch Ratcliffe 25:20
And obviously that’s part of the bigger challenge — coordinating technological responses to a changing climate and acute situations like fire. As you observe the environment with these systems, are we also potentially identifying opportunities for prescribed burns in order to reduce fire risk?
Andrea Santy 25:45
Absolutely. While our competition is focused on detection and response to incipient-stage wildfires, I do think this technology can be utilized across many different scenarios — including prescribed burns, where you want to monitor large burn areas to ensure nothing escapes. That is definitely a use case, and anything that reduces our risk. Personally, I think it could provide peace of mind: if you have something on hand that can prevent a prescribed fire from spreading when weather conditions change unexpectedly, that’s enormously valuable.
Mitch Ratcliffe 26:43
Indigenous communities have managed fire for millennia using these kinds of burning practices. Have you engaged with tribal fire practitioners? Do they see autonomous technology as complementary to, or in tension with, their traditional fire stewardship programs?
Andrea Santy 27:02
We have engaged with some. I was just at a meeting where I was able to meet with a representative from an indigenous community in Canada, and they are actually going to pilot-test one of the team’s technologies — specifically a team with a heavy-lift drone. It was really exciting to talk with them and learn more about how they envision it being used. Their community is quite remote, and understanding how this technology could work within their context was a great conversation.
Mitch Ratcliffe 27:41
When I think about the swarm of drones approach to fire management, the regulatory landscape seems like a significant challenge. The FAA has been grappling with drone airspace management. Does the regulatory framework need to change significantly to accommodate these systems?
Andrea Santy 28:06
That’s an excellent question. Current regulations and protocol don’t allow drones in airspace with manned aircraft. As the technology gets better, there are definitely ways this can happen — there are pilots and tests already occurring with other partners looking at shared airspace for heavy-lift drones operating at higher altitudes. Beyond visual line of sight is one area where the testing is definitely ahead of where the regulations are.
Mitch Ratcliffe 28:55
What has your conservation career taught you about how technology deployment can shape our relationship with nature?
Andrea Santy 29:07
I got into this position in part because many of the projects I was working on at the World Wildlife Fund were being lost to wildfire, and I felt we hadn’t really understood the impact of wildfires on conservation. Wildfires are now the main driver of deforestation globally, having surpassed agriculture. In places like the Amazon, the Congo, and parts of tropical East Asia, there’s such critical biodiversity — and I think if we can use technology to monitor these areas, understand where fires are happening, and deploy appropriate responses, my hope is that we can save really, really important places. There are endemic species that only live in very, very small areas, and one fire could wipe out an entire species.
I also worked for a long time on projects where your goal was 20 to 50 years away. Being able to work with XPRIZE, where in three years we’ve seen an absolute transformation in both what the technology can do and how people understand what technology is for — I think we need more of these competitions, more technology applied to conservation problems. I’m really hopeful.
Mitch Ratcliffe 31:23
After three years with XPRIZE Wildfire, do you feel like we can turn back the rising incidence of wildfire and all the costs we’re seeing pile up when cities burn?
Andrea Santy 31:35
I think so. Communities and citizens around the world are understanding the problem at a deeper level. This is going to be all hands on deck. You need citizens and homeowners making sure they have zone zero — no vegetation around their homes. You need communities, city and state incentives, industry engagement. You need prescribed fire and better forest management policies that allow good fire on the landscape, and communities that encourage it. All of these factors together are what will get us to a new paradigm.
Mitch Ratcliffe 32:29
You mentioned raising awareness — this competition actually sounds like really good TV. Have you thought about how to tell this story of wildfire innovation so that people can get engaged with and behind this kind of activity?
Andrea Santy 32:49
We’ve discussed at length how we would be able to document some of the testing. For the autonomous wildfire response, it is a very big, vast area, and turning it into good TV is probably a step beyond us — but I think the teams have amazing stories to tell. We’re going to capture a lot of imagery to share that story out. We have a resource page that provides a lot of different information to homeowners and individuals about other really amazing organizations doing great work in the wildfire space.
Mitch Ratcliffe 33:47
How can our listeners follow along as you complete the project?
Andrea Santy 33:51
We’d love to have them follow along. The easiest way is xprize.org/wildfire — we have lots of information about the competition and the teams, lookbooks to learn about which teams are competing, social media updates, and a newsletter you can subscribe to. During the testing events we’ll be sharing quite a bit of good information. The events are in fairly remote, closed-system locations, so we can’t invite everyone there — but we’ll definitely be exploring how to make sure as many people as possible can get their eyes on what we’re doing.
Mitch Ratcliffe 34:42
Andrea, thank you very much for spending time with us today. It’s been a really interesting conversation.
Andrea Santy 34:48
Thank you so much. We hope all your listeners think deeply about wildfire and what they can do. Our goal is that collectively we can all work together to reduce this wildfire risk and keep good fire on the landscape.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Mitch Ratcliffe 35:11
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Andrea Santy, Program Director of XPRIZE Wildfire, an $11 million global competition now in its final year. Learn more and follow the finalists at xprize.org/competitions/wildfire.
This conversation revealed, at least for me, that solutions to wildfire are arriving — but perhaps faster than the systems built to receive them can accept and use them. We’ll need more public funding to deploy these technologies, and right now we’re moving in the wrong direction. As wildfire damage grows, total federal wildfire spending is holding roughly flat at around $7 billion a year. However, the Trump administration’s FY 2026 budget proposes eliminating the Forest Service’s state fire capacity grants, cutting vegetation and watershed management programs by 30%, and zeroing out the $300 million in forest research funding that was in the budget previously. So we’re maintaining the suppression budget while cutting the prevention, detection, and research infrastructure that could reduce what we have to suppress.
Fortunately, we have XPRIZE Wildfire to take on some of the burden — but it’s not enough. Consider what Andrea said about early detection: every wildfire does start small. If autonomous systems can get suppressant on a fire quickly enough, it might not even need to be fully extinguished — just deterred enough that firefighters can arrive to finish the job. The technology to do that end-to-end and autonomously is already being demonstrated in the field. But Andrea was equally direct about what’s lagging: the testing is ahead of where the regulations are.
Consider autonomous drones operating beyond visual line of sight and coordinating with manned aircraft during active fire emergencies. For that to work, the FAA’s frameworks for widespread drone operations need to be reinvented. The recent closure of El Paso International Airport over nearby counter-drone laser testing is evidence of how unprepared we truly are for the innovations that are coming.
In short, the engineering has arrived, but institutions need support to integrate that engineering into their operations. A similar gap is evident in who’s doing the innovating: teams from over 55 countries entered this competition, and a high school team from San Jose made the finals by solving the problem of locating fires beyond ridgelines using multi-sensor triangulation — not because they had institutional backing, but because they had access to a well-defined problem and the drive to solve it, along with the incentive of XPRIZE’s $11 million award.
The XPRIZE premise that ideas can come from anyone, anywhere — it turns out — is literally true. But recognizing that changes nothing if the regulatory, procurement, and deployment systems still favor incumbents and slow-moving approval processes.
Underlying all these challenges is what Andrea brought to this work from nearly two decades at the World Wildlife Fund: wildfires are now the leading driver of deforestation globally, having surpassed agriculture. The game has changed, but policy is still anchored in now-outdated 20th-century strategies. One fire in the wrong place can drive a species to extinction, or it can burn a city to the ground.
Andrea said she’s hopeful — not because the problem is easy, but because in three years she’s watched a transformation in what technology can do and how people understand what technology is for. That hope is well earned. But it will only translate into outcomes if institutions move at the speed the crisis demands — citizens, homeowners, communities, industries, and policy, all moving together. The competition creates urgency; the systems around it need to act on and use the innovations being delivered.
So stay tuned for more conversations with people actually making sustainability happen, and I hope you’ll check out our archive of more than 540 episodes. There’s something worth sharing with anyone you know. Writing a review on your favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us — because, folks, you are the amplifiers that spread ideas to create less waste. Please tell your friends, your family, your co-workers, and the people you meet on the street that they can find Sustainability In Your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or wherever they get their podcast goodness.
Thank you for your support. I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks — take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.
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https://earth911.com/podcast/sustainability-in-your-ear-the-xprize-wildfire-competition-heats-up/
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