“Make sure your salt is iodized or your baby could have serious thyroid problems!” another friend cautioned while I was cooking, prompting me to discover, undoubtedly too late, that I’d been eating the iodine-free variety.

At the airport, I ran into a third friend while picking up my belongings after going through the X-ray scanner. “You shouldn’t go through those machines!” she scolded me. “You’re supposed to ask for a pat-down instead when you’re pregnant!”

Pregnancy has allowed me for the first time to understand how hard it is to tell good information from bad. As a science journalist, I make my living by being able to decipher the two, but all these warnings bewilder me. As a result, I feel like I can see a bit more clearly how misinformation can become epidemic, leading to collective panic and seriously bad policy making. So I have tended to take this unsolicited advice with several grains of noniodized salt. Many of these warnings strike me as absurd — whether they come from friends, strangers, books penned by supposed experts or the truly maddening discussions I occasionally can’t help reading on parenting websites. I have resolved to not give in to other people’s hysteria. Humans have been reproducing for millennia, I reason, without any books to admonish them to avoid sleeping on their backs or drinking unpasteurized orange juice.

Suddenly, I began to understand something else: exactly how — and why — so many people opt to ignore the looming threat of climate change. 

At least that was my position until a friend who writes about health and the environment suggested that I was choosing to ignore (as opposed to, say, fact check) the pregnancy warnings largely for emotional reasons. While I normally take a rational, science-based view of things — climate change, say, or vaccines — my desire to avoid the paralysis of fear, she said, prompted me to overlook some of the science surrounding pregnancy. I was indignant, until I realized she was probably right.

And suddenly, I began to understand something else: exactly how — and why — so many people opt to ignore the looming threat of climate change. Or to cherry-pick the facts that convince us that environmental problems are vastly overstated. Or to think that those preaching the most alarming outcomes are being melodramatic. “A threat this great can generate a great deal of anxiety if we let it,” Glenn Croston, author of The Real Story of Risk: Adventures in a Hazardous World, wrote last year in Psychology Today.  “So we don’t.” It’s how climate deniers gain an upper hand, Croston maintained: They take advantage of the “inner denier” we all harbor. “They merely exploit our own desire to create a safe bubble of denial,” he wrote, “to build a levee holding back the rising tide of uncertainty and allow ourselves to preserve a vision of a safe, happy, and stable world.”

The more people ply me with high-pitched alarms about the dire consequences of my actual or potential actions, the less inclined I am to listen to them. The more something strikes me, for whatever reason, as fearmongering, the less likely I am to pay it any mind. It’s not that I don’t recognize the obvious causal dynamic between my actions and the health of my baby; it’s just that I can easily dismiss the news if it comes from someone I know to be a worrier, or if it smacks of hearsay (“C-sections can cause autism!”), or if it just doesn’t jibe with my preconceived ideas.

Most people have neither the time nor the inclination to look up individual studies of whether, say, global warming does in fact cause more hurricanes. The best we can do, most of the time, is heed the advice of those whose opinions we respect, be they better-informed friends, clueless-but-cocksure folks who seem credible because they share our general worldview, or actual experts.

So when my health-writer friend — someone I know to be well versed in how environmental toxins impact the human body — suggested I should take a closer look, it resonated. But when I tried to fact check some of the admonitions I’d received, it turned out to be somewhat difficult. For example, in 2012 the New York Times reported, “Most experts agree that as long as the X-ray backscatter machines are functioning properly, they expose passengers to only extremely low doses of ionizing radiation,” seeming to dispel the assertion that radiation from airport X-ray scanners can cause harm in utero. But the piece then went on to probe the machines’ questionable maintenance records and history of mechanical problems. 

For decades, Messer-Yaron had studied signal processing and cellular communication. She knew rainfall interfered with wave patterns in measurable ways, and that information might be gleaned from this interference. But could the interference be used to actually measure the rainfall creating it? Through an existing connection with cellular companies in Israel, Messer-Yaron and a doctoral student gathered months of signal data. When compared to daily weather records, individual precipitation events affected the signals in notably different ways. The team designed an algorithm to match signal noise against particular rain events and ran a pilot test in 2005. “It worked like a miracle,” Messer-Yaron says.

“The potential is vast in the countries of Africa, where water is such an issue.” — Harald KunstmannWith a few independent science teams from Europe, Messer-Yaron has pushed far beyond the pilot phase. She hopes meteorologists worldwide will soon be able to gather precipitation data using the microwave signals passing between cell phone towers.

“This is one of the most sensitive ways to measure precipitation,” notes Harald Kunstmann, a professor of hydrology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

Clear Picture

Measuring rainfall through signal interference hinges on properties of wave attenuation first described in a 1930 theoretical paper, “The Effect of Rain and Fog on the Propagation of Very Short Radio Waves.” Particulates in the air — precipitation most dramatically — alter otherwise smooth wave patterns. Wireless communication companies have long known about and countered these effects to maintain a clear signal, but with understandably little interest in the possible applications of the information contained in the signal disruptions. By designing and calibrating an algorithm to separate this disturbance from a baseline clear-weather signal, Messer-Yaron and others have been able to extract a detailed fingerprint of rain.

The readings provide a complement to, not replacement for, the two methods now commonly used for measuring precipitation: satellite radar and ground-based rain gauges.

Radar images provide a valuable big picture, but have trouble giving precise readings of what’s happening on the ground. Rain gauges are precise, but provide only a single point of information. Microwaves, however, are relatively close to the ground, traveling at heights of 100–200 feet, and traverse a linear path. “It happens to be that the weakness of the radar and the weakness of the gauge is the strength of the microwave link,” says Kunstmann. Together, these three measures capture very clear spatial and temporal pictures of rainfall — particularly important in the case of severe weather events where conditions change quickly.

A Signal Possibility

Cell phone rain measurement technology is emerging at a time when water-monitoring networks are underfunded and in some cases being reduced. “Less is known with each passing decade,” according to a 2009 United Nations World Water Report. Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum this year ranked the water supply crisis as one of the top five global threats. These concerns hold particular weight in developing countries, which often struggle to maintain meteorological infrastructure but are deeply dependent on the vagaries of weather.

“The potential is vast in the countries of Africa, where water is such an issue,” says Kunstmann. The bulk of cellular subscriptions, nearing 7 billion this year, are in the developing world, with 500 million across Africa alone.

Key remaining challenges are integrating data from the three different sources to paint a single picture of precipitation and, perhaps equally challenging, negotiating deals with cellular service companies.

“Israel is a small place, with three major cell providers,” says Messer-Yaron. “All three of them gave the data for free — no contracts, no expectations. This is a nice model for collaboration between industry and universities, but I think my colleagues in other countries have not been so lucky.”

Kunstmann’s lab, for instance, spent three years working to build trust with a point person at a major cellular provider. Only after that did they gain access to the data.

Despite this potential hurdle, the method has great promise. Teams continue to refine the algorithm’s accuracy and universal applicability. “The best solution is not yet found,” says Christian Chwala, one of Kunstmann’s doctoral students. Looking ahead, these groups are hoping not only to accurately measure rain, but also to distinguish different types of precipitation, such as sleet and snow. Even more ambitiously, they hope to one day measure any kind of airborne impurity through microwave attenuation.

“Once you start to think about reverse engineering the signal, the opportunities are endless,” says Messer-Yaron. Though precipitation has the most dramatic effects on cell signals, she says, future research and development “absolutely” could open up a full spectrum of global-scale phenomena, such as pollution, to this type of monitoring. Perhaps with the help of a little more coffee. 

Today’s investment dollars are going toward business models that are strikingly myopic in their approach, based on the belief that increased consumption is the key to economic growth. As everyone knows, however, our Earth’s natural resources are finite, and they are degrading faster than we are replenishing them. Therefore, we need to shift from a “more consumption” to a “better consumption” model. We need a forward-thinking strategy that will help us build resiliency and regeneration into our ecosystems as we grow food for an increasing population.

By reconsidering our investments and developing new solutions, we will ensure not only enough food for 9 billion, but also a planet that provides clean water, fertile soil and rich biodiversity — as well as healthier consumers and stronger communities — in 2050 and beyond. 

Agricultural Evolution

Over the past few decades, farming systems have changed dramatically. Following World War II, the agricultural sector underwent a chemical revolution, with DDT being one of the first broadly used pesticides. Many farmers embraced it as a way to control unwanted pests or weeds, but it came at a cost to humans and wildlife. By the 1960s, it was linked to nervous system and liver damage, breast cancer, miscarriages, developmental delays and male infertility.

Based on performance to date, we need to think outside the singular box of GMOs and instead invest in a broad range of tools to address the challenges at hand.

Although DDT is now banned in the United States, other chemicals are similarly concerning. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is used extensively worldwide but has been linked to birth defects and cancers. In addition, a 2009 paper published in the European Journal of Agronomy finds it compromises plants’ defense mechanisms, making them more susceptible to disease and ultimately leading to reduced yields.

U.S. farm size has also increased, due in no small part to 1970s federal policies that helped drive farmland consolidation and monoculture cropping. According to an Economic Research Service report, as of 2007, farms with more than 1,000 acres now account for more than 60 percent of all U.S. farmland and more than 40 percent of all U.S. agricultural production value. While farm size is not inherently a problem, how the farm is managed can be: toxic, persistent chemical applications come at a cost to human health and the environment, and less diversification creates vulnerabilities in the system.

The most recent agricultural developments center around genetic engineering. In the nearly two decades since genetically engineered crops (commonly referred to as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs) have been farmed commercially, they have focused on adding two primary traits to crops: a herbicide-tolerant trait that allows crops to survive chemical sprays while a weed is destroyed, and an insect-resistant trait that gives crops a built-in toxin so farmers can use fewer pesticides. Although designed to use fewer chemicals on crops such as corn, soy, canola and cotton, these two traits have actually led to an increase of 400 million pounds of agrochemical applications in the United States, according to a study of pesticide use from 1996 to 2011 published in Environmental Sciences Europe in 2012.

To further complicate matters, evidence in recent years demonstrates nature adapting to chemical spray through the evolution of “superweeds.” These weeds are chemical resistant; 24 weed species are now resistant to glyphosate. This results in farmers needing to use more — or more toxic — chemicals to combat them, which pollutes our soils and waters, creates known risks to humans, and ultimately doesn’t help farmers.

Finally, a study conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that no genetically engineered corn or soy crops increased intrinsic yields (yields grown under “ideal” conditions) in the U.S. Operational yields — those that occur under field conditions — also didn’t increase for herbicide-tolerant corn and soy crops. Only the built-in toxin trait for corn demonstrated modest increased yields of approximately 0.2–0.3 percent per year from 1996 to 2009. Relative to yield increases from conventional breeding – corn yields have increased an average of 1 percent per year in the past several decades – it appears the impact of GMO crops is modest, at best.

All told, this is not a resounding return on investment. Based on performance to date, we need to think outside the singular box of GMOs and instead invest in a broad range of tools to address the challenges at hand. 

Once there, the trim was delivered to chefs employed by BAMCO, who were challenged to do something innovative with it. They created salmon burgers, salmon pad thai, salmon tacos and a wide variety of other meals.

The 26-year-old company, which serves 150 million meals per year to corporate employees, university students and museum goers in 32 states, has a long history of leadership in sustainable practices. Eliminating food waste like trim is just one example. Each of its 500 locations is under the direction of a chef who is required to buy at least 20 percent of produce from suppliers within 150 miles, a mandate that began back in 1999 when Maisie Greenawalt, vice president of strategy, established BAMCO’s Farm to Fork program. Another program, the company’s Low Carbon Diet, asks chefs to cut use of beef companywide by 33 percent, cut the use of cheese by 10 percent and eliminate airfreighted produce. And BAMCO was among the first food service companies to address the issues of antibiotic overuse, sustainable seafood, humanely raised meat and eggs, and farmworker welfare.

By empowering chefs to independently support sustainability, BAMCO is attempting to create the kind of food system it wants to see in America, rather than proceed with the industrial food system’s status quo. “How can we use every single part of our business to create that food system?” asks Greenawalt.

“There is no food service company that is close to Bon Appétit’s leadership on animal welfare issues.” – Josh Balk, director of corporate policy for the Humane Society’s farm animal protection campaign

The food service industry as a whole is increasingly moving toward sustainability. Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, a restaurant franchise and food product company, offers organic selections, serves vegetarian meals, and buys only sustainable seafood, cage-free eggs, crate-free veal and pork raised without gestation crates. Similarly, among other initiatives, the fast-food restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill buys 100 percent of its pork from suppliers that don’t use gestation crates or antibiotics. Meanwhile, the large supermarket chain Whole Foods buys local produce, procures large quantities of meat from producers that treat animals humanely, and has collaborated with the Marine Stewardship Council, Blue Ocean Institute and Monterey Bay Aquarium to make its seafood selection as sustainable as possible. Even Burger King has gotten on the bandwagon, offering veggie burgers and promoting meatless Monday.

But BAMCO’s long history has made it a leader in such efforts. “There is no food service company that is close to Bon Appétit’s leadership on animal welfare issues,” says Josh Balk, director of corporate policy for the Humane Society’s farm animal protection campaign. “Specifically, their commitments of switching 100 percent of their eggs to cage free, eliminating gestation crates in their supply chain and sourcing … animal products from farms that pass third-party certification programs from credible animal-welfare organizations.” By 2015 at least 25 percent of the company’s meat and eggs will be from sources whose humane practices have been verified by four such organizations.

“We put a stake in the ground, and we want to make it a reality of what we promised,” says Greenawalt, adding that the company still has a lot of work to do to meet its 2015 goal of procuring pork raised without gestation crates. “The problem is, we don’t have enough suppliers lined up,” she says. “We are making promises faster than producers are making changes — and we are even willing to write the bigger check!”

While most of the company’s efforts have been in support of local producers, BAMCO’s focus is also international. When company chefs requested tilapia, it enlisted the help of Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch to find the only tilapia producer in China producing the fish sustainably (less than 5 percent of tilapia is produced in the U.S.). Despite its red list of all tilapia from China at that time, the Seafood Watch program gave BAMCO the green light as a commercial buyer. Why? “Because it would send a signal to everyone else in China that if you change your practices, you can get more sales,” says Greenawalt. “So we buy from one particular producer in China as a way to create a carrot incentive for the other producers to change their practices to be more environmentally preferable.” As a whole, China’s tilapia production has improved since the time BAMCO first started buying from its sustainable producer. Now tilapia from China is no longer red-listed but labeled a “good alternative” by Seafood Watch.

Large-scale factory farms are the company’s next target. “We’ve always supported small, local growers, but how can we change the big growers?” asks Greenawalt. “They’ve gotten away with a lot by being nameless and faceless to most consumers.”

Though not the biggest food-service company, BAMCO looks to punch above its weight, so to speak, and create change. “We are always pushing and striving to think of ways to leverage our brand and purchases to exert more pressure than our size commands, in order to make changes in the supply chain,” Greenawalt says. Still, Greenawalt understands that success in any area of food will only come if the product is something consumers will want to eat. “Don’t think we are so focused on sustainability that we forget that,” she says.

When new waste-to-energy plants are proposed in California, for example, they run into buzz saws of liberal opposition. Plans to increase the volume of waste burned at a Minneapolis WTE facility have been blocked for four years, and the issue recently divided the Democratic candidates for mayor. From New York to Massachusetts to Rhode Island to Pennsylvania to Maine, opposition has delayed or stopped WTE plants across the nation, largely in liberal-controlled urban areas.

But the opposition is misguided. Today’s WTEs are not your granddaddy’s trash burners, and some liberal groups, like the Center for American Progress, are starting to look at the actual science and reevaluate long-held assumptions in light of new information and increasing concern over climate change. When they do, they are finding that today’s WTE plants look surprisingly good for the environment and for fighting climate change.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle — Then What?

Americans generate about 390 million tons of trash every year — as much as 7 pounds per day for every man, woman and child. Waste ranks with energy, food, population and the economy as one of the biggest issues humans need to tackle to create a sustainable world. The U.S. recycles and composts about 94 million tons of that waste, or roughly 24 percent, but could do much more.

Waste Management Hierarchy. Image courtesy of Shawn Otto.

But, even if the U.S. doubled its rate of recycling, there would still be hundreds of millions of tons of post-recycled, post-composted solid waste. What you do with it is the question, and there are two options: dump it in a landfill or burn it/gasify it for energy.

Concern that WTEs reduce recycling rates does not appear to be borne out by the evidence, which shows that they actually tend to be associated with increased recycling effort.

Liberals, overwhelmingly, are choosing to dump, which science shows is the most polluting alternative. Because of liberal opposition, almost no WTEs have been built in the U.S. in 20 years, despite the classification of WTE as clean energy by the EPA and 31 state environmental agencies.

Things are very different in green-conscious Europe. While the U.S. has just 89 WTE facilities, Europe has around 420 and is building more. Northern Europe, the most environmentally conscious part of the continent, is also where the most WTEs are located.

WTE construction in the U.S. is being held back by fears that burning trash will cause people to reduce their recycling effort or will put dangerous toxins into the environment. But are those fears supported by the evidence?

Recycling and WTE Are Complementary

Of course recycling should be maximized in order to remove all recyclables and compostables before waste is disposed of in a landfill or a WTE facility. But concern that WTEs reduce recycling rates does not appear to be borne out by the evidence, which shows that they actually tend to be associated with increased recycling effort.

The five European nations with the highest recycling rates — Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Sweden — have among the highest WTE usage, to the point that they have reduced landfill use to less than 1 percent of their waste. Sweden even competes to import waste. While this is questionably desirable, it does not appear to have reduced the country’s recycling effort;  its rate of recycling is higher than 22 other European nations.

The United States if far behind Europe on recycling and waste to energy. Image courtesy of Shawn Otto.

In America, by contrast, where environmental groups frequently portray the issue as an either/or choice between recycling and WTEs, both rates are much lower. A whopping 69 percent of U.S. municipal solid waste winds up in landfills. As in Europe, though, communities in the U.S. that do have a WTE plant show higher recycling rates than the national average.

Finally, recycling itself is not without waste. For example, recycling of mixed paper leaves a 15 percent residue that still has to be disposed of somehow.

Clearly, recycling and WTE can and do go hand-in-hand in a responsible waste management plan, and co-promotion by environmental groups would likely increase both WTE and recycling, both of which are preferable to landfilling in the waste management hierarchy.

Clean Air Technology Cuts Emissions To Near Zero

While trash burners once did put dangerous toxins into the air, in the past 10 years WTE pollution control technology has become so advanced that the most common and dangerous toxins have been almost completely eliminated, something that the environmental groups who still oppose WTEs rarely mention.

Huxley’s account is remarkable because it was written in the early 1930s, when far less public attention was devoted to the supply of natural resources. In fact, the full potential of phosphorus would be demonstrated several decades later. Its targeted use fueled the green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which dramatically improved crop yields and helped minimize the proportion of the world’s population remaining underfed.

Adding phosphorus to nutrient-poor soils can dramatically enhance crop production. Maize plants in the foreground of this photo taken on Brazil’s cerrado are growing on unsupplemented soil; the taller ones behind them received phosphorus fertilizer. Photo by D.M.G. De Sousa.

Farmers around the world have come to depend on manufactured inorganic fertilizers containing key plant nutrients phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium to enhance soil fertility, especially in the otherwise poor soils of most tropical settings. But while all three are relatively abundant in nature, commercially viable sources of phosphorus to make these fertilizers could be exhausted just a few decades from now. That prospect, which remains a source of heated debate, has spurred a drive to recover the significant quantities of this element that disappear in the waste streams of cities and farms. Such recovery would have a bonus benefit: Even without the threat of shortages, minimizing the disposal of phosphorus is increasingly key to preventing degradation of valuable freshwater resources.

Momentous Shift

The availability of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in soil is a limiting factor in plant growth. The limitation imposed by phosphorus is the strictest, based on the amount of this material that plants take up and concentrate. Since all living organisms incorporate phosphorus in varying chemical combinations, modest amounts are relatively easy to obtain from biological sources. Spreading animal manure on fields is among the oldest known ways to add phosphorus to a crop. Urine can also be effective. Guano from birds and bats is exceptionally rich in this regard, as is bone meal.

“Increasing environmental, economic, geopolitical and social concerns about the short- and long-term use of phosphate rock in agriculture means there is a need to reassess the way crops obtain their phosphorus and humanity is fed.” — Dana CordellYet even as Huxley was writing, and certainly by the time the green revolution rolled around, such organic inputs were no longer sufficient to match the scale of agricultural output. As a result, most of the phosphorus that ends up on fields today comes not from organic materials, but from inorganic phosphates extracted from geological deposits.

This distinction makes no difference to crops. For our society and economy, on the other hand, the shift has been nothing less than momentous.

“Today, we are effectively dependent on phosphorus from mined phosphate rock,” says environmental scientist Dana Cordell, a research principal at the Institute for Sustainable Futures in Sydney, Australia. In many places, such as Brazil or central Africa, phosphate-based fertilizers are essential to maintaining crop yields and ensuring domestic food security. And that, Cordell says, spells trouble. For her, inorganic phosphates represent a nonrenewable resource that contrasts sharply with traditional sources of phosphorus such as manure, which are integrated into a natural environmental cycle. And because they’re only found in certain areas, global politics comes into play.

“Increasing environmental, economic, geopolitical and social concerns about the short- and long-term use of phosphate rock in agriculture means there is a need to reassess the way crops obtain their phosphorus and humanity is fed,” she says.

Peak Phosphorus?

Some, including Cordell, see a limited future for the conventional mining of phosphates. Easily obtained, high-quality deposits of this material will become harder to find, and its price could be expected to rise accordingly. Production should ultimately peak as commercially viable supplies become more limited, reducing the amount of phosphorus available for use as fertilizer. This reduction would be reflected by declining agricultural production in some parts of the world, along with the specter of mounting hunger.

What remains a point of contention is exactly when such problems might arise. Cordell and others insist that this scenario could play out in a very few decades, as the quality of available phosphate begins to decline.

“Importantly, this means increasing energy and other resources (like sulfur) are therefore required to mine, process and extract the same nutrient value from phosphate rock while simultaneously generating more waste,” she says. “Further, the global trade of phosphate commodities to the farm gate currently relies on fossil fuel energy, yet in a carbon-constrained future, shipping millions of tons of phosphate rock and fertilizers around the globe may no longer be appropriate or possible.”

By 1975, there were only about 135 grizzlies left around Yellowstone and a few hundred more scattered throughout western states. The federal government moved to list the species under the Endangered Species Act, where it has, for the most part, been ever since.

Today, grizzlies have rebounded. With roughly 600 in the Greater Yellowstone Area, wildlife officials are ready to delist the species in that ecosystem and proclaim North America’s greatest conservation victory. “It’s taken us 30 years to get to this point,” says Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We consider the species recovered.”

But some say America should have more grizzlies — thousands more.

Similar debates swirl around the buffalo and the wolf. When it comes to wildlife conservation, the question of how many animals is enough is as much about philosophy as it is about biology. The answer depends on how wild we want our West — and other places — to be.

“Grizzlies are moving back into their historic ranges, so we’re seeing conflicts with humans. When you get conflicts, you get a push to control bears.” — Erin Edge, Defenders of Wildlife

Currently grizzlies are relegated to designated “recovery zones,” where state and federal officials carefully monitor their rates of reproduction and mortality and make sure they have enough food.

All this management makes the grizzlies of today “the very definition of an open-air zoo population,” according Chuck Neal, a retired ecologist for the U.S. Department of the Interior and author of Grizzlies in the Mist. To have a truly wild, free-ranging population, he argues, “we must permit these bears to expand their habitat.”

But the states surrounding Yellowstone — Montana, Wyoming and Idaho —want just the opposite. Citing threats to livestock and public safety, they want to confine the bears to designated areas and thereby limit their numbers. From 1986 to 2010, there were no fatal grizzly attacks on humans in Yellowstone. In the past three years, there have been four.

“Grizzlies are moving back into their historic ranges, so we’re seeing conflicts with humans,” says Erin Edge with Defenders of Wildlife, a national organization focused on conservation and the protection of biodiversity. “When you get conflicts, you get a push to control bears.”

Once federal protections are removed from an animal, management is turned over to the states. Wyoming is already lobbying to fast track the delisting process so the state can reintroduce hunting and thereby control its bear population. “There’s an essential urgency for the state of Wyoming to take care of nuisance bears,” says Steve Ferrell, policy advisor to Wyoming governor Matt Mead and former head of the state’s game and fish department.

But Neal says politics, including the deep pockets and influence of the livestock industry, are weighted too heavily in wildlife management decisions. “We’re talking about public land,” he says. “The preeminent use must be wildlife, not cattle.”

That is because wildlife is good for the land, he argues. In conservation biology, grizzlies are known as an “umbrella species.” Protecting grizzlies and other large animals in a given ecosystem indirectly protects smaller species whose habitat needs are not as great, thereby ensuring biodiversity, says Neal. “If you have habitat that can sustain a viable grizzly population, it can sustain a whole healthy ecosystem,” he says.

Grizzlies once roamed America from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean. They now occupy about 2 percent of their historic range, living in ecosystems that are geographically separate from one another. These are “isolated, postage-stamp sized populations,” says Louisa Willcox with Natural Resources Defense Council. If “linkage corridors” were created between these disparate ecosystems and grizzlies were allowed to occupy all the habitat that’s suitable for them, that would result in a population of roughly 3,000, Willcox says.

So far conservation groups are treading lightly in this debate. Many are still recovering from “a bruising battle over the wolf,” says Josh Mogerman with NRDC. For the first time in the history of the Endangered Species Act, an act of Congress removed a species — wolves in Montana and Idaho — from the list in 2011. “There’s a deep concern about setting up the same conflict dynamic,” says Mogerman, “which wouldn’t be good for the grizzly.”