To this day, Jaws remains the best example of Steven Spielberg‘s genius as a filmmaker. He somehow took a middling pulp novel about a killer shark and turned it into a thrilling adventure about masculinity and economic desperation. And to the surprise of no one, the massive success of Jaws spawned a lot of knockoffs, a glut of movies about animals terrorizing communities. None of these reach the majesty of Jaws, of course. But here’s the thing—none of them had to be Jaws. Sure, it’s nice that Spielberg’s film has impeccably designed set pieces and compelling characters, but that’s not the main reason people go to animal attack movies. We really just want to watch people get attacked. And eaten. With such standards duly lowered, let’s take a look at the best animal attack movies that came out in the past half-century since Jaws first scared us out of the water. Of course this list doesn’t cover every movie inspired by Jaws ( for example Godzilla Minus One, which devotes its middle act to a wonderful Jaws riff), and some can argue that these movies were less inspired by Jaws than other nature revolts features, such as Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds. But every one of these flicks owes a debt to Jaws, either in inspiration or simply getting people interested in movies about animals eating people. Those warning aside, lets make like drunken revelers on Amity Island and dive right in! 20. Sharknado (2013) Sharknado almost doesn’t belong on this list because it’s less a movie and more of a meme, a precursor to Vines and TikTok trends. Yes, many fantastic movies have been made off of an incredibly high concept and a painfully low budget. Heck, that approach made Roger Corman’s career. But Sharknado‘s high concept—a tornado sweeps over the ocean and launches ravenous sharks into the mainland—comes with a self-satisfied smirk. Somehow, Sharknado managed to capture the imagination of the public, making it popular enough to launch five sequels. At the time, viewers defended it as a so bad it’s good-style movie like The Room. But today Sharknado‘s obvious attempts to be wacky are just bad, making the franchise one more embarrassing trend, ready to be forgotten. 19. Orca (1977) For a long time, Orca had a reputation for being the most obvious Jaws ripoff, and with good reason—Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis, who would go on to support Flash Gordon, Manhunter, and truly launch David Lynch‘s career with Blue Velvet, wanted his own version of the Spielberg hit. On paper he had all the right ingredients, including a great cast with Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, and another oceanic threat, this time a killer whale. Orca boasts some impressive underwater cinematography, something that even Jaws largely lacks. But that’s the one thing Orca does better than Jaws. Everything else—character-building, suspense and scare scenes, basic plotting and storytelling—is done in such a haphazard manner that Orca plays more like an early mockbuster from the Asylum production company (makers of Sharknado) than it does a product from a future Hollywood player. 18. Tentacles (1977) Another Italian cheapie riding off the success of Jaws, Tentacles at least manages to be fun in its ineptitude. A giant octopus feature, Tentacles is directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, a man whose greatest claim to fame is that he annoyed first-time director James Cameron so much on Piranha II: The Spawning that he activated the future legend’s infamous refusal to compromise with studios and producers. Tentacles somehow has a pretty impressive cast, including John Huston, Shelly Winters, and Henry Fonda all picking up paychecks. None of them really do any hard work in Tentacles, but there’s something fun about watching these greats shake the the octopus limbs that are supposed to be attacking them, as if they’re in an Ed Wood picture. 17. Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) Spielberg famously couldn’t get his mechanical shark to work, a happy accident that he overcame with incredibly tense scenes that merely suggested the monster’s presence. For his arachnids on the forgotten movie Kingdom of the Spiders, director John “Bud” Cardos has an even more formative tool to make up for the lack of effects magic: William Shatner. Shatner plays Rack Hansen, a veterinarian who discovers that the overuse of pesticides has killed off smaller insects and forced the tarantula population to seek larger prey, including humans. These types of ecological messages are common among creature features of the late ’70s, and they usually clang with hollow self-righteousness. But in Kingdom of the Spiders, Shatner delivers his lines with such blown out conviction that we enjoy his bluster, even if we don’t quite buy it. 16. The Meg (2018) The idea of Jason Statham fighting a giant prehistoric shark is an idea so awesome, it’s shocking that his character from Spy didn’t already pitch it. And The Meg certainly does deliver when Statham’s character does commit to battle with the creature in the movie’s climax. The problem is that moment of absurd heroism comes only after a lot of long sappy nonsense. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! It’s hard to figure out who is to blame for The Meg‘s failure. Director Jon Turteltaub hails from well-remembered Disney classics Cool Runnings and National Treasure. But too often he forgets how to pace an adventure film and gives into his most saccharine instincts here. One of the many Chinese/Hollywood co-produced blockbusters of the 2010s, The Meg also suffers from trying to innocuously please too wide an audience. Whatever the source, The Meg only fleetingly delivers on the promise of big time peril, wasting too much time on thin character beats. 15. Lake Placid (1999) I know already some people reading this are taking exception to Lake Placid‘s low ranking, complaining that this list isn’t showing enough respect to what they consider a zippy, irreverent take on a creature feature, one written by Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley and co-starring Betty White. To those people, I can only say, “Please rewatch Lake Placid and then consider its ranking.” Lake Placid certainly has its fun moments, helped along by White as a kindly grandmother who keeps feeding a giant croc, Bill Pullman as a dumbfounded simple sheriff, and Oliver Platt as a rich adventurer. Their various one-liners are a pleasure to remember. But within the context of a movie stuffed with late ’90s irony, the constant snark gets tiresome, sapping out all the fun of a killer crocodile film. 14. Open Water (2003) Like Sharknado, Open Water had its fans for a few years but has fallen in most moviegoers’ esteem. Unlike Sharknado, Open Water is a real movie, just one that can’t sustain its premise for its entire runtime. Writer and director Chris Kentis draws inspiration from a real-life story about a husband and wife who were accidentally abandoned in the middle of the ocean by their scuba excursion group. The same thing happens to the movie’s Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel Travis (Daniel Kintner), who respond to their predicament by airing out their relationship grievances, even as sharks start to surround them. Kentis commits to the reality of the couple’s bleak situation, which sets Open Water apart from the thrill-a-minute movies that mostly make up this list. But even with some shocking set pieces, Open Water feels too much like being stuck in car with a couple who hates each other and not enough like a shark attack thriller. 13. Eaten Alive (1976) Spielberg’s artful execution of Jaws led many of the filmmakers who followed to attempt some semblance of character development and prestige, even if done without enthusiasm (see: Orca). Not so with Tobe Hooper, who followed up the genre-defining The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Eaten Alive. Then again, Hooper draws just as much from Psycho as he does Jaws. Neville Brand plays Judd, the proprietor of a sleazy hotel on the bayou where slimy yokels do horrible things to one another. Amity Island, this is not. But when one of the visitors annoy Judd, he feeds them to the pet croc kept in the back. Eaten Alive is a nasty bit of work, but like most of Hooper’s oeuvre, it’s a lot of fun. 12. Prophecy (1979) Directed by John Frankenheimer of The Manchurian Candidate and Grand Prix fame, Prophecy is easily the best of the more high-minded animal attack movies that followed Jaws. This landlocked film, written by David Seltzer, stars Robert Foxworth as Dr. Robert Verne, a veterinarian hired by the EPA to investigate bear attacks against loggers on a mountain in Maine. Along with his wife Maggie (Talia Shire), Verne finds himself thrown into a conflict between the mining company and the local Indigenous population who resist them. Prophecy drips with an American hippy mentality that reads as pretty conservative today (“your body, your choice” one of Maggie’s friends tells her… to urge her against getting an abortion), making its depictions of Native people, including the leader played by Italian American actor Armand Assante, pretty embarrassing. But there is a mutant bear on the loose and Frankenheimer knows how to stage an exciting sequence, which makes Prophecy a worthwhile watch. 11. Piranha 3D (2010) Piranha 3D begins with a denim-wearing fisherman named Matt, played by Richard Dreyfuss no less, falling into the water and immediately getting devoured by the titular flesh-eaters. This weird nod to Matt Hooper and Jaws instead of Joe Dante’s Piranha, the movie Piranha 3D is supposed to be remaking, is just one of the many oddities at play yhere. Screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg have some of the wacky energy and social satire of the original film, but director Alexandre Aja, a veteran of the French Extreme movement, includes so much nastiness in Piranha 3D that we’re not sure if we want to laugh or throw up. Still, there’s no denying the power of Piranha 3D‘s set pieces, including a shocking sequence in which the titular beasties attack an MTV/Girls Gone Wild Spring Break party and chaos ensues. Furthermore, Piranha 3D benefits from a strong cast, which includes Elizabeth Shue, Adam Scott, and Ving Rhames. 10. Anaconda (1997) With its many scenes involving an animal attacking a ragtag group on a boat, Anaconda clearly owes a debt to Jaws. However, with its corny characters and shoddy late ’90s CGI, Anaconda feels today less like a Jaws knockoff and more like a forerunner to Sharknado and the boom of lazy Syfy and Redbox horror movies that followed. Whatever its influences and legacy, there’s no denying that Anaconda is, itself, a pretty fun movie. Giant snakes make for good movie monsters, and the special effects have become dated in a way that feels charming. Moreover, Anaconda boasts a enjoyably unlikely cast, including Eric Stoltz as a scientist, Owen Wilson and Ice Cube as members of a documentary crew, and Jon Voight as what might be the most unhinged character of his career, second only to his crossbow enthusiast from Megalopolis. 9. The Shallows (2016) The Shallows isn’t the highest-ranking shark attack movie on this list but it’s definitely the most frightening shark attack thriller since Jaws. That’s high praise, indeed, but The Shallows benefits from a lean and mean premise and clear direction by Jaume Collet-Serra, who has made some solid modern thrillers. The Shallows focuses almost entirely on med student Nancy Adams (Blake Lively), who gets caught far from shore after the tide comes in and is hunted by a shark. A lot of the pleasure of The Shallows comes from seeing how Collet-Serra and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski avoid the problems that plague many of the movies on this list. Adams is an incredibly competent character, and we pull for her even after the mistake that leaves her stranded. Moreover, The Shallows perfectly balances thrill sequences with character moments, making for one of the more well-rounded creature features of the past decade. 8. Razorback (1984) Jaws, of course, has a fantastic opening scene, a thrilling sequence in which the shark kills a drunken skinny dipper. Of the movies on this list, only Razorback comes close to matching the original’s power, and it does so because director Russell Mulcahy, who would make Highlander next, goes for glossy absurdity. In the Razorback‘s first three minutes, a hulking wild boar smashes through the rural home of an elderly man in the Australian outback, carrying away his young grandson. Over the sounds of a synth score, the old man stumbles away from his now-burning house, screaming up into the sky. Sadly, the rest of Razorback cannot top that moment. Mulcahy directs the picture with lots of glossy style, while retaining the grit of the Australian New Wave movement. But budget restrictions keep the titular beast from really looking as cool as one would hope, and the movie’s loud, crazy tone can’t rely on Jaws-like power of suggestion. 7. Crawl (2019) Alexandre Aja’s second movie on this list earns its high rank precisely because it does away with the tonal inconsistencies that plagued Piranha 3D and leans into what the French filmmaker does so well: slicked down and mean horror. Set in the middle of a Florida hurricane, Crawl stars Kaya Scodelario as competitive swimmer Haley and always-welcome character actor Barry Pepper as her father Dave, who get trapped in a flooding basement that’s menaced by alligators. Yet as grimy as Crawl can get, Aja also executes the strong character work in the script by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen. Dave and Haley are real people, not just gator-bait, making their peril feel all the more real, and their triumphs all the sweeter. 6. Piranha (1978) Piranha is the only entry on this list to get a seal of approval from Stephen Spielberg himself, who not only praised the movie, even as Universal Pictures planned to sue the production, but also got director Joe Dante to later helm Gremlins. It’s not hard to see why Piranha charmed Spielberg, a man who loves wacky comedy. Dante’s Looney Tunes approach is on full display in some of the movie’s best set pieces. But Piranha is special because it also comes from legendary screenwriter John Sayles, who infuses the story with social satire and cynicism that somehow blends with Dante’s approach. The result is a film about piranha developed by the U.S. military to kill the Vietnamese getting unleashed into an American river and making their way to a children’s summer camp, a horrifying idea that Dante turns into good clean fun. 5. Slugs (1988) If we’re talking about well-made movies, then Slugs belongs way below any of the movies on this list, somewhere around the killer earthworm picture Squirm. But if we’re thinking about pure enjoyable spectacle, it’s hard to top Slugs, a movie about, yes, flesh-eating slugs. Yes, it’s very funny to think about people getting terrorized by creatures that are famous for moving very, very slowly. But Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón, perhaps best known for his equally bugnuts giallo Pieces (1982), pays as little attention to realism as he does to good taste. Slugs is filled with insane and ghastly sequences of killer slugs ending up in unlikely places, swarming the floor of someone’s bedroom or inside a fancy restaurant, and then devouring people, one methodical bite at a time. 4. Deep Blue Sea (1999) When it comes to goofy ’90s CGI action, it’s hard to top Deep Blue Sea, directed by Renny Harlin and featuring sharks with genetically enhanced brains. Deep Blue Sea doesn’t have a strong sense of pacing, it lacks any sort of believable character development, and the effects looked terrible even in 1999. But it’s also the only movie on this list that features LL Cool J as a cool chef who recites a violent version of the 23rd Psalm and almost gets cooked alive in an oven by a genius-level shark. It’s scenes like the oven sequence that makes Deep Blue Sea such a delight, despite its many, many flaws. The movie tries to do the most at every turn, whether that’s clearly reediting the movie in postproduction so that LL Cool J’s chef becomes a central character, stealing the spotlight form intended star Saffron Burrows, or a ridiculous Samuel L. Jackson monologue with a delightfully unexpected climax. 3. Alligator (1980) In many ways, Alligator feels like screenwriter John Sayles’ rejoinder to Piranha. If Joe Dante sanded down Piranha‘s sharp edges with his goofy humor, then Alligator is so filled with mean-spiritedness that no director could dilute it. Not that Lewis Teague, a solid action helmer who we’ll talk about again shortly, would do that. Alligator transports the old adage about gators in the sewers from New York to Chicago where the titular beast, the subject of experiments to increase its size, begins preying on the innocent. And on the not so innocent. Alligator shows no respect for the good or the bad, and the film is filled with scenes of people getting devoured, whether it’s a young boy who becomes a snack during a birthday party prank or an elderly mafioso who tries to abandon his family during the gator’s rampage. 2. Grizzly (1976) Grizzly stands as the greatest of the movies obviously ripping off Jaws precisely because it understands its limitations. It takes what it can from Spielberg’s masterpiece, including the general premise of an animal hunting in a tourist location, and ignores what it can’t pull off, namely three-dimensional characters. This clear-eyed understanding of everyone’s abilities makes Grizzly a lean, mean, and satisfying thriller. Directed by blaxploitation vet William Girdler and written by Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon, Grizzly stars ’70s low-budget king Christopher George as a park ranger investigating unusually vicious bear attacks on campers. That’s not the richest concept in the world, but Girdler and co. execute their ideas with such precision, and George plays his character with just the right amount of machismo, that Grizzly manages to deliver on everything you want from an animal attack. 1. Cujo (1983) To some modern readers, it might seem absurd to put Cujo on a list of Jaws knockoffs. After all, Stephen King is a franchise unto himself and he certainly doesn’t need another movie’s success to get a greenlight for any of his projects. But you have to remember that Cujo came out in 1983 and was just the third of his works to get adapted theatrically, which makes its Jaws connection more valid. After all, the main section of the film—in which mom (Dee Wallace) and her son Tad (Danny Pintauro) are trapped in their car and menaced by the titular St. Bernard—replicates the isolation on Quint’s fishing vessel, the Orca, better than any other film on this list. However, it’s not just director Lewis Teague’s ability to create tension that puts Cujo at the top. Writers Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier key into the complicated familial dynamics of King’s story, giving the characters surprising depth. It’s no wonder that Spielberg would cast Wallace as another overwhelmed mom for E.T. The Extraterrestrial the very next year, proving that he still has a soft spot for animal attack movies—even if none of them came close to matching the power of Jaws.

Nearly two decades ago, scientists made an alarming discovery in upstate New York: Bats, the world’s only flying mammal, were becoming infected with a new, deadly fungal disease that, in some cases, could wipe out an entire colony in a matter of months. Since then, the disease — later called white-nose syndrome — has spread across much of the country, utterly decimating North American bats that hibernate in caves and killing over 90 percent of three bat species. According to some scientists, WNS has caused “the most precipitous wildlife decline in the past century in North America.” These declines have clear consequences for human populations — for you, even if you don’t like bats or visit caves. Bats eat insect pests, such as moths and beetles. And as they decline, farmers need to spray more pesticides. Scientists have linked the loss of bats in the US to an increase in insecticide use on farmland and, remarkably, to a rise in infant deaths. Insecticide chemicals are known to harm the health of newborns. The only reason we know any of this is because of a somewhat obscure government program in the US Geological Survey (USGS), an agency nested within the Interior Department. That program, known as the Ecosystems Mission Area (EMA), is the biological research division of Interior. Among other functions, it monitors environmental contaminants, the spread of invasive species, and the health of the nation’s wildlife, including bees, birds, and bats.White-nose syndrome, a fungal disease, has caused massive declines in a handful of bat species, including the tricolored bat, shown here in flight. J. Scott Altenbach/Bat Conservation InternationalThe Ecosystems Mission Area, which has around 1,200 employees, produces the premier science revealing how animals and ecosystems that Americans rely on are changing and what we can do to keep them intact — or risk our own health and economy. This program is now at an imminent risk of disappearing.Send us a confidential tipAre you a current or former federal employee with knowledge about the Trump administration’s attacks on wildlife protections? Reach out to Vox environmental correspondent Benji Jones on Signal at benji.90 or at benji.jones@vox.com or at benjijones@protonmail.com.In the White House’s 2026 budget request, the Trump administration asked Congress to slash funding for EMA by about 90 percent, from $293 million in 2025 to $29 million next year. Such cuts are also in line with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy roadmap, which calls for the government to “abolish” Interior’s Biological Resources Division, an outdated name for the Ecosystems Mission Area.Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also reportedly trying to fire government employees in the Ecosystems Mission Area, though a federal judge has so far blocked those efforts. Eliminating biological research is not good. In fact, it’s very bad.For a decade now, EMA’s North American Bat Monitoring Program, or NABat, has been gathering and analyzing data on bats and the threats they face. NABat produces research using data from hundreds of partner organizations showing not only how white-nose syndrome is spreading — which scientists are using to develop and deploy vaccines — but also how bats are affected by wind turbines, another known threat. Energy companies can and do use this research to develop safer technologies and avoid delays caused by wildlife regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act. The irony, an Interior Department employee told me, is that NABat makes wildlife management more efficient. It also helps reveal where declines are occurring before they become severe, potentially helping avoid the need to grant certain species federal protection — something the Trump administration would seem to want. The employee, who’s familiar with Interior’s bat-monitoring efforts, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. A northern long-eared bat with white-nose syndrome. Steve Taylor/University of IllinoisA dead bat infected with white-nose syndrome under UV light. USGS“If they want to create efficiencies in the government, they should ask us,” another Interior employee told Vox. “The damage that can be done by one administration takes decades to rebuild.”In response to a request for comment, an Interior Department spokesperson told Vox that “USGS remains committed to its congressional mandate as the science arm of the Department of the Interior.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment. In a Senate appropriations hearing last week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum refused to commit to maintaining funding for EMA.“There’s no question that they don’t know what EMA does,” said a third Interior employee, who has knowledge of the Ecosystems Mission Area.Ultimately, it’s not clear why the administration has targeted Interior’s biological research. EMA does, however, do climate science, such as studying how plants and animals are responding to rising temperatures. That’s apparently a no-go for the Trump administration. It also gathers information that sometimes indicates that certain species need federal protections, which come with regulations (also a no-go for President Donald Trump’s agenda).What’s especially frustrating for environmental advocates is that NABat, now 10 years old, is starting to hit its stride.“We should be celebrating the 10-year anniversary of this very successful program that started from scratch and built this robust, vibrant community of people all collecting data,” said Winifred Frick, the chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, an environmental group. “We have 10 years of momentum, and so to cut it off now sort of wastes all that investment. That feels like a tremendous loss.” Meanwhile, the cost of maintaining the program is less than 1 percent of Interior’s overall budget.The government’s wildlife monitoring programs are “jewels of the country,” said Hollis Woodard, an associate professor of entomology at University of California Riverside who works with USGS on bee monitoring. “These birds and bats perform services for us that are important for our day-to-day lives. Literally everything I value, including food, comes down to keeping an eye on these populations. The idea that we’re just going to wipe them out is just terrifying.”Update, June 2, 12:58 pm ET: This article was originally published on May 29, 2025, and has been updated to include newly public details on the 2026 White House budget request.See More:

LUBBOCK — Every winter, after the sea of cotton has been harvested in the South Plains and the ground looks barren, technicians with the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District check the water levels in nearly 75,000 wells across 16 counties. For years, their measurements have shown what farmers and water conservationists fear most—the Ogallala Aquifer, an underground water source that’s the lifeblood of the South Plains agriculture industry, is running dry. That’s because of a century-old law called the rule of capture. The rule is simple: If you own the land above an aquifer in Texas, the water underneath is yours. You can use as much as you want, as long as it’s not wasted or taken maliciously. The same applies to your neighbor. If they happen to use more water than you, then that’s just bad luck. To put it another way, landowners can mostly pump as much water as they choose without facing liability to surrounding landowners whose wells might be depleted as a result. Following the Dust Bowl—and to stave off catastrophe—state lawmakers created groundwater conservation districts in 1949 to protect what water is left. But their power to restrict landowners is limited. “The mission is to save as much water possible for as long as possible, with as little impact on private property rights as possible,” said Jason Coleman, manager for the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District. “How do you do that? It’s a difficult task.” A 1953 map of the wells in Lubbock County hangs in the office of the groundwater district. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] Rapid population growth, climate change, and aging water infrastructure all threaten the state’s water supply. Texas does not have enough water to meet demand if the state is stricken with a historic drought, according to the Texas Water Development Board, the state agency that manages Texas’ water supply. Lawmakers want to invest in every corner to save the state’s water. This week, they reached a historic $20 billion deal on water projects. High Plains Underground Water District General Manager Jason Coleman stands in the district’s meeting room on May 21 in Lubbock. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] But no one wants to touch the rule of capture. In a state known for rugged individualism, politically speaking, reforming the law is tantamount to stripping away freedoms. “There probably are opportunities to vest groundwater districts with additional authority,” said Amy Hardberger, director for the Texas Tech University Center for Water Law and Policy. “I don’t think the political climate is going to do that.” State Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican, and Rep. Cody Harris, a Palestine Republican, led the effort on water in Austin this year. Neither responded to requests for comment. Carlos Rubinstein, a water expert with consulting firm RSAH2O and a former chairman of the water development board, said the rule has been relied upon so long that it would be near impossible to undo the law. “I think it’s better to spend time working within the rules,” Rubinstein said. “And respect the rule of capture, yet also recognize that, in and of itself, it causes problems.” Even though groundwater districts were created to regulate groundwater, the law effectively stops them from doing so, or they risk major lawsuits. The state water plan, which spells out how the state’s water is to be used, acknowledges the shortfall. Groundwater availability is expected to decline by 25% by 2070, mostly due to reduced supply in the Ogallala and Edwards-Trinity aquifers. Together, the aquifers stretch across West Texas and up through the Panhandle. By itself, the Ogallala has an estimated three trillion gallons of water. Though the overwhelming majority in Texas is used by farmers. It’s expected to face a 50% decline by 2070. Groundwater is 54% of the state’s total water supply and is the state’s most vulnerable natural resource. It’s created by rainfall and other precipitation, and seeps into the ground. Like surface water, groundwater is heavily affected by ongoing droughts and prolonged heat waves. However, the state has more say in regulating surface water than it does groundwater. Surface water laws have provisions that cut supply to newer users in a drought and prohibit transferring surface water outside of basins. Historically, groundwater has been used by agriculture in the High Plains. However, as surface water evaporates at a quicker clip, cities and businesses are increasingly interested in tapping the underground resource. As Texas’ population continues to grow and surface water declines, groundwater will be the prize in future fights for water. In many ways, the damage is done in the High Plains, a region that spans from the top of the Panhandle down past Lubbock. The Ogallala Aquifer runs beneath the region, and it’s faced depletion to the point of no return, according to experts. Simply put: The Ogallala is not refilling to keep up with demand. “It’s a creeping disaster,” said Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment. “It isn’t like you wake up tomorrow and nobody can pump anymore. It’s just happening slowly, every year.” [Image: Yuriko Schumacher/The Texas Tribune] Groundwater districts and the law The High Plains Water District was the first groundwater district created in Texas. Over a protracted multi-year fight, the Legislature created these new local government bodies in 1949, with voter approval, enshrining the new stewards of groundwater into the state Constitution. If the lawmakers hoped to embolden local officials to manage the troves of water under the soil, they failed. There are areas with groundwater that don’t have conservation districts. Each groundwater districts has different powers. In practice, most water districts permit wells and make decisions on spacing and location to meet the needs of the property owner. The one thing all groundwater districts have in common: They stop short of telling landowners they can’t pump water. In the seven decades since groundwater districts were created, a series of lawsuits have effectively strangled groundwater districts. Even as water levels decline from use and drought, districts still get regular requests for new wells. They won’t say no out of fear of litigation. The field technician coverage area is seen in Nathaniel Bibbs’ office at the High Plains Underground Water District. Bibbs is a permit assistant for the district. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “You have a host of different decisions to make as it pertains to management of groundwater,” Coleman said. “That list has grown over the years.” The possibility of lawsuits makes groundwater districts hesitant to regulate usage or put limitations on new well permits. Groundwater districts have to defend themselves in lawsuits, and most lack the resources to do so. A well spacing guide is seen in Nathaniel Bibbs’ office. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “The law works against us in that way,” Hardberger, with Texas Tech University, said. “It means one large tool in our toolbox, regulation, is limited.” The most recent example is a lawsuit between the Braggs Farm and the Edwards Aquifer Authority. The farm requested permits for two pecan orchards in Medina County, outside San Antonio. The authority granted only one and limited how much water could be used based on state law. It wasn’t an arbitrary decision. The authority said it followed the statute set by the Legislature to determine the permit. “That’s all they were guaranteed,” said Gregory Ellis, the first general manager of the authority, referring to the water available to the farm. The Braggs family filed a takings lawsuit against the authority. This kind of claim can be filed when any level of government—including groundwater districts—takes private property for public use without paying for the owner’s losses. Braggs won. It is the only successful water-related takings claim in Texas, and it made groundwater laws murkier. It cost the authority $4.5 million. “I think it should have been paid by the state Legislature,” Ellis said. “They’re the ones who designed that permitting system. But that didn’t happen.” An appeals court upheld the ruling in 2013, and the Texas Supreme Court denied petitions to consider appeals. However, the state’s supreme court has previously suggested the Legislature could enhance the powers of the groundwater districts and regulate groundwater like surface water, just as many other states have done. While the laws are complicated, Ellis said the fundamental rule of capture has benefits. It has saved Texas’ legal system from a flurry of lawsuits between well owners. “If they had said ‘Yes, you can sue your neighbor for damaging your well,’ where does it stop?” Ellis asked. “Everybody sues everybody.” Coleman, the High Plains district’s manager, said some people want groundwater districts to have more power, while others think they have too much. Well owners want restrictions for others, but not on them, he said. “You’re charged as a district with trying to apply things uniformly and fairly,” Coleman said. Can’t reverse the past Two tractors were dropping seeds around Walt Hagood’s farm as he turned on his irrigation system for the first time this year. He didn’t plan on using much water. It’s too precious. The cotton farm stretches across 2,350 acres on the outskirts of Wolfforth, a town 12 miles southwest of Lubbock. Hagood irrigates about 80 acres of land, and prays that rain takes care of the rest. Walt Hagood drives across his farm on May 12, in Wolfforth. Hagood utilizes “dry farming,” a technique that relies on natural rainfall. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “We used to have a lot of irrigated land with adequate water to make a crop,” Hagood said. “We don’t have that anymore.” The High Plains is home to cotton and cattle, multi-billion-dollar agricultural industries. The success is in large part due to the Ogallala. Since its discovery, the aquifer has helped farms around the region spring up through irrigation, a way for farmers to water their crops instead of waiting for rain that may not come. But as water in the aquifer declines, there are growing concerns that there won’t be enough water to support agriculture in the future. At the peak of irrigation development, more than 8.5 million acres were irrigated in Texas. About 65% of that was in the High Plains. In the decades since the irrigation boom, High Plains farmers have resorted to methods that might save water and keep their livelihoods afloat. They’ve changed their irrigation systems so water is used more efficiently. They grow cover crops so their soil is more likely to soak up rainwater. Some use apps to see where water is needed so it’s not wasted. A furrow irrigation is seen at Walt Hagood’s cotton farm. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] Farmers who have not changed their irrigation systems might not have a choice in the near future. It can take a week to pump an inch of water in some areas from the aquifer because of how little water is left. As conditions change underground, they are forced to drill deeper for water. That causes additional problems. Calcium can build up, and the water is of poorer quality. And when the water is used to spray crops through a pivot irrigation system, it’s more of a humidifier as water quickly evaporates in the heat. According to the groundwater district’s most recent management plan, 2 million acres in the district use groundwater for irrigation. About 95% of water from the Ogallala is used for irrigated agriculture. The plan states that the irrigated farms “afford economic stability to the area and support a number of other industries.” The state water plan shows groundwater supply is expected to decline, and drought won’t be the only factor causing a shortage. Demand for municipal use outweighs irrigation use, reflecting the state’s future growth. In Region O, which is the South Plains, water for irrigation declines by 2070 while demand for municipal use rises because of population growth in the region. Coleman, with the High Plains groundwater district, often thinks about how the aquifer will hold up with future growth. There are some factors at play with water planning that are nearly impossible to predict and account for, Coleman said. Declining surface water could make groundwater a source for municipalities that didn’t depend on it before. Regions known for having big, open patches of land, like the High Plains, could be attractive to incoming businesses. People could move to the country and want to drill a well, with no understanding of water availability. The state will continue to grow, Coleman said, and all the incoming businesses and industries will undoubtedly need water. “We could say ‘Well, it’s no one’s fault. We didn’t know that factory would need 20,000 acre-feet of water a year,” Coleman said. “It’s not happening right now, but what’s around the corner?” Coleman said this puts agriculture in a tenuous position. The region is full of small towns that depend on agriculture and have supporting businesses, like cotton gins, equipment and feed stores, and pesticide and fertilizer sprayers. This puts pressure on the High Plains water district, along with the two regional water planning groups in the region, to keep agriculture alive. “Districts are not trying to reduce pumping down to a sustainable level,” said Mace with the Meadows Foundation. “And I don’t fault them for that, because doing that is economic devastation in a region with farmers.” Hagood, the cotton farmer, doesn’t think reforming groundwater rights is the way to solve it. What’s done is done, he said. “Our U.S. Constitution protects our private property rights, and that’s what this is all about,” Hagood said. “Any time we have a regulation and people are given more authority, it doesn’t work out right for everybody.” Rapid population growth, climate change, and aging water infrastructure all threaten the state’s water supply. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] What can be done The state water plan recommends irrigation conservation as a strategy. It’s also the least costly water management method. But that strategy is fraught. Farmers need to irrigate in times of drought, and telling them to stop can draw criticism. In Eastern New Mexico, the Ogallala Land and Water Conservancy, a nonprofit organization, has been retiring irrigation wells. Landowners keep their water rights, and the organization pays them to stop irrigating their farms. Landowners get paid every year as part of the voluntary agreement, and they can end it at any point. Ladona Clayton, executive director of the organization, said they have been criticized, with their efforts being called a “war” and “land grab.” They also get pushback on why the responsibility falls on farmers. She said it’s because of how much water is used for irrigation. They have to be aggressive in their approach, she said. The aquifer supplies water to the Cannon Air Force Base. “We don’t want them to stop agricultural production,” Clayton said. “But for me to say it will be the same level that irrigation can support would be untrue.” There is another possible lifeline that people in the High Plains are eyeing as a solution: the Dockum Aquifer. It’s a minor aquifer that underlies part of the Ogallala, so it would be accessible to farmers and ranchers in the region. The High Plains Water District also oversees this aquifer. If it seems too good to be true—that the most irrigated part of Texas would just so happen to have another abundant supply of water flowing underneath—it’s because there’s a catch. The Dockum is full of extremely salty brackish water. Some counties can use the water for irrigation and drinking water without treatment, but it’s unusable in others. According to the groundwater district, a test well in Lubbock County pulled up water that was as salty as seawater. Rubinstein, the former water development board chairman, said there are pockets of brackish groundwater in Texas that haven’t been tapped yet. It would be enough to meet the needs on the horizon, but it would also be very expensive to obtain and use. A landowner would have to go deeper to get it, then pump the water over a longer distance. “That costs money, and then you have to treat it on top of that,” Rubinstein said. “But, it is water.” Landowners have expressed interest in using desalination, a treatment method to lower dissolved salt levels. Desalination of produced and brackish water is one of the ideas that was being floated around at the Legislature this year, along with building a pipeline to move water across the state. Hagood, the farmer, is skeptical. He thinks whatever water they move could get used up before it makes it all the way to West Texas. There is always brackish groundwater. Another aquifer brings the chance of history repeating—if the Dockum aquifer is treated so its water is usable, will people drain it, too? Hagood said there would have to be limits. Disclosure: Edwards Aquifer Authority and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here. This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

No Mow May encourages homeowners to stash the lawn mower each spring and let flowers and grass grow for pollinators and water retention. And if your neighbor’s lawn already looks like a wildflower field most of the time, it could be more intentional than passersby might assume.The movement has expanded to “Let It Bloom June” and the fall version: “Leave the leaves.” Conservation and horticulture groups say year-round low-mowing while selectively leaving native plants to grow can save huge amounts of drinking water and lead to lasting and impactful ecological changes.When Amanda Beltramini Healan moved into her Nashville ranch house in 2016, the yard had been manicured for sale: a walnut tree, roses from a home improvement store and short grass. So she experimented, first with a 10-by-10-foot patch where she dug up the grass and sowed native seeds. Then she planted goldenrods in the culvert near the street, and let more of her yard grow tall without mowing.Local authorities apparently didn’t appreciate her natural look: “I got a letter from the city saying that I had to mow it,” she said.But then, a friend told her about No Mow Month signs, provided by the Cumberland River Compact, a local water conservation nonprofit. Soon she was signaling to the city that she’s no derelict, but a participant in an international movement.These days, every month is No Mow May in parts of her property. While she keeps the growth shorter near the culvert and street, her backyard is filled with native grasses and plants up to her knees or waist. There’s a decomposing tree trunk where scores of skinks and bugs live, birds nest under her carport and she regularly finds fawns sleeping in the safety of the high grasses.“I have a lot of insects and bugs and that’s protein, so the birds and the bird’s nests are everywhere. Cardinals and wrens and cowbirds and robins,” she said. “I wake up to them, especially during spring migration right now. It’s just a cacophony in the morning and in the evening, especially when the mulberries come in.”The movement is popularized by groups such as Plantlife, a conservation organization based in England.American lawns, based on English and French traditions, are increasingly seen as a wasteful monoculture that encourages an overuse of pesticides, fertilizer and water. Outdoor spraying and irrigation account for over 30% of a U.S. household’s total water consumption, and can be twice that in drier climates, according to the EPA.Some criticize No Mow campaigns as a fad that could invite invasive plants to spread unchecked without helping pollinators much, if only done for a month.A guide outlining No Mow pros, cons and limitations, written by consumer horticulture extension specialist Aaron Steil at Iowa State University, says reducing mowing to every two weeks and replacing turf with plants that pollinate all year long can offer more benefits without risking a citation or complaints.The No Mow effort does encourage people to think more about biodiversity in their yards, and many local nature organizations advise provide guidance on picking noninvasive plants that fit each region’s climate and precipitation levels.Reducing mowing encourages longer-rooted native grasses and flowers to grow, which breaks up compacted soil and improves drainage, “meaning that when it rains, more water is going to be captured and stored in lawns versus being generated as a runoff and entering into our stormwater system,” said Jason Sprouls, urban waters program manager for the Cumberland River Compact.Beltramini Healan isn’t just letting just anything grow — she learned which plants are invasive, non-native or not beneficial to the ecosystem and carefully prunes and weeds so the keepers have room to thrive.Nashville homeowner Brandon Griffith said he was just tired of mowing when he decided years ago wait and see what comes up. Then he consciously added flowering plants to attract bees and bugs. Now he sees so many insects and pollinators all over his garden that the neighbors’ kids come over to look for butterflies.It’s about giving them the time “to come out of their larva or their egg stage and be able to grow,” said Griffith. He said he’s never heard a complaint — in fact, some of his neighbors also stopped mowing for a month each spring. His four-year-old son catches lizards, digs for worms and hunts for bugs in the yard.“I just enjoy coming out and walking around,” said Griffith. “And looking at it, it’s kind of peaceful. It’s kinda relaxing.”__This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Amanda Beltramini Healan’s name and to correct that Aaron Steil works at Iowa State University, not the University of Iowa. —Kristin M. Hall, Associated Press

Image by Getty / FuturismStudiesA controversial new study has found that those who live within just two miles of a golf course may face up to three times the odds of developing Parkinson's disease, the progressive neurological disorder that causes tremors and difficulty with balance.According to the population-based case-control study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, environmental risks (including pesticide exposure and groundwater contamination) could be contributing to the risk of developing Parkinson's near a golf course. And in the United States, golf courses are treated with extremely high levels of pesticides, which could in fact be varying degrees of hazardous to human health.The team examined medical records of over 5,000 people in southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin from 1991 to 2015, as well as groundwater vulnerability data. The team found that people living between one and two miles from a golf course weren't just more likely, but were 198 percent more likely to develop Parkinson's compared to a control group."The odds of PD were relatively constant within close proximity to a golf course and decreased linearly as distance increased; individuals living farther from a golf course had reduced odds of PD, decreasing relative to the distance from the nearest golf course," the researchers wrote in the paper.But not everybody agrees with that assessment. Experts have called the conclusion "reductive," arguing that the evidence is simply not strong enough to draw a definitive line between the prevalence of Parkinson's and the pesticides used at golf courses in the US."This study suggests an association between pesticides and Parkinson’s, however there are some important limitations in the methodology to be aware of," said Parkinson’s UK director of research David Dexter in a statement. "Firstly, Parkinson’s starts in the brain ten-15 years before diagnosis and the study didn’t only use subjects who permanently lived in the area. This would not only affect participants’ exposure, but also suggests their Parkinson’s could have started before they moved around a golf course.""The population was also not matched for location with 80 percent of the Parkinson’s subjects living in urban areas, compared to only 30 percent of controls, hence other factors like air pollution from motor vehicles etc. could also account for some of the increases in Parkinson’s incidence," he added."Many studies have investigated whether pesticides increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s in different populations around the world," Parkinson's UK research lead Katherine Fletcher added. "The results have been varied, but overall suggest that exposure to pesticides may increase the risk of the condition.""However, the evidence is not strong enough to show that pesticide exposure directly causes Parkinson’s," she added, arguing the study is "reductive" and "doesn’t take into account how someone might have been exposed to pesticides at their workplace or whether they have a genetic link to the condition."Despite decades of research, there's no cure for Parkinson's disease. However, treatments to slow its progression are available.Nailing down the exact cause of the disease has also proven extremely difficult. The consensus is that there are likely a number of genetic and environmental factors at play."It’s probably a perfect storm," Parkinson’s Canada CEO Karen Lee told Global News. "Meaning, you have genes that prime you to potentially get Parkinson’s, and if you’re put in the right environment, potentially that is what sets off the onset of Parkinson’s disease."More on Parkinson's: Brett Favre Says He Has Parkinson’s, Likely From Countless ConcussionsShare This Article

This hilarious and useful device is for tracking mosquitoes within a space. The Iris, by tech startup Bzigo, sits on a tabletop and scans your room with an infrared sensor. When its AI-based vision algorithms detect mosquito-like movements (as opposed to moths or other bugs), it fires a laser to mark the mosquito's location, like a sniper's spotter. It's then up to you to swat the thing, which should be easy with the target "painted." To let you know it's spotted a skeeter, it sends an alert to your smartphone. The object is billed as a healthier alternative to spraying your room with pesticides. One unit can cover a 430-square-foot room, and runs $200. Here's how it works:

Should you care about the suffering of bugs? For most people, it’s a laughable question. But for those who really, really care about animal welfare, there’s a certain intellectual journey that might lead them to take it seriously. It goes something like this: First, they learn that the vast majority of the 84 billion birds and mammals raised for food are kept on factory farms, where animals are routinely mutilated and intensively confined. They become passionate advocates for these neglected and abused creatures. Then they learn that over 90 percent of those land animals are poultry birds — chickens and turkeys raised for meat, and hens raised for eggs — who are treated worse than pigs and cows, and have even fewer legal protections. They become, more or less, advocates for chickens. But then they might learn that fish and shrimp are farmed (or caught from the ocean) on an even greater scale — trillions annually compared to a measly 76 billion chickens. If their compassion for animals extends equally to marine life, they might come to advocate primarily for these sea creatures. Go even further, and they’ll discover the emerging industry of insect farming, which works much like chicken, pig, or fish factory farming, with the aim of producing as many animals as possible as cheaply as possible. On these insect factory farms, vast numbers of bugs are confined in trays or other containers until, at several weeks old, they’re frozen, cooked, shredded, or suffocated alive. Most are then sold as feed for farmed fish, poultry, and pigs, as food for pets, or to a lesser degree, direct human consumption. For the animal advocates who take this journey and wind up at the bottom of this animal suffering rabbit hole, a new report from the research organization Rethink Priorities will be pure nightmare fuel. According to the group, humanity is on track to farm and kill nearly 6 trillion animals annually by 2033, a near-quadrupling from 2023. And almost all of the growth in animal farming will come from tiny animals: shrimp, fish, and most of all, two insect species (mealworms and black soldier fly larvae). While humans farm and slaughter an astonishing 3 billion pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle each year, these animals are so dwarfed in numbers by farmed chicken, fish, and bugs that Rethink Priorities didn’t even include them in its calculation, nor did it include the 1 to 2 trillion wild fish scooped out of the ocean every year. The forecast starkly illustrates how a transformation in global agriculture patterns have ratcheted up animal suffering to mind-boggling proportions. The reason is that we’re increasingly eating really small animals. In the 1990s, chicken overtook beef as America’s meat of choice, and US chicken consumption continues to climb every year. And it takes about 127 chickens to produce the same amount of meat as one cow, because cows are enormous, while chickens weigh only about 6 pounds at slaughter. So, as Americans shifted toward eating animal species that are smaller in size, the total number of animals raised on US factory farms shot up. The same logic applies to an even greater extent to fish and shrimp — you’d have to kill about 28,500 shrimps to get the same amount of meat as you would from one cow. These animals are being farmed and eaten in increasingly massive numbers around the world, with both fish and shrimp typically confined in crowded, disease-ridden ponds or tanks that animal advocates liken to underwater factory farms. The world now eats more fish from these farms than from the ocean. Even worse, small animals, like chickens, fish, insects, and shrimp, tend to be treated worse and have fewer protections than larger animals like pigs and cattle.Concern for the welfare of insects — and even fish and shrimp — might bemuse or even offend many people. Humans already kill untold numbers of bugs annually by simply going about our daily business — driving, walking, exterminating ant infestations from our homes, and spraying pesticides on our crops. Americans eat tens of billions of individual shrimps each year with virtually no worry that they might feel pain. While farmed chickens and pigs have received the sympathetic Hollywood treatment, like the Chicken Run movies, Charlotte’s Web, and Okja, similar films about shrimp or mealworms don’t seem to be in the offing. But Rethink Priorities, along with a growing chorus of scientists and philosophers, believe that invertebrates like shrimp and insects could be sentient, meaning they possess the capacity for pain, pleasure, and other sensations. They’re not arguing that these animals are equivalent to a chicken, cow, or human, but that they may be worth some moral consideration given emerging research on their potential for sentience and the massive scale on which they’re farmed.History has long shown us that today’s laughable moral concern could be tomorrow’s tragedy. That could be the case for these tiny, unfamiliar, uncharismatic animals the more we come to understand who they are and what they might be capable of feeling. What can a shrimp or an insect feel?There had long been relatively little research into whether invertebrates like shrimp and insects are sentient, but that’s begun to change in recent years.“Evidence is building that there’s a form of sentience there in insects,” Jonathan Birch, a philosopher at the London School of Economics who leads the Foundations of Animal Sentience project at the university, told me. Historically, this line of inquiry has focused on bees, he said, who have demonstrated signs of sentience by engaging in wound-tending behavior, complex decision-making in weighing pain versus pleasure, and even play. Some research has shown that fruit flies may have the capacity to feel pain and enjoy play.According to Birch and several of his colleagues, adult flies and mosquitoes, along with cockroaches and termites, satisfy six of eight key criteria for sentience, while several other orders satisfy three to four. He’s now collaborating with researchers to study pain indicators in black soldier fly larvae and crickets.What little research has looked at shrimp sentience has found mixed results, and much of it has been conducted on Caridean shrimp, not penaeid shrimp, the group that’s most commonly farmed (shrimp are not a single species, but a massive category comprising more than 2,000 known species across several taxonomic groups).Fish thrash inside a tightening net on a fish farm. Havva Zorlu/We AnimalsSome research has shown that shrimp have nociceptors, sensory neurons that detect and respond to potentially harmful stimuli — an important indicator of sentience — but their efforts to avoid threats could be merely reflexive. In one study, shrimp engaged in wound-tending behavior when researchers poured acid onto their antennae, but when they treated it with an anesthetic, the shrimp increased that behavior. This suggests they may not feel pain the way other animals do because the pain relief should have caused them to reduce wound tending.But Birch believes there is strong evidence of sentience in another crustacean species: the crab.Despite our limited understanding of invertebrates’ capacity for pain, our understanding of other animals’ capacities can quickly evolve. Just a couple of decades ago, it was largely thought that fish (which are not invertebrates) couldn’t feel pain, but scientific consensus has significantly shifted toward the belief that they can — and that they could experience many other physical and mental states. Given everything humans have learned about animals’ capacities in recent decades, there’s a strong argument to be made in favor of assuming that other animals are sentient unless proved otherwise, rather than assuming that they aren’t as the starting point.And if shrimp and insects are sentient, it would exacerbate an already emergency situation for global animal welfare, raising the number of farmed sentient animals by well over a trillion creatures today, and potentially many trillions in the decade ahead. The proposition to include these animals in humanity’s moral circle can lead some, Birch said, to throw up their hands in exasperation. “We lack ethical frameworks that tell us how to think about them, but to me, that’s not an excuse for ignoring the issue,” Birch said. “I think people sometimes imagine, well, if the sentient world is so vast — if all ways of feeding ourselves cause harm — then there can’t be any ethical constraints. And I think that’s entirely wrong. I think we do need to take the harm seriously, and think about what we might do to conduct ourselves more ethically.”A question of strategyMost people who advocate for factory-farmed animals focus on pigs, cows, chickens, and turkeys. Only the most quantitatively minded number-crunchers, like Birch and the folks at Rethink Priorities, look at the data and focus on fish, shrimp, and insects.Some in the animal advocacy movement might consider this expansion of moral concern — especially for insects — a major strategic error, one that will make an already fringe movement seem even more strange and scolding. It’s something, if I’m being honest, I’ve felt myself. A worker disinfects crickets’ watering trays in the final grow room at Entomo Farms in Ontario, Canada. James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBut the general public might be more open to having some ethical consideration for these animals than we might think. Hannah McKay, a research analyst at Rethink Priorities who co-authored the new report, pointed me to recent surveys from the UK and Brazil in which a majority of participants said that they believed that shrimp can feel pain. In the UK and the Netherlands, food companies are phasing out particularly cruel practices in their shrimp supply chains, “even in the absence of high public pressure,” McKay said. Last month, a post about eyestalk ablation — the common, disturbing practice of tearing out female shrimp’s eyes to make them breed faster — made it to the front page of Reddit, whose users were overwhelmingly horrified by it.In 2022, the UK passed the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act, which included decapod crustaceans (shrimp, lobsters, crabs, and crayfish) among the animals that should be considered sentient, in large part on the advice of Birch and colleagues.The aim of Rethink Priorities, Birch, and their ilk isn’t necessarily to start a campaign for worldwide shrimp and insect liberation, but rather to, at the very least, secure some minimum welfare standards.Many animal advocates today wish that their predecessors in the 1950s, who were more focused on the welfare of pets, had devoted more attention to cows, pigs, and chickens. Instead, the quiet rise of factory farming in mid-20th-century America went largely unchallenged, and has now led to the confinement, abuse, and slaughter of tens of billions of mammals and birds each year. Sagar Shah, a senior researcher at Rethink Priorities who co-authored the report with McKay, feels the same way about fish and shrimp farming, telling me that if he could turn the clock back 30 years to when these industries were relatively small, he would’ve pushed for “more resources into thinking about these questions: Are [fish and shrimp] sentient? What does good welfare mean for these animals if we’re going to use them?”“Collectively, we missed the boat a bit, and we’ve already got a huge scale of farming for fish and shrimp, and we’re catching up now,” Shah said. “But for insects, the industry is in its infancy, and that means we’ve got an opportunity to figure out what good welfare means and shape the growth of the industry.” It’s a cause that few animal advocates are willing to dedicate themselves to, and it may not win them many allies anytime soon. But that doesn’t deter Shah, who says “that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.” You’ve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you — threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you — join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

The Trump administration is not known for particularly prioritizing animal welfare. But in its first few months, alongside announcements that it would seek to gut federal funding for scientific research, Trump officials have taken steps toward a goal that animal advocates have been championing for decades: the end of animal experimentation. On April 10, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to phase out animal testing requirements for the development of monoclonal antibodies — used to treat a variety of diseases, including cancer and Covid-19 — and a range of other drugs.The Environmental Protection Agency, which has long required animal testing for substances including pesticides and fuel additives, also plans to revive an agency ban on animal testing that dates back to the first Trump administration. The agency had set deadlines under President Donald Trump in 2019 to reduce animal testing 30 percent by 2025, then eradicate it altogether by 2035. The Biden administration eliminated those deadlines, but now, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin “is wholly committed to getting the agency back on track,” spokesperson Molly Vaseliou told Vox in an email.Late last month came perhaps the most consequential announcement: a major new initiative from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, to reduce the use of animals in research and accelerate the development of novel, animal-free methods. Estimates suggest NIH-funded research relies on millions of animals every year in the US. That includes mostly rodents, but also monkeys, dogs, pigs, rabbits, and others. But Trump’s NIH cited scientific literature that finds animal models can have limited relevance to human outcomes.Advocacy groups that oppose animal testing, including PETA and Humane World for Animals (formerly known as the Humane Society of the United States), celebrated the news as the most significant commitment ever made by NIH to reduce its dependence on animal experimentation. The recent announcements are “among the biggest news there’s ever been for animals in laboratories,” Elizabeth Baker, director of research policy for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), told me. Together, these moves represent a potentially monumental shift in American science — one that could spare millions of animals from painful experiments and, advocates hope, speed up the adoption of cutting-edge technologies to produce better, more reliable research than animal models ever did. But if the goal is not just to benefit animals, but also to make science better, the Trump administration is surely going about it in a strange way. It’s waging war on scientific institutions, seeking to slash research budgets — massively, seemingly indiscriminately, and questionably legally — at the NIH and the National Science Foundation, undermining decades of American leadership in science and medicine. It hasn’t committed any new funding toward its goal of advancing animal-free research methods.In this light, scientists are understandably skeptical that research policy coming from this administration could benefit science, rather than just sabotage it. Putting animal research on the chopping block, many believe, could merely be a convenient and popular way to slash support for science across the board. Yet those seeking to phase out government-funded animal research aren’t just anti-science radicals — they’re also animal testing critics who correctly point out that animal experiments are expensive, often ineffective, and come at a steep ethical cost. This has created a diverse, sometimes-uneasy coalition of animal welfare advocates, science reformers, and far-right political figures — some are willing to accept reforms any way they can get them; others are more wary of moves made by this administration, even when their agendas align. In Vox’s Future Perfect section, you’ll find some of the deepest reporting and analysis available anywhere of the scientific, ethical, and political dimensions of animal experimentation.• The harrowing lives of animal researchers• Animal rights advocates are ready for Trump’s war on science• What can caged lab monkeys tell us about free human beings?• What went wrong with autism research? Let’s start with lab mice.• The US uses endangered monkeys to test drugs. This law could free them.• 43 lab monkeys escaped in South Carolina. They have a legal claim to freedom.The Trump administration’s NIH director, Jay Bhattacharya, embodies this alliance: An established scientist, albeit one who’s publicly aligned himself with the political right in recent years, he has praised the watchdog group White Coat Waste, which campaigns aggressively against animal research, as “heroes.” Now, with the NIH’s plan to reduce animal research, he’s arguing for the need to transition to animal-free methods in the language of scientific progress rather than the tear-it-all-down approach of other members of the Trump administration. Money and resources are powerful incentives in scientific research; allocate them in the right way, and scientists will be pushed to innovate in whatever direction is deemed important for societal progress. Evolving beyond the pervasive use of animals in science undoubtedly ought to be one of those priorities: Lab animals experience immense suffering in labs, living in intensive confinement and undergoing painful experiments involving blood draws, tube feeding, forced inhalation of substances, and other procedures. Finding alternatives that would end this agony would be one of American science’s most important achievements.It’s unclear whether a moonshot for alternatives to animal research can emerge from an administration that’s imposing widespread austerity on science. And there may be reason to worry that the Trump administration’s broader anti-regulatory approach could have negative consequences for the welfare of animals that still remain in labs. But many advocates of animal-free methods are willing to take the bet, hoping that they can use this uncertain, unsettled moment in American science policy to help usher in a paradigm shift in how the US uses animals in science. What will these policy changes actually do?For decades, animal advocates, and a growing number of scientists, have disputed whether animal trials are the most effective tools available in modern science. Historically, animal dissection laid the groundwork for early medicine, and breakthroughs from animal research have helped lead to polio vaccines, the preventative HIV medication PrEP, and treatments for Parkinson’s disease. But animals are not necessarily suitable proxies for humans, and more than 90 percent of drug trials fail between animal and human testing trials, according to a 2023 review by animal welfare advocates. It’s a problem many scientists acknowledge, albeit not always publicly. Former NIH director Francis Collins in 2014 privately discussed “the pointlessness of much of the research being conducted on non-human primates” in emails obtained by PETA via public records request.That the government is now planning cuts to animal research is undeniably groundbreaking. But how these planned cutbacks and phase-outs will actually unfold is more complex. In its announcement, the NIH said it will establish an Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application to scale the use of non-animal methods, expand funding for these approaches, evaluate human relevance, and include experts in alternative animal-free methods on grant review panels so that more of the agency’s funding is allocated toward those methods. Scientists are often incentivized to use animals in their research, as Celia Ford wrote for Voxearlier this year, a phenomenon sometimes called “animal methods bias.” Academic journals prefer to publish studies using animals, and internal research ethics review boards are mostly comprised of animal researchers. Advancing technologies, such as computational modeling or organ-on-a-chip technology, offer alternatives to animal testing, and many scientists around the world are embracing these new methods. But the scientific community has been slow to adopt them. To change that, the NIH’s new initiative will “address any possible bias towards animal studies” among its grant review staff. The agency will also publicly report on its annual research spending, something it hasn’t done in the past, “to measure progress toward reduction of funding for animal studies and an increase in funding for human-based approaches,” according to the recent announcement. The EPA, meanwhile, requires toxicology tests on animals for many substances that it regulates, including fuel and fuel additives, certain pesticides, and wastewater from industrial facilities. It has not yet announced an official plan to reduce animal research, though a 2016 agency reform required increased reliance on non-animal methods. Many are hoping the agency — which previously estimated that between 20,000 and 100,000 or more animals are used in toxicology testing every year — will recommit to its 2019 directive to end animal testing requirements by 2035, Baker says. Of course, announcements are meaningless without plans — and the FDA is the only agency to announce a plan that lays out a three-year timeline and alternative testing strategies. The FDA’s current requirements for animal testing in new drug approvals are somewhat unclear. The FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which Congress passed in 2022, authorized the use of non-animal alternatives in place of animal studies for FDA-regulated drugs, but some of the FDA’s regulations and nonbinding guidelines specifically mention animal tests. Pharmaceutical companies that have tried to obtain drug approval without animal testing have faced expensive delays. As a result, in practice, most drugs approved by the FDA are still tested on animals.According to the FDA, current regulations still require animal testing for monoclonal antibodies, which are lab-made proteins that can bind to and kill specific targets in the body. The FDA’s phaseout of animal tests will start with these antibodies and expand to other treatments. Lab animals’ immune responses are not predictive of human responses “due to interspecies differences,” the agency’s plan states. Safety risks may go undetected in animals, and the stress of laboratory life can affect their immune function and responses, a significant confounding factor in animal research that scientists have noted before. Animal testing is also very expensive: Monoclonal antibody development often involves monkeys, which can cost up to $50,000 per animal, according to the FDA; its plan notes it can cost $650 million to $750 million and take up to nine years to develop monoclonal antibody treatments, delaying delivery of new therapies to patients.While advancements like organ-on-a-chip and computer modeling are both exciting and laudable, counting on them to replace animals may be premature, Naomi Charalambakis, director of communications and science policy for Americans for Medical Progress, a nonprofit that supports the use of animals in research, said in an email. These tools, many of which are still under development, can’t fully replicate “the complexity of living organisms” — which is why she says they should be integrated “alongside traditional animal studies.”“Animal models remain vital for answering complex biomedical questions — particularly those involving whole-body systems, long-term effects, and unpredictable immune responses,” she says.A monkey used for research at the University of Muenster in Germany. Friso Gentsch/Getty ImagesScientists have also pointed out that the FDA’s promise that animal testing will be “reduced, refined, or potentially replaced” is not new. In 2022, the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 paved the way for alternatives to animal testing, and in December 2023, an NIH advisory committee made similar recommendations to develop non-animal methods. Regardless, the FDA’s and NIH’s recent announcements are among the first public statements by government organizations questioning the efficacy of animal testing. Can massive cuts to research funding help animals?In February, the Trump administration took the highly controversial step of capping “indirect costs,” the portion of universities’ research grants that cover administrative and operations expenses not directly tied to the research itself, at 15 percent of an institution’s grant. The research community has warned that the decision would be catastrophic for science — budgets will be slashed, young researchers may be laid off and see their careers ruined, and important science may fall by the wayside. But for animals, the news is “fantastic,” argues Jeremy Beckham, a law student and animal advocate who’s worked for organizations including PETA, PCRM, and the Beagle Freedom Project.While indirect costs are not a “meritless concept,” Beckham says, he believes universities renew research grants that harm animals while yielding little to no benefit in order to continue receiving operational funding. Universities “are allowing a lot of extremely pointless and cruel animal experiments to happen, because it’s such a gravy train for them for these indirect costs,” he says.Oregon Health & Science University, for example, which receives 56 percent of its grant in indirect costs for animal studies, has racked up several critical Animal Welfare Act citations for 14 animal deaths at its research labs since 2018. At Wayne State University in Michigan, researchers have induced heart failure in hundreds of dogs in a cardiac research experiment that has been running since 1991 but has “failed to help a single patient,” according to PCRM. Wayne State receives an indirect cost rate of 54 percent, according to a recent statement from the university. In a statement about its dog experiments, Wayne State argued that it’s important to continue the cardiovascular research, even if “science does not move at the pace we would like.” Critics of the cuts to indirect costs, including Harvard immunologist Sarah Fortune, have argued that funding cuts will mean labs are forced to euthanize their animals. But many, if not all, were already going to be killed in experiments, Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School, points out.In March, a federal judge blocked the NIH’s proposed cap on indirect costs, and universities are looking to negotiate. But if the proposal does go forward, “the number of animals in laboratories will plummet,” Beckham says.Despite its promises to reduce the number of animals in labs, the Trump administration’s disdain for regulation may mean those animals that still remain in labs will suffer more. During Trump’s first presidency, enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, the federal law that governs the welfare of animals used in research, took a nosedive. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency tasked with implementing that law, removed thousands of animal welfare reports, which had previously been publicly posted for decades, from its website. Given this precedent, Winders fears that going forward, the research industry will violate animal welfare laws “with complete impunity.”Research animals are already at a disadvantage under the Animal Welfare Act, and critics have insisted for decades that the act is insufficient and poorly enforced. The proverbial lab rat is not protected by the law — most mice and rats, birds, and cold-blooded animals are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act’s definition of “animal.” By some estimates, it covers as little as 5 percent of research animals.Nor does the law place any legal limits on what can be done to animals in experiments. “That’s left completely to the research facility,” Winders says.A beagle used for research in Spain. Beagles are widely used in experiments in the US and around the world. Jo-Anne McArthur/Animal Equality/We AnimalsWhen a researcher violates the Animal Welfare Act, the USDA has few options for enforcement. Because inspectors cannot confiscate animals that are required for research, they can really only levy monetary fines. But for facilities that receive millions in funding and spend billions on research, fines — most of which are less than $15,000 — are so low that they’re considered a “cost of doing business,” according to a 2014 USDA Office of Inspector General report. The USDA calculates these fines using an internal penalty worksheet, which factors in a facility’s size, compliance history, and the severity of its violations. The worksheet was recently obtained by Eric Kleiman, founder of research accountability group Chimps to Chinchillas, and it revealed that the USDA does not take a research institution’s revenue or assets into account when calculating fines. The USDA instead measures a facility’s size via the number of animals it uses, according to the worksheet, which divides research facilities into four size categories, the largest being facilities with 3,500 or more animals. But this metric is flawed, Kleiman says, since many labs don’t keep their animals on-site, instead contracting out with research organizations that perform the experiments on their behalf.In a statement, USDA spokesperson Richard Bell said the agency “carries out enforcement actions consistent with the authority granted under the Animal Welfare Act and associated regulations.”And in recent months, there have been alarming signs of an anti-regulation shift. A 2024 Supreme Court decision, SEC vs. Jarkesy, calls government agencies’ ability to issue fines into question. It’s possible this ruling could be interpreted in a way that bars the USDA from assessing fines, Winders says. “We’re still waiting to see how broadly the government interprets it,” she says. “Given that other enforcement mechanisms are not available against research facilities…civil fines were really the only pathway, and now that’s on the chopping block.” Since the June 2024 ruling, the USDA has issued few fines. The USDA is “still assessing the impact of the Jarkesy ruling,” Bell said. In the past, the Office of Inspector General has held the USDA accountable for poor enforcement — but in January, the USDA inspector general was fired and escorted out of her office, Reuters reported. The next month, the USDA OIG released a report on inspections of dog breeders — some of which supply dogs to research facilities. The report was critical of the USDA’s enforcement, but key information including the number of facilities inspected, the number of animal welfare violations, and photos was redacted “due to privacy concerns.” Winders has “never, ever seen that before,” she says, and it could set a new precedent for decreased transparency.About 15 percent of USDA’s workforce has accepted the Trump administration’s buyout to leave the agency, including more than 1,300 people in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which inspects and enforces the Animal Welfare Act, Reuters reported on May 5.“If inspectors aren’t there, how are they going to have a window into what needs to be done?” says Sara Amundson, chief government relations officer for Humane World for Animals.Regardless, the US is witnessing a seismic shift in how we use animals for research — or even whether we use them at all. It’s too soon to say what the Trump administration’s reforms to animal testing will accomplish, or whether they’ll produce durable changes in American science that manage to outlive an administration that has declared war on the scientific community. Although animal welfare is a bipartisan issue, it’s rarely been a priority for previous administrations, Republican or Democrat. To have an administration that, within months of taking power, is already meeting with animal welfare groups, holding congressional hearings, and taking strong stances on animal research issues is unprecedented, experts say. “I am optimistic,” Baker says.You’ve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you — threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you — join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin has said he wants the federal agency to accelerate scientific safety evaluations of various chemicals, including pesticides. The EPA reportedly has more than 500 pending reviews of proposed new pesticides and more than 12,000 overdue reevaluations of pesticides currently in use. The agency is under pressure from the chemical and agricultural industries to catch up, while health and environmental advocates demand it maintain high safety standards. The review process is careful for a reason – and perhaps the only real method of speeding it up is the one Zeldin has proposed: reassigning staff so there are more people to share the work. As a faculty member at a land-grant university who has studied the effectiveness of commercial and experimental pesticides in the southern U.S., I have seen how the federal pesticide regulatory process identifies risks to humans and the environment and mitigates them with specific use instructions. Here’s how the process works. First, what is a pesticide? The EPA, which regulates pesticides in the U.S., defines a pesticide as any substance or mixture of substances intended to prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate any pest, such as weeds, insects and organisms, that attack plants. Pesticides are often referred to as toxins when found in food, water bodies or other places where they are not intended. But just because something is detected doesn’t mean it’s harmful to humans or wildlife. Toxicity depends on how much of the substance a person or animal is exposed to, how they are exposed to it – such as breathing it, or getting it on their skin – and for how long. The Department of Agriculture began regulating pesticides in 1947 with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Most of the department’s interest was whether a particular pesticide was effective against the target pests. In 1970, the newly formed EPA took over responsibility for pesticides. It shifted its focus to the safety of consumers, farmworkers and the environment after the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act took effect in 1972. Risk-benefit analysis Federal law requires the EPA to evaluate both the risks and the benefits of each pesticide – and to revisit that analysis at least every 15 years for every pesticide used in the U.S. The EPA determines whether the risks to people, animals or the environment are too high for the benefits the pesticide provides and whether any of those risks can be reduced. Sometimes a chemical’s risk can be lessened by recommending mitigation strategies such as wearing protective clothing, reducing environmental spread by barring the use of pesticides near the edges of a property, or decreasing the amount of a pesticide that’s legal to use. In its analysis of any given pesticide, the EPA requires a massive amount of data from the manufacturer about what ingredients the pesticide contains and how they work. The agency also reviews scientific research on the pesticide and uses its own scientists and independent experts to evaluate any studies that were submitted by the manufacturer. The EPA uses all the available data on a pesticide to evaluate the dose that would be toxic to a range of organisms, as well as what residues the pesticide may leave on plants, in the soil and in water. The data is incorporated into computer models that estimate the potential amount of the chemical that may come in contact with humans, animals and the environment. Those models’ results are then combined with toxicity data to determine risk. The models used by EPA scientists are very conservative. They often use significant overestimates of exposure, which means that when the models determine the risk of a pesticide is below a particular level, they are evaluating the risk posed by far higher quantities of the chemical than will ever actually be used. The risk from the amount actually used, therefore, is even less likely to cause harm. The EPA also provides opportunities for public comment on a pesticide and uses that information in its evaluations as well. Additional scrutiny The Endangered Species Act also requires the EPA to evaluate the effects of pesticides on threatened and endangered species. If a pesticide is found to potentially be dangerous to a protected species or its habitat, the EPA will discuss those findings with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which enforce the Endangered Species Act, and determine what to do to ensure the species aren’t harmed. The law’s requirement to reevaluate each pesticide every 15 years is based on the fact that science evolves and information becomes more precise. New data can shed light on potential risks and benefits, and even lead to pesticides being banned or more closely restricted. Until recently, for instance, pesticide residues on plants, food and in the environment were measured in parts per million. Newer equipment can measure even smaller amounts, determining parts per billion, which is as precise as identifying one single second in 32 years. Some chemicals can even be measured in parts per trillion, equivalent to one drop of water in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools. That means exposures can be more accurately measured. While some chemicals can be toxic in very small concentrations, most pesticides can be detected at levels that do not pose a biological risk. Allowing a pesticide to be used If the EPA determines that a pesticide’s risks outweigh its benefits, then its staff will conduct additional analyses to determine how to mitigate the risks enough to justify using it. If that’s not possible, the EPA will reject the application and not allow the pesticide to be used in the U.S. If the agency determines that the benefits outweigh the risks, the EPA approves the pesticide for sale and use in the U.S. The law requires the pesticide come with a label providing a strict set of guidelines for how, when and where to use the pesticide. The guidelines define amounts and timing for applying the pesticide safely, and specific restrictions or protection strategies to control the target pests while eliminating or minimizing harm to the environment, workers and the public. The EPA also makes information on pesticides available to the public, so anyone can find out how to use them safely. Using the pesticide without following those directions is a violation of federal law. Jeffrey Gore is a professor of agricultural science and plant protection at Mississippi State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 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