In the U.S., efforts to shape a post-growth food system have yet to spark a mass movement, but interest and activism are growing.

ZȺWIZUT (Carl Olsen) speaks to supporters in SELEt₭TEȽ, a former village site and river. Today they are encompassed within Goldstream Park. Photo by Julie Chadwick

This story is a collaboration between IndigiNews and The Narwhal.

The sound of cars passing is a constant hum, so constant it’s almost meditative. Every so often one bleats out a honk of support.

On the shoulder of the highway stands a 78-year-old man, holding a sign that reads: “Save the Salmon.”

Cheeks ruddy from the cold, he clutches it with gloved hands from behind a waist-high concrete highway barrier.

His dark eyes glitter warmly behind glasses, and over his knitted wool toque is a black baseball cap emblazoned with the image of a tree, water and paddles.

This is ZȺWIZUT, a Tsartlip First Nation Elder also known as Carl Olsen.

Carl Olsen protests beside the highway in his homelands late last year. Photo by Julie Chadwick

For the last three years, he’s been coming out here every Tuesday — through rain, snow and even sickness — to stand out on the shoulder of the Malahat highway and protest.

It’s Dec. 30. ZȺWIZUT grins, surrounded by supporters who wave at cars and shake their own homemade signs.

Carl Olsen speaks with supporters outside Goldstream Park. Organizer Christine Willes, right, holds a salmon cutout designed by renowned artist Roy Henry Vickers. She said the highway protests have been a ‘transformative’ experience. Photo by Julie Chadwick

But it wasn’t always this way. When he first started out, it was just him, his granddaughter and a supporter from the local book club ZȺWIZUT runs.

At his back is Goldstream Provincial Park, or as ZȺWIZUT knows it, SELEt₭TEȽ.

At 477 hectares, it’s bigger than “New York City’s” Central Park, a verdant gem on the southern tip of “Vancouver Island,” just a 20-minute drive from the province’s capital.

The park features waterfalls, Garry oak meadows, 600-year-old Douglas fir trees, flowering dogwood, western red cedar trees, Oregon grape and salmonberries.

READ MORE: ‘Like going back in time’: W̱SÁNEĆ people to regain rightful ownership of abundant remote island

In front of ZȺWIZUT is the Malahat, a busy two-lane highway that cuts through the park and sees an average of 25,000 vehicles a day pass by.

The park’s accessibility means more than 600,000 people visit each year to camp, hike and hang out.

Many come in the fall to watch the huge runs of chum, Chinook and coho salmon that return each year to spawn in SELE₭TEȽ‘s waters.

The park’s chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat runs the length of the Goldstream River, from the downstream hydro dam to the river delta at Finlayson Arm. Photo by Julie Chadwick

Highway versus habitat

What prompted ZȺWIZUT to go out there in the early months of 2023 was learning of a proposal put forward by the province to widen the Malahat.

Critics say it would catastrophically affect the adjacent Chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat in SELE₭TEȽ.

According to the province, the highway expansion, estimated in 2024 to cost $162 million, was needed to improve safety and reliability along a 1.7-kilometre section that bisects the park.

One part that especially concerned ZȺWIZUT was the expected “permanent loss or alteration of aquatic salmonid and amphibian habitat” in SELE₭TEȽ.

This impact and others were detailed in a 139-page environmental assessment report commissioned by the province and completed in 2024 by consulting firm McElhanney.

The area’s chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat falls directly within the project’s footprint.

Within a half-kilometre of the project site, at-risk species were likely to be affected, including western screech owls, northern red-legged frogs, wandering salamanders and the endangered sharp-tailed snake.

Expand that to within five kilometres of the project site, and that list lengthens to at least 200 endangered and threatened species potentially impacted.

READ MORE: In W̱SÁNEĆ territories, Matriarchs raise funds to buy back their unceded lands

ZȺWIZUT was also horrified to learn that, among a host of other environmental issues, more than 700 trees would also be removed from an area along the highway during construction.

He thought about the owls and nesting birds, about the spe’uth (bears) that make their homes in SELE₭TEȽ and fed beside him while he and other nation members harvested fish for winter.

He thought of how the noise and vibration from excavation and rock blasting might affect the vulnerable salmon fry, hiding out in the darkness under fallen logs in river pools until they were big enough to head to the ocean.

“The canopy that creates the coolness of the water in the stream — if that disappears, those fish will disappear,” he says, “because then the water starts to get too hot. It’s about 12 degrees difference from the sun to the shade.

“So that’s what started me. I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this. I can be the voice for the salmon.’”

ZȺWIZUT (Carl Olsen) protests expansion of the Malahat highway in SELE₭TEȽ, today the site of Goldstream Park. Photo by Julie Chadwick

Prayers, tea, and bearing witness

Every Tuesday for the last three years, ZȺWIZUT wakes up at about 5 a.m. in the house his grandfather built, on the W̱JOȽEȽP Tsartlip reserve.

He heads down to the beach right outside his door on the “Saanich Inlet” and starts his day with a prayer at the water’s edge.

“I meditate about what I would like to see in my day,” he says.

READ MORE: With court win, Quw’utsun Nation sees a ‘spiritual homecoming’ after 150 years

After his prayer, ZȺWIZUT heads to a local cafe for some toast and tea.

That’s typically where a group of supporters show up to tag along with him to SELE₭TEȽ. Others meet him there.

Some are members of local churches and the Wilderness Committee, or participants in his Indigenous authors book club.

One of those book club members is Christine Willes, a settler from a group called Goldstream Protectors that helped organize a protest with ZȺWIZUT and others at the legislature last October.

“What he says to anybody who asked him is, ‘Well, I can go and stand by the side of the highway,’” she says.

“And that’s what he says to other people. ‘Do what you can.’ So I thought, well, I can go stand on the side of the highway too.”

Much more than a roadway

For ZȺWIZUT, this fight is now much broader than the highway project.

It’s a flashpoint in a larger and contentious discussion around Indigenous land rights, title and reconciliation that has consumed the province — and has repercussions for the entire country.

It’s also about the ability for Indigenous people to make land decisions in their own territory.

To the W̱SÁNEĆ people — of which Tsartlip are a part — SELE₭TEȽ is one of their oldest fishing villages.

It was arguably protected by a treaty put to paper 174 years ago which clearly states they retain the rights to their village sites, and to hunt and fish on those lands as they always have.

The original North Saanich treaty, shown here in a glass case, is kept in the B.C. Archives in Victoria. Photo by Julie Chadwick

It’s one of 14 treaties negotiated in the 1850s by James Douglas, then-Governor of “Vancouver Island,” with the local First Nations.

For many, the existence of these treaties may come as a surprise, as it’s well known that most of the province’s land mass was never ceded by its original inhabitants.

READ MORE: Treaty-protected sxwayxum village site returned to Snuneymuxw: ‘Where our people have lived for thousands of years’

Known collectively as the Douglas Treaties, multiple court cases since the 1960s have re-affirmed these treaty-protected rights, for both the W̱SÁNEĆ and the other nations on the island who signed them in the 1850s.

This fight to hold colonial governments to their word is what has kept ZȺWIZUT out on the highway for three years.

This is another Douglas Treaty in the B.C. Archives, known as the Snuneymuxw Sarlequun Treaty of 1854, from the Nanaimo area. Its ‘signature’ sheets are not accompanied by a Douglas form. It consists only of a six-page list, in ink, of 159 names under the heading ‘Sarlequin Tribe’ with a note at the top in pencil. Photo by Julie Chadwick

‘It rightfully belongs to us’

On its website, the province states “Goldstream Park” was “given to the people of British Columbia by the Greater Victoria Water Board in 1958.”

But the actual history is far more complicated.

“It rightfully belongs to us,” stated Jean Baptiste Paul, a Tsartlip First Nation member and son of then-chief Thomas Paul, in an article published in the Daily Colonist on March 27, 1956.

“We have never given it up, and never been offered anything for our fishing and hunting grounds there.”

Jean Baptiste recalled how he had hunted and fished at SELE₭TEȽ as a child.

He told the Daily Colonist that all of the inlet, from “Cherry Point” to the hills south of SELE₭TEȽ, was Indigenous territory. It had been identified as such by his grandfather, former Tsartlip Chief Ben Paul.

Tsartlip and Malahat members had built fish-smoking shacks near the river and his grandfather had also constructed a log cabin in the area.

But one day when no one was there, all the buildings were burned down, Paul told the paper.

READ MORE: Historic land agreement ‘will bring our people home,’ says SC’IA⁄NEW Chief

At the time, Paul’s resistance was reported as little more than a passing curiosity with headlines such as, “Prospect of city giving park to B.C. has West Saanich Indians on warpath.”

In 1958 the province went ahead and designated the area a park in celebration of the province’s centennial.

SELE₭TEȽ became a tourist attraction. Even though it was not yet officially open, the campground was quickly packed with vacationers.

Newspaper columnists sung the praises of its beauty and touted its quick accessibility from “Victoria.”

In the fall of 1960, thousands of onlookers crowded around the waterway to watch the salmon run, a practice that continues to this day.

WEC’KINEM (Eric Pelkey) is hereditary chief of the Tsawout First Nation. Photo by Julie Chadwick

A host of new problems

However, these thousands of new visitors brought with them a host of new problems, says WEC’KINEM (Eric Pelkey), hereditary chief of the Tsawout First Nation.

Sometimes when nation members are down at the river harvesting fish, visitors to the park will confront them.

“They start cussing us up and down, saying that we’re destroying the fishery,” WEC’KINEM says. “We tell them we have the right — we have the right to do this, to carry on our fishery and to just leave us alone.

“But there’s still a lot of racism that comes out at that time. People think we’re torturing the fish.”

The W̱SÁNEĆ carry on regardless. More recently, people have also been coming out there to support them, he adds.

WEC’KINEM sits at a picnic table in the park, the gentle rush of SELE₭TEȽ’s waters behind him.

Barrel-chested, his voice a deep, gentle baritone, he wears a ball cap-style hat woven from cedar bark and a wool and feather headband.

A cream-coloured traditional knitted blanket is wrapped around his shoulders.

These accusations are especially misplaced because, he explains, it’s the W̱SÁNEĆ who constantly steward the area and conduct their own assessments to monitor the health of the fish.

For example, in 2023 the numbers of chum in the SELE₭TEȽ were so low that nation members just went down to the river to observe.

“Nobody took a fish,” according to ZȺWIZUT, a long time volunteer at the Goldstream Hatchery.

READ MORE: Treaty-protected sxwayxum village site returned to Snuneymuxw: ‘Where our people have lived for thousands of years’

Most of the environmental problems in the area are due to settler activity in the first place, WEC’KINEM points out.

Commercial fishing boats that come down the “Johnstone Strait” along the coast of “Vancouver Island” and into the Salish Sea take most of the salmon before they can even reach SELE₭TEȽ, he says.

In 2011 a fuel tanker truck crashed in the area, leaking tens of thousands of litres of gasoline and diesel into the river caused further stress on the salmon.

Members from all W̱SÁNEĆ nations harvest chum, chinook and coho salmon from SELE₭TEȽ’s waters as a winter food supply, and have for generations.

When it’s smoked, the chum can last all winter, WEC’KINEM says.

“I remember growing up, and we always had that smell in our house,” he recalls, “because my parents would have sacks of smoked chum on top of our cupboards, burlap sacks.”

A village displaced

In 1877, the Indian Reserve Commission parceled out a fishing reserve along the south end of “Finlayson Arm,” an extension of the inlet where SELE₭TEȽ’s waters feed into the ocean.

However Goldstream Reserve no. 13, as it’s called, sits at the base of “Mt. Finlayson” instead of in the area of the river where the community still harvests fish.

“They carried out the survey of the old fishing village, but the surveyor is the one that took it from here and put it over there, off on the side of the mountain, instead of surveying where our village was,” says WEC’KINEM.

“This whole area here used to be filled with longhouses all along the river. Right over there, where that overhang is there, is actually where our family’s longhouse used to be.”

READ MORE: Mi’kmaq people mark 300 years of treaty — and broken promises

He turns and points over his shoulder, to a structure not far from Goldstream Park’s gravel parking lot.

“I was not aware of that until maybe I was in my 30s, when my grandfather asked me to bring him out here. We parked over there, walked down. And he said, ‘Oh, what is this building?’”

He told his grandfather, Marshall Pelkey, that it housed the washrooms and that this was now a public park. He became upset, WEC’KINEM recalls.

The saltwater people

Known as the “saltwater people,” the ocean is entwined within everything the W̱SÁNEĆ do, including their SENĆOŦEN place names, explains WEC’KINEM.

The W̱SÁNEĆ have maintained a wide and complex network of traditional reef net fishing sites throughout their territory, which encompasses what are currently known as the “San Juan Islands,” “Boundary Bay,” and the “Saanich” inlet and peninsula.

These reef net sites are not just places to harvest food, but are part of a wider spiritual and community practice.

READ MORE: W̱SÁNEĆ youth rise to the challenge of reef net fishing as they reclaim the formerly-outlawed practice

In and around SELE₭TEȽ, community members also use streams that feed into the area for ritual bathing, and host a first salmon ceremony each fall to greet their returning salmon relatives.

This is in an area right beside the province’s proposed road work site.

“Our people always fished here, no matter where the reserve was,” WEC’KINEM says.

“Every winter, our people came here to fish. Conservation officers always tried to stop us, but we always just kept on and dared them to take us to court.”

That’s exactly what happened one evening 30 years ago, when ZȺWIZUT and another Tsartlip member, Ivan Morris, were caught hunting by conservation officers on their territory and arrested.

The right to hunt and fish

Though it was early evening, it was already getting dark on Nov. 28, 1996 when two men, driving in the woods near Youbou, spotted what appeared to be the glow of deer eyes through the trees.

They were showing two boys — eight and twelve years old — how to hunt at night with the help of a light.

It was something their families had safely done for generations, but was previously done with burning pitch and bows and arrows.

Ivan Morris pulled the vehicle over. ZȺWIZUT took aim and fired a few shots. He then passed the rifle across the two boys to Morris, who got out of the vehicle and squeezed off two more.

They soon got a nasty surprise. The deer they shot at was, in fact, a decoy, complete with reflective eyes, set up by provincial conservation officers to trap illegal hunters.

Their vehicle was quickly swarmed by officers and the two men were arrested, ZȺWIZUT recalls.

“There were probably a dozen or more conservation that surrounded us and even manhandled the kids

Melissa Bailey
KFF Health News

WHITE MESA, Utah — On a hot April day, Malcolm Lehi maneuvered his Jeep Wrangler over a rough dirt road past junipers and sagebrush in search of Entrance Spring on land long connected to his tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute.

The cool, mossy spring lies just across the highway from White Mesa Mill, the nation’s only remaining conventional uranium mill, which produces yellowcake for nuclear power fuel.

For decades, the mill has sparked debate over whether radioactive contamination threatens human health by getting into the water and the air. Concerns run especially deep in the White Mesa Ute Community, where Lehi and about 200 members of his tribe live some 5 miles south of the facility.

State regulators and the company that owns the mill contend that any pollution associated with it is contained. That’s little consolation to nearby tribal members, who — aware of uranium’s deadly legacy across the Colorado Plateau — have raised questions about the potential spread of toxic waste. Many won’t drink the local water, relying on bottled water instead.

Now the tribe’s concerns have taken on new urgency as the U.S. pushes to revive domestic uranium production. A federal law, passed in 2024, bans imports of Russian uranium by 2028, increasing pressure to develop domestic fuel supplies. President Donald Trump set a goal to quadruple U.S. nuclear energy capacity by 2050. He issued orders to prioritize mining on federal lands and fast-track approval of mining projects. The Velvet-Wood uranium mine in Utah, for instance, zipped through federal environmental review in 11 days, to the dismay of local tribes who were given one week to offer input.

Trump’s goal of quadrupling nuclear power capacity will be hard to meet, because it would require constructing more reactors — which are difficult to build and often meet local opposition, said David Hart, a senior fellow for climate and energy at the Council on Foreign Relations. But data centers and rising electricity demand have intensified interest in nuclear power as a low-carbon energy source, he said. And more states are opening the door to it.

So the effort to obtain the key ingredient, uranium, is underway.

The White Mesa Mill, built in 1980 near what is now Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, is a focal point of this latest uranium boom — and the tensions between local tribal concerns and national economic interests. Increased demand draws a steady flow of trucks carrying uranium ore to the mill from regional mines, including one near the Grand Canyon where the Havasupai Tribe lives. That ore is trucked through the Navajo Nation. And the mill plans to expand its waste storage, as well.

A former tribal councilmember, Lehi is part of a growing opposition that includes members of the Havasupai and Navajo (Diné) tribes, who are now linked by the uranium trucking routes passing through their lands. The Havasupai and Ute Mountain Ute tribes share concerns that toxic wastewater from uranium mining and milling may move through the ground and poison drinking water for future generations.

The entrance to White Mesa Mill, 5 miles north of White Mesa, Utah, on April 21. (Melissa Bailey for KFF Health News)

A History of Distrust

One spring morning in White Mesa, Yolanda Badback gazed out an open door not far from the highway and watched three uranium trucks drive by.

“There goes another one,” Badback said with a tone of exhaustion. She is a Ute Mountain Ute member and leader of the White Mesa Concerned Community advocacy group that has been fighting the mill.

The mill receives 10 to 15 trucks each weekday, said Curtis Moore, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development at Energy Fuels, which has owned the facility since 2012. The majority pass through White Mesa.

The mill’s business is picking up after a quiet 15 years, Moore said. The White Mesa Mill produced 1 million pounds of yellowcake last year; the company plans to more than double that this year, he said. The mill has also diversified into processing radioactive waste from as far away as Estonia and Japan, and received a $725 million conditional loan commitment from the Defense Department to scale up its domestic processing of rare earth elements.

The new rare earths business alone could create 100 permanent jobs, Moore said. About half of the mill’s 105 workers are Indigenous; Moore estimated that no more than two belong to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

“When it comes to tribes in the area, I do very much understand their skepticism of uranium,” Moore said. “They’ve been lied to before.”

A uranium boom driven by the U.S. government from the 1940s through the 1980s, much of it concentrated around the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, exposed miners to heightened rates of mortality from lung and other cancers. Federal reviews found that the miners, many of them Navajo (Diné), were not warned about radiation risks even after government scientists understood the dangers. Mining companies left behind thousands of abandoned waste sites that have leached contamination into surrounding soil and water, including over 500 spots on and near the Navajo Nation.

But Moore said things have changed a lot since the 1950s. He said workers today are exposed to 15 percent to 20 percent of allowable radiation limits, and outside the mill it’s “effectively zero.”

Government agencies and Energy Fuels officials have said there’s no evidence that the mill is affecting White Mesa’s drinking water supply, which comes from a deep aquifer protected by a thick rock barrier known as an aquitard.

“It really is the perfect site for a uranium mill,” Moore said.

Scott Clow, environmental programs director of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, said that deep aquifer does have quality issues — including arsenic, iron, and manganese — but the public drinking water is filtered and safe to drink.

Adam Wingate, uranium recovery manager at the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said he understands why some residents are concerned. White Mesa is downslope in terms of underground water flow from the uranium mill.

If locals hear about the plume of contamination in a different, shallower aquifer beneath the mill — even if it’s not the source of their drinking water — and their own water tastes funny, “that’s a scary spot to be in,” he said. But based on available evidence, Wingate said, locals’ “health is not at risk because of the mill.”

Even so, Lehi and Badback said that the tap water smells of sulfur and has a milky color, and that people in White Mesa typically don’t drink it.

“I don’t trust it,” said Badback, whose family has been fighting the mill for decades. “My main goal is to shut the mill down.”

Yolanda Badback, whose family has been fighting the White Mesa Mill in southeastern Utah for decades, speaks at a No Kings rally in Moab, Utah, on March 28. (Melissa Bailey for KFF Health News)

An annual spiritual walk and protest sponsored by Badback’s group has grown over the past decade amid deep distrust rooted in uranium mining’s history. Much of the opposition centers on the mill’s toxic waste, which is stored in five lined pits called tailings cells occupying 284 acres of land.

Badback vows to fight expansion plans that include new tailings cells located about a quarter-mile closer to the White Mesa community than the current ones. Moore said the cells will be triple-lined per modern standards.

“They want to expand south towards my reservation,” Badback said. “That’s the reason why I am standing up and doing whatever I can to stop that from happening.”

Concerns About Air Quality

At a No Kings rally in March in Moab, about 80 miles north of White Mesa, Badback gave a speech and staffed a table offering T-shirts and information.

“No Uranium,” the T-shirts read. “Protect White Mesa Ute Community.”

In 2021, her tribe passed a resolution stating that the White Mesa Mill “has had severe health impacts on the residents of White Mesa and should cease entirely.”

While their psychological stress is palpable, other health effects have been hard to prove.

A 2023 federal health assessment concluded that radiation levels measured at the tribe’s air monitor in the center of White Mesa from 2013 to 2019 were unlikely to harm human health. But the authors said they could not evaluate whether the mill’s radon emissions could affect bordering properties or residents. They recommended that the tribe collect air samples closer to the mill, during times of heightened mill activity.

In December 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency found the mill was violating the Clean Air Act by failing to cover one of its tailings cells with liquid to limit emissions of radon, a known cause of lung cancer. The EPA called the violation “egregious in nature and duration” and temporarily barred the mill from receiving waste from Superfund cleanup sites.

The mill corrected the problem, according to state regulators, and passed its latest air quality review in 2025.

Still, some White Mesa residents remain uneasy. Badback and Lehi complained of odors, which they attribute to the mill, that smell like chemicals or rotten eggs. She has raised concerns about air quality and rates of cancer and asthma, which are being explored by a University of Utah health survey.

Moore denied that any odors from the mill could be smelled beyond the mill parking lot.

Utah air quality officials said the state does not conduct ambient air monitoring in White Mesa and does not regulate odors.

Watching the Water

That spring day, Lehi continued to look for Entrance Spring. On the horizon lay the silhouette of Sleeping Ute Mountain, a landmark of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, said to be the body of a great warrior god.

Along the way, Lehi pointed out a circle of stones that he thought looked like an ancestral burial site. After parking the Jeep, he walked down a faint trail through a lush grove of willows and found his way into a streambed that he reckoned would lead to the spring.

The tribe doesn’t rely on the spring for drinking water. But it’s one of the seeps and springs that the tribe, the state, and the company monitor, because they offer clues to whether the mill’s waste ponds are leaking into a less protected aquifer.

In the late 2000s, an EPA report found elevated contamination by radionuclides — atoms that emit radiation as they decay — at Entrance Spring. EPA water samples found that uranium concentrations at times exceeded the federal drinking water standard. EPA and U.S. Geological Survey fieldwork suggested the uranium at Entrance Spring came not from leaking waste ponds but from dust that blew off the mill’s ore storage pads.

The latest tests from 2025 showed Entrance Spring had uranium levels at 22.5 micrograms per liter (µg/L) — within the federal drinking standard of 30 µg/L but still elevated.

Clow said the tribe continues to keep a close eye on the seeps and springs.

“We’re concerned about the pollution of those springs,” he said. “We are looking towards many generations in the future here.”

Clow is also closely watching the Burro Canyon Aquifer, which lies beneath the mill’s toxic waste cells and feeds the local springs. A plume of chloroform and another of nitrates already pollute the aquifer, said Wingate, with the state. He said Energy Fuels is pumping out the contamination.

When contaminants increase, it’s hard to prove whether they stemmed from natural causes or mill activity, since substances such as sulfate and manganese occur naturally in the local bedrock. So Clow, the company, and state officials continually debate whether the tailings ponds are leaking. What’s not in dispute is that the mill produces radioactive waste — and once that exists, it can linger for tens of thousands of years.

Lehi followed the stream to where it ends in a curved grotto — the site of Entrance Spring. Water oozed from a rock face into a pool, offering cool relief from the desert. Lehi looked around with wonder at the dripping green moss. A descendant of medicine men, Lehi said he feels a duty to protect the landscape as his ancestors did, even if the tribe doesn’t currently use this spring for drinking water.

 “Water is life,” Lehi said, “because that’s where we all began.”

Malcolm Lehi touches the cool water of Entrance Spring, tucked in a valley about 500 feet from the White Mesa Mill’s entrance, on April 21. The mill processes uranium ore from across the region and radioactive waste from as far away as Estonia and Japan. (Melissa Bailey for KFF Health News)

This article was supported byThe Water Desk, an independent journalism initiative based at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

Steven Grattan
Associated Press

PUERTO MALDONADO, Peru — Eight Peruvian navy personnel jumped from a helicopter into a clearing carved out of the Amazon rainforest by illegal gold miners along the Malinowski River in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, sending sand and dust swirling as they ran toward the mining site.

The forest gave way to giant holes gouged into the earth and filled with opaque, muddy water, gasoline and other chemicals glistening on the surface. Makeshift wooden mining platforms straddled the pools, surrounded by pumps and thick plastic tubes used to suck up and sift through sediment for tiny particles of gold.

As the troops closed in, several miners stood watching from a distance. The officer leading the patrol fired a warning shot into the air. Within seconds, they vanished into the forest.

The raid over several days this week was part of an intensified government campaign against illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios, one of Peru’s most biodiverse regions, as authorities try to stop the activity from advancing into protected areas of the Amazon. Mining has stripped away vast areas of rainforest, leaving behind a scarred landscape of contaminated pools and altered rivers in the hunt for lucrative gold. Mercury used to separate gold from sediment has contaminated waterways, wildlife and people, including Indigenous communities that depend heavily on fish.

Behind them was a camp abandoned in haste. Crushed beer cans and empty liquor bottles littered the ground alongside mattresses, clothes and tools. That day’s lunch — rice and plantain — still sat in plastic containers. Freezers and fuel containers dotted the camp, alongside live chickens and guinea pigs kept for food.

The troops were one of eight patrols, flown by helicopter to separate points along the Malinowski River. The aircraft touched down only long enough to drop each group before lifting off and moving to the next site.

Illegal mining is advancing toward protected areas of the Amazon

Edy Reynaldo Dariquebe, an official with FENAMAD, an Indigenous federation representing communities in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, said criminal groups linked to illegal mining have been operating near or inside protected Indigenous communities. He said mining is destroying forests and contaminating rivers with mercury that accumulates in fish, spreading the impact to communities far from the mining sites.

Ronald Flores Yáñez, a deputy prosecutor for Peru’s Office of the Attorney General, said illegal mining has advanced close to military monitoring points and into protected areas.

“We can attest today that they have already entered the Tambopata National Reserve,” Flores told The Associated Press. “We are inside the reserve and around us we see dredges numbering in the hundreds.”

Illegal mining declined in parts of Madre de Dios after Peru launched a major military and police crackdown known as Operation Mercury in 2019. But miners have since moved back toward protected areas, prompting authorities to intensify operations.

Global Conservation, a U.S.-based nonprofit working with Peruvian authorities, said ongoing operations will combine satellite monitoring, aerial reconnaissance and law enforcement raids over the coming year to identify and dismantle illegal gold mining camps and equipment.

Destroying the motors hits miners where it hurts most

Before setting out Tuesday, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Renato Miranda told troops at a briefing that the mission’s objective was to “neutralize and dismantle” illegal mining activities. Once on the ground, that meant searching for anything that allowed the mines to function: pumps, batteries, fuel, dredging equipment and makeshift infrastructure.

“The most important thing is to destroy the main machinery,” Miranda said. “And the main machinery is the motors.”

The powerful engines are among the most valuable pieces of equipment at a mining site and a key economic pressure point for authorities trying to make it more expensive for miners to restart operations. Miranda said larger engines can cost around $30,000 to $45,000. He estimated that motors targeted in the raids can extract 30 to 50 grams of gold a day. At current gold prices, that would be worth about $4,000 to $7,000.

Miranda told AP the three-day operation destroyed 56 motors, 78 mining rafts and 13,751 gallons (52,050 liters) of fuel, with the destroyed material valued at more than 15 million soles ($4 million). On the ground, soldiers said they had destroyed around 115 motors over the previous three months during operations carried out nearly every week.

The remote sites give miners time to hear approaching boats or helicopters and flee, often hiding motors in sand, behind trees or in muddy pools to recover later. Specialized navy divers search the murky pools for submerged engines, entering water where mercury and other chemicals may be present. When they find one, they attach explosive charges and destroy it.

At one site, as troops prepared to leave, a soldier spotted disturbed sand and began digging. He uncovered a motor, threw it onto a pile with a mattress and chainsaw, doused it with gasoline and set it alight. A dog abandoned at the site fared better: soldiers took a liking to it, bringing it along for the rest of the day’s mission and eventually back to their military base.

Elsewhere, troops used dynamite-like explosives to destroy equipment and burned structures and supplies that could be used to keep the mining camps running.

A 10-minute boat ride away, another, larger camp offered a glimpse of daily life at the mining sites. A chest freezer was packed with meat, while wooden shelves held plates and coffee mugs. Several separate sleeping areas were strewn with personal belongings: a ledger filled with lists of needed supplies, freshly washed underwear hanging from string to dry, bottles of vitamins and even pills marketed as increasing penis size and sexual endurance. All was set alight by the troops. Before moving on, some of the soldiers cooked and ate food they found in the abandoned camp.

The expensive machinery and valuable gold contrasts with the precarious conditions of many living and working in the camps.

During the operation, another patrol encountered a woman with her 1-year-old child at a mining site. Flores told AP she had come to Madre de Dios from Cusco after failing to gain admission to university and, after being left by the father of her child, needed work. She responded to an advertisement seeking a cook and ended up preparing food for illegal miners.

Authorities say raids alone will not stop the mining

The destruction of machinery is intended to hit miners where it hurts most: the cost of restarting. But authorities themselves acknowledge that raids alone are not enough.

Miranda said that with gold prices high and mining highly profitable, operators can acquire another engine, rebuild their equipment and return to the same location or move elsewhere.

“Every day they are advancing more and more and more, and we are being very slow,” said Flores, adding that their strategy needs to change.

Prosecutors, he said, are now pursuing two fronts: continuing operations against dredges, motors and other equipment while also following the money behind the mines — identifying the financiers who provide the capital for expensive machinery and tracing the profits generated by the gold.

That approach could be critical to breaking the cycle visible along the Malinowski River: authorities destroy equipment, leave and miners find the money and machinery to start again.

“These operations have to be permanent,” Flores said.

As honey bee colonies face mounting threats, veterinarians are becoming increasingly important to hive health. But high costs, limited training, and a shortage of bee specialists are slowing efforts to expand this emerging field. (Photo by David Cappaert, Bugwood.org)

[2026-08-14] Entomology Today — Veterinary medicine has always included insects, but only recently have veterinarians started actually treating insects. The earliest documented case of treating diseases vectored by insects dates back to 1890. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the time established that cattle fever was caused by ticks and could be managed by suppressing tick populations. Since then, the field of veterinary entomology has focused similarly on pest management and reducing the disease burden on domesticated animals.

Recently, however, pollinator populations have declined sharply in many parts of the world, resulting in the need for immediate intervention. These declines have been driven by a wide variety of factors including parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss. While managed pollinators like honey bees haven’t seen the same levels of population decline, they have been experiencing dramatic increases in colony loss rates. Increased colony loss rates are caused by a variety of stressors interacting with each other that reduce overall hive health. As these stressors accumulate, researchers are scrambling for solutions that either directly target bee parasites and pathogens or more broadly increase hive health.

The role of veterinarians comes into play when discussing managed pollinator populations. In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began mandating that antibiotics for bees must be prescribed by a veterinarian rather than purchased over the counter. This legislative change made it so, at least on paper, veterinarians would be much more involved in the health of honey bee hives. The change is called a veterinary feed directive (VFD) and was made due to the food products that come from honey bees. The VFD was introduced at a time when many were concerned about mounting antibiotic resistance in livestock. However, in practice there exist many barriers to veterinary care.

Barriers to Honey Bee Veterinary Care

One key barrier is cost. Consulting a veterinarian can cost hundreds of dollars on top of the charges associated with any pharmaceuticals that are prescribed. In many areas, these costs are comparable to simply replacing a hive, making veterinary care a less attractive option for many beekeepers.

Another key barrier to veterinary care is simply lack of access. Approximately 300 veterinarians are registered as members of the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium. This consortium serves as the leading national organization for honey bee health information and diagnostic resources. For context, approximately 75,000 companion animal veterinarians currently practice in the United States.

A third barrier to usage of honey bee veterinarians is a perceived lack of knowledge and expertise. Many beekeepers are aware that bee medicine is often not well covered in veterinary curricula. A new study published in June further looks at the challenges facing veterinarians interested in practicing with bees. They find that the largest barriers to veterinarians are “lack of knowledge, education, skills, and training.” Veterinary schools are working to include more course work relating to bees. Additionally groups like the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium work to offer education and resources to those who have already graduated.

A final barrier to veterinarians is a shortage of available treatment options. Currently only three antibiotics are approved for use in honey bee colonies. The lack of legally approved antibiotics likely comes from limited consultation between beekeepers and veterinarians. Because there is a lack of bee veterinary service usage, companies do not have incentives to develop and approve products for usage in honey bee hives.

Pioneering a Novel Relationship Between Insects and Veterinarians

Managing honey bees with medical intervention is a unique connection between entomology and veterinary medicine. Honey bees are currently the only invertebrates that are routinely offered this level of support at all. Honey bees are in many ways pioneering a beneficial relationship between insects and veterinarians. However, pioneering a path does not come without difficulty.

Overall the state of bee veterinarians is caught in a difficult cycle. Veterinary schools often devote limited time to bee medicine because they don’t expect many graduates to use those skills, as beekeepers rarely seek veterinary care. At the same time beekeepers avoid consulting veterinarians because they believe veterinarians lack the extensive hands-on experience that beekeepers themselves possess. Breaking this cycle will not be easy, but it is becoming increasingly important as the number of threats facing honey bees continues to grow. From Varroa mites to pesticide use to habitat destruction, our bees need new and advanced treatments for the diseases that threaten their health.

To effectively break this cycle, we need buy-in across the board. First and foremost, we need researchers to develop and test treatments for honey bees. For scientists to develop these treatments, they need both funding and access to laboratory spaces. Entomologists, veterinarians, and beekeepers need to band together to advocate for federal funding.

This can be achieved by writing or calling your representative directly or by joining existing campaigns like those run by Environment America. You can also offer your support to organizations that independently fund this research. Some such groups are Project Apis m. and the Eastern Apiculture Society. Finally, you can also participate in and support groups like the Entomological Society of America that go to Capitol Hill and advocate for funding and support for entomology broadly.

Veterinary students and veterinarians can also help by choosing to learn more about honey bees and hive health. This can be done by completing the National Veterinary Accreditation Program’s module on honey bee health or by joining the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium (HBVC). Veterinary students can join or start chapters of HBVC on their campuses or sign up for elective beekeeping courses as they are offered.

Finally, beekeepers can form active relationships with their local veterinarians. These relationships are essential if they need to establish a veterinarian-client-patient relationship (VCPR) prior to obtaining any prescriptions. These relationships can also be helpful to both parties, as beekeepers can share their vast practical experience while veterinarians share their clinical education.

Some called it reckless dumping. Others warned it would be detrimental to an already dwindling ecosystem. And for a while, these concerns seemed valid. Even the researchers running this giant experiment had their doubts as no visible progress was initially seen.

All of these things and more helped revive fish, turtle, and dolphin populations to numbers not seen in over two and a half decades. Layer by layer, the ocean floor had rebuilt itself until the results were visibly undeniable.