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Nepal’s rhino conservation efforts have been, if anything, too successful.
Ganesh Paudel packs a wad of chewing tobacco as he talks about the rhinoceros attack. “When the rhino charged, we were in a boat,” he tells me. “The rhino was sitting in the water, then it hit me and broke my knee, broke the hand of another guide and gored a tourist” — he points — “through an eye.”
As we chat, another rhino wades in a stream just a short way away. Paudel works as a nature guide, but we’re not in nature today — we’re standing under a bridge that connects to a busy highway in Chitwan, a district of about a million people situated on the outskirts of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park. A school bus passes and a few locals stop their scooters to whip out phones and film. But most keep moving without looking twice.
Rhinos once roamed from Pakistan to Bangladesh, but their numbers plummeted in the 20th century. Many cultures throughout Asia believe rhino horns have medicinal properties, making the creatures they’re attached to vulnerable to poaching. Rajas and royals prized rhinos as trophy kills. Farmers, also, retaliated with violence against rhinos that pillaged their crops. By 1970 there were just 95 rhinos in the national park, a wilderness bigger than New York City.
Eventually, however, the government realized that wildlife protection attracts dollars. For decades now, the United States Agency for International Development and non-governmental organizations like the World Wildlife Fund have supported Nepal’s efforts to boost conservation and lessen human wildlife conflict. Between 2011 and 2020 alone, $57 million of USAID funding went to programs aimed at protecting biodiversity here. Soldiers now patrol the park to stifle poaching.
But while the rhino population has rebounded to nearly 700 in Chitwan, the animals themselves are hardly thriving. As temperatures rise, there's been less rain during monsoon season. Warming temperatures have fueled invasive species like American creeper vines that have taken over rhino habitat and grow three inches daily. Climate change has also dried up staple rhino foods like elephant grass and aquatic plants. Now, there are too many rhinos and not enough forest, which forces the animals out of the park and into the city. (The same goes for tigers.)
The particular rhino wading near us is named Meghauli. Each morning, like clockwork, he comes out of the forest and into town. Meghauli is a bona fide social media star. When he thuds down the road traffic stops and a parade of hypnotized Nepalis and foreigners snap selfies and touch his leathery hide.
Meghauli was hand-raised by park staff after he was found alone, wounded from a tiger attack. Fed on 18 liters of buffalo milk a day, he grew big and strong — and also lost his fear of humans. Four years later he was released, but he kept returning because it’s easier to find food in town than in the increasingly dry and crowded jungle.
Rhinos are everywhere in the populated regions around the park — wading in streams, but also painted in murals, memorialized in hotel names, and depicted in statues. The uncomfortable truth is that the rhinos’ plight has also created a lucrative tourist opportunity. Rajendra Dhami, who runs a tea shop in front of Meghauli’s main crossing point, a shallow river with basking crocodiles and waiting tourists, tells me the rhinos have become a big attraction. “People come to see rhinos since we have them,” he says. “That means more money for us.”
A pair of young Brits and an Indian family of nine are currently gathered, waiting for Meghauli, but Dhami insists that for the most part, it doesn’t matter which rhino shows up. “We have lots of problems in Nepal,” he tells me, “but we share with wildlife.”
It’s true visitors often choose hotels and shops near wildlife. But a recent 20-year study found that nature-based tourism rarely impacts locals, in part because hotel bookings are often made online with fancy tour operators who act as middlemen and skim off revenue much the same way food delivery sites take from restaurants. Meanwhile, just six of the 93 hotels here are owned or managed by indigenous people, according to the Regional Hotel Association Chitwan. For most Nepalis, especially in poor indigenous communities who rely on farming here, rhinos running around is bad for bottom lines — and bellies.
“Cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes, rhinos like it all very much” says Narayan Rijal, who has worked as a park guide for 15 years. ”That’s the problem.”
But people, also, are hungry. Many here are in such need of food that they’re invading rhino habitat to find fruits, honey, and meat. Impoverished communities illegally enter the park to gather firewood, a cycle that increases deforestation, shrinks habitat, and risks deadly rhino, elephant, and tiger attacks.
Tulsi Magar, a guide at the local Sanctuary hotel, says many attacks are because farmers are so desperate to protect their own food that they stand their ground and light fires to try and scare off hungry rhinos. When Magar was 12, he also fought this way, sleeping in a shed and narrowly avoiding losing his life to protect the family’s radish harvest.
“It didn’t work,’ he remembers. “The rhinos won.”
Soldiers try their best to manage the rhinos, trailing them as they leave the park to forage in farmers’ fields. Once they reach town, soldiers often have to hit them with sticks or their rifle butts to get them to return to the forest.
“They‘re not small animals,” an assistant warden says as a rooster crows outside his office. “We try to push rhinos back into the core area. With Meghauli no need for stick, we just push. We do our best.”
Meghauli has a lookalike named Madi, another rescue. Unlike Meghauli, Madi is angry, park staff say, asking me to avoid using their names for fear of speaking openly. “Madi even charged a few taxis by the airport,” they admit. “He’s very aggressive.”
Rhinos have killed 55 people since 1998, including a 2019 attack on safari-going tourists. Last year alone, rhinos killed five. “They’re more dangerous than tigers,” notes Isswari Chapagain who has climbed trees to avoid charges.
Rhinos aren’t just a threat to locals, he says. They’re also a threat to each other. Wild rhinos go nuts and attack orphans like Meghauli and Madi if they smell people on them — another reason they keep coming back to town.
As the park has become famous and rhinos have rebounded, human activities like road expansion have been linked to a string of strange deaths: 165 rhinos killed from falling into roadside ditches and septic tanks, shocks from electric fences, disease (likely from proximity to livestock), and at least six killed by poachers. In 2022 alone, 36 rhinos died from territorial fights, which are also connected to warming temperatures and habitat loss. Construction on Chitwan’s three main rivers changes their flow, shrinks space, increases food competition and pushes rhinos into fields.
Rhinos are protected even if they attack or leave the park boundaries, but people aren’t. If they’re attacked in the park, Nepalis can claim government compensation (although guides cannot). If they’re at home protecting their farms and a rhino mauls them, they get nothing, another reason researchers accuse the government of continuing to prioritize wildlife over people.
Back under the bridge, I watch Meghauli blow bubbles under the water, just like a kid.
When he rises, I see his massive body in full for the first time. He seems gentle but it wouldn’t take much — a jerk of his head or a kick from a leg — for him to kill someone. He exits the water and trudges up the riverbank, then pauses to scan the highway. He faces me and sniffs the air, then turns toward a potato field. It’s lunchtime.
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Current conditions: Thousands are without power and drinking water in the French Indian Ocean territory of Réunion after Tropical Cyclone Garance made landfall with the strength of a Category 2 hurricane • A severe weather outbreak could bring tornadoes to southern states early next week • It’s 44 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Washington, D.C., where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Trump today to sign a minerals deal.
The 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, known as COP16, ended this week with countries agreeing on a crucial roadmap for directing $200 billion a year by 2030 toward protecting nature and halting global biodiversity loss. Developed nations are urged to double down on their goal to mobilize $20 billion annually for conservation in developing countries this year, rising to $30 billion by 2030. The plan also calls for further study on the relationships between nature conservation and debt sustainability. “The compromise proved countries could still bridge their differences and work together for the sake of preserving the planet, despite a fracturing world order and the dramatic retreat of the United States from international green diplomacy and foreign aid under President Donald Trump,” wrote Louise Guillot at Politico. The decision was met with applause and tears from delegates. One EU delegate said they were relieved “about the positive signal that this sends to other ongoing negotiations on climate change and plastics that we have.”
The Trump administration yesterday fired hundreds of workers across the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, key agencies responsible for monitoring the changing climate and communicating extreme weather threats. The National Hurricane Center and the Tsunami Warning Center both operate under NOAA, and the layoffs come ahead of the upcoming hurricane season. “People nationwide depend on NOAA for free, accurate forecasts, severe weather alerts, and emergency information,” said Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “Purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives.” A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the administration’s mass firings of federal workers, so the status of those affected in this latest round is unclear. Somewhat relatedly, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports that the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, was told by NOAA it had to rename a major conservation program as the “Gulf of America” or else lose federal funding.
The FBI reportedly has been questioning Environmental Protection Agency employees about $20 billion in climate and clean energy grants approved under the Biden administration, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has insisted were issued hastily and without oversight. According toThe Washington Post, the Justice Department has asked several U.S. attorneys to submit warrant requests or launch grand jury investigations, but those efforts have been rejected due to lack of evidence or “reasonable belief that a crime occurred.” “It’s certainly unusual for any case to involve two different U.S. attorney offices declining a case for lack of probable cause and to have the Department of Justice continue to shop it,” Stefan D. Cassella, a former federal prosecutor, told the Post. Several nonprofits said their Citibank accounts holding the funding have been frozen without explanation.
Some Democratic states are apparently freezing out Tesla in response to Elon Musk’s political maneuvers within the Trump administration. Tesla operates on a direct-to-consumer sales model, so it doesn’t have to go through dealerships. More than 25 states ban or restrict direct EV sales in some way. The company has been lobbying to get permission to sell directly in these states, but some Democratic lawmakers are “disgusted” by Musk’s moves in Washington and are rebuffing lobbyists or dropping their support for proposed legislation allowing direct sales.
Apple is in trouble for claiming some of its Apple Watches are “carbon neutral.” A group of customers are suing the company after learning its claims relied on carbon offsetting projects in protected national parks or heavily forested areas, instead of “genuine” carbon reductions. “The carbon reductions would have occurred regardless of Apple’s involvement or the projects’ existence,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint. “Because Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are predicated on the efficacy and legitimacy of these projects, Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are false and misleading.” The lawsuit seeks damages, as well as an injunction that prevents Apple from using the carbon neutral claim to market its watches. Apple has a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Researchers in Amsterdam have examined the nests of birds known as common coots and discovered plastic items dating back to the 1990s, including a McDonald’s McChicken wrapper from 1996, and a Mars wrapper promoting the 1994 USA FIFA World Cup. “History is not only written by humans,” said Auke-Florian Hiemstra, who led the research. “Nature, too, is keeping score.”
Auke-Florian Hiemstra
Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.