Loss of the National Nature Assessment

Nature of Our Times, creative companion to the inaugural National Nature Assessment, reports on cancellation of the program.

In 2024, when I discovered The Nature of Our Times, I was thrilled to see a creative companion to the important, inaugural work of the National Nature Assessment, an effort by the US Global Change Research Program to catalogue US lands, waters and wildlife. (Anyone following the work I do with H5N1 avian influenza knows right away just how critical a better understanding of wildlife and our landscape is to health security.) I contributed some poems and read with joy the work of other writers and watched with hope the work of the scientists.

Unfortunately, as with many ‘climate’ related activities (no matter how important), the USGCRP is among the long and growing list of scientific projects that have been cancelled by the current administration. I’m heartbroken and I’m furious. This is just one of the shadows on the landscape of science these days, but this one stings in a different way.

Read another report here.