The anaerobic digester represents the culmination of a combined effort by the Auburn Gresham community, politicians and scientists to change Chicago’s approach to keeping food waste out of landfills, which are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the country.

The operation is “the first facility in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to processing inedible food waste in packaging,” according to a news release from Green Era Campus, which is run by a partnership of community groups and is home to the digester. By accepting still-packaged food, such as chopped salad kits, pizzas in takeout boxes and produce in mesh bags that are separated before composting begins, the operation can reduce disposal costs for businesses and municipalities.

While anaerobic digestion is not a new technology and has long been used in agricultural settings, the campus is pioneering a closed-loop, zero-waste system that returns municipal food waste to the soil in the form of nutrient-rich compost and to the power grid in the form of renewable energy.

“In other words, food waste is not waste — it’s a resource,” said Jason Feldman, CEO of the sustainability nonprofit Green Era, during a recent public unveiling. “The Green Era anaerobic digester is more than infrastructure, it’s a community-powered climate solution.”

Since operations began in April 2023, the digester has recycled over 40,000 tons of food waste from residents and businesses, according to Green Era leaders.

Two Mariano’s grocery stores in Evergreen Park and Oak Lawn have since 2023 diverted 500 tons of unsold or inedible food from landfills by sending it to the South Side digester — an operation that will soon expand to eight more stores in West Loop, South Loop, Bridgeport, Edgewater, Ukrainian Village, New City and Lakeshore East.

“Anything and everything, whether it’s in packages, whether it’s in cans — doesn’t matter,” said Michael Marx, division president of Mariano’s. “What we saw was this phenomenal opportunity to be industry-leading in the way that we would dispose of food.”

The food industry will always produce waste, he added. But an outlet like this, he said, is “game-changing.”

This could be especially true for cities trying to ramp up their composting efforts. In Chicago, the city’s first composting initiative, launched in late 2023 with 20 drop-off sites, has collected 400 tons of food scraps from 6,700 households as of this March. The scraps are processed at the Harbor View Composting Facility in South Deering, operated by Whole Earth Compost. However, the program doesn’t accept any kinds of packaging — even certified compostable or paper bags.

A spokesperson from the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation said the city is considering all options and will continue to explore “innovative ways” to build on its food waste program.

“Although we do not currently plan to send food scrap material to the Green Era, we are excited and encouraged by its potential development for the future of waste diversion in Chicago,” the spokesperson said.

Closing the loop

After the former International Harvester site was approved for a government remediation program to rid it of industrial contaminants, the Auburn Gresham lot on 83rd Street was turned into the Green Era Campus — which includes a 35,000-square-foot facility for the digester system and soon an urban farm, education center and community green space.

Different phases of the campus development have been funded through charitable donations, investors, the city’s Climate Infrastructure Fund and federal funding secured by U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

Besides accepting still-packaged food, the facility, like other composters, takes expired or spoiled products that food banks can’t distribute and would otherwise end up in landfills. Northern Illinois Food Bank sent 1.2 million pounds of food over the last year, reducing its carbon footprint by more than half, said Chris Gillette, the food bank’s director of operations.

Recycling unsellable, still-packaged goods is part of what Green Era hopes will make its waste management solution attractive to big retailers, rather than opting for open-air composters that produce and release carbon dioxide and other harmful gases into the atmosphere.

“It shortens food miles” — the measurement of the environmental impact of transporting food — “so it’s more convenient” for waste haulers and their clients, said Erika Allen, co-founder of the campus and CEO of Urban Growers Collective, a nonprofit of community farms and gardens in underprivileged areas in the West and South sides.

It has drawn participation from all corners of the city.

Block Bins — a crowdfunded curbside compost program with residential and commercial clients — has brought all of its food waste to the Auburn Gresham campus in the past year, including the hundreds of tons of food waste from Mariano’s.

Since 2018, the small hauling company has deployed over 1,000 receptacles to city blocks across Chicago to reduce barriers to organic waste recycling through shared community bins. Fees start at $10 per month for 5 gallons.

“We’ve obviously diversified now, because everybody is wasting food all over the place, in a lot of different ways,” said Kyle Preuss, chief marketing officer of Block Bins. Besides grocery stores, commercial clients include food pantries, cafes, restaurants and condo associations.

Being able to pick up food scraps in Wicker Park, drive them down to Auburn Gresham to be converted into natural gas for local use and compost for urban farms means that the food’s life cycle begins, ends and begins again in Chicago instead of being sent out to a suburb — which Preuss says is rare when it comes to managing waste in a big city.

“So, your food waste is from Chicago, for Chicago,” he said. “That is the Block Bins mindset: first, inclusivity — ensure that as many people that want to participate can — and closing the loop.”

Resilient future

When haulers drop off food waste at the Green Era Campus warehouse, a machine sorts it and removes any packaging. Packaging materials that can be salvaged like pallets, cardboard, glass and cans are also recycled, said Feldman, the Green Era CEO.

“Then what we’re left with is a big, food-waste sort of milkshake,” he said, which gets pumped into the digester tank outside to be mixed and broken down.

The product coming out of the digester, called digestate, gets mixed in with soil and other compost to be used across Urban Growers Collective’s community gardens around the city; the Green Era Campus will also use it in its future urban farm and greenhouse.

In contrast to open-air composters, anaerobic digesters provide an oxygen-free environment for microorganisms to break down organic waste. It’s similar to the decomposition that happens in a landfill, but the digester system captures the methane that would normally be released. Methane has over 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere.

The methane is then processed to meet purity standards and separated from other chemical compounds to become renewable natural gas.

“So we’re decarbonizing the local gas,” Feldman said, “because we’re taking it from a waste product that would otherwise go to a landfill.”

The carbon-negative renewable natural gas the Green Era Campus has been providing to the Peoples Gas system since June can power thousands of single-family homes, said Polly Eldringhoff, the company’s vice president of operational performance and compliance.

“This initiative marks a significant step towards a cleaner, more resilient and inclusive energy future for our city,” Eldringhoff said.

Because the renewable natural gas is mixed in with the overall gas supply, customers who want to purchase it don’t need to install special equipment. For more information, residents can fill out the website contact form at greenerachicago.org/contact.

After food waste is recycled, composting programs often send it back to the soil by selling it to landscaping companies — the city, for instance, does so at $18 per cubic yard with a minimum of 1 cubic yard. Block Bins recently gave about 3 cubic yards of compost back to 75 of its residential clients.

Through a distribution cooperative, the Green Era Campus is returning finished compost to workers from the community to use in home gardens and commercial landscape projects in a city where clean, healthy soil is in short supply.

The natural fertilizing product will also be used on-site to grow affordable, fresh produce and plants — including 10,000 collard bunches, 3,500 pints of strawberries, 4,000 tomatoes and over 70 kinds of medicinal and culinary herbs — for Auburn Gresham residents, who experience some of the highest rates of food insecurity in Chicago and almost half of which live below the federal poverty line.

“I stand here … with deep pride — not just on this campus, but in what it represents: the South Side that is leading and healing, that’s innovating, building and growing,” Allen said.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

Just before noon, the worker told Gómez he and his students had to evacuate their classroom and relocate to the band room because of a broken water pipe.

“I didn’t see any water. I thought, this is odd,” Gómez said.

Moments later, he was proven correct as he led his students into the band room.

Gomez broke into a huge smile when he walked through an archway made of yellow, blue and white balloons just inside the doorway.

Festive music filled the air, courtesy of Mariachi Estrellas De Chicago. And as Gómez walked in, school officials, teachers, parents, students and his family began applauding and cheering for the 2025 Illinois Teacher of the Year, as declared by the Illinois State Board of Education.

The prestigious honor floored Gómez, 31, a Wheaton resident in his sixth year of teaching at the Franklin Park high school.

“How do I express myself other than gratitude for everyone who has been part of this journey? To my family, my wife, my students — thank you,” he said.

It’s all about the students, not himself, he said.

“Doing what’s right for the kids, making sure they have every opportunity to succeed has been the one mission as an educator. After six years of being a bilingual educator, I believe I’ve touched a lot of students’ lives in positive ways,” he said.

Gómez was selected from 13 finalists.

After teachers are nominated, they are invited to apply for the honor. That’s followed by essays about their teaching philosophy, along with letters of recommendation.

A committee evaluates applicants who are interviewed and the final selection is made by Tony Sanders, Illinois superintendent of education.

“Each year,” Sanders said, “we select a teacher to represent our best and brightest and we think Mr. Gómez is an incredible choice for that.”

Gómez co-developed East Leyden’s bilingual program, and helped launch the school’s first bilingual chemistry course. He also is a mentor to future bilingual educators in a collaboration with Elmhurst University, and has facilitated opportunities for bilingual students at East Leyden. And he started a mariachi band at the school.

Sanders called Gómez “a dedicated advocate for bilingual education.”

At East Leyden, about 80% of the approximately 1,800 students are Hispanic, officials said. Gómez teaches bilingual chemistry and biology.

What sets Gómez apart, peers, students, officials and family said, is his ability to easily connect with others.

Student Jesus Osuna offered a prime example at the rally on Wednesday.

“I came here three years ago and on my very first day, I walked into your classroom. I heard music playing in Spanish. At that moment, I felt a huge sense of relief,” Osuna recalled.

The graduating senior thanked Gómez “for believing in your students and making us feel at home.”

“You are a teacher I will never forget,” Osuna said before giving Gómez a hug.

That empathy and providing a comfort zone has become even more important at a time marked by federal scrutiny and targeted deportations in the Hispanic community. Osuna confirmed students are concerned, and “there’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to what is going on.”

“A lot of us bilingual teachers really (are) making the effort to make sure our students are feeling that they belong here. That their language belongs. That they, too, deserve to be here,” Gómez said.

He said it’s no extra challenge teaching students for whom English is a second language “because it ends up being a family in the classroom.”

Family is a theme often heard in Leyden High School District 212, school board president Greg Ignoffa said. It came up again in a conversation he had at Wednesday’s event with Gómez’s father.

“That’s where he gets it. That’s the culture he grew up in. It’s engaging. It’s family. We use the word ‘family’ at Leyden here and it’s not just a word. It is a family,” Ignoffa said.

Andres Gómez, 29, and Vivian Gómez, 26, are proud of their big brother.

“Words cannot express the feelings I have right now. It’s a great achievement,” Andres said.

Growing up, Gómez “loved biology and chemistry. That led to him being a teacher here,” Andres, an accountant, said.

Vivian, a teacher’s assistant at Addison Trail High, called her brother “my biggest role model growing up.”

“He tutored me a lot, but not only in science,” she said. “I’m very proud because we’ve seen him grow not only as a person but as an educator.”

As Teacher of the Year, Gómez will receive his annual salary during a year-long sabbatical in which he will visit school districts statewide to assist their bilingual programs.

“You can give as many speeches as you want but if you’re not working with people, nothing will get done,” he said.

East Leyden Principal Julie Lam said Gomez’s positive impact on students is evident daily.

“His impact radiates throughout our district through his students and through every colleague who has had the privilege of working beside him,” said Lam, in her first year as principal.

“In his science classroom, learning is not about memorizing facts or preparing for tests. It’s about engaging them with curiosity, critical thinking and courage. Gómez makes science acceptable and exciting,” Lam said.

The school’s previous principal, Dominic Manola, now the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum, said Gómez gets to know “who the kids are.”

“I remember a water purity lesson a few years ago when he brought in the hometowns of his students. Because he knows them so deeply, he brings relevant things in constantly,” Manola said.

That engagement endured even through the challenges of the worldwide pandemic and remote learning sessions.

“Most kids were not turning their cameras on. You go into his class, they had their cameras on,” he said.

Gómez’s father, Victor Gómez Sr., who came to the United States from Mexico when he was nine years old, learned to speak English and became an engineer for an aerospace company.

Gómez said his father’s challenges adjusting to life here inspired him to work with bilingual students.

His wife Ingrid, who met Gómezwhen both were students at Addison Trail High School, joked that her husband may try to use his award to get out of doing laundry at home.

Laughing, GGómez assured her that won’t be happening despite winning the state’s top teaching honor.

“Now,” Lam said, “the rest of the state knows what we’ve known all along, that Víctor Gómez represents the very best of what it means to be a teacher.”

Gómez said he “does not feel like the top (teacher) in the state,” adding “there’s a lot of humility.”

He plans to keep teaching as long as possible and perhaps become a bilingual program director someday.

Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter. 

She always preferred science but said she wasn’t given the option to pursue it. At age 11, she remembers finding a dead bird and, out of curiosity, cutting it open with her dad’s razor.

“Nobody really said, Well, what are you passionate about? Because you probably could go into anything you want,” Walton said.

She worked as a teacher for years in her 20s before returning to Richard J. Daley and Kennedy-King colleges on the Southeast Side to enhance her math knowledge.

Now, almost 80, she sets an example teaching earth science and algebra classes at the Chicago Pre-College Science and Engineering Program, also known as ChiS&E, a nonprofit that offers enrichment classes on Saturdays and in the summer for historically underrepresented students to pique and motivate their interest in careers in science.

The program began serving first-grade students in 2009 and has expanded year by year. Today, ChiS&E collaborates with over 40 schools, both public and private, across Chicago, and is unique in that the students’ guardians are required to accompany them to the classes until fifth grade. The program has served 3,972 students since its founding, according to its coordinators.

The free classes are family-oriented and emphasize mathematics through projects like designing bridges and programming computers, breaking down systematic barriers such as limited exposure, financial constraints and underrepresentation in advanced classes.

While a 2021 Pew Research study reported “dramatic” growth in the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates from colleges and universities since 2010, Black and Hispanic adults are still underrepresented among STEM college graduates compared with their share in the population. The study said Black workers make up 11% of all employed adults, compared with 9% of those in STEM occupations. Hispanic workers make up 17% of total employment across all occupations but just 8% of all STEM workers.

The blueprint for ChiS&E is modeled after a Detroit-based program that began in a basement at the University of Michigan in the ’70s, said Kenneth Hill, ChiS&E’s president and CEO. That Detroit program has worked with tens of thousands of students.

Hill has an extensive and wide-ranging background as a teacher, having worked in the Detroit public school system before moving to the Republic of Zambia in Africa, where he taught calculus and physics to high school students.

“This is a smaller program, but we’re going to get there,” Hill said, looking around a room of students gathered at Kenwood Academy High School last Saturday morning. “It’s high-quality.”

ChiS&E’s classes go beyond standard curricula, said Iyabo Pommells, 41, a former math and physics teacher who leads the Saturday physics class at Kenwood. It’s different from the usual introduction to STEM, Pommells said.

“There’s more time. There’s a lot of space to ask questions and interact with others,” said Pommells, whose full-time job is with the city of Chicago.

Walton, who calls Pommells her “protégé,” watched her draw a table on the board at the front of the classroom to chart the densities of different materials and whether they would float or sink if placed in water.

“Anything else you notice? What about what we wonder?” she asked the class of middle-school students.

Pommells said she discovered her love of math and science in high school and was inspired by Walton, a family friend. Pommells holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and a mathematics degree from Spelman College in Atlanta.

“Seeing another Black woman doing that, it showed me that it was possible and that I could do it, too,” she said. “There are many times, especially when I was (in college), where I was one of the few women or Black people in the class.”

But because she’d had confidence in her abilities since she was young, she said she knew she “could do anything in any room that (she) entered.”

Gema Ramos, who attends Eli Whitney Elementary in Little Village, said she and her parents have been coming to the program since she was in kindergarten. Ramos, 13, wants to be a doctor.

“I like how we learn things that we wouldn’t in school,” Ramos said of ChiS&E.

Parents learn from going to class, too, said Tori Williams, 49. She attended the program with her 13-year-old son, Drelyn.

“Those classes helped me understand how important (science) is to just having a concrete understanding of the way the world works,” she said.

Drelyn was able to enroll at a gifted school in Chatham and is now a grade ahead in math. He just decided he wants to be a computer engineer, his mom said.

The ChiS&E curriculum inspired Williams, who is also the principal of Parkside Community Academy in South Shore, to apply for an unrelated $700,000 grant from Chicago Public Schools to focus on STEM. The money from the grant was used to build creative spaces and science labs, Williams said.

ChiS&E alumni have gone on to careers in nuclear engineering or psychology at schools like Yale University, Purdue University, Howard University and Spelman, said Jeffrey Johnson, the program’s summer program coordinator.

“A strong foundation in mathematics builds confidence in young people,” Johnson said. “This sets up young people to be competitive, to get into the top colleges and universities, and in the top fields.”

The nonprofit relies on philanthropic support and has financial and programmatic partnerships with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Argonne National Laboratory.

Saturday morning, Walton smiled at the students as they explained the findings of their experiments to Pommells, who she watched grow into an engineer.

Walton expressed some concern about the program’s mission in the face of President Donald Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Even though we have been getting funding from foundations, everybody is being affected by the changes,” she said.

She was a mechanical engineer for the city under former mayor Harold Washington before starting her own engineering company.

But she said she had to climb to be where she is now.

“Growing up, if I had had a program like ChiS&E … I would have been on my way a lot sooner,” she said. “Right now, (the program is) little known. We hope more people find out about it.”

The United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket carried up 27 of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites, named after the frigid fringes of our solar system beyond Neptune. Once released in orbit, the satellites will eventually reach an altitude of nearly 400 miles (630 kilometers).

Two test satellites were launched in 2023, also by an Atlas V. Project officials said major upgrades were made to the newest version. The latest satellites also are coated with a mirror film designed to scatter reflected sunlight in an attempt to accommodate astronomers.

Stargazers oppose the fast-growing constellations of low-orbiting satellites, arguing they spoil observations. Others fear more satellite collisions.

Founded by Jeff Bezos, who now runs his own rocket company, Blue Origin, Amazon aims to put more than 3,200 of these satellites into orbit to provide fast, affordable broadband service around the globe.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX already has launched more than 8,000 Starlinks since 2019. The company marked its 250th Starlink launch Sunday night. More than 7,000 Starlinks are still in orbit some 300-plus miles (550 kilometers) above Earth.

The European-based OneWeb satellite constellation numbers in the hundreds in an even higher orbit.

Amazon already has purchased dozens of rocket launches from United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin for Project Kuiper, as well as others.

“There are some things you can only learn in flight” despite extensive testing on the ground, said Rajeev Badyal, the project’s vice president.

“No matter how the mission unfolds, this is just the start of our journey,” he said in a statement ahead of the evening liftoff.

The first liftoff attempt earlier this month was nixed by bad weather. It took until now to secure another spot in the launch lineup at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The temporary lifeline for the Soybean Innovation Lab at the university’s flagship Urbana-Champaign campus came just as the center, which works to establish soybean markets in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions, was scheduled to close in mid-April, triggering layoffs for its 30-person staff.

The “very generous” donation, which came from a private enterprise in Europe that had seen coverage of the lab’s predicament, will allow the lab to retain about eight employees to continue its work helping the nascent soybean industry in the Lower Shire Valley region in southern Malawi, said Peter Goldsmith, the lab’s director.

That work was supposed to be funded by the federal government through a $1.4 million contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development. But the plug was pulled on that and the rest of the lab’s USAID funding when the Trump administration and adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency moved to shut down the aid agency and terminate most of its contracts.

The new funding will allow the soybean lab to finish its current project in southern Malawi, culminating in an industry tour for investors, importers, exporters and others in late August, Goldsmith said. The money also will be used to demonstrate the impact of the lab’s efforts and will buy Goldsmith time to continue his search for additional funding to keep the lab going beyond the next year.

“We’ve got some ideas, and other people have reached out as well, not just this donor, so that allows us to explore those options,” Goldsmith said Monday. But “it’s still … bleak.”

When it comes to the kind of high-risk, low-return research conducted by land-grant universities like U. of I., “the public sector is critical,” Goldsmith said. “The federal government is critical for putting the U.S. in a technological leadership position, and removing that is a big loss, and filling that in may not happen.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week unveiled the Trump administration’s plan to “make the State Department Great Again” — a riff on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — which includes a diminished role for foreign assistance programs.

Goldsmith said he has not received any indication from the State Department that it is considering renewed funding for his lab and more than a dozen others at land-grant universities across the country.

While a federal court in Washington, D.C., has ruled that the moves to shut down USAID likely violated the Constitution, an appeals court allowed the dismantling to continue.

Just three years ago, the soybean lab was awarded a $30 million grant from USAID to continue its work in sub-Saharan Africa.

The lab has worked in more than 30 African countries, helping spread expertise and technology to continue growing the industry, from the plants in the ground to the manufacturing processes needed to unlock the soybean’s versatile protein and oil.

In Malawi, for example, the lab’s experts “essentially worked ourselves out of a job” in the northern part of the country by successfully spurring soybean production, Goldsmith, who’s led the lab for more than a decade, told the Tribune earlier this year. The focus shifted two years ago to the Lower Shire Valley, the country’s hotter, drier southern region, where the agriculture sector is looking to diversify from crops like sugarcane and tropical fruits.

By shutting down the lab, the federal government is doing away with an effective tool for fighting poverty and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa and hampering the growth of a potential export market for soybeans grown in Illinois and across the U.S., Goldsmith said.

That lost opportunity in Africa may not be apparent to farmers yet because “it’s still young; it’s still a new market; it’s still abstract,” Goldsmith said.

“It’s understandable that the (U.S.) growers would not be aggravated at the loss of the African opportunity because they don’t really see it yet,” he said. “That’s our job is to help them see it. But that’s still — it takes time.”

The rabbit infected with tularemia was found in Tuscola, a small community south of Champaign, following weeks of reports of ill and dead squirrels in nearby Urbana. One of the rodents had also tested positive for the disease, which is rare but serious and can affect animals and humans.

“The presence of infected wildlife may indicate an increased risk of exposure in the area,” the Douglas County Health Department said in a Thursday statement, echoing an announcement made by the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District three days earlier about local squirrel deaths.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, tularemia is caused by Francisella tularensis, bacteria that are mostly found in rodents, rabbits and hares. About 100 to 200 cases are reported every year in the country, and it naturally occurs in all states except Hawaii. Illinois reported nine cases in 2023, behind seven other states: Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas, Colorado and Kentucky.

Pets can become infected if they come into contact with or eat an infected animal, or breathe in or ingest contaminated food or water. They can also be exposed to the disease through tick and flea bites. Pet owners should watch for signs of illness and consult a veterinarian with concerns, according to Douglas County health officials. The department also urges that cats and dogs not be allowed to roam outdoors unsupervised and be protected from tick bites.

While tularemia has not been found to spread between people, humans can catch it by being bitten by an infected tick, deerfly or other insect; skin contact with infected animals; eating or drinking contaminated food or water; or breathing in the bacteria during farming or landscaping activities if a tractor or mower runs over an infected animal’s carcass.

Health officials recommend wearing EPA-registered insect repellent and long clothing outdoors, not drinking untreated surface water, and not handling sick or dead wild animals unless wearing gloves.

Symptoms in humans include fever, chills, muscle pain or tenderness, and lack of energy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tularemia manifests in six main types with different signs and symptoms depending on how the bacteria enter the body — through the skin, eyes, mouth or lungs.

Up to 80% of cases lead to skin ulcers and swollen, tender glands. Effects from the other types include painful, red eyes with yellow discharge, a sore throat, stomach pain, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, a dry cough, difficulty breathing, sharp chest pain and weight loss.

Because it is rare and its symptoms can be mistaken for other common illnesses, tularemia can be difficult to diagnose. The CDC recommends sharing any likely exposures with health-care providers to help with the diagnosis.

If untreated, tularemia has a human mortality rate of 5% to 15%, which can be lowered to about 1% by antibiotic treatment, according to state health officials.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

Today in history:

On April 25, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in orbit from the space shuttle Discovery. (It was later discovered that the telescope’s primary mirror was flawed, requiring the installation of corrective components to achieve optimal focus.)

Also on this date:

In 1507, a world map produced by German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller contained the first recorded use of the term “America,” in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.

In 1859, ground was broken in Egypt for construction of the Suez Canal.

In 1898, the United States Congress declared war against Spain. The 16-week Spanish-American War resulted in an American victory, after which the United States took possession of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam.

In 1915, during World War I, Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Empire out of the war.

In 1945, during World War II, delegates from 50 countries opened a conference in San Francisco to create the Charter of the United Nations.

In 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway opened to commercial traffic, connecting all five Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.

In 2014, city officials in Flint, Michigan, changed the source of its water supply to the Flint River in a cost-cutting move. The river water exposed Flint residents to dangerous levels of lead and bacteria, leading to a public health crisis that took five years to resolve.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Al Pacino is 85. Musician-producer Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA) is 80. Actor Talia Shire is 79. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is 63. Actor Hank Azaria is 61. Sportscaster Joe Buck is 56. Actor Gina Torres is 56. Actor Renée Zellweger is 56. Actor Jason Lee is 55. Basketball Hall of Famer Tim Duncan is 49.

It’s the fourth global bleaching event since 1998, and has now surpassed bleaching from 2014-17 that hit some two-thirds of reefs, said the ICRI, a mix of more than 100 governments, non-governmental organizations and others. And it’s not clear when the current crisis, which began in 2023 and is blamed on warming oceans, will end.

“We may never see the heat stress that causes bleaching dropping below the threshold that triggers a global event,” said Mark Eakin, executive secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired coral monitoring chief for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“We’re looking at something that’s completely changing the face of our planet and the ability of our oceans to sustain lives and livelihoods,” Eakin said.

Last year was Earth’s hottest year on record, and much of that is going into oceans. The average annual sea surface temperature of oceans away from the poles was a record 20.87 degrees Celsius (69.57 degrees Fahrenheit).

That’s deadly to corals, which are key to seafood production, tourism and protecting coastlines from erosion and storms. Coral reefs are sometimes dubbed “rainforests of the sea” because they support high levels of biodiversity — approximately 25% of all marine species can be found in, on and around coral reefs.

Coral get their bright colors from the colorful algae that live inside them and are a food source for the corals. Prolonged warmth causes the algae to release toxic compounds, and the coral eject them. A stark white skeleton is left behind, and the weakened coral is at heightened risk of dying.

The bleaching event has been so severe that NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program has had to add levels to its bleaching alert scale to account for the growing risk of coral death.

Efforts are underway to conserve and restore coral. One Dutch lab has worked with coral fragments, including some taken from off the coast of the Seychelles, to propagate them in a zoo so that they might be used someday to repopulate wild coral reefs if needed. Other projects, including one off Florida, have worked to rescue corals endangered by high heat and nurse them back to health before returning them to the ocean.

But scientists say it’s essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet, such as carbon dioxide and methane.

“The best way to protect coral reefs is to address the root cause of climate change. And that means reducing the human emissions that are mostly from burning of fossil fuels … everything else is looking more like a Band-Aid rather than a solution,” Eakin said.

“I think people really need to recognize what they’re doing … inaction is the kiss of death for coral reefs,” said Melanie McField, co-chair of the Caribbean Steering Committee for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a network of scientists that monitors reefs throughout the world.

The group’s update comes as President Donald Trump has moved aggressively in his second term to boost fossil fuels and roll back clean energy programs, which he says is necessary for economic growth.

“We’ve got a government right now that is working very hard to destroy all of these ecosystems … removing these protections is going to have devastating consequences,” Eakin said.

Earlier this month, a biotechnology company announced it had genetically engineered three gray wolf pups to have white hair, more muscular jaws and a larger build — characteristics of the dire wolf, a species that hasn’t roamed the Earth for several millennia.

Now, the Trump administration is citing the case of the dire wolf as it moves to reduce federal protections under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. On Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a proposed rule to rescind the definition of “harm” under the act — which for decades has included actions like harassing, pursuing, hunting or killing endangered wildlife and plants, as well as habitat destruction.

“The status quo is focused on regulation more than innovation. It’s time to fundamentally change how we think about species conservation,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in an April 7 post on X, formerly Twitter. “The revival of the Dire Wolf heralds the advent of a thrilling new era of scientific wonder, showcasing how the concept of ‘de-extinction’ can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.”

But bioethicists and conservationists are expressing unease with the kind of scientific research being pioneered by Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based company on a mission to bring back extinct animals.

“Unfortunately, as clever as this science is … it’s can-do science and not should-do science,” said Lindsay Marshall, director of science in animal research at Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the U.S.

The dire wolf also came up at an April 9 meeting of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources that considered amendments to a proposed law that would strip federal protections from western Great Lakes gray wolves — the latest in a decadeslong back-and-forth between conservationists, hunters and politicians that has shifted the species on and off the endangered list since its inclusion 50 years ago.

At the congressional meeting, Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California suggested an amendment to allow a federal judge to reconsider the removal of federal protections if population numbers begin to decline significantly again.

“Well, didn’t we just bring a wolf back that was here 10,000 years ago? I mean, if it really gets that bad, we can just bring woolly mammoths back,” responded Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a Republican and the bill’s sponsor.

“That’s a deeply unserious response to what should be a very serious issue,” Huffman replied.

Gray wolves that live in the Great Lakes and West Coast regions are one of 1,662 species currently protected under the Endangered Species Act. Hunting and trapping almost drove them to extinction in the lower 48 states by the mid-20th century.

Naomi Louchouarn, program director of wildlife partnerships at Humane World for Animals and an expert on human-wildlife coexistence, had a gut reaction to the dire wolf news: “This is going to be a problem for gray wolves,” she recalls thinking. “It almost immediately undermined our ability to protect species.”

In a Wednesday statement to the Tribune, Colossal’s chief science officer, Beth Shapiro, said the company sees de-extinction as “one of many tools” that can speed up the battle against biodiversity loss, which humans are “not close to winning.”

“We don’t see this as an ‘either/or’ question, but rather as a ‘both and,'” she said. “We as a global community need to continue to invest in traditional approaches to conservation and habitat preservation, as well as in the protection of living endangered species.”

Advancements in genetic technologies could revolutionize wildlife conservation, said J. Elizabeth Peace, senior public affairs specialist with the Interior Department, in a statement Wednesday.

“By preserving genetic materials today, we equip future generations with the tools necessary to restore and maintain biodiversity,” the statement said. “This approach aligns with our commitment to stewarding natural resources responsibly, ensuring that our actions today support a sustainable and thriving ecosystem for the future.”

However, critics say de-extinction sends a misleading message and is, overall, a flawed approach to conservation.

“It’s important to realize that they did not bring the dire wolf back from extinction,” said Craig Klugman, a bioethicist and professor of health sciences at DePaul University. “What they did was genetically tweak a gray wolf … so you have a gray wolf that has some characteristics of a dire wolf.”

“It’s like one, but it isn’t one,” he added.

Shapiro said Colossal is working toward functional de-extinction.

“The goal of de-extinction has never been to create perfect genetic copies of an extinct species,” she said, “but instead to bring back key traits that fill an ecological niche that is vacant because of extinction.”

An inefficient science?

As the executive branch targets federal agencies through mass firings, funding cuts and regulatory rollbacks in the name of efficiency, those skeptical of de-extinction argue that it’s an inefficient science.

“It requires a lot of embryos that fail, a lot of pregnancies that don’t take, to get one creature,” Klugman said.

Those few dozen embryos were implanted in the wombs of two female domestic hound mixes, one embryo taking hold in each. A similar procedure was repeated a few months later with another surrogate who gave birth to a third puppy.

“This type of pioneering genetic research often requires multiple attempts to achieve success,” Shapiro said, “and the knowledge gained from both successes and failures contributes to future improvements in efficiency.”

Colossal announced in early March — around the same time Burgum met with company leaders to discuss their role in conservation efforts — that they had genetically edited 38 mice to have hair like the woolly mammoth, a significant step toward engineering Asian elephants with traits similar to those of the extinct species.

To get to those few dozen mice, however, scientists produced 385 embryos, of which 291 were implanted in 16 surrogate females.

“It’s mice. People don’t really care about mice — but we care about mice. We care what’s happening to them,” said Marshall, of Humane World.

Colossal’s facilities are certified by the American Humane Society and registered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to Shapiro. She said the company’s research is overseen by a committee of scientists and nonscientists that is required by federal regulations. The committee reviews and evaluates the company’s research protocols and ensures the ethical use of animals.

Skeptics also argue that animals manipulated to mimic extinct ones likely have no future in the wild.

“They have to be taught how to live and hunt and take care of themselves,” Klugman said. “How do they know how to survive? How can they thrive?”

Leaders at Colossal have acknowledged this reality.

According to an Associated Press report, Matt James, Colossal’s chief animal care expert, said that despite the resemblance, “what they will probably never learn is the finishing move of how to kill a giant elk or a big deer,” because they won’t have opportunities to watch and learn from wild dire wolf parents

Shapiro said the pups won’t be released into the wild, where they would have to compete with gray wolves. Instead, they will live in an “expansive ecological preserve” — the company has said it’s a 2,000-acre site in an undisclosed location — where their health and needs will be continually evaluated under managed care.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a wild wolf pack’s territory can be as large as 32,000 acres, extending up to 640,000 acres where prey is scarce. They can travel as far as 30 miles a day to hunt.

“If you think about (it), those pups aren’t going to live much of a life trapped in an area that’s a tiny percentage of what they should have,” Marshall said. “They’re not a self-sustaining population. They have nowhere to live. … We don’t know if those animals are going to suffer as they get older.”

Ed Heist, a professor at Southern Illinois University and a conservation geneticist,  said the news bothered him.

“This is not conservation, but people conflate it,” he said. “The point is entertainment.”

Nichole Keway Biber feels similarly unsettled. She is a tribal citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa and leads the wolf and wildlife preservation team at the Anishinaabek Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party. She said it demonstrates that the natural world, to humans, is for consumption or entertainment — and that it ignores the inherent worth of voiceless animals beyond any commercial or amusement benefit they can provide.

“That has a danger,” she said, “of setting a pattern of behavior: to be dismissive of the vulnerable, or take advantage of the vulnerable or be abusive toward the vulnerable.”

Inability to coexist

Louchouarn, the Humane World program director, has dedicated her studies and research to the relationship between humans and animals, specifically carnivores like gray wolves.

“The reason our current endangered species are becoming extinct is because we don’t know how to coexist with them,” she said. “And this doesn’t solve that problem at all.”

Humans can treat the symptoms of wildlife conflict with “big, flashy silver bullets” and “in this case, advanced, inefficient science,” she said, but the real solution is behavioral change.

“Assuming that we could actually bring back a full population of animals,” Louchouarn said, “which is so difficult and so crazy — that’s a big if — I don’t understand the point of trying to bring back a woolly mammoth when we already can’t coexist with elephants.”

In the United States, political discussions surrounding gray wolf conservation have been based on different interpretations of whether their populations have recovered enough to be sustainable without protections.

“But we define what well is, not the wolves,” Louchouarn said. “The ecosystem can carry a lot more wolves than that. We just refuse to live with them.”

Recent winter estimates count more than 750 wild gray wolves in Michigan, almost 3,000 in Minnesota and just over 1,000 in Wisconsin. Some of those wolves may occasionally travel to Illinois, where they were common until they were wiped out after the arrival of European settlers.

The bill in the U.S. House aimed at removing protections from the species is called the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, and its supporters and sponsors argue it will allow ranchers and communities to manage conflict with wolves as they fear for the safety of their domesticated animals.

In Wisconsin, wolf attacks on livestock have increased over the last three years, resulting in animal deaths or injuries: from 49 confirmed or probable cases in 2022 to 69 in 2023 and up to 85 in 2024. While wolf attacks on dogs in residential areas are rare, they have also increased in recent years, according to state reports.

Conservation biologists who oppose hunting worry it will only exacerbate this type of conflict. When a wolf is killed, it can disrupt pack dynamics, which can in turn lead to lone wolves preying on livestock or pets outdoors — smaller and easier to kill than larger prey such as bison, elk, moose and deer.

For other people, coexistence is a way of life. Biber said the Anishinaabe, the Indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes region, live by the principle of dabasendiziwin, or humility in regard to other living organisms.

“It’s not self-denigration, but a realistic awareness of our dependence (on) the elements,” she said, “but also plants and animals, and us. And all the other orders of being can exist apart from us. They’re OK. They were here long before. We’re the newcomers.”

Anishinaabe people, like the Ojibwe and the Odawa, believe in a parallel history with the gray wolf or Ma’iingan, that their fates are intrinsically connected.

“What happens to one, will happen to the other,” Biber said.

A question of stewardship

Species don’t exist in a vacuum, Heist often reminds his students at SIU. “They are parts of their communities.”

So when a species ceases to exist, it loses its place in the ecosystem. It’s a void left to be filled by others over hundreds, thousands of years.

Klugman wonders whether resurrecting animals unprepared for the modern world — “which we clearly have not done yet” — would even be fair to them. “Is that us being good stewards of this planet?”

During a livestreamed town hall with Interior Department employees on April 9, Burgum said: “If we’re going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back. Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal. And instead of raising money to get animals on the endangered species (list), let’s figure out a way to get them off.”

Ken Angielczyk, curator of mammal fossils at the Field Museum who researches extinct species that lived 200 to 300 million years ago, said it’s a misguided approach.

“If that’s the basis … for changing regulations related to the endangered species list, that is very, very premature,” he said. “Because we can’t resurrect things.”

Biber said humans should be focused on preventing further loss. “It’s a lot better use of effort, time, resources, mind power.”

“If the purpose is to restore the damage to the shared ecosystem, we have that opportunity right now,” she said. “And that’s the necessity immediately.”

Angielczyk, who studies mammals that survived the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history, said fossil records after such events show it takes a long time for real ecosystem recovery to occur: 1 to 10 million years — way longer than the human species has existed.

“So, changes that we can cause today quite easily, in some cases, have very, very long-term implications,” he said. “Just another reason why conservation efforts really are important and something that we should be concerned about and actively involved in.”

It’s also crucial to preserve the ability of species to adapt to changing conditions, Heist said, which requires large populations and genetic diversity.

Red wolves represent one such opportunity. The species — once common in most of the eastern and southern United States — still exists, but is critically endangered partly because in the wild, the wolves often mate with coyotes and produce hybrid offspring. That has led to low genetic diversity and weak evolutionary fitness. Just under 20 red wolves exist in their wild, native habitats today.

Alongside the dire wolf news, Colossal announced it cloned four of these hybrids and removed most of the coyote DNA along the way. They say it’s the first step to restoring genetic diversity in the captive breeding populations of red wolves, 241 of which live in 45 facilities across the country.

Some conservationists feel more hopeful about this endeavor, though they still express reservations.

“There is a benefit to trying to bring back some of the genes that would diversify … red wolves, that would enhance their ability to survive,” Louchouarn said. “But will that fix red wolf extinction, at the rate that they’re going extinct? No, because the reason it’s happening is they’re being poached at extreme rates.”

Heist said it might not be practical to spend so much money trying to create genetically diverse red wolves to significantly restore their populations.

Bioethicists and conservationists argue that, at its core, the issue is whether humans can put aside self-interest to invest in the well-being of other creatures.

“This whole idea that extinction is reversible is so dangerous,” Marshall said, “because then it stops us caring.”

adperez@chicagotribune.com

Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, not in our solar system but on a massive planet, known as K2-18b, that orbits a star 120 light-years from Earth. A repeated analysis of the exoplanet’s atmosphere suggests an abundance of a molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae.

“It is in no one’s interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life,” Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and an author of the new study, said at a news conference Tuesday. Still, he said, the best explanation for his group’s observations is that K2-18b is covered with a warm ocean, brimming with life.

“This is a revolutionary moment,” Madhusudhan said. “It’s the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet.”

The study was published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal. Other researchers called it an exciting, thought-provoking first step to making sense of what’s on K2-18b. But they were reluctant to draw grand conclusions.

“It’s not nothing,” said Stephen Schmidt, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s a hint. But we cannot conclude it’s habitable yet.”

If there is extraterrestrial life on K2-18b, or anywhere else, its discovery will arrive at a frustratingly slow pace. “Unless we see E.T. waving at us, it’s not going to be a smoking gun,” said Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

Canadian astronomers discovered K2-18b in 2017, while looking through ground-based telescopes in Chile. It was a type of planet commonly found outside our solar system, but one without any analog near Earth that scientists could study closely for clues.

These planets, known as sub-Neptunes, are much bigger than the rocky planets in our inner solar system, but smaller than Neptune and other gas-dominated planets of the outer solar system.

In 2021, Madhusudhan and his colleagues proposed that sub-Neptunes were covered with warm oceans of water and wrapped in atmospheres containing hydrogen, methane and other carbon compounds. To describe these strange planets, they coined a new term, “Hycean,” from a combination of the words “hydrogen” and “ocean.”

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in December 2021 allowed astronomers a closer look at sub-Neptunes and other distant planets.

As an exoplanet passes in front of its host star, its atmosphere, if it has one, is illuminated. Its gases change the color of the starlight that reaches the Webb telescope. By analyzing these changing wavelengths, scientists can infer the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

While inspecting K2-18b, Madhusudhan and his colleagues discovered it had many of the molecules they had predicted a Hycean planet would possess. In 2023, they reported they had also detected faint hints of another molecule, and one of huge potential importance: dimethyl sulfide, which is made of sulfur, carbon and hydrogen.

On Earth, the only known source of dimethyl sulfide is life. In the ocean, for instance, certain forms of algae produce the compound, which wafts into the air and adds to the sea’s distinctive odor. Long before the Webb telescope was launched, astrobiologists had wondered whether dimethyl sulfide might serve as a sign of life on other planets.

Last year, Madhusudhan and his colleagues got a second chance to look for dimethyl sulfide. As K2-18b orbited in front of its star, they used a different instrument on the Webb telescope to analyze the starlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere. This time they saw an even stronger signal of dimethyl sulfide, along with a similar molecule called dimethyl disulfide.

“It is a shock to the system,” Madhusudhan said. “We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal.”

No matter how the scientists revisited their readings, the signal stayed strong. They concluded that K2-18b may in fact harbor a tremendous supply of dimethyl sulfide in its atmosphere, thousands of times higher than the level found on Earth. This would suggest that its Hycean seas are brimming with life.

Other researchers emphasized that much research remained to be done. One question yet to be resolved is whether K2-18b is in fact a habitable, Hycean world as Madhusudhan’s team claims.

In a paper posted online Sunday, Glein and his colleagues argued that K2-18b could instead be a massive hunk of rock with a magma ocean and a thick, scorching hydrogen atmosphere — hardly conducive to life as we know it.

Scientists will also need to run laboratory experiments to make sense of the new study — to re-create the possible conditions on sub-Neptunes, for instance, to see whether dimethyl sulfide behaves there as it does on Earth.

“It’s important to remember that we’re just starting to understand the nature of these exotic worlds,” said Matthew Nixon, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the new study.

Researchers want to wait to see what the Webb telescope finds as it continues to examine K2-18b; provocative early findings sometimes fade in the light of additional data. NASA has been designing and building more powerful space telescopes that will look specifically for signs of habitability on planets orbiting other stars, including K2-18b. Even if it takes years to decipher what’s happening on K2-18b, it could be worth it, scientists said.

“I’m not screaming, ‘aliens!’” said Nikole Lewis, an exoplanetary scientist at Cornell University. “But I always reserve my right to scream ‘aliens!’”

Joshua Krissansen-Totton, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington, said he worried that American astrobiologists may not be able to follow up on the latest results on K2-b18b.

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to cut NASA’s science budget in half, eliminating future space telescope and other astrobiology projects. If that happens, Krissansen-Totton said, “the search for life elsewhere would basically stop.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.