National Geographic - July 2022

‘Listen, Mountain!’ You explain the acts as you person” to effectively enslave Native people,
perform them.” and then the state and federal governments
sponsored what amounted to death squads.
Spirit people are creatures with supernatural Thousands of Indigenous men, women, and
aspects, which include anything from mountains children were murdered. Bounties were offered:
to people. “Humans are the worst of the spirit 50 cents for a scalp, five dollars for a head.
people because we have the shortest memory,”
Hillman said. The prayer is “to remind people The federal government turned much of
of their obligations to the other spirit people.” the Klamath Basin into national forest. And the
California-Oregon Power Company (Copco) built
“Prayers are teaching devices,” Tripp said. “It’s four enormous hydroelectric dams on the river.
a codification of our management processes— All of them blocked salmon.
what we’ve learned from surviving in this place
for a long, long time. The prayer says, ‘This is Worse, they helped spread disease. As riv-
what we’re doing with the fire, this is what hap- ers flow into reservoirs, the water slows down,
pens in the water.’ ” warms up, and deposits sediment. Slow, warm,
silty waters are ideal habitat for the tiny aquatic
Both men were born and raised around the worm that hosts Ceratonova shasta, a parasite
Klamath River, which begins in south-central that kills salmon. In May 2021 a Yurok monitor-
Oregon, cuts through the Cascade Mountains, ing team found 97 percent of the juvenile salmon
and empties into the Pacific Ocean in far north-
ern California. The river zigzags through forest
scenery of the spectacular rugged variety. Like
the Egyptians with the Nile, the river tribes are
shaped by the Klamath—indeed, the Karuk have
come to be known by their word for “upriver.”
Downstream are the Yurok, whose name derives
from the Karuk word for “downriver.”

The names are more than geographic markers.
They position the societies with respect to their
greatest resource: the enormous salmon runs that
flow up the Klamath to spawn. Or rather, flowed
up. The river used to be home to the third larg-
est salmon migrations in the continental U.S.,
celebrated for its Chinook salmon. Now their
numbers have been reduced by 90 percent.

The annual movements of the fish were a
demonstration of the order and benevolence
of the world. The Karuk, Yurok, Hupa (who live
on a big Klamath tributary), and the Klamath
Tribes (who live at the headwaters) kept that
order by managing their landscape, regularly
subjecting their terrain to low-level burns that
prevent severe fires and maintain uncluttered
areas, promoting game and useful plant species.

This arrangement abruptly changed in 1848,
when the United States won California in the
Mexican-American War and the gold rush began.
California had several hundred Indigenous
groups and a scattering of colonists. Within
four years the U.S. had signed 18 treaties with
134 Native communities, including the Karuk,
Yurok, and Hupa. But Congress refused even to
consider them, and the government simply took
most of their land.

California passed a law allowing “any white

60 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

With a dip net,
Karuk fisherman Ryan
Reed searches for
Chinook salmon under
the watchful eye
of his father, Ron, on
California’s Klamath
River at Ishi Pishi Falls.
The Reeds caught no
fish—in stark contrast
to earlier times. Before
California became
a state, the river saw
about 500,000 salmon
each fall, but last
year just 53,954 mature
Chinook swam up,
a 90 percent decline.
The nation now restricts
salmon fishing to Ishi
Pishi Falls, but with the
slated removal of four
dams, the Karuk hope
the salmon will return.

swimming downstream were infected with nearly 30,000 delirious fans, Buffett holds court.
C. shasta. Most of them would die within days. “It is his favorite day,” Hillman said. “They just
love him. Well, we decided to ruin it.”
Reservoirs are also perfect habitat for a species
of cyanobacteria called Microcystis aeruginosa. In 2008 Karuk, Yurok, and Hupa activists,
Not only does M. aeruginosa turn the water many dressed in traditional clothes, waited
bright green and make it smell like rotting outside all night to be first in each of seven lines
seaweed, it also releases a toxin linked to liver set up for people to ask questions. When Buffett
disease in salmon and people. In the world- brushed off the first question about the dams,
renewal ceremonies, officiants had stood in the the person in the next line also asked him about
water. Now doing that would risk their health. them, and the next, and the next. Flustered, Buf-
fett cut short the Q and A, and security officers
With fire suppression and dams transforming removed Hillman and some of the other activists.
their homeland into something unrecognizable,
the Klamath societies began to fight back. “He just hated it!” Hillman said. “They had to
drag us out yelling from their party.” Eventually
The dams ended up being owned by Berkshire a deal was negotiated with PacifiCorp, the sub-
Hathaway, the giant holding firm controlled by sidiary that owns the dams. “They said they’d
Buffett, the Omaha, Nebraska, billionaire. Every take down the dams if we promised never to go to
year Berkshire Hathaway hosts a shareholders Omaha again. I said, ‘I never wanted to go there in
meeting in an Omaha stadium. Surrounded by

W E A R E H E R E 61

Upstream battle Cascade RangeUpper
EKlamath
Dams along the Klamath River— S
sacred to the Karuk, Yurok, Hupa, and Lake
Klamath Tribes—have blocked salmon
from reaching spawning grounds and Klamath Falls
harmed the water quality. The nations
have fought industry and government John C. Boyle
to remove four dams, which would
help restore the river’s flow and OREGON
revive its diminished salmon runs.
CALIFORNIA Iron Gate Copco 1 I B
Crescent City Copco 2
Klamath
KLAMATH TR

Yreka

Yurok UK CANADA
R
PA C I F I C K A
OCEAN K
Klamath
Trinidad lamath River Basin
R O K Ishi Pishi Falls UNITED
Salmon STATES
U Orleans
Y

TrinityHoopa 10 mi KARUK Historic homeland
Valley 10 km Karuk-owned or trust land
Federal Indian reservation
HUPA National forest
Dam to be demolished

the first place!’ ” Buffett had agreed to what might and so on—continue to make headlines.
be the biggest dam-removal project in history. In Washington State a group of 14 nations bat-

It didn’t happen right away. No clear legal tled local, state, and federal officials for decades
process for taking down giant dams existed. over their rights to fish and manage salmon, a
Congress let legislation lapse, leaving Califor- billion-dollar industry in the state. Treaties
nia, Oregon, PacifiCorp, and the tribes to find signed in the 1850s had guaranteed the region’s
the $450 million needed to take down the dams. first peoples the rights to fish and hunt “at all
Afraid of creating a precedent, politicians, dam usual and accustomed grounds.” Today, after
operators, and risk-averse bureaucracies put up multiple Supreme Court rulings, Indigenous and
obstacles at every step. But after more than a state governments co-manage coastal waters for
decade of legal strife, the dams are scheduled salmon and steelhead; four nations in Oregon
to come down next year—a major step toward co-manage fisheries on the Columbia River. In
re-creating the landscape of Hillman’s ancestors. 2018 the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court
decision ordering Washington State to spend
Similar struggles have been occurring all billions to fix or replace about a thousand
across Turtle Island. In 1984 the Tla-o-qui-aht salmon-blocking culverts—upholding that the
began blockading Meares Island, preventing right to fish was meaningless if a state destroyed
timber companies from clear-cutting ancient the fish.
cedars in a confrontation so furious it’s called
the War in the Woods. The Oceti Sakowin— The last time I saw Hillman, I told him I’d
the seven branches of the Lakota and Dakota—are visited one of the Klamath dams due to be
still in a standoff with the United States over the removed next year. I had walked around the
Black Hills, illegally seized in 1877. Cree, Métis, reservoir, which was thick with Microcystis aeru-
and Dene in Alberta have been fighting oil sands ginosa. The water stank and was intensely green.
development for two decades. And fights against
pipelines—the Dakota Access, the Keystone XL, “With any luck,” Hillman said, “you’ll be one
of the last people to see that.”

ROSEMARY WARDLEY AND MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF
SOURCES: YUROK TRIBE GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; KARUK TRIBE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES; ALEX GONYAW, THE KLAMATH TRIBES

Chapter Four It became ever
harder for
RESTORING THE CORN
Indigenous peoples
Haudenosaunee • New York to grow and eat
their own foods,
WHEN WE WALKED INTO the barn, Angela
Ferguson was sitting in a camp chair, glasses as central to their
propped on her head, ankle-deep in ears of identities as it is
dried corn. Around her the husking bee was in to other cultures
full swing: a dozen people in western New York, around the globe.
shucking and braiding, plastic crates beside
them full of husks and cobs. The cobs were local breeders adapted it, creating thousands
glossy and multicolored, a panoply of red and of types, from two-inch cobs with tiny, deep
yellow and cream and slate blue-gray. red kernels for popcorn to cobs almost two feet
long with thumbnail-size kernels that, Ferguson
Inside the barn were three main rooms. Like a said, “dance atop boiling soup.” This festival of
cheerful, exuberant general, Ferguson directed diversity is preserved in the Onondaga library.
operations in the middle room. Behind her and
the other huskers was a second room full of The U.S. takeover of Indigenous societies is
wheeled metal racks. Corn ears, braided together often described in terms of land. But it also was
by their dried husks, hung from the racks— an assault on culture: banning religions, sup-
several dozen varieties, none of them remotely pressing languages, even prohibiting games like
similar to supermarket corn. More braids, equally ishtaboli. A little-noticed aspect of the conquest
varied, dangled from the ceiling. All of this would was that it became ever harder for Indigenous
be ground into flour for traditional dishes or pre- peoples to grow and eat their own foods, as cen-
served as seed for Indigenous farmers. tral to their identities as it is to other cultures
around the globe.
The third room remains closed with an atten-
dant outside 24/7. Ferguson let us inside with a Ferguson told me she is “just a traditional corn
flourish. It’s a library. But instead of books, the grower” who always had a “little family garden.”
room is lined floor to ceiling with neatly labeled Twelve years ago she decided to work on a larger
glass jars. Inside each jar are corn kernels—more scale, growing corn for elders.
than 4,000 varieties altogether. “I cried when I
saw these for the first time,” she said. “It was “It was selfish,” she said, laughing. “I just gave
more than I could have imagined was possible.” them some corn, and they gave me so much
knowledge in return—recipes at first, and then
Ferguson is Onondaga. The Onondaga are the history of our people.” In 2015 she persuaded
one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee the Onondaga Nation to help her expand. She and
(Iroquois Confederacy), whose homelands are her collaborators staged community gatherings
in what is now upstate New York and southern with free food—traditional Haudenosaunee vari-
Ontario. In tales by early U.S. writers such as eties of corn, of course, but also beans, squashes,
James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving, fruits, vegetables, fish, and venison.
the Haudenosaunee are portrayed as fierce war-
riors. And it is indeed true that for three cen- “The food draws people together,” Ferguson
turies the six nations have furiously resisted
their colonizers. But that misses a much more
important part of their identity. The Haudeno-
saunee thought of themselves as highly skilled
farmers, people who transformed their northerly
landscape into an agricultural powerhouse. The
foundation of that powerhouse was … corn.

The world’s most important staple crop, corn
was developed almost 10,000 years ago in south-
ern Mexico. By about A.D. 1000, it had spread
throughout Turtle Island. Everywhere it went,

W E A R E H E R E 63

Standing in their field,
members of the Onkwe
community garden in
Akwesasne, New York,
display traditional vari-
eties of corn, squashes,
and beans they are
reviving. Onkwe is one
of about a hundred
such projects in Haude-
nosaunee territory.



SENECA
New York

WHAT DOES
SOVEREIGNTY
MEAN TO YOU?

‘It’s brought

me on a path
that’s leading me
towards being
grounded,
being more
connected

with the earth.’

ANGEL MAREA JIMERSON
production manager

CORN WAS A STAPLE of the
Haudenosaunee diet, and Jimerson
hopes the Iroquois White Corn
Project at the Ganondagan State
Historic Site in New York, where the
Seneca had a town in the 17th cen-
tury, will restore that role. Founded
in the 1990s, the project hand-raises
and hand-processes white corn. As
a young Native American, Jimerson
says they struggled in their early
years but found their purpose work-
ing with their cultural heritage,
learning patience, resourcefulness,
gratitude, and mindfulness.

ONONDAGA
New York

Angela Ferguson works
with Indigenous col-

leagues to bring back
varieties of corn nearly
lost to colonization and

industrialization. For
Native people wanting

to make a statement,
she says, “the biggest
protest you can make

is to put one of your
seeds in the ground.”

W E A R E H E R E 67

QUÉBEC

Rich roots O N TA R I O Kanesatake
Lands Montréal
Abundant corn crops were a Wahta Mohawk
source of sustenance as well as Ottawa Kahnawake no. 14
cultural and political stability Territory C A N A D A
for the six nations of the Haude- Akwesasne no. 15
nosaunee. Their Grand Council Tyendinaga
has governed for generations, Mohawk Akwesasne no. 59 CANADA
even as members of the nations Territory
wrence St. Regis U.S. Lake
Mohawk Champlain
St. La
MOHAWK V T.
S
are now dispersed between Toronto L a k e O n t a r i o ONEIDA A
ONONDAGA U
the United States and Canada. C AY U G AOnondaga N
EE
Tuscarora Nation ECA
N
E
S
MICHIGAN Six Nations Nation
no. 40 Tonawanda Ganondagan

Oneida no. 41 S.H.S. N OMohawk

Buffalo E Oneida Albany
Nation
Cattaraugus HAU D MASS.

Lake Erie Allegany Oil Springs NEW YORK
TUSCARORA

P E N N S Y LVA N I A Hudson CONN.

CANADA UNITED S TAT E S New York

MAP Haudenosaunee Cultural Region N.J.
AREA
UNITED CAYUGA Ancestral territory
STATES Canadian Indian reserve
U.S. federal Indian reservation
25 mi
25 km

said. “It’s medicine—‘medicine’ in our sense, the Sacred is working with more than a hundred
not the drugstore sense. I would get up from the farmers in a dozen or so nations.
table and feel the power of our community.”
The younger generation is the key, Fergu-
The next year Ferguson co-founded Braid- son and others told me. I’d just seen students
ing the Sacred, with the goal of bringing back at the Akwesasne Freedom School harvesting
Indigenous farms and foods across Turtle Island. in the fields. Founded in 1979, the Mohawk-
Braiding the Sacred is part of a movement called immersion school in northern New York is a
food sovereignty. From this perspective, food center of cultural resurgence—the Mohawk are
is a bond that unites people, health, and land. another of the Haudenosaunee’s six nations.
Taken to a Mohawk community farm on a cold
One of the organization’s first tasks was to October day, the teenagers had fanned out into
visit the home of Carl Barnes. Born in 1928 in the the field, snapping off ears from the plants.
Oklahoma Panhandle, Barnes was fascinated as Unlike today’s hybrid corn, traditional vari-
a child by the tales of his Cherokee grandfather. eties grow to different heights—the students
Like the Haudenosaunee, the Cherokee had a were harvesting Mohawk shortnose maize,
rich agricultural tradition—but one that had usually from three to five feet tall. Typical
faded. Barnes worked his family farm and used agricultural machinery can’t harvest it. The
his spare time to collect the seeds of ancient vari- kids, talking across the corn rows in English
eties from across North America. By the 1990s he and Mohawk, tossed the ears into a cart pulled
had thousands of types of corn, beans, squashes, by a trailer.
and other crops.
Watching them like a proud grandfather was
Barnes, who died in 2016, willed his collection Tom Kanatakeniate Cook, a Mohawk writer and
to friends, who contacted Braiding the Sacred. A longtime activist—he’d been one of the origi-
year later, the collection began arriving on Onon- nal stringers for Akwesasne News, the first pan-
daga land. Ferguson had the melancholy reali- Indigenous newspaper, in the 1960s. I asked him
zation that “some of these seeds no longer have if we were looking at a vision of the future. “I see
their people—the people who grew them were what you’re getting at,” he said. “But this isn’t the
wiped out or absorbed into other tribes. The seeds future—this is happening now.”
are here, but they’re like ghosts.” Now Braiding

ROSEMARY WARDLEY AND PATRICIA HEALY, NGM STAFF

68 SOURCES: NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA; U.S. CENSUS BUREAU; SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

Chapter Five ALASKA
(U.S.)
BRINGING BUFFALO BACK
CANADA
Siksikaitsitapi • Montana
ENLARGED
IT WAS WINTER CAMP in deep snow, and the BELOW
Siksikaitsitapi had no food. As the sun set, one
young wife went looking for firewood. In a copse SIKSIKAITSITAPI
by a river, she heard chirping from a tree. In a
fork in the tree was a stone. The stone gave her ancestral territory
songs. Teach your elders to sing these songs, it
said, and I will provide for all of you. UNITED STATES

That night the Siksikaitsitapi elders came to MEXICO
her tipi. Everyone was faint with hunger but still
sang the songs. A storm came up, burying the Historic range
tipis in snow. But when families dug themselves of American bison
out the next morning, they saw buffalo walking
through the camp. History and herds

I first heard the story of the buffalo stone on The culture of the Siksikaitsitapi (Black-
a bluff above Two Medicine River, in northwest foot) is intertwined with buffalo, a
Montana—a place where the Siksikaitsitapi keystone prairie species sacred to nations
have gathered for centuries. Imprinted in the of the northern plains. Millions of bison
soil were scores of rings formed by laying stones once roamed North America but were
on the edges of buffalo-hide tipis to hold their almost killed off by hunters in the late
edges down in the wind. I had been invited to a 19th century. Today many Native nations
tribal buffalo harvest—one of several held every have restoration programs that allow
year to teach Siksikaitsitapi children about the buffalo to roam free on their tribal lands.
animals’ role in their culture. In the cold, bright
March morning were elders offering prayers and Siksikaitsitapi Siksika no. 146
songs and the tale of the buffalo stone, sage and (Blackfoot)
tobacco smoldering in a little cast-iron pan, Cultural Region (Siksika)
wide-eyed kids in winter coats taking everything
in, three eagles wheeling above like a sign. Canadian Indian reserve

The Siksikaitsitapi are a confederacy of four U.S. federal Indian
nations, three in Canada—the Siksika (Blackfoot), reservation
the Kainai (Blood), and the Piikani (Peigan)—and
one in the United States, the Piikuni (Blackfeet). A L B E R TA
The Piikani and Piikuni are branches of the same Peigan Timber Limit B (Piikani)
culture, now split by the international border—
known to the Siksikaitsitapi as the Medicine Line, Piikani no. 147
a mocking reference to the supposed power of a
border they don’t accept. (Piikani)

Not far from the ceremony was part of the tribal Blood no. 148
buffalo herd, a few hundred animals lured by hay
scattered on the ground. I rode in a pickup toward B.C. Waterton (Kainai)
them with two of their caretakers: Chazz Racine, Lakes N.P.
leaning out of the passenger window with a gun,
and his cousin Rob Wagner, careful at the wheel. OUNTAINS Blood no. 148A (Kainai)
M
The buffalo slowly turned their heads to follow ROCKY CANADA
our progress. Their breath made clouds in the
wintry air. Racine said he’d know which buffalo UNITED STATES
was right when he saw it. He said that often an
Glacier Blackfeet
National
(Aamskapi Piikuni)
Park
Two Medicine

25 mi

25 km

M O N TA N A Badger-Two Medicine
proposed cultural
heritage area

ROSEMARY WARDLEY AND RILEY D. CHAMPINE, NGM STAFF
SOURCES: INDIGENOUS VISION; NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA; U.S. CENSUS BUREAU

At the Northwest Mon- old tradition, Indian
tana Fair and Rodeo in Relay has reimagined
Kalispell, Indian Relay the exuberant bare-
team members hang back riding style and
out at the stables. intimate human-animal
A new version of an relations of the past.



Piikani
Montana

WHAT DOES
SOVEREIGNTY
MEAN TO YOU?

‘Indian Relay

is ours, all Native.
Nobody in the
world can take
it, like they did

everything else.’

DUANE KEMMER
Indian Relay Racer

HUGGING A HORSE from his
Inii Yawmahka (Buffalo Runners) team,
Kemmer says Indian Relay is more
than a sport. It’s a way to connect
with his son Cliff (far right, in race
regalia) and his seven other children
and to pass on his heritage. Kemmer
started racing in 1990 but now mostly
helps his children compete. From
time to time, though, he still rides.
In a recent race, a horse threw a shoe
that hit him in the forehead. Despite
the blood running down his face,
Kemmer kept riding. “This is Indian
Relay,” he says. “You don’t stop.”

W E A R E H E R E 73

The Siksikaitsitapi
have raised buffalo
in Montana since the
mid-1970s, but system-
atic restoration began
there only in 2009
on the Blackfeet Indian
Reservation. Today
they have almost a
thousand animals,
and meat is available
at the reservation
grocery. But to buffalo
program director
Ervin Carlson, the
larger goal is to re-
create Siksikaitsitapi
landscapes—ecosys-
tems teeming with
free-ranging buffalo.

animal presented itself to him—it was choos- up with a reciprocating saw. Later it would be
ing to give its life. The Rocky Mountains, peaks distributed to the school and community.
agleam with snow, rose from the horizon like a
cupped, protective hand. Less than a mile from the tipi rings was a
steep hill, almost a cliff, its vertical face about
A cluster of buffalo ambled toward us. Then 30 feet high: a buffalo jump. Hunters enticed
a big bull stepped out and lowered itself to the buffalo onto the slope that approaches the cliff
ground. The others moved away. The bull looked top. “Drive lanes”—lines of cut brush and shout-
straight at us. Racine’s gun had been blessed with ing people—funneled the animals uphill. They
sage smoke. Its report was startlingly loud. The didn’t see the edge until too late. People waiting
bull slumped, dead in an instant. below dispatched any that survived. Genera-
tions of Siksikaitsitapi had hunted there. When
“Did you see how it gave itself? Did you see I walked to the bottom, I saw a foot-thick layer
that?” Racine asked. The two men winched the of bones: the relationship of the Siksikaitsitapi
slain animal onto the back of a flatbed truck and the buffalo inscribed on the earth.
and drove it to a paddock where, after a prayer
of thanks, the adults showed the children how Ecologists call bison, as buffalo are also known,
to remove the head and fur and entrails. The a keystone species: an organism that the prairie
stripped body was taken to a small butchering ecosystem revolves around. But buffalo are more
facility on the reservation where a couple cut it than that, said Leroy Little Bear, the Kainai leader

74 N A T I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

and law professor. “It’s a keystone for our culture, so many huge pastures: utopia for bison.
our songs, our stories, our ceremonies—they are By now, what happened to them is famil-
all connected to that animal.” Like corn for the
Haudenosaunee, buffalo to the Siksikaitsitapi iar: the terrible, wasteful slaughter, part of it a
are a source of identity even more than they are deliberate attempt to starve out Native societies
food. A landscape with buffalo was Siksikaitsitapi that depended on them. As late as the Civil War,
space, warm and inviting. millions of bison walked the prairies. But when
the Smithsonian Institution released the first
Siksikaitsitapi space was called wilderness by ever bison census in 1889, there were only 85
Europeans, but it was as domesticated as the free-roaming bison in the entire United States. A
English countryside. In spring and fall Indige- few hundred more remained in Canada. In a sin-
nous land managers set fire to it. Flames raced gle generation, abundance had become absence.
through the prairie at stunning speed, leav-
ing miles of blackened land. The burns killed Along with the loss of the buffalo came the loss
young trees and shrubs that otherwise would of land. The loss includes what became the east-
have overtaken the savannas. Prairie grasses, ern half of Glacier National Park, which the U.S.
with their deep roots, survived and regrew. Bison bought in return for promises that the Siksikaitsi-
are attracted to new growth. Centuries of Native tapi would always be able to use the land. Yet
torches transformed the western flatlands into again, the promises weren’t kept.

From Alberta to Oklahoma, scores of organiza-
tions are now trying to repopulate the grasslands
with their original inhabitants. One of the most
important steps occurred in 2014, when eight
Indigenous nations agreed to a treaty for “co-
operation, renewal and restoration” of the buf-
falo. Largely masterminded by Little Bear, the
treaty committed its signatories to using their
lands to create large, free-roaming buffalo herds.

The treaty, said Amethyst First Rider, “would
empower the tribes—not anybody outside, not
the government, but the tribes—to have relation-
ships.” First Rider, Little Bear’s wife, was a key
organizer of the Siksikaitsitapi buffalo program.

Today the treaty has 30 signatory nations. Its
long-term goal is to create a network of lands
where the animals can roam freely, ignoring
state boundaries and the Medicine Line. In
legal terms, such terrain would have shared or
plural sovereignty, with much of the title in non-
Native hands but effective control often in Native
hands. This anomalous status is likely to become
increasingly common on Turtle Island—the
Tla-o-qui-aht tribal parks, under de facto man-
agement of that nation, are a sign of the future.

When I visited Saya Masso at his office, the
walls were covered with maps and photographs
of his homeland. At one point he showed me
Meares Island and said that the Tla-o-qui-aht
had preserved it for everyone. I asked him how
he would describe the landscape they were pro-
tecting. “Ours,” he said. j

Charles C. Mann is the author of 1491, about the
Americas before Columbus. Kiliii Yüyan, informed
by his Chinese and Nanai heritage, photographs
the human relationship with the land and the sea.

W E A R E H E R E 75

WHY CITIES ARE

COYOTES, BEARS,
RACCOONS, AND OTHER
ANIMALS ARE ADAPTING

TO URBAN LIFE IN
SAVVY WAYS AS THEIR

HABITATS SHRINK.

GOING WILD

B Y C H R I S T I N E D E L L’A M O R E
PHOTOGRAPHS BY COREY ARNOLD

77

A black bear emerges
from his den under
an abandoned house
in South Lake Tahoe,
California. This densely
populated resort town
offers bears plenty
of garbage and other
food for less effort than
in the wild. As a result,
these urban bears
are about 25 percent
heavier than bears
living in wild areas.

PREVIOUS PHOTO

A radio-collared
coyote crosses
a railroad bridge in
Chicago, home to
as many as 4,000 of
the western canines.
Researchers are
discovering that city
animals are often
craftier at tackling
challenges than their
rural counterparts.



In San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Park,
raccoons stand at
attention at the arrival
of a resident who
regularly brings them
food—despite laws
against the practice.
Raccoons that become
reliant on human food
are more likely to
spread disease, get hit
by cars, and die when
the deliveries end.



AT FIRST GLANCE, The National
Geographic Society,
it’s a scene that plays out daily in cities across America. A U.S. committed to illumi-
Postal Service carrier wearing a royal blue bucket hat steps out nating and protecting
of his mail truck and strides across the street, letters in hand. the wonder of our
That much is unremarkable. But this postman either doesn’t world, has funded
notice or doesn’t seem to care that a hefty black bear, likely a Explorer Corey Arnold’s
young male, is sitting on his haunches a few yards away, vigor- work about raccoons
ously scratching his shedding winter coat. since 2019.

Immediately to the left, Interstate 240 roars behind a chain-link ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY
fence, apparently just white noise to the bruin, which eventually
lopes down the sidewalk deeper into this neighborhood barely
a half mile from downtown Asheville, North Carolina.

Along the highway, a team of researchers with the North Caro-
lina Urban/Suburban Bear Study is captivated by another discov-
ery: a deep hollow inside a gnarled silver maple tree. Bear N209,
a radio-collared female that’s among more than a hundred bears
being tracked in the study, hibernated there over the winter,
despite the constant rush of vehicles mere feet away.

The project is now in its eighth year, and yet “these bears still
surprise me,” Colleen Olfenbuttel, the state’s black bear and fur-
bearer biologist, shouts over the din of traffic. She holds a ladder
steady as a colleague scrambles inside the tree and measures the
den. It’s the biggest tree den Olfenbuttel has seen in her 23 years
of studying black bears. “They’re so much more adaptable than
we give them credit for.”

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that black bears would take so well
to living in Asheville. In this progressive city of about 95,000 nes-
tled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, bears shuffle down residential
streets in broad daylight and clamber onto people’s decks and
front porches. Some Ashevillians have embraced their ursine
neighbors, and nearly every person you talk with has a video of
their most recent bear encounter on their phone.

The advent of the city bear in Asheville and elsewhere stems
from a combination of trends, including changes in land use and
the tempting buffets available when living near people. These
factors have boosted North America’s black bear population to
nearly 800,000. At the same time, sprawling cities and suburbs
have swallowed up large swaths of bear habitat, leaving the ani-
mals little choice but to adapt to living with human neighbors.

It’s a phenomenon happening in urban areas across the United
States and around the world, and it’s not unique to black bears.
Many mammals that eat a wide variety of foods are moving in

82 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

and changing their behaviors as they learn urban Biologists examine surrounding moun-
survival skills. a sedated bear near tains. Residents are
downtown Asheville, invited to observe the
As more scientists study the creatures right North Carolina, which research and learn how
under our noses, a consistent message is emerg- has seen an influx to minimize conflicts
ing: Many species are adapting to urban life in of bears from the with bears.
unprecedented ways. Coyotes look before cross-
ing a street. Black bears know when it’s trash their natural diets to include human foods and
day. Raccoons figure out how to yank bungee shrank their home ranges to much smaller areas.
cords off trash cans. The more we understand the animals living in
our midst, ecologists say, the better we can get
In 2020 a review of 83 urban wildlife studies along with these urban newcomers.
across six continents found that a whopping 93
percent of citified mammals behaved differently I N A WO O D E D A R E A behind a strip of fast-food
from their rural peers. Most of these animals—as restaurants and hotels in Asheville, Jennifer
diverse as European rabbits, wild boars, rhesus Strules and two colleagues haul a culvert trap—a
macaques, and beech martens—became active
at night to avoid people. They also expanded

W H Y C I T I E S A R E G O I N G W I L D 83

barrel-shaped steel cage that humanely captures Urban/Suburban Bear Study, led by wildlife biol-
black bears—into place near a hotel parking lot. ogist Nicholas Gould, revealed intriguing differ-
They’re hoping to catch a mother bear with three ences between urban and rural bruins. Female
cubs that lives in the area. city bears aged a year to a year and a half old
weighed nearly twice as much as their country
Strules, a fisheries, wildlife, and conservation counterparts. Some two-year-old urban females
biology Ph.D. student at North Carolina State produced cubs, but none of the rural bears of the
University, opens a box of day-old baked goods— same age reproduced. However, 40 percent of
irresistible bait for an animal with a nose sharper the city bears died during the four-year study,
than a bloodhound’s. The team smears cupcake with vehicle strikes the leading cause. At this
frosting on the sides of the trap and tosses in stage, researchers say, it’s unclear whether city
some doughnuts and cinnamon rolls. Should living is a boon or a bust for Asheville’s bears.
their quarry get trapped, the scientists would
anesthetize the mother bear, which had been Other studies paint a less ambiguous pic-
captured once before, and replace its radio collar. ture. Like the bears in Asheville, urban bears
in Durango and Aspen, Colorado, as well as in
Data collected from more than a hundred Lake Tahoe, Nevada, weigh more and have more
radio-collared bears during the first phase of the

84 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Cubs cavort in the One cub climbs a tree; another scampers about
backyard of Ashe- its hulking mother, which watches us warily.
ville residents Kay
and David Carter, who To learn how residents can safely coexist with
put up a tire swing for their untamed neighbors, Strules is planning
the bears’ enjoyment. an experiment. Two neighborhoods will be the
“Asheville is very toler- focus of an educational campaign about Bear-
ant of bears,” says wild- Wise, a soon-to-be-nationwide initiative that
life biologist Colleen encourages bear-conscious practices such as
Olfenbuttel. “But my keeping pets leashed, securing garbage, remov-
worry is they’re going ing bird feeders, and not approaching or feed-
to love them to death.” ing the animals. Two other neighborhoods will
receive no educational material and serve as
cubs, but their young rarely survive, resulting in experiment controls.
net population declines. Seeing fat bears with
a bunch of cubs may give the impression that By tracking radio-collared bears in all four
urban growth and suburban sprawl benefit the neighborhoods, Strules hopes to learn whether
animals, but the reality is different. promoting the BearWise best practices changes
residents’ behavior and reduces the number of
Neither is it true that humans and bears nuisance reports. In Durango, researchers went
always live in harmony—even in open-minded a step further and distributed more than a thou-
Asheville, where bears have killed pets and sand bear-resistant trash cans. Homes that used
injured at least one person in recent years. the receptacles experienced a 60 percent drop
in problem encounters.
In 2020 a mother bear defending her cubs
attacked Valerie Patenotte’s dog, which later But some people want bears in their back-
died. “We understand everyone has to coexist,” yards—and none more so than Janice Husebo,
says Patenotte as we stand on her back deck who considers them part of her family. For 22
overlooking the distant mountains. “We just years she’s attracted hungry bruins onto the deck
want more space from bears.” of her home northeast of downtown Asheville,
where they help themselves to bowls of birdseed.
As if on cue, a bear family appears below us.
“I’ve got friends calling me the bear whis-
perer,” Husebo says as we huddle at her door,
watching a mother bear and her twin cubs amble
around the porch. “For her to lay here and nurse
her cub while I’m talking to her … ” she says, her
voice trailing off with emotion.

But wildlife officials warn that feeding bears
increases conflicts and risk of injury, which
decreases tolerance for the animals—two rea-
sons a local county ordinance prohibits the
practice. Strules, who recognizes bears’ beloved
status among Asheville residents like Husebo,
hopes her research will offer guidance on the best
way to live with the animals—both for them and
for us. “Wildlife belongs to everyone,” Strules
says, “but we want to keep bears wild.”

W H I L E B L AC K B E A R S have reclaimed about half
their former range and now live in some 40
states, coyotes—native to the Great Plains—have
taken the U.S. by storm in recent decades. They
now can be found in every state except Hawaii
and most major cities. The metropolis most
synonymous with the urban coyote is Chicago,
home to as many as 4,000 of the animals.

W H Y C I T I E S A R E G O I N G W I L D 85

86 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

NO ONE
PREDICTED
THAT BLACK
BEARS WOULD
TAKE SO WELL
TO LIVING
IN ASHEVILLE,
WHERE THEY
SHUFFLE DOWN
RESIDENTIAL
STREETS IN BROAD
DAYLIGHT AND
CLAMBER ONTO
PEOPLE’S DECKS.

Relaxing in their
“bear den,” Janice
and Janney Husebo
have developed
strong attachments
to the black bears
that frequent their
property near
Asheville. A fenced
yard is the dogs’
domain and helps
keep the peace.

W H Y C I T I E S A R E G O I N G W I L D 87

THE ABILITY
TO HIDE MOST

ANYWHERE
AND EAT MOST

ANYTHING—
INCLUDING
GARBAGE AND
SMALL PETS—IS
KEY TO URBAN
WILDLIFE’S
SUCCESS.

Clockwise from top
left: In Chicago a

coyote hides in the
hollow of a stone wall.

A Dumpster-diving
bear chows down on
garbage in South Lake
Tahoe. In San Francisco,
Misto the dog wears
a spiked vest designed

to deter hungry
coyotes, and a mother

raccoon emerges
from the six-inch space

between buildings
where she is raising

her young.

88 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

W H Y C I T I E S A R E G O I N G W I L D 89

Stan Gehrt, a wildlife ecologist with Ohio quickly adapting, in their classic wily fashion?
State University and the Max McGraw Wildlife It could be a mix—what Christopher Schell, an
Foundation, began studying Chicago’s coyotes in
2000, not long after the animals started showing urban ecologist at the University of California,
up there. Back then, Gehrt thought his project Berkeley, calls adaptive plasticity. That is, coy-
would last a year. More than two decades later, otes could be taking advantage of their inher-
he’s still at it. “We consistently underestimate ent ability to adjust to new environments while
this animal and its ability to adjust and adapt,” becoming better at living in them over time.
Gehrt says. “They push the boundaries of what
we perceive to be constraints.” “Coyotes are like an AI system, learning faster
than humans created it and taking over the
On a spring morning in the Chicago suburb of world,” Schell jokes.
Schaumburg, three researchers trudge through
marshy land behind a housing subdivision. Schell and Julie Young, a wildlife biologist
They’re looking for the den and pups of coyote with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are
581, a radio-collared female. Suddenly, a pup’s studying how various diets given to captive
squeal pierces the hum of highway traffic. The coyotes at the National Wildlife Research Cen-
group scatters, crashing through cattails and ter in Millville, Utah, could change the animals’
peeking into hillside burrows. behavior. For example, they’ll compare a group
of coyotes eating a simulated urban diet—high
Moments later, senior field technician Lauren in carbs and sugar—with those eating a more
Ross shouts. She’s found a weeks-old pup sitting natural, high-protein diet. Their hypothesis is
in the tallgrass, its pale belly still swollen with that the coyotes eating human food will become
his mother’s milk. Ross gently lifts the young bolder around people, which is supported by
male and examines him, pulling a tuft of hair some anecdotal evidence.
for genetic analysis and inserting a small micro-
chip called a pit tag between his shoulder blades. “We’re following the age-old adage ‘You are
The plump little pup is quiet and still during the what you eat,’ ” Schell says. He and Young theo-
exam. The mother will return for him once the rize that a coyote that eats processed cereal, for
team is gone, Ross says. instance, will be hungrier and looking for food
much more frequently than one that eats a rab-
At the beginning of Gehrt’s research, he bit for breakfast. Though Gehrt has not found
thought coyotes would be restricted to parks such a connection in Chicago coyotes, he notes
and green spaces, but he was wrong. “Now we that a reliance on human food does lead to more
have coyotes everywhere—every neighborhood, conflict with people and their pets by reducing
every suburban city, and downtown.” the canines’ fear of people. In some places, such
as Southern California, 38 percent of urban coy-
Indeed, coyotes have succeeded despite our otes’ diets consist of human food sources.
best efforts to eradicate them. At least 400,000
are killed each year, about 80,000 by a federal L I K E C OYOT E S A N D B E A R S , raccoons are expand-
predator control program primarily out West. ing throughout North American cities. In Wash-
Vehicle strikes are the main cause of death for ington, D.C., wildlife researchers Kate Ritzel
Chicago’s coyotes, but the animals have learned and Travis Gallo wanted to find out whether
to avoid cars and can even read stoplights. raccoons living in the city are bolder and more
willing to take risks than those in rural areas.
Adding to their adaptability is their flexible They measured this by observing a raccoon’s
diet. Coyotes will eat just about anything, from readiness to investigate an unfamiliar object—in
shoe leather to fruit (they can climb fruit trees). this case, bait buried inside a square of wooden
It stands to reason that coyotes living in green stakes. The researchers installed more than a
spaces throughout the metropolitan area would hundred automatic cameras throughout the city
eat mostly natural foods, such as rabbits and and rural areas of neighboring Virginia.
rodents, and those living downtown would rely
on food derived from humans, including trash On a muggy September morning at Fort Tot-
and domestic pets. But that’s often not the case, ten, a federally owned Civil War–era facility,
says Gehrt. “Variability is the primary pattern.” Gallo placed the smelly bait—“dead animals
in a jar,” he called it—while Ritzel strapped a
Coyotes have a talent for scratching out a liv- camera to a nearby tree. She would come back
ing pretty much anywhere. But are they genet- in two weeks to see which animals had passed
ically built for life as urbanites, or are they

90 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

THE LOOP

SOUTH GRANT CHICAGO’S
LOOP WILY COYOTES
PARK
Roosevelt Road Thriving in cities across the United States,
Field coyotes have become particularly adept at
Museum navigating Chicago’s urban spaces. Coyotes
typically have a home range of two to five
Shedd Aquarium square miles, but developed areas force
them to roam farther for food. And unlike
Vacant lot that S. State Street Soldier Field their rural counterparts, urban coyotes
was one of are active at night to avoid humans.
Using elevated Waldron Parking Deck Coyote 748—a radio-collared alpha male
coyote 748’s train tracks for First den, parking garage tracked for five months in 2014—guarded
favorite his den atop a parking garage by day
movement and hunted the city for rabbits by night.
hunting spots
Locations of Coyote 748 (February to June 2014)
hicago
C Day Night
River

E. Cermak Road

McCormick Place
Convention Center

55 S. Michigan Ave. 31st St. Harbor The range of coyotes Coyote range
94 90 H has dramatically expansion
expanded since 1900.
CHICAGO N 2016
BUR 1950
SOUTHWEST METRA RAILWAY
SOUTH SHORE METRA Before 1900

BRIDGEPORT ‘L’ GREEN LINE
ROCK ISLAND METRA
‘L’ RED LINE DOUGLAS CANADA

Second den, near train tracks

S. MLK Dr. M E Chicago
A K
A UNITED STATES
Guaranteed Rate Field L

A MEX.
P
SOUTH SIDE
A Central
90 Urban ranging G America
94 Coyotes farther away from I
the center of the city can find H
what they need to survive in C N
a much smaller area, whereas I
this coyote regularly traveled M S. Lake Shore Dri Foray onto
more than four miles from its the frozen lake
dens in search of food. K
R
ve
Danger in the city
Vehicle strikes are the leading KENWOOD
cause of death among urban
coyotes. Coyote 748 roamed 2000 ft
along train tracks, or between 500 m
Lake Shore Drive and the
water’s edge, to avoid cars,
but he was found with fatal
injuries likely caused from
a vehicle strike.

SOREN WALLJASPER, NGM STAFF. SOURCES: STANLEY GEHRT, URBAN COYOTE RESEARCH
PROJECT; CITY OF CHICAGO DATA PORTAL; ENVIROATLAS, US EPA; OPENSTREETMAP

92 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

COYOTES
HAVE TAKEN THE
U.S. BY STORM IN
RECENT DECADES.
THEY NOW CAN BE
FOUND IN EVERY
STATE EXCEPT
HAWAII AND MOST
MAJOR CITIES.

Coyote 1288, a young
male monitored by
researchers, lived
behind a downtown
post office along
the South Branch of
the Chicago River.
A few months after
this photo was taken,
he was killed by a car.
Some urban coyotes
have learned to avoid
vehicles and even
heed stoplights before
crossing busy roads.

W H Y C I T I E S A R E G O I N G W I L D 93

through. She showed me her favorite video so Window bars provide Citified raccoons are
far: a feisty raccoon chasing off a fox. Months a handy ladder for getting better at solv-
later Ritzel’s data indicated that urban raccoons the mother raccoon ing urban challenges,
are more exploratory than their country cous- and her three kits that researchers have found,
ins, taking more time to investigate the squares. camped on the roof which suggests that
City animals also are more social, traveling in of Michelle Ackerman’s they may be evolving
pairs more often than their rural, more territorial home in San Francisco. into smarter animals.
counterparts—suggesting that urban raccoons
are adapting their behavior to city life. The next center of learning and memory. “That kind of
goal is to “suss out if there are any evolutionary blew my mind,” says Lambert, whose research
changes” under way, Ritzel says. has also found that raccoon brains are more like
primates’ than any other species. But as is the
W H E N ZO O L O G I S T Sarah Benson-Amram first case with coyotes and many other urban ani-
started looking into raccoon behavior and cog- mals, more studies are needed to determine if
nition about a decade ago, she figured such a raccoons are evolving to be smarter.
common species would have been studied thor-
oughly. After all, the bushy-tailed omnivores are Still, Benson-Amram is intrigued that our
pop culture icons, jokingly dubbed trash pan- attempts to deter raccoons may be fueling
das. Instead, Benson-Amram was shocked to an innovation arms race. “It’s possible we’re
find almost nothing in the scientific literature. actually creating smarter animals,” she says,
A few researchers in the early 1900s had tried to “because we’re presenting them with increas-
study the clever animals but gave up when their ingly difficult problems to solve.”
subjects kept breaking out of their cages.
U N T I L R E C E N T LY, urban wildlife was mostly
So far, she says, her research has confirmed ignored in scientific research. This is partly
the raccoon’s crafty reputation. In an experi- because such species are considered pests
ment called reversal learning, she presented rac- unworthy of our attention—or not wildlife at all.
coons, coyotes, and skunks with a box equipped
with a button or foot pedal that, when pressed, “We live on a planet that’s rapidly urbanizing,
releases food. After the animals figured out how and it’s silly for us to say, Oh, we don’t care about
to get the food, the researchers would switch animals in urban landscapes,” says Seth Magle,
the buttons and pedals, forcing them to tweak director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at Chi-
their strategy. Most of the raccoons solved the cago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. “Whether we like it or
problem on the first night, while only one of six not, we live with wildlife.”
coyotes engaged with the box—and not until the
44th night of testing. Once the coyote was com- While much of urban ecology focuses on how
fortable engaging with the object, it could win to minimize conflicts, we forget that our expe-
the prize just as well as the raccoons and skunks. riences with wildlife often are delightful, Magle
says. “Another part of coexisting with animals
Urban coyotes have a different survival strat- has to do with celebrating these moments.”
egy from raccoons, says Benson-Amram, now at
the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. My moment came on a summer morning in
“They’re successful by avoiding humans, rather Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park Golf Course.
than exploiting them.” I was walking the hilly back nine with a group of
biologists, looking for coyote scat, or droppings.
Benson-Amram’s study bolsters the theory As we reached the top of a hill, we were startled
that some urban mammals rely on their cogni- to see a coyote and pup standing below us. We
tive abilities to adapt to city life and that when gazed at each other in mutual surprise. The adult
they’re presented with an obstacle, they can coyote, its back golden in the sun, remained
innovate on the spot. motionless while the pup pranced around. A few
seconds later, the adult quietly slipped into the
Kelly Lambert, a behavioral neuroscientist at nearby woods, the little one hanging back for a
the University of Richmond, has compared the last look before disappearing into the shadows. j
brains of captive raccoons known to be problem
solvers with those that were deemed less inno- Christine Dell’Amore is a senior animals editor
vative. She found that the innovators have more and a fan of the underdog—especially coyotes.
specialized nerve cells in their hippocampus, a Photographer Corey Arnold first volunteered at
an urban wildlife rehabilitation center at age 10.

94 N A T I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C



BY ADI RENALDI
P H OTO G R A P H S BY AJI STYAWAN

AS THE
NORTH COAST OF
JAVA , INDONESIA ,

FA D E S A W AY,
RESIDENTS

STRUGGLE TO
KEEP THEIR

HOMES—AND
T H E I R H I STO RY—

FROM THE
SAME FATE.

97

Hanging on is hard probably be gone
in Demak Regency in next year or so.” The
Central Java. In Tim- coast is sinking up
bulsloko, a farming to four inches a year,
village once sur- partly because of
rounded by rice fields, groundwater pumping.
residents recently built
a boardwalk to keep PREVIOUS PHOTO
their feet dry when
the tide rolls in. “We After a high tide
don’t know how long flooded the village
it will last,” says Ashar, of Purwosari Timur in
the village leader. “It’ll 2020, Turadi, 54, used
soil to raise his floor.







TO BURY
MUKMINAH
LAST YEAR,
THEY HAD
TO BRING IN
THE DIRT BY
ROWBOAT.

T H E C E M E T E RY WA S U N D E RWAT E R in Timbul- The main road out
sloko, a village some 250 miles east of Jakarta, of Bedono, a village
the Indonesian capital. On maps the village in Demak Regency,
looks like it’s still on the north coast of Central is flooded at high tide,
Java, but the land around it has lately been taken so children from the
by the Java Sea. The cemetery, a few hundred village ride a raft to
yards outside the village, had been submerged the mainland to go
even at low tide since 2020. There was a dead to school. More than
tree in the middle of it, surrounded by dozens half of Bedono’s resi-
of headstones sticking out of the water. dents have abandoned
their homes and moved
Mukminah was in her early 70s when she died. to higher ground.
She would have remembered, as surviving elders
do well, how green and prosperous their village
once was. Paddy fields stretched as far as the eye
could see. Villagers grew coconuts, red onions,
chilies, cabbages, carrots, potatoes.

“Whatever seeds you threw to the ground,
they would grow,” recalls Ashar, the village
leader. He’s lean and muscular—and only 39—
but he too remembers the better days. The water
has come on fast in just the past two decades.

The north coast of Java is sinking, and the
sea is rising. In Jakarta, a city of more than
10 million, as much as 40 percent of the land

is below sea level. But Demak Regency, which bend over under the low ceilings of their “dwarf
includes Timbulsloko, is one of the hardest hit houses,” as they call them. Of more than 400
areas. While global warming is raising sea levels families that once lived here, about 170 are left.
worldwide by around an eighth of an inch a year,
the land here is sinking as much as four inches. The cemetery is one of the last things that
Demak is losing more than a thousand acres, connect them with their history.
about half a percent of its area, each year.
Seven men were tasked to prepare the burial
In Timbulsloko, after rice crops failed in ground for Mukminah. They dug into the mud
the 1990s, the villagers shifted to aquaculture, for about an hour, building a dike around the
breeding milkfish and tiger prawns in brackish hole. Their hoes struck the bones of an earlier
ponds. They had a few good years, but by the burial; they kept digging. Shirtless and soaked,
mid-2000s, the ponds too had been swamped. they dug until the high tide filled the hole.
Now the “mainland” is more than a mile away,
and the villagers travel there by rowboat. To stay Mukminah was buried seven hours later, in
dry in their houses, they’ve installed wooden the night, when the tide had ebbed and the water
decks or raised the floors as high as six feet. They in the hole was only ankle-deep. She was buried
under more than a ton of loose, light-brown soil
that the men had rowed over from the mainland.

S I N K I N G FA S T 103

LOST Population density Location of ASIA
in Indonesia Nusantara, INDONESIA
GROUND planned AUS.
Low High new capital
Java is the world’s most populous island,
with 150 million inhabitants, and it SUMATRA BORNEO
has some of the worst land subsidence
on Earth. Parts of its northern coast are AREA IN D SULAWESI S I A NEW
dropping three inches or more a year, ENLARGED GUINEA
causing buildings to tilt and roads Java Sea ONE
to crack. A few coastal villages are
chronically flooding even at low tide, Jakarta JAVA 500 mi
and homes are being lost to the sea.
INDIAN OCEAN 500 km

10 mi

N 10 km

10,500,000 Tarum

2020 POPULATION
WITHIN CITY LIMITS

Ciliwung Pamanukan Eretan Indramayu
Wetan
Tangerang Bekasi Karangampel
A L L U V I -0.5 -1.2
1,900,000 -1.1 -1 2,500,000 A P L A I N
-1.5 -0.5 -1.1 Karawang L -0.4

Cikampek -1.7 Manuk

-1.8 inches

Depok Purwakarta -1.0 Cirebon

2,100,000 Jatiluhur J 333,000
Res.
-0.5

A sinking history Cirata Heavy developments A
Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, has sunk Res. Researchers previously thought
more than six feet during the past the city of Cirebon was not sub-
century. This land subsidence, along Bandung siding. But during their recent
with pollution and overcrowding, is study period, they noticed one
a primary reason that Indonesia is 2,400,000 area—which saw increased con-
creating a new capital city—on Borneo. struction in 2017—begin to sink.

1990 Java Sea

The coast of Demak Timbulsloko
Regency, east of Sema-
rang, once supported
extensive paddy fields
irrigated by the fresh-
water of rivers flowing
to the sea and ground-
water from below.

Bedono Demak

(NJOARLTUHRCPOAANSTTURROAAD) 2 mi
2 km
Sayung

Kaliwungu

SEMARANG

RILEY D. CHAMPINE, NGM STAFF; ÁLVARO VALIÑO
SOURCES: TEGUH SIDIQ, IRWAN GUMILAR, AND IRWAN MEILANO, BANDUNG INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY;
WORLDPOP; NASA; FACEBOOK AND CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL EARTH SCIENCE INFORMATION NETWORK

HOW The alluvial plain is Groundwater Heavy loads Flood-control
DEVELOPMENT made of soft river extraction on soft soil actions
ACCELERATES sediments deposited Thousands of wells Growing coastal Engineers dam and
SINKING over thousands of bring clean water cities are steadily confine rivers to
years, which naturally to the surface. But adding large manage flooding—yet
compact under with excessive buildings. Their this can prevent the
their own weight. pumping, the soil weight puts more rivers from naturally
But increasing compacts, resulting pressure on the spreading sediments
human activity has in subsidence. compressible land. that build up the plain.
dramatically sped
up the sinking,
worsening coastal
inundation.

Selected Measuring subsidence Mt. Muria Tayu
subsidence Using satellite data, Indonesian -1.3
researchers compiled a detailed 5,331 ft
location survey of land subsidence rates 1,625 m
along the coast from 2016 to 2020.
Annual rate This map highlights areas that
in inches sank the most over that period.

DEMAK REGENCY
1,200,000

IMAGES BELOW Kudus
Timbulsloko
-0.7 -1.0 Kapur Utara Hills
Demak Serang

Tegal 307,000 Kendal

274,000 -1.5 -1.2 ALL UV I AL P L A I N

Brebes Bodri Semarang

1,700,000

-0.8 -1.4 -2.3 A -2.1 -1.8 Geology matters
The southern part of the city of
V-0.9 -1.3

Fastest rate Semarang is built on stable volcanic
observed foothills that aren’t sinking. Some

-3.8 inches -3.1 places there are less than a mile from

-2.1 Mt. Slamet North Serayu Mountains Mt. Sumbing neighborhoods that are dropping
more than three inches a year.
11,247 ft 11,060 ft
3,428 m 3,371 m

2020 Java Sea

The coastline frag- Timbulsloko
mented as the Java Sea
inundated 8,000 acres
of Demak Regency,
submerging agricultural
land in salt water and
making it unusable for
years to come.

Bedono (NJOARLTUHRCPOAANSTTURROAAD) Demak

Planned seawall Sayung 2 mi
and toll road 2 km

Kaliwungu

SEMARANG

Some 400 trucks an
hour pass through
Demak on Jalur Pantura,
the North Coast Road,
a major artery built in
the 19th century by
Dutch colonial author-
ities. It now floods
regularly. The Central
Java government
is raising a 17-mile
stretch, putting it on
a seawall that will pro-
tect the land behind
it—but not the many
seaside villages.

“You can’t bury the body with mud and population. But in the late 15th century it was an
water,” Ashar says. “So we have to buy fresh soil. independent Muslim sultanate that dominated
the north coast. The Grand Mosque, built during
“It isn’t easy to live here, as you can see,” he that period as a center of Islamic teaching, still
goes on. Ashar can’t afford to leave, because stands in the town of Demak. Thousands of pil-
nobody wants to buy his dwarf house in the sea. grims a year visit the tombs of the Wali Songo, or
The elders don’t want to leave. They want to live “nine saints,” who helped spread Islam on Java.
with their memories, close to their ancestors. Demak is known as the City of the Saints.

After the funeral, the villagers pleaded with The North Coast Road, built in the 19th cen-
the Demak government for help. In the fall, tury along the length of Java by the Dutch colo-
it provided funding for a backhoe to scrape nial government, runs through Demak Regency.
enough mud off the shallow seafloor to raise the It’s still a major artery carrying some 400 trucks
whole cemetery five feet. That will buy the dead an hour. Factories lining the road produce every-
in Timbulsloko a little more time. thing from fertilizer and textiles to electronic
devices. But tidal floods now repeatedly inundate
D E M A K R E G E N C Y TO DAY has around 1.2 mil- it, at great cost.
lion inhabitants, a small fraction of Jakarta’s

106 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

water.” At least that’s what used to happen: As
the rivers jumped their banks during annual
floods, and as their channels migrated back and
forth through the soft mud, they spread sedi-
ment evenly across the plain.

The flooding, however, threatened modern
cities. In the late 19th century, the Dutch built
canals, levees, and sluice gates as flood con-
trols in the major cities, especially Jakarta and
Semarang, the capital of Central Java. Today the
levees and concrete embankments keep the riv-
ers from flooding—but also prevent them from
replenishing the plain. Instead, sediment falls to
the riverbed or shoots straight out to sea. That’s
one reason the north coast is sinking.

“Even in the absence of sea-level rise, just the
fact that we channelized the rivers and prevented
them from migrating means that the natural pro-
cess has been interrupted,” Meltzner says.

There are several causes of the floods—and of H E R I A N D R E A S , A R E S E A R C H E R at the Bandung
the fact that Central Java has lost 20,000 acres Institute of Technology who studies the sink-
of land, a lot of it in Demak. Sea-level rise due ing coast, says another factor is at work: massive
to global warming is one factor. But land subsid- groundwater extraction, which is causing the
ence is a greater one. sediments to compact faster.

Java’s north coastal plain consists of dozens In Demak Regency alone, as of 2014, there
to hundreds of feet of alluvial sediment, depos- were almost 250,000 wells, some up to 650 feet
ited over millennia by rivers flowing from inland deep, in an area the size of Berlin. There proba-
mountains. The sediment sinks as it compacts bly are more wells by now; 2014 is the latest year
under its own weight, explains Aron Meltzner, a for which government data are available. Most
geologist at the Earth Observatory of Singapore are private, but the Demak water authority has
at Nanyang Technological University. also drilled a dozen deep wells. It uses them to
supplement river water and provide tap water
“This is a very natural process,” Meltzner says. to more than 61,000 households in 59 villages,
“But because the river is bringing more sedi- out of 249 in the regency. In 2019 it distributed
ment, as the existing sediment compacts, more at least 9.1 million cubic meters of groundwater.
mud gets built on top and the delta stays above
For more than a decade, researchers say, the
local government has promoted groundwater as
the cheapest way to meet the pressing demand
for drinking water and sanitation. It’s clean and
requires no treatment plants, dams, or reser-
voirs. But using it here exacts a high price.

“People, especially the government, keep
blaming sea-level rise as the main cause” of the
loss of land in Demak, Andreas says. “But our
conclusion is that the main culprit turns out to
be decades of groundwater exploitation.”

Demak’s public water network still serves only
a minority of the regency’s population, and it
doesn’t reach Sayung District (which includes
Timbulsloko), where the worst subsidence is tak-
ing place. In the village of Sayung, residents have
drilled more than a dozen deep wells to supply

S I N K I N G F A S T 107