From March 2 through May 31, anyone can review the draft assessment and share input through the public comment portal or by participating in virtual or in-person engagement events hosted across the country.

What is The Nature Record?

The Nature Record examines the status, trends and future of nature in the United States, and how changes in nature are shaping our lives, communities, and economy. Nature influences the air we breathe, the water we drink, the homes we build, the stability of our climate, the health of our brains and bodies, and the strength of our local economies. Even for those who don’t focus on  environmental issues every day, these connections are constant and deeply woven into daily life.

The Nature Record is an independent team of nearly 200 leading scientists, researchers, experts, and practitioners. Their work is rooted in science, guided by communities, and enriched by public participation. Together, they’re creating a clear, accessible picture of nature across the nation and the role it plays in everything from local economies to public health and community resilience.

How to participate

The Nature Record team invites individuals, organizations, and communities to review the draft Assessment and share their perspectives. You can engage in several ways:

• Submit comments through the online public comment portal
• Participate in virtual engagement events featuring Assessment authors
• Attend in‑person events hosted in communities across the United States

The draft assessment, event listings, and more information are available on The Nature Record website.

Attend an upcoming event or tune into a webinar to learn more from Nature Record authors about the Assessment contents:

April 1 | 12 – 1:30 PM PT

Webinar: How Do Changes in Nature Shape Our Lives (Part 1)?
Virtual
Learn more & register

April 15 | 12 – 1:30 PM PT

Webinar: How Do Changes in Nature Shape Our Lives (Part 2)?
Virtual
Learn more & register

April 22 | Dallas, TX

EarthX 2026
Hilton Anatole
Learn more

April 26 | Bismarck, ND

Public Engagement Event
North Dakota’s Gateway to Science
Learn more

April 29 | 12 – 1:30 PM PT

Webinar: Taking Action to Improve Nature for All
Virtual
Learn more & register

May 7 | Tupper Lake, NY

Public Engagement Event
The W!ld Center
Learn more

May 14 | San Diego, CA

Public Engagement Event
San Diego Natural History Museum
Learn more

July 12 | Milwaukee, WI

2026 North American Congress for Conservation & Restoration
The Baird Center
Learn more

Figures That Use Images From Other Sources

We strongly discourage using extraneous illustrations in figures. A label that consists of words conveys meaning more clearly than a stock picture. Any illustration that is used must allow licensing under the least restrictive license available for the journal publication (Open Access, including for commercial reuse). The journal publication licenses do not permit sublicensing of materials in the paper. If using images, documentation of the image’s source and license must be provided with the submission and confirmed by ESA staff. The use of public domain images is encouraged if images are necessary, and source and license information for these images must be provided for confirmation. More information is available in our author guidelines for each journal.

Data and Code Availability

At the initial submission and revised version stages, ESA’s open research policy requires that authors disclose their data and code availability plans. New code strings created by authors of the submission must be provided for peer review. Data must be provided on an approved data repository if the paper is accepted, with limited exceptions for sensitive species and human data. Data and code necessary to replicate the paper’s tables, figures and conclusions must be published when the paper is accepted (before the paper’s publication). Please review this policy and ensure compliance with the requirements for each submission stage.

Relatedly, we are pleased to announce that we have expanded our partnership with the Dryad data repository. Authors that publish in ESA journals can deposit their associated data and code packages in Dryad at no cost (up to 10 GB; materials must be curated by Dryad after January 1, 2026 to qualify for fee coverage under ESA sponsorship). Using Dryad will ensure compliance with ESA’s open research policies, and all datasets are curated by Dryad to ensure they are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). We encourage you to explore Dryad’s services and consider this option for data and code archiving purposes.

Early last fall, I let then-President Stephanie Hampton know that, after more than 25 years in association management — and the past eight as Executive Director of ESA — I would retire in early 2026. I am deeply proud of all that we have accomplished together during my time at ESA. Our staff, in close partnership with committees, the Governing Board, and our donors has not only strengthened existing programs, but also launched new initiatives that advance our mission. The board has asked me to provide a more detailed perspective of my time with ESA in a Bulletin article, so what follows are just a few highlights.

When I joined ESA in 2018, one of our priorities was a comprehensive review of the Society’s governance. Two rounds of bylaw changes later, ESA has a governance structure that is well-positioned to guide it into its second century. The Council was reimagined as a representative body that advises the board and amplifies the voices of our sections and chapters — the heart of our membership. Council has since launched four new sections and two new chapters, bringing us to a total of 44 affinity groups where members can connect and find community.

Other major accomplishments of the past eight years include:

• We completed a visionary report shaping ESA’s direction for the next decade, supported by our current strategic plan to guide implementation.
• Invested reserve funds to launch new programs, including a new journal and expanded professional development opportunities for ecologists in academia, government, and the private sector.
• Evolved our Annual Meeting to better serve our members, with friendlier formats and new career programming.
• Renewed our publishing partnership with Wiley, ensuring continued excellence across our portfolio.
• Strengthened ESA’s contributions to science policy and major government initiatives.
• Expanded opportunities to advance diversity and inclusion across the society.

I am grateful to the Board, our incredibly dedicated staff, and the countless volunteers, members, and donors – we have achieved so much together. I would especially like to thank the 10 presidents that I served with for their guidance, leadership and support. They include Rich Pouyat, Laura Heunneke, Osvaldo Sala, Kathie Weathers, Dennis Ojima, Sharon Collinge, Shahid Naeem, Stephanie Hampton, Peter Groffman, and Rese Cloyd. And a special call out to our amazing staff, many of whom are in the photos below.

Serving as ESA’s Executive Director has been both an honor and a privilege. I look forward to finding opportunities to continue my commitment to healthy ecosystems and a clean environment through organizations in my community. I leave ESA in good hands with volunteer and staff leadership that is passionate and cares for the future of the Society. They will build on our momentum and lead ESA into its next chapter.

This is a unique opportunity for ecologists and other scientists to help ensure that this assessment reflects the best available science and informs decisions that matter for biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being.

Who They’re Looking For:

Experts in areas such as:

• Ecology or evolutionary biology
• Biodiversity, ecosystem services, and environmental change
• Agriculture
• Conservation-relevant biophysical sciences
• Climate adaptation and mitigation
• Environmental social science and human-nature interactions
• Science communication

Important Details:

The review committee will include 12–16 volunteer experts.

Individuals who contributed to the United by Nature assessment (authors, chapter leads, advisory board members, etc.) are not eligible.

Submit nominations by December 15, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET

Ready to make an impact? Learn more and submit nominations through the National Academies’ website.

The crowds came. The Indigenous peoples staked their claims to representation and rights to land. The connection between biodiversity and climate change is a priority topic in this “Amazon COP”, as are synergies across the three Rio Conventions – which together address the interconnected challenges of climate change, desertification and biodiversity loss.

The negative biodiversity impacts of climate change have been multiplying, leading to not only loss of species, but loss of species functions in essential ecosystems. But preserving biodiversity is not just something we need to do for its own (incredible) value. Protecting and maintaining biodiversity is also part of the solution to achieving a stable climate. Healthy forests keep carbon stored and out of the atmosphere. But the role that forest carbon sinks play in climate change is at stake with continued deforestation, and that is why there has been a lot of talk about including biodiversity and ecosystem integrity in decisions related to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

In addition to biodiversity itself, Indigenous and traditional forest communities’ stewardship of the land is being highlighted, and their rights are to be part of the discussions. They have for centuries known how to conserve the land and respect biodiversity, and now, as their lives and livelihoods are at risk of disappearing, they must have a seat at the table.

We enter week 2 of COP30 with two thematic days focusing on “planetary and community stewardship — centering on forests, oceans, and biodiversity, while spotlighting Indigenous peoples, Local and traditional communities” and other sustainability issues. This is the time for ESA to keep an eye on the negotiations and support civil society on their demands. I will report back on outcomes!

Disclaimer: Opinions are solely those of the guest contributor and not an official ESA policy or position.

On Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, ESA Executive Director Catherine O’Riordan and Public Affairs Manager Mayda Nathan joined nearly 300 participants in Washington, D.C., for the Day of Action to Save NASA Science. Organized by the Planetary Society and supported by 20 partner organizations and science societies, including ESA, the event brought scientists, professionals and enthusiasts to Capitol Hill to discuss the critical role NASA science plays in advancing ecological research and understanding life on Earth.

ESA’s participation was driven by concern over the FY 2026 President’s budget request, which proposes unprecedented cuts to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate — nearly 47% overall, with Earth Science slashed by 53%. These cuts would severely impact programs that provide essential data for ecological research, like Landsat, which offers the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Landsat data are foundational for monitoring land cover change, forest health, water use and ecosystem dynamics, among a myriad other uses beyond ecology. In our Hill meetings with congressional staffers, we drove home the message that the proposed restructuring of the next Landsat mission could disrupt this critical resource.

The Hill Day was also an opportunity to highlight the importance of funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), whose mission complements NASA’s. Together, these agencies support fundamental research that informs policy, conservation efforts and our understanding of the planet’s biomes.

Despite the backdrop of the government shutdown, Hill day participants met with nearly 250 congressional offices, urging lawmakers to reject the proposed cuts. The good news is that the introduced appropriations bills from both the House and Senate largely do that, maintaining steady overall funding for NASA (though the House bill proposes a devastating 23% cut to NSF).

We are grateful to the Planetary Society and fellow partner organizations for making this event possible. ESA remains committed to advocating for robust federal support of ecological and Earth science research. NASA and NSF play vital roles in enabling the data, tools and discoveries that help ecologists explore the complex interactions shaping our planet — and informing decisions that affect its future.

Study of Nearly 1,400 Scientists Documents Impacts on Food Security, Disease Research, and Environmental Monitoring

A comprehensive survey of scientists across ecology, evolution, and marine science has revealed significant disruptions to federal research programs following executive branch actions that began January 20, 2025. The study, which gathered responses from nearly 1,400 members of scientific societies nationwide, documents widespread impacts on research critical to American interests including food security, flood mitigation, infectious disease preparedness, and wildlife conservation.

The survey captured perspectives from scientists across all career stages and sectors, including academia, federal government, non-profit organizations, and industry, with respondents geographically distributed throughout the United States.

The survey will be published on August 25, 2025 at this website: https://www.firsthandaccounts.org/home

Key Findings

Research Disruptions: Federal policies and workforce restructuring have caused significant interruptions to ongoing scientific work. Respondents reported disruptions to summer data collection projects and long-term monitoring programs due to direct funding cuts or uncertainty about potential cuts. These disruptions affect research supporting critical national priorities including food security, flood mitigation, infectious disease response, and wildlife management.

Restrictions on Scientific Communication: Scientists reported experiencing restrictions on free speech and travel, along with chilling effects that discourage open scientific discourse. Survey participants also noted censorship of scientific terminology and expressed concerns about the federal government’s ability to meet legal mandates enacted by Congress.

Loss of Institutional Knowledge: The Reduction in Force has led to decreased government efficiency and significant loss of institutional knowledge within the federal workforce. Respondents documented delayed funding decisions, postponed collaborative research projects, and increased waste from cancellation of in-progress studies. Some participants reported breakdowns in longstanding collaborative relationships between federal agencies and state governments, academic institutions, non-profits, and industry partners.

Training Program Impacts: Quantitative data from the survey highlight the critical role of federally funded programs in developing the next generation of scientists. Respondents reported severe impacts, including cancellation of undergraduate training programs, cuts to graduate admissions at universities, rescinded job offers, and reductions in merit-based fellowship programs. Scientists across career stages expressed concern about an emerging bottleneck for early-career researchers and potential long-term consequences for scientific fields.

Concerns About Information Integrity: Survey participants raised concerns about potential bias in or removal of information from federal sources, as well as threats to the viability of established federal programs such as the Bird Banding Lab.

Long-term Implications

Some respondents indicated that certain harms may already be irreparable, citing disruptions to time-sensitive data collection, lost training opportunities, damaged career prospects, and harm to communities served by federal scientific programs due to the loss of institutional expertise.

The survey results provide the first systematic documentation of how recent federal policy changes have affected the scientific research enterprise that supports national priorities and public welfare.

About the Survey: The study was distributed to tens of thousands of members of scientific societies specializing in ecology, evolution, and marine science, with nearly 1,400 scientists participating anonymously. Respondents represented diverse career stages, geographic locations, and employment sectors across the United States.

Media Contact: Alison Mize, Ecological Society of America  alison@esa.org

Katie Lotterhos (American Society of Naturalists): k.lotterhos@northeastern.edu

Society for Conservation Biology North America: mail@scbnorthamerica.org

The Ecological Society of America’s 2025 annual meeting will bring ecology enthusiasts from across the world to downtown Baltimore. This year, they are partnering with Baltimore Green Space (BGS), Baltimore’s only environmental land trust that promotes vibrant neighborhoods and a healthy environment through land preservation, research, and community advocacy. BGS will receive $5 for each meeting registrant as an environmental offset donation, amounting to over $11,000 this year. Those funds will go towards providing green space access to the thousands of community gardeners and forest leaders who come together every year to care for the land, learn about bird banding, tree identification, safe vine removal practices, stormwater management, and more! All BGS programming is free.

Baltimore City has over 800 community-managed green spaces and 2,000 forest patches that are vulnerable to development. Currently, Baltimore Green Space protects 21 of those spaces: 7 food gardens, 8 pocket parks, 2 farms, 2 forests, 1 horseshoe pit and an urban wildlife refuge at Masonville Cove. We also work with 10-15 forest patches as part of the Forest Stewardship Network each season. As a land trust with over 62 acres of green space and a small but mighty crew, your support goes a long way. Every dollar raised will support BGS in increasing land security for neighbors caring for green spaces while advocating for protected green spaces and being an innovator in urban forest care and environmental research.

To learn more about BGS, go to their website at baltimoregreenspace.org, and follow them on Instagram and Facebook.

ESA members,

I am especially pleased with all that ESA was able to accomplish in 2024.  The year began with staff supporting the strategic planning process, led by President-elect Stephanie Hampton, gathering information and feedback from many constituents. The ESA Governing Board adopted a new 3-year strategic plan in May, and rolled it out to the membership at the Annual Meeting. The new plan highlights builds on our Vision: A future where people embrace science to understand and foster a thriving planet. It identifies three key goals for the society:

• Prioritize equity and inclusion to ensure a diverse membership
• Nurture a vibrant and inclusive community of knowledge and practice
• Ensure operational excellence and the stability of ESA as an inclusive society.

As noted in the letter from President Shahid Naeem, we continue to work on improving our governance.  In addition to approving the creation of two new sections, the Council approved a bylaw change in August 2024 that allows the nominees for officer positions of the board to run unopposed. The 2025 election will be the first one with a single slate for officers; Board member candidates still run opposed.

From our headquarters base in Washington, DC, 20 staff work in close collaboration with committees, sections, chapters, the Council and the Governing Board to advance our programs. We have an additional 6 staff that support the publishing program in New York state.

A number of staff changes took place in 2024. Long-time ESA CFO Elizabeth Biggs retired in December after 28 years of service. Rich Wallace also retired as Director of Publishing. We recruited several new staff this past year: Adrienne Sponberg moved into the role of Director of Publishing; Rashaun Poore became the new director of Finance and Administration; Holli Jones joined as the new Meetings Manager; Madeline Lee became a new Assistant Editor with journals; and Mary Joy Mulumba came as an Education Programs Assistant. Christi Nam was promoted to Director of Meetings and Operations.

We have built a great team and I’m proud of how we have worked together to strengthen ESA programs and meet new challenges. We have carried this momentum into 2025 and will continue to focus on improving the experience for all members.

These photos were taken at Liz Biggs’s retirement party in December 2024; they feature current and past staff, including former Executive Director Katherine McCarter.

It’s my honor as 2024 ESA President to write a letter to the members, to sum up our accomplishments and introduce the full annual report. Since we realistically have to wait until the year is over to work on that, we typically don’t start until late in the winter and hope we can deliver it in spring. But as you can imagine, things in our world became rather tumultuous at that time, and it felt like an all-out sprint just to keep up with developments in the political realm, so we’re later than usual in pulling this report together.

But this isn’t normal, is it? Many of the things that really define us as a Society, and as scientists, are under direct threat. Talking about good things we’ve done without putting that into the right context feels empty. So let’s celebrate our successes, and put particular focus on those things that some are trying to take away.

Ecologists From Local to Global

I’ve been an active member of ESA for 41 years. Yes, that makes sense, I’m an ecology professor, but the thing that always appeals to me is really the people. It’s that opportunity to meet and understand other ecologists from across the country and around the world, and increasingly from communities in the United States that traditionally hadn’t been well-represented in the sciences. I’m proud to say that, while we didn’t have one of our most numerically significant years during my presidential tenure, we did manage to continue to develop our community:

• We continued our trend of building more gender equity in ESA, with self-identified men now only constituting 49% of the membership, while women and non-binary members make up 46%.
• Total minority participation in ESA increased to 32%, as self-reported by members; since 2020, Asian membership has grown by about 20%, Hispanic membership by a little over 25%, and Black membership by more than 50%. We also have all-time high participation by Native Americans since our TEK Section took the lead in engaging with Indigenous scholars and practitioners in 2022.

We continued to bring new areas of scientific research and practice into the Society as well, as we welcomed the Climate Adaptation and Coastal and Marine Ecology Sections, both of which made immediate impacts.

Serving Our Community

As the world’s largest community of ecologists, we also host the world’s largest gatherings of ecologists: more than 3,000 colleagues joined us in Long Beach last year. They presented 2,148 abstracts across nearly 300 invited and contributed sessions, plus posters, many of which were included thanks to $60,000 in registration and dependent care support, plus thousands more administered by the sections and chapters. We also included 47workshops and short courses, and the largest Career Central program to date. The whole thing was held up by several hundred volunteers, including many students who had their meeting registration reimbursed!

I was pleased to lead the Opening Plenary, welcoming first the new Editor In Chief (EIC) of Earth Stewardship,  Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald, to the stage, and then introduce our opening lecturer, Executive Director Jackie Grant from Grand Staircase Escalante Partners.

The meeting was made possible, in large part, thanks to the attendees, exhibitors and sponsors who provided myriad resources to support to ESA.

Many students were able to participate last year as part of our award-winning SEEDS program, which ESA has always been so pleased to support. It’s been gratifying to see this campus network of future leaders in our field grow continuously in recent years.  We added 19 active chapters alone in 2024, bringing the total to 49, 20 of which were awarded grants for programs to benefit their members. It was a special honor to join the SEEDS Leadership Meeting at Harvard Forest in the fall! Staff estimate that approximately 2,500 undergraduate students are currently associated with SEEDS chapters, with many more in the alumni network that provides mentorship and other guidance to the students who follow them. This program, founded and long supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, has been running continuously since 1997 but currently faces an uncertain future given budget cuts, reorganization, and reprioritizing of objectives at NSF under the current administration. While we hope some form of normalcy will return, we are focusing on looking to secure new funding sources.

One similar program, which we founded just a few years ago, is the ESA Excellence in Ecology Scholarship, which is annually given to four early-to-mid career researchers to assist their continued professional growth.  I was pleased to welcome the 2024 cohort to the stage in Long Beach! While EEE was founded as a special project in the general operating budget of the Society, in 2023 we established the Equity & Excellence in Ecology Endowment to support programs like this one that broaden our community.  In 2024 long-time donor Phil Taylor pledged to match $100K in contributions as we aim for our initial endowment goal of $400K. Thanks to our generous donors, we are more than halfway to fulfilling the match.

Review this page on our giving website for a full list of 2024 donors.

Another program that made a big impact on our work last year is our collaboration with the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, through which we brought 11 scholars to last year’s meeting, and participated in a strategic planning exercise with Advancing Indigenous People in STEM, the Botanical Society of America and Entomological Society of America to increase participation of Indigenous scholars in our sciences.

We’re broadening our professional horizons, too. You may have run into Society leaders or staff at other scientific societies’ conferences—we’re frequently at AGU and the British Ecological Society—but recent years have seen us look further abroad, like to the Oikos meeting in Sweden last March, and exhibiting at (Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) (including last year) and Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS) to better connect with diverse communities of ecologists. We expanded our professional reach, too, by attending the National Adaptation Forum in May, the third Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) event on sustainability and ecosystem services in Montreal, and then the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties in Cali, Colombia, in November.

Serving Ecological Professionals

This outreach to other communities of practice that create and apply ecological knowledge is part of a deliberate effort to serve all ecologists. For instance, it’s been a pleasure to watch our certification program—our most tangible connection to applied ecologists across industries—mature and grow, reaching up to 900 certified ecologists after welcoming 128 more last year.

To better deliver value to our members and serve the entire community of ecologists with accessible professional development, we began holding more virtual events, and 2024 was the year that program began to mature. Staff report that we had nearly 1,400 total people register for those events! But beyond the paid opportunities, it was the dedicated career exploration opportunities provided by the Private & Public Sector Ecologists Section that really helped us continue to engage with ecologists across the professional spectrum. To that end, we also opened an organizational membership category, so private companies and NGOs (and university departments!) can join the Society as an entity and engage with us at a higher level.

The science of ecology is not just research; teaching and practice are as critical to our field as inquiry-driven research. Our long-running work to support high-quality ecology education continued throughout 2024. We leveraged funding from NSF to support 37 participants over three semester-long faculty mentoring network sessions to incorporate the Society’s Four Dimensional Ecology Education Framework, which led to the publication of 24 4DEE-aligned teaching resources. And, through our partnership with the National Park Service, we launched the Science Communication in the Parks program with an inaugural cohort of six fellows who developed high-quality science communication products for national parks in the Northeastern United States, and (along with Conservation Legacy) continued our Scientists in Parks program by engaging 229 participants spread over 104 parks.

Celebrating Scientific Excellence

We like to think of ourselves as standard-bearers for the science of ecology, so it stands to reason that awards we give for contributions to the science and service to ESA and our community carry a great deal of prestige. It would take much space to even briefly list our award winners and 2024 class of fellows and their amazing achievements, so I encourage you to look into their work—and then make your own nominations for next year when they open in the fall!

Promoting the Science of Ecology

That excellence is particularly highlighted in our journals, which remain the world’s leading portfolio of published ecological science year in and year out. As is always the case, science published in our journals went on to be featured in such major media as the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, National Geographic and Science, among many others.

The biggest highlight of all for 2024, though, was the official launch of Earth Stewardship with Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald at the helm as Editor in Chief.  Already, its first articles have been published with along with its first special collection.

We were deeply involved in promoting good ecological science beyond the scope of our journals, too, though with a much less happy ending.

Our engagement with the National Climate Assessment goes back into the past decade, but in 2024 our members had occasion to provide substantive comment on the (very large!) draft version of the new Biodiversity & Climate Change Assessment, a continental effort in coordination with government officials and scientists in Mexico and Canada. The BCCA was intended to build on the global Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services at a North American level and inform the draft National Nature Assessment from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, with many ESA members leading chapters! While the federal government ended its support of the program, it’s been great to see that the original authors have continued their path, led by Phil Levin, Jane Lubchenco and Heather Tallis in a new nonprofit called United by Nature, so this major contribution by ESA members will nonetheless be impactful and shared with the public.

From our own office, we remained focused on ensuring that sound science is employed in decision-making and public-facing discussions. Our policy highlight each year is the Graduate Student Policy Award event, and 2024 was no different. ESA hosted 12 graduate students who received the highly competitive award in DC as part of their day-long course in advocacy and additional day-long visit to Capitol Hill where they took the message of sound ecological science to their respective congressional offices.

Many other ESA members are involved in work to share and promote good ecology. For instance, our Rapid Response Team remained an active source for ecological expertise for legislative actions as well as news stories, and members were engaged at all levels of government. As an organization, we published 16 letters—official comments and requests—to decision-makers in government and civil organizations and issued 24 press releases on everything from new advances published in our journals to accolades of the innovators and leaders among us.

We do all this great work thanks to the contributions of our large community of volunteers, from peer reviewers to section leaders to committee members and the Governing Board, with many other roles in between, and with a highly talented, committed staff in our DC headquarters. (See the letter from Executive Director Catherine O’Riordan.) We succeed as a community of scientists, because of our dedication to each other and our work.

We’ve worked hard to get to where we are. We believe in this work. As 2024—and many years prior—showed, we can make a significant difference in the world. So, as I was pleased to say with current ESA presidential leaders in a recent letter: We remain steadfast in our support of ecology and ecologists. Let’s continue our great work in 2025 and in the years to come.