Researchers take canceled federal science to states, museums, and poetry books

“The smell of the salt air and rotting seaweed…

I'm a marine biologist, I can tell you: There's no better smell.”

On the night of May 14th, in the Kaplan Theater at San Diego’s natural history museum, this joke killed. The approximately 70 people stacked together on one side of the theater’s tiered seating bust into surprised, and yet knowing laughter. Dr. Phillip Levin, former project director at the White House Office of Science and Technology (and current seaweed-sniffer), had their number. Who among them hadn’t experienced the odd craving for a gag-inducing aspect of their dirty, earthy work?

I hadn’t. But I’m not an environmental scientist.

A fact which was starting to haunt me.

I had been following the speakers’ organization, The Nature Record, for most of its existence—since it was called United by Nature—and I was eager to attend their Nat Talk at the San Diego Natural History Museum (AKA: The Nat). I thought it would be my chance to hear about their process—how they took their Biden-commissioned report on American ecosystems from canceled, to an independent assessment now set to be published two years ahead of schedule.

I was expecting to get a walk-through of the organization’s history and their work. Maybe a sampling of their data and findings. Maybe some cathartic venting about the administration. Or maybe a cautionary tale about the Lorax-style apocalypse world destined to follow Trump’s pro-biggering stance on the oil and gas industries. But it became obvious as the sixth and final event on the Nature Record’s national campaign went on: This was not a press tour.

“We're here because you guys are the main event, actually. You are the stars of the show,” said Nature Record deputy director, Dr. Tessa Francis.

The Nature Record wasn’t there to market themselves, to sell us on the knowledge they had spent the last year trying to save. At least, not entirely. Apparently, they were there to extract knowledge, from us. Francis explained that we would be released back into the museum lobby (after just 30 minutes of Talk), where posterboards featuring the assessment's “Big Ideas” would be awaiting our sticky-note-imparted feedback. Instead of a lecture, I had signed myself up for some kind of informal, open-access peer review.

Levin had told us that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) were handling the assessment’s formal review, as had been the plan when the project was still under the White House. With support from the Resources Legacy Fund, the freshly-indie group could afford this marker of institutional legitimacy. But without the federal government, relevancy and reach would be much harder to DIY.

“The real magic happens when science reaches communities, when it informs decisions and helps people respond to the world changing around them,” said Levin, referencing Kurt Vonnegut’s definition of science as “magic that works.”

At the very beginning of their project, the Nature Assessment team “listened across all 50 states” to a wide variety of voices, according to Levin—everyone from scientists and healthcare experts, to farmers and fishers, to indigenous tribal leaders and community organizers. But getting local environmentalists invested in a federal report is one thing. How do you get them to trust an independent organization that’s barely a year old and already on its second name? How do you ensure that your work, the work you left your job at the White House to complete, will have an impact on the local ecosystems it assessed?

Well, if federal backing and implementation is off the table, you could try targeting the states. The Nature Record began to establish its own relationships with state governments, in the hopes that their findings would be implemented in environmental policy on that level, if not nationwide. Levin also said that they’re working with non-governmental research institutions, like museums, zoos, aquariums, and even hospitals, “because nature and health are inseparable, and what better place to show that than in a hospital waiting room while you're sitting around looking for something to do?” he explained.

And you could try to circumvent institutional barriers altogether, break academic norms to reach a new and broader audience. That’s why the new Nature Assessment includes art from middle and high schoolers, who were asked “the same questions we posed to our scientists” in a youth arts contest, according to Levin. Poets for Science and the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University were also drafted into contributing to the effort. Their answers to The Nature Record’s questions were compiled in a poetry anthology called The Nature of Our Times, published as a companion to the scientific report.

You could also take your work on tour, and make those local environmentalists feel included in its development. Beyond that, you could make them feel seen, give them a shared experience, and the sense that you are their ticket to being a part of something bigger than themselves.

“For the assessment to reach its greatest and highest purpose, it must reflect your community. You must be able to see yourself in this assessment,” Francis told us.

Levin took pains to establish an emotional connection with the crowd at The Nat. His seaweed joke, for example, was part of a heartfelt story about the comfort he found in the beaches outside Seattle while he was mourning his father’s passing.

“Nature just has this way of holding us. I mean, it couldn't cure my grief. It couldn't remove the uncertainty that I was facing. But it gave me somewhere to put it,” he said.

He closed with a poetry exercise based around Gary Snyder’s riff on the Pledge of Allegiance, asking every audience member to write a pledge to the natural places that impacted our lives. The people who volunteered to read their poems aloud received a free copy of the Nature Record-commissioned poetry anthology.

Thus, with our shared spiritual attachment to Mother Earth established, Levin had united us in a common purpose. We were primed for Francis to take the stage, and put us to work.

Alongside the posterboards, the scientists had provided cards of sample data graphics, with space on the back for written critiques, plus a map of San Diego county where we were encouraged to point out natural sites of personal significance. While the rest of the attendees dutifully drifted from station to station, picking up cards and sticky notes to jot down their contributions, I felt stuck at the edge of the crowd. As a journalist, I’m not used to sources asking for my opinion. Also, I don’t live in San Diego.

But I cared about the earth, didn’t I? Hadn’t I pledged my allegiance to the campgrounds, hiking trails, parks, and beaches that have hosted me and my loved ones? (I’m not a poet, either.)

I scribbled something about the wetlands and then got back to stalking my natural prey: busy experts just trying to do their jobs.

Another sign that this was not a press tour was that the Nature Record representatives seemed a little wary of me. When I explained my project, how I was covering independent research in the wake of Trump’s decimation of government science, they each objected to their work being framed as political. They told me that mitigating the consequences of industrial de-regulation, climate change, and all the other threats to US nature would require swaying Trump supporters to their side, not alienating them.

Personally, I think their chances of wooing the MAGA crowd died as soon as Levin introduced chapter 2 of the assessment, entitled “Equity and Environmental Justice.” And if there had been Trumpers in the Kaplan Theater that night, I’m not sure any of them would have made it through the poetry section. I can’t imagine taking America out of the Pledge of Allegiance as the nonpolitical activity that would win over the right.

I asked Dr. Francis how that portion of the evening went during their red state events. Perfectly fine in Nebraska, she said, but they skipped the poetry in Texas.

But maybe the reluctance to blame the Trump administration is less about shying away from the reality of what happened, and more about moving on. The Nature Record expects to publish the final version of its assessment this fall. It will include the work of additional scientists (brought on after the report left the White House), plus art from students across the country and a poetry collection, none of which the Trump administration expected to exist when it canceled the original assessment in 2025. When you look at it that way, the Nature Record is the most successful ex-federal effort to thwart the destruction of scientific knowledge—as far as I’m aware, it’s the only one that became more, in its post-government existence. It’s also the only one to focus on state and civil institutions, and on communities, instead of continuing to petition the federal government for reinstatement.

Maybe I should be less focused on what Trump is doing to nature, and more focused on improving my contributions to these efforts to save it.

I’ll end with the full version of Levin’s closing statement: “I'm going to end now simply by saying, join us. Not in the Federal Hall where this project started—not how I imagined things 479 days ago—but in communities, in classrooms and tribal councils, and state agencies, and board rooms, and in living rooms, and in rooms across the country just like this one. Our work continues, and you are invited to join us.”