Rewind 2025: The Year in Nature - The Nature Record

In 2025, nature continued to move from the margins of public conversation into everyday life. For many people, it showed up in ordinary, personal ways: an awe-inspiring forest walk, a quiet moment in a city park, heat shaping health and work, floods and fires affecting homes and insurance, shifting species altering food systems, livelihoods, and cultural practices.

This year also made clear that these changes carry tangible economic and human consequences. In 2025, the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable found that outdoor recreation supported roughly five million jobs nationwide, underscoring how healthy lands and waters function as economic infrastructure for communities across the country, from towns located near major attractions to urban economies. At the same time, ecosystem loss revealed quieter but equally profound costs. Communities around the Great Salt Lake reported the mental health toll of a disappearing lake, with exposed lakebeds and degraded air quality leading to rising anxiety and depressive symptoms, especially among young people and first responders.

There were also reminders of what works. In 2025, tribal-led dam removal on the Klamath River reopened hundreds of miles of salmon habitat under the leadership of the Yurok, Karuk, and Klamath Tribes. There, Indigenous leadership and co-management are restoring ecosystems while strengthening cultural practices, water quality, and community well-being — showing what’s possible when long-term stewardship guides restoration.

From my vantage point, the challenge in front of us now isn’t a lack of science. It’s fragmentation. We have strong data on ecosystems, species, and human outcomes, but they rarely travel together or reach the places where decisions about health, safety, and prosperity are made. What’s missing is a shared, trusted way to see these changes in combination and to connect evidence to real choices. That gap — between what we know, what we experience, and what we act on — is exactly why The Nature Record exists.

Team Highlights

This year, we rebuilt and strengthened our core staff, expanded the scope and authorship of the assessment — including the addition of four new chapters — and established a clear governance structure through the Secretariat. Authors completed drafts of the assessment and engaged a strong technical support unit, setting the stage for peer review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine early next year.

At the same time, we conducted outreach and engagement across the country, connecting with communities, practitioners, educators, artists, and decision-makers to ensure the assessment reflects diverse experiences and is designed for use. We integrated storytelling, poetry, and visual art as companion ways of making the science more accessible and human.

We’re deeply grateful to this community — authors, editors, partners, funders, advisors, and nature lovers. None of this would be possible without your time, trust, and commitment.

What’s Next

The months ahead are exciting. Early in 2026, we’ll release the full draft for public comment, and I hope you’ll join us in that moment. This is our chance to listen carefully — to learn how the assessment reflects your experiences, your places, and your hopes for the future. We want to know what feels right, what needs strengthening, and what isn’t being said clearly enough.

We’re building an online tool to make it easy for anyone to add their voice, whether through science, practice, lived experience, or deep connection to place. This work is stronger when it’s shaped together, and when it reflects the many ways people understand and care for nature. After that, we’ll roll up our sleeves for the hard, careful, and deeply satisfying work of revision, carrying us toward a final assessment in fall 2026.

Beyond the assessment itself, we’re preparing new partnerships, tools, and stories to help turn knowledge into action — so what we learn together can help guide decisions, strengthen communities, and open paths forward.

Thank you for being part of The Nature Record.