Ecological grief: How we carry loss without losing hope

I recently read Megan Mayhew Bergman’s article in The Guardian, “We know how to mourn other humans—but what about ecological grief?”. It gave language to something I have been carrying for some time. I have felt it while reading about “forever chemicals” moving through our water, soil, wildlife, and bodies. I have felt it while learning about sodium-cyanide devices used to kill predators, the removal of wild horses from public rangelands, and efforts to sell or reduce protections for public lands.

Each article leaves behind more than anger. Beneath the anger, there is sorrow. There is sadness in imagining a horse separated from its band. Horror at the thought of an animal encountering a device designed to release cyanide. Unease in knowing that chemicals created for human convenience may remain in the environment for generations. Grief at the possibility that a forest, desert, wetland, or open range held in common could be damaged, privatized, or made less hospitable to the lives that depend upon it.

This is ecological grief.

A moment on the Salt River

A few years ago, I had the extraordinary good fortune to be swimming in the Salt River in Arizona when one of the bands of Salt River horses appeared and crossed the river. For a few remarkable minutes, we shared the water. The horses were not photographs, symbols, statistics, or subjects in a policy debate. They were living beings moving together through their home. I was the visitor.

That experience stayed with me because it revealed how differently we understand the natural world when we encounter it as a living community rather than as scenery. The horses belonged to one another, to the river, and to the landscape around them. Their presence was not separate from the place. It was part of what made that place whole. That memory has returned to me as I have read about the management of wild horses, including the Salt River herd itself.

A 2026 management proposal calls for gradually reducing the Salt River herd from an estimated 274 horses to 120 over five years, primarily through fertility control and relocation. The Arizona Department of Agriculture has said that the plan is intended to balance the health and genetic integrity of the herd with the resources available in the surrounding ecosystem. Advocates have questioned how the target was determined and what the loss of more than half the herd would mean for the horses and the community that values them. The Arizona Capitol Times provides a factual overview of the plan and the competing concerns.

The issue is complex. Land has limits. Water and forage must be considered. Wildlife, livestock, people, and horses all place demands upon the same ecosystems.

But complexity does not prevent grief.

I can understand the need for responsible land management and still mourn the possibility that the band I watched crossing the river—or others like it—may one day no longer be there.

The grief that has had no funeral

Researchers describe ecological grief as the emotional response to experienced or anticipated losses involving species, ecosystems, landscapes, and meaningful places.

In a foundational article published in Nature Climate Change, researchers Ashlee Cunsolo and Neville Ellis argue that grief is a natural and legitimate response to ecological loss. They also describe ecological grief as a form of disenfranchised grief: grief that is not widely recognized, openly acknowledged, or publicly supported.

We know how to respond when a person dies. We gather. We tell stories. We bring food. We remember. We acknowledge that a life mattered and that its absence has changed the people who remain.

But there is rarely a gathering for a contaminated river. There is no funeral for a herd that disappears from a familiar landscape. No sympathy card for the loss of a forest. No public day of mourning when the spring evenings grow quieter because fewer frogs, bats, birds, or insects have returned.

Instead, we read the article, feel the pain, close the screen, and continue with the rest of the day. The grief remains inside us, largely unwitnessed.

The Guardian article describes this contradiction clearly: we are experiencing profound environmental loss while often behaving as though nothing meaningful is happening. The author calls for greater permission to name, document, and collectively mourn these losses—not as a substitute for science or policy, but as a necessary human response to what the evidence is telling us.

Perhaps this is one reason environmental news can feel so overwhelming. We are repeatedly receiving reports of loss without being given a way to process them. We are asked to absorb the statistics, photographs, and warnings. We are rarely invited to say, simply and honestly:

This hurts because I love the world.

The losses are not abstract

Ecological grief is not only anxiety about a distant future. It can arise from documented changes happening around us now.

The US Environmental Protection Agency reports that there are thousands of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly called PFAS or “forever chemicals.” They are present in many industrial processes and consumer products and can enter water, soil, food, wildlife, and human bodies. Research has associated exposure to certain PFAS with harmful health effects, although the risks vary among compounds and scientists are continuing to study the consequences of different exposure levels. The EPA provides a current overview of what is known about PFAS and their potential effects.

In 2026, the Bureau of Land Management and the US Department of Agriculture entered an agreement allowing M-44 sodium-cyanide devices to be considered for use on BLM-managed land on a case-by-case basis. These devices are intended to kill coyotes, foxes, or feral dogs believed to be threatening livestock, poultry, people, or protected species. Critics raise concerns about the risks to pets, people, and animals that were not intended targets. E&E News reported on the new agreement and the agencies’ rationale.

The Bureau of Land Management also conducts wild horse and burro “gathers,” removing animals from public rangelands when populations exceed the levels the agency believes the land can support. The BLM says these actions are needed to prevent habitat damage, dehydration, starvation, and other harms associated with drought and limited forage. Advocates and some public officials argue that removals—particularly helicopter-assisted gathers—can be traumatic and that fertility control and other on-range strategies should play a larger role. The agency’s 2026 plans included the removal of approximately 14,000 wild horses across the West. The Colorado Sun offers a detailed report on the 2026 plans, while the BLM publishes its gather and fertility-control schedules here.

Public lands have become another source of grief. In 2025, a proposal would have required the sale of between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of federally managed land across several Western states. Supporters connected the proposal to housing development and federal revenue. Opponents included conservation groups and both Democratic and Republican Western officials who objected to the scale and structure of the proposed sale. The proposal was ultimately withdrawn, but the debate revealed how uncertain the future of shared landscapes can feel. Reuters reported on the proposal and the bipartisan opposition it encountered.

These are complicated matters involving land capacity, agriculture, housing, public safety, wildlife management, economics, and environmental protection. Reasonable people can disagree about how competing needs should be balanced. Acknowledging ecological grief does not require us to pretend that every question has a simple answer. It does not require political contempt.

We can examine the evidence, question decisions, and advocate for different approaches without treating everyone who disagrees with us as an enemy. The facts are serious enough. We do not need to make them more inflammatory in order to care.

We can understand that public agencies face difficult decisions and still mourn an animal’s suffering. We can recognize human economic needs and still grieve the loss of habitat. We can consider competing evidence without closing our hearts.

What reciprocity asks of us

In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, botanist and enrolled Potawatomi Nation member Robin Wall Kimmerer brings Indigenous teachings and Western science into conversation. One of the central principles running through her work is reciprocity.

The Earth gives continuously: oxygen, food, water, medicine, shelter, beauty, companionship, and life itself. Reciprocity asks what we will give in return.

Kimmerer’s work challenges the belief that human beings exist outside or above the rest of nature. We are participants in living systems. We breathe because plants breathe. We eat because soil, rain, sunlight, plants, animals, and countless microorganisms make nourishment possible. We are not separate.

In the understanding of this kind of kinship, plants, animals, waters, and landscapes are not merely objects or resources. They are members of the larger community of life. They are our relatives—our brothers and sisters in a living world to which we also belong. Reciprocity helps us to recognize both the gifts of the natural world and the responsibilities those gifts place upon us.

To think of the natural world as family changes the meaning of ecological loss. When a forest is destroyed, we have not merely lost a collection of marketable trees. When a species disappears, the world has not simply misplaced a unit of biological diversity. When a band of horses is broken apart, we are not moving interchangeable animals from one location to another.

Relationships have been disrupted. Members of a community are missing. Something that once made the world more complete is no longer present in the same way. Reciprocity therefore has room for grief. To mourn is to acknowledge that the relationship mattered.

But reciprocity also asks us not to remain immobilized by sorrow. Gratitude becomes responsibility. Love takes form through restoration, protection, restraint, service, advocacy, and care.

What mourning does

Grief and mourning are related, but they are not quite the same. Grief is our emotional, mental, and physical response to loss. Mourning is the process through which we acknowledge that loss and learn to live within a world changed by it. Mourning takes different forms across individuals and cultures, and there is no single correct sequence or timetable.

Mourning does not erase the loss. It gives the loss somewhere to go.

It allows us to say that something mattered. It gives sorrow language and witness. It helps us begin integrating what has happened rather than carrying it as an unnamed weight. We sometimes talk about grief as something we need to “get over.” But healthy mourning may be less about leaving behind what we loved and more about learning how to move forward while continuing to love it.

The same may be true of ecological grief. We do not have to forget the poisoned stream, the displaced horses, the felled trees, or the species that no longer returns in spring. We can carry their stories forward. We can allow the loss to influence how we live and what we choose to protect.

When people are supported in facing their sorrow, grief can reconnect them with their deepest values and help sustain meaningful action. Grief shows us what we love, what we fear losing, and what we believe is worthy of care. Mourning can become a bridge between love and action.

Making Space for Ecological Grief

There is no single practice that will be meaningful for everyone. Mourning can be quiet or communal, private or public, spiritual or entirely secular. What matters is that we stop pretending the loss has not affected us.

Name what you are grieving

Be specific.

• “I grieve the animals harmed by this decision.”

• “I grieve that this water may remain contaminated beyond my lifetime.”

• “I grieve the horses who may lose their bands and their freedom.”

• “I grieve the transformation of land that belongs to all of us.”

Naming the loss gives shape to feelings that might otherwise remain diffuse and overwhelming.

Allow yourself to feel more than anger

Anger can protect us. It tells us that a boundary has been crossed or that something we value is under threat. But anger may also sit on top of sadness, fear, guilt, or helplessness.

We do not have to suppress anger, but we can ask what it is protecting.

• What do I love here?

• What am I afraid will be lost?

• What sadness have I not yet allowed myself to feel?

  
  

Bear witness without consuming yourself

Learn what happened from reliable sources. Read the agency documents as well as independent reporting. Understand the stated reasons for a decision and the concerns raised by those who oppose it.

Then step away when you need to. Bearing witness is not the same as consuming an endless stream of distressing news. Repeated exposure can exhaust us without increasing our understanding or our ability to respond. Choose depth over volume. Give sustained attention to an issue instead of trying to carry every environmental crisis at once.

Make space for remembrance

Remembrance gives ecological grief somewhere to rest. It allows us to pause long enough to recognize what has changed, honor what has been harmed or lost, and reaffirm our relationship with the places and beings we love. This does not require a formal ceremony. It can begin with a small, intentional act of attention.

Write about a place, animal, tree, river, or species that matters to you. Share a photograph and the story behind it. Take a quiet walk through a place you love. Gather with others to talk about what has changed. Plant something native in memory of what has been lost.

Remember what the world felt like before the loss. Remembering is not nostalgia for its own sake. It protects us from accepting ecological decline as normal simply because it happened gradually.

Ritual can also give ecological grief a physical form. It does not need to be elaborate, religious, or public. A ritual is simply an intentional act that helps us pause, acknowledge what has happened, and express what may be difficult to put into ordinary words.

• You might light a candle for a species, herd, or landscape under threat.

• Place a bowl of clean water somewhere meaningful in remembrance of a polluted river.

• Leave flowers, seeds, or a stone beside a photograph of a beloved place.

• Read the names of endangered or extinct species aloud.

• Write down what you are grieving and what you hope to protect.

• Sit quietly beneath a tree, beside a stream, or in your own backyard and offer a few words of gratitude.

• A family or community might gather to share memories of a place that has changed.

• A group could walk together in silence, plant native flowers, remove litter, or restore habitat as an act of remembrance.

• Artists might respond through painting, music, poetry, or movement.

These practices do not reverse the loss, but they help us recognize that the loss is worthy of attention.

Ritual can also help us hold grief and gratitude together. We can mourn what has been harmed while giving thanks for what remains. We can remember the beauty of a river even as we work to protect its water. We can honor an animal not only through sorrow, but through a commitment to make more compassionate choices.

Let grief become evidence of love

Ecological grief is painful because the world is not an abstraction to us. We love the horses moving together across open land. We love the life hidden within healthy soil. We love rivers, coyotes, wolves, birds, trees, pollinators, wetlands, and the intricate communities they sustain.

We love places that existed before us and that we hoped would remain after us. Our grief is not evidence that we are weak or overly sensitive. It is evidence that we are still in relationship. The greater danger may not be that we care too deeply. It may be that we become so accustomed to loss that we no longer allow ourselves to feel it.

So let us mourn.

Let us tell the truth without cruelty. Let us make room for sorrow without surrendering to despair. Let us remember what has been lost, protect what remains, and restore what we still can. Then, when the first intensity of grief has moved through us, let us ask the question at the heart of reciprocity: What does the living world need from me now?