A rocky path, strewn with thick tree roots, leads from a dirt road down to a small green hut overlooking the choppy waters of the Beagle Channel, a strait between Chile and Argentina. The shack is home to Diane Mendez and her family but doubles as Alama Yagan, one of nine restaurants in the fishing village of Puerto Almanza.

The village, in Argentinian Tierra del Fuego, has become a foodie haven, and the final stop on the king crab route, a trail that starts in the provincial capital Ushuaia, 45 miles to the east. But things could have been different.

In 2021, the provincial government voted to ban intensive salmon farming in Argentinian waters, after campaigners successfully argued that it would wreak environmental havoc, close down local fishing fleets and threaten the established nature-tourism sector, which employs 16,500 people.

“Everything in the sea has benefited from the ban on industrial salmon farming,” says Mendez. “The whole ecosystem was saved, from the crabs to the seaweed; they all depend on a healthy Beagle Channel.”

For chefs such as Mendez, the sea is her larder. It provides the centolla, or king crab, for which the region is famous, as well as mussels, which her husband freedives to collect each day, and huge kelp forests, which she harvests to use in her cooking. And it’s all shared with colonies of sea lions, rock shags, and the occasional southern right whale passing through.

The success in Tierra del Fuego led to the formation of the Global Salmon Farming Resistance (GSFR), an alliance of environmental organisations and scientists that is pushing for others to follow Argentina’s lead. The Falkland Islands has also banned the farms, while the Canadian province of British Columbia has promised to “transition away” from salmon farming by 2025. The US state of Washington has also banned them.

But in neighbouring Chile, the same level of protection does not exist. “Things drastically changed over the years with the arrival of this industry,” says Daniel Casado, a film-maker and activist for Centinela Patagonia, a group of biologists, engineers, artists and fishers who monitor the marine ecosystem around the salmon farms.

The first open-net salmon farms arrived in Chilean waters in the 1980s, where the sheltered coastline and cold currents offered perfect conditions. They went unnoticed initially, but now there are an estimated 1,400 dotted among the islands and inlets of the Chiloé archipelago.

“They pretty much destroyed the Chiloé area,” says Casado. Now, the industry is moving south, threatening some of Chile’s last stretches of pristine coastline. This includes Magallanes, a region he describes as the last frontier before Antarctica, and home to the Kawésqar national park.

The park has become the new frontline in the battle against salmon farming due to a quirk in the law that means only its land, not its waters, are protected. Yet ironically, the Kawésqar, an Indigenous people who live in the area, are a nomadic “canoe people”, who live on the water, not the land.

As a result of the way the law works, the fjords and channels are becoming a new hub for the salmon industry and Casado fears the continued growth of the farms will devastate local ecosystems and fishing communities.

Artisanal fishing has all but disappeared in Chiloé, he says, with local laws preventing people accessing traditional fishing grounds close to the farms. Salmon are also alien to Chilean waters, and the millions that escape each year outcompete indigenous species. There are simply no fish left to catch, says Casado.

By exceeding stocking limits and placing nets too close together, the farms are also affecting water quality, he claims. “Dead zones” are appearing directly beneath the pens – patches of seabed that are devoid of life due to the buildup of fish faeces and other detritus. “In many areas there is a complete lack of oxygen – nothing can live,” he says.

The charge sheet continues, with activists also placing the blame for huge algal blooms, or “red tides”, on the farms. The algae flourishes in the artificially nutrient-rich waters around the pens, and often proves toxic to fish, including salmon, and other marine species.

“The industry says this is natural and not down to them,” says Casado. “But in reality, the eutrophication of the area, by putting so much stuff in the water, causes a big change in the environment.”

The Chilean government has also begun striking deals with fish farms that have been set up in national parks illegally by relocating them to new sites, he says.

“The government needs to start taking this issue seriously; otherwise businesses will continue to destroy an area, move on and do it all over again, until there will be no other place to go,” Casado says.

The industry disputes the effects it has on the environment. Catarina Martins is chief sustainability and technology officer at the Norwegian multinational Mowi, which is one of the world’s largest salmon-farming businesses and has a huge presence in Chile.

She believes the likes of the GSFR paint an out-of-date picture of a well-regulated industry that operates within strict frameworks. “We are not the cause of these dead zones,” she says.

It is simply easier to blame the industry for events such as the algal blooms, she argues, rather than considering more complicated causes, such as the effects of the climate emergency on ocean dynamics and water temperature.

The industry is looking at ways to reduce its footprint, says Martins. For instance, introducing fallow periods of between four to six weeks, when no fish are farmed, helps to avoid any “cumulative impact” on the seabed, giving the environment time to recover. Skirts around the top of the pens are being installed to prevent infestations of sea lice, a parasite that can thrive in fish farms and decimate the salmon. This has also cut the need for medicated feeds containing antibiotics, which can leach into the environment.

Underwater lights encourage salmon to feed at different levels, moving them around the pens and preventing disease from spreading so easily. Critics, however, suggest that not enough research has been carried out into their effects on other fish and marine mammals.

Outside Alama Yagan, an Argentinian flag flutters in the strong breeze. Mendez is taking a break after cooking lunch for half a dozen visitors from Ushuaia.

She used to work with Chilean fishers and is sorry for those who have lost their livelihoods, but grateful too that Argentina was able to learn lessons from their experience and prevent the salmon farms from coming to the Beagle Channel.

“If salmon farming had been allowed here it would have been a betrayal of the fishing community and the ecosystem as a whole,” she says.

Four years ago, Berkeley made history when it became the first city in the US to ban natural gas hookups in new buildings.

It was a natural step for the famously progressive California community, which was an early adopter of curbside recycling in the 1970s, banned styrofoam in 1988, and more recently led the charge to outlaw single-use packaging and plastics.

But today the ban is dead in the water, after a lawsuit brought by a restaurant trade group challenged its legality, tying the ban’s enforcement up in court for years. Last month, the city finally gave in and began the process of repealing it.

For a moment, the news appeared devastating for efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. But even without the historic ban, local climate advocates and restaurant owners are imagining ways Berkeley could still lead a national push to transition away from natural gas, amid growing public awareness of its harms to both the climate and human health.

Alastair Iles, a professor of sustainability transitions at the University of California, Berkeley, remembers how community groups rallied with local legislators to introduce and pass the ban. “Communities and activists around the city identified very closely with the ban’s successful passing, and saw it as a sign that the city is continuing to tackle the challenge of climate change.”

He said these groups aren’t giving up hope that Berkeley can still set an example. “From what I have heard, they are upset, sad, and disheartened that the ban has been overturned,” said Iles. “But they also know that there are alternative ways forward.”

‘Fossil fuel-free city’

Berkeley has long been a leader on progressive climate legislation, and in 2018 the city council resolved to become a “fossil fuel-free city”.

So it wasn’t a surprise in July 2019 when the Berkeley city council unanimously passed an ordinance preventing natural gas hookups in new residential and commercial construction. At the time, nearly a third of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions came from natural gas. The move was lauded by environmental organizers as a step towards California’s goal of achieving 100% zero-carbon energy by 2045.

Berkeley’s move sparked a wave of action, and an inevitable backlash. In the years since, 135 cities and counties have introduced some type of building decarbonization ordinance. At the same time, 24 mostly red states have done the opposite, passing laws that prohibit cities from banning natural gas.

Yet before Berkeley’s natural gas ban could even take effect in January 2020, the California Restaurant Association (CRA) filed a lawsuit arguing both that the ban harmed restaurant owners who rely on gas stoves and also that, under the 1975 Energy and Policy Conservation Act, only the federal government has the authority to regulate energy standards for appliances.

Thus ensued a lengthy back and forth between the city and the trade group. In 2021, a US district judge sided with Berkeley, ruling that the city wasn’t trying to regulate appliances, but instead the fuel they used. CRA then took their case to the ninth circuit court of appeals, which ruled against the ban. In January 2023, Berkeley lost its request to have the case reheard and could have appealed to the US supreme court, but instead chose to settle with the CRA. Some environmental advocates have pointed out that the natural gas utility SoCalGas provided financial support to the restaurant association.

“Very likely, Berkeley decided that it might be counterproductive to keep the case going, because a loss could hurt similar city and state laws in other parts of the country along with California,” given the supreme court’s current conservative majority, said Iles. “More importantly, the supreme court could easily have made a more expansive ruling than needed, as it often has in the past few years, meaning that a range of options to require gas-free buildings could be prohibited.”

‘Cooking with gas is really a mindset’

The debate over natural gas has heated up in the past year, following 2023 studies that found gas stoves could be linked to more than 12% of childhood asthma cases in the US, and emit indoor pollutants at levels worse than secondhand smoke.

Despite the Berkeley blow, environmental leaders and business owners – including some of the city’s leading restaurateurs – don’t see this as the end of the road. Although Iles suspects other California cities will stop pursuing natural gas bans, he says many are considering alternative policy pathways.

“Learning from Berkeley’s ill-fated experience, cities across California and the US west have already introduced different rules focused on energy performance,” which require buildings to lower their energy usage but don’t set specific requirements as to how, he said, creating an incentive to use electric or solar rather than gas appliances without mandating it. “Cities can also set air pollution emission standards to favor electric appliances.”

Iles adds that last September, mayors from 25 California cities wrote to the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, “urging him to set statewide building codes that would require new buildings to be fully electric”. Just last month, California released a draft update to its building code that will encourage the use of heat pumps, which are fossil fuel-free heaters that are more efficient than gas furnaces, in all new homes beginning in 2026.

Meanwhile, despite the CRA’s stance, many chefs in Berkeley and beyond are considering their role in leading the way toward electrification. Last year, chef Alice Waters of Berkeley’s Michelin star restaurant Chez Panisse told Yahoo News that she plans to transition the restaurant to electric stoves, and that a new bar opening up next door would also use electric cooking.

“It’s a matter of getting used to it,” she told the outlet. “You just have to know a little more about cooking with it. It’s not rocket science.” In response to a Guardian inquiry about the transition, a spokesperson for Chez Panisse said there were no updates to share yet and that the bar was still under construction.

“Cooking with gas is really a mindset,” agrees chef Grégoire Jacquet, owner and founder of Grégoire, a high-end take-out restaurant in Berkeley who is exploring bringing more electric equipment into his kitchen. “Nowadays there is some stuff that really is pretty awesome when it comes to electric.”

But he acknowledges that it’s scary for chefs who have trained on gas stoves to make the switch, especially given the cost of buying new equipment. “I think if we all want to switch to electric, it’s going to take a lot of education and a lot of training.”

He hopes culinary schools will begin training new chefs on electric stoves early in their education, and that local governments will consider giving restaurants grants to encourage transitioning to electric, and to help cover the costs.

As Jacquet expands his business with new franchise locations, he’s planning to source both gas and electric cookers. It’s a sign of where the city, and others across the country, could be headed. The transition to electric is happening, says Jacquet. “But not fast enough,” he adds. “Because the Earth is dying.”

National parks are failing to tackle the biodiversity crisis, with just 6% of national park land in England and Wales managed effectively for nature, according to the first full assessment of how well they are supporting nature recovery.

National parks, which cover 10% of England and 20% of Wales and this year celebrate their 75th anniversary, are not restoring nature because of a chronic lack of government funding and because they were designed for a different era, according to the report by the Campaign for National Parks (CNP) charity.

The parks’ direct grant from government has been cut by 40% in real terms since 2010, with most national parks only receiving several million pounds – equivalent to the annual budget of a small secondary school.

Ruth Bradshaw, the policy manager for the CNP, said: “National parks are special places and they are the last refuges for struggling species like curlew, hen harrier and cuckoo. Nature in the national parks isn’t immune from the crisis that is happening elsewhere but there are huge opportunities to bring it back to good health. We need urgent action and major changes – the government needs to strengthen legislation and significantly increase the resources that are going into nature recovery in the national parks.”

National parks are key to Britain meeting its commitment to protecting 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030 but nature is still in retreat in these protected areas.

Peatlands, which store carbon and cover 43% of the land within national parks, are in poor condition: an estimated 1% of Dartmoor’s deep peat area is in a healthy condition, according to the CNP report. There had been virtually no change in woodland coverage across national parks in the five years to 2020, and rivers and lakes are in worsening health. The 47% of rivers in national parks judged in “good” health in 2013 fell to 39% in 2022.

Apart from the lack of funding, national parks are struggling to restore nature because only 13.7% of national park land is publicly owned, with the vast majority privately owned and managed as farmland. Most of this land has suffered from the same nature losses linked to the intensification of farming over the past 75 years in the rest of Britain.

Part of the problem, the CNP report said, was that national parks were created 75 years ago to address fears of urbanisation. Although enhancing wildlife is one of the parks’ statutory duties, the parks have not changed their mission to reflect the 21st-century climate and extinction crises.

The CNP is calling for a new deal for national parks, with the government setting a clear new priority that they are for nature protection and restoration alongside a doubling of core national park grants to restore 2010 funding levels.

It wants a ban on all burning of moorlands within national parks, a common practice on shooting estates; a ban on all forestry plantations on any depth of peat soil, a practice which can degrade peatlands and cause more carbon emissions; and the licensing of driven grouse shoots to reduce the illegal persecution of threatened species such as hen harrier.

It also wants government agencies, including the Ministry of Defence and Forestry England, and water companies to pay for the restoration of areas that have suffered from historic damage such as pollution, the planting of conifers on peatland and the cost of removing unexploded ordnance which makes restoration much more expensive.

It suggests creating citizen’s assemblies for every national park to better ensure that every citizen of whatever age, race and class feels welcome and can participate in decision-making within the parks alongside commoners – those who use the land for grazing animals – as well as farmers and landowners.

National parks are facing a long-running funding crisis. The Yorkshire Dales is facing a £4m hole for 2025-26 and some parks have warned they will need to close visitor centres or cut back on footpath management, reducing public access.

Tony Gates, the chief executive of Northumberland national park, where the core grant from Defra has shrank from £3.7m in 2006 to £2.6m today, welcomed the CNP report and its recommendation that national parks are given a leading role by government in recovering nature.

“We should be doing more, we could be doing more, and we’re best placed to do it. Governments just need to back us to do it,” he said. “Since I took over in 2006, I’ve lost a third of my staff. Most of the money we spend on nature recovery, we raise through fundraising, grants and philanthropic donations. If we were relying on core funding alone, we’re resourced to do very little. We don’t have the legal powers to do a lot around nature and yet as place-based organisations with a rich range of relationships built with landowners over decades, we’re best-placed to lead the way. But government aren’t backing us to do that.”

Prof Sir John Lawton, a conservation scientist and the author of an influential government review of how to recover nature in Britain, welcomed “the bold proposals” in the CNP report “to make more space for nature by restoring, recreating, and joining up habitats for the benefit of people and the creatures that live in these beautiful areas”.

“It won’t be easy,” said Lawton. “They are working landscapes, home to people and to wildlife, but the report makes clear how it can be done. Its vision fills me with hope.”

The CNP said it supported the government’s proposals to create more national parks but these must not come at the expense of funding the existing parks. Bradshaw said: “We really need to strengthen the way national parks are run to ensure that they are delivering for nature. Alongside that we should be thinking about places where there’s potential for future new national parks as well. We’re very clear that new national parks should only be introduced alongside increased funding for existing national parks. We certainly wouldn’t want to see new national parks resulting in reduced funding for existing national parks.”