There’s no tangible evidence that caribou have memory the way humans have memory, but researchers, such as biologist Anne Gunn, have observed tundra caribou change migration routes based on past experiences. If a route is too icy and foraging is difficult, for instance, older female caribou – who lead the herd – may remember a different, less icy path they used a previous year.  

“The average cow lives, say, 15 years, and she will have learned [routes] from her mother, because when she was a yearling, she will have followed her mother, who would have followed her mother,” Gunn says. “So there’s collective memory. They learn from each other.” 

As the barren-ground caribou population declines – with the Bathurst herd in particular thinning out by 98% – the risk of caribou losing their collective memory increases. The key to retaining that memory, beyond ensuring the population doesn’t go extinct, is making sure those migration routes stay accessible to caribou, Gunn says. But infrastructure initiatives in the Canadian Arctic, such as the proposed 400-kilometre all-season road from the Northwest Territories to Nunavut, are poised to cut through a significant portion of caribou migration range, blocking the routes these animals have crossed for millennia. 

“We know that caribou, especially barren-ground migratory caribou, really do not like crossing roads,” says Elie Gurarie, professor of wildlife ecology at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry at the State University of New York.  

Researchers have a good sense of how caribou might react to the all-season road based on their behaviour on smaller roads linking the Diavik and Ekati diamond mines in the Northwest Territories to Yellowknife. These mining roads are not open to the public, with traffic increasing seasonally along with mining activity. 

Data from GPS-collared caribou – collected by the Northwest Territories’ Department of Environment and Climate Change – have recorded caribou crowding along the sides of these roads when traffic is active, unable to cross and roam their natural range. “Caribou are just remarkably successful in the Arctic,” Gurarie says. “The environment is really harsh and not very protected. I think the key to that success is that collective memory, their sociality and their freedom to move.”  

Barren-ground caribou have extremely variable migratory routes, so it’s not as simple as making sure one path is free for them to use. They need a lot of space to roam. When it came to the diamond mine roads, one solution, Gunn says, was to close these roads for a few hours each day during the high migratory season.  

The proposed all-season road, however, is much bigger than the mining roads. It’s part of the $40-billion Arctic Economic and Security Corridor linking mines, military operations and communities under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s nation-building projects list, which allows it to be fast-tracked through the approval process. A portion of the road, called the Grays Bay Road and Port project, cuts right through the dwindling Bathurst herd’s migratory range.   

If we don’t look after the herd well enough when they’re declining, and we lose most or all of a herd, all that collective memory of the landscape is lost.

— Anne Gunn, biologist

But there are three ways the impact of the road on caribou can be mitigated, Gurarie says. The government could collaborate with researchers and local Indigenous wildlife monitoring groups – including the North Slave Métis Alliance, Tlicho Ekwǫ̀ Nàxoèhdee K’è and Yellowknives Dene First Nation – to map a route least intrusive on the caribou range. The road itself could be designed to make crossings easier, such as with lower embankments, so that the animals don’t have to climb anything to make it through. And the roads could be closed for dedicated periods when migration activity is highest.  

With the project still in its infancy, the fate of the caribou can still be changed. As their natural habitat becomes ever more fragmented – spurred by industrial operations and a warming climate that affects the vegetation they need – caribou populations, and the memory they rely on, are on a precipice.  

 “If we don’t look after the herd well enough when they’re declining, and we lose most or all of a herd, all that collective memory of the landscape is lost,” Gunn says. “But the herds are still there, and there are still knowledgeable individuals among the caribou there. So, not letting a herd go extinct is really important.” 

Ayesha Habib is a Vancouver-based journalist. 

The post How researchers are working to preserve caribou collective memory and migratory routes appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“What she showed us is that nature doesn’t recognize our borders, and our protection systems have to catch up to that reality,” says Laurel Angell, director of government relations and policy at the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, or Y2Y, a transboundary U.S.–Canada–Indigenous wildlife protection non-profit.

Canada shares a nearly 9,000-kilometre-long border with the United States, and more than 500 migratory species cross that border each year, ranging in size from the monarch butterfly to the grey whale – and that’s not including the animals that roam across the border constantly, such as whitetailed deer, grizzly bears and grey wolves like Pluie.

Nature doesn’t recognize our borders, and our protection systems have to catch up to that reality.

– Laurel Angell, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

The two countries have collaborated on cross-border wildlife conservation for decades, sharing research and partnering on initiatives. Key to this has been the relationship between federal agencies, local governments, non-profits, scientists, private landowners and Indigenous groups. But as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration slashes funding for conservation research and federal departments, and rolls back critical endangered-species laws, wildlife that rely on the stability of these relationships now face unbalanced protection.

“We are genuinely concerned about what’s happening to federal land and wildlife management agencies,” Angell says. “Our federal partners are essential to this work, and when you cut those agencies deeply, you lose the people, the research capacity, the field scientists and the relationships that make cross-boundary conservation actually function.”

In 2025, Trump began slashing jobs at U.S. public land agencies, firing rangers and land managers who protect public parks. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has had an 18% reduction in workforce – about 1,800 jobs, including around 500 biologists. In a letter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, FWS director Brian Nesvik said that “almost 60 percent of the nation’s wildlife refuges lack the resources and staff needed to fulfill their missions.”

Sixteen out of 22 land research cooperatives – government research centres that focus on science-based conservation – have been placed on indefinite hiatus. During his first administration, Trump proposed several provisions that would weaken the critical Endangered Species Act (ESA) to make energy and resource development easier. And the 2027 proposed budget would cut funding by hundreds of millions of dollars to a host of environmental programs and departments.

Staff cuts to the Fish and Wildlife Service predate the current administration, says Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. But the accelerated rate is worrying, he says, particularly the loss of scientists, who are integral to collecting the data sets that then inform conservation work. As climate change and biodiversity loss affect how transboundary wildlife – including endangered species such as caribou and monarch butterflies – shift their movements, up-to-date data and research is vital.

These aren’t solely U.S. problems. Many species protected by the Endangered Species Act migrate across the border, like the whooping crane, which travels from Texas to breeding grounds in the Northwest Territories and Alberta. These migration routes are essential to their survival.

On-the-ground conservation work across the border has been disrupted, too. “There are cross-border conservation projects right now where the U.S. side of critical habitat and connectivity mapping work is being cut mid-stream, leaving partners working from an incomplete picture of the landscape and leaving many people uncertain about what to even do,” Angell says.

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Connectivity mapping helps researchers maintain and improve wildlife corridors across borders, which are protected spaces that allow animals safe passage through busy roads and private lands. Making sure animal populations aren’t isolated is essential to their survival. For more than 30 years, Y2Y has worked to bridge the gap between two of the largest Rocky Mountain grizzly populations in Montana and Canada, which were split by 240 kilometres. Now, through land conservation and wildlife corridors, that gap is just shy of 50 kilometres. Once connected, the transboundary populations can migrate and mate, strengthening their numbers.

“That’s what we’re trying to protect,” Angell says. “And that last stretch to achieve real, full connectivity – which would be a landmark conservation success story – requires sustained investment and rigorous science, not less of both.”

Both Angell and O’Mara have cause for optimism, however. So far, the U.S. Congress has pushed back on most of the proposed budget cuts, “in a bipartisan, nonpartisan way,” O’Mara says. “I think at the end of the day, there’s so much support – across regions, across political ideology, across the national boundary – for this work,” he says. “That’s what gives me hope.”

Ayesha Habib is a Toronto-based journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The Narwhal and Maisonneuve.

The post Cross-border wildlife conservation between the U.S. and Canada is under strain appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That strategy seems to have paid off: revenue has grown 45% since 2019, according to Mads Twomey-Madsen, Pandora’s senior vice president of communications and sustainability. In that same period, he says, Pandora has cut emissions by 17% across the board.

“We can grow and become more sustainable at the same time,” he says. Adopting sustainable practices was a natural next step in Pandora becoming “future-proof,” he adds. “It’s not something that we did as a marketing play. We’re quite aware that many consumers are very interested in sustainable options . . . but it’s more something that we did to stand strong as a brand overall.”

Whatever the reason, the moves make Pandora stand out. And they have helped earn it the number two spot in the Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking, all the way up from 48 in 2025.

The fashion industry contributes up to 8% of global emissions, but a minority of brands are committed to incorporating circular processes. According to the 2022 S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment, which surveyed 70 brands in the textile, apparel and luxury goods industry, 44% of brands had at least one circular fashion program in place.

Pandora isn’t alone in its sustainability ethos. Some of the biggest brands in fashion have launched recycling initiatives in recent years. The German athletic apparel giant Puma, for instance, now uses polyester textile waste saved from factory off-cuts, faulty goods and used clothes to make new garments under the brand’s Re:Fibre program. On average, about 25% of Puma’s products contain recycled materials.

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Inditex Corp., the parent company of Zara, aims to use only textiles that have a low environmental impact by 2030. The brand claims to have used 39% recycled fibres in 2024. It is also working to scale up purchases of recycled materials – such as fibre made from cotton-rich textile waste and polyester made from textile waste – through offtake commitments. The brand also has several eco-certifications, including the Recycled Claim Standard.

Kering S.A., the holding company that owns some of the largest luxury brands, including Gucci, also carries a Recycled Claim Standard certification. The company works with Econyl, a brand-name nylon made from waste products, and partners with start-ups such as Worn Again, which has developed the technology to create fabric from non-reusable textiles.

A steep hill to climb

Despite these types of initiatives – several of which are still in their infancy – the overwhelming majority of textile waste ends up in landfills. According to Boston Consulting Group, only 12% of global textile waste is reused, with less than 1% recycled into new fibres. When it comes to jewellery, recycled gold makes up a larger percentage of the overall supply than recycled silver but these metals are still being mined extensively.

Pandora mostly deals with silver, which makes up about 67% of the brand’s product volume. “The world is not very good at recycling silver,” Twomey-Madsen says, adding that the metal often ends up in the landfill through electronic waste.

Pandora’s big bet on sustainability pays off

It took four years for the brand to completely transition into recycled metals. The process required Pandora to convince its suppliers – 40 total – to source recycled metal certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council Chain of Custody standard. The transition will add an additional US$10 million to annual operating costs, which includes investing in new equipment for suppliers to establish a separate recycled-metal process from their non-recycled metals.

That’s a cost of doing sustainable business that Pandora is willing to pay, Twomey-Madsen says. The added benefit, he says, is that Pandora’s suppliers can now offer recycled metals to other brands, too. “It’s available now for other companies that want to do the same. And I think that’s something that you encounter in these circularity changes,” he says. “These value streams aren’t really established yet. So when you go first, you need to invest in making that happen.”

Ayesha Habib is a Vancouver-based journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve and Chatelaine.

The post These big retail brands are rallying around circular fashion appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The bill is the first such law to directly sanction fast-fashion companies for the consequences of their business models, which produce a non-stop conveyor belt of ephemeral clothing items destined for landfills. Globally, about 92 million tons of textile waste are produced each year. The fashion industry is the second-largest water consumer after agriculture and is responsible for about 10% of global emissions.  

France’s bill is a definitive sign of tides shifting, at least on the legislative stage. Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the country’s minister for ecological transition, described the bill to journalists as “a strong signal sent to businesses and to consumers.” 

The law creates a better environment for alternatives to fast fashion, but halting the flow of cheap clothing into landfills still necessitates a mindset shift on the part of consumers, says Alyssa Gauk, a communications lead with the activist movement Fashion Revolution. “Competing with fast fashion will require us to reshape our relationship with clothing and consumption altogether,” she says in an email. That means buying far less than we do now, making what we do own last, and supporting local makers, she says.  

For big clothing brands, there is a business case for producing more sustainably. A 2024 study from Simon-Kucher, a global business consulting firm, found that about 85% of buyers care about sustainability when making purchases, with 54% of those willing to pay more for a sustainable product.  

But even if many people want to buy sustainably made clothing, most of what’s available is too expensive for average consumers. Until that gap closes, fast fashion can be too tempting to give up. 

The meaning of sustainability in fashion can be hard to pin down, too. Gauk says that we should be suspicious of brands that use terms like “eco-friendly” without being transparent about what they mean. Even using recycled materials isn’t always a better choice for the environment. “A brand may use organic cotton or recycled textiles, but if the production process runs on fossil fuels or energy-intensive methods, the overall impact remains unsustainable,” Gauk says. “And when an industry as massive as fashion relies on these energy-intensive systems, the environmental impact is amplified on a global scale.” 

While there are eco-certifications to look for that can provide some ease of mind when shopping, such as Oeko-Tex, GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) or Fair Trade, experts suggest that if we stopped producing new clothes today, we’d have enough product to last decades. 

So what can we do with the clothes that exist now? France’s new bill is a legislative attempt to spur the necessary mindset shift among consumers while fostering a more competitive atmosphere to give smaller local clothing brands a leg up. The revenue from the added tax on ultra-fast fashion brands will go toward funding sustainable French brands. A blanket ban on ultra-fast fashion advertising includes promotions from influencers, who could face fines. Brands will be required to provide environmental data, such as carbon emissions and recyclability of products, to receive an eco-score. Those with poorer eco-scores will be taxed higher. 

Whether the bill will make a significant impact is yet to be determined, but its passing could make room for new ways to approach how we buy clothes. 

Ayesha Habib is a Vancouver-based journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve and Chatelaine. 

The post Here is how France is trying to fix fast fashion appeared first on Corporate Knights.