LETTERS The black-footed ferret has Downloaded from benefited from the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Edited by Jennifer Sills programs to protect biodiversity from 8. We invite all scientists to endorse this message by signing severe and growing threats. The effort the open letter at https://defenders-cci.org/sign-on/ http://science.sciencemag.org/ conservation-funding. Solve the biodiversity to conserve threatened and endangered species must be prioritized to protect our SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS national heritage and safeguard human science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/1256.1/suppl/DC1 crisis with funding well-being. In light of the unprecedented List of Initial Signatories The recent Intergovernmental Science-Policy global biodiversity crisis identified by 10.1126/science.aay9839 Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem the IPBES, we urge the United States to Services (IPBES) Global Assessment (1) is the join governments around the world in most comprehensive synthesis of the status immediate action. The data are clear and and trends of biodiversity to date, and it consistent: Our leaders must invest today On reporting scientific offers a bleak outlook: up to 1 million species to protect biodiversity in perpetuity. and racial history on September 19, 2019 at risk of extinction, with tangible harm Jacob Malcom1, Mark W. Schwartz2, Megan for human societies. The U.S. Endangered Evansen1, William J. Ripple3, Stephen In his News Feature “Science’s debt to the Species Act (ESA) is widely considered the Polasky4, Leah R. Gerber5, Thomas E. slave trade” (5 April, p. 16), S. Kean discusses strongest law in the world for conserving Lovejoy6, Lee M. Talbot6, Jennifer R. B. the role of the slave trade in 18th-century imperiled wildlife (2), protecting species Miller1*, and 1648 signatories European science with an unfortunate from extinction and providing tools for 1Center for Conservation Innovation, Defenders of lack of sensitivity (1). Scholars quoted in species recovery. Successes of the ESA are Wildlife, Washington, DC 20036, USA. 2Department the article use “we” and “us” when talking of Environmental Science and Policy, University of well documented, placing species like the California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA. 3Department about people who are surprised by scientists’ California condor, black-footed ferret, and of Forestry Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State connection to the slave trade. This in-group snail darter on the path to recovery (3). University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA. 4Department of construction (2) suggests an underlying Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, However, decades of severe underfunding MN 55108, USA. 5School of Life Sciences, Arizona assumption that neither the Africans and have prevented the ESA from achieving its State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA. 6Department African-Americans enslaved nor their potential. While the vast majority of listed of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason descendants, who experienced and survived University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. species are still with us today, upwards of *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] 400+ years of the transatlantic slave trade, half of listed species have not progressed were scientists then or are scientists today. towards recovery (3, 4). Data also show that REFERENCES AND NOTES Although the author and editors may have less than 25% of the funding needed just for 1. S. Díaz et al., “Summary for policymakers of the Global intended to raise awareness about white Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science- species recovery has been provided overall Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” scientists’ problematic involvement in the (5). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a lead (IPBES, 2019). slave trade—a worthy goal—the language agency for ESA implementation, receives 2. L. E. Dwyer, D. D. Murphy, P. R. Ehrlich, Conserv. Biol. 9, used in the article serves as an example of 725 (1995). less than half of the $486 million that it 3. D. M. Evans et al., Issues Ecol. 20, 1 (2016). how inclusion is one of the wider science needs each year (6). And although conserv- 4. J. W. Malcom, W. M. Webber, Y.-W. Li, PeerJ. 4, e2230 (2016). community’s biggest challenges. ing listed species should be a shared effort, 5. L. R. Gerber, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113, 3563 (2016). An opening sentence is typical of the arti- 6. Defenders of Wildlife, “Funding needs for the U.S. Fish expenditures by other federal agencies are and Wildlife Service endangered species program, cle’s flawed perspective: “Petiver eventually inadequate, and states have provided an FY 2020” (2019); https://defenders-cci.org/files/ESA_ amassed the largest natural history collec- average of just 5% of total funds (7). funding_needs_final.pdf. tion in the world, and it never would have 7. Defenders of Wildlife, “The importance of properly funding As scientists (8), we call on the U.S. the ESA” (2019); https://defenders-cci.org/analysis/ happened without slavery.” This passage can Congress to fully fund wildlife conservation ESA_funding/. be read to suggest a worthiness of slavery, PHOTO STOCK DALTON/ALAMY & LARRY ROMIN LAURA PHOTO: 1256 20 SEPTEMBER 2019 • VOL 365 ISSUE 6459 sciencemag.org SCIENCE Published by AAAS INSIGHTS diminishing the means from which the lived and died are plagued with moral and collection came about. Dr. Carolyn Roberts, ethical violations that require thought- A new scientific the only person of color interviewed, is given ful discussion. Although the term “white one quote in the piece, introducing non-con- supremacy” is often equated with direct agenda for Mexico sensual studies on enslaved Africans. Kean violence, it also encompasses language use In his Editorial “Quo vadis, Mexican directly follows Dr. Roberts’s quote by listing and word choice that reinforce racial hier- science?” (26 July, p. 301), A. Lazcano various ways black bodies were manipulated archies. By using language and context expressed concern about cuts to the budget and pulled apart, but he does not offer the (even unintentionally) that propagate the of the Mexican National Council of Science reader any guiding judgments. Without idea that white interests trump black lib- and Technology (CONACYT) and ques- bringing the reader back to the role of insti- eration, this piece, at the utmost, upholds tioned my leadership of the organization. tutionalized racism and power dynamics, colonial science and white supremacy. The data summarized here should allay the article does little to support its title—a At the minimum, this type of writing is Lazcano’s concerns. “debt” that scientists need to repay. a microaggression that can cause black In Mexico, the total budget for science, Alarmingly, the suggestion that early people to feel unvalued and unwelcome technology, and innovation (STI) in 2019 Western scientists were wrong does not in the scientific community. I implore (77.3 billion MP) was the highest it has appear clearly in the piece. Although Kean Science magazine, Sam Kean, scientists, been in 7 years (1–3). Despite the 2.4 billion briefly details the harsh nature of the slave and journalists globally to put the experi- MP cut to CONACYT’s funding in 2019, trade, he never describes these men—sci- ences, values, and needs of people from an efficient administration and coordina- entists who are revered in a white-washed oppressed backgrounds at the center of tion among federal sectors that receive version of history—as complicit in the mur- historical narratives to endow them with STI resources have redirected other funds Downloaded from der, torture, and brutal enslavement of black truth and transparency (6, 7). to support the scientific community more people. An estimated 12 million Africans Rae Wynn-Grant than ever (1–3). were forced across the Atlantic Ocean, with National Geographic Society, Washington, DC During previous years, there was limited variable rates of survival (3, 4). To suggest, 20002, USA. Email: [email protected] or no support for basic science, and many as the article does, that European scientists REFERENCES AND NOTES high-quality proposals went unfunded. In http://science.sciencemag.org/ “had to hitch rides on slave ships,” as if they 1. Examples of language that conveyed a white-centered 2019, 1.6 billion MP have been assigned to were without options for their work other perspective can be found at https://threadreaderapp. be transferred to fund high-rated peer- than to use (and profit from) this inhu- com/thread/1116076320188981250.html. reviewed basic science projects (3). Calls 2. T. van Dijk, in Discourse and Society, Volume 4 (Sage, mane system, is to exonerate their insidious 1993), pp. 249–289. for novel technological development and behavior and corrupt belief system. For 3. H. L. Gates Jr., “Slavery, by the numbers,” The Root (2014); innovation approaches were recently them to participate in this institution, they www.theroot.com/slavery-by-the-numbers-1790874492. announced. In addition, interdisciplinary 4. N. Hannah-Jones, “Our democracy’s founding ideals had to believe science was more important were false when they were written; Black Americans have projects geared toward the UN Sustainable than black life. Saying that they did it for fought to make them true,” The New York Times (2019); Development Goals will be published “access” is eliminating their responsibility. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/ soon; they address pressing challenges Slave ships should always be conceptualized black-history-american-democracy.html. such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia, 5. E. J. Smith, Science 353, 1586 (2016). as sites of violence, torture, and brutality— 6. J. E. Harris, Africans and Their History (New American the most common cause of mortality in on September 19, 2019 without reconsideration—and should not be Library, New York, 1972). Mexican children (4–6). characterized, as one of the scholars quoted 7. S. McDougal III, Research Methods in Africana Studies CONACYT allocated 5.65 billion MP to (Peter Lang Inc., New York, 2014).