The beauty and wonder of the natural world is what keeps these scientists fighting to protect it. But a culture of suppression and self-censorship has meant that speaking out comes at a cost.
For the past 40 years, Antarctic ecologist Dana Bergstrom has studied one of the wildest places on the planet.
“Antarctica gets into your blood,” she says.
“For somewhere so cold, it really makes your heart warm.”
As a public servant with the Australian Antarctic Division, she operated inside a system where any outside communication about her scientific work was carefully calibrated, crafted and monitored.
But, eventually, that calibration went beyond what Bergstrom thinks can be justified.
“I was gagged,” she says.
Recently retired, Bergstrom is now speaking out about being silenced.
“I went with it, I was a good public servant.
“But it was disheartening to not be able to tell the whole story.”
And she’s not alone. Ecologists and climate scientists have told the ABC of a widespread culture of suppression and self-censorship.
Sometimes it’s insidious, driven by the fear of losing funding or contracts.
Sometimes it’s overt, through active gagging or academic careers being threatened.
All of that for attempting to "speak the truth" about environmental damage, ecosystem collapse and climate change.
And it’s taking a toll, with scientists suffering mental anguish at their research being suppressed instead of being used to help save species on the brink of extinction, to help arrest the rapidly deteriorating state of the natural world.
As one says: “It really impacts you, because how can it not?
“You can't look away.”
From an early age, the natural world captured Bergstrom’s imagination.
Her first trip to Antarctica was like stepping into another world.
“It’s that wildness, the wilderness.
“And it's also the myth of Antarctica.
“It's a place that's put aside for peace and science.”
Amongst the rock and ice, one place stands out in Bergstrom’s memories of visiting the continent — Heard Island.
“It's the wildest place on the planet. It's 4,000 kilometres from anywhere and it's covered in ice.
“It's a place just for animals — humans visit there so rarely — and life goes on.”
But the wonder and awe is turning into a nightmare, as the impacts of climate change move much more rapidly than scientists predicted, or even imagined they could.
“I've seen in my lifetime, a glacier retreat on Heard Island,” Bergstrom says.
“I've seen plants go from healthy to critically endangered in three years.
“It was an ecological surprise. When I first started with climate change, we thought time scales of 50 years or 100 years, but not three.”
Bergstrom likens scientists to soothsayers, carrying the burden of being able to see the future, a vision that is now hurtling much faster towards us.
“It plays a heavy toll on your psyche,” she says.
“It's hard to take because we know what's coming down the track.”
In 2021, after releasing a comprehensive paper that revealed 19 ecosystems were collapsing, she says she was “gagged”.
The groundbreaking report, which garnered international attention, had come from research Bergstrom had started on ecosystem collapse on Macquarie Island.
“It was an idea that had come very much out of Antarctica, we had seen ecosystem collapse,” she says.
“A team of just under 40 world-leading ecologists had put this story together of collapse right across the [Australian] continent and to Antarctica.”
Bergstrom was one of two lead authors and it was her work that led to the paper, but, despite being at the heart of the research, she was unable to be the leading voice in the media.
At six o’clock the night before the paper came out, the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) told her not to speak anymore and to let the researchers outside the division take over.
“It was quite disheartening to suddenly not be able to talk,” she says. “I had been talking to the media in preparation, but suddenly to get a gag order [was hard].”
Bergstrom doesn’t know the reason she was gagged. She speculates it could have been to avoid embarrassment to the minister at the time, or the government department that oversaw the AAD, the then Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.
“It left me with a sadness because I couldn't tell the story about how it generated out of Antarctic science, out of the incredible things that we do with the Antarctic Treaty,” she says.
“What people then focused [on] was the collapse in 19 examples, but what we also had was the story about what to do about it.”
The Australian Antarctic Division didn’t respond to questions from the ABC but said in a statement:
"The AAD actively encourages and facilitates its scientists to communicate about their research and specialist areas, as much as possible."
Bergstrom wonders how many other scientists have been gagged like her; how many other organisations are doing the same thing.
“I think transparency is very important in a democracy and scientists should be able to talk, they shouldn't be stopped if it might cause embarrassment to a government,” she says.
Bergstrom acknowledges that these environmental conversations might be difficult to have with the community, but says the public needs to know what scientists are uncovering.
“Ecosystems are collapsing, our mammals are becoming extinct, there's pollution in our waterways, but it's far better to be able to recognise the change that's happening and then, as a community, anticipate and act with regard to stopping these pressures that scientists are documenting,” she says.
The tight control over scientists within the public service is something former CSIRO climate scientist David Karoly has also experienced.
Since his retirement from the CSIRO last year, he’s spoken publicly about the restrictive culture there and the consequences of self-censorship.
“It's clear that there is a very large cohort of government-employed climate scientists, both in CSIRO as well as in the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), who are not allowed to talk about issues like climate change,” Karoly says.
“Their views, based on their own expertise and their assessments of other science datasets, is being suppressed and is not being allowed to be communicated openly to the media, or to the public, or often is being suppressed in government reports as well.
“And that is completely inappropriate in my view.”
Karoly says the worst example of direct censorship he experienced was as a reviewer on the two-yearly State of the Climate report, published jointly by CSIRO and the BoM.
He says while the reasons were never communicated directly to him, he believes the organisations vetoed agreed text in the report to make it more palatable to the relevant ministers at the time.
“I am certainly aware of where senior management within the Bureau of Meteorology or CSIRO have played final veto roles in suppressing what was agreed documents or material text within the report,” he says.
“It was direct censorship of material that was based on the best available science that was removed.”
Karoly says that while the culture is improving a bit, there is still a very strong filter.
He says that is illustrated by the change in language from earlier State of the Climate reports to that used in the reports for 2020 and 2022.
For the first time, the report sets out a clear warning in its opening statement of the dangers of human-caused climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Karoly says it had nothing to do with the science changing significantly, or even the government changing — but because the scientists had decided to be more assertive in the organisation.
In a statement, the BoM said the use of language in the reports reflected the bureau's "role and capabilities [to] provide Australia with unrestricted public access to authoritative observation, analysis and reporting of climate change status and trends".
"The bureau does not have a role or capability devoted to analysis or formulation of impacts of, or responses to, climate change, which are the responsibility of other agencies."
The CSIRO says, "the report commentary is directly related to the scientific data and analysis drawn as a result".
"CSIRO and the bureau go to great lengths to ensure the strong message of how our climate is changing is conveyed accurately and objectively in the report," a spokesperson said.
Karoly says the suppression and carefully calibrated communication of science is driven by a fear of losing funding from private industry — which includes the fossil fuel industry — or of annoying government.
He believes that has led to CSIRO shifting resources out of climate science — which can upset governments — and into other areas.
The clearest example of this was from 2014 to 2016, when budget cuts to CSIRO led the organisation to cut back massively on its climate research.
"It's much more important that the media and the public are provided with the best available science on climate change, not science filtered by the interests of management," Karoly says.
“That sort of information can best be provided by experts in both weather and climate science, [and] there are limited numbers of those people.”
CSIRO told the ABC it rejected any suggestion its research was influenced by anything other than science.
"CSIRO is dedicated to research that will deliver benefit to Australia," a spokesperson said.
"Collaboration with industry is an important pathway by which our research can deliver economic, environmental and community benefit.
"This includes working with hard-to-abate sectors to decarbonise, supporting the nation’s transition towards net zero."
The federal government said it would never seek to interfere, with Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek saying in a statement: "I respect and admire the important work of our climate and conservation scientists."
'You can't look away'
As an academic, wildlife ecologist Euan Ritchie has had much more freedom to speak about his work, but he’s seen the devastating impact the culture of suppression is having on his peers.
“I haven't personally been gagged from speaking freely and I guess that's a fortunate position that many university academics have,” Ritchie says
“But I guess [that] because of my personality, and also the privileged position that I have, I recognise that I have this freedom to speak. I see it as a duty to speak.”
That sense of duty comes from his love of the natural world, fostered by his mother since he was a little boy.
“[She] would wade into swamps with me and let me catch frogs and pick up dead birds on the side of the road to look at their feathers,” Ritchie recalls.
“My great-grandfather actually helped establish the Mornington Peninsula National Park and so I guess it's almost in the blood, you might say — conservation.”
Like Bergstrom, Ritchie says knowing ecosystems and species intimately and witnessing their decline takes a toll and he finds himself oscillating between anger and sadness.
“It's somewhat akin to members of your family or other things that you might care deeply about and know really well, and then you see them suffering on a daily basis,” he says.
“And in some cases, of course, being basically driven into oblivion, despite the fact that we have all the available resources needed to stop that from happening.
“That's the excruciating, gut-wrenching feeling that you frequently feel as an ecologist and conservation scientist.
“That's led to many people in the field, including myself, to having issues with mental health, and it really impacts you, because how can it not?
“You can't look away.”
In 2020, Ritchie co-authored a study that found ecologists and conservation experts in government, industry and universities were routinely constrained from communicating scientific evidence on threats to the environment.
It documented cases of senior managers or ministers' offices preventing researchers from speaking, as well as cases of self-censorship by scientists, who feared damaging their careers or losing funding.
The research paper dubbed the information blackout “science suppression” and said it “can hide environmentally damaging practices and policies from public scrutiny”.
In the paper, dozens of scientists from government, industry and universities described harrowing experiences of being silenced due to financial or political interests of the organisations they worked for. All of them wrote anonymously.
"They want us to give them politically supportive information, not science."
"It feels terrible to know the truth about impacts to the environment but know you'll never get that truth to the public and that the government doesn't care at all."
"I proposed an article in The Conversation about the impacts of mining … The uni I worked at didn't like the idea as they received funding from [the mining company].”
"After years of observing how broken the system is, not being legally able to speak out becomes harder to deal with."
"By being blocked from reporting on the dodgy dealings of my university with regards to my research and its outcomes, I feel like I'm not doing my job properly."
Ritchie describes the culture of suppression as “Orwellian and very 1984”, referring to George Orwell’s dystopian novel.
“Scientists are too scared to speak out, speak truth to power, and worse yet, they get conditioned to self-censor,” he says.
“The fact that so few people report cases of suppression speaks to how effective the system of suppression is.”
Freedom to speak
Senior principal research scientist David Eldridge is one of those now willing to go on the record — something he only feels able to do after having left his government job.
Eldridge worked in the NSW Department of Planning and Environment for nearly 40 years, and last year was awarded the NSW Premier’s Prize for his contribution to public sector science.
Recently retired, he’s breaking his silence on something that happened to him in 2018.
Eldridge had been asked to present his research on the impacts of feral horses at a conference organised by the Australian Academy of Science.
But just before the seminar, he was told by the department he couldn’t go.
“I was told I couldn't present because, in my abstract, I'd call the animals ‘feral’ instead of ‘wild’,” he says.
“I've been working for 40 years and I know what to say in public and I'm not an idiot.
“I felt demeaned.
“I'm not going to get up there and say that the government's policy on feral horses is misaligned with current science, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to talk about the science.”
Eldridge says that towards the end of his career, scientists in the department were tightly controlled and micromanaged.
“I'm recognised as a fairly reputable person and my science is pretty rigorous. Twenty years ago, or even 25 years ago, I would be in the media all the time,” he says.
“Talking to the press all the time, there were no problems.
“I see my colleagues in the agency now and morale is really rock-bottom. Total control, no trust. Science is a dirty word.
“It's quite sad and I'm hoping it'll change with the new government, but I don't know. Who knows?”
The NSW Department of Environment and Heritage did not respond to the ABC's questions about its workplace culture.
But in a statement, it said Eldridge's paper had not undergone "the final peer review process for the department prior to submission to the conference, so it was unable to be presented at that time".
The state's new minister for climate change, energy, environment and heritage, Penny Sharpe, says the government "deeply values" the scientists and ecologists working across the department and wants "their frank and fearless advice" as the state implements policies to fight climate change.
Evidence no longer enough
The culture of suppression of ecologists and climate scientists is happening at the same time as the threats they are warning of amplify.
That growing urgency leaves many scientists feeling they must move beyond straight communication, towards what some would call advocacy — despite the associated costs.
For Australian National University palaeoclimate scientist Nerilie Abram, being clear and direct with the public about the scientific evidence is a matter of necessity.
“The science is emphatic,” she says.
“And when we’re not clear in communicating the role humans are playing in climate change, it allows people to have doubt.
“We miss the opportunity to then open a conversation about the role humans are playing in this.
“It can only lead to action if we have the discussion about what’s causing it.”
Abram’s research tracks the deep history of the earth's climate, before records began, giving researchers an understanding of the changes in the climate on a much grander scale.
Since beginning her career as a climate scientist, efforts to communicate the science have become an increasingly large part of her role.
But it’s not something she ever thought she would need to be doing as a scientist.
In 2020, she was one of 270 signatories to an open letter from climate scientists to the Australian government, calling for further climate action. She penned an open letter herself to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when he was elected in 2022.
“I still struggle with the idea that the evidence is not enough,” she says.
“For a long time, even within the climate science community, there’s been a feeling that all scientists do is gather evidence, judge it rigorously, publish it, and that’s where our job ends — and to be a good scientist, you don't push into taking that further.”
It’s a step she says has exposed her and her colleagues to hostile commentary and personal attacks, particularly on social media.
It has also led to many moments of “exhaustion” and “frustration”.
But she still clings to a flicker of hope, underscored by the technology that is already available to stop using fossil fuels and the feeling that the public acceptance of climate change has increased in recent years.
And ultimately, she feels the consequences of what she and others in the field are studying are “just too big” to let slide by.
“And so, I just think there’s a moral obligation to not just sit on that information and have it within the scientific realm, with nobody actually using it to take action.”
Glimmers of hope
Abram’s work has taken her to some of the most “magical” places on earth — from the rugged, tropical jungle of Christmas Island to the glistening white snow of Antarctica, where clues of the ancient climate are locked away in coral reefs, ice cores, tree rings and ocean sediments.
It’s by looking for the beauty in nature that she finds the will to keep going.
“I just remind myself of the wonder of the planet that we live on, and that it's worth fighting for, and it's worth being tired to continue that fight,” she says.
It’s the same for Dana Bergstrom — through her grief for the natural world, she finds solace in the glimmers of hope.
“That means you look for things that excite you in the natural world on a daily basis,” she says.
“At the moment, outside my window, I'm watching pardalotes create a nest and I spend a couple of minutes if I see them and look at them and they're beautiful, they've got the most beautiful dots.
“Or I see a seagull, or I see a wallaby, and just spending that moment and actually enjoying the world that we have.
“It makes you want to save it because you see the most beautiful things in the smallest of places.”
Credits
Reporting: Jess Davis and Tyne Logan
Photography: Maren Preuss, Patti Virtue, Dana Bergstrom
Additional photography: Michael Slezak, Lannon Harley, Samantha Shelley, Jennie Mallela
Artwork: Sharon Gordon
Digital Production: Jess Davis
Editor: Rachel Kelly