Leading scientists have issued a stark warning that vital environmental data is being deliberately erased or manipulated following political upheavals, threatening the world’s ability to track biodiversity loss and climate change.
A special report published in BioScience reveals that in early 2025, several major environmental datasets maintained by national agencies were “abruptly taken offline” or replaced with “curated versions” in countries that had recently experienced electoral shifts. The authors describe these actions as a “political orchestration” designed to downplay human responsibility for ecological crises.
“This alarming erosion of transparency transforms once-robust scientific knowledge into misleading or outright false narratives,” the report states. “When long-term data becomes a target, our ability to understand — and respond to — global environmental change is profoundly compromised”.
Biological invasions
The report argues that the deletion of long-term data is not only a scientific loss but also an economic risk. Healthy ecosystems provide services estimated at US$125 trillion per year, while biological invasions alone cost the global economy approximately US$1.288 trillion between 1970 and 2017.
Without data spanning decades, identifying these threats becomes impossible. The authors note that reliable population trends typically require minimum study periods of 10 to 20 years.
They point to the collapse of global whale populations in the 20th century as a key example. Had long-term monitoring been in place, “early warning signals” such as changes in body size could have been detected up to 40 years before the population crash. Similarly, current long-term studies on albatrosses are revealing complex evolutionary responses to industrial fishing that short-term snapshots miss entirely.
Erosion of transparency
To counter this “erosion of transparency”, the researchers highlight France’s CNRS SEE-LIFE program as a blueprint for institutional resilience.
The initiative provides recurring funding and institutional recognition to 79 long-term ecological studies, protecting them from the volatility of short-term grant cycles. The program supports monitoring across 28 research centres and involves over 100 international collaborators, tracking more than 500 species using datasets spanning 10 to over 100 years.
By securing these “unique scientific heritages” in dedicated repositories, the program ensures that data remains accessible regardless of political winds. The authors urge other nations to adopt similar frameworks, warning that in an era of disinformation, independent, long-term science is “our best defence”.
