Carolyn Kaster/AP

President Trump waves as he walks with first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron Trump, across the South Lawn to the White House in Washington on Sunday, June 11, 2017, when his wife and son officially moved into the White House.

This could be another big week for President Trump. He faces a series of important legal and political events that could powerfully affect one way or another a presidency rocked by last Thursday’s dramatic public testimony from ex-FBI Director James Comey.

The context is crucial: Time is beginning to work against the White House. The July 4 congressional recess is approaching fast, and the GOP has yet to muscle big legislative wins for Mr. Trump through Congress. Meanwhile, members can see the outskirts of the 2018 mid-term elections looming on the horizon. Republican leaders are worried that if the president can’t reverse a slow slide in public opinion, they’ll lose the House.

Trump himself may see July 4 as a crucial break point. There are reports the president has told Chief of Staff Reince Priebus he has until the holiday to get the White House staff straightened out and end internal bickering – or else he’ll be fired.

Perhaps Washington’s biggest event over the next few days will be Tuesday’s testimony by Attorney General Jeff Sessions before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – the same panel that heard from Mr. Comey.

Attorney General Sessions’s testimony will be public. That means that on live TV he’ll be asked to respond to a number of key questions raised by Comey’s testimony.

Sessions was involved in Comey’s firing, for instance. Why get rid of the former FBI chief? Trump has said it was due to the Russia investigation. Is that true? If so, why did Sessions take part? He’s recused himself from Justice Department matters dealing with the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Comey testified that he’d asked Sessions to intervene and act as a barrier between himself and the president, to maintain FBI independence. How did Sessions respond to that? Comey told the Senate panel that Sessions said nothing when the ex-FBI Director said to never leave him alone with Trump again. Is that so? (Sessions’ spokesman has denied this anecdote.)

Finally, Comey hinted to senators that there was some classified information bearing on Sessions’s recusal decision. Did the attorney general have further, unacknowledged meetings with Russian officials?

Sessions could undermine Comey’s public image with a forceful appearance. Trump has said Comey lied. If Sessions says the same thing, it could bolster his boss’s pushback against the former FBI head.

But the stakes are high, for Sessions as well as Comey (and Trump). Comey’s testimony was lengthy and detailed, and may be backed up by his contemporaneous memos and conversations with other Justice officials. It’s one thing for Sessions to defend the White House. It’s another thing to mislead Congress under oath.

Lawsuit filed

Against this background, the White House this week must deal with further legal challenges to perceived ethical breaches by the president. In particular, Trump’s lawyers now need to respond to a lawsuit filed Monday by attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia which alleges Trump has violated the Constitution by taking in millions of dollars in payments and other recompense from foreign governments since taking office.

At issue are the Constitution’s foreign and domestic emoluments clauses. In essence, they forbid high US officials from receiving benefits from foreign nations, lest they be lured to sell out America’s national interests.

The Maryland/DC lawsuit charges that Trump has not fully separated himself from his businesses, and foreign payments to his hotels and golf courses amount to such emoluments.

Trump has already defended himself against similar lawsuits filed by private groups by arguing that market-rate payments for ongoing businesses don’t qualify as, in essence, bribes.

But if a federal judge allows the lawsuit to continue, the political and legal damage could be considerable. Trump’s tax returns would be subject to legal discovery by the Democratic Maryland and DC attorneys general. Some Democrats, such as former Obama ethics lawyer Norm Eisen, feel that Trump is highly vulnerable to continued legal attacks on his relationship with Trump Inc. This lawsuit could validate this approach – or indicate that it’s an empty threat.

Travel ban on display – again

Meanwhile, this could be a big week for the president’s proposed travel ban.

Trump ordered the original ban on Jan. 27, his first week in the Oval Office. It was blocked by federal courts, as was a revised, narrower version.

On Monday the ban’s legal struggles were in full view again, as a second federal appeals court, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, rejected Trump’s effort to limit travel from a number of predominantly Muslim countries.

But soon the Supreme Court may be involved in this legal action. High court justices could decide as soon as this week whether to overrule the lower courts and allow the ban to take effect on a temporary basis, as well as whether to rule on the ban’s constitutional status in general. 

The Trump team would likely trumpet even a temporary imposition of the ban as a big win for the administration’s approach. The stakes would be high, however: if the Supreme Court also rules the ban as unconstitutionally focused on religion, Trump would suffer an ultimate defeat on one of his signature issues from the 2016 campaign.

From pink hat-wearing protesters to former FBI Director James Comey, President Trump has accrued plenty of challengers in his first four months in office – but perhaps none has been as effective as the federal courts.

The judiciary is a key cog in America’s checks-and-balances system, and a significant question mark loomed over how the institution would respond to such an unorthodox and unpredictable character in the White House. And ever since Judge James Robart in Washington became the first federal judge to block one of Mr. Trump’s policies nationwide – in that case, his first travel ban executive order – federal courts around the country have overwhelmingly done the same.

But as the losses have mounted for his administration, particularly in liberal-leaning courts, some have begun to wonder if the hype and fear surrounding his policies have led the judiciary to treat him unfairly.

For almost a century, presidents have enjoyed a “presumption of regularity” that, barring evidence to the contrary, they always properly discharge their official duties.

Perhaps for the first time in history, the question of whether a president is entitled to that presumption is being seriously debated. And should it vote to take up a challenge to Trump’s revised travel ban order, which restricts the entry of immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries, the Supreme Court would be poised to issue a major judgment on the question.

“What the court does here will signal how the judiciary should react to Trump” in the long-term, says Josh Blackman, an associate professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. “It’s not going to be constrained to this specific case.”

Courts have blocked Trump on other policies, including his executive order on sanctuary cities. But the travel ban executive order is where claims of unfair treatment toward the president have focused. On Monday, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit handed the White House another legal defeat – becoming the latest appeals court to uphold an order blocking the ban from taking effect.

In recent arguments before the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit over the second travel ban – revised after courts blocked the original version – Judge Paul Niemeyer asked the lawyer opposing the government if an identical order would be considered constitutional had it been signed by a president not named “Trump.” After dancing around the question twice, the lawyer admitted, “in that case it could be constitutional.”

The exchange helped Judge Niemeyer drive home the point in his dissent that in continuing to block the order, which never mentions “Muslims” or “Islam,” the court “adopts a new rule of law that uses campaign statements to recast the plain, unambiguous, and religiously neutral text of an executive order.”

Instead, Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall urged the 4th Circuit to grant Trump the “presumption of regularity” as a reason for the judges to not look beyond the neutral (and perhaps constitutional) plain text of the order.

“A ‘presumption of regularity’ requires reading [executive orders] in a way that is not most hostile to the president, but would render the actions lawful,” said Mr. Wall, in one of at least four references to the doctrine, which the US Supreme Court created in a 1926 case involving a lawsuit over a domestic monopoly of chemical industries. As part of their decision in the case, the justices wrote at the time that in authorizing an executive order, the president “is presumed to have known and acted in light of the material facts.... Such orders are supported by a presumption of regularity, and [due to] the basis of fact on which they rest, will not be reviewed by the courts.”

The lower courts, for the most part, have ignored that presumption when it comes to the travel ban. Among their most prominent justifications for doing so is that while the order is neutral on its face, statements made by Trump and some of his associates – both before and after he took office – suggest there may be discriminatory intent behind the order.

Most recently, Trump let forth a series of tweets last week criticizing his own Justice Department for revising the original order to a “watered down” version, and criticizing the courts for being “slow and political.” The 9th Circuit cited those tweets in its unanimous ruling on Monday and stated that the administration had not made its case strongly enough for denying 180 million people entry into the country.

Previously, the president had said in an interview that the original order would prioritize Christians. Statements by senior adviser Stephen Miller, former adviser Rudolph Giuliani, and other proxies also have also been cited in lower court decisions.

'Trump-only' decisions?

Court rulings premised on such statements are, in the eyes of some, overreaching and “Trump-only” decisions.

The 4th Circuit “refuses to apply the traditional deference to the president and Congress in immigration affairs because of Trump’s statements,” John Yoo, a Berkeley law professor who served in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, told the Washington Examiner. “There is no doubt that this is a Trump-only decision.”

The rulings are “Trump-only” decisions only in the sense that no other president has made statements as legally compromising as the president has, critics counter.

“This is not about being Trump-specific, it’s about being motive-specific,” says Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.

Specifically, a central challenge to the travel ban is a pretextual discrimination claim: that the order, while facially neutral, would have a discriminatory impact on Muslims.

“There’s a general principle here against pretextual discrimination that the Supreme Court has applied in lots of previous cases,” Professor Somin adds. “It’s simply false to claim that the courts are somehow picking on Trump in a way they wouldn’t pick on another president who did the same thing.”

Supreme Court decisions are by definition precedent-setting, and the justices will be acutely aware that their decision will long outlive Trump’s presidency. Thus, experts say, they will be careful about doing anything to trim the broad, congressionally-mandated discretion the president has in immigration and national security affairs.

But a ruling against Trump doesn’t necessarily have to mean a narrowing of executive power on these issues, according to Peter Spiro, a professor at Temple University Law School.

“If the Court rules against Trump, this will be an important explanation,” he wrote in an email to the Monitor. “They can rule against this president knowing that the ruling is unlikely to apply to any future president, assuming the improbability of future presidents who continually undermine their own cases with tweets and the like.”

Steven Schwinn, a professor at the John Marshall School of Law in Chicago, suggests such a decision could be helpful in drawing a bright line for future presidents.

“Not only might the court think other presidents wouldn’t behave that way, but then you’ve also got a ruling that instructs future presidents not to behave this way,” he adds.

On the flip side, if the court ruled in Trump’s favor, he thinks that may “invite future candidates to make wild and anti-religious statements and statements in support of a policy they later write to be facially neutral.”

Supreme Court sets 'very high bar'

It is far from certain, however, that the Supreme Court will follow the lower courts in ruling against Trump.

The Supreme Court has set “a very high bar for looking beyond a facially neutral policy” in other areas of the law, Professor Schwinn says, particularly when it comes to racial discrimination.

Furthermore, the high court has – until recently, in some cases – been comfortable giving broad deference to the White House.

Yet the White House has never been occupied by someone who has behaved like Trump, says Professor Blackman.

“Under the law, President Trump wins. Under the law, President Obama, President Clinton, President Bush would all win,” he adds. “But President Trump is his own worst enemy, truly so.”

“When the Supreme Court does something, it lasts for generations,” he continues. “I sincerely hope that the justices view this case in the normal course of order – what the government’s called the ‘presumption of regularity’ – but President Trump seems to be trying to undercut that at every possible juncture.”

Tasnim News Agency/Reuters

Members of the Iranian civil defense run to the site of an attack on the Iranian parliament in central Tehran, Iran, on June 7, 2017.

Manchester. Nigeria. Baghdad. Kabul. London Bridge. Tehran. And Marawi, in the Philippines, among many other targets…

The news headlines about recent bloody attacks conducted by the so-called Islamic State, or inspired by it, give the impression that the ISIS brand of global jihad is ever-expanding and still dynamic.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when ISIS traditionally ramps up such high-profile attacks, is a little more than half over, and has demonstrated the jihadists’ continued global reach.

But two other datelines tell a much different story: of an inescapable, two-year decline in ISIS’s aspirations for its self-declared territorial state. Today ISIS fighters are clinging to their last toeholds in Mosul, Iraq’s second city, where the jihadists declared an Islamic caliphate in June 2014. And last week US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces launched the much-anticipated offensive against the caliphate’s self-declared capital in Raqqa, in northern Syria.

So what is the overriding trend with ISIS, which is seeking to transform its failing promise of utopian Islamic rule into a prime motivator of attacks worldwide, with weapons sometimes as simple as kitchen knives?

Analysts warn that shrinking territory does not translate into defeat for ISIS, much less victory over it.

“ISIS is at the same time a solid, a liquid, and a gas, and can move between these forms as and when it needs to,” says Shiraz Maher, deputy director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College London.

“The idea that ISIS is coming to the end, that this is the beginning of the end, is completely incorrect.”

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Where is ISIS rising?

In a bid to ensure its own relevance, even as its physical state disintegrates, ISIS has launched attacks far afield. In Manchester, England, a suicide bomber killed 22 people at a concert May 22. And on June 3 in London, three men killed eight people in a brief rampage with a van and knives.

In Afghanistan, a small ISIS threat to the central government has long been dismissed as marginal, compared with that posed by the Taliban. But its increasing presence was felt May 31 when a truck bomb ripped through the center of Kabul, killing more than 150.

In the Philippines, a long history of Muslim opposition to the predominantly Christian government has morphed into a potent ISIS cell. For three weeks now, Philippine soldiers have battled ISIS fighters holding between 500 to 1,000 civilians hostage in the city of Marawi. Scores of US Special Forces troops are officially confirmed to be aiding the fight.

The fight in the Philippines highlights a challenge that opponents of ISIS face around the world, analysts say: even physical elimination of the jihadists is not enough. 

Airstrikes and martial law “will not get at the roots of radicalization: poor governance, a dysfunctional legal system, and endemic poverty” in the Philippines, writes Sidney Jones, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta, Indonesia, in The New York Times. “Too often strong-arm tactics only breed more fighters – and fighters with a desire for revenge.”

Where is ISIS falling?

Virtually gone are polished ISIS propaganda videos that portrayed an Islamic paradise, replete with the “justice” of ceremonial beheadings and the cage burnings of “infidel” enemies. Those videos once energized Islamist recruits to flood into Syria and Iraq from around the world, but have now dwindled as ISIS focuses on war – and on a different future.

A recent ICSR analysis found that ISIS portrayals of utopian life in mid-2015 accounted for 53 percent of propaganda output, while war-related material was 39 percent. By February this year – as Iraqi forces began the fight for western Mosul – fully 80 percent was devoted to war, and just 14 percent was utopia-themed.

“In spite of its terrorist infamy abroad, the Islamic State is suffering at home,” noted Charlie Winter of ICSR in the March analysis. “As its territorial clout, leadership, and manpower depleted over the course of 2016 and early 2017, [ISIS] was forced to recalibrate the strategic parameters of its propaganda narrative.”

ISIS has been preparing its followers for territorial erosion, casting it as a normal, centuries-old historical fluctuation.

The latest issue of the ISIS online magazine, Rumiyah (Rome), said losses would only prompt ISIS into “rekindling the flames of war,” and vowed to “recapture every inch of territory” and expand.

Significantly, even as ISIS loses ground in Mosul, it pulled off a suicide attack in the Iraqi city of Karbala, site of a holy Shiite shrine, killing 30 people on June 9.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Where are ISIS’s newest conquests?

Long on the ISIS to-do list has been a strike against Iran, to avenge Iran’s anti-ISIS efforts in Iraq and Syria. On June 7, ISIS attackers killed 17 people with strikes against two key symbols of the Islamic Republic: the parliament in Tehran, and the mausoleum of Iran’s 1979 revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The six attackers were Iranian citizens armed with assault rifles, grenades, and suicide vests, who officials say had fought with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The direct ISIS link was clear: The group claimed responsibility even as the killing spree unfolded, gave updates, and even posted video filmed by the attackers while the stand-off continued.

The ISIS presence was no surprise to Iran, whose officials in 2015 claimed to have captured ISIS cells and thwarted bomb plots on a weekly basis. Officials say 45 “terrorist cells” were dismantled in the 12 months up to March 2017, and 25 more were dismantled in just the 2-1/2 months since then.

“Terrorists fumbling with firecrackers won’t impact [the] Iranian nation’s willpower,” tweeted the official account of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran on Monday claimed to have killed the leader of the ISIS cell behind the attack in a cross-border raid, and four other suspects the day before, inside Iran.

What are ISIS’s biggest challenges?

The breadth and scale of the ISIS surge of attacks abroad allows the jihadist franchise to project continued relevance, even without its unique state.

But even as ISIS shrivels in Iraq and Syria, the chaos it thrived on and tapped into for local support – especially in Sunni regions of Iraq – is likely to continue. Analysts warn that sectarian, ethnic, and tribal differences are likely to flare anew in the post-caliphate world.

“There are really deep-seated social issues here, that will continue to give longevity to groups like ISIS,” says Mr. Maher of ICSR, author of “Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea.”

ISIS propaganda about the Iraqi forces recapturing Mosul, for example, played on local fears of Shiite militias and their brutality.

“People are so worried, and ISIS has really exploited that and capitalized on that,” says Maher. “It’s good for ISIS when there is social instability and tension in these countries. And Iraq is a million miles away from being a cohesive, stable society right now.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Landfill Manager Thomas Cue looks out over Massachusetts' largest landfill, in Southbridge, Mass. The landfill is expected to reach capacity within the next year, but on June 13, 2017, Southbridge residents will vote on potentially expanding the landfill.

John Jordan’s three-bedroom home in Charlton, Mass., was once appraised to be worth $300,000. But a real estate agent recently told Mr. Jordan that his home was worth whatever a buyer was willing to pay. In other words, the realtor said, $0.

Less than a mile away in neighboring Southbridge, what was just a municipal landfill when Jordan moved here in 2001 has grown into the state’s largest trash depository. Over the years, it took in as much as 1,500 tons of waste a day – a lot of it from Boston.

“It wasn’t anything like that when we moved in,” says Jordan, pointing toward the landfill from his kitchen, where Poland Spring water jugs are stacked in the corner. “I never would have moved here if I knew it was going to get this big.”

Now, Casella Waste Systems, the regional company that manages the site, says the landfill is expected to reach capacity within the next year and wants to increase the size of the landfill. Some residents blame the landfill for odors and truck traffic, as well as contaminated drinking water – which led two environmental law groups to file suit Friday against Casella. But the landfill has also been an important source of income for Southbridge: Over the past 14 years, Casella has paid the town more than $36 million.

On June 13, Southbridge citizens will vote on whether they want the town council to enter negotiations with Casella to extend the size of the landfill.

“This city needs a fair shot to make a decision about its future,” says landfill manager Thomas Cue, who says the company negotiated a “great deal” for Southbridge, with the highest host fee rate in New England ($6 to $7 a ton) and free trash pickup for residents until 2027. “How bad would it be without Casella?”

Across New England, landfills are disproportionately located in low-income communities where there is cheap land and residents hold little political sway. If Southbridge residents vote against expansion, they will add their weight to two other Massachusetts towns who won improbable victories against proposed landfill expansions – Saugus, earlier this year, and Hardwick in 2007. A third victory could help encourage other towns in the Northeast facing similar moves.

Casella has spent more than $75,000 on everything from consulting to postage in a bid to persuade residents to support the expansion, according to a report John Casella filed to the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance on June 1. Meanwhile, the Committee Against Landfill Expansion has spent just under $3,500 on mailings, flyers, lawn signs, and related costs, according to a similar form filed to the same office.

“If any community can do the David and Goliath fight and go against a company who is trying to buy them, that’s amazing,” says Kirstie Pecci, an environmental lawyer with the Conservation Law Foundation and a resident of nearby Sturbridge. “That is the best part of the human spirit and it makes me feel like there’s hope.”

A pattern of landfills in poor towns

Nationwide, poor communities tend to bear the brunt of environmental problems, including landfills, industrial waste sites, and other hazardous disposal facilities.

Southbridge, home to 17,000 residents, is ranked as Massachusetts’ 10th-poorest town. Among adults 25 years and older, only 16 percent of Southbridge residents have a college education.

“This would never happen in Wellesley,” says Sturbridge Board of Health Chairman Linda Cocalis, referring to one of Boston’s wealthiest suburbs. “Never.”

It's a pattern that is apparent throughout much of New England.

New Hampshire has six active landfills: one, in Success, N.H., population zero, and five others in areas with poverty rates above the state average. 

Likewise, more than 60 percent of Maine’s landfills are located in poor communities and its largest is located in Old Town, where the poverty rate is 27 percent – double the state average. And Vermont’s only active landfill is in Coventry, a community with a poverty rate of 20.2 percent, also roughly double the state average.

Private waste companies are looking to be “economically efficient and politically expedient,” says Daniel Faber, director of Northeastern University’s Environmental Justice Research Collaborative (NEJRC) in Boston. This means choosing host communities with lower education levels and less time, money, and resources to mobilize themselves, he says. “They are less likely to offer opposition.”

Resident: 'It's not all about the money'

Casella tries to be a good neighbor, says Mr. Cue, while driving in his Ford pick-up around the landfill’s dirt roads.

The landfill closes early on hot days to avoid excessive smells, and Casella prohibits trash trucks from driving through the town during early morning hours. They also capture methane emissions from the landfill and transfer it back into the local energy grid.

“Many of the people are just afraid about what a landfill is,” he says, explaining how Casella captures the leachate – essentially the liquid that oozes out from the bottom of a trash heap – in tanks and then sends it to a wastewater treatment plant. “This is a scientific business.”

While other cities in Massachusetts put their trash on the curb, says local resident Pamela Paquin, Southbridge has the opportunity to manage its waste responsibly, and become an environmental leader. Southbridge could make even more money off of the landfill by separating recyclable materials that could be resold.

“You just need the mind-set to see a point of conflict as an opportunity to create something useful,” says Ms. Paquin.

But at a May 22 town council meeting in Southbridge, all who spoke had questions or concerns about the potential landfill expansion. Southbridge mother Erin Lapriore invited the town councilors to come to her home at 7:00 a.m. as she waits for the school bus with her children while the trash trucks speed past. 

“It’s not all about the money, it’s the quality of life,” said Southbridge resident Kevin Buxton. “What are we leaving our children?”

Ms. Pecci says zero-waste programs could deal with as much as 80 percent of the waste currently being generated. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh recently announced his intention to implement such a program.

'We know what we can be again'

Back in Jordan's kitchen, he says he never really considered himself an environmentalist kind of guy. But he says when chemicals from the landfill contaminated the wells in his neighborhood, he founded the local activist group CleanWells.org.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

John Jordan, a homeowner in Charlton, Mass. and founder of CleanWells.org, studies contamination results from wells in his neighborhood. Mr. Jordan blames Southbridge landfill for the water contamination.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has not blamed Casella for the contamination, but the DEP has been unable to find any other possible sources. As a result, Casella supplies 33 homes in Charlton with bottled water. Only 15 are mandated by the state, notes Cue. The rest, including Jordan’s home, are “courtesy.” 

But despite Casella’s paychecks and donations, the landfill has brought down the self-esteem of the entire area says Town Councillor Kristin Auclair, a lifelong Southbridge resident.

“We need to rid ourselves of this baggage to fully move forward,” says Ms. Auclair, who was inspired to run for public office because of the landfill. “Our identity should not be the landfill... Those of us who are still here and still fighting see the potential, and know what we can be again.”

Mark Baker/AP

Two shag chicks sit on a nest with their mother at Zealandia in Wellington, New Zealand, on March 22. People across New Zealand are embracing an environmental goal so ambitious it’s been compared to putting a man on the moon: ridding the entire nation of every last stoat, possum, and rat.

New Zealanders are deeply connected to their land, and the menagerie of peculiar critters that have evolved on the nation's hundreds of islands. But in recent years, Kiwis, as residents call themselves, have watched with dismay as their country has become ground zero of Earth’s extinction crisis. With fierce determination, however, they have also become the tip of the spear in fighting it.

Home to one of the highest proportions of threatened species in the world, New Zealand's wildlife is in a state of crisis. The first global analysis of established alien species, published Monday, ranked New Zealand, along with Hawaii and Indonesia, as one of the globe's three hotspot regions for invasive species. With nearly a third of the country’s endemic species at risk, including its talismanic kiwi bird, the nation has taken on a seemingly insurmountable challenge: total elimination of three invasive predators from its two main islands by the year 2050. The endeavor has earned the moniker “New Zealand’s Apollo program.”

Non-native predators are some of the biggest threats to New Zealand wildlife. Scientists estimate that invasive stoats, rats, and possums kill 25 million native birds in the country every year. That threat looms large for New Zealanders, who view nature as “almost like our church,” says Nicola Toki, Threatened Species Ambassador for the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC).

“Our nature is who we are, and we can’t describe ourselves as Kiwis to the rest of the world if we don’t have any left,” she says.

The country is already a world leader in invasive species management, but an eradication on the scale of the Predator-Free New Zealand 2050 (PFNZ) initiative would be unprecedented. The science to achieve it doesn’t exist yet, and it would likely unearth social and logistical challenges that invasive species managers have never seen or even contemplated before.

Yet the potential benefits, for New Zealand and the entire planet, could be immense. The planet is currently experiencing what many scientists believe to be the sixth mass extinction event in the past 500 million years, with about a quarter of all the planet’s known species on track to go extinct by 2050. If PFNZ is successful, experts say, it could unlock new techniques and technologies to prevent tens of thousands of species around the world from being wiped out.

And if anyone can achieve it, the Kiwis can, says Daniel Simberloff, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and an expert in invasive species.

“Of all the nations in the world, they have been certainly the most aggressive in dealing with this problem,” he adds, especially on New Zealand’s smaller islands. “But the idea of eradicating introduced predators from [the main islands], that’s a quantum leap.”

Nick Perry/AP

Workers assemble resetting rat traps at the Goodnature factory in Wellington, New Zealand.

The world is watching

The rest of the world is eagerly watching New Zealand and the PFNZ initiative.

Simply perfecting eradications on uninhabited islands – which New Zealand is already close to doing – would alone have a huge impact on global conservation, says Heath Packard, the director of communications at Island Conservation, a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based nonprofit dedicated to preventing extinctions by removing invasive species from islands around the world.

Island Conservation is currently struggling with its own challenges of carrying out an eradication on an inhabited island. The organization has been working for seven years to plan and fundraise for a rat eradication on Floreana Island in the Galápagos.

“We are continually reaching more complex projects,” Mr. Packard adds. “The ambitious vision that New Zealand has could be a major stepping stone for us to be considering places that are much bigger and grander in scale.”

Forty percent of endangered species worldwide live on, or rely on, islands, and invasive species are the leading cause of extinctions on islands. Since 1500, 80 percent of all recorded extinctions have been on islands.

But Floreana illustrates the scale of New Zealand’s challenge – and its potential benefits. The island is only 67 square miles, with a permanent population of 140 people, and Island Conservation’s eradication project would likely cost at least $7 million. New Zealand’s largest offshore island, Rakiura Island, by comparison, is 10 times as large, with almost three times as many people.

“The prospect of what New Zealand is trying to achieve” lends hope, says Packard, that “there may be tools and techniques in place to consider reversing the extinction trajectory in a place like Hawaii,” which is home to about a quarter of all endangered species in the United States.

How small mammals became such a big problem 

For about 80 million uninterrupted years, native wildlife evolved on the islands of New Zealand without the threat of ground-based predators. The Maori didn’t settle the islands until about 1350, while European explorers didn’t arrive until 1769. With the arrival of humans, other invasive mammals weren’t far behind.

And for animals that evolved to only look to the sky for threats, the results have been predictably devastating.

For native wildlife, the “best thing to do in face of avian predators is to be camouflaged and to freeze,” says the DOC’s Dr. Toki. “If you camouflage and freeze and a ferret’s chasing you, you don’t stand chance because those things use smell.”

Rats arrived in the late 1700s, while New Zealanders brought possums in the 1830s to establish a fur trade that still exists today. Stoats were introduced in the 1880s to help control rabbits and hares. Since the mid-1800s there have been 20 bird extinctions in the country. 

New Zealanders began to take invasive predators seriously in the 1970s, and the country since has become the world’s leading expert on the issue. Invasive predators have been eradicated on 117 of the country’s offshore islands, and the country develops traps and bait systems used around the world. That success has been replicated globally, with about 1,000 offshore islands now cleared of invasive predators. 

“We’re good at killing small furry animals,” says Toki. “If you look at any pest eradication program around the world, it will generally have a Kiwi scientist running it or a Kiwi helicopter pilot [helping] it.” 

The most stubborn invasive species 

Eradicating invasive predators from small uninhabited islands is one thing, but Phil Cowan – an ecologist at Landcare Research, a government-funded research organization – laughs off the suggestion that PFNZ will involve simply scaling up that approach.

“Almost all the eradications of pests from islands, both in New Zealand and globally, have been done on uninhabited islands,” he says, “so trying to do operations like this in areas where people are living is going to require a whole lot of discussion with people who live in these areas to work out what will be acceptable and what will not.” 

Ironically, the species in New Zealand that conservationists there expect to be toughest to deal with isn’t rats, possums, or stoats – but humans. And for conservationists around the world, how the New Zealand public is convinced to not only support the predator-free goal, but to actively participate as well, may be the most valuable lesson to come out of the enterprise. 

Developing the technology needed to kill the tens of millions of predatory mammals in the country will be difficult, but it will be a matter of when, not if, experts say. Social acceptance and participation, they say, is a much more complex challenge. 

There are simple, traditional concerns, such as the use of toxins. But there are knottier problems as well. The possum fur trade is reportedly worth $130 million a year, with some trappers pulling in six figures annually. Some Kiwis worry that revitalizing native species could create new ecological and social problems. Others aren’t enamored with the idea that more native wildlife could mean more tourism.

Rakiura Island (or Stewart Island) is a living example of some of the challenges mainland New Zealand may have to contend with in the coming decades.

The island – a few miles off the southern coast of New Zealand’s Southern Island – is mostly a national park, but it has one town with a permanent population of 400 people, one school, one general store, and one 15-mile road that connects it all. The DOC and the Morgan Foundation, a philanthropic organization, have been funding a predator-free effort there for several years, but some of the locals – particularly those who enjoy the harsh, sub-Antarctic seclusion of the island – have expressed reservations. 

“Traditionally we’ve been a fishing community, so the move to tourism is not always welcomed by people,” says Sandy King, who has lived in the town, Oban, for 50 years. “There are lots of strange faces around. They fill up the shop.”

Some residents oppose the construction of predator-proof fencing because they would feel “like they’re being fenced in,” Ms. King says. Others are worried about the use of toxins or the possibility of reinvasions if eradication is successful.

Wild ambassadors

The most powerful ambassadors in the quest to bring a wary public along with the idea may not be conservationists, but the animals they are trying to save. There may be no better example of this than Wellington, New Zealand's capital.

In 1999 a 556-acre ecosanctuary, surrounded by a 5.3-mile predator-proof fence, opened on the edge of the Wellington city suburbs. Eighteen species of native wildlife have been reintroduced into the Zealandia sanctuary, six of which have been absent from the New Zealand mainland for more than a century. A large native parrot called the Kākā, for example, has grown from a population of six to more than 800.

But as impressive as Zealandia has been in reviving endangered native species, perhaps even more impressive is the effect it’s been having on Wellingtonians.

As species, particularly birds like the Kākā, have regenerated inside the sanctuary, they’ve journeyed outside the fence into the city itself, leading to a “proximity” or “halo” effect. As more people physically see the animals, they become more interested in protecting them, including through helping eradicate invasive predators.

Geoff Simmons, who lives a 20-minute drive from Zealandia, has witnessed this firsthand.

“Twenty years ago people would have known the Tui as a native bird, and that would have been about it,” says Mr. Simmons, an economist at the Morgan Foundation. “Now people talk about Kākā, Saddleback, Hihi. All these birds they never knew existed are appearing in their back yards, and once people have something they don’t want to lose it.”

Reuters

China's President Xi Jinping arrives for a session of the National People's Congress in Beijing March 12.

As nations from Russia to Brazil try to deal with popular resentment against corruption, they should take note of China’s anti-corruption campaign. Since 2012, the ruling Communist Party has relied heavily on the fear of punishment in a campaign to curb widespread graft. More than 100,000 party or government officials have been disciplined or jailed. Yet as Chinese officials admit, fear is not enough.

Last year, the number of prosecutions for corruption in China began to decline. This is seen as a sign that the party wants to move from purifying its 87 million members to what President Xi Jinping calls improving the “working style” of the party. To achieve clean governance, more Chinese officials will need to embrace qualities such as honesty, transparency, and service.

Mr. Xi has often said corruption is the “greatest threat” to China and its need for reform of a slowing economy, which is now the world’s second largest. Yet beyond preventing corruption by individuals, the next step for the party is to reform entire departments. And nothing is more basic to the official handling of the economy than honesty in economic statistics.

In telling change of course on June 11, the party’s internal anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), issued a criticism of fake data from two provinces, Jilin and Inner Mongolia. In the past, such fingering of falsified statistics came from the government’s Bureau of Statistics. But the party is now taking the lead in ensuring truthful data.

CCDI has also begun to turn its attention to the finance sector, hoping to bring about better governance to an industry critical to economic reform – and to attracting foreign investment. The powerful CCDI leader, Wang Qishan, hopes China can turn a corner from merely deterring wrongdoing with fear to encouraging officials to do the right thing by their own impetus.

If China can achieve this transition in moral development, it will be a genuine cultural revolution. And perhaps a model for other countries still struggling with corruption.