Elephants In The Room
The outlook for nature in Trump 2.0. And, announcing Ulysses!
🪸 We’re Superorganism, the first VC for startups that benefit biodiversity. Each month we publish thoughts from the frontline, company updates, and a round-up of new happenings in the nature tech world.
Time to address the elephants in the room.
In November, a Trump-led Republican Party swept all branches of government. With control of the Presidency, the Senate, the House, and the Judiciary, it's extremely likely we'll be seeing some changes on both climate and conservation policy in the US.
The climate and the biodiversity crises have no political affiliation. This month, we’re diving into what a second Trump presidency might mean for nature, conservation, and the emerging nature tech landscape.
But first…
Introducing Ulysses
In possibly the most important thing to happen all November, Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering came out of stealth and launched publicly.
Ulysses is developing autonomous robots for marine ecosystem restoration. Their mission is to rewild the ocean to remove gigatons of carbon, starting with seagrass, an ecosystem powerhouse for both carbon and biodiversity. Taking up around 0.1% of ocean surface area, seagrass beds contribute to around 10% of ocean carbon storage, while also contributing to fisheries, ecosystem health, and coastal erosion prevention.
But seagrass restoration is bottlenecked by humans. Restoration usually involves either wading in intertidal muck or diving in the shallows to plant seed sprigs. This manual process results in high-cost operations, limiting projects to a few hectares.
Enter Ulysses. With their self-directed seed harvesting and planting technologies, Ulysses promises to up-end the unit economics of seagrass restoration, which would in turn unlock and accelerate the growing $200B market for nature restoration.
We’ve been working with Ulysses in stealth for the past year alongside Lowercarbon and Regen Ventures. Founded by a team of autonomy experts, ocean enthusiasts, and a Formula F1 team lead, Ulysses has been rapidly iterating through novel hardware designs. In only their first year, they’ve field deployed in Australia, formed partnerships with Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, and scaled to $1M in revenue.
To learn more about how Ulysses is revolutionizing ocean industry, check out their website, or listen to this great podcast with Astranis’s Christian Keil. They’re also hiring!
And now: nature in a Trump presidency.
The Same, Only Different
There’s little debate that the first Trump administration’s policies were net-negative for nature and climate. While there were some policies that improved funding for public access and national parks (the Great American Outdoors Act), these were dwarfed by sweeping climate and land policy deregulation.
The first Trump administration led to the US leaving the Paris Agreement, permitting oil and coal companies to drill on protected federal land and waters, the approval of major oil pipelines like Keystone XL, and more. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, a 19.3 million acres wildlife area roughly the size of South Carolina, was opened to oil and gas leasing. The Energy and Environment page of achievements within the Trump White House reads heavy on energy, light on environment.
What’s less-discussed is that the Biden administration quietly approved 50% more oil and gas permits than the Trump administration did, including the Willow Project, the largest proposed oil drilling project on America’s public lands. While Biden kept promises to reinstate national monuments like Bears Ears, revoke Keystone XL, and prevent leasing in the ANWR, net domestic oil production increased under his tenure.
Many of the 100+ cuts to environmental regulations of the first Trump administration, though, were undone by the Biden administration. Realistically, a returning Trump admin with a full mandate won’t let those reversals stand, and there’s little reason to believe that this administration will have a materially different vision for nature than the first go-round. In fact, we might expect more reforms, particularly taking hatchets to the EPA and the IRA (though with most IRA money directed toward red states, a full repeal appears unlikely).
Still, climate progress continues. From a peak in 2006-07, US emissions have been dropping consistently. The IRA has made coal 99% more expensive than renewables. Meanwhile, long a contentious topic for environmentalists, nuclear has become a right-wing talking point for energy resilience, especially as America faces surging energy demand due to AI.
New Actors On Stage
Also unlike last time, Elon Musk is heavily involved in this new administration, and while his climate views have publicly softened in the past 5 years, he remains a pro-climate accelerationist and one of the key voices Trump may listen to on climate change. From FT:
Donald Trump, long an implacable opponent of electric vehicles, has recently changed his tune. “I’m for electric cars,” he said at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, in August, adding with exemplary candour: “I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly, so I have no choice.”
Another influence is RFK Jr and the “Make America Healthy Again” banner, which could lead to a clash between the US health and agriculture departments. Agricultural land is over 50% of land cover in the US, and so is one of the highest-leverage places to focus on for biodiversity through land, pesticide, soil, water, and air quality.
While the MAHA agenda “prioritizes regenerative agriculture, preserving natural habitats, and eliminating toxins from our food, water, and air,” Project 2025’s stated agricultural objectives are to “remove the U.S. from any association with U.N. and other efforts to push sustainable-development schemes connected to food production.” It remains to be seen exactly how these competing pressures resolve.
30 by 30… or maybe 40
What 1.5°C is to the climate movement, “30x30” is to biodiversity.
Unlike climate’s CO2e, biodiversity is difficult to boil down to a unit to align focus and global action. “30x30” has emerged as a simple and clear rallying cry: protect 30% of land and 30% of oceans by 2030.
Of course it depends which land and which ocean, but as targets go, the wholesale protection of habitat is a good proxy for biodiversity. 30x30 has been adopted by countries, NGOs, and as of 2022, the Global Biodiversity Framework. There’s lots more to stopping the extinction crisis than protected areas, but it’s an important piece of the puzzle.
Biden was hailed as a pro-conservation president, setting 30x30 as a goal with the America The Beautiful initiative and executive order in his first months in office. Per Heatmap:
When Biden took office in 2021, roughly 293 million acres of the United States fell under the protection of various federal laws, about 12% of his 30% goal. Since then, Biden has set aside another 1%, or 37 million acres, for protection, including about 1.6 million acres of new monuments under the Antiquities Act. So far, Biden has protected slightly less land than President Bill Clinton did in his first term.
Meanwhile, during his tenure, Trump rolled back protections for a net 13.5 million acres of protected land, including the largest de-listing of public lands in US history, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante (2M+ acres, about the size of Puerto Rico).
Between the two admins, the US added 23.5 million acres of protected land and ocean.
This is likely to become a political football. We expect the new administration to remove 30x30 as a goal, and to roll back protection of many Biden designated areas, starting with Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. How much further into the 23.5M they will go remains to be seen, but America’s chances of hitting 30x30 are effectively gone.
Nature, Tech, and Nature Tech
How else might land, species, and ecosystems fare under Trump 2.0?
Beyond the removal of 30x30, we can read tea leaves from the first administration as well as Project 2025, the full text of which is here. In particular, the sections on the Dept. of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Interior lay out a roadmap for what we might expect under more conservative leadership:
More use of land for oil, gas, and coal. This has impacts for land clearing during construction, pumping and mining, and potentially pollution from spills or leakage into water bodies.
Deregulation for EIAs. Requirements for environmental impact assessments (EIAs) will likely be loosened. This could affect habitat preservation, as the presence of certain species may no longer be sufficient to prevent new development.
Shrinking the EPA. If heavily pared down, there will likely be rollbacks of some of the clean water and air requirements from the last few decades, and it’s reasonable to expect that water and air pollution could go up in kind.
Scrutiny for the Endangered Species Act. Project 2025 specifically calls for removing protections from gray wolves and Yellowstone grizzlies, and for preventing species like the greater sage grouse from stopping land clearing for development.
On the other hand, many in the tech (and even some in the climate) sectors are excited for what this administration could do for entrepreneurship.
Permitting reform. Created under Nixon in response to an America where rivers were catching fire, environmental laws like NEPA have resulted in years-long review processes that can balloon budgets and timelines. Even progressive advocates have bemoaned how these policies have delayed and prevented energy infrastructure, dense housing, public transit, and wildfire prevention.
All of the above energy. Nuclear has long been an environmental boogeyman, but with the focus on energy independence in the new administration, there is a renewed openness to nuclear. This could drive new abundant energy resources and an (eventual) decline in fossil fuel dependence.
FTC about-face. Under Biden, current FTC chair Lina Kahn made breaking up and preventing monopolies a signature issue. Trump’s new FTC pick, Andrew Ferguson, plans to undo many of Kahn’s initiatives, in order to recreate a more deal-friendly administration. With more mergers and acquisitions, especially if public markets continue to grow and see more IPOs, we may see a sudden burst of liquidity for private markets to thaw VC winter.
DOGE. The US has decades of regulations and compounding bureaucratic practices, which both sides have argued are stifling economic progress. Even some left-leaning advocates are cautiously optimistic for the chance to re-evaluate government machinery with fresh eyes, a mandate for reform, and a willingness to use technology.
American dynamism. There’s a “build baby build” mood in the air, and the new administration has shown particular interest in AI, robotics, space tech, defense tech, and biotech. The American dynamism movement with techno-futurist top notes may accelerate progress for deeptech and its applications.
For a nascent category like nature tech, that puts us somewhere in the middle. While there will likely be headwinds for biodiversity monitoring and land management tools, we’ve always seen the opportunity set in nature tech as larger than that. Technologies that are simply better businesses through cost, speed, service, scale, quality, or any other lever will continue to do well, simple as that.
Understatement of the month: we’re in for a roller coaster. Our advice for startups going into the next 4 years:
Shore up your supply chain. We don’t know what the next 4 years has in store for international trade, China, or tariffs, but we know there will be shake-ups. Your supply chain is now the most potentially fragile part of your business. Now is the time to look at supplier redundancy, potential for onshoring, and simplifying BOMs.
Become policy-agnostic. Major Biden-era policies are likely to go under the scalpel. Take a sober look at your business: how dependent are you, your customers, your suppliers, your partners on policies like the IRA? X-ray your entire value chain and think hard on where pressure points could appear.
One eye on exits. Changes in the FTC and lowering of the federal interest rate could lead companies to rush for an exit, unsure whether these 4 years represent a reprieve or the new normal. With climate VCs at near-record dry powder highs, 2025 could mark the beginning of the VC market renewal.
Think global. Other geographies still have the opportunity, the desire, and the regulatory pressure to lead on climate and nature. If you’ve been thinking about international expansion, now may be the time to explore.
America The Beautiful
The Republican Party of history were champions of nature. National Parks, the Endangered Species Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency all came into existence under Republican leadership. Many staunch conservatives today maintain significant support and respect for the outdoors, wildlife, and for clean air and water. Ducks Unlimited for example has worked to preserve wetlands and migratory birds, and the majority right-leaning hunters, fishers, and ranchers have a deep respect for the wild (albeit very different opinions on how to manage it).
We’re hopeful that nature can be a middle ground where the left and right can meet to make progress. Whatever happens, though, the reality is that nature tech just became much more vital.
If 2024 proves anything like 2016, we expect a groundswell of talent and energy into the climate and nature spaces. Trump pulling out of the Paris Accords may have done more to galvanize the Cleantech 2.0 wave than anything else. In a world with slowed federal action on nature and climate, progress will necessarily fall more to the private sector.
Remember: the best way to predict the future is to create it. If you’re concerned about the future of the water, air, climate, ocean, and ecosystems in a Republican-led government, then get out there and do something about it. And if you’re excited, same deal. Get building.
But What Do We Know
We’re not macro-economists, geopolitical strategists, or policy analysts. We’re VCs, and maybe (just maybe) we shouldn’t have expert opinions on everything. So to close out, here are some takes we liked from other smart people:
This article by Noahpinion with 10 (begrudging) optimistic Trump scenarios.
This teardown of climate tech in Trump 2.0 by Climate Tech VC / Sightline Climate.
The Everything Bubble, which is not what you think, by Not Boring.
What Trump’s Victory Means for Climate, Bloomberg.
Bringing Elon to a knife fight, by Jennifer Pahlka.
Notes From The Field
Updates from our portfolio companies, and from us at Superorganism
🛰️ Array Labs won a $1.25M Air Force grant, and CEO Andrew Peterson sat down with the Minds Behind Maps podcast for a technical deep dive.
🌐 Cecil announced their partnership with Chloris Geospatial and had its first teams accessing Planet's 3.5 m forest carbon monitoring dataset. Get in touch to get access to the platform today.
🌰 Foray’s technology to transform plant cells into forests was covered in Forbes, and they were welcomed into Elemental Impact’s newest cohort.
🐍 Inversa was featured in Vogue: “Can Exotic Leathers Ever Be Ethical? Gabriela Hearst Says Yes” highlighting their exciting partnership with the American fashion designer.
🍫 Planet A Foods raised its $30M Series B to scale production of its cocoa-free ChoViva from 2,000 to 15,000 tons per year. Sweeter still, the company had a great month of new product collaboration launches, including Lidl Popcorn, ja! Peanut Snacks at Rewe and Chocolà Peanut Snacks at Penny, Nougat Wichtel, and Chocolate Stella Bernrain.
🦅 Spoor received more coverage of its finding that in two years of detecting bird species and movements near an offshore wind farm, not a single collision occurred.
🌿 Sway announced its Sway Innovation Coalition with Alex Crane, Faherty, Florence, and Prana, and was selected alongside fellow seaweed startup Umaro for $1.5M in funding through the DOE’s MACRO program. Sway is also hiring a senior materials engineer.
🪸 As for us at Superorganism in November…
Silverstrand got Kevin’s advice for founders in its piece What All Nature Positive Founders Need to Know
Tom was featured in the Ma Earth podcast: From Mass Extinctions to Sea Slugs.
We traveled to Helsinki, London, Copenhagen, Big Sur, Iceland, and Amsterdam.
Want to join a Superorganism company? Check out our Jobs Board, with 28 active jobs currently available. Start your nature tech career today!
Ecosystem News
🦧 Conservation
Saving ‘old and wise’ animals vital for species’ survival, say scientists | The Guardian
Nativeness as Gradient: Towards a More Complete Value Assessment of Species in a Rapidly Changing World | Springer Nature Link
The critical role of coral reef restoration in a changing world | Nature
Prehistoric Bird Believed to Be Extinct Returns to the Wild | GreekReporter.com
Biofouling & Invasive Species | Silverstrand
How Are the World’s Trees Doing? A New Assessment Has Answers. | NY Times
How Rethinking ‘What Is a Forest’ Can Result in More Effective Conservation | WRI
People do care about extinct species, but not for long - new study | DownToEarth
Artificial intelligence correctly classifies developmental stages of monarch caterpillars enabling better conservation through the use of community science photographs | Scientific Reports
🗺️ Regions
California conservation efforts have raised Lake Mead by 16-feet in two years, regulators say | Nevada Current
How a Colombian City Cooled Dramatically in Just Three Years | Reasons to be Cheerful
Braving sharks and hordes of urchins, Bay Area scientists are growing kelp one forest at a time | East Bay Times
JPMorgan finalised a $1B debt-for-nature swap for El Salvador.
Bumblebee population increases 116 times over in 'remarkable' Scotland rewilding project | Scotsman
'Alalā, the Hawaiian crow that went extinct in the wild decades ago, released on Maui | Hawai'i Public Radio
First Known Bird Extinction From Mainland Europe, North Africa, And West Asia Declared | IFLScience
🌩️ Climate
The U.S. Is Building an Early Warning System to Detect Geoengineering | The New York Times
The Race to Save Glacial Ice Records Before They Melt Away | Yale E360
Climate change identified as main driver of worsening drought in the Western United States | LA Times
We are in danger of forgetting what the climate crisis means: extinction | The Guardian
Arctic tundra is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs, US agency says | The Guardian
🤖 Tech
A new golden age of discovery: Seizing the AI for Science opportunity | Google
Meet Willow, our state-of-the-art quantum chip | Google
$7 Bluetooth Beacons, Linked to Apple's FindMy Network, Could Revolutionize Urban Animal Research | Hackster.io
As Ocean Waters Warm, a Race to Breed Heat-Resistant Coral | Yale E360
Satellite firm Planet’s ‘biodiversity subscription’ aims to make tech accessible | Mongabay
🏈 US Politics
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Releases National Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Research Strategy | OSTP
Biden-Harris Administration, NOAA Make $99 Million Available for Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund | NOAA Fisheries
The USDA announced up to $7.7B of funding to support conservation practices on working lands and $1.5B in investments for 92 conservation and climate-smart agriculture projects.
America’s favorite (and least favorite) federal agencies | Sherwood News
Can Support for Clean Energy Withstand Changing Political Winds? | Yale E360
Hochul vetoes animal crossing bill | News10
🗳️ US Election
Trump Won. Now the Fight Over the Clean Energy Economy Begins. | Heatmap News
As Trump Wins Election, ESG Fund Bosses Urged to Get Lawyers on Speed-Dial | Bloomberg
With Ready Orders and an Energy Czar, Trump Plots Pivot to Fossil Fuels | NY Times
Thune Is Big Fan of Wind Power, an Energy Source Trump Hates | Bloomberg
Trump’s science-denying fanatics are bad enough. Yet even our climate ‘solutions’ are now the stuff of total delusion | George Monbiot | The Guardian
Trump Vowed to Kill Biden’s Climate Law. Republicans Say Not So Fast. | WSJ
Lee Zeldin didn’t ask to head EPA. Here’s why Trump picked him. | The Guardian
🌐 Global Policy
Alarm grows over ‘disturbing’ lack of progress to save nature at Cop16 | The Guardian
U.N. plastic pollution treaty talks collapse in Busan, South Korea | The Washington Post
Biden Administration Takes 'Morally Bankrupt' Climate Position at ICJ | Common Dreams
DSI Framework Secured at COP16, Paving the Way for Equitable Benefit-Sharing | Bezos Earth Fund
Why the Delay in EUDR Enforcement Is an Ideal Moment to Take Action | Amini
🤝 Friends of the Fund
The Founder Fellowship, a program via Newlab, supports historically underrepresented founders who are building climate and/or deep tech startups in NYC. Apps are currently open and the deadline is Dec 6th.
Conservation X Labs is hiring for a Conservation Technology Business Development Associate
Labstart is recruiting for a LabStart Associate and an Operations Manager. Applications accepted until December 10th.
💭 Stories we liked
This Rum Protects the Ocean: the world’s first conservation distillery is open for business. | Southern Fried Science
We Finally Know How Birds Can See Earth's Magnetic Field | Forbes
Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia | Nature
Fentanyl found in Gulf of Mexico dolphins, new study says | Chron
A new installation lets you hear extinct and endangered animal sounds, thanks to Björk | NPR
Thank You!
Thanks for reading and for supporting Superorganism, and a special thank you to everyone who went above and beyond this month with introductions, diligence, advice, and help to founders:
Piper Bonacquist, Peter Bryant, Luke Carpenter, Patti Chu, Sunny Fleming, Joseph Fridman, Naz Goksu, John Hardman, Leslie Harwell, Jonathan Hed, Till Hoelzer, Taylor Holshouser, Jonathan Hursh, Nare Janvelyan, AJ Kumar, Heidi Lindvall, Susan Mac Cormac, Anil Maguru, Ivan Markman, Tom McQuillen, Jahed Momand, Javier Monterosso, Tom O'Keefe, Tariq El Haj Omar, Serena Oppenheim, Josh Parrish, Sierra Peterson, Sabin Ray, Jake Reznick, Mitch Rubin, Guy Schory, Jonas Skattum Svegaarden, Ben Trombley, Yihana Von Ritter, Tom Walker, Evan Weaver, Gracie White, Spencer Wolfe.