African Wild Dogs Are Paying for Your Electric Vehicle

The pursuit of renewable energy gets sold as a moral imperative, a necessity that outweighs all other considerations. It's a narrative that appeals to our desire to do good, to leave the world better than we found it. But when you follow three brothers and their ill-fated sisters across 340 miles of Zambian terrain, you start to see what that narrative costs and who pays it. The demand for copper, driven by electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels, is tearing through the landscapes that species like the African wild dog need to survive. We know this. The people making the decisions know this. It's just not a conversation they're willing to have, because having it would mean admitting the green transition has victims.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists African wild dogs as endangered. That word means we've decided to document their disappearance rather than stop it. Roughly 6,600 adults remain. The brothers' journey started in Kafue National Park in western Zambia and ended in the Luangwa valley in the east, eight months and 340 miles of hunters, vehicles, and the copper-belt mining region, where the ground is worth more than what lives on it. Don't trust the coffee the mining companies pour when they talk about responsible extraction. The companies pulling copper out of that region don't pause for wildlife trying to cross it. They don't have to.

The sisters didn't make it. The brothers did, barely. And the demand driving the machinery that killed the corridor they needed is still climbing.