Anastasia Barashkova/Reuters

A fighter of the Wagner private mercenary group visits a makeshift memorial for Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in St. Petersburg, Russia, Aug. 24, 2023.

The plane crash that killed Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and at least two of his top lieutenants on Wednesday was clearly no accident.

Mr. Prigozhin had many enemies, and Russian state media Thursday were full of speculation about a possible Ukrainian or Western hand in his demise. But it seems likely that the Russian private warlord who staged an open, if short-lived, coup against the Russian military establishment was living on borrowed time.

Though Mr. Prigozhin’s rebellion was quashed, and he and a core of his men banished to Belarus, they remained in the headlines. There was likely a lot of murky, unfinished business between the mercenary leader and the Kremlin.

His death most probably spells the end of the Kremlin’s reliance on freelance military groups, especially in Africa, in favor of direct state control. Earlier this week Mr. Prigozhin issued a militant video manifesto, purportedly shot in Africa, proclaiming that the Wagner force would be actively fighting to make Africa “more free” in the interests of Russia. The prospect of a reviving Wagner is something that would have focused minds in many quarters.

But there is surprise and confusion among Russian analysts over Mr. Prigozhin’s dramatic demise, exactly two months after his abortive uprising.

“The main likelihood is that [Mr. Prigozhin’s assassination] was an operation of Russian siloviki [security forces],” former Kremlin speechwriter-turned-critic Abbas Gallyamov said in a YouTube debate, accessible in Russia, on Thursday. “It is important for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to show all potential conspirators, who might follow in Prigozhin’s footsteps, that it will not pass unnoticed. But on the other hand, Prigozhin had a lot of projects on the go, in Africa, Belarus, Syria. It’s hard to believe that Putin would risk all this. It’s like shooting himself in the foot. But it does seem that’s what happened.”

Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Russian service members inspect wreckage of a private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, Aug. 24, 2023. Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was reportedly one of the 10 people on the jet when it crashed, killing all aboard.

Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, says he believes that external enemies had every motive to kill Mr. Prigozhin, while no one in Russia would have wanted to. Still, he says, “people in Russia are concerned about the circumstances of Prigozhin’s death. They want our top authorities to make clear and transparent decisions, and they don’t understand this situation.”

“There is only one Russian actor in Ukraine now”

People who challenge Kremlin power in Russia have a way of coming to hard and sometimes bizarre ends. Mr. Prigozhin’s death will be added to a list that includes Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, and Boris Nemtsov. Add to that several failed poisonings, such as the attacks on Sergei Skripal and anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny. Few dispute that Mr. Putin is to blame, at least for creating the fractious system of state governance in which he acts as supreme arbiter among various factions, individuals, and interest groups who vie for his favor and often undermine each other.

On the other hand, some analysts argue, the Kremlin has a far more effective machine for sidelining and silencing opponents than anything that headline-grabbing and often botched assassinations could possibly achieve.

Mr. Navalny, who survived at least one poisoning attempt amid a glare of publicity, has been sentenced to decades in prison in Kremlin-controlled courts, and has largely disappeared from Western media discourse. Mr. Navalny recently issued a scathing manifesto from prison that has been widely debated in Russian opposition circles, but has gone almost unnoticed in the Western media. Another example is Boris Kagarlitsky, arguably Russia’s leading left-wing intellectual. He has been in a pretrial detention center in the Arctic region of Komi for months because of his anti-war stance, with few noticing outside of left-wing circles in the West.

Prigozhin Press Service/AP

Yevgeny Prigozhin asks Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to withdraw the remaining Ukrainian forces from Bakhmut to save their lives, from an unspecified location in Ukraine, March 3, 2023. Behind Mr. Prigozhin's Wagner forces, Russia saw one of its few clear victories in the Ukraine war when it took Bakhmut.

There seems little doubt that Mr. Prigozhin’s fall from grace in Moscow began several months ago, even as his large, powerful private army was winning the only clear military victory that Russia has enjoyed in Ukraine so far this year, at Bakhmut. The very existence of such a force, acting outside the control of the Defense Ministry, may have been enabled by President Putin’s desire to fight without placing Russian society on a full war footing. Instead, Russia used Wagner mercenaries, ragtag separatist militias, Chechens, and volunteers to do much of the fighting.

But when Russian forces suffered catastrophic battlefield setbacks a year ago, Mr. Putin ordered a military mobilization and began the process of placing Russia’s economy on a war footing. By last spring, the Russian Defense Ministry had consolidated its control over most of the Ukrainian front line, integrating separatist and other forces into the central chain of command.

Mr. Prigozhin, with a huge mercenary army made up in large part of freed convicts, was an anomaly. His open feud with the Defense Ministry, which he accused of corruption, incompetence, and “criminal mistakes,” was a very public embarrassment for the Kremlin. After Wagner declared victory in Bakhmut in May, Mr. Putin ordered the mercenary force to disband. Mr. Prigozhin’s muddled and abortive revolt followed.

“There is only one Russian actor in Ukraine now, and it’s the Defense Ministry,” says Mr. Markov. “If there are any Wagners still there, they are all under army contracts now.”

But Mr. Markov says he doubts that the Kremlin was involved in Mr. Prigozhin’s death. “I just don’t see what Putin could possibly accomplish by killing Prigozhin, other than a lot of bad publicity,” he says. “No one in Russia needed this.”

Nonetheless, Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert with Carnegie who continues to work in Russia, argues in a draft article that he provided to the Monitor by email that Russian and Soviet secret-police traditions run deep, and Mr. Prigozhin’s removal after his “betrayal” of Mr. Putin was inevitable.

“Extrajudicial killings have become the new normal in Russia,” he writes. “The system built by Putin is designed in such a way that it does not need public executions [as in other autocracies] or official trials [as is usual in democracies]. ... It’s pointless to speculate about whether Putin has strengthened his power as a result of Prigozhin’s business jet disaster. The autocrat remained the top leader after the mutiny, and the winner takes it all.”

The Kremlin’s new focus on Africa

Now, analysts suggest, the front lines in Africa will also be occupied by official forces of the Russian state following the effective destruction of Wagner. The battle for influence in Africa has ceased to be a sideshow in Moscow, and is now a front in what is increasingly seen as a global confrontation between Russia and the West.

French Army/AP/File

Russian mercenaries board a helicopter in northern Mali. The Wagner Group has deployed its personnel to Syria, the Central African Republic, Libya, and Mali.

In the volatile Sahel region, the Russian Defense Ministry has been actively developing a direct presence, says Ivan Loshkariov, an Africa expert with Moscow State University of International Relations, which trains Russian diplomats.

“In West Africa there is growing military cooperation on a state-to-state basis,” he says. “It makes sense. The Wagners can’t sell weapons, train officers, engage in diplomacy. In the Central African Republic, the Ministry of Defense helped to craft the [now failed] Khartoum agreement in 2019. There are Wagners in Mali and Burkina Faso, but official contacts are also increasing. In Niger, Russia is not being asked, and it is not coming.”

Mr. Markov says it’s likely that the Wagner forces who have operated below the radar for years in Africa will at least be placed under new management.

“There is a vacuum now to be filled,” he says. “So maybe the Wagners will get a new owner, one that’s more reliable in the eyes of the Russian government. Or, there will be more official presence. There are strong reasons to increase direct state control in [Russian dealings] in Africa.”

The Republican presidential debate Wednesday night was surprisingly riveting – a chance to assess Donald Trump’s opponents for the 2024 nomination without the distraction of the former president’s outsize persona.

Mr. Trump was absent by choice, and remains the runaway frontrunner for the GOP nomination. What’s more, the former president chose Thursday evening on which to surrender in Atlanta for his latest indictment, an obvious effort to eclipse postmortems on the debate and keep the focus on him.

But the eight Republicans on stage in Milwaukee last night gave voters plenty of fodder for discussion on the future of the GOP – and the country – if not the possibility that Mr. Trump could somehow lose the nomination. More likely, those on stage included potential running mates for Mr. Trump or members of his Cabinet if he regains the Oval Office.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur rising in the polls, was a youthful stand-in for Mr. Trump. Barely old enough to run for president, Mr. Ramaswamy managed to compare himself to both former President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump. An American-born son of Indian immigrants, Mr. Ramaswamy called himself a “skinny guy with a funny last name,” an echo of Mr. Obama’s pitch in 2004.

But with no previous experience in politics and a charismatic personality, Mr. Ramaswamy could also portray himself as a Trump-like figure, bringing a businessperson’s sensibility to governance. He was the most MAGA – ”Make America Great Again” – candidate on stage Wednesday, and thus possibly a contender for Trump vice president or Cabinet member.

Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, was another standout Wednesday night. She articulately framed the GOP’s challenge on abortion, government spending, and support for Ukraine, and as the only woman in the Republican field, stood in for many voters in a key segment of the electorate.

“At the end of the day, you look at the 2024 budget, Republicans asked for $7.4 billion in earmarks. Democrats asked for $2.8 billion,” Ms. Haley said. “So you tell me, who are the big spenders? I think it’s time for an accountant in the White House.”

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Six of the eight Republican presidential contenders indicate that they would support Donald Trump as their party's 2024 White House nominee even if he is convicted of a crime at the first GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee, Aug. 23, 2023.

Maybe “accountant in the White House” isn’t the most compelling message, but Ms. Haley’s point is important. Republicans used to stand for fiscal responsibility, and after the free-spending Trump era, that’s now in doubt. Her call for fiscal prudence speaks to a significant portion of the GOP base, and it’s a message she could build on.

Ms. Haley’s message on abortion – a nuanced take on the reality of women in an unwanted pregnancy – also introduced a fresh perspective in a male-dominated field that could help the GOP.

It’s easy to say that, with no clear winner, Mr. Trump “won” the first Republican debate. But his decision to skip the debate could also be portrayed as a mistake. As a TV performer focused on ratings, he missed the opportunity for a big cable audience, opting instead for an interview with former Fox host Tucker Carlson on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.

But it’s also apparent that Mr. Trump “beat” his top primary opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has struggled with relatability. Governor DeSantis barely smiled during the two-hour debate. And while he didn’t stumble, he also didn’t distinguish himself. Mr. DeSantis needed a breakout moment, and it didn’t happen.

It’s still early, and maybe Mr. DeSantis can step up his game. As a Trump-friendly GOP activist noted by text Thursday morning, “50%+ of Republicans are open to voting for him, which is second behind Trump.”

All of which means, this ain’t over.

In the Christian neighborhood of Issa Nagri lie the ruins of a once thriving church – one of more than a dozen that were targeted after rumors spread that a couple of Christian residents in Jaranwala, Pakistan, had defaced the Holy Quran.

On the morning of Aug. 16, an incensed mob wreaked havoc on the building and the adjoining courtyard. Hundreds of Muslim men knocked down the walls, desecrated the nave, burned copies of the Bible, and set fire to the furniture.

“The violence started in a different neighborhood,” recalls resident Rashid Javed. “When people found out what was happening, they started evacuating the area.” Some hid in fields or factories; others fled to relatives’ homes.

When the mob arrived in Issa Nagri, rioters began to loot the abandoned houses. “They stole the fan in my house,” says Pervez Masih. “My daughter-in-law had 1.5 tola [approximately 18 grams] of jewelry, and they took that as well.”

Non-Muslims make up around 3.5% of Pakistan’s predominantly Sunni Muslim population, and though the country was envisioned by its founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a secular state, it has frequently been accused of majoritarianism. Experts say the state’s policies have allowed intolerance to flourish, creating a powder keg for violence. Now religious minorities and their advocates are demanding accountability, while calling on their fellow citizens to resist division.

Hasan Ali

Issa Nagri resident Rashid Javed stands amid the ruins of his local church, Aug. 21, 2023 in Jaranwala, Pakistan.

“The first thing that needs to happen is for Muslim and Christian leaders to sit together and to dissolve the hatred between these two communities,” says Maulana Imran Qadri, a local faith leader who gave sanctuary to two Christian women and made several attempts to pacify the mob. “The people who committed this act violated the principles of Islam. ... Our Prophet said that it was incumbent upon all Muslims to protect Christian places of worship till the end of time. If you’re willing to give your lives to defend the honor of the Prophet, you must also be willing to defend his teachings.”

More than 160 Muslims have been arrested by police as well as the two Christian men who allegedly committed blasphemy.

Under Pakistan’s penal code, blasphemy is punishable by death. Though no one has ever been executed, vigilante mobs like the one in Jaranwala have murdered several people accused of disrespecting the Islamic faith. Earlier this month, Abdul Rauf, a Muslim English teacher, was gunned down in Turbat after his students accused him of blaspheming in one of his lectures.

“Religious intolerance in Pakistan has witnessed an unfortunate increase due to a combination of factors,” says Malaika Raza, the general secretary for human rights of the Pakistan People’s Party. “The rise of extremist ideologies, weaponization of blasphemy laws, growing income inequalities, political and social unrest have contributed to a climate where differing religious beliefs are met with hostility.”

Many trace the problem back to the late 1970s, when the administration of military dictator Gen. Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq embarked on a policy of Islamization. Having persecuted and hanged a secular political leader in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, General Zia consolidated his grip on power by re-imagining the state according to his interpretation of Islamic teachings. This included the establishment of Shariat courts, the introduction of punishments for immorality, and the promotion of religious conservatism in schools and universities.

Charlotte Greenfield/Reuters

Kanwal (right), a Christian who was displaced along with her family by sectarian violence, comforts her 12-day-old baby boy while taking refuge in a school set up as a temporary shelter, in Jaranwala, Pakistan, Aug. 21, 2023.

According to feminist scholar Farzana Bari, these policies, coupled with the Pakistani state’s support for the Afghan mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, created an “ecosystem of intolerance.”

“During the Cold War era, the state used religiosity to create a jihadi mindset,” she says. “They used madrassas [religious schools] and the education system to create a way of thinking that was both sectarian and fundamentalist.”  

More recently, critics have accused Pakistan’s military establishment of using hard-line religious groups to pressure politicians and human rights activists. 

“Religious bigots are given a free hand and even encouraged by the state to act with impunity,” says left-wing historian Ammar Ali Jan. “The result is that [religion] is becoming the only vehicle for popular mobilization. You protest for human rights, you get arrested immediately. You create an anti-minority mob, and the state vanishes.”

But Murtaza Solangi – who is serving as the minister of information and broadcasting in the caretaker government – affirms caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar’s commitment to tackling religious extremism. 

“The prime minister’s vision is that Pakistan was created due to the fear of a Hindu majoritarian state, to protect the then-Muslim minority groups of India. Anti-majoritarianism is the essence of Pakistan,” he says. The prime minister “said that our state shall stand by the weak, vulnerable, marginalized.”

On Monday, authorities distributed 2 million rupees ($6,800) each to around 100 Christian families whose houses had been attacked last week. A day earlier, the caretaker chief minister of Punjab assured Jaranwala’s Christian community that the government would restore the damaged churches to their original condition. 

However, survivors say financial compensation is not sufficient justice. “We want assurances that this sort of incident will never happen again,” says Christian resident Tehmina David. “Our holy book tells us to forgive those who do not know what they do, but it’s becoming very difficult to live in this version of Pakistan.”

“For Christians like us, this sort of incident is a form of torture,” says Pastor Jamil, a relief worker who came from Karachi to distribute aid. “What’s happening here is like dying every day.” 

If there is any consolation, it is in the strong public response to the events in Jaranwala. Faith leaders and politicians have roundly condemned the attacks and expressed solidarity with the Christian community. On Saturday, International Interfaith Harmony Council President Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi described the violence in Jaranwala as an attack on all Pakistanis. 

“The rioters have shamed us for which I apologize to Christians all over the world including those in Pakistan,” he said. “I was traveling when I saw the images of Christian daughters spending the night in the fields. My eyes filled with tears because I felt that these were ... my own daughters.”

There have also been reports of Muslims in Jaranwala coming to the aid of Christian neighbors. 

“Our Muslim brothers and sisters have stood by us,” says Lubna, a local Christian woman who declined to give her surname. “There were Muslims who came and burned down our homes and Muslims who came to save our lives. Not everyone is the same.”

Saudi Press Agency/AP/File

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, harbors vaulting global ambitions for his country.

It is a truly remarkable turnaround: A Mideast leader vilified just five years ago for the murder and dismemberment of a prominent democracy advocate is now being eagerly courted by Washington and its major Western allies.

And that’s not because Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has done anything to mend fences with his international critics since his security officers allegedly lured Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 and killed him.

Quite the opposite. Shrugging off human rights concerns, he has deployed his country’s vast oil riches in pursuit of his “Vision 2030,” with the aim of building a less oil-dependent economy; making Saudi Arabia a leading player in golf, soccer, and other world sports; and imposing the kingdom not just as a regional force but a major power on the world stage.

MBS, as the crown prince is known, has been playing diplomatic hardball with Washington, which for decades has been Saudi Arabia’s key overseas ally. Last October, for example, in a reflection of the understanding Riyadh has reached with Moscow, the Saudi leader dealt a humiliating rebuff to U.S. President Joe Biden’s plea for increased oil production to stem price rises.

More strategically – and this is one major reason why the United States and other Western countries have been muting their human rights criticisms – he has been forging increasingly close ties with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

All of this has now left the Biden administration at a defining moment in America’s relationships and role in the Middle East – a region, ironically, that successive administrations have been de-emphasizing in order to focus on Washington’s main rival, China.

An immediate issue is a complex new Mideast diplomatic initiative, which has seen senior U.S. officials meeting with the Saudis throughout the summer.

The idea is that the Americans would mediate a historic peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is not just the preeminent Arab power but also home to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites for the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims.

AP

Saudi fans welcome Brazilian soccer star Neymar Jr. at the ceremony marking his new membership of Saudi Al Hilal club, which paid a reported $98 million for him. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman envisions his kingdom as a sporting superpower.

Delicate questions have yet to be worked out between Saudi Arabia and Israel – chiefly the Saudis’ reported insistence that Israel’s far-right government recommit to the idea of an eventual two-state agreement with the Palestinians.

Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that the main key to any deal will be a geopolitical trade-off between the U.S. and the Saudis.

For Washington, it’s primarily about China.

A U.S.-brokered peace would reassert America’s traditional role as the key diplomatic power in the Middle East. That would hold particular significance in the wake of Crown Prince Mohammed’s embrace of Chinese mediation six months ago to finalize a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement.

But MBS is making it clear he wants a quid pro quo. In fact, three of them. The least difficult is his demand for more advanced U.S. weaponry. But he is also pressing for a formal NATO-style security treaty with Washington, and for U.S. approval to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear facilities – both of which Washington has been reluctant to consider in the past.

His wish list underscores the extent to which Saudi Arabia still relies on the U.S. for its security.

But almost week by week, there have been signs that an ever more self-confident MBS could yet walk away from the negotiations if he doesn’t get what he wants.

He is certainly not ruffled by U.S. human rights concerns. Though overseeing genuine social reforms – reining in the once-powerful religious police, starting to expand rights for women, and opening the country to Western culture, even to the blockbuster “Barbie” – he has kept a draconian lid on dissent.

Hundreds have been detained for criticizing government policies, and some have been given decadeslong sentences in jails where Human Rights Watch recently said that “torture and mistreatment remain pervasive.”

Saudi Press Agency/AP/File

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrives in Saudi Arabia for an Arab summit last May. Riyadh is said to be insisting that Israel recommit to a two-state agreement with the Palestinians in return for a peace treaty.

This week, a new report from Human Rights Watch documented “widespread and systematic” killing by Saudi troops of Ethiopian migrants trying to cross the country’s southern border with Yemen.

Yet on the diplomatic stage, MBS was recently welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron. A visit to Britain is reportedly set for this fall.

This month, he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a conference attended by delegates from dozens of countries, including the U.S. and China.

A few days later, it was reported that Riyadh is seeking to join Britain, Italy, and Japan in a consortium to build next-generation fighter jets.

And on Thursday, the BRICS group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – which Beijing has been trying to expand so as to create a more effective counterweight to U.S. influence – announced that Saudi Arabia would be one of six new members.

None of this necessarily means the crown prince will succeed in making his Vision 2030 a reality. But at age 37, with no visible challenge at home, he clearly expects to be a political force for decades to come.

And one thing seems clear for now.

A leader whom Mr. Biden, as a presidential candidate, once termed an international “pariah” in the wake of the Khashoggi killing, is a pariah no more.

If Kim Sager-Fradkin didn’t have to write a grant proposal, she’d be spending her afternoon on the trail of a killer. 

The biologist leads a team that’s researching cougars in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. (The big cat is also referred to as a puma or a mountain lion.) Today, the team is tracking a cougar named James. It suspects he recently hunted an animal in a nearby forest. 

“Visiting cougar kill sites is really fun and like being sort of a forensic scientist,” says Ms. Sager-Fradkin. 

It’s tempting to call her a CSI – cougar scene investigator – but her formal title is wildlife program manager for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. She’s overseeing the Olympic Cougar Project in partnership with Panthera, a nonprofit that protects species of big cats, and five other Native American tribes. They’ve pooled their talents and resources to help an apex predator that has become effectively imprisoned in the westernmost part of Washington. 

The region’s cougars are penned inside a geographical island roughly shaped like a square. Three sides are bordered by the ocean and bays. To the south there’s the expansive Columbia River as well as Interstate 5. The barriers on all four sides collectively form a de facto fence. Unable to easily connect with other big cats in the Pacific Northwest, cougars in the Olympic Peninsula are inbreeding. The lack of genetic diversity poses health challenges for them, scientists say. By collecting data on the big cats, the Olympic Cougar Project is bolstering the case for constructing a wildlife overpass over I-5 so that the species is less confined.

“Humans love wildlife stories, and humans love wildlife movements,” says biologist Jim Williams, author of “Path of the Puma: The Remarkable Resilience of the Mountain Lion.” “What’s really neat about this project is it’s going to create information that will be translated through story that will keep humans excited and caring about the species.” 

Inside a conference room at the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s Natural Resources Department, Ms. Sager-Fradkin and fellow biologist Dave Manson swap stories about their favorite cougars. They both have affection for Bramble, a mother of multiple litters who once survived being hit by a car going 55 mph. She also managed to discard the GPS collar they’d put on her. 

Mark Elbroch/Panthera

Members of the Olympic Cougar Project, including Kim Sager-Fradkin (standing, at left) and Vanessa Castle (standing, at right), and the Administration for Native Americans oversee the sedation and GPS collar fitting for a male cougar in Washington state.

“She’s feisty,” marvels Ms. Sager-Fradkin. “She outsmarts us all the time. We can’t get a collar on her again. We’ve tried.”

When Ms. Sager-Fradkin began working for the tribe in 2007, her primary role was to plan sustainable subsistence hunting and fishing for current and future generations. A year later, she initiated a small-scale study of cougars in the region. She called in cougar expert Mark Elbroch. In 2018, they expanded the scope and scale, incorporating the five other tribes in the region and adopting the Olympic Cougar Project name. 

“The tribes on the peninsula aren’t always working together on a lot of things,” says Ms. Sager-Fradkin, adding that there are sometimes disagreements over issues such as hunting jurisdictions. “So it’s really amazing that we’ve all come together and are working on a big project like this.” 

To get all the partners on board, she had to get them to see the big picture.

In the field 

On a June afternoon, Mr. Manson heads out to conduct fieldwork while his boss writes the grant proposal. 

He parks his SUV on a dirt road, picks up a hand-held GPS unit, and plunges into a forest. Surefooted and nimble, the biologist clambers over fallen tree trunks and uneven terrain. The few shards of sunlight that pierce the leaf canopy cast glitter-ball shapes on the bracken. GPS signals indicate that James, who is collared, has been spending a lot of time in this particular spot. 

It doesn’t take long for Mr. Manson to find what untrained eyes would miss – the burial site of a fawn. The cougar covered it up with sticks and branches. The biologist conjectures that a scavenger ate the rest of the remains. “I’m guessing a bear,” he says, doing his best to ignore mosquitoes swarming around him. 

The cougars are considered an “umbrella species” because so many other creatures in the ecosystem depend on them. “Where there are frequent kills, the grass is literally more nutrient rich,” explains Ms. Sager-Fradkin. “All the way up to the bears and eagles and everything else. ... A lot of other animals are getting food from cougar kills.”

It was this fact that helped her persuade the region’s tribes that it was in their common interest to study the feline carnivore. 

Jesse Major/Peninsula Daily News/Sound Publishing

Team members (left to right) Cameron Macias, Kim Sager-Fradkin, and Mark Elbroch investigate an elk killed by a cougar named Apollo.

For his part, Dr. Elbroch, director of the puma program at Panthera, adds that Ms. Sager-Fradkin used her natural skill of engaging with people to build a community. “What was so essential to seeing this project succeed was that network,” he says during a Zoom interview. “Without it, it was a nonstarter.”

“Wildlife all is intertwined”

Working in concert, the Skokomish, Makah, Quinault, Jamestown S’Klallam, and Lower Elwha Klallam tribes have created a grid consisting of 550 cameras. Artificial intelligence catalogs animals photographed in the peninsula – including bobcats, bears, coyotes, deer, and elk – and helps estimate their populations. Research technicians, such as Lower Elwha Klallam tribe member Vanessa Castle, analyze the patterns of 127 individual cougars. There’s also the less glamorous task of analyzing animal scat. 

“A lot of our ancestral knowledge was lost,” says Ms. Castle, who praises how Ms. Sager-Fradkin has mentored her and other employees in the project. “So we’re having to relearn those things. Like how wildlife all is intertwined with each other. ... I had no idea the role that mountain lions played in the system as a whole.”

The cougar is still a relatively unknown species. The cats can be found in 28 countries across the Americas. “This species is fiercely independent,” says Dr. Elbroch. “Agile, strong, curious, but incredibly cautious. They’re, of course, masters of invisibility.”

The tagged cougars aren’t, however, hidden to the satellites that track them. The Olympic Cougar Project has been able to document numerous examples of how individual cats have roamed hundreds miles in unsuccessful bids to find a way out of the region. 

“They’re coming up with some really interesting information, which doesn’t surprise me because this species is so adaptable,” says biologist Maurice Hornocker, author of the memoir “Cougars on the Cliff: One Man’s Pioneering Quest To Understand the Mythical Mountain Lion.” 

“They can live on the Olympic Peninsula,” he says, “and they can live in Death Valley. They can even live in Los Angeles.” 

Dr. Elbroch says conservation groups are in talks with Washington state about two potential options for a wildlife bridge or underpass on I-5.

“The first thing that is needed is to protect the habitat on either side, because you can’t spend all the money on a wildlife bridge and then end up with a Walmart parking lot right on one side,” says Ms. Sager-Fradkin. 

The Olympic Cougar Project is not just liberating the big cats, she adds, but also creating a sustainable ecosystem for the tribes for the next seven generations.

“By protecting and understanding habitats used by cougars, we are protecting and understanding habitats used by a lot of other animals,” she says. “It’s big-picture conservation.” 

“We care for something in common,” she says. “Everybody’s invested. I don’t think any of us view this as just a job.”

Reuters

Researchers work in the laboratory of the cultivated meat company CellX in Shanghai, China, Aug. 9.

China’s history over the last half-century has been mainly about this: how much freedom the Chinese Communist Party would allow its citizens – from speech to private investment to a couple’s choice on the number of children. Now, with the Chinese economy in rapid decline, the party has begun to actually push freedom on a particular group: researchers in basic science.

Their creativity and curiosity – which require the freedom to share, challenge, and even fail – will be key to achieving the kind of breakthroughs that can boost economic productivity and help China get out of its slump. The world economy may depend on this rising bit of freedom under a one-party dictatorship.

“Without a free and open sci-tech management system, no amount of money is enough to make stunning scientific breakthroughs,” declared a recent article on the Beijing-based news website Caixin Global. “On China’s journey to pursue the ‘endless frontier’ of science and technology, academic freedom and openness become the bedrock.”

In March, control over official spending on basic research was shifted from a government agency – known for bureaucratic rigidity and rules – to a new party-managed body that may allow scientists to set priorities on their research. The party has elevated leaders with science backgrounds to high positions and opened the door for foreign investors to set up research labs. In a recent speech, Bi Jingquan, executive vice chair of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, emphasized that originality in science requires freedom of exploration.

China’s decadeslong playbook of imitating and assimilating foreign research and making small innovations on those major inventions may be nearing an end. “Once Chinese scientists reach the technological frontier, they must adjust their strategy to engage in cutting-edge and future-defining research,” writes Australian scholar Marina Yue Zhang in East Asia Forum. Dr. Zhang co-wrote the recent book “Demystifying China’s Innovation Machine.”

Two years ago, party leader Xi Jinping called for scientists to have more “autonomy” as China tries to achieve self-reliance in technology. Now Chinese scientists are seeing more leeway in their work. That taste of freedom may lift the world’s second-largest economy. Yet like a good discovery from a lab, it could also open thoughts of freedom among all Chinese.