Collecting wild mushrooms, berries and other foods from public forests and parks has become so popular that state and federal agencies are imposing more restrictions.Beneath a row of fir trees River Shannon Aloia walks along a remote dirt road on national forest land, scanning the ground for morels.“Find it,” she commands her dog, Jasper.The search pays off for Ms. Aloia, an avid forager: She spies a solitary honey-colored morel, and plucks it.“Foraging changes your relationship with nature,” she said. “You are out in the woods using all of your senses. And it’s gratifying when you can identify something and take it home and prepare it for your family.”Spring in the northern hemisphere is a favorite time of year for foragers like Ms. Aloia. It is especially popular in the American West because of the millions of acres of publicly owned lands that give foragers the freedom to roam and harvest to their liking.Once the snow melts, a variety of fungi begin popping their heads above ground — oyster mushrooms, king boletes and several types of morels. A profusion of flowers and other edible and medicinal plants, including wild onions and asparagus, fiddleheads, nettles and miner’s lettuce, are also highly sought.Come summer, the berry crop beckons in the Rocky Mountain West: chokecherries, wild strawberries and plump, purple huckleberries. In late summer and fall, other wild crops emerge, such as piñon or pine nuts in the Southwest and mushrooms like chicken of the woods, shaggy manes and the prized matsutake.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

PABLO, Mont. — In the mountain streams of southern British Columbia and northern Montana, a rugged part of the world, fish with misshapen skulls and twisted spines have been caught over the years.Many scientists attribute the malformed creatures and declines in certain fish populations to five enormous open-pit coal mines that interrupt this wild landscape of dense forest flush with grizzly bears and wolves.For decades, these mines owned by Teck Resources, a multinational mining company based in Canada, have been the subject of environmental concerns because of chemicals like selenium, a mining waste product, that leach into mountain rivers flowing through Indigenous land and across the border into U.S. waterways.Selenium is a naturally occurring chemical important in the environment as a trace element. But selenium pollution has long been recognized as an extremely hazardous byproduct of coal mining. In larger concentrations, the chemical accumulates in the eggs and reproductive organs of fish and birds, and can cause a variety of detrimental effects, including lowered reproduction, deformities and death. The risk to human health from eating contaminated fish is not well understood.Teck has repeatedly disputed various state and federal regulatory standards over what should be considered as safe levels of selenium in waterways. And those limits differ for lakes and rivers and between countries, complicating oversight efforts.The latest case involves Montana and Idaho, where environmentalists’ lawsuits are waging a campaign over levels set by Montana for Lake Koocanusa in 2020. Its state standard is being challenged as a debate rages over cross-border pollution of the waterways, part of the war among regulators, tribal nations and scientists against Teck over whether the levels pose a hazard to aquatic life.In a letter in the journal Science in 2020, a group of scientists warned of the cross-boundary pollution from Canadian mines and criticized what they and others attributed to a lack of regulatory oversight. “Mine assessment and permitting do not require incorporation of transparent, independent and peer-reviewed science,” they wrote. In Canada, they said, “Teck’s Elk Valley permit allows contaminant discharges up to 65 times above scientifically established protective thresholds for fish.”They urged the Canadian and U.S. governments to begin bilateral negotiations, through the International Joint Commission, although previous appeals had gone unheeded.In March, President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada pledged to reach an agreement by this summer to reduce and mitigate the water pollution in the Elk-Kootenay watershed. U.S. and Canadian officials say they are engaged in talks to set up a bilateral process in the coming months.On the Montana standard, Teck has challenged the state’s levels, which are more restrictive than U.S. standards. “Significant, ongoing monitoring confirms selenium concentrations in the Koocanusa Reservoir are safe, not increasing and have been stable since 2012 and do not pose a risk to aquatic or human health,” said Chris Stannell, a spokesman for Teck.Fish without gills or with misshapen spines caught on the Elk River in Montana. Experts say the culprit is open-pit mining, which spills pollutants into waterways. Jim Dunnigan/Montana Fish & WildlifeIn its annual report for 2022, the company said it was continuing “to engage with U.S. regulators to work toward the establishment of appropriate science-based standards for the reservoir.” And the company has also pointed out that there are other lakes in Montana with high levels of naturally occurring selenium.Scientists in Montana, however, do not accept Teck’s assessments or assertions of levels in the lake, which spans the international border. Selenium levels in the Kootenai River have not decreased, environmentalists said.At the site where the Kootenai River empties into Lake Koocanusa in Canada, levels have steadily increased well above those metrics, said Erin Sexton, a senior scientist at the Yellow Bay Biological Station, operated by the University of Montana on Flathead Lake.. “It’s a hockey-stick graph, it just goes up and up,” she said.Provincial government officials say there are “robust monitoring and assessment programs in place” that have not detected any effects.The environmentalists’ lawsuit is seeking to preserve the more restrictive Montana standard, which has come under fire from Republican-led lawmakers and some state agency officials. In its company report, Teck questioned whether the lower limit was in force, presumably because of the internecine feud among state authorities.The U.S. level for selenium in rivers is 1.5 micrograms per liter in lakes and 3.1 in flowing rivers. Montana’s standard for Lake Koocanusa, after six years of research, was set at 0.8. The level for protection of aquatic life in British Columbia is 2.Tracing the waterway chemicalsWhen rain falls or snow melts, waste rock from the mines leaches selenium into waterways. The level of selenium in the Fording and Elk Rivers in British Columbia near the mines have at times reached levels many times higher than provincial standards. A population of genetically pure cutthroat trout in the Fording River was decimated, at least in part, by selenium levels. In 2021, Teck was fined $60 million, a record, under Canada’s Fisheries Act for release of selenium into the Fording River.The Elk River flows 140 miles from its source until it enters Lake Koocanusa, created by the damming of the Kootenai River, which straddles the border. The lake becomes the Kootenai River again below the Libby Dam in Montana and Idaho, and it flows back north into Kootenai Lake in British Columbia. Eventually it empties into the Columbia River.Unlike in an oil spill, the effects of high selenium levels do not result in large kills of fish that suddenly appear belly up in the water. Instead, selenium poisoning reduces fish numbers by causing mortality in the larval stage.“It’s a really nasty contaminant because it causes deformities in reproductive organs,” Ms. Sexton said. “They call it an invisible contaminant because they fail to thrive. You don’t find eggs that don’t hatch.”Trout fishing below the Libby Dam on the Kootenai River. “Our native fishery is extremely important to us,” said Tom McDonald, a tribal official.Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesIndigenous land concernsU.S. and tribal officials argue that the mining-related presence of chemical pollution violates the 1909 International Boundary Waters Treaty. Tribal leaders in the United States claim it may breach their treaty rights of 1855, which guarantee “taking fish at all usual and accustomed places.” They want the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian body that oversees trans-boundary disputes, to study the issue and prepare recommendations for cleanup.But the government of British Columbia has continued to oppose efforts to remedy the situation, Montana officials say.Part of the problem, Ms. Sexton said, is that the province of British Columbia allows industries, including mining companies, to largely monitor themselves and offer evidence produced by their own scientists.Mr. Stannell pointed out that the company had spent $1.2 billion on wastewater treatment near the mines, and planned to spend $750 million more to improve water quality in the coming years.A region rich in coalCoal mining in this Canadian province began more than a century ago, though the methods changed in the 1980s, when underground mining was largely abandoned for open pits.High-grade metallurgical coal is mined using a method called cross-valley fill, similar to the mountaintop-removal technique employed in West Virginia and some other states. Explosive charges blast away the top of the mountains, removing whole sections of a range, to expose rich deposits of coal. Giant shovels and massive 550-ton dump trucks mine the coal, which is transported by rail to Vancouver and then by ship to Asia, where it is essential for steel manufacturing.Other mining-related pollutants, partly from the extensive use of explosives in the blasting, include cadmium, sulfates and nitrates, experts say.Teck’s open-pit mines produce more than 21 million metric tons of coal a year. An analysis issued last year by the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce estimated that the company provided nearly 13,000 jobs in the province and $4.6 billion to its gross national product.The company is seeking to expand one of its five Elk Valley mines, and it has applied to open two new ones.Burbot at the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho’s Twin River Hatchery; young white sturgeon, a native species, at the hatchery; burbot roe.Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesCalvin Sandborn, the legal director of the Environmental Law Center at the University of Victoria and one of the authors of a 2021 report, accused the governments of British Columbia and Canada of deliberately failing to regulate Teck.“If they had acted on the warnings of their scientists years ago, they would have dealt with this problem,” Mr. Sandborn said. “And they didn’t because it’s a corporation that’s too big to fail.”According to the Elk Valley Water Quality Plan, British Columbia allows Teck to continue to operate its mines as long as it stabilizes selenium levels and eventually reduces them after 2030.Scientists worry that the existing mines could pollute the rivers for centuries. And some do not believe the technology exists to remove enough selenium from flowing rivers or groundwater to reach safe levels. Ms. Sexton said Teck could do more to seal the contaminants in the waste rock.Critics of government policies point out that when John Horgan stepped down from his post as premier of British Columbia in 2022, he became a member of the board of Elk Valley Resources, a spinoff of Teck Coal, created to manage the mining resources. According to BIV, a publication that covers business in British Columbia, board members are paid at least $235,000 annually.The Canadian Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy did not respond directly to questions seeking a response to accusations that the government’s oversight of the mining giant was inadequate or lax.“We are pleased that Canada and the United States have committed to working together to reduce and mitigate the impacts of water quality concerns,” said David Karn, a spokesman for the agency. “Protecting and enhancing water quality is a key priority, and through our regulatory activities, we continue to undertake and oversee projects to improve and protect water quality in the Elk River Valley and Koocanusa Reservoir.”New policies cannot come soon enough for Indigenous people and conservationists in both countries.The mining on the ancestral lands of the Kootenai people, (known as Ktunaxa in British Columbia), has become a longstanding issue. “Over a century of mountaintop-removal mining has laid waste to the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa Nation, contaminating the Kootenay River and fish that depend on it,” the six governments of the tribal nation said.“Our native fishery is extremely important to us,” said Tom McDonald, chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes at their headquarters in Montana and a fisheries biologist. “Water to us is almost considered holy water. It’s very sacred.”Lake Koocanusa on the Kootenai River, seen from the Libby Dam. White fish populations are down by 55 percent in 2023 in the lake. Grant Hindsley for The New York Times“You catch a fish and its gill plate is missing or its jaw is all malformed, are you going to eat it?” Mr. McDonald said. “No, you are not going to. When you lose that ability to fish, it disconnects you from your culture. It takes a whole thing away from the people — their society, their sense of place, their community and their family. It’s an extreme taking.”The Kootenai/Ktunaxa tribes have worked to protect water quality and fisheries in their territory. The Kootenai band in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, has a long-term program to restore burbot to the Kootenai River. The long, eel-like fish, known for its flaky white flesh, is important for subsistence fishing, and it almost became extinct before the tribe built a hatchery to rear fish for introduction back into the river. Now, selenium has been found in the fish there.Whitefish populations below Libby Dam, which created Lake Koocanusa, have declined considerably in recent years. Monitoring in 2018 found that populations, which are usually 700 fish per 1,000 feet, were down 53 percent in 2018 and 55 percent in 2023. High levels of selenium, above state and U.S. limits, have been found in fish eggs and ovaries.The selenium from the mines “is likely causing the decline,” said Jim Dunnigan, a fisheries biologist for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks who is studying the contamination. “It’s cause for serious concern.”Wyatt Petryshen of Wildsight, the Canadian environmental group that monitors Teck’s operations, said environmentalists were worried about recent moves by Teck that split its operations into Teck Metals Corp. and Elk Valley Resources, which will own the coal-mining operation.“There are very real concerns that Teck is trying to spin off the company to avoid paying for environmental damages while maintaining cash flow to their metal mining business,” Mr. Petryshen said.Sheila Murray, chairwoman of Teck’s board, defended the change, saying it would be more profitable for shareholders and would “support a sustainable future for the benefit of employees, local communities and Indigenous peoples.”U.S. officials and advocates said the International Joint Commission, the bilateral body, would be the best authority to seek ways to contain and reduce the mining pollutants. “We need a scientific advisory panel of both U.S. and Canadian scientists,” Mr. Sandborn said. “We need to get this to the International Joint Commission so that we have a proper watchdog.”Jennifer Savage, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, which oversees the United States’ role in the commission, said it wanted the international body to take the matter up soon.“Indigenous communities along the watershed depend on these waters for cultural survival and for their survival,” said Ms. Savage, director of the department’s office of Canadian affairs. “We’re impatient. We are definitely eager to find a solution.”

This year’s outbreak of the H5N1 virus has resulted in the deaths of nearly 400,000 wild birds worldwide. Scientists are studying the pathways of contagion among species. A great black-backed gull migrating from Europe to Eastern Canada last winter may have been the first carrier to North America of the deadly strain of avian influenza that has killed tens of millions of domestic poultry and devastated wild bird populations.The wide-scale outbreaks have provided researchers with a new opportunity to fine-tune their understanding of the disease by studying which wild bird species, behaviors and ecologies play key roles in transmission.“Previous studies looking at bird flu made these large categorizations of wild and domestic birds,” said Dr. Nichola Hill, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and lead author of a new paper on the topic.But “wild birds are incredibly species-rich,” she said, adding that “each of them has a unique natural history and behavior.”Knowing which migratory species carry the pathogen, for example, can help predict when and where it might arrive based on migration routes.After the migrating gull came ashore, the highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as the H5N1 virus, exploded across North America. More than 77 million poultry, most raised in crowded conditions that fueled the spread and evolution of the virus, have been culled in dozens of countries.For some experts, the toll wrought by this H5N1 strain on wild birds — it has struck more than 100 species so far — has been alarming and unprecedented in its depth and breadth. Among wild birds, the spread can be very difficult to contain, posing a greater threat of spillover to other wildlife. And some wild bird species, like cranes and some seabirds, are particularly vulnerable, especially those with low reproductive rates and those already endangered.The World Organization for Animal Health estimates that more than 383,000 wild bird deaths can be attributed to the virus since October 2021, although the count may be a vast underestimate because of how difficult it is to track sick and dead birds.The pathogen has spread rapidly through various regions and species, at much higher rates than during the last outbreak in 2014-2015.“It’s impacting a bigger host range and doesn’t dead-end in wild birds like it used to,” Dr. Hill said. “It is sustained in wild birds, and that is a frightening prospect. For many of us in this field, my God, what do we do when we get spillover into a wild animal for which there is no control?”It has long been assumed that the primary hosts for avian flu are dabbling ducks, such as mallards, teals and shovelers, that feed on the surface and just below with their rumps in the air. They are critical to the spread because they have mild or no symptoms and they carry it far and wide. The new study, however, found that other birds, like geese, played an underestimated role because of their natural history.“Geese are a little more tolerant of human-disturbed areas,” Dr. Hill said. “Imagine a commercial poultry operation or backyard operation where they spread grain around.” That attracts “geese and other scavenging birds, like gulls and crows and magpies, so there’s an interface between them,” she said.Rangers from the Ministry of Agriculture retrieved flu-stricken dead cranes from Hula Lake in northern Israel earlier this year.Abir Sultan/EPA, via ShutterstockThe unique natural history of the black-backed gull, for example, plays a role in transmission. “Gulls were really rare hosts for highly pathogenic forms of the virus,” Dr. Hill said. “When they did carry it, those rare occasions, they spread it really quickly. There is nothing like a gull for a really rapid dispersal of the virus and really long distances. They will catch a tail wind and cross the Atlantic in 24 hours.”The study may help other researchers track not only the continued spread of this year’s pathogen, but the paths taken by other viruses that are harmful to wildlife.“Knowing that gulls, geese and ducks may be moving this virus in different ways is a big contribution to understanding or eventually modeling with more accuracy how to expect a virus like this to spread,” said Jonathan Runstadler, professor and chair of the Department of Infectious Disease and Global Health at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and a co-author of the paper.The data “allows us to predict if there’s a virus emerging, when that bird might enter North America and what bird populations we might target for surveillance to detect it,” Dr. Runstadler said.The highly pathogenic lineage of this year’s avian flu originated around 1996, found first in a domestic goose in China. It has been circulating around the world in wild and domestic birds ever since, evolving as it travels from host to host.In 2005, after a decade of evolution, the strain caused a large outbreak in wild birds in wetlands in China.The strain showed up in the United States for the first time in 2014, traveling in migrating birds from Eurasia across the Pacific to Alaska and farther east, causing outbreaks at U.S. poultry farms that resulted in the killing of 40 million turkeys and chickens.After it reached the Midwest, however, mass cullings stopped it, eliminating the viral spread for both wild and domestic populations.“We don’t have a vaccine,” Dr. Hill said. “All we have in our tool kit is the swapping out all of our poultry, which is awful, but to some degree it was successful.’’But killing off infected poultry hasn’t worked this time around, in part because the virus has been able to find a home in so many wild birds, spawning the largest outbreak of avian influenza ever.In some places, officials have been warning chicken producers and even people who keep backyard flocks to keep their birds indoors, while in other places, the threat seems to have passed.“This virus is so good because it Ping-Pongs back and forth between wild and domestic,” Dr. Hill said. “There is no better way to amplify a virus than taking a wild reservoir and domesticating a close relative. That’s exactly what we’ve done with chickens and ducks. Highly pathogenic forms of the virus only happen when the virus goes into agricultural animals.”On Quebec’s Magdalen Islands, wildlife officials recently discovered the carcasses of thousands of white gannets that had been wiped out by the flu.There is no way to predict whether the flu outbreaks will dwindle or grow worse.A colony of northern gannets on Bonaventure Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Quebec in 2017.Robert F. Bukaty/Associated PressSome species, such as raptors, seabirds and shorebirds, are also at great risk of catching the virus because of their behaviors. Dozens of bald eagles are known to have died of the flu, largely because they prey on ducks and other birds that carry the pathogen.Birds that gather in large numbers are also at risk. “There’s a lot of flocking birds — shorebirds, terns and seabirds — that form massive, massive groups and that could just be a field day for the virus,” said Dr. Hill.The extent of the devastation to various species is difficult to assess, because surveillance is lacking. Better tracking along migration routes would help experts figure out ways to mitigate the spread of the virus.Deaths of large numbers of shearwaters and other seabird species have been reported along the Atlantic coast in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut. The avian flu is a suspect, although tests have not confirmed that.“The geographic extent of detection, the number of species that we’re getting with detections, the amount of disease we’re seeing in wild birds, this is all unprecedented,” said Andy Ramey, a U.S. Geological Survey research wildlife geneticist in Alaska who studies avian influenza. “It’s unknown territory and hard to know what to expect.”There is also concern that during this year’s breeding season for many species, parents could pass the disease to offspring in the nest, which have underdeveloped immune systems. Young wild birds are often exposed to low-pathogenic viruses, which are common and can serve almost as inoculations, helping strengthen their immune systems.One endangered species being monitored is the roseate tern on Buzzards Bay off the coast of Massachusetts. Testing is just getting underway, and no sick birds have been found yet.“It does appear to be a rough food year for the terns,” said Carolyn Mostello, a coastal bird biologist for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. “Nesting has been slow. Hopefully we don’t have a combination of poor food resources and avian flu; that could act together to really injure the populations.”Experts say the avian flu poses a very low risk to people and so far has been detected in only two humans. However, as it persists and evolves, it could gain the ability to pose a serious threat of spillover into humans.Dr. Hill said that a major handicap to better understanding the outbreak has been the lack of funding for efforts to track the spread. “Surveillance is really, really, really bad,” she said. “We are spending very little money and time getting ahead of this.”

TUCSON, Ariz. — In a small room in a building at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the invertebrate keeper, Emma Califf, lifts up a rock in a plastic box. “This is one of our desert hairies,” she said, exposing a three-inch-long scorpion, its tail arced over its back. “The largest scorpion in North America.”This captive hairy, along with a swarm of inch-long bark scorpions in another box, and two dozen rattlesnakes of varying species and sub- species across the hall, are kept here for the coin of the realm: their venom.Efforts to tease apart the vast swarm of proteins in venom — a field called venomics — have burgeoned in recent years, and the growing catalog of compounds has led to a number of drug discoveries. As the components of these natural toxins continue to be assayed by evolving technologies, the number of promising molecules is also growing.“A century ago we thought venom had three or four components, and now we know just one type of venom can have thousands,” said Leslie V. Boyer, a professor emeritus of pathology at the University of Arizona. “Things are accelerating because a small number of very good laboratories have been pumping out information that everyone else can now use to make discoveries.”She added, “There’s a pharmacopoeia out there waiting to be explored.”It is a striking case of modern-day scientific alchemy: The most highly evolved of natural poisons on the planet are creating a number of effective medicines with the potential for many more.Leslie V. Boyer, founder of the Venom Immunochemistry, Pharmacology, and Emergency Response Institute, calls Arizona “venom central.”Ash Ponders for The New York TimesA giant hairy scorpion at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.Ash Ponders for The New York TimesOne of the most promising venom-derived drugs to date comes from the deadly Fraser Island funnel web spider of Australia, which halts cell death after a heart attack.Blood flow to the heart is reduced after a heart attack, which makes the cell environment more acidic and leads to cell death. The drug, a protein called Hi1A, is scheduled for clinical trials next year. In the lab, it was tested on the cells of beating human hearts. It was found to block their ability to sense acid, “so the death message is blocked, cell death is reduced, and we see improved heart cell survival,” said Nathan Palpant, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who helped make the discovery.If proven in trials, it could be administered by emergency medical workers, and might prevent the damage that occurs after heart attacks and possibly improve outcomes in heart transplants by keeping the donor heart healthier longer.“It looks like it’s going to be a heart attack wonder drug,” said Bryan Fry, an associate professor of toxicology at the University of Queensland, who is familiar with the research but was not involved in it. “And it’s from one of the most vilified creatures” in Australia.The techniques used to process venom compounds have become so powerful that they are creating new opportunities. “We can do assays nowadays using only a couple of micrograms of venom that 10 or 15 years ago would have required hundreds of micrograms,” or more, Dr. Fry said. “What this has done is open up all the other venomous lineages out there that produce tiny amounts of material.”There is an enormous natural library to sort through. Hundreds of thousands of species of reptile, insect, spider, snail and jellyfish, among other creatures, have mastered the art of chemical warfare with venom. Moreover, the makeup of venom varies from animal to animal. There is a kind of toxic terroir: Venom differs in quantity, potency and proportion and types of toxin, according to habitat and diet, and even by changing temperatures due to climate change.Venom is made of a complex mix of toxins, which are composed of proteins with unique characteristics. They are so deadly because evolution has honed their effectiveness for so long — some 54 million years for snakes and 600 million for jellyfish.Howard Byrne, a curator at the Arizona desert museum, handling a Gila monster, from which the drug exenatide, for Type 2 diabetes, is derived.Ash Ponders for The New York TimesA tiger rattlesnake at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum.Ash Ponders for The New York TimesVenom is the product of a biological arms race over that time; as venom becomes more deadly, victims evolve more resistance, which in turn makes venom even deadlier. Humans are included in that dynamic. “We are made of protein and our protein has little complex configurations on it that make us human,” said Dr. Boyer, who founded the Venom Immunochemistry, Pharmacology, and Emergency Response Institute, or VIPER. “And those little configurations are targets of the venom.”The specific cellular proteins that the venom molecules have evolved to target with pinpoint accuracy are what make the drugs derived from them — which use the same pathways — so effective. Some proteins, however, have inherent problems that can make new drugs from them unworkable.There is usually no need to gather venom to make these drugs. Once they are identified, they can be synthesized.There are three main effects from venom. Neurotoxins attack the nervous system, paralyzing the victim. Hemotoxins target the blood and local tissue toxins attack the area around the site of poison exposure.Numerous venom-derived drugs are on the market. Captopril, the first, was created in the 1970s from the venom of a Brazilian jararaca pit viper to treat high blood pressure. It has been successful commercially. Another drug, exenatide, is derived from Gila monster venom and is prescribed for Type 2 diabetes. Draculin is an anticoagulant from vampire bat venom and is used to treat stroke and heart attack.The venom of the Israeli deathstalker scorpion is the source of a compound in clinical trials that finds and illuminates breast and colon tumors.Dr. Boyer’s collection of venomous objects at her home in Tucson, Ariz.Ash Ponders for The New York Times“Things are accelerating because a small number of very good laboratories have been pumping out information that everyone else can now use,” Dr. Boyer said.Ash Ponders for The New York TimesSome proteins have been flagged as potential candidates for new drugs, but they have to journey through the long process of manufacture and clinical trials, which can take many years and cost millions of dollars. In March, researchers at the University of Utah announced that they had discovered a fast-acting molecule in cone snails. Cone snails fire their venom into fish, which causes the victims’ insulin levels to drop so rapidly it kills them. It holds promise as a drug for diabetes. Bee venom appears to work with a wide range of pathologies and has recently been found to kill aggressive breast cancer cells.In Brazil researchers have been looking at the venom of the Brazilian wandering spider as a possible source of a new drug for erectile dysfunction — because of what happens to human victims when they are bit. “A characteristic of their envenomation is that males get extraordinary painful, incredibly long-lasting erections,” Dr. Fry said. “They have to separate it from its lethal factor, of course, and find a way to dial it back.”Some scientists have long suspected that important secrets are locked up in venom. Scientific interest first surfaced in the 17th century. In the mid-18th century the Italian physician and polymath Felice Fontana added to the body of knowledge with his treatise, and in 1860 the first research to look at venom components was conducted by S. Weir Mitchell in Philadelphia.The medicinal use of venom has a long history, often without scientific support. Venom-dipped needles are a traditional form of acupuncture. Bee sting therapy, in which a swarm of bees is placed on the skin, is used by some natural healers. The rock musician Steve Ludwin claims to have routinely injected himself with diluted venom, believing it to be a tonic that builds his immune system and boosts his energy.The demand for venom is increasing. Ms. Califf of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum said she had to travel to the desert to find more bark scorpions, which she hunts at night with a black light because they glow in the dark. Arizona, Dr. Boyer said, is “venom central,” with more venomous creatures than in any other U.S. state, making it well suited for this kind of production.Venom, made of a complex mix of toxins, are so deadly because evolution has honed their effectiveness for so long — some 54 million years for snakes.Ash Ponders for The New York TimesThe Arizona bark scorpion, which glows in the dark is hunted at night with a black light.Ash Ponders for The New York TimesScorpion venom is harvested from the arachnid by applying a tiny electrical current, which causes the spider to excrete a small drop of the amber liquid at the tip of its tail. With snakes, venom glands are gently massaged as they bare their fangs over a martini glass. After they surrender their venom, the substance is sent to researchers around the globe.Pit vipers, including rattlesnakes, have other unusual adaptations. The “pit” is the site of the biological equipment that allows snakes to sense the heat of their prey. “You can blindfold a snake and it will still strike the target,” Dr. Boyer said.But it’s not just venom that’s far better understood these days. In the last few years, there has been a well-heeled and concerted search for antivenom.In 2019 the Wellcome Trust created a $100 million fund toward the pursuit. Since then there have been numerous research efforts around the world looking for a single universal treatment — one that can be carried into remote areas to immediately help someone bitten by any type of venomous snake. Currently, different types of snakebites have different antivenom.It has been difficult. The wide array of ingredients in venom that benefit new drug research has also made it difficult to find a drug that can neutralize them. One promising universal antivenom, varespladib, is in clinical trials.Experts hope the role of venom will lead to more respect for the fear-inducing creatures who create them. Dr. Fry, for his work on anticoagulants, is studying the venom of Komodo dragons, which, at 10 feet long and more than 300 pounds, is the largest lizard in the world. It is also highly endangered.Work on the Komodo, “allows us to talk about the broader conservation message,” he said.“You want nature around because it’s a biobank,” he added. “We can only find these interesting compounds from these magnificent creatures if they are not extinct.”