Drill, Baby, Drill: The U.S. Added 38 Percent More Oil and Gas Rigs Last Year

Burn, baby, burn: Experts express fear about the enormous climate impact of this boom in new fossil fuel development.

The number of oil and gas rigs in the United States has increased an astonishing 38 percent over the past year. That’s according to S&P Global Platts Analytics, which reported this week that the country had 1,070 rigs at the end of January, up from just 773 a year earlier.

Experts expressed fear that all of this new development does not bode well for the planet. “This will have a very significant climate impact,” says Romany Webb, climate law fellow with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “The oil and gas industry is a huge source of methane, which is a really potent greenhouse gas. And then on top of that you also have the carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of this oil and gas. So this is very concerning from a climate perspective.”

Webb links the increase in drilling, in part, to the recent rise in prices for crude oil and natural gas. “Oil is now above $60 a barrel, which is what the industry always said that they needed to ramp up production,” she says.

Experts also connect the boom to the policies of the Trump administration, which has prioritized the extraction of oil, natural gas and coal over the development of renewable energies even as the planet continues to warm. “That the hottest years in human history coincide with a dramatic increase in U.S. drilling for oil and gas is a reminder of what a rogue nation we now live in,” says noted environmentalist Bill McKibben.

The Boom

The extraction boom took place nationwide, with all but one of S&P’s reporting regions (see below) gaining new rigs. The fastest growth occurred in two states in the natural gas-rich Permian Basin: Texas gained 141 rigs, while New Mexico added 43. S&P also noted that extraction companies are moving outside the Permian Basin, which, according to senior analyst Trey Cowan, indicates “future growth being led from other regions in the months ahead.”

The analysis includes rigs located on U.S. land, as well as in inland waters and the Gulf of Mexico.

	Jan 2017	Jan 2018	Variance Year over Year (YOY)	YOY % Variance
Colorado	30	34	4	13%
Louisiana	33	52	19	58%
New Mexico	40	83	43	108%
North Dakota	36	50	14	39%
Oklahoma	106	128	22	21%
Texas	367	508	141	38%
Rest of U.S. Land	121	172	51	42%
U.S. Land Subtotal	733	1,027	294	40%
U.S. Inland Waters	6	5	-1	-17%
U.S. Gulf of Mexico	34	38	4	12%
U.S. Inland and Gulf of Mexico	40	43	3	8%
Total U.S. Rig Count	773	1,070	+297	38%

Source: S&P Global Platts Analytics

It doesn’t look like this will slow down any time soon. The number of rigs has already increased in the few days since January ended. The weekly Platts RigData Locations & Operators Report for Feb. 5 reveals that there are now three additional rigs in operation, for a total of 1,073, with 61 more facilities “waiting to spud” (industry terminology for getting ready to start drilling).

The Future: More Drilling, More Impact

S&P released its data the same day the U.S. Energy Information Administration issued its annual Energy Outlook report for 2018, which projects U.S. oil production will soar past 11 million barrels a day by the end of this year.

The report also found that natural gas use in this country will increase at an annual rate of 0.8 percent through the year 2050. The use of wind and solar energies is also projected to increase at a similar rate. Coal and oil are expected to decline, that won’t be enough to offset the increase in emissions caused by the use of natural gas. The Energy Information Administration predicts that the U.S. carbon footprint will dip slightly over the next few years and then increase by mid-century.

The impact won’t just occur in the United States, as the agency found that the United States will become a net energy exporter by the year 2022, pushing an additional rise in emissions worldwide. As Inside Climate News put it, “the U.S. would almost single-handedly exhaust the whole world’s carbon budget by midcentury.”

The total effect of this mad rush to drill may be felt for even longer than that. “Our short-term folly will be felt for tens of thousands of years in the geologic record,” says McKibben.

Previously in The Revelator:

Trump’s Offshore Oil Plan: Like Nothing the Country Has Ever Seen

Mountain Bikes Do Not Belong in Federal Wilderness

A Republican bill threatens to open up federal wilderness areas to mountain biking — and in the process threatens the 1964 Wilderness Act.

House Republicans recently advanced a bill allowing mountain biking in federal wilderness areas, where they’ve been banned for decades. The move dredges up a long-resolved debate at a time when our public lands face more pressing threats, including shrinking monuments, increased drilling, climate change and crippling wildfire costs. On top of this, the bill — which is really about more than mountain bikes — threatens the 1964 Wilderness Act, one of America’s bedrock conservation laws. It deserves strong opposition.

The bill, H.R. 1349, was introduced by Representative Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). It gained five Republican cosponsors and in December sailed through the Republican-controlled House Natural Resources Committee. It now awaits a House vote.

McClintock claims introducing biking into wilderness “would restore the original intent of the Wilderness Act.” While the statement lacks legal or historical merit, it does echo a fringe group out of California called the Sustainable Trails Coalition, which appears intent on opening the Pacific Crest Trail and other protected areas to biking. Their effort is opposed by other groups, including the Pacific Crest Trail Association and the International Mountain Biking Association.

No legal argument supports biking in wilderness. Unambiguously, the 1964 Wilderness Act states there shall be no motorized vehicles and “no other form of mechanical transport” in wilderness. Yet some claim “mechanical transport” somehow exempts bicycles, or unintentionally excluded a sport that emerged after the law. They tout an early Forest Service misinterpretation that initially allowed bicycles in wilderness but was corrected more than 30 years ago. They omit the fact that other agencies never adopted the Forest Service misinterpretation.

The claims ignore the historical context and foresight of the Wilderness Act. We should remember that the law grew from a half-century of public-lands battles fought by America’s most influential conservation thinkers, including Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, and Olaus and Mardy Murie. Theirs was a multigenerational struggle to safeguard vestiges of the public lands from increasing population and technology.

The technology part is important. The framers of the Wilderness Act knew human ingenuity was not petering out in 1964 — they lived in an era of fantastic invention. Forms of transport tested at the time included jetpacks, gliders, aerocycles and various new wagons, boats and bicycles. That the law anticipated and banned future forms of mechanical transport is indisputable.

But also consider the reasoning behind the concern. It was most concisely expressed by the bill’s principal author, Howard Zahniser. In 1956, as the Wilderness Act began its eight-year journey into law, he defined wilderness as a place where we stand without the “mechanisms that make us immediate masters over our environment.”

Zahniser was a Thoreauvian pacifist deeply troubled by the Holocaust, atomic warfare and other 20th century crises. In designated wilderness, he saw a suite of biophysical and social attributes that carried the potential to make us better people. But to fulfill its promise in modern times, by offering opportunities for raw challenge, humility and solitude, wilderness had to remain a place of human restraint.

Zahniser’s writings conveyed uniquely American ideas on nature that evolved over 150 years. They reflected the painter George Catlin camped on the Missouri frontier; Henry David Thoreau facing “only the essential facts of life” alongside Walden Pond; John Muir scaling the high Sierras in pursuit of hidden glaciers; Aldo Leopold on horseback in the great expanse of the Gila; and Bob Marshall hiking….well, everywhere. Marshall trekked through regions from the Adirondacks to the Brooks Range and, like Leopold, crafted early Forest Service rules on wilderness areas, including their core value as undeveloped landscapes accessed without motors and with “no possibility of conveyance by any mechanical means.” Marshall then helped form The Wilderness Society in 1935 to guard those ideals in an increasingly mechanized age, and the group eventually led the movement for legislated wilderness.

Other women and men contributed, too, so that when Zahniser wrote the words that became the law, the American notion of wilderness was solidly a place to experience by primitive means — where visitors “depend exclusively on [their] own effort for survival,” as Marshall put it. Added to ecological benefits, goals included preserving the remoteness and challenge that forged the American character and providing solitude, for inspiration, contemplation and renewal. Codifying the notion was debated for nearly a decade, and the Act eventually passed Congress with almost unanimous consent.

So we know biking has no legal place in wilderness and that it defies the intent of the Wilderness Act. But what harm would it actually do to modern wilderness areas? Most broadly, but least tangibly, it would undermine the sanctity of wilderness as a place we go unaided by machines, where person and place intimately meet. More concretely, mechanical transport would erode remoteness and solitude, the resources protected by law and sought by many wilderness visitors. It would force those seeking the “primitive” types of recreation described by the law, including hunters, packers and others, into even smaller enclaves than available today.

There’s a political cost, too. Allowing biking and other wheeled access as described in H.R. 1349 fulfills a long-held Republican desire to crack open Wilderness Act protections, usually on behalf of logging, drilling, mining or motorized recreation. Allowing biking provides these interests with a convenient precedent.

Those pressing for bikes in wilderness ignore all this. Instead they too often reduce the focus to issues of trail erosion, where they front overly rosy claims. Or they conflate the ban on bikes with a ban on certain people. This ploy stirs emotion but undercuts serious public-lands discourse. Yet McClintock, the Sustainable Trails Coalition and others use the trick. A Bike Magazine video even casts bikes in wilderness as a civil-rights issue. That’s an affront to anyone who has worked for voting rights, fair housing, protection against hate crimes or other actual civil rights.

Advocates also oversimplify prohibitions on bikes in wilderness study areas, calling them overreach by conservationists or the feds. But such bans are essential to the purpose of these study areas, which must be carefully managed to preserve their eligibility as wilderness pending congressional review. Once bikes, snowmobiles or other forms of transport are established, the purpose of a study area is undone.

And let’s not be distracted by the inclusion of wheelchair access in McClintock’s bill. The Americans with Disabilities Act already unequivocally assures wheelchair access to wilderness, a clarification representing the only time in over a half-century that the Wilderness Act was amended.

Lastly, consider the issue’s scale. The wilderness system is limited to roughly 53 million acres outside Alaska. Smaller than Colorado, that portion is scattered across 43 states. And while most of the land is in the West, most of it is also rugged and unbikable. Meanwhile hundreds of millions of acres remain open to biking.

Talk about wanting the last pork chop.

In the end McClintock’s bill caters to a small group of bike enthusiasts apparently out of touch with the intent of federal wilderness. But it threatens real harm by unraveling protections and pitting recreationists against each other at a time when public lands need our unified support. We should join the dozens of conservation groups opposing the measure, then get back to the real work of defending our lands.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

How Colleges Can Attract More Minority Students to Environmental Studies and Careers

Universities should hire diverse professors and teach classes that appeal to a broad group of students.

Generalizations can be misleading when it comes to perceptions about race. Minority students, troublingly, are often perceived as not having the educational background necessary to work in environmental careers, or as not having a strong environmental identity. But a recently published study polled white, black and other minority students on three different campuses and found they had comparable educational chops, strongly identified themselves as environmentalists and conservationists, and were just as interested as non-minorities in working in environmental organizations, both governmental and private.

The study — conducted by Dorceta Taylor, the director of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Michigan and a professor at its School for Environment and Sustainability, as well as a lifelong environmental justice advocate — is significant because the percentage of minorities in the field is still low, despite the diversity-increasing steps that have been taken. Taylor’s findings show what needs to be done to fix the imbalance.

The roots of Taylor’s work date back to 1983, when she first arrived at Yale University’s School of Forestry for her graduate degree. At the time she was only the second African American woman to be admitted to that particular school. In her environment classes, she found she was the token black person among Caucasian peers. This struck her as unusual, given the minorities she had seen in other science classes, so she asked her professor about it. He told her black students weren’t interested in the environment.

She began looking into it and discovered that, in reality, black students in the United States were just as interested in the environment as anyone else, yet few took up environmental studies. This hadn’t been the case when she was growing up in Jamaica, where she and her peers had always been aware of, and concerned about, the environment. The disparity in enrollment in the United States became a subject she dug into as her career progressed. Last fall she published her research paper, which found that minority students do want to pursue green careers, but need to see diversity reflected in both the faculty teaching courses and the staff leading environmental organizations. She also found that students want to connect what’s happening in their communities to their studies, so programs need to be tailored better, which is why one-size-fits-all approaches to recruiting minorities won’t work.

Taylor spoke with The Revelator at length about the reasons behind the low numbers of minorities in environmental studies and careers, what’s being done and what more needs to be done to improve the situation.

Nagappan: Is it still true that not many people of color, particularly African Americans, choose to study this field?

Taylor: That’s what people believed back then — that we were not smart enough, or didn’t know enough, or even that we wanted too much money for such jobs. None of this was really true. People of color, including biracial folks, represent about 38 percent of the population, yet we represent only 14 to 16 percent of the staff in environmental organizations. We’ve seen the percentage climb from 2 to 3 percent back in the 1990s, but it’s still low, and we’re still concentrated in the lower ranks of organizations, not leadership roles.

Cost is one factor. These programs of study tend to be expensive and so they’re more populated by middle- and upper-middle-class students. Without a lot of scholarship money, the programs are out of reach for many lower-income minority students.

Second, it’s the culture. The programs are not very inclusive, so even if someone can afford it, they may start to feel isolated very quickly.

Third, the faculty and staff in these programs lack diversity, so students don’t see themselves reflected in the faculty. If there are no faculty members of color, it leads to more isolation for minority students.

Nagappan: What can colleges do to correct this?

Taylor: A lot of students of color want to do environmental justice programs because they want to connect what they see with what they study. Like Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, when it happens in places populated by blacks and browns, the response is slow. They start to see a class and race dimension to environmental problems and how they’re dealt with.

So these environmental justice courses become gateway courses, and when students see how this relates back to what is happening in the community, they want to take these programs. So we need more of these programs that are relevant and will engage a diverse group of students.

There’s also the curriculum — are they matching the curriculum to the interests of the millennials? Students don’t just want to study hydrology. They also want to connect it to what’s going in places like Flint, Michigan, because they see that as a very critical piece of environment issues. Today’s students are more interested in why water or electricity is shut off in low-income minority neighborhoods but not in upper-crust white areas. So the programs need to adapt and bring these connections in to engage a wider range of students.

Finally, there are a lot of colleges around the country that train students of color in these fields, so if colleges are attuned to diversity they can find and recruit minority faculty in environmental studies.

Nagappan: What else can colleges do to improve recruitment for these courses?

Taylor: The student body is very diverse, so the curriculum has to broaden out and bring in a wider range of case studies and research. And it’s important to make this kind of education accessible to a wider range of people, both financially and physically. It shouldn’t just be in elite universities. There should be more of these programs in community colleges, in online learning and in countries outside the U.S. We should also start teaching about it in kindergarten.

There are many public schools in low-income neighborhoods where there are no programs teaching about the environment, so they get to college with no training or knowledge from school, unlike students from better neighborhoods. That puts them at a disadvantage for enrolling in environmental courses, and majoring in it will be hard if they can’t take a course until their junior year.

Nagappan: What are some programs that are helping address this situation?

Taylor: There are a growing number of diversity programs. I run two such programs. The Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program provides 40 internships on several campuses to low-income, minority, rural college students from all over the country. We provide two summers of internship, with a good stipend, travel expenses, room and board. Paid internships are a great way in which low-income minorities can get into this field. Many other programs offer unpaid internships or volunteering opportunities, which are more suited to upper middle class students.

The second program I run is for graduate students. It’s expensive to go to grad school, and spending the summer training as volunteers will be hard, so our graduate fellowship is offered to students all over the country. The idea is to attract gifted students of color to join these programs. So if we are going after top talent, why would you expect them to work for free or very little?

Nagappan: How will this translate to minorities taking up jobs not just in environment advocacy organizations, but also within the government, scientific community and industry?

Taylor: Both these programs are still very new, just two years old. Our graduate students have all found jobs as a result of the internship program, and they’ve gone into the environmental field. Other schools have several programs, and they’ve also found that their students went into the environmental field for their jobs. With these robust programs, we’re hoping more will take up jobs in this field.

Building a nurturing environment is a critical piece in recruiting students of color. They like being able to fit in and feel comfortable with the student body and faculty.

With the changes in curriculum and diversity in faculty that need to happen, it will take time to translate this into more minorities taking up this field — for word to get out among the community, for people to say, go to this school or this organization. We’ve invested centuries in homogeneity. Why do we think heterogeneity will come overnight?

Previously in The Revelator:

Environmental Justice Means Desegregating the Environmental Movement

Extinction Ink

With his Holocene Project tattoos, artist J. Trip immortalizes endangered species on the bodies of wildlife-loving clients.

“I tattoo,” says artist J. Trip. “That’s what I do.”

A second-generation tattooer, Trip brings something unique to his creations. From his chair at Funhouse Tattoo: International Guesthouse in San Diego, Trip turns his customers’ biceps, shoulders, knees and backs into stunning visualizations of extinct and endangered species.

Trip has been creating the tattoos of what he calls the Holocene Project for a few years now. He sketched out his first creation a few hours after seeing the documentary Racing Extinction. “I’ve always loved nature,” he says. “So when I saw Racing Extinction, it inspired me to do even more research into what we humans are doing to our planet. It also made me decide to figure out more ways to open eyes. The Holocene Project is the culmination of those thought processes.”

extinction tattoos — Photo courtesy J. Trip

Trip’s flesh-and-ink images depict species from all over the planet, but they all bear one common design element. Each tattooed animal is accompanied by the image of an hourglass, counting down the species’ time left on Earth. For some, like the giant panda, the hourglass is mostly full. For others, like the now-extinct western black rhino, the sands of time have run out and the hourglass is left empty.

extinction tattoo sloth — Photo courtesy J. Trip

It’s the hourglasses that often draw Trip’s customers’ attention. “I have a few designs for pieces that I haven’t tattooed yet hanging around my workspace,” he says. “People ask about them and then I get to explain the project.”

Once a customer expresses interest in wearing an endangered species on their body, Trip starts searching for inspirational images. He looks for each species’ most defining traits, thinks about the body part where the tattoo will go, and then goes about designing the art. “I have to think about how to best incorporate the hourglass and the environment, without overpowering either the featured species or the body part,” he says. “By the time the design is correct, I’ve studied every inch and every detail that makes the thing what it is. I’ve imagined why they are as they are, and the function they serve in their worlds.”

As with any good tattoo, the process takes a while, but the resulting images are both stunning works of art and lasting conversation-starters. “By the time I’m done tattooing it, mostly I’m just grateful to the client,” Trip says. “I’m grateful for the person who thought enough of the creature, of my work, and of the project to dedicate a portion of themselves and their bodies. It’s extremely humbling.”

Trip hasn’t kept an exact count, but he figures he’s done a few dozen Holocene Project tattoos at this point. He completed many of them while he and his wife spent a year driving across the country in a renovated van — complete with solar-powered fridge and composting toilet — with more customers finding him since they settled in San Diego, either by coming into his studio or through seeing his Instagram account. “One guy drove all the way from Utah to get a green sea turtle,” Trip says.

extinction tattoo sea turtle — Photo courtesy J. Trip

Tattooing endangered species is an emotional experience for both artist and client, but Trip says the effort is worth it. “It’s been amazing, and I’m looking forward to what I’m lucky enough to be asked to do next,” he says.

At Least 197 Eco-Defenders Murdered in 2017

Global Witness calls the murders part of “the ruthless scramble for natural wealth.”

At least 197 environmental activists and eco-defenders around the world were murdered in 2017 — nearly four deaths per week, according to a shocking new report from Global Witness and The Guardian newspaper.

The deaths included farmers murdered by soldiers while defending their ancestral lands from coffee plantations in the Philippines; an indigenous leader allegedly killed by rebels in Colombia; and wildlife rangers slain by poachers in multiple countries. One of the most infamous cases was the January 15, 2017 murder of Isidro Baldenegro López, an indigenous activist in Mexico who had earlier won the Goldman Environmental Prize for standing up to illegal logging.

Mexico is now the fourth most dangerous countries for land-defenders, with 15 murders in 2017, according to Global Witness. Latin America overall was considered the deadliest part of the world for activists. Brazil had the highest number of murders, 46, followed by Colombia with 42. The Philippines was a close third with 41 reported homicides.

Agribusiness and mining were linked to 60 percent of 2017’s deaths.

“Until companies, investors and governments genuinely include communities in decisions around the use of their land and natural resources, the people who dare to speak out will continue to face violence, imprisonment and loss of life,” Rachel Cox, a campaigner for Global Witness, wrote on their website.

In addition to the murders, Global Witness says many activists are intimidated or silenced with death threats, sexual assaults and aggressive lawsuits (the latter of which have become particularly prevalent).

Although the number of activist murders has quadrupled since Global Witness started tracking them in 2002, there is a hint of good news: “Killings have leveled off for the first time in four consecutive years,” Cox wrote. “As the international community sits up and listens to these hidden stories, there is a momentum for renewed pressure on companies and investors to take more responsibility and further scrutinize governments who have allowed those who kill to get away with it.”

Meanwhile, the murders continue in 2018. Last week, three Cambodian rangers and law-enforcement officers were killed just hours after locating an illegal logging camp on the Cambodia-Vietnam border. They are survived by their wives and daughters, the youngest of which is just two and a half months old. And just this weekend Esmond Bradley Martin, an investigator into the illegal ivory trade, was found stabbed to death at his home in Kenya.

February’s Best New Eco-books — All 17 of Them

This month’s new books look at America’s disappearing bees, how religion can fight climate change, a pioneering woman scientist and a lot more.

February may be the shortest month, but this year it also brings a huge number of new environmentally themed books. Titles to be published this month cover everything from climate change to wildlife to important environmental history. The list also includes books for everyone — from dedicated environmentalists to nature-friendly kids. Check ‘em all out below (links are to publishers’ or authors’ websites) and then warm up your library card or plan a trip to your local bookstore.

Wildlife:

Our Native Bees: America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them by Paige Embry — an in-depth look at North America’s pollinator crisis.

A Forest in the Clouds: My Year Among the Mountain Gorillas in the Remote Enclave of Dr. Dian Fossey by John Fowler — the shocking true story and “the only first-person account from inside Dian Fossey’s beleaguered camp.”

Leatherback Blues: The Wild Place Adventure Series by Karen Hood-Caddy — a YA novel about a young girl trying to rescue sea turtles in Central America who goes head-to-head with vicious poachers.

Conservation Optimism:

The Future of Conservation in America: A Chart for Rough Water by Gary E. Machlis and Jonathan B. Jarvis — a “clear and compelling guide” and “a unified vision of conservation that binds nature protection, historical preservation, sustainability, public health, civil rights and social justice, and science into common cause — and offer real-world strategies for progress.”

Thank You, Earth: A Love Letter to Our Planet by April Pulley Sayre — science, nature, geography, biology, poetry and community, all wrapped up together in this beautifully illustrated children’s book.

Climate Change:

Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival by Dr. Peter D. Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth — an indemnification of the world’s governments, corporations, religious bodies and the media. Foreword by climate scientist James Hansen.

Rising Seas: Flooding, Climate Change and Our New World by Keltie Thomas — an eye-popping kids’ book showing us what the world might look like when climate change puts some of our most famous landmarks underwater.

Climate Garden 2085: Handbook for a Public Experiment by Manuela Dahinden and Juanita Schläpfer-Miller — learn how climate change will affect your neighborhood by creating a garden that mimics what will happen in the future. An interesting thought experiment turned real.

Climate Church, Climate World: How People of Faith Must Work for Change by Jim Antal — a look at the moral challenges of global warming and how churches can address them. Bill McKibben provides the foreword.

Last Diamonds by Francesco Bosso — a beautiful photography book capturing the Arctic’s icebergs before they disappear.

Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future by Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright — a challenge to avoid a future of “capitalist planetary sovereignty” brought about by climate change. Yikes.

Pollution:

Fractured Communities: Risk, Impacts, and Protest Against Hydraulic Fracking in U.S. Shale Regions, edited by Anthony E. Ladd — an interesting look at this hotly contested form of energy development and the sociology of protest.

Environmental History:

The City That Ate Itself: Butte, Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit by Brian James Leech — the long and troublesome history of an infamous open-pit mine that has now become a toxic lake.

The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America by Robert Wuthnow — a window into how Trump, Cliven Bundy and their like rose to power.

Pushing Our Limits: Insights From Biosphere 2 by Mark Nelson — one of the crew members locked into this infamously failed experiment recounts the experience. You know Steve Bannon was in charge of this, right?

The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science by Joyce Sidman — a kids’ book about a pioneering woman scientist in a time before women were allowed to be scientists.

The New Deal’s Forest Army: How the Civilian Conservation Corps Worked by Benjamin F. Alexander — a look at how America’s parks, national forests, scenic roadways and even picnic shelters came to exist, and how they gave birth to the modern environmental movement.

Looking for even more new eco-books? Check out our previous “Revelator Reads” columns for dozens of additional recent recommendations.

Another Deadly Year for Rhinos

Video: Poachers slaughtered 1,028 South African rhinos for their horns in 2017.

Transcript:

Poachers slaughtered 1,028 rhinos in South Africa in 2017.

That’s nearly 3 dead rhinos… every day.

Rhino horns sell for prices higher than gold — all because of their perceived (but mythological) medicinal values.

Even baby rhinos are killed for the sake of their tiny horns.

South Africa is home to 90 percent of the world’s rhinos.

Other rhino species live in Asia, where they’re also threatened by poachers.

At this rate, how long do rhinos have left in the wild?

Is This the Year the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow Goes Extinct?

With just a few dozen left in the wild, things don’t look good for these critically endangered birds. But a captive-breeding program could help save them.

This year the United States could experience its first bird extinction in more than three decades.

That’s the warning from the scientists and conservationists working to protect the critically endangered Florida grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus). Once common in the grasslands of central Florida, this geographically isolated subspecies has experienced a catastrophic population decline since the 1970s, mostly due to habitat loss and degradation. Although the tiny birds have been protected by the Endangered Species Act since 1986, their numbers have continued to fall — to the point where recovery now seems next to impossible. A survey last year found that just 22 females and 53 males remained in the wild — and that was before 2017’s hurricane season and record-setting winter cold snaps.

“Extinctions really happen,” warns Paul Reillo, zoologist and president of the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation in Loxahatchee, Fla. “This is going to be North America’s next extinct bird if we do nothing.”

Reillo says there’s just one option left to save the Florida grasshopper sparrow: the captive-breeding program that began in 2015. “Captive breeding is never anyone’s desire, and it’s always the approach of last resort,” he says. “Given the collapse of the wild population it’s not only the last option, but it’s the last of the last options.”

Getting to this point took several years of debate among the various government agencies and partner organizations working to protect the birds. Finally the first sparrow eggs and juvenile birds were brought into captivity at the Rare Species Conservatory and the White Oak Conservation Center plantation near Jacksonville in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

Learning to Live

As with any captive-breeding program, learning how to get the birds to mate and hatch outside their native habitat has been a complex process. Early attempts to hatch the birds’ tiny eggs failed before the team established the proper temperature, humidity and incubator-rotation procedures. They learned quickly, though; by May 2016 a successful artificial incubation protocol had been established. The first captive-laid eggs hatched that month at the conservatory. Several additional chicks have been born since that point, although not all have survived. The captive population now stands at a total of 48 birds, with 29 living at the conservatory in Loxahatchee.

Beyond figuring out how to hatch the birds, the conservation teams also learned more about the adult birds, specifically the critical role of parenting. For one thing, the birds they’ve hand-reared never learned how to act like wild birds and “tend to be very poor parents,” Reillo says. Breeding pairs rarely work together to build nests, while females sometimes lay eggs outside of their nests and then fail to sit on the eggs until they hatch. Most of the females who did successfully nest often fed their chicks improperly, while males were rarely attentive to any part of the reproductive process except for mating — a big change for a species that engages in bi-parenting in the wild. During 2016 and 2017 most of the fertile eggs laid at the facilities had to be artificially incubated and then hand-reared after hatching, a process that could conceivably extend this cycle of parental neglect.

Parenting is also important in other ways. Although chicks can be raised by humans to become healthy adults, they need some quality time with their parents first. “The first two to three days of parental care stimulate all sorts of wonderful things, the most important of which seems to be the bacteria in the gut flora that enables a healthy immune system to develop,” Reillo says. “We cannot replicate that.” The facilities have managed to raise more than a dozen chicks whose eggs were removed from their parents after just a day, but “it’s extremely difficult and it often ends in disappointment because they develop septicemia and often there are infections that the chicks can’t overcome,” he says.

A Threat Revealed

Another immunological challenge has revealed itself through the captive-breeding program: Many of the birds, they found, have become afflicted with a previously unknown protozoan parasite that starts in the intestines and then invades vascular tissue in the liver, heart, spleen and other organs. This causes high mortality in the sparrows, particularly young birds, as well as birds stressed by factors such as cold, handling or even breeding.

Reillo says we might not have learned about this parasite without the captive-breeding program. “When birds die on the landscape the bodies disappear very quickly, and you can’t explain the mortalities,” he says. That’s why there has never been what he calls a “unifying explanation” for the collapse of the wild population. Captivity, on the other hand, provides a more controlled setting and gives the scientists “a window into some of these problems facing the birds that otherwise you would not see in the wild.”

Although the parasite’s still killing some captive birds, the conservation teams have learned how to detect and treat it. “We’ve stumbled across a means of controlling it and we do have a therapy that clears this organism from birds very quickly,” Reillo reports. “But so far we’ve only found one such drug that actually works well. That’s a concern because whenever you use one thing over and over again there’s a good chance that the target organism will evolve some resistance to it, and then you’ve got a real serious problem because you’ve got something that you can’t treat.”

What Happens Now?

The next step involves finding out more about how parasites and other potentially transmittable threats affect the birds both in captivity and in the wild. Larry Williams is the Florida supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the lead agency in the birds’ conservation efforts. He says disease analysis is being conducted and is expected to be completed by March. In April the wild population will be surveyed “so we’ll have a feel for how many birds survived the winter.” Once that’s complete the species’ conservation working group will meet in mid-May to make a final plan for possibly collecting any of the remaining wild birds and bringing them into captivity.

“We’re being really careful about this,” Williams says. “If the working group says our plan will be to bring in 10 females, then we want to have the cages and capacity in the captive facilities to handle those 10 new females. We don’t want to be sitting there at May 15 saying ‘bring in 10’ when nobody thought to build the cages to house them.” He expects that if the working group gives the go-ahead to start collecting more wild birds, the effort would start in June when the birds are nesting, so both mothers and eggs can be brought into the breeding facilities.

One big hurdle looms over all of this: money. After investing millions of dollars on field research, mitigation efforts and launching the captive-breeding program, the Fish and Wildlife Service has requested an additional $150,000 to $200,000 for future captive-breeding efforts. But federal funding for many endangered species programs is up in the air under the Trump administration. Reillo says “we’re not counting on the federal government actually providing tangible resources for this program going forward.” The Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida is currently raising funds to help the captive-breeding program, as is the Rare Species Conservatory through Florida International University’s Tropical Conservation Institute, the latter with a matching-grant program.

Another obstacle for this entire effort: Some of the captive birds may not live much longer. Florida grasshopper sparrows typically only live four to five years in the wild, and Reillo reports that several of the birds in their collection are already older than that. “Why they’re still alive is anybody’s guess,” he says. “They’re on borrowed time.”

Hope Springs Eternal

If most or all of these many difficult problems can be overcome, there is actually hope for this subspecies. Although the sparrows are relatively short-lived, they make up for it with several biological advantages. “These birds are hardwired for rapid reproduction,” Reillo says. Parents incubate eggs for just 11 days, and chicks can start leaving the nest at nine days before becoming completely independent just after three weeks of age. They start reproducing about one year later, and females can lay three to four eggs at a time, with as many as five clutches in a season. “So a female may be able to produce up to 20 chicks a year,” Reillo says. “It is a species that is engineered and has evolved for rapid population growth.” That means the captive population could conceivably grow fast enough and large enough that a release program could be considered some time down the road.

Of course, getting to that point won’t be possible without additional potential breeders, and every day that passes without bringing more wild birds into the captive population is a day when the total population could shrink even further. “Every single life is precious for these birds,” Reillo says.

Ultimately what happens next depends on the people who have devoted their lives to saving the Florida grasshopper sparrow from extinction. “I’m worried about our ability to save the species,” Williams admits, “but I’m confident that the people working on it are doing the absolute best work possible.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Extinct in the Wild But Still Flying: The Guam Kingfisher

Turning Power Over to States Won’t Improve Protection for Endangered Species

Many states currently are poorly equipped to assume the responsibility of caring for their threatened wildlife.

By Alejandro E. Camacho, University of California, Irvine and Michael Robinson-Dorn, University of California, Irvine

Since the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973, the U.S. government has played a critical role in protecting endangered and threatened species. But while the law is overwhelmingly popular with the American public, critics in Congress are proposing to significantly reduce federal authority to manage endangered species and delegate much of this role to state governments.

States have substantial authority to manage flora and fauna in their boundaries. But species often cross state borders, or exist on federal lands. And many states either are uninterested in species protection or prefer to rely on the federal government to serve that role.

We recently analyzed state endangered species laws and state funding to implement the Endangered Species Act. We concluded that relevant laws in most states are much weaker and less comprehensive than the federal Endangered Species Act. We also found that, in general, states contribute only a small fraction of total resources currently spent to implement the law.

In sum, many states currently are poorly equipped to assume the diverse responsibilities that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries (collectively, “the Services”) handle today. In our view, therefore, devolving federal authority over endangered species management to the states will almost certainly weaken protections for those species and undermine conservation and recovery efforts.

Endangered species listings — Endangered and threatened species listings by year for all U.S. states and territories. ESA, CC BY-ND

Science-based decisions

The Endangered Species Act requires the Services to list and then protect endangered fish, wildlife and plants and their habitat, working with expert scientists, state authorities and citizens. It prohibits anyone from harming any listed species, and requires decisions about whether a species is endangered to be made “solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available.” While costs are clearly relevant to protecting at-risk species, the law is clear that determinations about whether a species is endangered or likely to be harmed by a particular activity should not be based on the decision’s potential economic impacts.

In addition, the act directs the Services to cooperate as much as practical with states on conserving listed species. This may include actions such as signing management agreements and providing funding to state agencies. The law also allows citizens to petition to list species as endangered and file lawsuits to help enforce the Act.

Congress takes aim

Critics argue, often with little proof, that federal endangered species protection is too cumbersome and costly, and that the agencies act without sufficient input from states and localities. Some contend that endangered species protection can be more effectively and efficiently accomplished by state agencies alone.

Sea turtle tracks — USAF biologist Danielle Bumgardner measures a path left by a nesting sea turtle at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., June 22, 2016. All sea turtles found in US waters are listed as threatened or endangered. USAF

The House Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Utah Republican Rob Bishop, has approved five bills that would weaken key provisions of the Endangered Species Act. These measures would:

Allow the Services to deny that a species is endangered (and forgo protection of that species) due to economic impacts of listing.
Require the Services to classify indiscriminately any data submitted by states, tribes or counties for listing decisions as “best available science.”
Make it harder for citizens to challenge government actions under the ESA by limiting recovery of attorneys’ fees in citizen suits.
Remove protection for at-risk non-native species within the United States.
Lift federal protection for gray wolves in the Great Lakes states and Wyoming.

Observers expect similar legislation to be introduced in the Senate. And Utah Senators Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch have reintroduced a bill that would remove all federal ESA protection for species found within the borders of a single state. Such action would eliminate federal protection for hundreds of currently listed species, including the Florida panther and Florida manatee.

These legislators argue that states should play a larger role. When a federal appeals court found that the Endangered Species Act barred the Services from transferring management of federally threatened prairie dogs in Utah to the state in 2016, Bishop asserted that “Utahns have proven they can maintain prairie dogs. The only thing impeding the state is federal meddling.”

More recently, Wyoming Senator John Barrasso said, “Endangered species don’t care whether the federal government, or a state government, protects them. They just want to be protected.”

State laws are weaker and narrower

Our review shows that most states are poorly positioned to assume primary responsibility for endangered species protection. State laws generally are weaker and less comprehensive than the Endangered Species Act. West Virginia and Wyoming do not protect endangered species at all through state law. In 30 states, citizens are not allowed to petition for listing or delisting of a species.

Only 18 state laws protect all federally listed endangered species found in that state. Another 32 states provide less coverage than the federal statute. And 17 states do not cover endangered or threatened plants.

Only 27 states require use of scientific evidence in listing and delisting decisions. In 38 states, regulators are not required to consult with the state’s wildlife experts for state-level projects.

California condors perch above an enclosure where biologists trap them to conduct research in the Ventana Wilderness, east of Big Sur. AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

Unlike the Endangered Species Act, 38 state laws do not authorize regulators to designate critical habitat for threatened or endangered species – areas essential for those organisms to survive. Only two state laws require recovery planning, only five state laws restrict harm to important endangered species habitat, and only 16 states protect endangered species on privately owned lands.

Finally, state-reported expenditures make up only five percent of all annual spending to implement the Endangered Species Act. In short, states will need to massively increase spending to maintain current levels of protection.

Better ways to enhance state roles

We agree that there is a need for better collaboration between states and federal agencies. States and tribes may have important knowledge and data that can complement the substantial expertise and resources provided by federal authorities. But that information alone should not substitute for the science-based decision making required by the ESA.

Furthermore, the Endangered Species Act already provides ample opportunities for federal and state collaboration. Many charges of poor coordination appear to be thinly veiled attempts to reduce protections, rather than efforts to promote meaningful collaboration. In our view, effective coordination under the ESA requires an enduring commitment to conservation and recovery by both the Services and the partnering state.

Congress should find ways to provide more incentives for conservation on private lands, which provide habitat for nearly 80 percent of listed species. The Endangered Species Act already encourages federal collaboration with states and private landowners, and there are many examples of successful partnerships.

Several studies have shown that listing species and developing conservation and recovery plans improves their status, provided that recovery efforts are funded. Rather than dismantling the Endangered Species Act, Congress needs to provide more resources to achieve its goals. The most productive strategies would be increasing funding for listing, conservation and recovery; systematically implementing and enforcing the law; and developing strategies for managing looming stressors to ecosystems, such as global climate change.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Tribal Cultures Underwater — and Falling Through Thin Ice

A national tribal climate-change conference highlights impacts to culture, heritage and survival.

Maija Katak Lukin’s cousin plunged through the ice to his death while hunting for food for his family. Wenceslaus “Boyo” Billiot, Jr. and Stanley Tom continue to encounter new hurdles in their quest to relocate their communities threatened by encroaching seawater. And Henry Lickers worries about seasonal changes that are altering the dates on which his community holds traditional ceremonies.

These were some of the stories presented during Cultures Under Water: Climate Impacts on Tribal Cultural Heritage, a conference held in December 2017 at Arizona State University. Hosted by the university’s Indian Legal Program, the three-day conference brought together tribal leaders, cultural practitioners, attorneys and nonprofits that support tribal climate efforts. They discussed how they advocate for policy changes in a nation that’s dismissive, at best, of their unique cultures and history. And they all expressed a common goal: ensuring their communities survive in an era where ecosystems are changing almost daily.

In her remarks, Rebecca Tsosie, a Yaqui law professor at the University of Arizona and longtime native-rights activist, noted that the U.S. failure to recognize or respect tribal cultures is leading to tribes being left behind — or left out entirely — in planning and policy. Ninety percent of all coastal land lost in the United States is in Louisiana, she reported, yet the tribes whose homes are in the coastal bayous and wetlands that line the Gulf of Mexico, and who are on the front line of climate change, are “not even mentioned in state planning.”

Wenceslaus Billiot. © 2018 Debra Utacia Krol. All rights reserved.

Another Louisiana tribe, the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, is planning to relocate its entire community from a rapidly disintegrating island to further north in Terrebonne Parish. But they’ve run into some roadblocks, says “Boyo” Billiot, the tribe’s deputy chief — namely, the state of Louisiana, which wants to wrest control of the project away from the tribe, and the federal Fair Housing Act, which would force the 600-member tribe to accept non-native residents, since they lack federal recognition.

Stanley Tom feels the Isle de Jean Charles tribe’s pain. “We’re just one storm away from extinction,” says Tom, the tribal administrator for the Newtok Traditional Council, whose own relocation project in Alaska is snarled in red tape and a dispute with a neighboring community. “If we hadn’t built our own new village, we would have had to move to the city and become refugees,” Tom said. “We would have lost our lands and our culture.” He agreed with Billiot that the two communities should not have had to compete for the same relocation grants.

Lukin, who lost her cousin, said she isn’t just heartbroken at the loss of yet another community member to thinning ice: More broadly, she’s the superintendent of the Western Arctic National Parklands, headquartered in Kotzebue, Alaska. Her dual roles — as a wife and mother concerned with ensuring her family gets proper nutrition through traditional subsistence in a changing ecosystem, and as an executive charged with managing public lands — can sometimes be in conflict. Due to the thin ice, she has to send her staff out by air on projects; but, she said, “I’m worried that, by sending them out in airplanes, I’m contributing to climate change.”

Maija Katak Lukin. © 2018 Debra Utacia Krol. All rights reserved.

Being a federal employee also meant that Lukin’s presentation wasn’t as detailed as it could have been; “I’m not sure how much I should say,” she replied when asked about how she felt about the changes occurring in her community. However, Lukin and Tom both stressed undeniable facts about the loss of sea ice and a rapidly altering climate. The changes affect subsistence food security, as well as sport hunting and fishing and other recreational activities by non-native hunters and other visitors in the 104-million-acre region under Lukin’s management.

“Climate change is one of those things that can uproot all people,” said Lickers, environmental science officer for the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne in Ontario, Canada, one of the Haudenosaunee peoples. “We’ve been concerned about climate change for a long, long time.”

Traditionally, Haudenosaunee seasons align with a moon phase, he said. “Each one of those seasons dictates when to plant beans or corn. We have ceremonies that are tied into those seasons that tell us what the world looks like.” But, those ceremonies have been disrupted, he reported. The ceremony associated with bean planting, for example, can no longer take place at the traditional time, because “the seasons have shifted,” he said.

It’s not just about seasons. Tsosie said that climate change is causing nothing less than “cultural genocide,” as governments fail to respect traditional ways of life and may even be sparking the “intentional destruction of cultural heritage.”

Keynote speaker Joel Clement echoed this, saying “There’s nothing climate change doesn’t touch.”

Clement, the former climate change lead at the Department of the Interior, said that the current administration is mounting an “all-out assault on anything that had to do with climate change — it’s like being led by a gang of vindictive fifth-graders.” Clement detailed how the Interior Department is working to eviscerate its staff, including slashing people of color and native people from the federal payroll by reassigning staffers with no notice and taking other moves to dislodge them from federal employment. “It’s clear that Secretary Zinke had no respect for the career ranks and the mission of DOI, and clearly wasn’t going to do any work on climate change,” he said.

So, in a political environment that has little interest in protecting tribal cultures, how do indigenous peoples assert their rights?

Robert Hershey, law professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, said, “Every attorney should read the Guideline for Considering Traditional Knowledge and Climate Change Initiatives,” which contains information on how to understand and abide by protocols when advocating for tribal communities.

Another possible solution involves a more radical approach. Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, averred that capitalism, and its addiction to fossil fuels, is the cause of climate change. Goldtooth’s solution was delineated in a report released at the conference that called for an end to public subsidies for fossil fuel extraction, including carbon taxes, markets and offset pricing.

Finally, Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian Community, offered another solution: Remain connected to tribal communities and their lands.

“Once those connections are broken, that’s when we become unfocused, a weaker society,” Lewis said. “My elders tell me, ‘Don’t forget our stories of resilience and adaptation.’ ” He added that tribes should create their own action plans, with a cultural foundation, to deal with climate change.

“We should all look to each other as our allies, as water protectors,” he said.

Whatever the future holds, one thing is certain: “We must be ready for changes,” Lickers said. “Societies that can’t change will collapse.”