Eels, Cocaine and Climate Change

Forget ‘Cocaine Bear’ and ‘Cocaine Shark.’ To really understand the environmental threat of illicit drugs, look to eels.

This summer many media outlets smelled blood in the water and went on a feeding frenzy, publishing sensationalized reports about sharks getting high on cocaine off the coast of Florida.

The story originated with a Discovery Channel “Shark Week” program, which posited that odd, manic shark behavior observed off the Florida Keys originated after the predators consumed bales of cocaine dropped in the water by smugglers.

Shark scientists quickly debunked this theory by pointing out that sharks would only be attracted to cocaine if it smelled like meat, and that cocaine has never been found in wild sharks’ systems.

Still, the damage was done: The media had drummed up one more excuse to be afraid of sharks.

But cocaine in the water — that’s something we should still be afraid of. Only it’s not coming from bales of drugs dropped from the sky. It’s coming from human urine, the same way antidepressants and other pharmaceuticals end up in our sewers and waterways.

And it’s not causing the animals who consume it to get high or stoned. New research published in the journal Fishes reveals that this human-excreted cocaine could cause a host of health problems for wildlife — and people.

Cocaine’s a Hell of a Drug

To understand this potential threat, researchers looked to the critically endangered European eel (Anguilla anguilla), a species known to science for its usefulness in studying environmental pollutants.

“Eels are excellent biomonitors,” says Anna Capaldo, a biology professor at the University of Naples Federico II and the study’s senior author. “They are very sensitive to aquatic contaminants, live in the same place for many years, and have a large percentage of fat that promotes the accumulation of many contaminants. They also represent a source of food for humans.”

European eel by Lorenz-Seebauer via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Eels regularly swim in waterways where cocaine has been detected, like the Thames River in London. Previous studies have detected the drug in eels’ systems, but Capaldo and her team wanted to find out exactly what that meant. They exposed young eels to levels of cocaine equivalent to those found in the environment (20 ng/L−1) for 30-50 days. (All experiments were conducted under ethical guidelines for animal experimentation.)

The result: The cocaine accumulated at various levels in — and caused damage to — the eels’ brains, muscles, livers, kidneys, digestive tracts, gills, skin, spleens and gonads.

“That cocaine could cause damage to a living organism, such as an eel, was somewhat predictable,” Capaldo says. “However, the fact that this damage was also induced by a chronic exposure to very low concentrations of cocaine (20 ng of cocaine per liter of water equals 20 billionths of a gram of cocaine per liter) surprised us.”

The study concluded that even this relatively low concentration of cocaine could put European eels further at risk in the wild. “[T]he alterations in nervous and endocrine systems, and in peripheral tissues, induced by cocaine, could decrease its ability to survive and its reproductive fitness,” the authors wrote. “Moreover, the presence of cocaine in the muscle, which is the edible part of the animal, can be a problem not only for the eel, which needs a healthy muscle to complete reproductive migration, but also for human consumption of this fish.”

As for the “Cocaine Shark” effect? That remains to be seen.

“Drugs are particularly dangerous because they affect mood and behavior of living organisms, and this in turn can interfere with their survival skills,” Capaldo says. “In this regard, there are many studies concerning the effects of antidepressants on behavior of aquatic fauna. The effects of cocaine on eels’ behavior are a topic that we’d like to explore with further studies.”

They also hope to repeat the study using more than one contaminant, so they can better understand the compound effect of multiple pollutants or drugs on animals’ health.

The eels in this study were actually lucky. They were weaned off the cocaine, and many of the health effects receded. But eels encountering illicit drugs in the wild would remain exposed to environmental cocaine throughout their time in a polluted habitat — a situation that’s likely to worsen as the world gets hotter.

The Climate-Cocaine Connection

Capaldo points out that pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are just one threat to European eels; climate change poses a danger to all eel species across the world. But the two threats remain linked, as temperature fluctuations can cause chemical interactions to change and become more toxic.

“All these findings would suggest that climate change, and in particular the rise in temperatures, could pose a problem for eels’ survival,” she says.

Meanwhile the study cites research that points out how cocaine poses its own threat to the climate — and a major one, at that:

“It is estimated that 1982 tons of pure cocaine were produced in 2020, an increase of 11% over the previous year. The carbon footprint … of cocaine, related to cultivation of coca plants, processing of cocaine, disposal of waste generated in the manufacturing process and land-use change, is 4500 kg CO2e per kg of cocaine produced. Therefore, referring to the 2020 data, we obtain a mean value of the total emissions per year of 1.9 million tons of CO2e, a value significantly higher than that of other crops, as sugar cane or cocoa beans.”

And the problem is only going to get worse. Cocaine production increased another 35% between 2021 and 2022, according to a recent United Nations report. Meanwhile a commentary published this July in the Journal of Addiction Medicine predicts that climate change — and its resulting human suffering — will worsen the opioid epidemic and increase abuse of fentanyl, cocaine, and other legal and illegal stimulants.

Embed from Getty Images

Which just goes to show: It’s all connected.

“We are all linked by our environment,” says Dr. Emily Einstein, chief of the Science Policy Branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who was not affiliated with either study. “The idea that the behaviors of humans end up in the water and impact our ecosystems and endangered species is an important one to keep in mind. Much like we share a water supply, we also share a drug supply. I think this idea that humanity is kind of linked by these shared resources is an important one to remember. We all have to care about each other, the impact we’re having on each other, and on our environment as well.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

Endangered Wildlife Are Getting Dosed With Rat Poisons

Time to Dance the Salmon Home

This summer a Tribal ceremony celebrated the return of sacred fish, lost for generations.

Late in the morning on July 12, a helicopter landed in a field near the entrance to AhDiNa, a campground on the McCloud River in Northern California. Children ran ahead to greet the craft, and soon the road was lined with spectators waiting to witness the delivery of precious cargo: an insulated bucket containing 25,000 fertilized winter-run Chinook salmon eggs.

These eggs would not only bring the Winnemem Wintu Tribe one step closer to bringing salmon, or Nur, back to their ancestral waters, but could also help save the species from extinction.

Winter-run Chinook spawn in summer, but the spring-fed McCloud River runs cold all year round, buffering eggs and young salmon from even the worst summer drought. For 80 years the formidable Shasta Dam has blocked Chinook from the McCloud. Now fish are stuck in California’s Central Valley, where sizzling temperatures and water withdrawals make the Sacramento River lethal.

An adult winter Chinook salmon at the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery. Photo: Laura Mahoney/USFWS

Winter-run Chinook eggs were first brought to the McCloud River last summer, as part of an emergency plan spearheaded by NOAA Fisheries, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Winnemem Wintu to help the fish survive a third straight year of drought.

“We were flying by the seat of our pants,” says Cathy Marcinkevage, assistant regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region. “We had no idea what was going to happen last year. We had no idea if any of them would survive.”

The young salmon released into the McCloud River not only survived — they thrived, growing larger than those that reared in the Sacramento River below Shasta Dam.

Late last year the California Department of Fish and Wildlife captured and trucked 1,600 of the fry downstream so they could continue their journeys to the ocean. This year — with a new juvenile collection system, a novel streamside incubation system designed by the Tribe, and agreements in place that recognize the Winnemem Wintu as co-equal decision-makers — the partners hoped to build on their success.

Together Marcinkevage and Marine Sisk, fisheries supervisor for the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, carried the bucket to the ceremony grounds, a caravan of children and adults in their wake. Later in the afternoon, the partners would deliver the eggs to incubators on the riverbank.

First, it was time to dance the salmon home.

Warriors and Eggs

AhDiNa is at the end of a bone-juddering road south of the town of McCloud. On that July day, the campground was full of Winnemem Wintu, agency folk and their families, and people with Run4Salmon, a movement and prayer journey started by Winnemem Wintu Chief Caleen Sisk in 2016 to call salmon home to the McCloud River.

The ceremony took place in a circular arbor made from wood poles and conifer boughs. A fire in the center burned throughout the day, and as the sun rose higher, the circle had to be sprayed with water before the barefoot dancers could enter.

Chief Sisk. Photo: Juliet Grable

Between dances Chief Sisk invited partners from the agencies and organizations to join her in the circle. While a tribal member blew sage on each person, Chief Sisk asked the partners to open their hearts and minds and pressed for her two most urgent goals: building a “fishway” around Shasta Dam and bringing salmon, or Nur, from New Zealand back to the McCloud River.

Chinook eggs from the McCloud River were exported to New Zealand in the early 1900s, where runs formed in streams on the South Island. In 2010 Māori tribal members invited the Winnemem Wintu to come to New Zealand and see the fish, who Chief Sisk believes are the true relatives of McCloud River Nur.

In their agreements NOAA Fisheries and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have vowed to work with the Tribe to determine whether Nur can be safely imported from New Zealand to California and reintroduced in the McCloud River. Both the state wildlife department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would have to sign off on the plan. Some of the questions they will need to answer: Would the fish bring new pathogens to the McCloud? Would they compete with the other reintroduced Chinook for the same resources?

“Bringing the fish back to the U.S. doesn’t necessarily fulfill the recovery objective that we have for winter-run because, to our understanding, [the New Zealand fish] are not genetically the same as the winter-run Chinook that we have now and are trying to recover,” says Marcinkevage. “But we understand they are culturally significant fish for the Tribe and there’s probably a feasible opportunity to have a dual reintroduction that would support both of these species.”

Chief Sisk says that if it weren’t for regulatory barriers, the Māori could deliver 20,000 fertilized eggs as early as next year.

“Some of the rules are wrong for salmon, and they need to be changed,” she says.

For now the eggs come from U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Livingstone Stone hatchery on the Sacramento River. To the people gathered at AhDiNa, they were still worth celebrating.

Gathering around the eggs. Photo: Juliet Grable

The Salmon Dance was the last dance of the ceremony. While the women sang and men drummed, two dancers entered the circle, stepping lightly, undulating like fish. Next came a pair of warriors, their steps more emphatic, underscored by the clatter of anklets. A fifth dancer weaved in and out of the others.

The fifth dancer was the Salmon Spirit, dance captain Rick Wilson explained. First he dances with the salmon and thanks them for presenting themselves. Then he dances with the warriors in the same style.

“He makes sure they’re doing it for the right reason,” says Wilson. “He’s saying, ‘It’s okay; you’re good to go.’ ”

Stronger, Faster, Larger

Down by the river after the ceremony, a small crowd of adults and children pressed around a shade structure, where two vertical stacks of trays were set up. A pipe trickled water continuously through the stack. Each tray can accommodate thousands of salmon eggs. Used in virtually all hatcheries, the system is an efficient if unnatural way to grow fish.

Adjacent the shade structure was a second incubator system designed by Chief Sisk and built with the help of scientists from UC Davis.

Chief Sisk doesn’t like how the fry in the hatchery trays are stacked on top of each other; she wants them to have access to gravel and more agency. Her system, called the Nur Nature Base, has a much larger footprint than the hatchery trays and resembles a backyard water feature. Two deep square basins, lined with gravel, connect to a central pool that is planted with rocks and willow shoots. A sloping chute leads from the pool to a shallow, cobble-lined basin alongside the river.

Chief Sisk demonstrates the Nur Nature Base. Photo: Juliet Grable

Once the eggs hatch, the fish can swim over the lip of the basin into the pool, Chief Sisk explained to the crowd. “And when they’re ready, they’ll swim into this side channel, which the Winnemem Wintu have always built.”

Children crowded around Chief Sisk and her daughter, Marine, waiting for their turn to scoop cups of the orange, BB-sized eggs into the hatchery trays, then into one of the basins of the Nur Nature Base. By the time they completed the task, there were 11,000 eggs in the hatchery trays and 14,000 in the Nature Base.

Chief Sisk is confident that the Nur Nature Base will give the young fish a jump-start. “They’ll be stronger, faster, and larger,” she says.

In a few years, the team will know if she’s correct. Because the fertilized eggs come from the hatchery, the scientists know the identities of their parents and have segregated eggs from unique families between the hatchery trays and the Nur Nature Base. This way any fish that survive and return to the Sacramento River as spawning adults can be genetically traced back to one of the two rearing systems.

Eggs were delivered again in late July and early August, for a total of up to 80,000. Using two different systems and three simulated spawning dates will help the partners learn which strategies work best.

“We’ll know and learn better ways of setting up rearing and incubation,” says Rachel Johnson, salmon life history program lead for NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “What I also love is we are braiding natural science with spiritual and culturally relevant practices.”

Later this summer, the state wildlife department and the Tribe will place a rotary screw sampling trap downstream so they can estimate the number of fry that make it downstream. The agency also hopes to test an experimental in-river fish-trapping station where the McCloud River fattens into an arm of Shasta Lake. Finally, the California Department of Water Resources will install its Juvenile Salmonid Collection System to catch any fish the other traps miss. The system, which the agency piloted last year, uses cold water to funnel young salmon to a collection point, where they can then be trapped and transported below the dam.

Though this is the first project to reintroduce salmon to historical habitat above a large dam in California. Marc Commandatore, environmental program manager at the Department of Water Resources, says the winter-run project is “just the beginning.”

NOAA Fisheries has identified reintroducing fish to high-elevation tributaries as a key climate resilience strategy, especially for salmon languishing in the Central Valley.

“Fish are in the frying pan in the valley,” says Commandatore. “They want to be this beautiful cold water.”

The partnership with the Winnemem Wintu is also a welcome sign of new respect and collaboration among Western scientists and the region’s original salmon stewards. “To bring tribal knowledge into decision-making…I’m humbled by it,” says Commandatore. “We wouldn’t be here if science and engineering and belief hadn’t all come together.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

https://therevelator.org/lifeline-winter-run-chinook/

Playing Matchmaker for Corals

Improving the success of sexual reproduction is another tool for restoring the world’s coral reefs.

Coral reefs support vibrant marine ecosystems, stimulate tourism and fishing industries, and protect shorelines from tropical storms and erosion. But reefs around the globe have been hit hard by pollution, overfishing and climate change, which is causing increasingly frequent and severe coral bleaching. Scientists predict severe bleaching on 99% of the world’s reefs within this century unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Saving coral reefs requires major systemic changes — dramatic cuts in energy consumption, switching to renewable energy, managing overfishing and pollution, and restoring target reefs.

Restoration efforts have now become a priority for many scientists. This series looks at some of those efforts.

Along Florida’s coast, multiple coral restoration projects have hundreds of people painstakingly attaching thousands of coral fragments to acres of endangered reefs. These efforts are yielding impressive results, but they won’t be enough — especially now, in the face of unprecedented high sea temperatures, as some projects scramble to rescue corals from in-water nurseries.

Other projects have successfully coaxed corals to reproduce sexually in laboratory settings. But that approach, while important, remains costly and limited in scope.

Another option is boosting natural sexual reproduction of corals. Many corals reproduce sexually through broadcast spawning — a coordinated release of eggs and sperm into the water, with fertilization occurring at the surface. Fish and other marine creatures eat many of the gametes, and others drift off into the open sea without ever bumping into their other half. That doesn’t help their rate of survival, so scientists are developing a workaround. Sexual or larval propagation, also called coral seeding, involves collecting spawn in the wild, fusing the eggs and sperm in a container, growing larvae in protected settings, and dispersing them back onto the reef.

Think of it as sort of fertility treatment for corals.

Freshly collected elkhorn coral gametes. Photo courtesy SECORE International.
Photo: SECORE International / Paul Selvaggio

One project pursuing this option is a joint effort of The Ocean Foundation, Fundación Dominicana de Estudios Marinos (FUNDEMAR) in the Dominican Republic, Centro de Investigaciones Marinas (CIM) at the University of Havana in Cuba, and SECORE International.

SECORE, which stands for SExual COral REproduction, is the research and development arm of the effort.

“We are working on ways to do larval propagation more efficiently and successfully,” says the nonprofit’s research director, Margaret Miller. “We do the research and development and pass it off to the locals to do the work on the ground. As we develop these tools, we have a ready-made beta testing network. We learn a lot about what works and doesn’t work at a variety of settings and locations.”

Coral seeding offers two big advantages over outplanting coral fragments: reduced labor and cost and, more importantly, increased genetic diversity.

As Fernando Bretos of The Ocean Foundation explains, every fragment from a coral organism is genetically identical and, when placed back in the sea, faces the same issues that damaged its reef in the first place. Genetic variety increases the chances that some coral organisms survive harmful events such as disease or increases in water temperature.

There are a lot of steps to this approach, though, and some are tricky. The first challenge is knowing when a specific species is going to spawn. While scientists aren’t exactly sure what sets off spawning events, it likely is some combination of lunar cycle, solar cycle, water temperature, and chemical or light changes. But based on observation of previous events, they can predict spawning for specific reefs and coral species within two or three nights. Some corals are more reliable than others, though, and the cues themselves are sometimes ambiguous. For example, some corals spawn 7 to 10 days after the full moon in August. But when a full moon occurs in early August or late July, or if there are two full moons August, it can happen in September instead of or even in addition to August.

And even when the timing is known, the tiny organisms don’t make things easy.

“Spawning is usually in the middle of the night, and during hurricane season, which is doable but not convenient,” Miller says. “We plan a couple of extra dives to make sure we don’t miss it, because it could be a month or a year before we get another chance. So just being there at the right time is the first big hurdle.”

Another challenge is the capacity for working in the field, including having the right people and equipment in place at the right time. But on the plus side, other than a boat, that equipment is decidedly low-tech. The devices for collecting coral spawn, for example, are small tents that are open at the bottom and funnel into a container at the top.

Photo courtesy SECORE International.

The next step, fertilization, basically involves unceremoniously dumping all the eggs and sperm from each colony into a bucket. A slightly high-tech microscope comes in handy at this step, because it isn’t possible to see with the naked eye whether fertilization has occurred, at least not for a day or so.

“If we don’t get good fertilization, like 90%, the rest of the process is really difficult,” Miller adds. (But no pressure, corals.)

The scientists tested the amount of time that different species need to complete fertilization. “Brain coral, for example, is pretty much completely done in 15 minutes,” she says. “For some, it is an hour or more. The default is to keep everything mixed for 1 to 2 hours.”

The next step is providing the tiny swimming larvae with a suitable spot to attach and develop into coral polyps. For that, SECORE designed special tiles with grooved surfaces to encourage settlement by coral larvae but discourage growth of algae, and tiny ledges to protect the settlers as they mature. The tiles also are self-stabilizing and usually can be placed on the reef without using any kind of adhesive — a drastic reduction of labor.

Tiles and larvae are placed together in basins, basically kiddie pools with a cute name: Coral Rearing In-Situ Basins, or CRIBs. These are kept in a little over a yard of water near the beach or dock. About a half million larvae fit in a 6-by-12-foot pool.

Raising corals in CRIBS costs significantly less than raising them in land-based laboratories or aquaculture facilities and requires only about 5% of the labor.

FUNDEMAR and CIM have provided the labor and, along with The Ocean Foundation, training on the process. A $1.9 million grant from the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund paid for the initial work, and now the foundation is looking to expand it.

Coral spawning and restoration training. Photo courtesy SECORE International.

“We brought the entire Cuban coral research community to the Dominican Republic to learn the technique,” Bretos says. “They’ve initially applied it at Jardines de la Reina and Guanahacabibes Peninsula National Parks in Cuba. And we recently held a workshop to look beyond the initial grant, to add 12 new sites and four additional coral species.”

Boosting the number of species propagated is important, Bretos adds, because restoration is more about saving an entire habitat than an individual species. He and Miller stress that the tools of fragmentation and sexual propagation are both needed to accomplish that goal.

“If we can get sexual propagation to the level of converting, say, 10% of the millions of eggs to larvae, versus maybe 1%, there is tremendous potential,” says Miller. “The potential of scale is there in terms of the raw material that corals provide, sperm and eggs.”

But mortality rates remain a barrier to large-scale application of this method, and improving those rates are a research priority for the Coral Restoration Consortium’s Larval Propagation Working Group. A paper the group published notes that there have been examples of corals propagated in this way that survived to sexual maturity and now spawn predictably each year — a huge step forward and validation of the potential of coral seeding.

Plus, as Miller points out, even with the high mortality, the effort makes a difference. “These days the recruitment of species naturally on Florida reefs is zero. So even if our result is low, compared to zero, it’s not nothing. And we are doing the research to improve survival.”

Cuba and the Dominican Republic are the two largest island countries in the Caribbean, Bretos points out, so the project covers a lot of coral area. And they plan to share information and knowledge with scientists and practitioners across the Caribbean, United States and Mexico.

“The Caribbean is linked by ocean currents,” Bretos says. “Every country is facing the same problems. By working together, we share resources and we share experiences. It is a great investment. Yes, it’s a slow game when we need a fast game, but we’re building capacity. And once you do that, it’s forever and it’s a fast game.”

SECORE also has implemented larval propagation projects in Florida, working with the University of Miami, Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, and the Biscayne National Park Authorities, and in the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of an initiative by The Nature Conservancy. Other projects took place in Belize, Bonaire, Columbia, Honduras, and Mexico.

That represents a lot of people playing matchmaker to help save coral reefs.

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Previously in The Revelator

Planting Coral Gardens to Save Florida’s Reefs

A Lifeline for Winter-Run Chinook

With salmon migration blocked by Shasta Dam, a Tribe and agency scientists collaborate to bring them home.

Near McCloud Bridge, about 15 miles east of Interstate 5 in Northern California, lies one of the former village sites of the Winnemem Wintu. The Tribe still holds coming-of-age ceremonies on the river, which they also call Winnemem.

Backed up by Shasta Dam and reservoir, the river is wide and sluggish, flowing under McCloud Bridge and past the Forest Service campground, which is popular with anglers casting after the river’s famed trout. In late June temperatures rise by mid-morning and warblers sing from the generous canopies of the oaks shading the campsites.

From the bank below one of the campsites, Matt Johnson, senior environmental scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, points to a spot where he installed two rotary screw traps in the river last summer. The traps — each a large metal cone-and-trap box moored on twin floats — are typically to sample fish populations, but Johnson used them to catch young winter-run Chinook salmon fry who’d been released upstream.

“It was a duct tape and bailing wire emergency operation,” jokes Johnson, who had been brought onto the project just weeks before. “I had to use whatever I had on hand.”

Winter-run Chinook fry. Photo; Jake Sisco/USFWS

The project, part of an 11th-hour emergency action to help save winter-run Chinook from extinction, marked the first time these endangered, evolutionarily unique fish have been above Shasta Dam in 80 years.

“The McCloud was probably the worst river to dam in California,” says Johnson. “It’s incredible salmon habitat.”

The McCloud River is replenished by snow and glacier-fed springs on Mt. Shasta’s southern flank. The river winds through a labyrinth of basalt canyons before fattening into an arm of Shasta Lake. Salmon and steelhead once thrived in these waters, which flow cold even during drought.

Shasta Dam is the centerpiece of the Central Valley project, the audacious network of dams, reservoirs and canals that supply and deliver, on average, 7 million acre-feet of water to farmers and communities every year. When it was completed in 1944, the 602-foot dam cut off miles of salmon habitat, and the reservoir inundated nearly all the Winnemem Wintu’s ancestral territory, including many sacred sites.

Aerial view of dam and lake
Shasta dam and lake near Redding, Calif. Photo: Kelly M. Grow/ California Department of Water Resources

The Tribe, which is not federally recognized, does not own any land on the McCloud, but under the leadership of Chief Caleen Sisk, the Winnemem Wintu have spent the past 25 years fighting for their right to hold ceremonies on the river, opposing proposals to raise Shasta Dam even higher, and praying to return salmon, or Nur, to their rightful waters.

More recently state and federal agencies have joined that effort.

“Winter-run are a ‘species in the spotlight’ for us at NOAA,” says Rachel Johnson, salmon life history program lead for NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “We recognize that they are some of the most vulnerable fish that we manage. We really need help moving the needle on their recovery.”

Eggs and young salmon need continual cold water to survive. Winter-run Chinook spawn in June and July, a strategy that worked well when they could reach the spring-fed reaches upstream. Now Chinook who return to spawn are trapped in the Sacramento River Valley near Redding, where summer temperatures reliably soar above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The Bureau of Reclamation strategically releases cold water into the Sacramento River throughout the summer to aid fish that spawn below the dam.

“Nature cared for them in a much more brilliant, sustainable way,” says Rachel Johnson. “We’re trying to mimic that, but we’ve seen a continued decline.”

The Sacramento River winter-run Chinook population started crashing in the 1970s, and they became a federally listed endangered species in 1994. In 1997 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service built a special conservation hatchery at the base of Shasta Dam to help bolster the population. But little changed over the following two decades: The number of non-hatchery adults returning to spawn dwindled to just 153 individuals in 2017.

In 2021, following an anemic winter, Shasta Lake dipped to just 24% of capacity. The Bureau ran out of cold water, and Chinook ran out of luck.

That year, “there was essentially complete failure of all the winter-run that spawned,” says Matt Johnson.

As the drought persisted, Rachel Johnson heard from NOAA headquarters. “They wanted to know, what can we do to not let winter-run Chinook go extinct on our watch?”

The emergency pushed the agency to think creatively. Together with the state wildlife department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they outlined a suite of actions to help both winter-run and spring-run Chinook: trapping and relocating spawning adults to cold water tributaries; increasing production at the conservation hatchery; and treating gravid females with the equivalent of “prenatal vitamins” to offset thiamine deficiency, a new challenge related to poor ocean conditions.

Fish agencies had been wanting to reintroduce Chinook above Shasta Dam since at least 2009. Now, if they were going to save the species, they had to act quickly.

“This is a really hard thing to do,” says Matt Johnson. “You have a giant dam in the way of restoring salmon. It’s monumental in scope, money, planning and resources.”

They needed the Winnemem Wintu’s cooperation and knowledge, but the Tribe was resistant to introducing hatchery-bred eggs to their river because Chief Sisk believes that their true salmon relatives don’t dwell in the Sacramento River, but in streams on New Zealand’s South Island.

In a strange irony, fertilized Chinook eggs from the Baird Hatchery on the McCloud River were shipped all over the world, starting as early as the 1870s.

“The only place they survived was New Zealand,” says Chief Sisk.

Chief Sisk. Photo: Juliet Grable

For decades, the Winnemem Wintu had no idea these fish existed. Then, in 2004, they were contacted by Māori tribal members who had seen a film about the Tribe’s resistance to raising Shasta Dam. They were invited to travel to New Zealand in 2010 to reunite with the salmon.

“We have stories about salmon going through an ice waterfall in Mt. Shasta,” says Chief Sisk. She cites an ice waterfall on Aoraki, a mountain on New Zealand’s South Island, as further evidence that the salmon in both places are physically and spiritually connected.

The Tribe is advocating to bring these New Zealand Chinook home; in the meantime, Rachel Johnson met with Chief Sisk at the river to discuss using eggs from the conservation hatchery to carry out NOAA’s emergency action.

“I recall very vividly the language that she used,” says Johnson. “She said, ‘You know, I don’t recognize the fish that are below the dam — they are not familiar to me — but I am willing to bring them back here because they belong here.’ ”

Last summer, on two separate dates, the partners brought fertilized Chinook eggs to a campground on the McCloud River called AhDiNa, about 20 miles upstream of McCloud Bridge. They eventually released a total of 35,000 Chinook fry into the river. Over the next several months, Matt Johnson’s rotary screw traps caught 1,600 of the young fish, who were successfully trucked to a release site on the Sacramento River in Redding, below Shasta Dam.

The release was not a true reintroduction, but a pilot experiment, he says. “What we did last summer numerically was not significant for recovery of winter-run Chinook salmon. But symbolically, it was a tremendous first step forward.”

This year the partners plan to release twice as many fish, and they will deploy a different, more effective trapping system. Water conditions in the river are also better. Most significantly, the relationships among the partners have been officially defined.

On May 1 Chief Sisk, on behalf of the Winnemem Wintu, signed a co-management agreement with California Department of Fish and Wildlife and a co-stewardship agreement with NOAA Fisheries. The agreements recognize the Tribe as an equal decision-making partner and pledge to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge and Tribal cultural values into restoration plans. The state wildlife department has also awarded the Tribe a $2.3 million grant to help fund its efforts to restore salmon.

During the signing ceremony, Chief Sisk spoke about the significance of the salmon’s return to the river and Winnemem Wintu homelands, and the role salmon play as both harbinger and provider of health.

“They are the messengers about water — about ocean water, about spring water, about all the waters,” she said. “They’re the ones who make water clear and pure and alive.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

5 Things to Know About the Fate of Wild Salmon

Three Ways Congress Could Act to Protect Imperiled Wildlife

Legislators in Washington could help close significant funding gaps that thwart wildlife conservation.

From bees to bison to boreal grasslands, wildlife and wild places face grave threats. Globally, a million species could be pushed to extinction in coming decades, with habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, and climate change among the many manmade factors driving declines.

The picture in the United States is dire, too, a report from NatureServe found earlier this year. Across the country, one-third of plants are at risk of extinction, including nearly half of all cactus species, and about 200 species of trees. In addition, 40% of animals are at risk of extinction and those associated with freshwater, like mussels and amphibians, are the most vulnerable.

The bigger picture is concerning, too: Some 41% of U.S. ecosystems face range-wide collapse, with temperate and boreal grasslands being among the most threatened.

Gray-blue butterfly on a plant.
An endangered mission blue butterfly Photo: Patrick Kobernus/USFWS (CC BY 2.0)

Stemming these impending losses will take concerned efforts at every level, including by legislators in Washington. Three bills introduced in Congress this year could help efforts considerably.

Funding Conservation

The best opportunity to save at-risk species would come from the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. The bill would allocate $1.3 billion to state fish and wildlife agencies and $97.5 million to Tribal conservation programs to help protect and recover species with the greatest conservation needs.

If passed, the legislation “would represent the largest, most transformational investment in wildlife and habitat conservation in a generation,” the NatureServe report found.

Currently states rely on funding from the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants Program for work outlined in State Wildlife Action Plans. These are the roadmaps that fish and wildlife agencies use to guide conservation work and help keep species from becoming endangered.

But the current grant program is “woefully underfunded,” says Caroline Murphy, government relations manager for The Wildlife Society. Only about $70 million is appropriated by Congress each year to all states, territories and the District of Columbia. It’s a far cry from the more than $1 billion that’s needed.

It’s an even more uphill battle for Tribes, which can compete for a small piece of the funds from the grant program.

“Tribes, unlike states, don’t have a guarantee that they will receive that funding, and then if they do receive funding over one fiscal year, they don’t have the ability to go back and apply the following fiscal year,” says Murphy. “The current setup is extremely challenging for Tribal governments to do at-risk species conservation work.”

If passed, Recovering America’s Wildlife Act could help close these funding gaps and “help ensure the diversity of species that need conservation efforts are actually being protected” she says.

The bill also contains an incentive: an additional 5% of funds to state agencies that include plant conservation as part of their wildlife state action plans.

It was first introduced in 2016 and reintroduced this year by Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich (New Mexico) and Republican Sen. Tom Tillis (North Carolina). And while the bill hasn’t been introduced this session yet in the House of Representatives, “the majority staff on the House Natural Resources Committee are working on their draft of the legislation,” says Murphy. “And they’re working in good faith with Democratic offices to ensure that we get a bill that’s not only introduced, but viable within the House.”

Could this be the year that the landmark legislation becomes a reality? “Yes, I think there’s definitely a path forward within this Congress,” she says. Still, Murphy urges the public to contact their legislators and urge their support for the legislation.

“This funding would be a game changer for fish and wildlife professionals in their ability to conserve species that we all care about most,” she says. “States and Tribes will have certainty year after year that this will be the amount of funding they will have in the future to do these long-term conservation projects and ensure over significant time horizons that they can conserve these species.”

On the Brink

Groups of species that are especially imperiled, but often overlooked, could have a fighting chance with the Extinction Prevention Act.

The legislation — introduced in the House of Representatives in May by Democrat Raúl Grijalva (Arizona) and in the Senate by Democrats Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Jeff Merkley (Oregon) — would provide $20 million annually to threatened and endangered North American butterflies, Pacific Island plants, freshwater mussels and Southwest desert fishes.

Cyanea stictophylla
Critically endangered Cyanea stictophylla (or Haha). Courtesy PEPP.

It would create four grant programs of $5 million each to help close gaps in conservation spending and could be used by states, territories, Tribes or other groups with conservation expertise.

The need is great, in part because pressures on plants and animals are increasing with habitat loss and degradation, and climate change, among other threats. But funding through the Endangered Species Act also falls short of what’s needed.

“Funding for endangered and threatened species is not only insufficient but also highly disproportionate among taxonomic groups,” a 2016 study published in Issues in Ecology found. “From 1998 to 2012, over 80% of all government spending went to support 5% of all listed species, whereas 80% of all listed species shared less than 5% of all funds. Most federal spending has gone to just 15 fishes: 7 salmonid and 8 sturgeon species.”

Freshwater mussels, for example, may not be the most charismatic of animals, but they’re important contributors to the health of rivers and streams. Yet nearly two-thirds of North America’s freshwater mussel species are imperiled.

The situation for endemic plants in Hawaii is also dire. This small state is home to 44% of the nation’s threatened and endangered plant species.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took a small step to help Hawaiian and Pacific Island plants, pollinators, freshwater mussels, and southwest desert fish on July 20 by allocating $5.1 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to these species groups, but it’s still just a quarter of what the Extinction Prevention Act could deliver.

Boosting Birds

Our feathered friends could use help, too.

Birds across the western hemisphere stand to gain from bipartisan legislation introduced in the House of Representatives in June. The Migratory Birds of the Americas Conservation Enhancements Act, put forward by Republican representatives Maria Elvira Salazar (Florida) and David Joyce (Ohio), and Democrats Rick Larsen (Washington) and Mary Peltola (Alaska), would reauthorize and expand the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act.

Small blue and white bird on a branch.
A cerulean warbler. Photo: Dominic Sherony (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The program has been in place for two decades and is a critical source of funding to help conserve migratory birds, including supporting more than 700 projects to restore or project habitat in 43 countries and 40 U.S. states and territories.

The new legislation would reauthorize the program, which expires at the end of the fiscal year.

Passing the legislation “should really be a no-brainer,” says Erik Schneider, a policy manager at the National Audubon Society.

The new legislation would make several important enhancements to the existing program that would help improve its effectiveness and impact. “It’ll make a few changes to help reduce some of the barriers to funding including, tweaking the matching formula that would allow for greater accessibility to the program,” he says. “It’s really about making sure that we’re continuing to both implement and grow the program to address the really important needs that birds are facing in the United States and across the hemisphere.”

Some of those needs came to national attention after a 2019 report found that North America had lost 3 billion birds since 1970, with the decline affecting even birds that were previously considered common.

“These results have major implications for ecosystem integrity, the conservation of wildlife more broadly, and policies associated with the protection of birds and native ecosystems on which they depend,” the researchers found.

Helping to reverse those trends requires protecting and restoring habitat within the United States, as well as in the key wintering areas for migratory birds throughout the hemisphere. Fully funding the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act with the newly introduced legislation is part of that — but it’s not all that’s needed.

“We need a broad array of funding increases and policy changes that will be important to recovering the 3 billion birds that we lost since 1970,” says Schneider. “That also includes a lot of other legislation that’s been proposed, including recovery of Recovering America’s Wildlife Act and making sure that we’re effectively implementing bedrock laws like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Species Spotlight: The ʻŌlulu, a Rare Hawaiian Plant That Depends on Humans for Survival

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5 Hot New Environmental Books

…to read while it’s too hot to do anything else.

This summer’s soaring temperatures and searing wildfires have made it too hot and too dangerous to spend much time outdoors. But that shouldn’t stop us from preparing for a better future for the planet. Here are five powerful new books covering the most pressing environmental issues of the day — climate change and the extinction crisis — and the people trying to create the solutions we need.

Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future

by Gloria Dickie

This masterful look at the world’s eight remaining bear species (note that key emphasis) gets our vote as the best conservation book of the year to date. It’s a powerful, inspiring and somewhat worrying examination of our ursine neighbors and, through them, ourselves.

From the publisher: “…Gloria Dickie embarks on a globe-trotting journey to explore each bear’s story, whisking readers from the cloud forests of the Andes to the ice floes of the Arctic; from the jungles of India to the backwoods of the Rocky Mountain West. She meets with key figures on the frontlines of modern conservation efforts — the head of a rescue center for sun and moon bears freed from bile farms, a biologist known as Papa Panda, who has led China’s panda-breeding efforts for almost four decades, a conservationist retraining a military radar system to detect and track polar bears near towns — to reveal the unparalleled challenges bears face as they contend with a rapidly changing climate and encroaching human populations.”

Two bonuses from the archives: Dickie wrote about grizzly bears for The Revelator back in 2018. And for more on bear extinction, read an excerpt from Mike Stark’s Chasing the Ghost Bear: On the Trail of America’s Lost Super Beast.

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell

My first impulse is to call this an angry book, but that’s not quite right. It’s a motivated book, one that aims to push for positive change before it’s too late. The fact that this feels “ripped from the headlines” right now makes it all the more important in this painful summer, which embodies the new abnormal that’s been thrust upon us.

From the publisher: “Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow. Stop burning fossil fuels in 50 years, and the temperature will keep rising for 50 years, making parts of our planet virtually uninhabitable. It’s up to us. The hotter it gets, the deeper and wider our fault lines will open.”

Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas

by Karen Pinchin

I’ve written about endangered tuna several times over the years, but reading this book gave me a chance to think about what it means to be a tuna — and how hard it is to protect them. This decades-spanning tale of environmental justice presents the human side of tuna, as well as a look below the surface of the ocean at species very few of us truly understand but more of us should treasure.

From the publisher: “In 2004, an enigmatic charter captain named Al Anderson caught and marked one Atlantic bluefin tuna off New England’s coast with a plastic fish tag. Fourteen years later that fish — dubbed Amelia for her ocean-spanning journeys — died in a Mediterranean fish trap, sparking Karen Pinchin’s riveting investigation into the marvels, struggles, and prehistoric legacy of this remarkable species. Over his fishing career Al marked more than sixty thousand fish with plastic tags, an obsession that made him nearly as many enemies as it did friends. His quest landed him in the crossfire of an ongoing fight between a booming bluefin tuna industry and desperate conservation efforts, a conflict that is once again heating up as overfishing and climate change threaten the fish’s fate.”

Mother Nature

By Jamie Lee Curtis and Russell Goldman, Illustrated by Karl Stevens

Curtis, the Academy Award-winning actor, shifts from scream queen to eco-horror with this graphic novel, adapting a to-be-produced Blumhouse screenplay. The villain this time isn’t a faceless, unstoppable serial killer; it’s a heartless, PR-savvy fossil-fuel executive who happens to wear Curtis’s face (she’ll obviously play the role in the eventual film). The story starts with an act of over-the-top bloodshed but soon settles into more nuanced terrors of pollution and betrayal, while presenting us with realistic and welcome Diné and LGBTQ characters — not all of whom make it out of the book alive.

One last note: Curtis may be the marquee name here, but the breakout star is Stevens’ exquisite watercolor artwork.

From the publisher: “After witnessing her engineer father die in mysterious circumstances on one of the Cobalt Corporation’s experimental oil extraction projects, Nova Terrell has grown up to hate the seemingly benevolent company that the town of Catch Creek, New Mexico, relies on for its livelihood and, thanks to the ‘Mother Nature’ project, its clean water. Haunted by her father’s death, the rebellious Nova wages a campaign of sabotage and vandalism on the oil giant’s facilities and equipment, until one night she accidentally makes a terrifying discovery about the true nature of the ‘Mother Nature’ project and the malevolent, long-dormant horror it has awakened, and that threatens to destroy them all.”

Restoring Eden: Unearthing the Agribusiness Secret That Poisoned My Farming Community

By Elizabeth D. Hilborn

Another horror story — except it’s all true. Equal parts memoir and detective story, this stunning book recounts an EPA scientist’s quest to uncover and understand what’s unravelling her family’s North Carolina farm. Her journey reminds us that unseen evil exists in the world, and that we can fight it.

From the publisher: “The chemicals found in her water samples showed beyond any doubt that not only her farm, but her greater farming community, was at risk from toxic chemicals that travelled with rainwater over the land, into water, and deep within the soil. Hilborn was given a front row seat to the insect apocalypse. Even as a scientist, she’d been unaware of the risks to life from some common agricultural chemicals. Her goal was to protect her farm and the animals who lived there. But first she had to convince her rural neighbors of the risk to their way of life, too.”

That’s it for this month, but you can find hundreds of additional book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives.

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Protect This Place: World-Renowned Elwha River Threatened by State Logging

A timber sale looms over hiking trails, a nearby city’s water supply, and already-vulnerable salmon and orca populations.

The place: 

The Elwha watershed in northwestern Washington, near Port Angeles, is approximately 321 square miles. The river’s headwaters originate 6,000 feet above sea level in the Olympic National Park and flow to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which drains into the Salish Sea before leading to the Pacific Ocean. The river is the site of the biggest dam removal and river restoration in history, with the federal government spending over $327 million to remove the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams and regenerate the river’s surrounding ecosystem. Protect This Place

Despite that, industrial logging continues in this beloved river valley — in some instances less than 1,000 feet from the river itself.

Why it matters: 

The Klallam people have been stewards of the Elwha River and the surrounding area since time immemorial, with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe working decades to achieve dam removal and continuing to play a key role in river restoration. Before settlers arrived, Indigenous peoples lived in reciprocity with the Elwha while it nourished their culture and provided food for their families.

As the Elwha River regenerates, it’s a source of hope for many — not only in Washington, but around the world — that dismantling structures of colonization can lead to a more balanced relationship with nature.

Recovering salmon populations have only just reached a level to allow limited ceremonial and subsistence fishing in 2023, after decades of decimation due to the dams.

The watershed’s nonhuman inhabitants, many of whom are threatened or endangered, also depend upon a healthy watershed: marbled murrelets, northern spotted owls, American black bears and cougars. Keystone species like Chinook salmon are a food source for critically endangered Southern Resident orcas and bind the ecosystem together in a vital, interdependent food web. The remaining Southern Resident orcas, fewer than 75, are in a struggle to survive due in large part to the lack of salmon in the area.

A healthy watershed is also of critical importance to 20,000 Port Angeles residents who rely on the Elwha River for their drinking water. The frequency of city water-shortage advisories is rapidly increasing.

The densely forested Olympic Peninsula, which hosts the entire 45-mile river, is one of the natural wonders of the United States whose breathtaking beauty draws tourists from all over the world. The Olympic Adventure Trail, one of the most popular trails in the region, will be irreversibly altered by the proposed logging, which will leave a barren landscape alongside heavily trafficked portions of the trail.

The threat: 

Despite millions of dollars in federal investment and thousands of volunteer hours to restore the watershed post-dam-removal, Washington’s Public Lands Commissioner Hillary Franz, along with the state’s Board of Natural Resources, continues to approve hundreds of acres of logging annually in the Elwha River watershed.

Map showing proposed timber sale and location of river and hiking trail
Map depicting the Power Plant timber sale parcel in yellow and the Olympic Adventure Trail in blue. Credit: © forest2sea.com

Over 200 acres are scheduled to be cut in 2023-2024 alone, including a timber sale of 126 acres called “Power Plant.”

If we’re serious about addressing the climate crisis and bringing back the natural abundance that used to be so characteristic of this watershed, meaningful protection of the remaining 850 acres of unprotected legacy forest left on state lands there is critical.

We know that mature and old-growth forests and large trees are the most important terrestrial carbon sink and that Pacific Northwest forests are essential for addressing climate change and preserving biodiversity. Yet we’re left battling a violent and unsustainable colonial system that incentivizes extraction over conservation.

Maps of four proposed timber cuts.
The location of four Power Plant timber sale parcels in yellow and a timber sale called TCB23 in red, and the Olympic Adventure Trail in blue. Credit: © forest2sea.com

Washington passed the Climate Commitment Act in 2021 requiring the state to reduce 95% of carbon emissions by 2050. Protecting legacy forests on state lands could make a big contribution. The act also created a Natural Climate Solutions account, with a small amount of funding already flowing to protect legacy forests, but much more is needed.

Relying on the unique ability of Washington’s mature and legacy forests to sequester carbon is a win for everyone.

My place in this place: 

Elizabeth: “As a resident of the Elwha River watershed for nearly a decade, I launched a local community engagement last year by inviting people to hike in an area of forest proposed to be logged in the ‘Aldwell’ timber sale. Despite significant opposition by the community and city of Port Angeles, the state auctioned Aldwell for logging. Since the Department of Natural Resources has continued teeing up forests in the watershed for logging, I led an effort to put together a recently filed lawsuit to challenge the Power Plant timber sale.

“I’m motivated to take action because I know we can’t replace 100-year-old trees in my lifetime. These trees will be old growth by the time my son is my age. You can’t make a new home for all the animals who live there. You can’t recreate complex forest ecosystems overnight. There’s no substitute. I know these forests like a good friend. I visit them and spend time with them. They give me so much. What do I have to give them? Everything I can to help them survive, so that they can continue to bring peace and joy to generations to come. The Elwha River needs these forests, and so do we.”

What this place needs:

Protection of this place will require educating the broader public about what’s at stake. We’re working tirelessly with community members and partners to raise awareness about logging in the Elwha River watershed and share the importance of legacy forests and how they are essential to the web of life.

Tillie Walton, a veteran river guide and award-winning documentary filmmaker, will also be telling the story of the Elwha River and its forests. She intends to film as she traverses the whitewater, allowing viewers to see and feel what she experiences — and what stands to be lost.

Protection of this place will also require bold legal action. On June 30 the Earth Law Center, along with the Center for Whale Research and the Keystone Species Alliance, filed a notice of appeal to challenge the upcoming Power Plant timber sale.

The community group Elwha Legacy Forests, of which Earth Law Center is a founding member, simultaneously launched a crowdfunding campaign to buy out the extractive timber harvest lease by replacing the funds that beneficiaries would otherwise receive from the harvest.

Aerial view of clear cut with forest surrounding
The Aldwell cut in March 2023. Photo: © John Gussman

We need more scientists to explain why these forests play a critical role in the watershed’s health. And we need more wisdom keepers to awaken us to a relationship with these forests rooted in respect and reciprocity.

We also need new laws and policies. Earth Law Center is part of a coalition calling for Commissioner Franz to adopt a new mature forest policy and to place a moratorium on logging legacy forests until that policy is in place. We need more funding to complement and complete the Elwha River restoration by protecting all the watershed’s forests. And we need laws that fund essential services for rural communities without relying on extractive timber harvest dollars.

Who’s protecting it now:

The Earth Law Center, the Center for Whale Research, the Keystone Species Alliance, and the Elwha Legacy Forests community coalition are giving a voice to the Elwha forests through legal action and community outreach.

This spring more than 100 community members, largely from Port Angeles, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the Jamestown S’klallam Tribe, the Lummi Nation, and surrounding areas in the Olympic Peninsula, joined together in a peaceful rally at the Elwha River Observation Area near an active Aldwell timber harvest site. Although Aldwell was logged, we formed a lasting network of Elwha forest protectors.

 The Port Angeles City Council has vocally opposed logging within the watershed until further study and discussion. In a June 1 letter, city manager Nathan West wrote to Franz to request delaying the Power Plant and another timber sale.

Lessons from the fight:

Our current system is rooted in an extractive mindset. As we move to a new paradigm, we need to be prepared to mobilize to provide urgent responses to the destruction of our natural world. This takes building a vast network of allies and drawing on all of our talents and passions — from artists, photographers, lawyers, scientists and more.

We know we are ready for this shift. Even though it might seem far, it is quite close. We’re at a tipping point.

Follow the fight:

Learn more about our work by visiting ELC’s Elwha Legacy Forests page, where you can also read about the importance of Pacific Northwest forests to combat climate change. Visit the Elwha Legacy Forests website to stay up to date, take action and see more photos of the forests we’re working to protect. Also check out ELC’s social media for updates on our case (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).

Previously in The Revelator:

The Elwha’s Living Laboratory: Lessons From the World’s Largest Dam-Removal Project

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Climate Education Suffers From Partisan Culture Wars

But teachers in many states are stepping up to the challenge and providing students with knowledge and tools for resilience.

Climate change education has been caught in the crossfire of the culture wars. While some U.S. states are boosting climate literacy, others are effectively miseducating children by depriving them of the skills they’ll need to face the biggest challenge of their generation.

Studies show that climate education can help inspire kids to become more resilient, teach them about climate solutions, and prepare them to take jobs in the flourishing clean energy economy ― all while reducing climate anxiety and the carbon footprint of schools. Perhaps more importantly, advocates say that climate education has a positive ripple effect in local communities and across generations.

However, despite the rapid increase in heatwaves, droughts and climate-induced wildfires, K-12 teachers in most states typically devote just a couple of class hours per school year to climate change. And in recent years, several bills supporting climate education have failed in the U.S. Congress.

But behind the scenes, there’s a major push by advocates striving to improve climate education in two major ways: by training teachers, and by doing advocacy work at the state, city and district levels to ensure that climate education is included in the curriculum.

Thanks to these grassroots efforts, climate education is improving in many states. In 2020 New Jersey became the first state to pass a bill adding climate change to its K-12 education standards. Connecticut has passed a similar bill, while California and New York are also considering legislation to support climate education. Maine, Oregon and Minnesota are also taking steps toward boosting climate education.

Despite these advances, a 2020 study found, the education standards of at least 20 states failed to include the basics of human-caused climate change. In addition, advocates tell The Revelator that conservative-leaning states trying to limit LGBTQ rights and outlaw women’s rights to choose, like Florida and Texas, are also censoring climate education.

This partisan divide, coupled with the complex bureaucracy of the education system and a systemic lack of urgency, is undermining climate education, says Elissa Teles Muñoz, coordinator of the Climate & Resilience Education Task Force at the National Wildlife Federation.

“Our youth frankly don’t care about all the bureaucracy that’s going on at the state level,” she says. “They want climate education in their classrooms right now. Those who have received this education feel grateful to their teachers, who have sometimes gone out of their way to teach them about climate. But those who haven’t received it feel slighted. They’re anxious. Some of them are depressed. They feel grief. Climate education is a key solution to these feelings because we need to channel that into solutions.”

Grassroots Movement

Although 20 states have adopted the K-12 Next Generation Science Standards, which cover many climate change topics, climate education tends to be patchy across the United States because educators haven’t been trained to teach about the intricacies of the climate crisis, especially when it comes to attribution and solutions.

“Climate change needs to be taught at all different levels and subjects,” says Katie Boyd, program manager for the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN), which has 800 members. “It’s not just the science — children also need to understand the policy, health, and justice implications. Teachers need tools and resources to dig into climate in a holistic way.”

Boyd says “scores” of nonprofits provide teachers with the skills they need to teach about the climate crisis by organizing workshops and designing courses for educators. Some of these groups receive funding from progressive states.

“California, New Jersey and Washington are great examples,” Boyd says. “They’re doing good work to make climate education more robust by not only adopting the standards but also funding professional development and creating curriculum.”

Washington is spearheading this effort through Clime Time, an initiative sponsored by Governor Jay Inslee that has provided grant money for climate education projects across the state since the 2018-19 school year.

One of the leading recipients is EarthGen, a climate education nonprofit that works with approximately 750 teachers and 50,000 students in Washington every year. EarthGen aims to provide kids with the skillsets to be changemakers within their communities and has a strong focus on the intersection of climate change and social justice.

“This is especially important in a state like Washington, where we have a pretty robust fire season during which kids can’t even go outside,” says EarthGen program manager Becky Bronstein. “Certain communities, usually communities of color, are unfairly and unjustly impacted.”

Becky Bronstein, talks with educators during an EarthGen climate science training. Photo: EarthGen

But BIPOC communities aren’t helpless victims ― they are also agents of change that often use traditional knowledge to safeguard the environment.

“For our professional development, we try to showcase and raise the voice of native Tribes in the Pacific Northwest because they’re doing great climate action work,” Bronstein says. Her team is currently developing a course that highlights how Tribes are restoring the wild salmon population in the Columbia River watershed.

Culture Wars

A survey published in April by the Center for Sustainable Futures at Columbia University found that 80% of Americans think that elementary and secondary schools should teach climate education. But the poll’s data shows that liberals are more likely than conservatives to support climate education and efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of schools.

Climate change advocates say this gap is widening amid the culture wars being waged by predominantly red states. The Texas State Board of Education is actively trying to undermine climate education in the state in a bid to include more “positive” messages about the fossil fuel industry. Florida, meanwhile, is waging a culture war against “woke ideology,” including sexual and gender freedoms, as well as the climate crisis.

In Florida, there isn’t much opposition to teaching the underlying science of climate change, says Karolyn Burns, Education and Curriculum Manager at the CLEO Institute, a woman-led nonprofit dedicated to climate education in the Sunshine State. “But you see opposition when you try to talk about causes or solutions,” Burns tells The Revelator. “And of course, the disparate impact that climate change has in certain communities. Bringing up the justice angle is not allowed in Florida.”

There isn’t an outright ban against teaching climate justice, but teachers feel “censored and scared” because they fear that some students may record them and report them to their parents or the media, Burns says.

This hostility is fueled by extremist organizations like Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based far-right group that campaigns against what its members call “woke indoctrination,” and which has supporters at local school board meetings in many states. These groups represent a minority, but they’re “very loud and very hostile,” says Burns.

Although Burns describes Florida as “ground zero for these kind of attacks on education,” the impact of this pushback is being felt across the United States, even in liberal-leaning states like Washington.

“All the time we’re hearing about parents calling and saying, ‘I don’t want my kid learning about global warming,’” Bronstein says. “Or some parents don’t want their kids to learn about critical race theory and how that’s connected with climate justice.” But, she adds, educators show “a lot of bravery” when they teach about the climate crisis in conservative areas.

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Previously in The Revelator:

10 New Books for Environmentally Active Kids and Families

Small But Mighty: Why Antarctic Krill Are Worth Fighting For

Experts call for action to protect vast areas of the Southern Ocean and help safeguard the shrimp-like crustaceans at the base of the food web.

If you love penguins, whales and a livable climate, then it might be time to stand up for Antarctic krill.

These shrimp-like crustaceans occur around Antarctica but are most highly concentrated in the Antarctic Peninsula, which also happens to be one of the fast-warming places on the planet. That’s bad news for krill — and everything that depends on them — which is a lot.

Only a few inches long, Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) may be small, but their contributions to the ecosystem are massive — much like the swarms themselves. They form the base of the food web in the Southern Ocean, which circles Antarctica and makes up about 10% of the global ocean.

Most animals living in and around Antarctica dine on krill. That includes sea birds, whales, penguins, seals, squid, and numerous species of fish that live in the open ocean.

“Krill play such a fundamental role in the ecosystem, not just for the top predators, but also for smaller predators,” says Kim Bernard, an associate professor at Oregon State University who’s currently in Antarctica studying the crustaceans. “Almost everything down here feeds on them. And if they don’t feed directly on Antarctic krill, they’ll feed on something that does.”

A seal lying on ice surrounded by water.
A seal in the Antarctic Peninsula, 2019. Photo: Daniel Enchev, (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Krill help support a diversity of marine life, but they also play a major role in biogeochemical cycling by trapping carbon in the deep sea — something that benefits even those of us that live far from its frigid waters.

While krill have been spotted thousands of feet deep on the seafloor, they also come up to the surface of the water to feed on algae that absorb carbon dioxide. “When the krill migrate down in these massive swarms and excrete their waste, that transfers a large amount of that carbon to ocean depths,” explains Nicole Bransome, an officer with the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project.

One of the Southern Ocean’s most important aspects is its capacity to take up carbon. “And a huge player in that is krill,” says Bernard. “They’re worth fighting for.”

And the time to do that, experts warn, is now.

Dual Threats

While krill are abundant, researchers have seen a downward trend in population size, says Bernard, and their distribution is shifting. Climate change is one culprit.

Sea ice is important for krill lifecycles, especially in the juvenile stage, but warming temperatures are decreasing sea ice in the region.

A 2019 study in Nature Climate Change found that krill had shifted the center of their distribution south by 275 miles in the past 40 years. “The changing distribution is already perturbing the krill-centered food web and may affect biogeochemical cycling,” the researchers found.

Another study found that declining krill numbers could cause penguin populations to crash by 30% in one part of the region.

Climate change isn’t the only threat. Krill are also a target for industrial fishing vessels. (Yes, humans eat krill, too, as do our pets.) This fishing puts a lot of other species at risk.

“Most of the fishing happens in these really small nearshore areas where predators like penguins, whales, seals, and other animals feed,” says Bransome. “This hyper-concentrated fishing, in conjunction with climate change, is already having a negative impact on penguins in particular in the Antarctic peninsula.”

The intensity and duration of fishing efforts is also a concern, says Bernard.

“I’ve noticed that in recent years the fishing season has pushed further into the winter because there isn’t a seasonal closure,” she says. “And with less sea ice along the Antarctic Peninsula in the wintertime, the ships can just stay down there for longer.”

Global Action

There’s much that can be done. The Southern Ocean is managed by an international body of 27 members known as the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

The Commission is working on two fronts that could aid krill. The first is developing and implementing a science-based plan that would help spread out fishing in both space and time to ease pressure on predators.

The second is designating a network of marine protected areas. A big step on this front occurred in 2016 with the establishment of the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area — the largest in the world.

Gentoo penguin looking to the side, standing on snow with water in the background.
A gentoo penguin in Antarctica. Photo: Gregory Smith, (CC BY-SA 2.0)sea

But efforts to designate three more Antarctic marine protected areas have been blocked by just two Commission member states. China and Russia have prevented it from reaching the consensus that it needs for designation, says Bransome. The most recent stalemate came at a June meeting.

“A lot of people were very disappointed by that outcome,” says Bransome. “It seems Antarctica’s melting faster than CCAMLR members are acting to protect it.”

Conserving more areas of the Southern Ocean wouldn’t just benefit Antarctica, but could also help propel efforts to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, which global leaders recently agreed to under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

“Designating these marine protected areas, which are mature and ready, would be one of the best ways to actually move towards meeting that objective in the relatively short amount of time that’s left between now and 2030,” says Bransome.

The three proposed areas — in East Antarctic, the Weddell Sea and the Antarctic Peninsula — would not just help krill but conserve habitat and protect biodiversity for a huge range of the region’s species.

“Adélie and chinstrap penguins get almost all of their calories from krill,” says Bransome. “Other predators that would benefit include crabeater seals, fur seals, gentoo penguins, and whales, like humpback and fin whales, that are having massive population recoveries after experiencing centuries of exploitation themselves.”

Large protected areas that are free from pressures of industrial fishing can also better help animals build resilience to stresses from climate change. And a network of areas would allow animals to migrate between such spaces for breeding and foraging.

Bransome says she’d like the United States, which helped develop the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, to apply that same leverage to establishing new areas in the region.

The United States “could try to replicate that success and really make this issue a top political priority and continue to work closely with other proponents,” says Bransome. “France, Germany and Australia would be a few key ones to continue to engage with China and Russia via top diplomatic and technical channels to try to find a solution to finally reach consensus on designating the proposed protected areas.”

Personal Action

While global action is needed to protect Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, there’s a lot individuals can do, too. One of the biggest drivers of the krill fishing industry are omega-3 supplements. But consumers have other options besides krill, including marine algae.

“There are lots of different alternatives,” says Bernard. “The fats that the krill have inside them, that are supposedly so valuable to us, actually come from plants. So we could go directly to the source.”

Krill is also used by the aquaculture industry for raising farmed salmon, which comes with its own set of environmental problems.

Demand for the tiny crustaceans doesn’t stop there. “The industry is also developing some new products, including protein powder, and they’re starting to sell actual krill meat itself for human consumption,” says Bransome. “I would say the biggest growth markets for krill products right now are North America and Asia.”

Beyond leveraging consumer power, individuals can take action on climate change and conservation.

“People can reach out to government officials to let them know how important Antarctic conservation is, and reduce their individual carbon emissions,” says Bransome. They can also look for ways to spread the word to their communities about the importance of the Antarctic and krill. A good time to start is World Krill Day on Aug. 11.

We also need more awareness about the importance of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in general, she says.

“I think so many people just think it’s this place that has penguins and it doesn’t impact anyone,” says Bransome. “But it’s often referred to as the ‘beating heart of the planet,’ because the currents send nutrients to the global ocean feeding fisheries and biodiversity throughout the ocean. It stores the majority of heat and carbon that’s created. It really impacts us all.”

Previously in The Revelator:

‘We Found Plastic on the Seabed in Antarctica and I Just Cried’

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Saving the Earth Up the Street From Racist Murder

We can’t ignore other racial injustices while fighting the climate and extinction crises.

I was trying to tell my story about saving the trees of the East River Park, destined for the chainsaws and bulldozers of the real estate moguls of New York. But our stage was just too close to the Broadway Lafayette station where Jordan Neely was murdered.

Jordan was killed four blocks from Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, on the underground stage of the F Train, which squeezed and lurched into the Broadway Lafayette station on May 1 with Jordan on the floor in the chokehold of a marooned-in-macho former Marine named Daniel Penny. He snuck up behind Jordan and grabbed him as he was wailing, “I’m thirsty! I’m hungry! I’m tired! I’m fed up! I’m ready to die!”

Jordan Neely was a well-known busker, a street performer who perfected the moves of Michael Jackson, to whom he bore a strong resemblance. He was 30. Penny compressed his windpipe, and Neely was dead in minutes. The police of New York saw fit not to arrest Penny at first. He returned home to suburban Long Island as Jordan Neely went to the coroner, who ruled his death a homicide. The city erupted in protest, some of us even walking down tracks in the subway tunnel, stopping the trains.

Jordan was suffering emotionally and was unhoused for long periods. He needed our help, and we failed him as a city. That day Jordan was scary to Daniel Penny. He didn’t touch anyone or personally threaten any one person. But for many years anguished souls in the trains have been a part of living here.

Jordan Neely’s story and death swept through the city. At our May 7 show, after a week of still no murder charge and silence from our cop-mayor, we brought to the Joe’s Pub stage a bright red drum major’s coat, hung up on a light tree. This is the classic Michael Jackson costume that Jordan wore in his widely seen photographs, maybe with fewer gold braids.

At the end of our show, our director Savitri D invited the audience to come with us to the Broadway Lafayette station. We walked there, climate activists, arm in arm, chanting “Justice for Jordan.” Most of the audience came with us. We marched to the F Train platform where he died, following his red coat, which Savitri raised high on a long stick. Passersby joined us in our singing vigil.

There was something about that heaving rhythmic singing on that afternoon in the echoey tunnel… I don’t remember anything like it from years of shouting protests about extinction and climate change. The force of it, the anger, implacable refusal to let this continue, and then sadness, too, that this kind of violence spreading across the country, from children knocking on the wrong door to the insurrection of Jan. 6… This new kind of violence, can it be confronted with the sounds our bodies make? Can it be sung away?

In the United States, racist violence is never far from anyone, no matter what your issue might be. But progressive people do tend to choose an issue, and we can use it to narrow our lenses, as a defense against being overwhelmed by an overwhelming world. A person devoted to the cause of cruelty to animals might spend years opposing a Smithfield meat plant. Or it might be a Disney sweatshop in sub-Saharan Africa. Or palm plantations. Or redlining bank loans in the city.

And when you successfully raise an issue in the western mind, then institutions align with you and create your identity — like foundations, press, database outfits, your lawyer, etc. You’re labelled with your issue and you won’t escape. You are the “toxicity in beauty products” person, and that’s how you are defined or define yourself.

With our performance at the Public, such isolation was impossible. We could hear the trains rumbling underground. We could feel Jordan’s life and death flooding into the lyrics of our songs, into our stories of talking birds, invading machines, and subtitles we lend to superstorms. Our one message is that the Earth is a conscious being, with intelligence and feelings… Jordan moonwalked right through it.

One great failure in the “naming” of the Jordan Neely crisis by our city was what subways have become. Unmentioned in the killing’s trail of op-eds was the psychic environment in the train stations. That’s because of the narrowness of “issues” again. Public transportation is an issue, a necessary one to fight the dominance of fossil fuels, but you don’t hear anyone asking the question, “What happens to people in the psychic environment of the subway trains and stations?”

In fact the tunnels under the city vibrate with fear, and the unhoused and vulnerable are not the primary cause. Our train stations are cruel psychic experiments. There’s the glut of advertising to the point of torture; video screens large and small are jumping everywhere. You can’t escape the pressure of products. The faces of your fellow commuters glow with handheld games and TikTok and the Avengers and porn.

By the time the train pulls out of the station you are threatened by the happy professional voice announcing that post-9/11 militarized cops have lots of power down here. “The police would like to remind you that backpacks and large packages are subject to random search.” The intercom shares some common sense about leaning on the doors and walking between train cars but adds the ominous suggestions “Keep your possessions in sight at all times. Be alert!” — the thinly veiled NYPD fetish, the criminal inevitability they see in young Black males.

 

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The train begins to pull out of the station, and then here come the subway performers, vying for our exhausted eyes and ears. While the mariachi bands and drummer soloists and Jesus freaks might penetrate the already over-saturated sonic world, the more delicate artists — like a Doo-wop group with high harmonies from a threesome of soul stirrers, or a broke mother with her child pleading in a voice that doesn’t carry — their weak sound is wiped out. Jordan Neely though, moonwalking and smiling by, was some kind of pied piper.

But what happened to him? We know that his mother was murdered before he was 10 years old. But also, Sean Bell was shot at his Harlem wedding party when Jordan was 13, Freddie Gray died in the back of a Baltimore police vehicle when Jordan was 20, Eric Garner was unable to breathe in Staten Island and Michael Brown jaywalked in Ferguson and Tamir Rice was playing with his toy gun when Jordan was 21, Deborah Danner was shot in her bedroom in the Bronx when he was 22, Philando Castile of Minneapolis reached for his wallet when Jordan was 23, Stephen Clark waved his phone in his grandmother’s backyard when Jordan was 25… And then George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and on and on and on.

For the many harmed and desperate people of color who brave the crazy environment of the subway to ask for help, the context is a nightmare, especially given the police warnings on the public address system which amount to threats.

Ten riders sat there with their iPhones, busy but paralyzed, as Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely to death. What if they had stood up, all of them, accepting the task of defending a life? That’s what our singing that evening seemed to make possible, albeit too late. The soaring “Justice for Jordan” went up and up on the rhythms of clapping hands and harmonies. We didn’t feel like we were struggling to get from one issue to a second issue, from environmentalism to racial justice.

The volunteer gathering of strangers in the city was singing against a nightmare, singing down the injustice. We sensed we would be singing this song for a long, long time, and I like to think that more activism will come from it. Jordan danced and danced and danced as long as he could, and more dancers will grace our pavement and parks and our city will change.

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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.