Trump Budget Cuts Could Threaten Nation’s Drinking Water

Funding to forecast toxic algae blooms could be at risk, putting lakes and water supplies in danger.

On the broad metal deck of a small research boat, Rick Stumpf lowers a rope over the stern. It’s attached to a round metal disk, painted in alternating quarters of black and white.

“I’m out of practice,” he confesses, as he leans over the side.

Stumpf is an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Center for Coastal Science.  But today his boat isn’t on an ocean, but on a bay in western Lake Erie.  And the instrument he’s using — a Secchi disk, invented in the Mediterranean in the 1860s — is a far cry from the technology he normally uses.

As he reels the device back into the boat, Stumpf explains that measuring how far down you can see the disk reveals a lot about water clarity.

“Right now it’s about 8 feet? And that means there’s not much sediment and not a lot of algae in the water.”

Algae has become a major focus of scientific research on Lake Erie. Since 2002 toxic algal blooms — more accurately known as cyanobacteria, an ancient life form that produces chlorophyll, but can also release deadly toxins — have been plaguing the lake’s shallow western basin.

In 2014 a massive harmful algal bloom overwhelmed the drinking water intake for the city of Toledo and sparked a nearly three-day shutdown of the city’s water system, when nearly half a million residents were warned not drink the water or even bathe in it.

That same year, Congress re-authorized and amended the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act to include research on and response to blooms of freshwater cyanobacteria.  Stumpf says that legislation refocused NOAA’s mission in the Great Lakes.

And the research tools he uses these days are far more sophisticated than Secchi disks.

For more than eight years now, Stumpf has been tracking Lake Erie’s algal blooms from space.  Using satellite imagery detailed enough to spot high concentrations of chlorophyll — an indicator that harmful algae may be present — Stumpf has developed an early-warning system to alert residents to where blooms are and where they may develop.

To refine his Lake Erie forecasts, along with the satellite data gathered from both U.S. and European space agencies, Stumpf also draws on 30 years of water-quality data from Heidelberg University and regular water testing of the lake by federal and state agencies, universities, and even charter boat captains.

Lake Erie resource managers like Kelly Frey, who oversees water treatment for Port Clinton, Ohio, about 50-miles east of Toledo, have come to rely on NOAA’s bi-weekly forecasts of summer algal blooms.

“We’re looking every day,” says Frey.  “Operators are checking the Lake Erie satellite imagery, to see where the blooms are.”

But it’s not just Lake Erie that suffers from harmful algae.  Last year at least nineteen states, from Florida to Wisconsin to California, posted public health warnings about harmful algal blooms.

That’s why NOAA’s Stumpf and principle investigators from three other federal agencies are now trying to expand identification and assessment of harmful algal blooms nationwide.

The Cyanobacteria Assessment Network (CyAN) was launched in 2015 to develop an early-warning and assessment system for toxic algal blooms in lakes, reservoirs and recreational waters in the contiguous United States.  It’s a five-year inter-agency project with work from the NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Geological Survey, all supporting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the agency with lead authority for freshwater systems.

The project draws on years of data from NOAA’s experience with harmful algal bloom forecasting in Lake Erie. It also employs the EPA’s National Lakes Assessment,  NASA’s satellite imagery expertise, and the U.S. Geological Survey’s stream surveys and Landsat photos.

“We were already doing pieces of this work as part of our core mission,” says Keith Loftin, the principle CyAN investigator for the USGS, who is also doing work on algae toxins at his Lawrence, Kansas lab.  “So were all of the other agencies.  It’s everybody working together to solve a problem.”

One way researchers will do that is by comparing a 10-year archive of national satellite imagery with what they’re seeing now, to see how fresh water toxic algal blooms have changed over time.  A preliminary study in Florida, Ohio and California has already demonstrated that in each region algal blooms have behaved differently, with some shrinking, some expanding and some staying the same.

A recent study by the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University seems to indicate that climate change may play a role in the apparent increase in harmful blooms, due to increased rainfall that washes pollutants into freshwater lakes.

But Loftin says there’s still not enough data to be able to say with certainty that algal blooms are increasing in all parts of the country.  He hopes that ongoing monitoring of satellite and field data under the CyAN project will eventually provide an answer to that question.

“Trends assessment and monitoring are vital,” he says. “We can’t answer questions about trends without that.”

In the meantime, Stumpf says, CyAN aims to assist states across the country dealing with harmful algae by providing a database of easy-to-understand satellite data that can alert them to local blooms, and help them figure out strategies to reduce their threat — and their possible sources.

“Our basic format, just for the imagery, will at face value look like a picture.  It’ll be colored, but it will actually have data and be geo-referenced,” says Stumpf.  “It might be tables where they can go in and say, well, here’s the number for this year and that year.  That’s the whole goal of doing it. So they don’t have to be an expert.”

Accessing those science findings may also be made easier by a GIS mobile app now in development by the EPA.

Solution-based science on freshwater safety could be wiped out by federal budget imperatives

But there’s a problem that could stand in the project’s way: the future of funding for these federal agencies and their freshwater work.

Earlier this year, President Trump recommended a 31 percent budget cut to the EPA. In June the House Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would shave a more moderate amount — 6.5 percent — off the EPA budget. The Senate has yet to vote.

It’s unclear whether proposed cuts to the EPA could impact the agency’s Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Research Program, through which it funds CyAN.

NASA also funds CyAN through an inter-agency agreement set to expire at the end of FY 2018.  A statement from the agency says NASA is still planning to meet its 2018 commitment.

A spokesman for the USGS says are no proposed cuts to its 2018 budget that would affect the agency’s work on the CyAN project in either the White House budget proposal or the House budget plan, although the Senate has yet to weigh in.

And Steve Thur — acting director and permanent deputy director of NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science — says if Congress passes the proposed 2018 White House appropriation for his agency, he’ll be able to continue funding work on CyAN next year.

But none of the four federal agencies can be sure of funding for 2019, the final year of the CyAN project’s work.  That uncertainty is complicated by renewal of the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act, slated for Congressional re-authorization next year.

“I think we’re in a game of wait-and-see at the moment,” says Thur.  “We’ve got funding for the current operations for the CyAN project right now and so we’ll wait and see what comes of that.”

In the meantime, scientists like the USGS’s Loftin and NOAA’s Stumpf are determined to get on with the work and ignore national politics.

But NOAA’s Thur says federal funding directives from the White House could still possibly eliminate some of the local programs NOAA now hopes to take nationally. “There were proposals in the president’s request for FY 2018, under multiple budget lines, that would potentially impact our ability to produce the forecasts,” he says.

What Thur is referring to are the bi-weekly harmful algal bloom forecasts upon which Lake Erie water resource managers like Kelly Frey have been relying for years.

“The potential loss of our health and for a potential loss of jobs, potential loss of our economy as a result of not having safe drinking water,” says Frey.  “It’s very concerning to all of us.”

And if those forecasts are eliminated because of budget cuts, Frey and others wonder what will happen to the larger effort to safeguard the nation’s drinking water.

© 2017 Karen Schaefer. All rights reserved.

Tinder Talks Tough on Tigers

Tigers aren’t sexy, especially if you're posing with one in captivity.

Tigers aren’t sexy.

That’s the message from the dating app Tinder, which this week asked its users to stop posting photos of themselves with the big cats.

The photos, taken at tourist attractions with captive animals, may look cool, but “many of these wild animals are taken from their mothers as babies and forced to endure cruel and intensive training to make them ‘safe’ to interact with tourists,” said Cassandra Koenen, head of wildlife campaigns at World Animal Protection.

Tinder agrees, saying “we promise that your profile will be just as fierce without the drugged animals.”

If you really want to show that you love animals, Tinder has a better suggestion: post photos of yourself volunteering at an animal shelter.

Endangered Monkeys Can Thrive in a Disturbed Habitat

Research in Costa Rica illustrates the value of monkey social behavior — and of stolen bananas.

In a rainy, swampy rainforest in northeastern Costa Rica, female Geoffroy’s spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) go about their daily lives, blissfully unaware that they’re what humans call “an endangered species.” For them life consists of traveling through the forest, foraging on ripe fruit, caring for their offspring, and avoiding aggressive males.

The reason they can enjoy this relative peace is because they’re lucky enough to live on the protected land of a biological field station. The station was set up when landowner Hiner Ramirez’s daughters learned about the urgent need to conserve rainforest and encouraged their father to convert the family’s land — which he used to harvest trees for shipping pallets — into a protected reserve. He approached professors who were teaching at a nearby field station and made plans to set up a similar research and teaching facility.

The reserve is still owned by the Ramirez family and includes 1,000 hectares (about four square miles) of primary forest, secondary forest and a mosaic of pasture land and plantation. Stands of exotic beechwood (Gmelina arborea) continued to be harvested, but the native trees that were originally planted for harvesting were left to regenerate, and the former plantation areas have been made available to the wildlife.

Over multiple field seasons I spent there from 2005-2011, the shy female monkeys with infants became accustomed to my presence. I grew to love crawling in the swamps (which I frequently fell into), and racked up an impressive number of painful bites from inch-long bullet ants. My colleagues and I also discovered many unique behaviors in these monkeys. We observed several individuals using sticks to scratch themselves, a behavior that hasn’t been seen at other sites. We saw some other surprising behaviors, too, such as crossing forest gaps and sitting on the ground, an unusual behavior for an arboreal species. We even witnessed a couple of one-armed juveniles, that managed to travel gracefully despite their handicap. We aren’t sure whether these lost limbs are due to birth defects or injuries, but we continue to investigate potential causes and consequences.

Scientists studying spider monkeys across Central and South America originally thought the animals could only live in pristine primary, untouched forest, but the animals at the field station appeared to be doing well despite the fragmented habitat. Still, the behaviors we observed did not answer the biggest question: How were these spider monkeys in the secondary forest truly coping with their environment? Were they healthy, or were there any unhealthy conditions we could not see from mere observation? Spider monkeys are picky eaters that depend on ripe fruits, so they travel over large distances and monitor trees to find fruit that’s ripened to their liking. This makes them extremely sensitive to environmental disturbances. Female spider monkeys are particularly vulnerable due to the energy costs of seven-month pregnancies and then nursing infants for another two to three years.

To try to better understand how this affected the population, I studied behavior and stress hormones from fecal samples in 17 monkeys from 2010 to 2011 to determine if changes in fruit availability either altered their behavior or created elevated stress levels.

Contrary to my predictions, the spider monkeys did not exhibit elevated stress hormones in response to low fruit availability. Instead, I observed, they ranged in small groups when fruit was scarce and increased their subgroup size when fruit was plentiful. This flexible social system, in which a larger community splits off into variable subgroups, allowed them to strategically cope with variation in food availability without getting stressed. However, females that had the lowest resting times had the highest stress levels, and resting time predicted high stress hormones.

My results, published this week in the International Journal of Primatology, suggest that spider monkeys can use adaptive social strategies to help them cope with living in disturbed habitats, an important element in our understanding of this species.

It’s not just social behavior, though. This habitat also offers some tasty food options that counteract the negative effects of disturbance. My observations indicate that their top food resource was Pílon (Hyeronima alchorneoides), which was first planted as harvestable tree stands but had since been left to grow and sustain wildlife. Additionally, I occasionally caught them raiding the station garden for both bananas and guava. In fact, bananas foraged from the abandoned plantation turned out to be one of their top five food resources. The availability of these foods, as well as the large size of the preserve and protected status, allow them to thrive in this environment.

My research illustrates that spider monkeys can cope with disturbed environments — but only if we give them the protection and resources to counteract those disturbances. One crucial way in which we can promote healthy populations and dispersal between communities is to connect fragments with forested corridors. Planting quick-growing native trees, especially valuable feeding trees like Pílon, can facilitate travel between forest islands. This may be especially important for monkeys living in smaller patches of forests outside protected areas. Reforestation efforts should focus on planting preferred trees to support vulnerable species.

Spider monkeys can eat a wide variety of fruits, but across sites they nonetheless strongly prefer the same key trees species. Their travel, and their droppings, can then disperse those seeds across their habitat. This, in turn, helps to preserve larger tracts of forest. Spider monkeys in smaller tracts of fragmented forest experience greater stress, but my results suggest that having a larger forest helps, even when it’s dived by patches of pasture and harvestable trees.

Even in areas of mixed land usage, it is still possible to support wildlife. Given that fruit-loving spider monkeys are especially sensitive to habitat disturbance, the same strategy of planting fruit trees and connecting fragments should also benefit other kinds of primates. Most primates prefer fruit, but other species have more flexible diets that include leaves, insects or even animal prey. Primates are declining at an alarming rate — recent research indicates 60 percent of primate species are now at risk of extinction — but there’s still hope that we can preserve them and their forest ecosystems by developing conservation projects that work with local landowners. Such solutions are beneficial to both the wildlife and people, as local landowners can still profit from mixed-usage land while promoting sustainable practices.

© 2017 Michelle A. Rodrigues. All rights reserved

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.

U.S. Infrastructure Needs Resilience, Sustainability

Improving stability and overall standards will help infrastructure to survive disruptive events.

How does infrastructure in the U.S. compare to that of the rest of the world? It depends on who you ask.

On the last two report cards from the American Society of Civil Engineers, U.S. infrastructure scored a D+. This year’s report urged the government and private sector to increase spending by US$2 trillion within the next 10 years, in order to improve not only the physical infrastructure, but the country’s economy overall.

Meanwhile, the country’s international rank in overall infrastructure quality jumped from 25th to 12th place out of 138 countries, according to the World Economic Forum.

The quality of infrastructure systems can be measured in different ways – including efficiency, safety and how much money is being invested. As a researcher in risk and resilience of infrastructure systems, I know that infrastructure assessment is far too complex to boil down into one metric. For instance, while the U.S. ranks second in road infrastructure spending, it falls in the 60th place for road safety, due to the high rate of deaths from road traffic.

But by many measures, the U.S. falls short of the rest of the world. Two of these characteristics are key to our infrastructure’s future: resilience and sustainability. A new class of solutions is emerging that, with the right funding, can help address these deficiencies.

Resilience

Resilient infrastructures are able to effectively respond to and recover from disruptive events. The U.S. is still in the top 25 percent of countries with the most resilient infrastructure systems. But it falls behind many other developed countries because the country’s infrastructure is aging and increasingly vulnerable to disruptive events.

For example, the nation’s inland waterway infrastructure has not been updated since it was first built in the 1950s. As a result, 70 percent of the 90,580 dams in the U.S. will be over 50 years old by 2025, which is beyond the average lifespan of dams.

In addition, since the 1980s, weather-related power outages in the U.S. have become as much as 10 times more frequent.

Several European countries – such as Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Finland – are ahead of the U.S. in the FM Global Resilience Index, a data-driven indicator of a country’s ability to respond to and recover from disruptive events. Though these countries are exposed to natural hazards and cyber risks, their infrastructure’s stability and overall high standards allow them to effectively survive disruptive events.

The U.S. infrastructure was built according to high standards 50 years ago, but they are no longer enough to ensure protection from today’s extreme weather. Such weather events are becoming more frequent and more extreme. That has a severe impact on our infrastructure, as cascading failures through interdependent systems such as transportation, energy and water will ultimately adversely impact our economy and society.

Take last year’s Hurricane Matthew, which was considered a 1,000-year flood event. The unexpectedly strong rainfalls broke records and caused damages equivalent to $15 billion. A better infrastructure that is modernized and well-maintained based on data-driven predictions of such events would have resulted in less impact and faster recovery, saving the society large damages and losses.

As the country’s infrastructure ages, extreme weather events have a greater impact. That means the recovery is slower and less efficient, making the U.S. less resilient than its counterparts.

Sustainability

In terms of sustainability practices designed to reduce impact on human health and the environment, the U.S. does not make it to the top 10, according to RobecoSAM, an investment specialist focused exclusively on sustainability investing.

Average CO₂ emissions per capita in the U.S. are double that of other industrialized countries and more than three times as high as those in France.

The infrastructure in most EU countries facilitates and encourages sustainable practices. For example, railroads are mostly dedicated to commuters, while the bulk of freight moves through waterways, which is considered the most cost-effective and fuel-efficient mode of transportation.

In the U.S., however, 76 percent of commuters drive their own cars, as railroads are mostly reserved for freight and public transit is not efficient compared to other countries. American cities do not show up in the top cities for internal transportation, as do cities such as Madrid, Hong Kong, Seoul and Vienna.

To promote sustainable practices, global initiatives such as the New Climate Economy and the Task Committee on Planning for Sustainable Infrastructure aim to guide governments and businesses toward sustainable decision-making, especially when planning new infrastructure.

Smart infrastructure as a solution

To address challenges of resilience and sustainability, future infrastructure systems will have to embrace cyber-physical technologies and data-driven approaches.

A smart city is a city that is efficient in providing services and managing assets using information and communication technology. For example, in Barcelona, a city park uses sensor technology to collect and transmit real-time data that can inform gardeners on plant needs.

While there is no official benchmark to grade countries in this aspect, a number of American cities, such as Houston and Seattle, are considered among the world’s “smartest” cities, according to economic and environmental factors.

In order to prioritize dam restoration, the dam safety engineering practice is moving toward a data-driven process that would rank the dams based on how important they are to the rest of the waterway system. And last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a call to action to improve road safety by releasing a large database on road fatalities, which researchers can study to answer important questions.

Similarly, worldwide initiatives are seeking smart solutions that integrate communication and information technology to improve the resilience of cities such as 100 Resilient Cities and Smart Resilience.

It’s imperative that we pursue these types of new solutions, so U.S. infrastructure can better and more sustainably withstand future disruptions and deliver better quality of life to citizens, too. Perhaps, by addressing these needs, the U.S. can improve its score on its next report cards.

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

Big Oil Could Threaten Biodiversity in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Drilling would also harm the cultural and religious core of the Gwich’in people.

Buried in the recently proposed congressional budget for 2018 is a partially cleared path for oil and gas drilling in one of North America’s last truly wild environments: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

If passed, the budget would allow the House Natural Resources Committee to permit fossil fuel development in an untamed, 20-million-acre wildlife sanctuary that’s historically been off limits to human activity. The budget says drilling in the refuge is projected to raise $1.8 billion.

The budget follows Interior Secretary Ryan Zink’s proclamation last May that Alaska is “open for business.”

The Arctic refuge is not just huge and pristine — it’s also home to a vast array of species that live only in the Far North. Polar bears, Arctic wolves, foxes, wolverines, moose, musk oxen and porcupine caribou all live and breed in this territory. The coastal plain is home to some 200 species of birds that raise their young in the area before migrating around the world, including all 50 states in America.

And it has another resource, too: about 17 billion barrels of oil and 34 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to a 1980 U.S. Geological Survey.

Alaskan wildlife biologists like Ken Whitten, retired from Alaska Department of Fish and Game, are worried that oil drilling in the refuge will disrupt the breeding grounds and movement patterns of the native creatures there, as it did to the caribou living in the 100-mile-wide coastal plain around Prudhoe Bay. For 25 years Whitten studied the relationship between the caribou and the surrounding oil wells, drills and instances of human activity. “Caribou would tend to stay away from the equipment a distance of one to three miles,” he says. Deterred by the strange noises, structures and smells associated with oil mining, the caribou were forced east.

“If we were to experience the same sort of displacement it would drive the caribou to areas with a higher density of predators,” says Whitten. “We concluded that a displacement similar to what happened around Prudhoe Bay would have an effect of a 5-8 percent decline in calf survival. It doesn’t sound like much, but it would result in population decline. And the caribous aren’t the only species to have their habitat compressed.”

This debate over whether or not to drill for oil in such an unspoiled and ecologically important swath of land has been in the discourse for several decades, since Dwight D. Eisenhower laid out the initial protections for the refuge. But today, with the ticking clock of climate change and Trump and EPA head Scott Pruitt seemingly hell-bent on environmental deregulation and cozying up to fossil fuel interests, the debate has reached new levels of intensity.

Organization and individuals are speaking out about this issue, seemingly louder than ever. Even people that never have, and never will, set foot in the Arctic wilderness understand the importance of decoupling it from industry. And one environmental educator, Miho Aida, who actually has been to the refuge, understands a side to the story beyond its effect on wildlife: the human impact.

“Environmental issues are human rights issues,” she says.

Aida is a Japanese-American environmental scientist, educator and filmmaker who recently spent three weeks in the refuge with the Indigenous Gwich’in people, who, in many ways, would be the most affected by development in the area. She’s returned to the contiguous states with a short documentary she shot and produced called “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins: Gwich’in Women Speak.”

“I wanted to draw a connection to how these Gwich’in people are associated with the environment, the animals, the history,” Aida tells me while on tour with the film. “Development of the land would be devastating to them.”

The Gwich’in people are thought to be the area’s original inhabitants. “They were there first, they know every plant and animal,” says Aida.

And their livelihood depends on every plant and animal. According to Aida, when she arrived in the Arctic Village, a settlement right on the edge of the refuge, she felt she was in a different country. She observed that people there spoke in their native tongue on radios, tribal societal structures were recognized, and hunting and fishing was their way of life, as it had been for centuries.

The reason why the Gwich’in people oppose oil drilling in the area — although the prospect might bring them jobs — is twofold, but both deal with their intimate connection to the land.

Primarily, the coastal plain is the main breeding ground for the Gwich’in people’s main source of sustenance: the porcupine caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti). Herds of caribou raise their young near the ocean, because the strong winds keep away mosquitos, which can prove fatal to a caribou calf. Oil and natural gas drilling would surely affect their habitat, yet exactly how is unclear. But what is known is that if the caribou start to get displaced, so do the 2,000 or so Gwich’in people.

“It’s why they protect the land. It’s their lifeline,” says Aida. “Indigenous people have been fighting this kind of aggression for 500 years. These people are so resilient.”

The second reason the Gwich’in people are prepared to fight against the White House’s renewed interest in drilling in the Arctic, as they have done in the past, has to do with religion. To the Gwich’in people, the land is sacred and deeply tied to their ancestral roots, their culture, ideology, and values. Most of their songs and stories are about the caribou.

“It’s where everything came from for them,” says Aida. “It’s taboo for the Gwich’in people to go there, let alone oil crews.”

“The caribou herd and the Gwich’in are one,” says Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Fairbanks based Gwich’in Steering Committee. “We have made a pact with them 20,000 years ago to always take care of them if they take care of us.”

Demientieff has spent most of her career rallying the 14 communities of the Gwich’in Nation around this issue, raising awareness across the state, and putting pressure on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a pro-development Republican.

“Drilling in such a sensitive place would be a big disaster,” says Demientieff, who feels her people’s food security is threatened under the new administration.

During one of her last afternoons in the Arctic with the Gwich’in people, Aida searched the horizon for caribou and moose with some tribal elders. She remarked to them about how stunningly quiet and beautiful the landscape was before them.

“It was so remote there,” says Aida. “Not even a road in sight.”

The elders described to her a time in their tribe’s history when the same landscape was buzzing with life, aloud with the activity of insects, mammals and birds. That was in the early 1800s before French trappers came, hunted, and “poisoned the land,” which had a lasting effect on many species there.

Now visitors have to strain to hear signs of life, and if oil interests gain a foothold in the area, it may prove difficult to see signs of life there too.

Demientieff can attest to this, as she says that she’s observed animals like polar bears, caribou and migratory birds moving farther south because of oil development in the coastal plains around Prudhoe Bay.

“Our animals are acting very strange,” says Demientieff. “And we’re losing our identity, but we’re prepared to fight for our way of life. It’s not up for negotiation.”

© 2017 Francis Flisiuk. All rights reserved.

Previously in The Revelator:

Hilcorp Alaska Avoids Fines for Cook Inlet Methane Leak

Further Reading: Arctic Ocean Drilling: Risking Oil Spills, Human Life, and Wildlife

Great Lakes Gray Wolves Regain Protection

The federal Court of Appeals this week reinstated Endangered Species Act protection for the gray wolf populations in the Great Lakes region, vacating a previous decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The court ruling says the previous decision did not take into account the potential impact on other wolf populations, a decision which could have implications for other species sub-populations or “distinct population segments” which have similarly lost protections.

Moving Past the Illusion of Control

The author of the Southern Reach Trilogy and “Borne” examines “life in the broken places.”

Jeff VanderMeer’s novella “Strange Bird: A Borne Story” is released in e-book form today.

What comes next for us — and for the planet? It’s a question being asked by anyone realistic about climate change and habitat loss. Fiction writers can’t escape it any more than scientists, and I’ve been exploring these issues since the late 1980s. Except now it seems to me that our relationship to nature occurs as much in what we think of as failed places or cities that contain landscapes we render invisible rather than think about what we’ve lost there.

For this very reason, my new post-apocalyptic novel “Borne” contains numerous themes about ecology and our relationship to nature in our modern urban settings. I’ve been calling this a book about “life in the broken places,” which admits to how much we’ve changed the planet while also acknowledging that, despite this, life continues to survive even in very devastated settings.

That acknowledgment is very important because you can easily miss the biodiversity and adaptation that can be found in places we don’t consider wilderness. Ignoring this fact seems to indicate a lack of empathy and yet another turning away — not just from nature but from our fellow human beings. Treating or making such places invisible allows even more harm to be perpetrated against all who live there. Even the false idea that deserts are lifeless results in projects such as covering miles of desert with solar panels and truly rendering them wasteland.

I thought about these ideas even in terms of where I live in Tallahassee, Florida, which has a Tree City USA designation despite being a fair-sized town of over 250,000 people. Similarly, I live pretty close to I-10, which has green strips of natural-looking land on either side but is a slaughter zone for animals trying to cross the highway. The polluted stream located one street behind our house creates a further greenway, even as it goes through water-treatment holding ponds in which I have seen animals such as a wayward beaver or muskrat, building homes from branches, and wood storks, which are a threatened species.

All of these spaces teem with life; throughout them all the birds and mammals and fish and frogs and lizards are trying to get by, despite these obstacles. Even as the holding pond is razed by the property owners every season, not always for good reason, and lies lifeless, soon enough the vegetation grows back and the animals return, too.

My earlier Southern Reach Trilogy was about layering a seething and tangled natural landscape that infringes upon the characters and reader — with the animal life kind of lurking in the vegetation — but in “Borne” I wanted the animals to stand out in stark relief, in the context of a failed city that must reinvent itself and forge new relationships between people and animals. All this other life has its own narratives, its own story to tell, one that intersects with the human but is not always beholden to the human.

All too often, we want to only see animal life for how it can be of use to us or be commodified, without acknowledging that animals have purpose that is theirs and theirs alone. Until we learn that lesson, we will continue to threaten our own continued existence on this planet; nor, it seems, do we recognize that a species could usurp our place with or without sentience, given the changes to our physical environment.

We also often seem to have encoded in our DNA or our belief systems something that makes us treat our planet as if we were alien settlers under the sway of a corrupting Manifest Destiny, almost as if we’re here to make Earth conform to some demented vision of a lost home world that is an industrial wasteland.

This is the idea that we must bend the world to our will instead of bend to it or find some compromise. It’s a kind of death wish sublimated into all kinds of rationalizations for the value of business and corporate extraction of natural resources, among other manifestations. Often, we ignore the hidden cost of traditional business in establishing so-called best-practices and in doing so create a myth of efficiency on the back of ecological destruction. In fact, we are incredibly inefficient, if the business world’s standards were applied in an objective way.

As a result, whole areas of study such as biomimicry, which we must pursue much more seriously, have not gotten as far as they would have if we had the imagination and drive to more passionately pursue them. If we could create systems that are more organic and coexist with the biosphere — that in fact reflect the biosphere’s richness and complexity — we would be much better off. Creating packing material from mushrooms to replace Styrofoam is just one small example: you just toss it in your backyard and it biodegrades in a few weeks. Some scientists are laughed at for thinking we could create wires and other conduits out of organic biological material, but in fact that’s another example of moving beyond our current derangement.

Of course, for such experiments to work we need more than imagination and research. We need a hybrid system in which the virus of our out-of-control consumerism and capitalism is cured with the vaccine of a big dose of socialism, entangled with bits and pieces from every other system or ideology that can be of use. Because in addition to continuing to adhere to old modes of thought, another killing approach is to claim territory, to, for example, say one ideology is inherently better than another, when our problems are so complex they require complex solutions.

For example, anyone who thinks that outright revolution is the answer should remember that the first thing to be jettisoned in times of political instability is any responsible stewardship of the environment.

Instead, what we must acknowledge is that capitalism isn’t going to disappear, and certainly not within the next forty years, a time period critical in terms of biomass loss and climate change. Much as I would prefer a more radical approach — perhaps one that eschews all current ideologies in favor of something new — the pragmatist in me says that our best goal is to mix capitalism with other models in hopefully beneficial and inventive ways, while blunting or transforming consumerism.

Our goal must be two-fold: to stem global warming, and in the process to help our ecosystems overall. This will cut down on human misery and also allow animal and plant populations to recover. If we don’t get smarter about these issues and abandon thought-loops and received ideas that should have been outdated long ago, we will find that geologic narratives and the narratives of other species — whether they be the narratives of viruses or of something larger — will outstrip our own. And the illusion of our control will be revealed in stark terms.

We exist in ecosystems whether we realize it or not and imbalances in ecosystems create situations where the strain to retain an old way of life just creates more useless energy use and makes collapse more imminent. The reality of the situation in my novel “Borne” is that people today already live in situations of ecological collapse and displacement. If you don’t feel that in your bones, it is because you have been sheltered from it — literally by location or economics or because you wall out the images and reports coming in from “other” places.

Hanging over all of these issues like a blade is a question: Can we avoid some version of catastrophe? No, we can’t avoid it, and what frustrates me almost as much as climate-change deniers are people who say they believe in global warming but at the same time reject the scientific evidence that suggests the worst of it will be upon us within 25 years. “Oh, that’s not going to happen,” I hear all too often.

This pushing off of the near future into the far future will doom us almost as much as climate change deniers. It’s happening right now, in front of us, not at some undetermined point in the future — and part of being responsible is looking at the yawning void directly and to fight against it and to not turn away. In this context, the recent New York Magazine article that caused such uproar, even with corrections to the science, revealed who thinks existing best-case and mid-range predictions will hold and who believes that an ever-increasing number of unknown variables, acting in combination, may bring the end of our civilization much, much sooner.

Where I am hopeful about the future it is because of what dedicated scientists and creative people are doing in the moment, and how we are beginning to understand that environmental concerns and social justice concerns are often intertwined — and that animals aren’t just objects for us to exploit and that, in addition to the fact we should respect them just because they are living things, they are also vital to our own survival. Habitats are incomplete without animals. Animals are incomplete without plants and fungi. Humans are incomplete with all of this, and we need to live more within the complex web of this wondrous world than we do.

Because that’s the way the world works. Our brains, institutions, businesses, and culture have to adapt to that or we’re simply not going to make it.

© 2017 VanderMeer Creative. All rights reserved.

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.

 

Also in The Revelator:

Revelator Reads: 7 New Environmental Books for August

Revelator Reads: 7 New Environmental Books for August

This month brings books about killer fires, strange birds and wicked bugs.

The lazy days of summer are here — which means it’s the perfect time to curl up with a good book after you’re done enjoying the great outdoors. This month you have quite a few new environmentally themed books to choose from, covering a wide range of topics and styles. Here are our top picks for the month, including titles for adults, kids and professionals.

are we screwed?“Are We Screwed?” by Geoff Dembicki

Don’t let the title fool you. This new book, subtitled “How a New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change,” is actually a positive “roadmap” for fixing the planet. (Bloomsbury, August 22, $28)

megafire“Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame” by Michael Kodas

Gigantic fires have become the new norm, thanks in no small part to climate change. Kodas traveled the world to build a narrative about this growing threat and the efforts being taken to beat back the blazes. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, August 22, $28)

strange bird vandermeer“The Strange Bird” by Jeff VanderMeer

A novella-length e-book set in the world of Vandermeer’s recent post-apocalyptic novel “Borne,” this promises to continue the author’s examination of our relationship with nature. (Read VanderMeer’s essay about “life in the broken places” today on The Revelator.) (FSG, August 1, $2.99)

“Becoming a Wildlife Professional,” edited by Scott E. Henke and Paul R Krausman

Looking to get into wildlife conservation as a career? This may be the book for you. Billed as “the first comprehensive book to describe the entry-level jobs available for the next generation of wildlife biologists and conservationists,” this tome covers everything a student could want to know about 100 different career options. (The Wildlife Society, August 30, $59.50)

wicked bugs“Wicked Bugs” by Amy Stewart

Here’s one for the kiddos — a look at the “meanest, deadliest, grossest bugs on Earth.” This is a young readers’ edition of Stewart’s earlier (and just as wicked) book for adults of the same title. (Algonquin, August 8, $12.95)

“Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon” by John Clayton

This entertaining new book looks at how the fabled national park “shaped America’s relationship with her land, and will continue to do so for generations to come.” (Pegasus Books, August 8, $27.95)

climate crisis“Climate Crisis and the Democratic Prospect” by Frank Fischer

What are the chances for the survival of democracy as the world warms? This new book “argues that establishing and sustaining democratic practices will be difficult during the global climate turmoil ahead, especially in the face of state of emergencies” and offers a framework for ensuring the continuation of participatory democracy. (Oxford University Press, August 15, $90)

But wait, there’s more!

We can’t list everything, but here are few more notable books due out this month:

Well, that’s our list this August, but you can help add to it. Share your new or old favorite environmental books in the comments below.

 

Previously in The Revelator:

Revelator Reads: 7 New Environmental Books for July

Oil Sands Becoming Old News?

Fossil fuel development companies have abandoned their leases on more than 1 million hectares of oil sands in northern Alberta. The areas have become less desirable (and less profitable) following the worldwide plunge in crude oil prices. Even the infamous Keystone XL pipeline — which President Trump approved almost as soon as he took office — now seems to lack the necessary support for its construction. What could replace it? Oh, maybe a little thing called solar power.

Rangers Provide Thin Green Line Protecting Wildlife Against Poachers, Extinction

World Ranger Day gives us an opportunity to recognize the people on the front lines.

On a dark Mozambique night just over a year ago, sleeping villagers were brutally attacked in their homes. It was coordinated, targeted violence against men who work to stop the poaching of some of the planet’s last remaining rhinos. Today a rhino is killed every eight hours, and estimates indicate that a mere 30,000 are now left on Earth, down from millions a few centuries ago.

In this assault both the wildlife rangers and their families became victims. The poachers looted homes, destroying personal property and donated equipment such as bikes, cell phones and radios — all essential for anti-poaching work. The vicious attack left one man with critical injuries after he was abducted, tortured and dumped roadside.

This is just one story among many about the dangers park rangers face in their critical work to save Earth’s endangered and threatened wildlife and other biodiversity. Serving as a ranger or guard in a park, preserve or sanctuary is among the most challenging jobs in the world. In the past 10 years, hundreds of rangers have been killed in the line of duty — at least 105 in the past year alone. Some have lost their lives in tribal or boundary disputes; many die or are wounded at the hands of poachers, illegal loggers and terrorists. In many places this dangerous employment is poorly compensated, too, with rangers working in locations far away from their homes and family for long periods of time. Some even lack adequate equipment, such as uniforms or radios.

Even in the United States, as NPR reported several years ago, rangers face many risks. They cover wide spaces and remote locales, often with little backup. As the law enforcement for public lands, park rangers deal with varied crimes, from sexual assaults and stabbings to weapons and drugs scenarios, such as meth labs and marijuana growing on public lands.

One ranger noted that the issues of the broader society are reflected in our supposed protected wild spaces. That includes, globally, a dramatic increase in wildlife and plant trafficking, an illicit trade valued at an estimated $70 billion to $213 billion annually. So as long as this rape of the planet remains at crisis levels for too many species — threatening to drive bears, elephants, tigers, rhinos and a multitude of other species extinct — rangers will continue to be in grave danger from the often well-organized and well-armed criminals and rebel groups behind this grim business.

The eleventh World Ranger Day — today, July 31 — gives an opportunity to pause for the brave men and women who protect our wild creatures and wild spaces. Every three days a park ranger loses his or her life in the line of duty. We should all do what we can to support these rangers and the families who have lost their loved ones defending the wild. Organizations including the Thin Green Line Foundation and the International Ranger Federation work directly to support the tens of thousands of rangers in parks globally and to build awareness of their contributions.

And in Mozambique, last year’s brutal attack on those holding the thin green line to protect wild rhino did not go unchallenged. The International Anti-Poaching Foundation immediately launched a campaign to assist the rangers. IAPF operates on the front lines of the world wildlife wars to protect some of the most endangered animals, including the rhino, by using military principles in training rangers to be the first and last line of defense for nature.

Working with the governments of South Africa and Mozambique, IAPF’s efforts along the South Africa-Mozambique border of Kruger National Park — home to 40 percent of the world’s remaining rhinos — have reduced losses dramatically and increased arrests of poachers. At the same time, Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world, has increased its protected areas by almost 130,000 acres. As a result, for the first time since rhinos were declared extinct in Mozambique in 2013, a resident population of approximately 25 rhinos has re-established itself in the country.

Where there’s courage, there’s hope. Keep it up, rangers.

© Maria Fotopoulos, all rights reserved