Has Mexico finally taken the step that will save the vaquita from extinction? Or will it not be enough?
Mexico this week permanently banned gill nets as part of a last-minute effort to save the vaquita from extinction. Just 30 or fewer of these critically endangered porpoises (Phocoena sinus) remain in their only habitat, the Gulf of California. The cetaceans frequently die after becoming entangled in gill nets, which poachers use to catch the totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), an endangered fish whose swim bladders sell to Chinese consumers for thousands of dollars a pound. Conservationists have called for a ban on gill nets for years. Vaquitas have continued to die while poachers continued their efforts under the cover of legal operations.
The Revelator will cover this developing story extensively in the coming weeks.
Check out Al Gore’s “Sequel” plus books about birds, disasters and pollution.
Ah, July…the perfect time of year for reading on the beach, or in the woods, or in the comfort of your own home. This month will see the publication of quite a few new environmentally themed books, making it the perfect time not just for escapism but also a bit of enlightenment. Here are our top seven picks for the month.
Yes, the former Vice President and perpetual client advocate is back with his much-needed follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth. This heavily illustrated book accompanies the new documentary of the same name and serves as a “call to action, exposing the reality of how humankind has aided in the destruction of our planet and groundbreaking information on what you can do now.” (July 25, Rodale Books, $25.99)
It’s nonfiction that reads like science fiction. If you haven’t heard of de-extinction, it’s the scientific effort to resurrect long-gone species such as the passenger pigeon and woolly mammoth. Yes, just like Jurassic Park only real. Can it be done? Should it? Read the book and find out. (July 4, Atria Books, $26)
How do you call attention to the problem of plastic pollution? Eriksen and Joel Paschal did it by collecting a ton of that plastic junk, strapping it together into the form of a raft, and then sailing across the Pacific Ocean from Los Angeles to Hawaii. Yikes. Look for our interview with Eriksen this Wednesday. (Beacon Press, July 4, $26.95)
Okay, this might not exactly be beach reading, but it seems like a pretty important book for the people who need to deal with disasters caused by, as the publisher puts it, “both natural and anthropogenic sources.” If that’s you, check it out. (July 5, Wiley, $110)
Does Western-style philanthropy always benefit conservation? Hanes looks at the history of conservation in Africa to find quite a few examples where we did at least as much harm as good. This will definitely inspire some conversations. (Metropolitan Books, July 11, $28)
The author of “Too Late: How We Lost the Battle with Climate Change” returns with an equally depressing look at the fate of Australia’s rapidly disappearing bird species. This book serves as both a warning sign and a call to action: As Maslen writes, “In saving Earth for birds, remember, we will be saving all other life forms as well. And that includes us.” (This is only in print in Australia but it’s available on Kindle and other e-platforms.) (July 1, Hardie Grant Books, $37.99)
Let’s end with something fun: a 700-page compilation of the Wasteland comic book series, set a century after an apocalyptic event that society only remembers as “the Big Wet.” Environmental fiction at its finest — and weirdest. (July 26, Oni Press, $39.99)
Well, that’s it for our list this month. What are you reading? Share your new or old favorites in the comments below.
Will the weekend rain clouds arrive before or after that long hike you want to take? Your local TV meteorologist probably has the definitive answer.
What climatic changes will occur in your region over the next 10 years? That’s a question your local weathercaster may decline to discuss on the air.
It’s not that your local weatherperson is a climate-change denier (although a handful of them are). It’s that his or her job — seemingly a perfect platform for communicating science to the masses — just isn’t conducive to spreading the facts about global warming.
That’s the word from a new study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Bentley University. Published last month in the book “Climate Change Adaptation in North America,” the study found three surprising reasons meteorologists don’t talk about the future beyond the next 10 days.
1. Their jobs depend on their popularity.
Think about it: Do you watch the local news because you trust the anchors or because you trust the weather reports? If the same station kept getting its predictions wrong, you’d change the channel, wouldn’t you?
“It turns out that the weather forecaster is the main driver of local news loyalty,” says one of the study’s authors, Helen Meldrum, an associate professor of psychology. “I had thought it was maybe the anchor, but people feel that ‘Tom on station ABC 5 tends to get those snowstorms right,’ so they stay tuned into that station.” That translates into ratings for the TV station and profits for everyone involved.
It goes even further than that. Meldrum says many viewers develop deep attachments to their local weathermen in what are known as “parasocial” (one-sided) relationships. The audience members feel the TV personalities are friends.
These two factors add up. Meldrum says meteorologists are aware of their viewers’ loyalty and these emotional relationships, which makes it even harder to talk about the potentially polarizing subject of climate change. “They are incredibly aware of their popularity and they do not want to do things that will risk it,” she says. “Why risk stepping into the role of being a science educator and presenting the facts if you know the facts are going to alienate over half of the people who have given you ‘likes’ on your Facebook page,” she asks.
2. They just don’t have time.
Consider your local evening news program and its weather segments. First the anchors banter with their station’s meteorologist for about 30 seconds, joking about the weather, and then it’s time for the forecast, which has to cram predictions for the morning the commute, the evening rain and the entirety of the next week into about two minutes. They can’t go a second over their allotted time — after all, the sports report’s next. No room for discussion of climate.
On top of that need to be pithy, today’s average meteorologist also has to spend time interacting with viewers on his or her personal Facebook page and Twitter account, while squeezing in a never-ending barrage of personal appearances.
“They’re just completely strapped for time,” says Meldrum, who interviewed meteorologists around New England for the paper. Many of them struggled to find even half an hour to talk with her.
3. Their profession doesn’t prepare them to talk about climate.
Standing in front of a green screen pointing at digital clouds and numbers may look easy, but getting a meteorology degree takes a lot of work. Even the most advanced coursework, however, leans heavily on the science of developing an instantaneous snapshot of the atmosphere. “They don’t have enough time to put climatology or paleoclimatology into the curriculum,” says another of the study’s authors, David Szymanski, an associate professor of geology. “They don’t get the long-range view. Distinguishing between natural and unnatural climate requires this lens.”
The Impact on the Public
All of this is a bit of a shame because the public loves and trusts their local weather professionals. “Broadcast meteorologists are perceived as the TV station’s resident scientists,” Szymanski says, adding that they may be the only scientists that many viewers know. “When people are asked to name a living scientist, many of them pick their local weathercaster.”
That makes meteorologists what he calls “a fantastic conduit of information on climate change” — one the world isn’t really getting the chance to experience.
Luckily things are changing. Some meteorologists are talking about climate change at their public appearances, and a few have become strong advocates for science on Twitter and other social networks. Others are using special climate-change-related graphics, created by Climate Central’s Climate Matters program, during their broadcasts. “These new services give them pre-made, empirically tested images that don’t kill their time budget,” Meldrum says.
Finally, some broadcasters are taking the message outside of their two-minute window. Meldrum reports that one of the meteorologists they interviewed decided to do a special climate report outside her normal weather segment, and that’s an example others can follow. “The ones who want to be climate change communicators, they need to have enough power within their station to negotiate for longer special reports,” she says.
Increases in battery storage capacity will soon transform renewable energy. Battery manufacturing is expected to more than double by 2021, with China leading the charge in building new factories. US states, meanwhile, are already investing in battery storage to support the growth of wind and solar power. This battery boom will help utility-scale energy and individual consumers: a new study finds that batteries could allow solar households to start “defecting” from the power grid in a little over a decade. Just one question remains: where are we going to get the lithium for all of these batteries?
Bluff and Blanding represent diametrically opposing views over the future of the national monument and its Indian ruins.
BLUFF, Utah — When it comes to the fight over Bears Ears National Monument, the stark differences in attitudes toward the monument designation between residents of Bluff and nearby Blanding are literally 15 centuries apart.
The roadside signs welcoming travelers to each community located along U.S. 191, one of the nation’s most beautiful highways, succinctly sum up the difference between the two communities.
In a respectful nod toward the ancient settlements that first appeared along the banks of the San Juan River, Bluff’s welcome signs declare that the unincorporated community of about 300 was founded in 650 A.D.
Photo: John Dougherty
Twenty-three miles north, on a windswept mesa, the city of Blanding welcomes travelers with signs proclaiming its motto, “Base Camp for Adventure,” and stating that it was established in 1905.
Photo: John Dougherty
Although Mormon pioneers founded both communities, Bluff has shed its ultra-conservative past and has become an intellectual mecca noted for its preponderance of PhDs and archeologists. Residents overwhelmingly hailed President Barack Obama’s proclamation last December creating the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument.
“When people are educated and learn to look at other opinions, they are not closed minded,” says Jackie Warren, who works at a Bluff resort and has owned a home in the community for the past 20 years. “I think that’s what you are finding here in Bluff.”
On the other hand, Blanding remains steeped in its deep Mormon heritage. The alcohol-free community has a striking dearth of restaurants and retail stores that creates a depressed downtown pockmarked with vacant buildings. A handful of motels, however, are generally full at night and lodging is relatively expensive.
Most of Blanding’s 3,000 residents adamantly oppose the monument designation and are encouraging President Donald Trump to rescind it as soon as possible. Front lawns prominently display signs opposing the monument, and cars and trucks frequently carry anti–Bears Ears decals in their back windows.
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced earlier this month that Bears Ears should be downsized, but he provided no indication of how much of a reduction he will recommend to the president later this summer. Last April Trump issued an executive order requiring Zinke to review all national monuments designated in the past 21 years greater than 100,000 acres in order to determine if they should be revoked or downsized.
Blanding Embraces Its Past in Opposing Bears Ears
To many in Blanding, getting rid of Bears Ears won’t come soon enough.
“It’s an absolute disaster,” says Jerry Murdock, a longtime Blanding resident who manages Canyonlands Lodging, a website that books vacation homes and cabins.
“In order to save Bears Ears and the lifestyle here, they need to rescind the monument,” he says in a lengthy, rambling telephone interview. “There is no reason to take 1.3 million acres and turn it into a monument when 98 percent of it was already protected.”
Murdock claims that the majority of American Indians in southern Utah oppose the monument but cites no polling to support this claim. He says that tribal leaders who requested President Obama create the monument have not been truthful to their constituents about future access to the land.
Many American Indians forage for plants, hunt for game and collect firewood from the public lands that are now part of the national monument. Murdock and others in Blanding say that monument managers will cut off access.
“They have been fed a line of baloney and that is not going to change,” Murdock says.
Perpetuating the claim that American Indians will be denied access to the land persists, despite the fact that Obama’s proclamation creating the monument addresses this concern. The proclamation creates the Bears Ears Commission, made up of representatives of five area tribes.
The proclamation requires the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, and the Department of the Interior — which manages Bureau of Land Management property, as well as the National Park Service — to “meaningfully engage with the (Bears Ears) Commission” in developing and revising management plans. The goal is “to ensure that management decisions affecting the monument reflect tribal expertise and traditional and historical knowledge.”
Murdock’s anti-monument attitude echoes the city of Blanding’s official position. In July 2016 the city passed a resolution opposing the monument, declaring it would be “unilateral and unwarranted Presidential designation.”
Blanding City Councilman Robert G. Ogle says in an email that the biggest complaint about the monument designation comes from many in the community who believe “they were not consulted” in the monument decision. “The voice of the local citizens has been minimized,” he adds.
Ogle notes that San Juan County is Utah’s largest county, and federal and state governments control 92 percent of its land. Blanding is the largest community in the county. “Simply put,” Ogle says, “the national monument designation is a land grab to generate greater control.”
Like others in his community, Blanding businessman Joe Lyman, currently serving his third term on the Blanding City Council, turns to a far-right fringe analysis to buttress his anti-monument stance.
Lyman, a descendent of Mormon pioneers who founded Bluff in 1880 after a harrowing trek through the rugged mountains, provided The Revelator with a copy of a report written by J.R. Carlson of Stillwater Technical Solutions of Garden City, Kansas, which was presented to the San Juan County Commission in October 2016.
Carlson’s report claims, incorrectly, that the president doesn’t have the authority to proclaim a national monument under the Antiquities Act of 1906, and that the 43 grazing allotments on Bear Ears National Monument are lands that are not “owned or controlled” by the federal government and therefore not eligible for monument inclusion.
Carlson, the executive director of the Kansas Natural Resource Coalition — an alliance of county governments that engage with federal agencies on natural resource policies — argues in the document that “for purposes of a monument designation, grazing allotments (districts) are a limited-fee, surface title property, and as a result such lands are not owned or controlled by the Federal government.”
There is no widely accepted legal basis to support Carlson’s claim, which is often cited by ranchers seeking to assume control of federal land. The federal government has been leasing federal land to ranchers since passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.
The Act instituted a permitting system to be issued by the federal government for all public rangeland, where for the first time in federal land-management history, fees could be charged in exchange for grazing rights, according to a 2015 Montana Law Review article on the legal framework for transferring federal public land to states.
The article concludes that unless Congress legislates the “disposal of federal public lands, federal lands will remain federal, regardless of which state makes the demand.” In other words, unless Congress transfers ownership of grazing land to ranchers, the property remains under federal control.
Carlson also claims that when Congress in 2014 “reauthorized” the Antiquities Act and moved it under Title 54 National Park Service Preservation Statutes, it eliminated the president’s power to declare national monuments.
“In placing the AA (Antiquities Act) under Title 54, Congress removed any potential for the AA to be considered a stand-alone, executive prerogative,” his report states.
Spurious legal arguments aside, Lyman says Blanding has long relied on the tax base created from grazing, mining and timber harvesting on federal lands, including Manti-La Sal National Forest, that are now included in Bears Ears National Monument. He worries the national monument designation will reduce economic development opportunities.
“Continued multiple use of the land is vital to our way of life and our economic survival,” he says. “An increase in seasonal tourism is no replacement for a diverse and healthy economy.”
Bluff Looks Ahead to Protecting Bears Ears
Steve Simpson. Photo: John Dougherty
Steve Simpson points to a mound of dirt across the parking lot at his Twin Rocks Café and Trading Post in Bluff. “That’s an unexcavated ruin,” he says. “You can’t go in any direction without finding antiquities.”
There are an estimated 100,000 archeological sites scattered across the Bears Ears cultural landscape, according to the Bears Inter-Tribal Coalition’s national monument proposal submitted to Obama in 2015. Many have been looted over the last 150 years, but countless more remain undisturbed, hidden beneath the soil, in caves and remote canyons.
“I have spent most of my life in this area,” he says. “The pressure on these sites is extreme. Sites where you could once find huge pot shards everywhere, now they are basically sterile.”
Simpson, a tax attorney by training, says most of the people living in Bluff support the national monument and embrace a tourist-based economy that they believe is far more sustainable than relying on the boom-bust extractive industries that have historically underpinned the regional economy.
“You have Bluff, which is a liberal community, right in the middle of an extremely conservative, extremely LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) area,” he says. “The position of Bluff doesn’t mesh well with the folks in Blanding.” Simpson also knows quite a few people who are opposed to the monument. Many of them are Mormon pioneer descendants, he says, and have strong ties to the land that their ancestors settled in the late 19th century.
There is resentment, Simpson says, that a huge part of what they see as their back yard is now being set aside as a national monument — particularly since it was at the request of American Indian tribes that were forcibly removed from much of their traditional lands, including Bears Ears, more than 150 years ago.
The resentment toward American Indians by the local population was readily apparent during the debate leading up to the monument designation. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman told Navajo leaders that they “lost the war” and have no right to comment on public land management. Ranchers in San Juan County were also telling American Indians to “get back on the reservation.”
For some American Indians, the overt hostility of some monument opponents has resulted in an unofficial boycott of Blanding.
Woody Lee, an American Indian who has worked for years on the monument designation with the Salt Lake City nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah, says Blanding’s negative attitude is scaring off business.
“I live approximately 4 to 5 minutes from Blanding,” Lee says. “Now, why am I not going to Blanding? Well, because the town is not so welcoming.”
Lee says he will travel several hours to Cortez, Colo., or Farmington, N.M., to go shopping rather than spend money in Blanding. He finds it ironic that Blanding cites negative economic impact from Bears Ears while ignoring its less-than-welcoming attitude toward American Indians.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where to go,” he says. “So now they are jumping up and down about their economy. They are the ones who messed it up.”
Simpson takes a less harsh attitude about Blanding’s opposition to the monument. “I don’t feel it’s a dislike of local Native American people, or a disrespect of Native American people. I think it is more a feeling of possession. ‘We are here. Our ancestors worked this land. We are emotionally invested.’”
At the same time, Simpson says, those opposed to the monument “overlook the Native American spiritual connection to the land. They are overlooking the fundamental idea that this is just not my land. The fact that I live in Bluff doesn’t give me superior right to the land.”
The two fundamental arguments that monument opponents cite — they were not involved in the monument decision and the designation is a land grab — don’t sway Simpson.
Nearly all of the 1.3 million acres of Bear Ears were already federal land, with 109,000 acres controlled by the state of Utah. Obama’s proclamation requests that Utah enter into negotiations to trade the state land within the monument for other federal land in Utah. Utah, so far, has refused and instead enacted a resolution in February requesting that the monument be rescinded.
Monument opponents, Simpson says, also had opportunity to express their views to local, state and federal representatives, including former Interior Secretary Sally Jewel, who held a contentious public hearing on the monument proposal in July 2016 in Bluff.
“To say there was no opportunity for public input is absolutely wrong,” Simpson says.
Bluff is also home to Friends of Cedar Mesa, an environmental group working to protect the monument’s countless archeological resources and stunning landscape.
Josh Ewing, executive director of Friends of Cedar Mesa, credits the fact that five American Indian tribes set aside their longstanding differences and worked together to prepare a comprehensive proposal for the monument that Obama subsequently supported.
His organization, at first, supported efforts to find a legislative solution to debate over Bears Ears. But when that failed, he says, a presidential monument proclamation became the best option.
That won’t be enough, though, if the monument designation ends up in court and the federal government doesn’t allocate sufficient funds to protect the monument from an already significant increase in tourism, Ewing says.
“This is a place where government is not going to be the solution,” he says. “It’s going to have to come from philanthropy, volunteers and hard work on the ground.”
Moving forward, his group is stepping up its efforts to protect resources on the ground by hiring additional employees and promoting a campaign to protect the area’s archeological treasures.
He knows that his group is facing an uphill battle to protect the monument, particularly given the fierce opposition from the state and local governments to its designation. But he remains optimistic and isn’t going to focus on trying to change opponents’ minds.
“The folks against the monument would have been against it no matter who proposed it or how it came about,” he says.
An avid rock climber, Ewing left a corporate job in Salt Lake City to move to Bluff in 2012. He and his wife, Kirsten, are passionate about protecting the Bears Ears cultural landscape that the Trump administration so far has taken a negative approach to protecting.
“Anywhere else, this would be a national park, even if you didn’t have the archeology,” he says.
The herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, has been added to California’s list of chemicals known to cause cancer. The listing, which goes into effect on July 7, will require manufacturers to add package warning labels and similar warnings to be places around certain sites where large quantities of the weed killer have been applied. The World Health Organization had previous labeled glyphosate as a “probable” human carcinogen. The chemical is the most widely used pesticide in California – and in the entire world. Monsanto has said it will fight California’s designation in court.
Working as a conservationist often means living in conservative towns. That offers both risks and opportunities.
Keeping my mouth shut after 49 people were murdered at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was one of the most difficult things I did last year. Like many LGBT people, I felt huge grief for the mostly Latinx and LGBT lives taken, as well as fear that it might be the start of more attacks on us.
At the time I was living in a small Mormon town where I directed a rural conservation group. I ached to talk about the killings in Florida, but the only person in town who knew I wasn’t straight cautioned me to remain silent. He told me that he had been fired twice in that community simply for being gay. And then he reminded me that I was working for religious and political conservatives, some of whom believed homosexuality was a dire sin.
I had never considered my own vulnerability until that moment, even though I knew that there was no state law or local ordinance that would protect me from being fired or evicted for being queer.
This was not the first time I had been warned to stay in the closet. Years earlier, a friendly political staffer had told me that my effectiveness as a conservation advocate would be greatly diminished if my sexual orientation were publicly known. There are two big problems with that advice. It’s hard to get a date when you’re in the closet, and an angry ex can out you at any time.
As an environmentalist who mostly works in rural areas, whether to hide a basic part of my identity can also come up when I’m looking for employment. Sometimes conservation job-listing preferred locations are in places that lack local or state laws protecting LGBT people from being fired or evicted. This is an issue more often than you might think. In the United States, only 20 states, Washington D.C., and some local areas explicitly protect their residents against employment or housing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Usually I’m not worried about being fired, just about getting and keeping housing. In the fishbowl that is small-town America, your landlord may notice your companions and ask you personal questions. It’s not malice, just curiosity. But honest answers can create problems.
I’ve had to think about my LGBT identity often because my drive to protect wildlife and wild places keeps sending me to live in conservative rural areas and small towns. The things I’m trying to save or restore are not typically located in LGBT-friendly cities, so learning how to live in conservative America is a key part of my conservation practice.
The great compensation is that in America’s rural areas are often quite beautiful. They contain most of our public lands and wildlife, as well as incredible outdoor recreation that is accessible without a long, carbon-burning drive through traffic.
Just as important, in the solitude of wild places I can hold another woman’s hand and look at her fondly, in quiet and safety, without the fear of being spit on or glared at. Sadly, I’ve had those hostile reactions even in coastal cities where you wouldn’t expect them. By defending the wild, I’m also protecting privacy and freedom for myself.
The Rural Advantage
I think there are real advantages to being a rural environmentalist, especially toward the beginning or end of a career, when job opportunities can be thin. Restoration and advocacy jobs in rural areas and small towns often have less competition, and more trouble finding qualified candidates, than positions located in larger cities. As a result, becoming an executive director before you’re 30 without having to found your own organization is a real possibility.
If you self-fund your environmentalism, many small towns and rural areas are wide open for you. If you’re doing something interesting, you do not have to be affiliated with a known environmental group to get mentioned in the local newspaper. Most of the time, you just need to show up and start improving conditions in the community in ways that people can easily see. Nearly everyone wants the place they live to be beautiful and have safe food, clean air and clean water. Yes, there will be people who resist all change, but you will also have supporters.
Another advantage of rural environmentalism is that rental housing is cheaper than in large cities, so it offers a chance to build your bank account. However, there are exceptions, such as ski towns and oil boom towns. In tiny places, there may be no rental housing at all, leaving you with buying something or living in a tent or vehicle. It’s necessary to choose your location carefully if you want to save up money.
To protect your mental and physical health, you need to avoid social isolation. Bringing a partner or family with you is a great way to prevent loneliness. However, if you’re alone in a small conservative community, you can still find friends if you work at it. Even in the reddest of red places, there will be people who are silently pleased that an environmentalist has moved to town. The key is knowing where to look for them. I have discovered welcoming souls hidden in libraries, arts councils, farmers markets, community gardens, town cleanup groups, public meetings, hiking clubs, local charities and Episcopal churches. Sometimes I’ve even found other LGBT people.
Whether you make one friend or many, it’s important that you be there in these communities. There are relatively few conservationists living in rural and small-town America. In this way I find being an environmentalist much like being LGBT. False stereotypes thrive when people don’t know us.
Once, after I helped a rural community defeat an energy project it didn’t want, an old-time rancher joked, “You’re not an environmentalist. You’re a lovely woman.” The truth is, I’m both, and he knew it. However, the word “environmentalist” is hard for people in small conservative places because it’s been politically demonized. Your being there can chip away at that. But it won’t happen unless you go.
Mosquitoes and climate change carry disease to endangered island birds. Can the threat be reversed?
On a Friday morning, in a quiet subdivision in Kauai’s Wailua Homesteads, after a sleepless night of watching two newborns, Amy Klotz and Becky Geelhood are preparing for their next feeding.
They’re not preparing baby formula, though. In the kitchen, Klotz picks up a tub of bee larvae donated by a local apiarist and pulls out the crunchy, less tasty bits. When she’s done, she carries the miniature snacks to the nursery.
Inside a small room at the back of the house, two white-and-brown-speckled eggs, weighing only 1.5 grams each, rotate slowly in an incubator. Across the room, their bald, blind, and recently hatched kin doze in brooders. These tiny birds are akikikis (Oreomystis bairdi), members of the Hawaiian honeycreeper family.
Although these newborns don’t look like much now, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say the entire akikiki species depends on their survival.
Akikiki are one of six remaining endemic forest bird species of Kauai. Once found from the island’s shoreline to lush mountaintops, today fewer than 500 akikiki remain, relegated to high-elevation forests. Hawaii’s elusive forest birds have been decimated since man first arrived on the island roughly 1,500 years ago, destroying habitat, introducing weeds, and bringing predators, such as cats and rats, and disease vectors, like mosquitoes.
Until recently, mosquitoes were limited to lower, warmer elevations. But climate change has brought warmer temperatures higher up Hawaii’s mountains, allowing mosquitoes to spread over the entire island and transmit fatal avian malaria and avian pox to the remaining wild bird populations. Twelve forest bird species have already gone extinct on Kauai, and in 2010, akikiki were federally listed as critically endangered, along with their honeycreeper relative, the akeke’e (Loxops caeruleirostris).
Following four years of behavioral research, the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and San Diego Zoo Global in 2015 to begin building up captive populations in hopes of saving the two species as insurance against the possibility of extinction in the wild. To date, 40 akikiki and seven akeke’e live in the project’s facilities.
Yet as these populations grow, so too do threats in the wild.
Every spring, teams of three to four people hike into the dense Ohi’a forests of Kauai’s Alaka’i Plateau, where they’ll stay for days at a time, weathering torrential downpours. An akikiki nest takes between 40 and 60 hours to find, explains Cali Crampton, leader of the Recovery Project, though they tend to nest in the same areas year after year. An akeke’e nest, on the other hand, takes about 100 hours to find, as the parents move around and nest high up in the canopy.
Once a nest is located, reinforcements will hike and helicopter in, 40-foot ladders in tow, to climb the trees and collect the eggs shortly before they’re about to hatch. Those eggs will be swiftly flown out to the nursery near Kapa’a before they’re transferred to a larger facility on Maui or the Big Island. When the birds reach breeding age, they’ll produce children that will form the majority of the captive population to one day be released into the wild.
“Before we got this project started, we did some population modeling and we found we should have about 60 individuals of each species to start the captive breeding population,” explains Bryce Masuda, San Diego Zoo Global’s conservation program manager, who oversees the Keauhou and Maui Endangered Bird Conservation Centers. “In case the birds do go extinct in the wild, we’ll have a core group of 30 breeding pairs to restart the population.”
But the mosquito threat looms large over Hawaii. That’s why researchers at the University of Hawaii are working rapidly, in tandem, to deploy a form of mosquito “birth control” that could greatly reduce the invasive mosquito population.
At the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) meeting in Honolulu last year, scientists from around the world met to discuss the mosquito issue and what could be done. “One of the outcomes was that people were excited about wolbachia,” says Jolene Sutton, who co-leads the university’s mosquito research.
Wolbachia are intracellular bacteria that naturally occur in mosquitoes and fruit flies. However, if a female and male mosquito mate, each carrying a different strain of wolbachia, the resulting eggs will be infertile. By removing the natural strain of wolbachia found in male mosquitoes and replacing it with the strain from fruit flies, scientists think it may be possible to reduce the wild mosquito population. A similar approach is being studied elsewhere to control the transmission of human diseases such as Zika.
With funding from Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources, Sutton and her colleagues began studying how to deploy fruit fly wolbachia in lab colonies. Down the road, Sutton says, they hope to infect a new population in a mass-rearing facility with that wolbachia strain, which could then be deployed to the wild.
“Disease is the number-one threat causing such dramatic population declines,” says Crampton. “As with human diseases, we’re just beginning to understand how we can do landscape-level mosquito control. Until we have mosquito control, we can’t put on a lid on disease transmission.”
There’s no clear timeline as to when the akikiki and akeke’e’s habitat will be mosquito-free enough for the reintroduction of the captive birds. It could be five years. It could be 10. Even if wolbachia deployment is successful on a large scale, the regulatory process to ensure there are no unforeseen side-effects to the environment will be a long one.
And it’s unclear how much time the captive birds have.
“We do not have good survival data because we only started studying these birds in 2010,” explains Crampton. “We know of one female in the wild who lived to be at least six years old… but it’s anyone’s guess as to how long these birds can persist, especially in captivity.”
Meanwhile, two new threats loom on the horizon.
The first threat affects the birds’ habitat. Akikiki and akeke’e nest exclusively in Ohi’a trees (Metrosideros polymorpha), a species of flowering evergreens endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. In 2015, a new fungal disease began attacking and killing the trees on the Big Island, with most dying in only a few days or weeks. By 2017, hundreds of thousands of trees had succumbed to the disease, dubbed “Rapid Ohi’a Death.” While the state has been able to contain the disease to the Big Island thus far through strict screening, scientists worry about how long containment will last. “It’s terrifying to think that we could lose Ohi’a,” says Michelle Clark, a Fish and Wildlife Service conservation biologist working with the recovery project on Kauai.
The second threat is much more banal: lack of money. This year marks the last year of funded egg collection — although the project’s partners are hopeful that new grants will still come through for 2018. With only seven akeke’e in captivity, the project has fallen far short of their goal of 60 individuals, but Michelle Clark, a federal conservation biologist working with the recovery project says she “wouldn’t call the akeke’e a lost cause.” The Hawaiian crow nearly went extinct, and captive breeding started with just 11 individuals, she points out. Today the species numbers more than 100. “It’s still a concern, but I feel like we have a little more time because there are at least twice as many akeke’e in the wild than akikiki,” says Clark.
After all, until mosquitoes are controlled and the birds’ habitat is protected from predators, the 47 captive akikiki and akeke’e will be waiting in the wings.
(Reporting on this story was made possible by a fellowship from the National Tropical Botanical Garden.)
The Trump Administration announced the bears would lose their protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The Trump Administration yesterday announced that the grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) of Yellowstone National Park would lose their protection under the Endangered Species Act.
As part of the announcement, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called Yellowstone grizzlies “one of America’s great conservation successes” and declared the population recovered. This, of course, leaves out future threats from climate change, invasive species, inbreeding, habitat loss and a potential return to trophy hunting.
The hotly debated delisting process, which has long been opposed by tribal authorities, began under the Obama Administration.
A new report finds that malnutrition, unsafe water, drought, floods and other environmental dangers affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Nearly 1.5 billion people around the world, including 689 million children, live in such extreme poverty that it affects their health — and often the environment around them — according to a powerful new study issued this month by the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative.
“We’re looking at very, very acute and basic forms of poverty,” says Sabina Alkire, director of the initiative, who has spent more than 20 years studying the issue.
Poverty rates have actually gotten slightly better overall in the past few years, Alkire reports, but little has changed when it comes to the worst-affected populations around the world. “The fact that it remains so prevalent is quite worrying,” she says. “We compute these things and then we cry when we see what’s on our screens.”
The initiative calls this “multidimensional poverty,” a measure that reflects not just lack of income but how this impacts — or is impacted by — health, education and living standards. Oxford’s Multidimensional Poverty Index looks at populations for the presence of ten weighted factors (below) reveal which populations around the world are most at risk.
Alkire points out that several of the factors driving multidimensional poverty stem from situations in which people live in environmentally unsafe conditions. These factors include malnutrition, lack of access to sanitation and safe drinking water, and the use of polluting solid cooking fuels such as charcoal, wood or dung.
Alkire says there are also “very clear links” between changing environmental conditions and extreme poverty. For example the report found that between 98 and 99 percent of the people in Chad’s Lac and Wadi Fira regions live in extreme poverty. “That is clearly affected by the drought in Chad,” Alkire says. “You can see the drought-affected regions. Poverty has increased and those areas have now unfortunately overtaken others as the poorest regions of the world.”
Other areas have experienced dramatically different environmental conditions. “We could talk about the borders of Myanmar and Bangladesh and the floods there and the interaction with poverty,” Alkire says. One of the factors in the multidimensional poverty index, she points out, is living in homes without floors. “We can see when floods wipe out peoples’ homes by the increase in houses without floors in the index,” she says.
Multidimensional poverty, meanwhile, has its own broader environmental impacts, including an over-reliance on hunting wild game for sustenance, as well as deforestation, air pollution and improper waste disposal.
Alkire adds that there are enormous opportunities to improve our understanding of the environmental impacts of and on poverty. “There’s a big need for joint analysis,” she says. “I’m hoping to attract environmentalists, whether they’re working on deforestation, air pollution, climate or other areas,” who might be able to combine environmental data with Oxford’s regional population data. “We have a paper coming out next month on how to include environmental and natural sources in the Multidimensional Poverty Index,” she says. “We’ve been able to do it conceptually, but it’s so difficult to get data on climactic or environmental natural depravations that affect entire populations.”
A Critical Need for Funding
The Oxford report comes at a time when President Trump has proposed drastic cuts to U.S. international financial assistance, including for health and food programs. The Trump administration also cut off funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which aids reproductive health services in poorer countries around the world. A recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that these cuts could result in tens of thousands of illnesses and deaths around the world and that at least 6.5 million women would lose access to contraceptives.
Alkire calls this financial aid “fundamental” for reducing worldwide child poverty. “These cuts are really devastating,” she says with a sigh.
In part, she adds, that’s because these aid programs themselves are already severely underfunded. “People don’t understand just how little we give in international aid,” she says. “When you do surveys, the American people systematically overstate what they think we give and how generous we are.” She points to Chad again as an example. “Chad is a very poor country, but if you look at how many dollars Chad receives from all bilateral governments, the World Bank, UNICEF and other sources, it’s just $5.89 per person, per year. That is not very much.”
India is another example. “There are over half a billion poor people in India, by our count,” Alkire says. “As a global community, we give less than $2 per person per year.”
The total amount given to help alleviate poverty worldwide, Alkire says, “is ridiculously small. We assume that we are very generous, but from a poor person’s perspective we are not.”
On top of that, Alkire says, what little funding is actually granted often goes to the wrong places, with aid being based on political priorities, such as national security, rather than humanitarian ones. “Chad is not a security country, but it’s terribly important in human terms,” she says.
The Oxford data could help reprioritize that distribution, Alkire says. “We really do have a bit of a magnifying glass on poverty. We have data for 103 countries, many over multiple time periods. We’re hoping that others will both use the data and be troubled by the data.”
Even if the world governments don’t take action based on Oxford’s findings, Alkire suggests, the report can still help others in taking action to help alleviate some of this poverty: “Who knows where the states will go in terms of these conversations — but individuals can still act in ways they know will be appreciated.”
Alkire points out that several of the factors driving multidimensional poverty stem from situations in which people live in environmentally unsafe conditions. These factors include malnutrition, lack of access to sanitation and safe drinking water, and the use of polluting solid cooking fuels such as charcoal, wood or dung.