Page 126 • The Revelator

Whooping Cranes Could Be Wiped Out by Climate Change

A conservation success story faces a new threat that could undo the heroic efforts of the past.

North America’s tallest birds could be wiped out by one of the world’s biggest threats.

Whooping cranes (Grus americana) famously barely escaped extinction during the 20th century. After decades of habitat loss and unrestricted hunting, their population had crashed to just 15 birds in 1941. Today, thanks to intense captive-breeding programs and the protection of the Endangered Species Act, that number has soared to approximately 500 wild birds. Their seven-foot wingspans are once again visible in the sky as they migrate between their summer breeding grounds at Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada and their wintering grounds in the southern United States.

But those cranes’ breeding grounds may be at risk. According to research published recently in the journal Ecology and Evolution, climate change could cause the whooping cranes’ wetland breeding habitats in Canada to dry up just enough by the year 2050 to allow predators to access the birds’ shallow-water nests and precious eggs and hatchlings. According the paper, authored by researchers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the loss of just one juvenile crane per 200 adults would be enough to cause the wild population to start declining once again.

“[Any] perceptions that whooping cranes remain secure in Canada, and can remain free of active management, are false,” the researchers wrote. They added that if attempts to manage this climate threat are not successful “then the only wild population of this species must adapt or likely face extinction.” (Lead author Matthew Butler of the Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment for this article.)

Why would climate change be so disastrous for this species? It all boils down to whooping cranes’ biology and behavior, explains Dr. Richard Beilfuss, President and CEO of the International Crane Foundation, one of several organizations partnering to conserve the species (Beilfuss is not affiliated with the new study).

“Whooping cranes only raise one chick a year except in extreme cases,” he says. “There’s pretty high vulnerability of that chick to predators, so their recruitment is naturally low overall and it makes recovery very challenging.”

By comparison sandhilll cranes (G. canadensis), which often have overlapping habitats with whooping cranes, tend to have a couple of chicks per year and are better at protecting their eggs from predators. “They’re better hiders,” Beilfuss explains. This has allowed their population to withstand some of the same pressures faced by whooping cranes.

Given their biological and behavioral limitations, whooping cranes have done remarkably well since they returned to their native habitats over the past few decades. Beilfuss says their numbers continue to rise, and the current target is to achieve about 200 to 250 breeding pairs and around 1,000 overall birds in the wild. “Until we reach that magic number, we’re going to feel that they’re still really vulnerable, even though their populations are increasing.”

Although the paper concentrates on the effects of climate change in Canada, the rest of whooping cranes’ range could also be affected, something illustrated by previous FWS research. “My personal feeling is our biggest worry on climate change is still related to maintaining conditions on their wintering grounds,” Beilfuss says. “I’m very concerned about the combination of water-use decisions and reduced water correlating to more prolonged drought in the southwest U.S.”

In fact, he says, the effects of climate change are already being felt to a degree by all of the world’s 15 crane species, which are experiencing increased droughts and more extreme rainfall. Heavy rains might sound like a good thing for wetlands-dependent species, but it doesn’t quite work that way. “Water will run off more quickly into rivers and run down to the sea but not be in the landscape for as long where the cranes need it,” Beilfuss says, pointing out that these heavy strains are already affecting crane species in northeast China, northwest India and southern Africa.

Other threats loom, particularly for whooping cranes, which could be all but wiped out by a single disaster. “For example, we were very fortunate that the BP oil spill happened during their non-breeding season and off of Louisiana,” Beilfuss says. “If a similar spill had happened closer to Texas in the winter, then it could have contaminated their entire coastal range.” Getting the population higher, he says, would allow the species to withstand an impact like that while continuing to grow their population.

Although the climate change predictions in the new paper are fairly apocalyptic, Beilfuss says it doesn’t mean that whooping cranes are necessarily doomed. “They’re pretty resilient birds,” he says. “They’ll probably find some alternative ways to get by as long as there’s a reasonable amount of water on the landscape.” He adds, though, that “conditions are going to be worse and worse” and that the new paper illustrates the need to be concerned about whooping crane productivity in the United States and in Canada if we hope for these magnificent birds to keep flying the skies of both nations.

Diesel is 50% Dirtier (and Deadlier) than Expected

Government emissions tests have drastically underestimated the pollution created by diesel trucks, cars and other vehicles, according to a study

Government emissions tests have drastically underestimated the pollution created by diesel trucks, cars and other vehicles, according to a study published this week in Nature.

Instead of the previously estimated 9.4 million tons of emissions worldwide, researchers calculate the actual amount was 5 million tons higher, saying the discrepancy comes from not testing vehicles under real-world conditions.

The study estimates the added soot and smog could be responsible for an additional 38,000 deaths a year from heart and lung diseases. Most of those added deaths would be in the EU, China and India, which have a higher proportion of diesel vehicles.

Ironically, the study comes at a time when one lab that could help better understand diesel emissions, the EPA’s National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory, faces severe budget cuts under President Trump’s budget plan.

Plastic Pollution: From Ship to Shore

When a 60,000-pound shipping container falls into the ocean, its plastic contents can end up on the world’s beaches — and in its fish.

The journey to the most trashed beach in the United States, on Hawaii’s Big Island, is a long — and bumpy — one. I traveled there last year, spending about two hours in the back of a rusty old truck that bucked and bounced down a winding, rock-strewn dirt road down to the shore.

With me were two filmmakers and our guide Megan Lamson, Hawaii Island program director of an environmental nonprofit called Hawaii Wildlife Fund. Our tasks included documenting and cleaning up trash. Lamson’s two dogs were also along for the ride.

About halfway to our destination, as the truck crested a hill and sand and sea came into clearer view, Lamson, who was at the wheel, pointed out the window at a jagged hunk of land jutting out from the coastline: Kamilo Beach. “That’s where we’ll see the most junk,” she said.

She was right. Kamilo Beach was literally trashed, covered with plastic debris large and small, of all shapes, sizes and varieties, from truck tires to fishing nets to water bottles to tiny microbeads.

Trash on Kamilo Beach. Justin Dolske (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

Most beaches I’ve visited have some litter strewn around, but never before had I seen anything so extreme. While I watched the dogs go splashing into the sea, I noticed the water, too, contained plastic — thousands of tiny bits floating like confetti on the surface. And as I walked across this plastic beach I couldn’t help but wonder: Where had it all come from?

Kamilo Beach lies directly in the path of the Pacific Gyre, a clockwise-swirling ocean current. That current carries trash — mostly plastic — through the ocean and dumps a lot of it on beaches like Kamilo. Megan told me that a not-insignificant amount of the plastic has escaped from massive shipping containers that have been lost from cargo vessels.

“Oh yes, we see plastic container-ship debris all the time,” said Lamson, who heads up regular cleanups at Kamilo Beach. “We can tell a container has gone overboard recently when we find a lot the same item on the beach. One week we found hundreds of clothes hangers; another time, a ton of sandals.”

An international fleet of cargo ships carries 5 to 6 million shipping containers across the oceans at any given time, transporting about 90 percent of the world’s consumer goods. These containers — each of which can contain upwards of 60,000 pounds of cargo — are filled with all types of items, from food to cars to clothes to appliances. Most of these goods are made at least partly of plastic, or are wrapped in plastic packaging. And sometimes what’s being shipped is plastic itself.

According to various estimates, at least hundreds, and as many as ten thousand, shipping containers are lost at sea annually when cargo ships tip over in rough seas or crash on reefs or rocks. The World Shipping Council, an international maritime shipping industry trade group, contests the 10,000-container estimate, claiming it is “grossly excessive,” yet concedes that “there have been no comprehensive statistics kept, as to the number of containers lost overboard.” So no one is really sure how many containers are lost at sea each year because detailed records aren’t kept by any one entity.

When shipping containers go overboard, they float for days or weeks just below the ocean’s surface, like an iceberg, posing a major threat to ships that may hit them. Eventually they take on enough water to sink to the seafloor, where they rupture and release the goods they contain.

But spilled goods are not usually cleaned up — with the exception of oil — and that’s in part because there’s no international rule delineating who’s responsible for claiming consumer goods lost by cargo ships. “Currently there are no international treaties or federal laws that effectively combat the problem of consumer goods spills from cargo ships,” says Mike A. Bajaj, a maritime attorney of counsel to Arthe Law in Delhi, India.

In fact it’s not even required for shippers to report their container losses (again, unless those losses are oil) to ocean management agencies, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Plastic is popular for consumer goods because it’s more lightweight and durable, and cheaper, than materials such as glass and wood. But it’s a clear environmental mess on a global scale.

Large plastic items can lethally entangle marine wildlife. And over time plastic in the oceans breaks up into tiny pieces and absorb toxins from the water; it’s often ingested by animals, eventually sickening and killing them. And the ocean’s plastic pollution problems get transferred back to land when debris washes up on beaches like Kamilo.

Some manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to clean up their goods after spills to avoid bad PR. Chinese petroleum giant Sinopec did this when it paid for an effort to recover thousands of large bags of plastic pellets (called “nurdles”) for use in manufacturing that had fallen into the sea and washed onto beaches after a cargo ship spill in 2012. But Sinopec did not actually claim liability for the spill, because there were no laws holding it accountable. Had it been oil that had spilled, under the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, Sinopec would have been responsible for the cleanup.

Bajaj and other maritime law experts say they’re skeptical any international rules outlining the cleanup of plastic goods spilled in the oceans will arise in the near future. The plastic industry is simply too resistant. They say the best way to prevent plastic from getting into the seas starts with the world using less plastic. Only then will manufacturers make — and ship — less of it.