Playing Matchmaker for Corals

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think of it as sort of fertility treatment for corals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coral spawning and restoration training. Photo courtesy SECORE International.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously in The Revelator

Planting Coral Gardens to Save Florida’s Reefs

A Lifeline for Winter-Run Chinook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More recently state and federal agencies have joined that effort.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously in The Revelator:

5 Things to Know About the Fate of Wild Salmon

Three Ways Congress Could Act to Protect Imperiled Wildlife

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funding Conservation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Brink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boosting Birds

Our feathered friends could use help, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously in The Revelator:

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

5 Hot New Environmental Books

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

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

Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future

by Gloria Dickie

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

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

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

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

by Jeff Goodell

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

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

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

by Karen Pinchin

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

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

Mother Nature

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

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

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

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

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

By Elizabeth D. Hilborn

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

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

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

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

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

The place:

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

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

Why it matters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The threat:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My place in this place:

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

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

What this place needs:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who’s protecting it now:

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

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

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

Lessons from the fight:

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

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

Follow the fight:

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

Previously in The Revelator:

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

Climate Education Suffers From Partisan Culture Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grassroots Movement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culture Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously in The Revelator:

10 New Books for Environmentally Active Kids and Families

Small But Mighty: Why Antarctic Krill Are Worth Fighting For

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dual Threats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Personal Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy #WorldKrillDay 🦐 Krill capture carbon and feed other species – they are a ‘keystone’ species of the Southern Ocean @AusAntarctic @pewenvironment @CCAMLR1 https://t.co/to20itPIkC

— Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (@Ant_Partnership) August 11, 2022

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

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

Previously in The Revelator:

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

Saving the Earth Up the Street From Racist Murder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Planting Coral Gardens to Save Florida’s Reefs

Volunteers flock to Key Largo to go underwater and help restore one of the world’s most important ecosystems.

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

Early on a June morning, a group of 10 people dressed in shorts and flipflops gathers in a classroom at the Coral Restoration Foundation Exploration Center in Key Largo, Florida. We have come from Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Texas, and just down the road to help save Florida’s coral reefs.

The 360-mile-long Florida reef is the third largest in the world. But since the 1970s, nearly 90% of its corals have died due to climate change, hurricanes, disease and human development. Reefs around the world are suffering from similar threats, and we’re just some of the thousands of volunteers joining scientists, government and non-government agencies, and private companies fighting to stop this loss.

As scuba divers, we take it personally.

“This loss has happened in my lifetime,” says Sage Morningstar, the foundation intern leading today’s volunteer training. Others of us remember diving the Florida reef years ago or hearing about its former glory from those who did. The foundation created its public dive program for people like us in 2017, and since then more than 4,000 volunteers have participated.

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Corals reproduce both sexually and asexually, the latter through fragmentation — when a piece breaks off, reattaches to the reef, and grows a new colony. The Coral Restoration Foundation uses fragmentation to grow corals in seven underwater nurseries along the South Florida coast, each containing hundreds of underwater structures called Coral Trees. Teams build the trees in a nearby facility, put them in the water, and attach about 60 small fragments. The corals grow for six to nine months, then are tagged, taken to a restoration site, and attached to a living reef through a process called outplanting. The nurseries now are self-sufficient, meaning fragments for new growth come from corals already there.

Five of the foundation’s restoration sites — Carysfort Reef, Horseshoe Reef, Sombrero Reef, Looe Key and Eastern Dry Rocks — are also part of Mission: Iconic Reefs, an ambitious effort by NOAA to restore seven Florida reefs (the other two are Cheeca Rocks and Newfound Harbor). Other parties involved are Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, The Florida Aquarium, The Nature Conservancy, Reef Renewal and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

The project totals 3 million square feet of restoration. It’s not just about planting more corals, but the most resilient corals, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary superintendent Sarah Fangman explained in a webinar in early 2021.

While some have criticized the agency for launching this mission while the threats continue, we can’t afford to wait. “Natural recovery can’t happen fast enough,” Fangman stressed during the webinar. “Yes, we have to address temperature stress, water quality, and other threats to give this system a chance, but restoration helps it along while we’re fixing those things.”

The morning training session complete, our group heads to the dive shop. But then Mother Nature steps in, sending a storm that cancels the trip. Disappointment shows in every face; each of us was excited about doing something meaningful today, contributing in however small a way to the reefs.

The plan had called for us to board the dive boat and go to the Tavernier Coral Nursery to clean some of the 500 trees standing in the sandy bottom there under about 30 feet of water.

Groves of the trees create an orderly grid that covers 1.5 acres, each grove containing a different species. In the one we were to clean, fragments of endangered staghorn coral hang like ornaments on the spindly Charlie Brown-ish tree structures. Volunteers use brushes to remove algae from monofilament line that holds each fragment and small chisels to scrape the stuff from the branches and trunks of the coral trees. On a healthy reef, but to a lesser extent in this nursery setting, herbivorous fish species like parrotfish keep algae in check, lest it grow over and kill corals by smothering them or blocking the sunlight.

One section of the nursery is a sort of genetic ark, holding hundreds of coral genotypes — the complete set of an individual organism’s genes, including variations.

“Biodiversity is primary,” says Morningstar. “We have genotypes here that no longer exist in the wild.” That genetic diversity makes it more likely that at least some of the corals survive if something happens on the reef, such as high temperatures or disease. It’s a key component of outplanting efforts.

Out next stop was to be Craysfort Reef, to plant staghorn corals that have grown big enough to venture from the nursery. On these dives, the crew hits the water first, schlepping milk crates of fragments, small hammers, and containers of epoxy. Volunteers follow and buddy teams are assigned to a tagged section of reef. Each measures a hammer’s length from an existing coral fragment, cleans three saucer-sized spots on the reef, applies epoxy, and attaches the new fragments at the three points. Proper attachment is critical, as the corals must survive the incessant action of normal waves and the more forceful waves of storms.

So, although volunteers are encouraged to attach as many corals as possible during the timed dive, the goal is quality, not quantity. The foundation team checks each planting and teams work outward in a circular fashion. This pattern allows the corals to grow together and fuse into one large colony. (Because the fragments come from the same original coral, they grow together rather than competing for space, as unrelated corals do.)

Working underwater has unique challenges and divers say outplanting can be quite frustrating. Surging ocean waters move you back and forth at this shallow depth, and you must control your buoyancy to avoid damaging any corals. Each scrape of the hammer moves your body. Fish attracted by the stirred-up algae get in the way. Most people use up their air faster than they would on a recreational dive. But the frustration pales against the importance of the task.

After these dive trips, volunteers scatter to the various attractions of the Keys, but work continues for the foundation team. The staff creates and maintains the nurseries, conducts regular outplanting dives on their own, and leads public outreach events and dives. They also monitor survival of individual outplants and the effect of restoration efforts on the larger ecosystem. Monitoring now is done primarily via a technique called photomosaic, which uses software to stitch together multiple photographs and create a map of a restoration site.

“With photomosaics, we are able to see survival and growth of all our outplants, not just a select sample,” Morningstar says. The technique, which several published studies have validated, also reduces the time spent on monitoring corals, freeing up more time for planting them.

Since 2012 Coral Restoration Foundation has outplanted more than 220,000 corals (nearly 13,500 of those by volunteers) representing more than 365,000 square feet of habitat. The foundation also ticked off another important indicator of success: the first-ever spawning of nursery-raised corals in the wild.

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“Making babies is hard, especially for corals,” Morningstar says, adding that spawning is a clear sign of reef health.

While scuba divers and residents of the Florida coast have an obvious stake in this effort, coral loss affects almost everyone. The annual economic value of the world’s coral reefs is an estimated $9.9 trillion — two times that of tidal marshes and wetlands and seven times more than tropical forests. This value comes from the role of reefs in supporting 25% of all marine life, providing food and livelihoods for coastal residents, underpinning tourism, and protecting shorelines and structures from wave energy, especially during storms. Coral reef services benefit more than a billion people around the world. That makes restoration an important investment.

“Restoring a tenth of the world’s coral reefs would cost in the range of $4 to $8 trillion,” writes marine biologist Juli Berwald in her book Life on the Rocks. “A 2014 study of coral reefs valued their ecosystem services at $362,000 per hectare per year. Frank Mars said it required a $250,000 investment to restore a hectare of reef. So, you’ve got a return on investment of about 1.5 with coral reefs.” Restoring coral reefs is “a reasonable investment,” she concludes. (The method developed in Indonesia by Mars — yes, the candy company — uses six-legged rebar structures populated with coral fragments and networked together on the ocean floor; Mars says 8 divers could construct a basketball court-sized ‘reef’ in 3 hours.)

It remains true that unless and until humans stop doing the things that harm reefs, these restoration efforts are a bit like trying to empty the sea with a bucket. But again, wait and it may be too late. And there’s more that people can do.

“Put pressure on policymakers around the world,” suggests Jessica Levy, the foundation’s director of restoration strategy. “Support policies, candidates and leaders who support climate response. We need this to be a political issue, unfortunately. Make ocean friendly choices in your daily life, choosing sustainable seafood and reducing plastic consumption and your carbon footprint. It all contributes, but we really need to ensure that governments take action.”

And show up in Key Largo, too, if you can. The corals need all hands on deck. I plan to make a return trip — and hope for better weather.

Previously in The Revelator:

Coral Reefs Are in Crisis. Could a Controversial Idea Help?

The Great Plains: Bringing Back an ‘American Serengeti’

Conservationists are working to preserve eastern Montana’s intact prairie and return its assemblage of native wildlife.

Some people call the Great Plains “flyover country.” Outdoor enthusiasts sail above it on the way to the mountains of Acadia, California’s redwoods or Utah’s red rock. Conservationists, too, have bypassed the region. Few big public preserves or parks exist there.

Ecologist Curtis Freese hopes that changes.

His new book, Back From the Collapse: American Prairie and the Restoration of Great Plains Wildlife, is a call to protect and restore the northern Great Plains and the biodiversity it once held in great numbers. That includes swift foxes, beavers, river otters, bison, elk, pronghorn, black-footed ferrets, grizzly bears, wolves and numerous species of grassland birds.

Some of that work is already underway. In 2002 Freese helped launch the nonprofit American Prairie, which aims to establish a preserve of 3.2 million acres in northeast Montana where the mixed-grass prairie has escaped the wrath of the plow that uprooted many other areas of the Great Plains. The group’s about halfway to its goal, with nearly 600,000 acres of deeded lands or leased public lands, along with 1.1 million acres of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.

“The region offers our best chance to reassemble the native wildlife community within a vast reserve large enough to preserve the ecosystem to its fullest potential,” he writes in the book.

The Revelator spoke with Freese about the biodiversity of the northern Great Plains, what it would take to restore native wildlife, and what obstacles remain.

Why do you think the Great Plains is often neglected when it comes to conservation?

I think there’s two main reasons. One was that compared to wetlands or forests or mountains, agriculture could simply get a quick jump on colonizing the Great Plains. You didn’t have to drain the wetlands, you didn’t have to clear the forest, you just opened the gates and let the cows out. It was all right there, ready to eat or plow.

Secondly, the turnover from 1870 to 1895 was dramatic. There had never been such a big change in the world so quickly — from an ecosystem where there was nothing but wild ungulates, to one that virtually eliminated all the ungulates and you had nothing but livestock. Because it was eliminated so quickly, there wasn’t a chance for the public to appreciate what had been — to say, “We need a big Great Plains park like Yellowstone.” We never had the chance.

What was the biodiversity of the region like before European colonization brought plows and cows? And how does that compare with what’s there now?

This was one wild, rambunctious system that went through a lot of ups and downs. We had glaciers covering it just 12,000 years ago. In the mixed-grass prairie it’s 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and sometimes it’s -50 degrees in the winter, so you’ve got to be tough to live there. Prairie wildlife exhibits that. Bison don’t need to go to water nearly as much as cows do.

When Lewis and Clark went through eastern Montana [in 1805-1806] they saw more wildlife than any other place in their trip — either to the east or to the west of the Rocky Mountains — all the way to the coast. It was just a remarkable ecosystem that we once had.

Now most of the species are either [greatly diminished] or not there at all, such as the wolf. Wolves now are in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, but back in the 1880s and 1890s, the state put a bounty on them, and every year roughly 4,000 to 6,000 wolves were killed, mostly in the plains of eastern Montana.

Today we’ve got relatively good numbers of deer because people like to hunt deer and they’re not quite so threatening to agriculture. But the elk numbers are highly suppressed because of depredation concerns about crop land, and pronghorn numbers are still down. The bison is simply a fraction of 1% of what it once was.

What’s the potential to be able to restore some of these populations of native wildlife?

What I see in northeast Montana — and what’s great about this ecosystem — is its diversity of habitat. You’ve got the Missouri River running through it. Then you’ve got floodplains and the rugged Badlands-like environment as you come out of the floodplain up into the rolling prairie. And then there are these isolated mountain ranges, like the Little Rocky Mountains, with pine forests. You have this wonderful cross section of habitats that support a great diversity of species. Some only live down in those floodplains. Some live in the rolling prairie, like the swift fox, and others live in the more mountainous and forested areas, like mountain lions.

The diversity of habitat is there, and much of it’s intact, but there’s still a threat of prairie being plowed up and put into wheat and barley. Once you plow it up, that’s the killer threat. Nothing survives very well in a wheat field.

Pronghorn standing in prairie grass. — Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge was established, in part, for pronghorn. Photo: USFWS (CC BY 2.0)

Put bison out there [instead], they’ll double the population every three or four years, no problem. Three of the Indian reservations in the region have bison. Grasslands National Park just across the border in Saskatchewan has bison. But we need to create much bigger herds of bison to mimic what they once did to that ecosystem and support the diversity of grassland habitat by their grazing. So there’s a long way to go in terms of building back the wildlife numbers.

Some, like the black-footed ferret, have a real challenge ahead of them because prairie dogs, which are their main source of food, continue to be poisoned and shot. Another threat is an introduced disease that came decades ago from Asia and is highly lethal to prairie dogs, as well as ferrets.

Others are also going to take some extraordinary effort to bring back. With wolves and grizzly bears, the problem isn’t a lack of food — or as we say, the “ecological carrying capacity” of the environment. It’s the social carrying capacity — people’s tolerance for big predators. We need to have some innovative approaches to enabling these big predators.

What does recovery look like for native grassland birds, many of whom are also declining?

Ecologist Andy Boyce said that recovering birds should be the easiest. They don’t threaten anybody. They move around to find the best habitat. And yet we still have declining bird populations because of three main threats.

One is the ongoing conversion of grasslands to cropland. The problem there as much as anything is the huge farm subsidies that lead to more plow-up and conversion of prairie to cropland.

The second is homogeneous grazing. In rangeland management the idea is to have the cows eat half the grass and leave half the grass everywhere. Uniform grazing. Well, to a lot of birds, that’s the worst outcome because some birds like it grazed down to the ground. Other birds like it not grazed at all. If you’re a five-inch-tall bird, that difference in grass height is like the difference for us of walking through a forest versus the shrubland.

So we need bison, and sometimes fire, to go back and recreate that diversity of grassland habitat, which birds depend upon.

The third one that’s an increasing threat are the new neonicotinoid insecticides, which are shown to be highly toxic to migratory birds and pollinators like butterflies and bees.

What’s needed to boost conservation in the region?

There are three pillars of conservation in the Great Plains. The first is no more sod busting, no more conversion of grassland to cropland.

Number two is the ranching community needs to be much more friendly to prairie wildlife. A lot of ranchers do a good job. There’s a lot of good ranch management going on, but a lot of them don’t. For example, prairie dogs are still much maligned and not tolerated, and they don’t create that much of a problem for ranching. And we also still see bison as belonging behind a fence, which is nuts.

We need to have a new kind of approach to ranching that realizes wildlife like bison, big predators, and small animals like prairie dogs, all have a place. Ranching can provide corridors and safe passage between parks, refuges and reserves for wildlife to move through.

Then third, we’ve got to have big protected areas of a million acres or more. Those are the cornerstone of wildlife conservation, whether you’re in the Great Plains, the Amazon or the Arctic. So we need more places like American Prairie and the Charles M. Russell Refuge across the Great Plains if we want to restore and conserve everything from prairie birds to ferrets to large predators and ungulates.

Black-footed ferret staring at camera — A black-footed ferret in the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge. Photo: USFWS, (CC BY 2.0)

We’ve got a lot of public lands in the Bureau of Land Management lands and National Grasslands, which are managed by the Forest Service. An act of Congress could convert those into more protected status.

Those places have a multiple-use mandate that includes biodiversity conservation. I think we simply have to provide greater weight to the biodiversity benefits of these public lands that belong to all the public, not just to the ranching communities that graze them. I think we need to have a shift in attitudes about what the best use of these lands is. And I think in a lot of cases, these public lands, the best use is for wildlife biodiversity conservation.

In just the Great Plains alone, we’re spending $10 billion a year to subsidize farming. What if we just took 10% or 20% of that and we apply it to buying and conserving grasslands?

Private lands have got to be part of the solution too, because especially in the southern Plains, almost all the lands are private lands.

A third part of the solution is Tribes. Indian reservations are engaging in wildlife restoration as well.

American Prairie, working with the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, can serve as a place where the American public can visit a landscape of an endless sky and wildlife with no fences, the likes of which you won’t see unless you go to the African Serengeti now. It used to be the African Serengeti in the Great Plains. Once people experience that, it’s going to be a revelation of, “Yes, we could have this, we could restore it.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Wolves as Teachers