Conservationists racing to save one of Hawai‘i’s last honeycreeper species get creative, allowing birds to choose their own mates.
The ʻakikiki is a critically endangered species of Hawaiian honeycreeper endemic to the island of Kauaʻi. Populations have shown rapid decline in the past five years. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance operates a conservation-breeding program on the islands of Maui and Hawaiʻi in an effort to save the species. Researchers have studied mate choice selection as a means of increasing reproductive success and the number of individuals in the population.
Species name:
ʻAkikiki (Oreomystis bairdi)
Description:
A small (12-15 grams) creeper species. Light-cream to pale-gray underside with a dark-gray back. A small, pointed beak for gleaning insects from branches and leaves.
Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Where it’s found:
High-elevation forest in the Alakaʻi Swamp on Kauaʻi. The population is restricted to an area less than 7 square miles.
IUCN Red List status:
Critically endangered. The population faces rapid decline: Scientists estimate that only 40 birds remain in the wild.
Major threats:
Avian malaria and avian poxvirus have spread to the birds through mosquitos that were introduced to the islands. The birds evolved in isolation from these diseases and have no immunity. Climate change has exacerbated the problem, allowing the mosquitos to increase their range and reach the last strongholds in the cooler mountain forests.
Notable conservation programs or legal protections:
Federal listing under the Endangered Species Act in 2010. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance works in conjunction with Kaua’i Forest Bird Recovery Project, State of Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife, and others to protect the species. The first ‘akikiki eggs were brought into human care for conservation breeding in 2015 as a last-ditch effort.
My favorite experience:
I’ll never forget traveling to the remote regions of Kauaʻi and collecting ʻakikiki eggs from nests in conjunction with Kauaʻi Forest Bird Recovery Project. We set out in the hopes of establishing conservation-breeding flocks in case the species goes extinct in the wild. It was my first opportunity to see ʻakikiki in the wild, and the views from the helicopter were amazing. Being high up in the canopy collecting the tiny ʻakikiki eggs from nests was an adrenaline rush.
What else do we need to understand or do to protect this species?
Mate choice is an important component when managing species in a conservation-breeding program. Although genetic pairings are also critical to take into consideration, behavioral compatibility is important for picking pairs that will breed successfully. Like many species, when female ʻakikiki are allowed to have choice in selecting a preferred male, it increases overall reproductive success. My colleagues and I discovered this after conducting a study on the conservation-breeding flock of ʻakikiki over a span of three years.
Key research:
Alverson, D., Martin, M., Hebebrand, C.T., Greggor, A.L., Masuda, B., Swaisgood, R.R. (in review). Designing a mate choice program: tactics trialed and lessons learned with the critically endangered honeycreeper, ‘akikiki (Oreomystis bairdi). Conservation Science and Practice.
Paxton, E. H., Crampton, L. H., Vetter, J. P., Laut, M., Berry, L., & Morey, S. (2022). Minimizing extinction risk in the face of uncertainty: Developing conservation strategies for 2 rapidly declining forest bird species on Kaua‘i Island. Wildlife Society Bulletin 46.
Do you live in or near a threatened habitat or community, or have you worked to study or protect endangered wildlife? Share your stories in our ongoing features, Protect This Place and Species Spotlight.
Climate activism is most effective when it taps into the pain of grieving instead of repeating statistics that overwhelm people into numbness.
When I read news about the latest IPCC climate assessment report, or predictions of imminent mass extinction, I admit that the statistics — the exact degree of warming, the number of feet sea levels will rise, how many species will die — find fewer footholds in my brain than the overwhelming sorrow they elicit.
To paraphrase Maya Angelou, I don’t always remember the numbers, but I remember how they make me feel.
It’s hard to focus on the individual words when your eyes are blurry with tears.
It’s love that makes me run my hands along tree bark ridges. It’s love that moves me to feed the birds that grace our house in winter. And it’s grief — love’s counterpoint — that makes me care so passionately about what threatens the neighbors I love.
That somatic experience informs why I believe climate activism is most effective when it taps into the climate grief, instead of repeating statistics that too often overwhelm people into numbness.
I wrote a book called Cry, Baby: Why Our Tears Matter that will be published this May, and I think the science of crying has important lessons to teach organizers about how to motivate people. That may sound counterintuitive: Crying is a deeply personal act and climate action is, fundamentally, about mobilizing collective action. But that framing obscures both the social dimensions of weeping and the ways in which personal psychology is at the core of large-scale change.
There’s some disagreement among psychologists about why we cry emotional tears. In 1985 William H. Frey published the much-heralded Crying: The Mystery of Tears, in which he found emotional tears contain higher concentrations of certain neurotransmitters than tears caused by chopping onions. He hypothesized that the reason we evolved the ability to cry from deep feeling — and why we often feel better afterward — is that our tear ducts help release chemicals from the brain. More recently researchers like Ad Vingerhoets have cast doubt on this theory, instead suggesting that tears primarily serve a social function. The jury is still out about Frey’s work, but evidence that tears facilitate interpersonal bonds is undeniable.
One recent experiment found that in 41 countries across six continents, inevery country, seeing someone cry made people more likely to offer help. Qualitative studies also affirm this link: In a paper analyzing 89 “crying events” at a Hong Kong shelter for abused domestic workers, Hans Ladegaard found that tears helped participants talk about their trauma, and increased the emotional support provided by other members. In my own research, people I interviewed regularly described times when a stranger offered them assistance or comfort after seeing them cry.
There’s something about seeing palpable evidence of other people’s grief that sparks a response.
Photo: Pixabay
So what light does this shed for climate activism? One takeaway is how important it is for people to see the climate grief their neighbors carry. It can seem, as we move about our lives, that other people do not share the overwhelming sorrow and anguish we feel when thinking about our ecological future. Certainly we’re not all equally concerned, but more pain lurks beneath the surface — particularly for young people — than we see or name. Providing avenues to discuss this hurt can help move people through their emotions toward action.
This underscores the importance of storytelling: Narratives about climate activists transforming pain into resistance against the forces that are killing us help people see how they can do the same.
One counterintuitive lesson I learned from my crying interviews, however, is that often people don’t cry when they’re most overwhelmed. It seems, broadly speaking, that loss increases weeping to a point, but once pain becomes too intense and a threshold is crossed, people report crying less and retreating into numbness.
I fear this dynamic is very much at play in our climate crisis. The scale of death projected in scientists’ reports is so staggering that it can be paralyzing. To contemplate, for example, projections that one-third of the planet’s species could go extinct by 2050 can provoke an immobilizing anguish. To consider there may 1.2 billion climate refugees in that same time span is a disaster so enormous that any action we take can feel insignificant. But this is, of course, a lie. What we do matters.
Claiming that truth requires not just acknowledging suffering but affirming our collective power to change how much we suffer. This isn’t just an intellectual exercise, it’s emotional work.
But here’s the last truth I’ll share about crying: When we cry, we deepen our relationship to the object of our grief. And, right now, that’s essential. The forces of extractivism deliberately inculcate and depend on our isolation and despair. They want us to feel alone in our anxiety, separated from community that can do something about it.
As Indigenous writer Kaitlin Curtice shared in an interview for Cry, Baby, “As we get older, we start learning lessons of colonization — the land is not someone you interact with, the land is a commodity. We lose the emotional connection we had to the Earth as a being, as our mother, as a friend.” For example, we are trained to think about climate refugees as problems, not as people who deserve an abundant future.
Moving through grief is an opportunity to reforge these bonds, to feel them in our body and honor the claim they make upon our life.
We rely on freshwater plants and animals for clean water, food, recreation and other needs. And yet they’re often overlooked in conservation.
Nearly two dozen experts from around the world have issued a call to action to protect freshwater biodiversity.
“It’s our collective opinion that freshwater biodiversity is really important, but it’s often forgotten,” says Steven J. Cooke, a professor of biology at Carleton University and a coauthor of the paper published in the journal WIREs Water.
Globally at least one-third of freshwater species are threatened with extinction, and they’re disappearing twice as fast as species in the ocean or on land. Habitat loss and degradation, pollution, river fragmentation, invasive species, climate change, mining, microplastics and pharmaceuticals are just some of the threats driving these losses.
And they’re taking a big toll. Freshwater vertebrates declined 84% from 1970 to 2016. And invertebrates and aquatic plants are perpetually forgotten in discussions about biodiversity, says Cooke. “There are many organisms that get relatively little attention.”
That might be because many of these plants and animals are out of sight, in frothing rapids or deep lakes or turbid rivers. We don’t see life below the surface, so we don’t act to protect it.
Freshwater species also aren’t as colorful and showy as those in the marine realm.
“When it comes to freshwater, it’s kind of a blind spot because a lot of the life there is cryptic,” says Cooke.
Freshwater biodiversity is greatest in the Global South, but that’s also where there’s the least amount of money for research that could help protect it. “We’re losing species there before we’re able to document their existence,” says Cooke.
But the Global North doesn’t have everything sorted, either.
In Canada, where Cooke is a fish biologist, there are 10 million lakes. “We don’t have 10 million biologists,” he says. “We don’t have 1 million biologists. That means each resource manager is responsible for hundreds of kilometers of rivers and hundreds if not thousands of lakes and wetlands. You can’t do it all.”
But there’s still a lot that can be done to help protect freshwater biodiversity — especially if people better understand the benefits these plants and animals provide.
“We wanted to flip the more common conservation narrative that only focuses on declines to populations to instead show the importance of freshwater biodiversity by highlighting the benefits that are being lost,” says Abigail Lynch, a research fish biologist with the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center and the paper’s lead author.
Nepali woman crosses the rice paddy in Sitapur, Nepal. Photo: Robin Johnson/USAID (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Here are some of the reasons, according to the paper, to protect freshwater ecosystems:
Individual freshwater species help keep ecosystems healthy — along with the human communities they support. Aquatic plants like sedges, reeds and rushes help control runoff, capture sediment, and filter pollutants.
These ecosystems also have key roles in fighting climate change by sequestering carbon and methane. “It is estimated that wetland ecosystems contain about 20% to 30% of the global carbon pool and contribute a significant role in the atmospheric carbon cycle,” the researchers write.
Wetlands are also hailed for their role in cleaning water by filtering pathogens and pollutants, like nitrates which can cause harmful algal blooms.
Freshwater plants and animals are important food sources. More than 90% of fish caught in inland waters are for human consumption. And rice, grown in freshwater, feeds half the world.
We rely on freshwater organisms for medicinal, veterinary and pharmacological products.
Freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity are deeply linked to culture in many places.
Lakes and rivers provide opportunities for angling, swimming, birdwatching, photography, snorkeling and other recreation activities.
We have a long way to go to make sure that these important areas and diverse species are protected. But one significant step was made last December’s at the global Convention of Biological Diversity, where the international community recognized “inland waters”as a realm worthy of protection for the first time.
“Freshwaters are not seas and they need to be managed differently and thought of differently,” says Cooke.
There’s also an opportunity to pair freshwater biodiversity solutions with climate solutions. One way to do that is building more “nature-based solutions,” like constructed wetlands that store carbon, support aquatic life, clean water and control pollution.
We need to take action now, and with an eye toward practitioners, says Cooke.
“Restoration ecologists, watershed planners and environmental managers who are making decisions on a day-to-day basis affect the future of our freshwater resources,” he says. “We need to make sure they’ve got the right information to be making good decisions, and that they are supported behind the scenes with good legislation and with public interest that generates the political will to actually invest the resources and end up with real action.”
We need functional freshwater systems to ensure clean water, food security and wellness.
“Investing now just makes good sense,” says Cooke. “Fix it before it’s entirely lost, or the costs are going to be truly massive.”
A region historically plagued by industrial pollution is overwhelmed with unconventional oil and gas development.
The Place:
The Allegheny Plateau is a lower-lying portion of the Appalachian Mountain Range that extends from southern and central New York to northern and western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, northern and western West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky.
Why it matters:
The plateau consists of areas of gently sloping hills in the north and west of the region as well as rugged valleys in the south and east. It overlies the Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale, sedimentary rock formations. The region is rich in natural resources, including hardwoods, iron ore, silica, coal, oil and natural gas.
The abundance of these resources supported development in the region and were integral to the local steel, glass, rail and extraction industries.
Prior to widespread logging between 1890 and 1920, the area hosted old-growth forests containing red spruce, eastern white pine, eastern hemlock, sugar maple, black oak, white oak, yellow birch and American beech.
But the forest’s makeup is now different, favoring oaks, maples, hickories, American beech and yellow birch. Though fragmented and much less mature than the old-growth forests, today’s forests continue to play a vital role in ecosystems, serving as habitats for the federally endangered Indiana bat as well as locally endangered or at-risk species such as little brown bats, northern flying squirrels and blackpoll warblers.
Shippenville, Pa. Photo: Lisa C. Lieb
The region hosts the Ohio River watershed and confluence, the Allegheny National Forest in New York and Pennsylvania, and the Wayne National Forest in Ohio.
The threat:
Unconventional oil and gas development has boomed in the region over the past decade. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Marcellus and Utica shale plays contain approximately 214 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, making the Allegheny Plateau a lucrative location for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
Already more than 13,000 unconventional wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania. Fracking itself is a resource intense process, requiring between 2 and 20 million gallons of water per well. A 2014 study estimated that in Pennsylvania, 80% of the water used for fracking comes from streams, rivers, and lakes, thus potentially altering water temperature and levels of dissolved oxygen. This water is combined with sand and a mixture of hazardous chemicals, which may include methanol, ethylene glycol and propargyl alcohol.
Between 20-25% of the water that is injected into the well returns to the surface. This flowback water often has higher salinity and has been known to contain barium, arsenic, benzene and radium. While recycling of flowback is becoming more common, other methods of disposal include underground injection, application to road surfaces, treatment at public waste facilities, and discharging it onto rivers, streams and lakes.
Near fracking sites in West Virginia, elevated levels of barium and strontium were found in feathers of Louisiana waterthrushes, native songbirds who make their home in brooks and wooded swamps. In northwestern Pennsylvania, crayfish and brook trout living in fracked streams were found to have increased levels of mercury. Fish diversity is also reduced in streams that have been fracked.
Fracking consumes land, too. Each fracking well requires 3-7 acres. In Pennsylvania over 700,000 acres of state forest land are leased or available for gas production. Well pads, pipelines and other fracking infrastructure fragment forests, alter their ecology, and reduce biodiversity. Appalachian azure butterflies and federally threatened northern wild monkshood — purple-flowering herbaceous perennials found in New York and Ohio — are both sensitive to forest fragmentation.
In addition to the direct impacts of fracking, the availability of natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays attracts petrochemical development to the region. Shell Polymers Monaca initiated operations in November 2022 at a newly constructed 386-acre petrochemical complex in southwestern Pennsylvania, along the Ohio River.
The plant manufactures virgin polyethylene pellets, which will be largely be used for production of single-use plastic products. In addition to releasing hazardous air pollutants, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter, this ethane “cracker” plant will emit 2.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
The plant’s existence will also fuel fracking in the region; it is anticipated that it will require between 100 and 200 new wells each year in order to supply natural gas for its productions. Other petrochemical companies, including Exxon, PTT Global and Odebrecht, have reportedly been considering building similar complexes in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
Fracking waste disposal in Guernsey County, OH. Photo: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
My place in this place:
I was born and raised in the area, and my family’s roots in southwestern Pennsylvania go back several generations. Some of my most cherished memories involve Pennsylvania’s forests, rivers and streams. As a child I loved my family’s summer pilgrimages to our cabin, a rustic building that had been converted from a one-room schoolhouse in the Pennsylvania Wilds. At “camp” we fished for yellow perch, smallmouth bass and walleye in the Sinnemahoning Creek and caught crayfish by hand. We sunned ourselves on the rocks along the river bank when the water was warm. In the evenings we walked on quiet, narrow roads in hopes of spotting an eastern elk in a grassy field.
I now live in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, one mile from the Shell cracker plant. I can observe the plant’s flaring from my kitchen window, which often creates an ominous orange glow in the night sky. To me the plant doesn’t symbolize job creation or a rebounding local economy, despite the assertions of local and state politicians. I see the plant as the perpetuation of a hopeless dependence on fossil fuels and corporate profit at the expense of ecological integrity. I worry that fracking and an associated petrochemical buildout will destroy already fragile ecosystems throughout my home in the Allegheny Plateau.
Who’s protecting it now:
There are a variety of environmental groups located in the region. No Petro PA is an organization that resists fracking and pipeline development in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. More locally the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community in western Pennsylvania opposes fracking and seeks to protect local community members from its harmful effects.
With the rise of the Shell cracker plant, the group also formed Eyes on Shell, a community organization that aims to hold Shell accountable for its activity and advocates for the surrounding communities’ health and safety. These are just three of the many grassroots organizations working to protect the air, soil, water, wildlife and communities in the region.
The national organization, FracTracker, also provides extensive data on oil and natural gas wells, pipelines, legislation and environmental health.
What this place needs:
Ideally Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will follow in the footsteps of New York and institute a ban on fracking in light of the environmental and health risks associated with unconventional gas and oil development. However, given their strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, it is unlikely that this will occur. Banning fracking on public land in the region, such as in state forests and county parks, in a practical first step in combatting forest fragmentation and pollution.
At a regional level, regulations should be put in place to protect the water quality of the Ohio River. The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, a multistate organization working with the federal government, could ban fracking in the Ohio River Basin in order to protect the river and its watershed. The Delaware River Basin Commission has successfully prohibited fracking within the Delaware River Basin; the rules developed by the commission could be adapted for use by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission.
Additional government oversight would help to protect water quality in the region. Presently fracking is exempt from the Safe Water Drinking Act and therefore isn’t regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ending this exemption could increase water quality and safety within the Allegheny Plateau.
Increased transparency from oil and gas companies is also required to protect the region’s water. As of July 2022, California is the only state in the country that requires full public disclosure of all chemicals used in fracking. Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio must implement policies that require full public disclosure of chemicals used in all phases of the fracking process.
New research finds that at least 254 bat species face pressure from hunters, and that could push some of them into extinction.
The Malaysian flying fox, one of the world’s largest bat species, boasts a wingspan of nearly 5 feet and an ominous taxonomic name: Pteropus vampyrus.
But despite its bloodthirsty moniker and imposing appearance, the flying fox isn’t a threat, let alone a vampire. As a frugivore it only eats fruit, flowers and nectar. And as it feeds and travels, the bat helps pollinate trees and spread seeds throughout the forest. The famously pricey durian fruit, an Asian delicacy, depends in part on the bats’ role in the ecosystem.
That doesn’t stop people from killing them, though. Last year the IUCN Red List, which assesses the extinction risk of species around the world, listed the Malaysian flying fox as endangered due to habitat loss and “intensive and unsustainable hunting pressure across its range.”
It’s not alone. According to a new study, hunting poses a little-recognized threat to at least 19% of the world’s 1,400 bat species. Many of these bats are hunted for food, while others face persecution as “pest” species that eat agricultural crops. Some die simply due to negative cultural perceptions.
The study’s authors have seen the scope of the problem firsthand.
“In some areas of the Southern Philippines where I live, I have witnessed fruit bats being harvested in a massive number from caves or trees where they roost,” says Krizler Cejuela Tanalgo, a biologist with the University of Southern Mindanao. And Alice C. Hughes, a biologist with the University of Hong Kong, says she’s seen signs of hunting at “one-third to half of the caves I have surveyed in Asia.”
Photo: Krizler Cejuela Tanalgo. Used with permission.
Other researchers have published warnings about bat hunting, but this new paper finds that the problem is significantly worse than previously thought. Hunting could even contribute to many species’ extinction, the authors warn.
Species at highest risk include large-bodied bats like flying foxes, bats in tropical locations, and those with limited distribution, like bats who evolved on islands. Hunting is also particularly bad for bats already suffering declines due to deforestation, agriculture, climate change and extreme weather events.
Economics matter, too. Hunting poses a greater threat in countries where subsistence hunting is the norm or nations that lack resources to protect forests or national parks or enforce endangered-species regulations.
But the greatest threat hunting poses to bats is that we’re simply not talking about it as much as we talk about other heavily hunted species like wolves, rhinos, pangolins and ducks.
In fact, the problem has gone mostly overlooked in conservation circles, say the authors.
“Most conservation prioritization is too focused on species that are perceived as charismatic, such as megafauna,” says Tanalgo. “Bats are often neglected and feared species because they are often associated with negative perceptions and beliefs, and the global Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated this.”
That’s why they conducted the study — “to highlight the conservation status and needs of bats so we can attract the attention of policymakers and effectively conserve them,” he says.
Photo: Krizler Cejuela Tanalgo. Used with permission.
So what do we do to keep bats flying?
One answer is communicating their value. “Bats are amazing animals that fulfil many important services, from pollination to pest control,” says Hughes. “Reducing hunting maintains those services.”
She also suggests education campaigns to inform people about the risk of eating bats in regions where the animals may carry pathogens or parasites. “Eating and hunting bats includes a risk of spillover, so highlighting this across all sectors is critical,” Hughes says.
Bats also need more research to further identify which species are at risk from hunting. “In global analyses of bushmeat and hunting, the hunting of bats is frequently overlooked,” Hughes says. “Understanding the dimensions of trade is critical.”
But most of all, they need simply to be seen and safeguarded, something the authors say their study aims to help correct. “We hope that bats will receive more attention when it comes to conservation prioritization and protection,” Tanalgo says.
That starts with updating more IUCN Red List entries to reflect hunting risks. The Malaysian flying fox is a good start: The paper suggests the species should have been listed as endangered “decades” ago, when there was more time to address the hunting threat.
Tanalgo says uncontrolled hunting could be causing other species currently perceived as “common” — and are therefore unprotected — to decline while no one is watching.
“This can lead to ‘passenger-pigeon fiasco effects,’ where a common and abundant species may become extinct as a result of continuous human activities,” he warns. And as bats decline and disappear, a lot of other species — including humans — could suffer.
“Climate change is real and it is here, and it’s not going away. We need your help,” writes Joëlle Gergis in the new book Humanity’s Moment.
We’re running out of time to get things right.
With the final installment in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 6th Assessment Report released this week, the world’s leading climate scientists have offered a stark warning that we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 or face a “rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”
This will require an abrupt about-face as emissions continue to rise despite the massive body of scientific literature affirming the dire risks of proceeding with business as usual.
“Recognize that you are living through the most profound moment in human history,” climate scientist Joëlle Gergis tells The Revelator. “How bad we let things get is still in our hands. Averting planetary disaster is up to the people alive right now.”
It’s clear from the book that Gergis isn’t a shout-it-from-the-rooftops kind of person. But she felt compelled to share the loss she was feeling — not just as a scientist but as a person. And it’s something she hopes more scientists will do.
“It’s a long-held myth that a credible scientist should be devoid of human emotion, presenting our work rationally, without commentary,” she writes. “Given that humanity is now facing an existential threat of planetary proportions, and scientists are the people who really know exactly what’s at stake, shouldn’t that logically include acknowledging our sense of despair, anger, grief and frustration?”
Humanity’s Moment provides a front-row view of our planetary emergency. Not surprisingly, it’s scary. Gergis writes:
The more I hear, the more I realize that the situation is far worse than most people can imagine. In truth, it’s also hard for me to fathom that our generation is likely to witness the destabilization of the Earth’s climate; that we will be the last to see the world as it is today.
That’s what really keeps me up at night. I wonder if we may have already pushed the planetary system too far, unleashing a cascade of irreversible changes that have built such momentum we can now only watch as they unfold.
For those who need a refresher on how we got to this perilous moment, the book summarizes the science of climate change and explains concepts like the importance of polar areas in regulating the Earth’s climate, the threats to biodiversity, the human health risks, the cultural losses to come, and why the scientific community has been stunned by the rate of change they’re seeing.
But it’s also deeply personal. Gergis writes about her fear that we will not be able to right this ship. And what it means to live with the weight of that.
“It’s a pretty fraught moment, to be honest,” she tells The Revelator. “As a scientist trying to sound the alarm, I feel a sense of responsibility to do what I can to help people understand the significance of the time we are living in. I don’t think most people are aware of how bad things are, or that we can still do something to avert the worst aspects of climate change.”
And that last part is key. All is not lost … yet.
But we do need to take swift and meaningful action. The good news is that we have a roadmap to follow.
Climate protest on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. in Oct. 2021. Photo: Victoria Pickering (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
“The IPCC has very clearly laid out a path toward stabilizing the Earth’s climate. We know exactly what we need to do, we just need governments all over the world to urgently implement policy to avert disaster,” she says. “For that to happen we need ordinary citizens to vote for politicians who will take real leadership, and also be prepared to do whatever we can in our own lives to live more sustainably on the planet.”
Of course the gist of this action requires leaving fossil fuels in the ground, something major governments of the world — most especially the United States — have thus far failed to do. And the approval last week of a large new oil-drilling project in Alaska shows there’s still a long way to go.
But Gergis also highlights other bright lights, including regionally led renewable energy transitions, and a shifting tide of public sentiment and coordinated action. “The social tipping point we need is now clearly on the horizon,” she writes.
And in hand is irrefutable evidence gathered by scientists in the latest IPCC assessment that was compiled over countless hours, distilled from thousands of studies by researchers working to exhaustion. All so we could have the scientific foundation to guide action.
Scientists have done their part. Will we do ours?
“The 2020s will be remembered as the decade that determined the fate of humanity,” says Gergis. “We can each choose to be part of the critical mass that will change the world. And when we do, it will bring profound meaning and purpose to our lives.”
Researchers have found PFAS in the bodies of wild animals everywhere they’ve looked. Now they’re beginning to understand the health effects.
Images of starving polar bears staggering across the snow earned the species the dubious honor of being the “poster child” of climate change. But now another human-caused environmental danger threatens these apex predators: pollution from a class of 12,000 chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). And they’re not the only ones.
The nonprofit Environmental Working Group analyzed hundreds of recent peer-reviewed scientific studies and found more than 120 different PFAS compounds in wildlife. Some 330 species were affected, spanning nearly every continent — and that’s just some of what scientists have identified so far.
PFAS have been around since the 1940s in paint, cleaning products, food packaging, nonstick pans, stain-resistant fabric, waterproof clothing, and firefighting foam used at military bases and airports. Dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment, they migrate into the soil, water and air — and then into the food chain.
In people different PFAS chemicals have been linked to a range of risk factors, including increased cholesterol, increased risk of pre-eclampsia in pregnant women, decreased vaccine response in children, and increased risk of kidney or testicular cancer.
“The scientific literature shows that PFAS exposure is one of those risk factors that make our western lifestyle unhealthy,” says Catharina Vendl, a wildlife health researcher at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, who is mapping the health risk of PFAS in wildlife. “And unfortunately, wildlife has become unwillingly part of our western lifestyle.”
On the Research Trail
We have some idea of the human impacts of PFAS pollution, but we still have a long way to go in understanding what it does to wildlife.
The first study published about PFAS in wildlife was in 2001, “which is shocking,” says Vendl, “because the chemicals have been around for ages.” For the next 15 or 20 years, she says, the research was mostly focused on measuring concentrations of PFAS compounds in the bodies of wild animals.
Wherever researchers looked for PFAS, seemingly, they found it, as a map of studies from Environmental Working Group revealed. In recent years they’ve also started working to determine how these chemicals actually affect wild animals’ health — a much more daunting task.
What they’ve learned so far is that there’s evidence that PFAS can pose a threat to immune function, hormone balance and fertility.
A study of American alligators — who can live for 60 years — in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River found that exposure to PFAS “broadly alters immune activities resulting in autoimmune-like pathology.” This included atypical skin lesions and wounds that were slow to heal.
Alligator in Everglades National Park. Photo: Shell Game (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The researchers concluded that the data “reaffirms the need to reduce exposure and cease production and use of a chemical class that, through its ubiquity and persistence, is a global environmental health concern.”
Although the problem is global, one clear pattern emerges: Wild animals who live near areas with larger human populations tend to have higher levels of PFAS in their bodies.
“If we reduce those known sources where there are releases, that can be a step to reducing accumulation in animals and people,” says Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at Environmental Working Group who’s involved in its mapping project. “Because those higher levels do track with more developed and populated areas.”
Polar Bears and the Arctic
Unfortunately the high mobility and longevity of PFAS also means that even the most remote wildlife face risks, too. Research in the early 2000s found high concentrations of PFAS in Arctic ocean waters and animals.
“That was a wake-up call to the research community, because if PFAS was being found in remote wildlife in the Arctic, then it was surely everywhere,” says Vendl. It also inspired increased research efforts on environmental toxicity from scientists in Norway.
“What those researchers found was that polar bears have the highest level of PFAS of all wildlife species in the Arctic, comparable to concentrations of people who work in or live near a PFAS manufacturing plant in China,” she says.
Their study concluded that, “PFAS exposure in Arctic biota, in particularly in polar bears, is alarming.”
What does that mean for the bears’ health?
“The toxicologist who works on those polar bears told me that it’s really hard to say because they only see the animals once, and if they’re in bad body condition, it could be the result of climate change and not finding enough food,” says Vendl. But modeling studies suggest “that it goes towards reduced fertility and messed up hormonal balances,” because some PFAS components have an effect that’s similar to the effect of estrogen in mammalian bodies.
Research Gaps
There’s still much to be learned about how wild animals are affected, but Vendl’s work has found that there are already big geographic gaps in where research is occurring.
Studies have been heavily focused in wealthier countries, including in North America, Europe and China, which spend more on scientific research generally. But PFAS abounds globally, and many less affluent countries, including those in the Global South, have the same contamination issues.
“Those countries will have as much — or more — exposure to PFAS,” she says. “But there’s barely any research measuring concentrations because there’s no money and therefore little interest. And that’s a big issue.”
Arms Race
Another looming problem with PFAS is how to regulate this broad class of chemicals.
Signs along the White Pine trail north of Rockford, Michigan warn people about water quality risks. Photo: G. Witteveen (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Two of the more commonly used compounds, PFOS and PFOA, have been phased out in North America and Europe, but production continues in Asia. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency launched a strategic roadmap for addressing PFAS pollution in 2021 and has just announced a proposed drinking-water standard for six of those chemicals.
It’s a necessary and overdue step, but it only scratches the surface of a much greater problem.
With new regulations exposing health risks of long-time PFAS compounds, manufacturers are producing a new generation of the chemicals. But there’s an inevitable lag in studying the impacts and assessing any potential harm.
“So for a few years companies can do whatever they want,” says Vendl, “By the time we realize it’s a problem, they move on to another chemical and it starts all over again.”
That’s why it’s important to regulate the entire class of fluorinated chemicals, which have similar structures and properties, says Stoiber.
“The more that we study PFAS and the more that we study the replacements, the more that we’re seeing that they act the same and many of them have the same health impacts,” she says. “We need to make sure that when we’re tackling this, we’re looking at the whole class of chemicals so that we don’t have these regrettable substitutions that are going to be just as much of a problem as the original chemicals.”
And the time to do that is now, she says. Many wildlife species are facing unprecedented rates of decline from climate change and habitat loss and degradation. Chemical pollution adds another pressure — and one that could prove too much.
“Those effects might not be as visible, but the harms that animals might sustain as a result of these chemicals may leave them less likely to deal with some of some of these other factors,” she says. “All of these pressures acting together simultaneously on animals is a huge problem that we need to tackle.”
The privately owned land, outside Goldendale, Washington, is called Pushpum, or “mother of roots,” a first foods seed bank. The Yakama people have treaty-protected gathering rights there. One wind turbine-studded ridge, Juniper Point, is the proposed site of a pumped hydro storage facility. But to build it, Boston-based Rye Development would have to carve up Pushpum — and the Yakama Nation lacks a realistic way to stop it.
Back in October 2008, unbeknownst to Takala, Scott Tillman, CEO of Golden Northwest Aluminum Corporation, met with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a collection of governor-appointed representatives from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana who maintain a 20-year regional energy plan prioritizing low economic and environmental tolls. Tillman, who owned a shuttered Lockheed Martin aluminum smelter near Goldendale, told the council about the contaminated site’s redevelopment potential, specifically for pumped hydro storage, which requires a steep incline like Juniper Point to move water through a turbine. Shortly thereafter, Klickitat County’s public utility department tried to implement Tillman’s plan, but hit a snag in the federal regulatory process. That’s when Rye Development stepped in.
“We’re committed to at least a $10 million portion of the cleanup of the former aluminum smelter,” said Erik Steimle, Rye’s vice president of project development, “an area that is essentially sitting there now that wouldn’t be cleaned up in that capacity without this project.”
Meanwhile, Tillman cleaned up and sold another smelting site, just across the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon, a Superfund site where Lockheed Martin had poisoned the groundwater with cyanide. He sold it to Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which operates water-guzzling data centers in The Dalles and plans to build more. For nine years, the county and Rye plotted the fate of Pushpum — without ever notifying the Yakama Nation.
The Tribal government only learned of the development in December 2017, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a public notice of acceptance for Rye’s preliminary permit application. Tribal officials had just 60 days to catch up on nine years of development planning and issue their initial concerns and objections as public comments.
When it came time for government-to-government consultation in August 2021, FERC designated Rye as its representative. But the Yakama Nation refused to consult with the corporation. “The Tribe’s treaty was between the U.S. government and the Tribe. We’re two sovereigns,” said Elaine Harvey, environmental coordinator at Yakama Nation Fisheries, who’s been heavily involved with the project. “We’re supposed to deal with the state.”
FERC countered that using corporate stand-ins for Tribal consultation is standard practice for the commission. When the Tribe objected, FERC said it could file more public comments to the docket instead of consulting.
But sensitive cultural information was involved, which, by Yakama Tribal law, cannot be made public. Takala noted, for example, that Yakama people don’t want non-Natives harvesting and marketing first foods the way commercial pickers market huckleberries: “That has an impact for our people as well, trying to save up for the winter.” The Tribe needs confidentiality to protect its cultural resources.
There’s just one catch: Rule 2201. According to FERC, Rule 2201 legally prohibits the agency from engaging in off-the-record communications in a contested proceeding. Records of all consultations must be made available to the public and other stakeholders, including prospective developers and county officials. Who wrote Rule 2201?FERC did.
“Nevertheless,” FERC wrote to the Yakama Nation in December 2021, “the Commission endeavors, to the extent authorized by law, to reduce procedural impediments to working directly and effectively with Tribal governments.” FERC said the nation could either relay any sensitive information in a confidential file — though that information “must be shared with at least some participants in the proceeding” — or else keep it confidential by simply not sharing it at all, in which case FERC would proceed without taking it into account. So formal federal consultation still hasn’t happened. But FERC is moving forward anyway.
Yakama Tribal member fishes in the Klickitat River for salmon. Photo: USFWS Pacific Region (CC BY-NC 2.0)
“It’s important for First Nationsto be heard in this process,” said Steimle, the developer. During a two-hour tour of the site, he championed the project’s technical merits and its role in meeting state carbon goals. “If you look at Europe at this point, it’s probably 20 years ahead of us integrating large amounts of renewables.”
Steimle repeatedly described Rye as weighed down by stringent consultation and licensing processes. Rye, he said, lacks real authority: “We don’t have the power in the situation to ultimately decide, you know, it’s going to be this technology, or it’s going to be in this final location.” Becky Brun, Rye’s communications director, echoed Steimle’s tone of inevitability: “Regardless of what happens here with this pumped storage project, this land will most certainly get redeveloped into something.”
When asked what Rye could offer the Yakama people as compensation for the irreversible destruction of their cultural property, Steimle suggested “employment associated with the project.”
Takala wasn’t surprised. “That’s always the first thing offered on many of these projects. It’s all about money.”
Presented with the reality that Yakama people might not want Rye’s jobs, Steimle hesitated. “Yeah, I mean I, I can’t argue that — maybe it won’t be meaningful to them.”
But for Klickitat County, the jobs pitch works: It’s a chance to revive employment lost when the smelter closed. “That was one of the largest employers in Klickitat County — very good family-wage jobs for over a generation,” said Dave Sauter, a longtime county commissioner who finished his final term at the end of 2022. The smelter’s closing was “a huge blow,” he said. “Redevelopment of that site would be really beneficial.”
Sauter acknowledged the pumped hydro storage facility would only provide about a third of the jobs that the smelter offered in its final days, but “it will lead to other energy development in Klickitat County.” The county, with its armada of aging wind turbines and proximity to the hydroelectric grid, prides itself on being one of the greenest energy producers in the state and has asked FERC for an expedited timeline.
Klickitat County’s eagerness creates another barrier to the Yakama Nation. In Washington, a developer can take one of two permitting paths: through the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or through county channels. Both lead to FERC. In this case, working with the county benefits Rye: Klickitat, a majority Republican county, has a contentious relationship with the Yakama Nation, one that even Sauter described as “challenging.”
“Klickitat County refuses to work with us,” said Takala. On Sept. 19, 2022, Harvey logged into a Zoom meeting with the Klickitat County Planning Department to deliver comments as a private citizen. Harvey says county officials, who know her from her work with the Yakama Nation, locked her out of the Zoom room, even though the meeting was open to the public and a friend of hers confirmed that the call was working and the meeting underway. Undeterred, Harvey attended in person and delivered her comments.
The Planning Department denied that Harvey was deliberately locked out, claiming that everyone who arrived on Zoom was admitted. They also said they were having technical difficulties.
Fighting Rye’s proposal has required the efforts of Tribal attorneys, archaeologists and government staffers from a number of departments. “Finding the staff to do site location is very difficult when we don’t have the funds put forth,” Takala said.
And Rye’s project is just one of dozens proposed within the Yakama Nation’s 10 million-acre treaty territory. Maps from the Tribe and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife show that of the 51 wind and solar projects currently proposed statewide — not including geothermal or pumped hydro storage projects, which are also renewable energy developments — at least 34 are on or partially on the Yakama Nation’s ceded lands. Each of these proposals has its own constellation of developers, permitting agencies, government officials and landowners.
“There’s so many projects being proposed in the area that we here at the nation are feeling the pressure,” said Takala. He noted that when it comes to fulfilling obligations to Tribes, the United States drags its feet. “But when it’s a developer, things get pushed through really quickly. It’s pretty much a repeating history all over again.”
Accumulating sediment in reservoirs is affecting how much water dams can hold back to supply water for drinking, irrigation and flood control.
Images of a shrinking Lake Mead illustrate a stark water crisis — one that’s being exacerbated by climate change. As the arid Southwest is getting hotter and drier, there’s less water to store.
But a lack of water isn’t the only kind of storage problem dams can present. They’re designed to hold back water — whether for water supply, hydropower or flood control — but they also block river sediment from flowing downstream. And over time it accumulates in reservoirs, leaving less and less space for water.
How bad is the problem? Pretty bad, it turns out. Some dams could lose up to 50% of their water-storage capacity by mid-century, according to a new study published in the journal Sustainability.
The study — conducted by researchers from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and other institutions — estimated the loss of storage from sedimentation in more than 47,000 large dams in 150 countries and called reservoir sedimentation “a significant challenge … that must be addressed.”
The Findings
The study isn’t the first to suggest that sedimentation is a problem — that’s been known for decades, although the researchers write that it’s also been largely ignored. Their work, however, is the first to assess potential storage loss on a global scale.
On average they found that by 2050 the world’s major dams will have lost more than a quarter of their storage capacity. Their findings varied by region and by country, with the size and age of dams being the biggest factors.
This is “an alert to this creeping global water challenge with potentially significant development implications,” they write.
The United States is expected to see the second-highest storage loss in the Americas after Panama, with 34% reduction expected across its 7,469 large dams by 2050. Europe, with thousands of old dams, has already lost 19% of its storage capacity, and that number will climb to 28% in the next 30 years.
In Africa, where dam construction is more recent, storage losses are predicted to be 17% by 2030 and 24% by 2050. The worst-hit will be the archipelago nation of Seychelles — which has two large dams around a half century in age. They are projected to lose half of their storage capacity by 2050.
Asia-Pacific, the most heavily dammed region in the world, should expect capacity losses around 23% by mid-century, lower than other regions. The biggest losses will be felt by Japan, where the average dam age is 100 years. The country has lost 39% of storage in its reservoirs already, and that will climb to 50% by 2050. After Japan, Azerbaijan (24%), Israel (24%), Kazakhstan (20%) and Afghanistan (20%) are next on the list.
“In Asia, the region where 60% of the world’s population lives, water storage is crucial in sustaining water and food security,” the researchers write. “It will face a more challenging future if it loses 23% of its water storage in large dams due to sedimentation.”
The Problem
One of the most significant problems from sedimentation, as the study points out, is the loss of storage capacity for water supply or flood control. As climate change brings longer droughts and bigger storms, maximizing water storage will become even more crucial.
The Susquehanna River flows south past Conowingo Dam near Conowingo, Md. The dam has long captured sediment, preventing millions of tons from reaching the Chesapeake Bay. Photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program with aerial support by Southwings.
But the loss of sediment that’s blocked by dams is also important downstream. Sediment flux in rivers provides the material for sandbars, dunes, marshes and barrier islands. These structures help protect communities from floods, storm surges and rising tides. And they also provide habitat and carry nutrients used by wildlife.
Sedimentation comes from riverbanks and upland runoff, but activities like deforestation, mining, and other development can cause it to increase.
And lately it has.
A study published in June 2022 in Science found that in the global hydrologic north, dams have blocked almost half the sediment that used to flow down rivers. But in the global hydrologic south, more intensive land use is causing greater erosion, leading to about 41% more suspended sediment in rivers there since the 1980s.
There are fewer dams there to block sediment, but that’s likely to change with 300 large dams planned for the Amazon — and more for other parts of South America and Oceania.
“The Amazon, which exports two-thirds of the sediment from South America and more sediment than any other global river, is home to globally unrivaled channel, floodplain, and estuary biodiversity and transfers essential nutrients to coastal waters,” the researchers wrote. “The planned dam projects there and on other unregulated rivers are particularly impactful because the current absence of dams allows virtually unchecked river transport of sediment, conditions that persist along few major rivers.”
The Solutions
How do we solve this engineered problem?
The researchers of the Sustainability study point to dredging but warn that it’s costly and temporary. A cheaper option is flushing out sediment, but that can have “significant adverse impacts downstream,” they caution. A better option would be a bypass that diverts flows around the dam using a separate channel.
There’s one other option. “Complete removal of dams, including those that are filled with sediments, is also a (slowly) emerging practice,” they write. “Dam removal can bring rivers back to their natural state and reestablish the natural river sediment transport.”
None of the solutions are easy, cheap or quick, which is why the researchers hope their study can ignite action.
“What’s important to underline is that the overall magnitude of water storage losses due to sedimentation is quite disturbing,” they write. “It adds to the list of water development issues that the world is already facing and has been unable to resolve.”
New research shows that these ecosystem engineers can be an “ally in stopping the decline of biodiversity.”
Researchers in Poland have found another reason to love beavers: They benefit wintering birds.
The rodents, once maligned as destructive pests, have been getting a lot of positive press lately. And for good reason. Beavers are ecosystem engineers. As they gather trees and dam waterways, they create wetlands, increase soil moisture, and allow more light to reach the ground. That drives the growth of herbaceous and shrubby vegetation, which benefits numerous animals.
Bats, who enjoy the buffet of insects found along beaver ponds, are among the beneficiaries. So too are butterflies who come for the diversity of flowering plants in the meadows beavers create.
Some previous research has found that this helping hand also extends to birds. For example, a 2008 study in the western United States showed that the vegetation that grows along beaver-influenced streams provided needed habitat for migratory songbirds, many of whom are in decline.
A beaver dam in Bierbza Marshes, Poland. Photo: Francesco Veronesi (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The new study published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management found further evidence by focusing on birds in winter. The researchers looked at assemblages of wintering birds on 65 beaver sites and 65 reference sites in a range of temperate forest habitat across Poland. Winter can be a challenging time for birds in that environment, as they need to reduce energy expenditures in the cold weather and find habitat that has high-quality food and roosting sites.
Wintering birds, it turns out, find those qualities near beaver habitat.
The researchers found a greater abundance of birds and more species richness near areas where beavers had modified waterways. Both were highest closest to the shores of beaver ponds.
One of the reasons that birds are attracted to these areas in winter has to do with warmth: The open tree canopy caused by flooding and tree diebacks lets in more sun, and ice-free beaver ponds can release heat, previous research has found.
The changes beavers make to the landscape also provide for different kinds of birds. Standing dead wood caused by flooding is sought after by woodpeckers, and then by secondary cavity nesters that follow. The diversity of plants that grow in beaver areas produce fruits and attract insects — and therefore frugivorous and insectivorous birds.
“All beaver-induced modifications of the existing habitat may have influence on bird assemblage,” says Michal Ciach, a study co-author and a professor in the department of Forest Biodiversity at the University of Agriculture in Krakow, Poland. “But different bird species may rely on different habitat traits that emerge due to beaver activity. It’s like a supermarket.”
Just how far into the forest do beavers’ benefits extend?
While the study found that the number of bird species and the number of individuals were significantly higher in the study areas closest to beaver ponds, “for some species this tendency also held in forests growing at some distance from beaver wetlands,” the researchers wrote.
The Eurasian beaver. Photo: Per Harald Olsen/NTNU (CC BY 2.0)
Those instances, though, weren’t statistically significant. But Ciach says beaver effects can be far-reaching in other cases. He’s the coauthor of a study published last year that found a greater number of wintering mammal species near beaver ponds, which extended nearly 200 feet from the edges of ponds.
And it’s likely that what’s good for birds may be good for many other species, too.
“Birds are commonly considered a good indicator of biodiversity,” he says. “If they positively respond to beaver presence, one may expect that such patterns will be followed by other groups of organisms. At this moment we are sure it works for wintering mammals. Other groups of organisms need investigation, but I’m quite sure many other organisms will do the same.”
The growing research about beavers suggests a greater need to protect their habitat and understand their important role in the ecosystem.
“Beaver sites should be treated as small nature reserves,” says Ciach. “The beaver, like no other species, is our ally in stopping the decline of biodiversity.”
I wrote a book called 
l.”
