Fear of Nature, Love of the Ocean, and Other Links From the Brink

We’ve got the word on an important new treaty, a victory against ag-gag laws, and two new threats to the massive Andean condor.

March keeps barreling forward like a freight train full of vinyl chloride — but hope and spring are both in the air, and they smell like victory.

Welcome to another edition of Links From the Brink, where we gather and dissect (in an ethical manner, not like your high school biology class) the environmental news that might otherwise fall through the cracks.

This month we take a look at giant birds, awful laws, an oceanic win, and … fear.

Seas the Day

International victory of the month: It isn’t official yet, but members of the United Nations have ironed out a decades-in-the-making treaty that would protect biodiversity in the high seas — the mostly lawless stretches of the ocean outside national boundaries. (That’s about two-thirds of the ocean, for those of you counting at home.)

If the U.N. member nations all agree to adopt this treaty — and remember, the United States has still failed to sign on to the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea — it would allow for the creation of large marine protected areas, establish an international organization to address biodiversity issues, and restrict companies from exploiting the genetics of ocean life (say, for pharmaceuticals).

This treaty will do a heck of a lot more than conserve dolphins and sharks (although it will do that too, and that’s important). It will help reduce overfishing, ocean mining and oil extraction. And it will also go a long way toward the goal of protecting 30% of the world’s land and water by 2030 — key to slowing both climate change and the extinction crisis.

We’ll be watching to see which nations sign on to this new treaty — and which ones don’t.

Biophobia Redux

Back in 2020, researcher Masashi Soga warned us about how “biophobia,” the fear of living things and a complete aversion to nature, had become the latest risk to conservation. “I believe that increased biophobia is a major, but invisible, threat to global biodiversity,” he told us. “As the number of children who have biophobia increases, public interest and support for biodiversity conservation will gradually decline.”

Well, that fear isn’t going anywhere, but luckily neither is Soga, who’s back with another must-read paper titled “The Vicious Cycle of Biophobia.” Here’s a key graphic:

A graphic illustrates how biophobia grows and escalatesThat image, of course, details how biophobia builds into a feedback loop that gets worse at every step.

But the paper goes beyond that. Much like in their original paper in 2020, Soga and colleagues write that education, outreach and direct experiences with nature can help break the vicious cycle. There’s no “silver bullet,” they caution, but anything we do now to help people appreciate the natural world will help in the long run.

So take a nature-averse friend to a park, ask for help with gardening, or share an article or cute animal video. What have you got to lose — other than the planet?

Gag Off

Best activist news of the month: A federal court has ruled that North Carolina’s infamous ag-gag law, which blocked undercover operations at livestock facilities and other companies, violates the First Amendment. Similar laws have fallen in court rulings around the country. This law was particularly egregious, as it blocked undercover video in any business and made it a civic liability.

But the fight to shine a light on cruel or unsafe agricultural practices ain’t over: Iowa last month asked the courts to reinstate its ag-gag law and introduced a new bill to block drone surveillance of livestock operations. Someone’s got something to hide…

Condor Conundrums

A few years ago I wrote about how livestock owners in Argentina have started using high doses of pesticides to kill Andean condors, a persecution driven by the (needless) fear that the massive birds will attack live sheep and other animals. (Scavengers don’t do that.)

As if those deliberate poisonings weren’t bad enough, now we have reports of two new indirect environmental threats to Andean condors: Pharmaceuticals and plastics.

Andean condor wings
An Andean condor spreads its wings at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. Photo: John R. Platt/The Revelator (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

The first emerging threat, detailed in the journal Biological Conservation, comes again from livestock owners, who researchers found are treating their animals with veterinary drugs — antibiotics and anti-inflammatory NSAIDS — in even the most remote grazing locations. When livestock die on the range, condors scavenge the corpses and get dosed by proxy. The researchers didn’t find this to be a quantifiable danger to Andean condors yet, but they remind us that “these compounds can produce catastrophic consequences for populations of avian scavengers,” like it’s doing for vultures throughout Asia and Africa. Could the same thing happen in South America?

The second threat — plastic — is even more worrying. Researchers tested undigested food regurgitated (gross) by condors at two remote protected sites in Peru and found that almost all of them contained “different sizes and varieties of plastic debris, with a very high frequency of occurrence (85–100%) of microplastics in pellets of both areas studied.” According to the study, published in Environmental Pollution, this means the condors’ prey — mostly camelids and marine mammals — is already packed with plastic, even though the two locations are far from human settlements.

As we’ve seen with whales, eagles and humans, the chemicals from plastic — and their health effects — tend to bioaccumulate and cause the most harm to top-of-the-food-chain predators. Andean condors could soon be added to that list.

Two Contradictory Headlines to Nuke Your Brain

Biden’s DOE Announces $1.2 Billion to Extend or Restart the Life of Nuclear Plants

Nuclear Waste Is Piling Up. Does the US Have a Plan?

Dammed Salmon

Maine’s Milford Dam is supposed to allow 95% of adult Atlantic salmon, an endangered species, to quickly pass through as the fish migrate up the Penobscot River. According to documents obtained by environmental groups and the Penobscot Indian Nation, the dam misses that target by (checks math) 74%.

Yup, only 21% of salmon passed by the dam within the allotted 48 hours. That’s bad.

Milford is operated by Brookfield Renewable Partners, the same company that’s been targeted — and has to date refused — to remove four dams on the Kennebec River. Both the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers, expert say, hold the key to restoring Atlantic salmon.

“Ultimately the fate of the species in the United States really depends upon what happens at a handful of key dams,” John Burrows, executive director of U.S. programs at the Atlantic Salmon Federation, told us last year. If any of those dams don’t allow the fish to pass, he said, “you could basically preclude recovering Atlantic salmon in the United States.”

The salmon’s in your court, Brookfield.

And Finally, in No Particular Order, 10 Stories About Forests

    1. Increasingly Large and Intense Wildfires Hinder Western Forests’ Ability to Regenerate
    2. Costa Rica Ponders Ways to Sustain Reforestation Success
    3. California’s ‘Zombie Forests’ Are ‘Cheating Death’ as the Climate Has Changed So Drastically It’s No Longer Able to Support Them
    4. Why Tropical Forests Are Important for Our Well-Being
    5. Northern Forests Released a Record Amount of Carbon Dioxide in 2021
    6. Firewood Theft: The Forests Where Trees Are Going Missing
    7. How Nepal Regenerated Its Forests
    8. Saving a Forest of One
    9. Conservationists Decry Palm Oil Giants’ Exit From HCSA Forest Protection Group
    10. New Study Finds Gaps in Research on the ‘Wood Wide Web’

That’s it for this edition of Links From the Brink. We’ll be back in late April with another dose of environmental news and analysis.

Until then, stay tuned for the latest on the East Palestine chemical disaster (or whatever train crash comes next), some important news about clean water (what little of it’s left), and more culture war nonsense from the MAGA right.

Also in the weeks ahead: International Day of Action for Rivers (March 14), World Sparrow Day (March 20), Manatee Appreciation Day (March 29) and International Beaver Day (April 7). Check out our full list of environmental holidays for even more reasons to celebrate.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Elephant Poop, Tasmanian Snails and Other Links From the Brink

Moby: Veganism, Skepticism and Punk Rock

The musician’s new documentary, Punk Rock Vegan Movie, shines a light on a hidden history of the animal-rights movement.

The musician Moby wants people to stop eating animals — and he’s recruited a few dozen performers from the punk rock scene to help explain why.

Moby’s new documentary, Punk Rock Vegan Movie, casts the punk music of the late 1970s and 1980s as one of the primary seeds of today’s animal-rights movement. Bands like Crass, Bad Brains, the Cro-Mags and Earth Crisis led vegetarian or vegan lifestyles, raged against animal cruelty in their songs or on stage, included animal liberation messages on their physical albums and at their merchandise tables, and inspired a generation of activists and musicians that followed.

“It’s a surprising story,” Moby tells The Revelator. “This genre of super-loud, aggressive punk rock is actually where a lot of animal-rights activism came from.”

 

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The punk scene, as shown in the film, embraced social justice with an ethos of questioning authority and the status quo, standing up against cruelty and injustice, and living ethical lives.

And that, Moby says, offers lessons that still resonate as loudly as the songs, especially when it comes to animal rights.

“If you’re a smart, reasonable person, an extension of that should be questioning everything,” he says. “And once you start to question things, one of the first things that falls apart under scrutiny is where our food comes from.”

Animal agriculture, the film points out, is one of the primary drivers of the extinction crisis and climate change. The animals themselves suffer horrible lives and deaths, while their sentience is ignored. Diseases run rampant, and pollution from industrial farms harms workers and nearby communities.

In the face of that harsh reality, many of the musicians interviewed in the documentary portray punk as a form of resistance against capitalist oppression and unjust systems. For bands like Youth of Today, that meant taking on the food system in hardcore songs like “No More,” where they sang “When the price paid is the life of something else / No more / I won’t participate.”

Punk, meanwhile, served as its own ecosystem, allowing communities of like-minded people — many of whom were already feeling alienated from or rebelling against society — to find each other, to learn from each other, and to protest and take other forms of collective action.

The music scene was hardly alone on that front, of course, but it echoed other avenues for progress.

“Every change-oriented movement, every activist movement, has required that sort of incubating community,” Moby says. “That women should have the right to vote, or that humans should not be owned, or that people should be allowed to marry whomever they choose — all these notions, which are so ingrained in our culture at this point, at one point they were the most radical ideas you could possibly espouse. As a result, activists were beaten and thrown in jail.”

 

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“I really do see animals as being the next extension of that,” he continues. “The vegans now are the weird ones. And the fascinating thing is that everyone already agrees with us for the most part. People care about workers. They care about antibiotic resistance. They care about the rainforest, the climate, water use. They care about health costs. They care about animals. But then you say, ‘OK, so you’re a vegan.’ They’re like, ‘Well, no.’ Why aren’t you taking that logical next step and simply acting in accordance with your belief?”

But getting to that point isn’t always easy. Every person responds to different messaging. And stepping back from the status quo and going vegan can present unique, social challenges.

“One of the reasons it’s so hard for people to give up meat and dairy is because it’s simply choosing a degree of isolation and loneliness,” Moby says. “So the rebellion — and it is a central aspect of both activism and punk rock — is that idea that principles are what you’re committed to, even if it means potentially being lonelier, even if it means you’re not going to be invited to the barbecue, even if people are going to give you weird looks at Thanksgiving when you don’t eat the turkey and the ham. There is a loneliness to a principled existence.”

Perhaps that’s why so many misfits and nonconformists find solace in punk and other music — it tells them they’re not alone and gives them a shared direction.

That message from these vegan punk bands still resonates today, as does the music itself. But Moby says he also hopes viewers go beyond the music and embrace the punk ideal of questioning the status quo.

“I personally love the form of punk rock,” he says, “but what’s far more interesting that I hope I looked at in the movie is the function of punk rock, which is that idea of incredibly principled skepticism — not irrational, anti-vax skepticism, not irrational, angry skepticism for the sake of skepticism, but skepticism that has empirically supported rational and ethical criteria attached to it. Obviously punk rock does not have the exclusive rights to that type of skepticism, but I feel like our culture, to speak very broadly, is really missing that.”

That principled approach, ultimately, is the intent of the film.

“My hope is that people will be reminded of the important utility of skepticism and questioning and apply it to every aspect of our lives,” Moby says. “And as I say at the end of the movie, if things don’t conform to our ethics, if things don’t conform to our values, don’t support them. If there’s an easy alternative, and in this case a healthier alternative and a more environmentally sustainable alternative, just simply choose that.”

Punk Rock Vegan Movie is free on YouTube. Watch it below:

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Previously in The Revelator:

Nature Sings: New Protest Songs for the Climate Emergency

Rage Against the Anthropocene: The Extinction Crisis Gets an ‘Eco-slam’ Soundtrack

 

 

Drought to Deluge: Managing Water for Climate Extremes

California’s recent floods show that we aren’t ready for the bigger storms that climate change will bring, an expert warns.

The year began with a soaking for California. Nine atmospheric rivers doused the state, leaving at least 20 lives lost, roads washed out, and communities underwater.the ask

Though it may have felt that way, the quick swing from drought to deluge isn’t uncommon: California naturally pivots between extremes.

“I think people forget how ordinary rain can be in California,” says Ann Willis, an engineer and California regional director at the nonprofit American Rivers. “It wasn’t too long after that series of storms when scientists were saying that this wasn’t climate change, this was a regular year for California. We just haven’t seen it for so long that we forgot.”

But that doesn’t mean climate-amplified storms aren’t coming. This year’s heavy rain events aren’t even close to what’s expected in the future as climate change makes weather whiplash more severe. That’s why it’s important for California — and other states — to start planning now.

“It was such a valuable message because this is why we need to think much more critically and urgently about rivers and how we’re managing water,” says Willis. “We can’t even manage normal water events, let alone what we know we should expect [because of climate change] in the future.”

The Revelator spoke to Willis about green infrastructure, whether we need more dams, and how to make sure water management is climate-ready.

What is California doing to cope with big swings between wet and dry?

California is accelerating its investment in multi-benefit green infrastructure. By that I mean things like accessing floodplains and setting back levees so rivers have enough space to carry these relatively modest flood events.

When we originally built our levees and our dams, it was with this mindset that we were going to capture all the water that we could and then divert it out of the channel. This is why our rivers are entirely overallocated from our water-rights system and why levees were built that really pinched our rivers down to a size that they were never really designed to function at.

To put it even more starkly, some of these really large dams in California’s Central Valley, for example, aren’t even designed to carry what was historically a flood event that would’ve happened 50% of the time, let alone 0.5% of the time.

It worked because we assumed we were going to capture and divert all the water in these large projects. However, now that we’re thinking differently about rivers, now that we’re seeing the extreme distress and collapse of freshwater ecosystems, and we have chosen as a community to then address those through creating healthy functioning rivers, we’re recognizing that we haven’t left ourselves with very good options.

This is why focusing a lot of investment on things like making room for rivers, restoring access to floodplains, restoring wetlands and meadows — these are all ways that we can naturally store, filter and improve the function of water moving through rivers.

Exposed ground and water covering a field
A groundwater recharge FloodMAR site in an agricultural field in Yolo Couny, Calif. after heavy rains in January, 2023. Photo: Andrew Innerarity / California Department of Water Resources

California has experimented with flooding agricultural lands in winter to redirect high river flows into depleted aquifers. Has that been successful, and is it something that can be scaled?

It has been moving forward, and I think it’s a really great example of how a lot of this water management and conservation discussion is trying to be both realistic and forward facing. We really do need to take hundreds of thousands of acres [of farmland] out of production. It’s completely overdeveloped.

However, it’s not realistic to say that we’re taking all agricultural land out of production. So we have to focus on ways to integrate what we want to preserve in terms of our land with what we need to do to restore natural river processes.

How do we make those two things work together? By flooding almond orchards in winter we can start to recharge and restore our aquifers.

We’re seeing agencies start to accelerate the processes by approving permits for water diversions to flood agricultural lands in the winter. The places where we still need to see more investment, more development, is in the infrastructure to move that water.

We have a pretty good understanding of the state’s geology and where it makes sense to try this kind of approach and where it doesn’t. Moving the water to those places where the ability to infiltrate water happens more rapidly and efficiently, that’s where we need the conveyance infrastructure.

Our biggest opportunities to increase storage in the state actually lie below our feet.

Does that mean that new dams and reservoirs aren’t still on the table as a water-supply solution?

New reservoirs are on the table, but it’s not a good option. Just thinking about the larger, named dams, we already have almost 1,500 in California. So the idea of adding the 1,501st dam to address storage doesn’t hold much water.

More storage doesn’t create more water. What we saw in looking at these past rain events is that there was actually quite a bit of [reservoir] storage available to us, and that’s because these wet years really don’t happen all that often.

We’re much more likely, especially moving into the future, to be seeing drier hydrology, lower flows coming out of our rivers, less runoff for the same amount of precipitation. All of that’s related to climate change. And the surface water storage we have is already widely built out in all of the best places that we had to put a dam.

If we can think about the potential for groundwater storage, and not just surface-water storage, that’s really where the future of California water needs to be focused right now.

Is there anywhere else that’s doing this well that California could learn from? Or is California the example that other states should be looking to in terms of managing for more climate extremes?

We need to move into this next iteration of water management that isn’t so heavily based on hard infrastructure, and California really is a leader in that.

But the answer is also a little complicated because California is geographically so diverse. If California only had one problem like drought, then there are absolutely other places that are addressing these kinds of problems effectively. But California has all the problems.

So what we need is not just a strategy to manage water for drought, but we also need a strategy to manage water for our coastal streams with a lot of runoff. We need a strategy that manages water across nations because we have Tribal nations that are rights holders that we have to negotiate with within our state. The really tough part is trying to balance all those different approaches — whether it’s managing Colorado River water for almost desert-based agriculture in Southern California, all the way up to the Emerald Triangle in the north part of the state and managing for a completely different kind of agricultural and geographical economy.

Are there any projects you find inspiring?

One of the projects I’m involved with at American Rivers is Paradise Cut, which is modeled after the Yolo Bypass [on the Sacramento River]. It’s creating a bypass through an urban community, and also an agriculturally developed community, in order to make space for floods from the San Joaquin River.

We know that this kind of infrastructure is climate resilient, recession resilient, and it has the added value of bolstering ecosystem function, as well as providing flood protection.

American Rivers has also developed a tool looking at 14 indicators of socially vulnerable communities and laying that over flood-risk maps to try and understand where we see the most flood risk intersect with communities that have the least resources to manage it.

One of the highest priority areas that was revealed was in the Merced-Planada area [in the San Joaquin Valley]. And with this last series of atmospheric rivers, that’s exactly where we saw levees fail and communities flooding.

So now we have this roadmap to try and address these kinds of problems in some of the most vulnerable communities in the state.

We know that climate change is urgent, and there are opportunities to do things now that are going to reduce how serious the consequences might be in the future. The fact that we already struggle to manage relatively moderate flood flows should impress upon us the urgency of wanting to reduce the likelihood that we have to manage much more catastrophic events in the future.

Our droughts are going to get drier, our floods are going to get wetter, and there’s a cost to delay. The longer we delay, what we really lose is the opportunity to keep existing in this more moderate, manageable middle ground.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Stormwater Could Become an Important Water Source — If We Stopped Ignoring It

 

Time Is Running Out to Restore Plants and Animals That Exist Only in Captivity

At least 33 animals and 39 plants are extinct in the wild. But research suggests there is hope for restoring wild populations.

It was April in 1981 when a party of four camped for two days and nights on the forested slopes of Mount Evermann, the central peak of Socorro, a volcanic island in the Pacific some 400 kilometres southwest of Baja California, Mexico. Their fruitless search confirmed their suspicions: the Socorro dove, an endearingly tame bird unique to the island, had disappeared, eaten by the cats of Spanish colonists, pushed out by grazing sheep and shot from the sky by hunters.

But the species had not vanished. Fifty six years prior to this search, in 1925, 17 Socorro doves had been collected from the island and transported to a bird keeper in California. Somehow, almost 100 years later, the descendants of these birds — the last Socorro doves on the planet — are still with us, distributed across captive facilities in Europe and North America.

It’s a strange liminal space: disappeared from the wild, yet not entirely extinct. And it’s one not peculiar to the Socorro dove. Our research has confirmed that at least 33 animals and 39 plants no longer have wild populations, but survive under human care in places such as zoos, aquariums, botanic gardens and seed banks.

These species are categorized as “extinct in the wild” under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the system conservation biologists use to evaluate and communicate extinction risk. It’s a diverse set that includes the manicillo, a relative of the peanut only found in Bolivia; the Tali palm originally identified from a lone specimen on the campus of Dhaka University in Bangladesh; and a number of tree snails from the remote Society Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

In one sense, here is something worth celebrating: a group that has given extinction the slip. But what does the future look like for these species? Human care will not preserve them indefinitely. On the contrary, the longer they spend in captivity the more they risk becoming inbred or losing the genetic diversity that helps them resist diseases and other threats. Eventually, outright extinction looms, especially if their populations are small.

Life in Captivity

A quirk in the red list means that conservationists don’t systematically count the numbers of seeds, plants or animals in captivity or monitor any changes in their status in the same way we do for threatened species in the wild. An extinct in the wild species numbering in the thousands is indistinguishable from one represented by a handful of individuals. We have somehow contrived to ignore the extinction risk of the very group of species for which we are most responsible.

area of vegetation surrounded by fence on hillside
Exclosure to protect Oahu tree snails. Photo: Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resource Conservation (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Our review of this group uncovered reasons to be concerned. For the most part, it seems that these populations were founded by a tiny number of individuals and would require large populations, ideally in the thousands, to best insure against future genetic deterioration and extinctions. Unfortunately, where known, most species are held in small numbers (in the hundreds or lower), and across a small number of institutions (fewer than eight in most cases).

There also tends to be a lack of coordinated planning across institutions and regions where the same species is held. This is especially true for plants, where it’s not always known how many collections exist and where they are. Fortunately, there have been recent efforts by botanical gardens to share data and collaborate more closely. Seed banks are also important facilities that can store threatened plants as seeds for many decades or even centuries. But most extinct in the wild plant species can’t easily be found in online databases that might allow conservationists in different regions to work on joint recovery programmes.

Conservationists, and society more widely, must do better. We know that outright extinction is a real threat. Of the 95 species that have found themselves extinct in the wild or restricted to human care since 1950, 11 have since been lost forever, like the Christmas Island whiptail-skink and the Saint Helena olive, a tree endemic to the island of the same name in the southern Atlantic Ocean.

Return to the Wild

Is there hope? Perhaps surprisingly, yes. The flip side to the 11 species we’ve lost is the 12 that have been restored to the wild. These include the European bison, which, having disappeared from the wild in 1927, is now thriving in its native range in Eastern Europe and Russia, thanks to reintroduction efforts starting in the 1950s using stock from European zoos.

Encouragingly, more should follow: two-thirds of extinct in the wild animals and just under a quarter of extinct in the wild plants have already been released back to natural habitats. These nascent populations may not yet have reached true “wild” status by, for example, producing viable young, but this is a promising start. They show that being Extinct in the Wild needn’t be a dead end: it can be a platform for long-term restoration.

But if this is the aim for all extinct in the wild species and others perched on the brink, there must be a transformation in the way they are regarded and resourced. Conservationists should continue to rescue species nearing extinction and care for them in captivity. But collectively, we must also commit to revitalising the precarious populations under our care, with more individuals in more institutions.

Where return to the wild is a challenge, we must redouble efforts to find and mitigate threats in native habitat, or explore whether populations can be set up in new areas. Continued care of these wild populations will probably be needed.

Extinction looms but recovery is achievable. Conservation biologists have the tools for success, but need the support and attention of decision makers, funders and the broader public to deliver it.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Previously in The Revelator:

How Do You Save an Endangered Tree From Extinction When You Can’t Save Its Seeds?

 

Countdown to the Next East Palestine?

Train derailments and chemical disasters could happen in any community — even yours.

A freight train whistles in the distance, and my heart skips a beat.

Ever since the train derailment and resulting chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, three weeks ago, I’ve taken to listening to the sounds of trains passing through my small town every day. The train tracks are about a mile from my house — not visible from my office window, but easy to see if I walk down to the end of the street. Easier still if I drive anywhere in town; the tracks bisect streets and neighborhoods, and trains often block traffic for five to six minutes at a time as their seemingly endless chains of graffitied cargo carriers rattle past.

What’s on those cargo trains, in those earth-toned train cars? We know some of it is coal and oil, and some of them carry grain, but do any of them also contain vinyl chloride or other toxic chemicals? Could my little town in Washington state become the next East Palestine?

Could your town? Could all our towns?

Those are the questions that run through my head every time I hear a train whistle or the echo of metal wheels rattling on the tracks.

There are a lot of opportunities for potential disaster — and not a lot of information around to ease worried minds.

Eight years ago the then-mayor of our town set out to find out how many trains passed through here every day and what they carried. It wasn’t easy. The rail company wouldn’t tell him. He ended up parking by an intersection and counting them himself — 174 trains in a week, an average of one per hour.

He tracked how fast they traveled, too. The fastest roared through town at 54 miles per hour. Other trains — those moving around 35 miles per hour — slowed down because of regulations for carrying hazardous materials through residential areas.

I asked BNSF, the rail company that operates in our area, how many trains now pass through our town every day and how many carry hazardous chemicals. As of press time, the company hasn’t responded to my request for information.

To be fair, there’s not much indication that there would be an accident. A train did kill a pedestrian last year, and another one hit a pickup truck in 2019. Neither of those accidents resulted in a spill of any sort.

But what if they had? The train tracks pass by a national wildlife reserve full of rare birds and fish, multiple parks and schools, grocery stores, housing developments, apartment complexes, creeks and rivers (including the mighty Columbia between Oregon and Washington states), churches, restaurants, dentists and doctors’ office, veterinarians, and so much more… Go one town over, and the tracks pass by the notoriously polluting paper plant that helped inspire Earth Day activist Denis Hayes. One disaster in either town could devastate this community and its natural beauty.

Local and state legislators have worried about that possibility for years, especially after the Trump administration eased train-safety regulations in 2017:

Obviously we need trains to move the goods that keep our society flowing and growing. But we don’t need the oil that many of them carry. We don’t need all the grain, much of which goes toward feeding livestock rather than people. We don’t need chemicals that can destroy the environment, kill wildlife, and leave a toxic legacy for years to come. We do need regulations to keep it all safe, and we need to embrace the ongoing decarbonization that will make these trains less essential.

Until then, I may just lie awake at night listening to the trains rattling by and worrying about what could come next.

All Aboard

We’ve collected some essential reading about East Palestine and other disasters:

Human-rights lawyer Steven Donziger argues that strong laws against ecocide — the destruction of the natural environment — could have prevented the East Palestine disaster.

Trains have a reputation for low levels of greenhouse gas emissions compared to shipping by road or air, but that’s not the whole story. What they carry often creates its own emissions. After all it was the fracking boom, which drove a surge in crude-by-trail traffic that peaked nearly a decade ago, that put the phrase “bomb train” into common parlance.

And trains aren’t emissions-free. Writing for National Geographic, Jason Bittel shines a light on the many health hazards of living near railroads.

Carey Gillam points out that East Palestine is not an aberration: “Accidental releases — be they through train derailments, truck crashes, pipeline ruptures or industrial plant leaks and spills — are happening on average, every two days.” On a related note, The Conversation analyzes crash data and reveals that trucks carrying hazardous materials have more frequent, deadlier accidents than trains.

But train disasters are just bigger. For NBC News, Evan Bush writes about the 1982 tanker-car spill in Livingston, Louisiana, and what that historical disaster suggests for the future of East Palestine.

The Wall Street Journal reminds us that communities around the country could feel effects from the crash, most notably as toxic soils are moved elsewhere. Meanwhile about 5,500 species in Ohio were killed by the spill, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

In The Times assigns some blame: “Wall Street caused the East Palestine crisis.” Antiplastics advocate Judith Enck has a different take: The disaster, she writes, “was a direct result of the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and plastic.”

Speaking of plastic, James Bruggers at Inside Climate News writes about why vinyl chloride and PVC are so bad for people and the planet.

Finally, as they warm up for the 2024 presidential race, Republicans and their media colleagues are trying to turn the East Palestine disaster into the latest culture war battlefield. Columbia Journalism Review calls this “empty politicization.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

Death by Rail: What We’re Finally Learning About Preventing Wildlife-train Collisions

Wildlife Wins From Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act

A bounty of much-needed new federal funds will help reconnect habit for freshwater and terrestrial animals.

Remember that $1 trillion infrastructure bill that passed in 2021? Well, its huge pot of money is starting to make its way across the United States, and salmon, mountain lions and other animals could get some much-needed help.

At first glance, a law devoted to improving roads, bridges, airports and other transit systems may not seem like much of a biodiversity win. After all, our 4 million miles of roads carve up wildlife habitat and endanger animals, and more than a quarter of U.S. climate emissions can be traced to the transportation sector.

But the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by President Biden in November 2021, contains notable nods to climate resilience and making infrastructure a bit greener. Some of the most publicized include cleaning up toxic Superfund sites, building more electric vehicle charging stations, expanding the transmission network for clean energy, and reducing drinking-water contaminants.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find concrete — pardon the pun — opportunities to address some of the harm to wildlife caused by a century of paving over wild places and obstructing free-flowing rivers.

Among them: a $350 million wildlife-crossing pilot program and $2 billion to improve fish passage via a host of programs in the Interior, Transportation, Agriculture and Commerce departments.

“This is a generational opportunity to use large funding programs to match really intense infrastructure needs with opportunities to improve ecosystems and fish passage,” says Sandra Jacobson, the South Coast regional director at the nonprofit California Trout.

Fish and Flooding

Jacobson will get a hand in doing just that in San Diego County.

California Trout is a partner on a project replacing a roadway bridge and culvert over the Santa Margarita River, which received $3 million from the infrastructure law. The current structure floods whenever there’s heavy rain. It also blocks the migration of endangered Southern California steelhead.

Aerial view of roadway bridge over river with trees on the banks.
Bridge over the Santa Margarita River in San Diego County. Photo: Mike Wier, courtesy of California Trout

The plan to replace it “started as a fish passage project, but it quickly became evident that it was actually a community resiliency project,” says Jacobson. “This crossing over the Santa Margarita River is the number-one flooding hotspot in the county.”

It’s also in the middle of the Santa Margarita Trail Preserve, a wildlife corridor between the Santa Ana Mountains and the Palomar Mountains. “And it’s the last barrier to steelhead passage in the mainstem of this high-priority river,” she says. “So it’s an ideal project to mobilize the community.”

Removing barriers to fish passage in the river was identified as a key goal in a federal recovery plan for Southern California steelhead.

“Eliminating this barrier and completely freeing the river from the ocean to its headwaters has significant implications for [steelhead] recovery,” says Jacobson. “This project is a big one, but it also takes several of these sorts of projects to achieve the goals of recovering a stable population.”

Removing Barriers

At least $1 billion in funding will help remove or replace culverts that impede fish like the one in San Diego County, but there are hundreds of millions for other kinds of fish passage projects, too, including dam removals, fish lifts, and redesigning stream channels.

A stream restoration project on Big Chico Creek in Northern California received $10 million to remove a natural rockfall and obsolete fishway. The work will help endangered Central Valley spring-run Chinook and steelhead reach critical cold-water habitat.

“We’re going to reconstruct the channel to mimic a natural channel that’s passable for fish,” says Damon Goodman, the Mount Shasta-Klamath regional director of California Trout, which is leading the project. That will help the fish reach a relatively undisturbed upstream habitat — and one that’s much colder. “Unfortunately our endangered species can’t get up there and are stuck below in a spot where the temperatures get too high,” which threatens their health.

Aerial view of narrow creek with large boulders.
Fish ladder and rock fall barrier in Big Chico Creek, Calif. Photo: Mike Wier, courtesy of California Trout

Endangered species on the East Coast will get help from the Penobscot Indian Nation, which is continuing its work improving habitat for Atlantic salmon. The Tribe was a partner in a major restoration effort on the Penobscot River that removed two dams and bypassed a third to open 2,000 miles of habitat for imperiled salmon and other fish.

“We’re building on that success, but we still have a long way to go,” says Dan McCaw, fisheries program manager for the Penobscot Indian Nation. Infrastructure funds will help the Tribe remove culvert and dam barriers on the East Branch of the river, one of the largest and most high-quality cold-water tributaries of a critical salmon stream.

“When it comes to Atlantic salmon in the United States, Maine is the last hope,” says McCaw. “Maine is the only place where we have returning fish, and if we can’t do it here, then we can’t do it anywhere.”

Removing smaller river obstructions can make a big difference, says Serena McClain, a senior director at the nonprofit American Rivers.

“Even culverts or road stream crossings can fragment habitat for species like salmon, steelhead, alewife, blueback herring or American shad,” she says. “What you’re seeing first and foremost in all of these projects is the important benefit of reconnecting habitat to help rebuild populations of these fish.”

Dams Come Down

One of the biggest threats to freshwater biodiversity in the United States comes from the 90,000 dams obstructing rivers and streams.

There’s funding from the law that can go to removing some of those dams, including $75 million through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, $10 million via the Forest Service, and hundreds of millions more from in-stream barrier removal and fish-passage programs in the Department of the Interior and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

American Rivers is leading a few of those efforts, including a project to remove five dams in North Carolina’s Cape Fear watershed that received $7 million from NOAA. It will benefit sturgeon, American eel, river herring and shad, says McClain.

And in Oregon, removing a dam on Kellogg Creek, a tributary of the Willamette River near Portland, will give threatened Lower Columbia River coho, chinook and steelhead access to 15 miles of high-quality habitat.

These are dams that might not be removed if not for the new federal funds.

“The money gives these bigger, more complex projects enough funding to get the start that they’ve needed for a really long time,” she says.

For a $70 million project like Kellogg Creek to receive $15 million from one source, instead of trying to cobble together grants of $1 million or fewer, is a “legitimate buy-in” that helps ensure it can find enough funds to be completed, says McClain.

Habitat Connectivity

Aquatic species aren’t the only animals that need habitat connectivity help.

Collisions between vehicles and wildlife kill 1-2 million animals each year, cause 200 human fatalities, and cost $9.7 billion, reports ARC Solutions, which works to build habitat connectivity and safe wildlife crossings.

The infrastructure law could make a small dent in that large problem with the wildlife-crossing pilot program, set to distribute $350 million in grants over five years to state, local and Tribal agencies to build structures like highway underpasses that reconnect habitat while reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions.

The law also includes a provision to update a 2008 report on wildlife-vehicle collisions with more recent data. “If we can’t measure the problem, then we don’t know how important it is to fix it,” says Renee Callahan, executive director of ARC Solutions.

And the 2008 report already showed there was a serious problem. “It found 21 threatened and endangered species for which roads are a potential game changer,” she says. “If you don’t fix this issue, you risk having these animals disappear.”

Callahan says she welcomes the new wildlife-crossing program’s dedicated funds, but much more money is needed.

Her organization has identified 15 other infrastructure programs created or expanded with funding from the law that could incorporate wildlife-friendly provisions into infrastructure upgrades but aren’t required to. So far much of the funding from those projects hasn’t been allocated, so it’s too soon to see whether wildlife infrastructure will get more resources.

But they’ve found two examples that have already received funding.

One is a project in Colorado to redesign eight miles of the I-70 mountain corridor with funding through the Infrastructure for Rebuilding American Program — a program expanded by the infrastructure law. “Wildlife crossings are integrated into this larger improvement of this highway,” says Callahan.

Another is a planning grant for four bridges in Montana funded through the newly created Bridge Investment Program, designed to help address the thousands of structurally deficient bridges in the country.

“As part of the assessment for how to redo those bridges, they’re going to also consider wildlife connectivity,” she says.

Many more projects are still to be announced soon and she hopes it’s not a missed chance to solve multiple problems at once.

“This is an opportunity to make infrastructure more resilient in the face of extreme weather, to take into account the way that animals are moving, and to provide for terrestrial and aquatic connectivity,” says Callahan. “This is the way that we are going to make sure that future generations have wildlife around.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

Road to Nowhere: Highways Pose Existential Threat to Wolverines

 

The First Must-Read Environmental Books of 2023 Have Arrived

From wolves to climate change, these new books will help set the agenda for the year ahead.

This is going to be a good year — dare I say it, a great year — for environmental books. We’re just two months into 2023, and already dozens of fantastic volumes have landed on our review desks. There are books about wildlife, climate change, pollution, environmental justice, activism…you name it. The subjects and authors are as varied as the threats we all face.

So where to start? We’ve picked the best books we’ve read so far this year, pulling from titles published in January and February 2023. This is hardly an exhaustive list — reviewing them all would be a full-time job — but it encompasses the ones we felt would make the most impact on readers and, through them, the world.

The Climate BookThe Climate Book

by Greta Thunberg

Our take: Subtitled “the facts and the solutions,” this book contains dozens of bite-sized yet thought-provoking essays from scientists, activists and other leaders outlying the history and reality of climate change, where we’re still going wrong, and what we need to do to fight it. Thunberg provides several insightful essays throughout the book, which is also packed with more graphs and charts than you can shake a hockey stick at. The result is one of the most authoritative yet accessible books about climate change I’ve ever seen. Even a person like myself, who’s been writing about climate change for decades (sigh), will find something new or noteworthy on every page. I know I’ll be referring to this book quite a bit in the months ahead.

From the publisher: “In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts — geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and Indigenous leaders — to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Throughout, illuminating and often shocking grayscale charts, graphs, diagrams, photographs and illustrations underscore their research and their arguments. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild’s strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried?”

Black Earth WisdomBlack Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations With Black Environmentalists

by Leah Penniman

Our take: Penniman, author of Farming While Black, describes this book as “a tapestry of voices.” Those voices certainly shine through this collection of roundtable interviews with scientists, authors, journalists and other experts. The resulting discussions range from spirituality to soil, and from environmental justice to defending communities. One of the most important themes that arises is the need to listen not just to ourselves but to the Earth. (Speaking of listening, I reviewed this in ebook format, but the pending audio book seems like a fertile avenue for conveying these ideas and conversations.)

From the publisher: “This thought-provoking anthology brings together today’s most respected and influential Black environmentalist voices — leaders who have cultivated the skill of listening to the Earth — to share the lessons they have learned. These varied and distinguished experts include Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Alice Walker; the first Queen Mother and official spokesperson for the Gullah/Geechee Nation, Queen Quet; marine biologist, policy expert and founder and president of Ocean Collectiv, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson; and the executive director of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers, Land Loss Prevention Project, Savi Horne. In Black Earth Wisdom, they address the essential connection between nature and our survival and how runaway consumption and corporate insatiability are harming the earth and every facet of American society, engendering racial violence, food apartheid and climate injustice.” (Available Feb. 28)

Heart to HeartHeart to Heart: A Conversation on Love and Hope for Our Precious Planet

by the Dalai Lama and Patrick McDonnell

Our take: A religious leader and a cartoonist team up to produce a beautifully illustrated book that serves as a prayer for compassion for the planet.

If you’re familiar with the Dalai Lama’s work, you may not find much new in the text of this book, which draws from several of his previous writings. But McDonnell, the creator of the Mutts comic strip, ties it all together and takes it all to a new level through his watercolor illustrations of a panda seeking help for a planet in plight. The result is something akin to a graphic novel, wrapping up the poignancy of environmental destruction with the hope that we all can — and must — make a difference.

From the publisher: “At the Dalai Lama’s residence in Dharamsala, India, an unusual visitor has arrived. His Holiness interrupts his morning meditation to greet a troubled Giant Panda who has travelled many miles to see him. Welcoming him as a friend, His Holiness invites the Panda on a walk through a cedar forest. There in the shadow of the Himalayas, surrounded by beauty, they discuss matters great and small…”

Forest JourneyA Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization

by John Perlin

Our take: Third time’s the charm. This latest update to the classic book is ready to stand the test of time. There’s so much good material this time around they had to publish 70 pages of endnotes online. Meanwhile the 500-page physical book is packed with hundreds of gorgeous photos and illustrations that depict the history of trees on Earth and their uncertain future. You’ll savor (or worry) over every detail.

From the publisher: “Originally published in 1986 and updated in 2005, A Forest Journey’s comprehensive coverage of the major role forests have played in human life — told with grace, fluency, imagination, and humor — gained it recognition as a Harvard Classic in Science and World History and as one of Harvard’s “One Hundred Great Books.” This is a foundational conservation story that should not be lost in the archives. This updated and expanded edition emphasizes the importance of forests in the fight against climate chaos and the urgency to protect what remains of the great trees and forests of the world.”

Ecological ClassOn the Emergence of an Ecological Class: A Memo

by Bruno Latour and Nikolaj Schultz, translated by Julie Rose

Our take: This short book contains just 76 paragraphs, but each one packs a punch. Written with style and wit and structured in a way as a business memo — or perhaps more accurately, a manifesto or strategy document — it provides a philosophical, class-based look at the ways an “ecological class” should demand change in what Latour and Schultz call the New Climate Regime.

Of course, even the authors have their doubts. “Never has the idea of an ‘ecological class that’s self-aware and proud’ seemed so remote,” they write in their postscript. But oddly enough, the war in Ukraine gives them hope. They write that the war is being fought on two fronts, one on Ukrainian soil and the other for the future of a carbon-free lifestyle.

From the publisher: “Under what conditions could ecology, instead of being one cluster of movements among others, organize politics around an agenda and a set of beliefs? Can ecology aspire to define the political horizon in the way that liberalism, socialism, conservatism and other political ideologies have done at various times and places? What can ecology learn from history about how new political movements emerge, and how they win the struggle for ideas long before they translate their ideas into parties and elections?”

Fandom ActsFandom Acts of Kindness: A Heroic Guide to Activism, Advocacy and Doing Chaotic Good

by Tanya Cook and Kaela Joseph

Our take: With great cosplay comes great responsibility.

Let’s be clear — this is not specifically an environmental book. But it is a look inside a new type of activism driven by pop culture and pure ideals, and it offers a great way to extend the environmental movement to people from other communities who already have their own organizational structures, history of collaborations, and desire to generate positive action for the world.

In other words, environmental groups, rent a booth at your next local comic-con.

From the publisher: “Fandoms are united as a community because of the power of story. And it’s exactly the magical alchemy forged when mixing story and community that has helped fandoms across the world feed thousands of hungry children, donate countless books, build schools, register voters, disrupt online hate speech and save lives through crafting PPE for COVID-19 frontline workers, natural disaster response and mental health crisis support. Fandom Acts of Kindness not only tells the stories of the good fans have done in the world but serves as a dungeon master’s guide to how to be a hero yourself. Perfect for those who want to inspire others, organize collective action, sustain and nurture your own mental health and creativity, and do it all through a pop culture perspective.”

WolfishWolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear

by Erica Berry

Our take: I’ll admit I felt a bit apprehensive going into this one. The title seemed to paint wolves as villains and play off the negative public perception that too often drives them to their deaths.

But maybe that worry proves the book’s point. Wolfish is less a profile of wolves than a meditation and memoir — an examination of the nature of fear and the fear of vanishing nature. Through a creative, feminist lens, it uses wolves as the defining narrative and metaphor to provide insight into our relationship with the wild and with ourselves. The result is a work that feels very much of the moment.

From the publisher: “What do stories so long told about wolves tell us about our relationship to fear? How can our society peel back the layers of what scares us? By strategically unspooling the strands of our cultural constructions of predator and prey, and what it means to navigate a world in which we can be both, Erica bridges the gap between human fear and grief through the lens of a wrongfully misunderstood species.”

Conflict of Interest Department:

Biodiversity Litigation edited by Guillaume Futhazar, Sandrine Maljean-Dubois and Jona Razzaque — This textbook “presents the trends in biodiversity litigation, highlighting recent evolution, and measuring the influence of international biodiversity law.” It contains a chapter by one of the legal minds at our parent company, the Center for Biological Diversity.

Honorable Mentions:

Six more Jan./Feb. releases that caught our attention:

Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond by Christina Dunbar-Hester

Profit: An Environmental History by Mark Stoll

Koala: A Natural History and an Uncertain Future by Danielle Clode

The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life by Johan Eklöf

The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle

Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think about Animals by Christopher J. Preston

That’s it for this month. Check out the “Revelator Reads” archives for hundreds of other recent environmental books.

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In Ukraine, Saving Wildlife Harmed by War

For Ukrainian activists, rescuing the dogs of war — not to mention the cats, swans, bats, bears and other wildlife — often means putting their own lives on the line.

Saving Ukraine’s injured and displaced animals during wartime often means seeing the worst elements of Russian cruelty.

“When a territory is liberated, our team goes there and we speak with the people who survived the occupation,” says Olga Chevhanyuk, chief operating officer of UAnimals, Ukraine’s largest animal-rights organization. “And each time we hear that when the Russians entered the town, they started shooting animals for fun, starting with dogs just walking the streets and ending with huge farms and shelters. Sometimes it’s probably a matter of manipulation, getting people scared. But mostly it’s no reason at all, just because they can.”

Originally founded to oppose inhumane conditions in circuses, the nonprofit UAnimals has shifted its mission to rescuing and caring for domestic animals and wildlife devastated by Russian aggression.

Working with local volunteers and shelters, they’ve helped tens of thousands of animals since the war began a year ago, including dogs and cats, horses, deer, swans, birds of prey and bats — even large predators like bears. In January alone they rescued more than 9,600 animals, provided food and medicine to thousands more, rebuilt shelters, and helped fund operations throughout the country.

 

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They’ve also found themselves purchasing supplies not traditionally used in animal rescues.

“Before the war, you never think of buying helmets for your team,” Chevhanyuk says.

And then there’s the human toll: The nonprofit has contracted with psychologists to provide on-demand assistance to its team in the field. “So now they can have a session with the psychologist when they’re overwhelmed,” she says.

But this is all about saving more than individual animal lives and human minds. It’s about saving the soul of a country.

A Crime Against Nature

UAnimals has started calling the Russian war an ecocide — the deliberate destruction of the natural environment.

“Nowadays 20% of Ukraine’s nature conservation areas are affected by war,” Chevhanyuk says. “Russians occupy eight national reserves and 12 national parks, and some of the national parks are land-mined. Holy Mountains National Park is 80% destroyed. Some of them are destroyed 100%, meaning there’s no plants, no animals, no buildings which people used to heal animals. The land is littered with remains of destroyed objects, like tons of oil and burned products.”

Landmines are among the worst problems. They kill humans and animals indiscriminately, start fires, and will take years to mitigate. About 62,000 square miles of Ukraine may be contaminated with landmines. “This is greater than the size of Illinois,” according to information provided by a U.S. State Department official. “The United States is investing $91.5 million over the coming year to help the government of Ukraine address the urgent humanitarian challenges posed by explosive remnants of war created by Russia’s invasion.”

Cleaning up the pollution will require even more funding and effort. The war has caused at least $37 billion in environmental damage, a Ukrainian NGO said in November.

 

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UAnimals predicts it could take more than a decade to repair the damage, but Ukraine’s wildlife doesn’t have that much time. “More than 80 species of animals in our country are on the verge of extinction and may completely cease to exist due to Russian aggression,” Chevhanyuk says. “Some of them are the steppe eagle, black stork, brown bear, Eurasian lynx, barn owl and eared hedgehog.”

While many of these species also exist in other countries, Chevhanyuk says wildlife has been an important element of Ukrainian folksongs, art and symbology — the very fabric of its culture — for centuries. “Being humane and treating animals as something really important and equal — this is one of the things which differs us a lot from Russians. And that’s, I believe, a part of our future victory.”

Moving Forward

UAnimals continues to ramp up its fundraising and recovery efforts while expanding its network of shelters outside the country — a necessary step, as Ukrainian shelters and reserves are rapidly filling to capacity with animals too wounded ever to be released back into the wild.

“We have big shelters for bears, for example,” Chevhanyuk says, “but they are already full. I’m afraid that if something happens, we’ll need to bring these animals abroad. So we are very grateful to all our partners in different countries, because there’s a big need right now.”

The organization is also tapping back into its activist roots to bring international attention to conditions in Ukraine. In February they organized Stop Ecocide Ukraine rallies in four U.S. cities — Atlanta, Austin, New York and San Antonio — that each attracted hundreds of people.

 

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In a way this is a return to form. “We used to create huge animal-rights marches in 30 Ukrainian cities every September,” Chevhanyuk says. “But since war started, we are more focused on the emergency.”

And the international community has started to take notice. Last month the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution to “build and consolidate a legal framework for the enhanced protection of the environment in armed conflicts” — steps that support establishing ecocide as a new international crime.

“From a legal perspective, this is really encouraging,” says Jojo Mehta, cofounder and executive director of Stop Ecocide International, “because if you put severe harm to the living world on the same level as severe harm to people, if you say ecocide is as bad, wrong and dangerous as genocide, you’re creating a mental rebalance.”

It could still take years for ecocide to become international law. But meanwhile the destruction of Ukraine continues, as do recovery efforts.

“If our team knows there is an animal to rescue,” Chevhanyuk says, “they will go in.”

Previously in The Revelator:

20 Endangered Species at Risk in Ukraine

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Restoring the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta: Reversing a Century of Colombian Tragedy

Can science and tradition finally help heal the region’s peoples and bring balance to its biodiversity-rich waters and mangrove forests?

When I visited the floating palafito fishing village of Nueva Venecia in early 2021, I found myself staring out across the calm, reflective expanse of the coastal lagoon complex known as the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta. Looking back at that moment, I understand why Ernesto Mancera has spent the past 35 years studying the region’s mangroves and other species: Everywhere I looked, I saw life.

More than 130 fish species call the Ciénaga Grande home, along with 200 bird species, manatees and 18 other mammals, 26 reptiles, three mangrove species and hundreds of other types of plants and trees.

Mancera, a marine biologist from the National University of Colombia, later told me, “The Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta is the most productive estuarine ecosystem in the world.”

As with any estuary, it’s the properties of the brackish water that make the difference. The Ciénaga Grande serves as a node of interconnection in a complex hydrological network, linking Colombia’s principal waterway, the world’s highest coastal mountain range, and the Caribbean Sea. For millennia this system has existed in a dynamic balance that allowed life to flourish.

But despite its internationally recognized beauty and value, a sense of awe and sadness intertwine here. No place better represents Colombia’s rich biocultural diversity and tragic history.

The Ciénaga Grande has suffered decades of degradation. Human alteration of its dynamic hydrology and the obstruction of essential points of connection have led its mangroves and aquatic species to suffer devastating mass die-offs.

At the same time, the traditional people who have long lived in harmony with the ecoregion have experienced brutality, exploitation, and the denigration of their traditional knowledge.

But today there’s hope. Experts and community leaders say rigorous and coordinated effort could lead to the recovery of this complex, resilient place.

A Vital Ecosystem

The Ciénaga Grande delta-lagoon complex encompasses around 20 interconnected ciénagas (lagoons) and hundreds of square miles of mangroves.

To the east is the towering Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range, which itself is a biodiversity hotspot and a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Three rivers rise in the highlands of the Sierra — the Sevilla, Fundacion and Aracataca. These rivers directly feed the Ciénaga Grande with freshwater and rich sediments.

The mountains also contain montane forests, paramos and glaciers, all located within the territories of Indigenous peoples.

Running along the west is the Magdalena River, Colombia’s longest and most important waterway. The Ciénaga Grande is part of the Magdalena Delta system, which drains into the Caribbean Sea to the north, and connects to the river through natural channels that bring sustained flows of freshwater and sediment.

The freshwater from the channels and the Sierra’s rivers is critical to the health and balance of the Ciénaga Grande, whose semi-arid hydroclimate experiences much more evaporation on average than precipitation. Climate change is expected to exacerbate this freshwater deficit.

“The interconnection between these various ecosystems, the hydroclimate, and the interchange of brackish and fresh waters created unique conditions and provided the energy for the Ciénaga’s remarkable biodiversity and productivity,” Mancera said.

“The Real Magic of the Ciénaga” – oil on canvas – © Vannessa Circe. Used with permission.

This hydrological connectivity and the Ciénaga Grande itself also have irreplaceable biocultural value for the Sierra peoples.

“The life, vital feminine energy and balance generated in the Ciénaga supports the environmental, social and spiritual equilibrium of the entire Sierra,” according to my colleague Teyrungümü Torres Zalabata, an Arhuaco physicist and leader of the Agua Maestra collective.

That connection has suffered for nearly 100 years.

A Tragic Social and Ecological History

The decades-long deterioration of the Ciénaga Grande began as an extension of the bananero epoch of the 1920s, when multinational corporations like the United Fruit Company, in collaboration with local authorities, incentivized and exploited large banana plantations. This region along the western Sierra foothills near the Ciénaga Grande became known as the “banana zone,” and its complex history inspired the magical realism of the fictional town of Macondo in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

But the reality was far from magical. Powerful plantation-owners diverted and contaminated water from the rivers that feed the Ciénaga Grande and blocked the Sierra’s Indigenous peoples from making their traditional pilgrimages.

“In the late 1950s a road connected the cities of Ciénaga and Barranquilla to facilitate the export of bananas to the United States,” said Mancera. “This cut off the natural communication between the Ciénaga and the Caribbean Sea.” Towns sprang up along the road, bringing increased deforestation and human waste.

Thus began the wide-scale alteration of the hydrological and socioecological dynamics of the Ciénaga Grande.

In the 1970s the government built another ill-conceived road parallel to the Magdalena River along the western banks of the Ciénaga Grande. “This was the critical point,” said Mancera. “This road cut off the vital connection between the Magdalena River and the Ciénaga.”

With less freshwater flowing into the system, the water and soils of the Ciénaga Grande became hypersalinated. Water levels also lowered, exacerbated by an El Niño. This led to the first mass mangrove and fish die-offs.

“Mangroves provide many important ecosystem services,” said Mancera. “They ensure water quality, prevent coastal erosion, provide refuge for many species, and capture carbon. Their degradation in the Ciénaga led to cascading negative impacts for the entire ecosystem.”

Over the decades these die-offs increased in severity and frequency, with approximately 55-60% of the mangrove forests now lost. Upwards of 70% of the fish were lost as well.

Dead mangroves along the Ciénaga-Barranquilla road. This road cut off the natural connectivity between the Caribbean Sea and the Ciénaga Grande. Photo by D.H. Rasolt

This ecological disaster caused enormous suffering for the peaceful palafito fishermen and their families, a situation exacerbated by Colombia’s prolonged civil war and notorious history of drug trafficking. In the most pronounced example of the horror inflicted on the region, paramilitaries perpetrated a brutal massacre in 2000 within and around the floating villages of Nueva Venecia and Buenavista. The assault killed at least 39 locals and displaced hundreds.

“We lived in fear for a long time, and many never returned,” said fishermen and community leader Diego Martinez from his stilted home in Nueva Venecia. (Editor’s note: Martinez’s name has been changed to conceal his identity and protect him from retaliation.)

The Palafitos

For more than 200 years, traditional amphibious palafito communities have lived within the Ciénaga Grande in floating villages. Artisanal fishing with traditional hand-woven nets called atarrayas has been the foundation of their idyllic life and livelihood.

“We know the Ciénaga, its many species that are still here and those that are gone, and the many changes it has gone through, better than anyone because we live it, every day, every minute, and we should be listened to,” Martinez tells me, his voice filled with indignation.

Policymakers and researchers, both national and international, have drastically overlooked this traditional ecological knowledge of the palafitos in their many failed plans for the Ciénaga Grande.

For example, the opportunity to build capacity within the communities for monitoring water quality and fisheries has been largely neglected. When I visited the region in 2020 and 2021 as part of a project investigating cumulative impacts to the Lower Magdalena River wetlands and the potential for establishing water monitoring stations and decentralized clean energy technologies, I learned that nearly all previous projects neglected both the palafitos’ multi-decadal, firsthand knowledge of changes to the Ciénaga Grande, as well as their ability to participate in data collection for long-term research projects.

A young palafito fisherman arrives with his catch in the amphibious community of Nueva Venecia. Photo by D.H. Rasolt.

It is not only the palafitos’ knowledge and capacity to participate in protecting the Ciénaga Grande that is ignored. Their constitutionally guaranteed rights to life and livelihood are frequently neglected by designated government entities.

“When we call on the regional authorities to maintain the water flow, which they have promised to do and which is essential to the fisheries and our access to food and drinkable water, we are almost always ignored,” said Martinez.

The regional authority in question, CORPAMAG, has been consistently unaccountable, said environmental attorney David Vargas from the Colombian Ombudsman office, who worked for years in the Ciénaga Grande ecoregion.

“We formed popular actions and petitioned CORPAMAG in 2018 on numerous rights violations of local communities, from water concessions and illegal dike constructions of large landholders along the rivers of the Sierra that feed the Ciénaga, to water quality and waste-management issues within the Ciénaga that impact the health and livelihoods for palafito communities. These petitions were all ignored.”

Protective Status and Past Interventions

The Ciénaga Grande, while largely degraded and ignored, is not lacking in formal protective status — although they exist in part in name only.

At the national level, there are the Cienega Grande de Santa Marta Flora and Fauna Sanctuary and the Isla de Salamanca Park Way National Park.

At the international level, the Ciénaga Grande has been declared a Ramsar protected wetland, a UNESCO biosphere reserve and an AICA bird conservation area — all designations that in theory require the Colombian government to protect it.

Countless environmental protection laws exist in Colombia, including those covering wetlands and mangroves, but many of the best ideas and policies remain only on paper.

“We have the tools, the knowledge and the data, but nobody listens or pays attention to the science,” said Mancera. “It has been many years of inefficiencies, unnecessarily repeated studies and failed policies.”

There was a time, during the 1990s, where ambitious integrated research and planning for restoring the Ciénaga Grande was put into action. The framework was known as Procienaga.

“Much was learned over this period regarding the fisheries, water quality and mangrove forests,” said Mancera. Robust data — since organized into a publicly available database — demonstrated the importance of river-Ciénaga connectivity for maintaining hydrological balance and healthy salinity levels in the water and soils. Scientists also identified the eutrophication-inducing impacts of agrochemicals like phosphorus coming from the banana zone of the Sierra, which was beginning to host water and chemical-intensive oil palm plantations.

Fishermen in the Ciénaga Grande near the one remaining Ciénaga-Ocean connection, with the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the background. Photo by D.H. Rasolt.

Starting in 1996 five channels connecting to the Magdalena River were dredged, allowing freshwater to flow back into the Ciénaga Grande. The relatively sudden rush of freshwater — aided by a La Niña event in 1998 — shocked certain important components of the complex interdependent hydrology and ecology, such as eutrophication-controlling oysters. But at the same time, many positive signs were seen for mangrove recovery. The hypersaline soils returned to tolerable levels in certain areas.

Since the Procienaga project ended in 1999, Colombia’s Institute of Marine Investigations, INVEMAR, has continued monitoring the mangroves, water quality and fisheries, while making recommendations to authorities like CORPAMAG. But accountability and action have been few and far between. Channels frequently become blocked by sediment, while agrochemicals and diminished water flow from the Sierra keep killing fish.

New Initiatives and Governmental Change

After a damning report in 2017, the Ciénaga Grande was officially placed on the Ramsar Montreux List of wetlands at extreme risk, which brought some renewed interest and investment into the ecoregion. One example is the new “Sustainable Landscapes” project through the UN’s FAO, in collaboration with INVEMAR and other entities.

“These projects hold promise for better coordinating the different actors and including the communities in the process,” said Mario Rueda, research coordinator and fisheries scientist at INVEMAR.

While the impact of this renewed internationally backed interest remains to be seen, there has been a major governmental change within Colombia. New president Gustavo Petro — who has proclaimed support for the environment, traditional peoples and peace — may bode well for Colombia’s diverse ecosystems, including the Ciénaga Grande.

Rivers that rise in the highland territories of Indigenous Peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta feed the Ciénaga Grande with freshwater and rich sediments. Photo by V. Circe.

As part of the new administration, marine biologist Sandra Vilardy, a longtime proponent of the socioecological importance of the Ciénaga Grande, has been named the Viceminister of the Environmental Ministry. Vilardy recently made commitments to restoring Colombia’s wetlands during Ramsar COP14.

Petro has extended his biocultural priorities internationally by appointing Leanor Zalabata, a strong, principled female Arhuaco leader from the Sierra with a holistic worldview, as the new Colombian ambassador to the United Nations.

Integrated Solutions for Recovery

It’s a testament to the resilience of the Ciénaga Grande that this complex ecosystem remains productive at all and still has restoration potential after decades of interconnected threats.

But resilience only goes so far, and the ecosystem can still reach a critical point of no return. If the Ciénaga Grande is going to recover, it needs long-term integrated research and planning, with local community participation and even guardianship, which has a record of success in other local and Indigenous-led areas.

Most notably the region needs rigorous mangrove restoration studies to demonstrate how much soil salinity each species can resist and what outcomes are possible in terms of carbon capture and fishery recovery.

“Just planting seeds without this firm knowledge for a dynamic estuarine ecosystem, or any other forest ecosystem, has been shown not to work,” said Mancera. “Many projects in the Ciénaga have failed because they ignore basic science and integrated planning.”

This research would need to run in parallel with plans for periodically dredging the channels, based on monitoring and alerts from the palafitos, to maintain a healthy dynamic hydrological equilibrium for the Ciénaga Grande.

Ideally integrated long-term plans would also encompass projected climatic changes for the ecoregion, cumulative impacts from “development” along the Magdalena River Basin, and attention to the basin-scale integrity of the Sierra rivers that feed the Ciénaga.

“These collaborations and commitments would give time for the recovery of mangrove species and fisheries and for the Ciénaga overall,” said Mancera.

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Klamath Countdown: Researchers Hustle Before Largest Dam-Removal Project Begins 

To anticipate the impacts of a historic river restoration, we need to understand how salmon, bats, insects, algae and other parts of the ecosystem are behaving today.

Next year will be the big year. By the end of 2024 the Lower Klamath River will run free for the first time in a century, enabling fish like salmon and steelhead to reclaim 400 miles of river habitat in California and Oregon.

The removal of four dams on the river — the largest dam-removal and river-restoration project to date — got the official go-ahead late last year after two decades of work from the region’s Tribes and other advocates.

But before next year’s much-anticipated demolitions begin, a lot remains to be done.

The smallest of the four dams, Copco 2, will come down in 2023, and crews will improve roads and bridges, move a municipal water line, and build a new fish hatchery.

Map of Klamath Basin and dam removal project
PHOTO: The Klamath River watershed and the four dams slated for removal. (Map by Klamath River Renewal Corporation)

Proponents expect dam removal to help resuscitate a beleaguered river where dams have blocked migratory fish and warm reservoir waters have spurred toxic algae growth and fed deadly fish parasites. But evaluating the ecosystem after dam removal — and understanding how to manage a changing river — requires a firm understanding of how all the river’s components function today.

To accomplish that, researchers have spent years gathering information on everything from salmon to algae to bats. And now, as they enter the critical final year, they’re hustling to collect as much data as they can before the dams finally come down.

“It’s an exciting time for the river because dam removal has been a long time coming,” says Laurel Genzoli, a researcher from the University of Montana who has been studying algae and water quality on the Klamath. “But it’s also a stressful time, because this is the last summer to collect data with the dams in place, and we have to make sure we have everything we think we might need.”

Long-Term Data

The uphill political battle to remove the dams began two decades ago. But the effort only started gaining widespread support in the past few years. Thankfully researchers have been studying the river for a longer time, amassing comprehensive data that could form the baselines for future comparisons.

Many of these researchers are affiliated with universities, or state and federal agencies, and some are from the region’s Tribes. Upstream are the Klamath Tribes in Oregon. And along the lower Klamath River in California are the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, Quartz Valley Indian Community and the Resighini Rancheria.

“We’ve been monitoring fish populations for decades — how many fish are spawning, how many are being captured, how many juvenile fish are out-migrating,” says Barry McCovey Jr., a fisheries biologist from the Yurok Tribe. “As far as salmon populations go, we’ve been tracking that closely for a long time.”

Recovering salmon populations for Tribes’ cultural and subsistence needs, and for the health of the ecosystem, is a key goal for river restoration.

Tribes have also been involved in more than a decade of research in partnership with state agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and researchers from the Oregon State University to track the fish disease Ceratanova shasta, a parasite that’s decimated salmon populations.

That work began independent of dam removal, but it’s become increasingly important because researchers expect a free-flowing river will help reduce the deadly parasite.

The same is true for water quality, which Tribes have tracked for years.

“That work didn’t begin because of dam removal, but the baseline data will be helpful afterwards,” says Genzoli, who works with Tribes from the lower Klamath River to gather data on water quality.

She’s also studying the growth of algae and other aquatic plants. Driven in part by a large amount of upstream nutrients, the river produces a lot of algae. Too much can clog fishing nets, and some can be toxic, endangering wildlife and human health.

Clumps of algae floating on the river surface.
Algae on the Klamath River. Photo: Tara Lohan

Robert Lusardi, a research scientist at the University of California, Davis and a fish scientist for the nonprofit California Trout, is working with the Yurok Tribe and others to study the aquatic invertebrates which feed on those plants, as well as water temperature and chemistry. “Those are really good indicators of change in the system,” says Lusardi.

That baseline data will be important. “When the dams come down, we’ll start doing this same work in the river that’s currently under the reservoirs and it will help us evaluate how the river and tributaries are recovering,” says McCovey.

Moving up the food chain, another group of researchers is studying an animal that often feeds on aquatic insects — bats.

Barbara Clucas, an associate professor in the Department of Wildlife at Cal Poly Humboldt, works with her graduate student Ryan Matilton and other researchers to collect baseline data on the species of bats in the region and their activity levels.

As the diversity or abundance of invertebrates change after dam removal, so might their predators.

“I would imagine that dam removal would change bats’ prey base,” says Clucas. “That could impact when and where we see them. It’s possible that looking at how their diversity, abundance or activity levels change could give an indication of the health of the system overall.”

Dam-Removal Research

While some long-term monitoring will be useful for post-dam study, other efforts have been initiated specifically for dam removal.

One of those is extensive research and mapping by the U.S. Geological Survey of how sediment will move, and what effect that could have on streamside vegetation and the downstream estuary.

Other work has targeted fish — a main conservation priority.

Lusardi has been studying where salmon go in the basin, including the mainstem of the Klamath and its tributaries, by examining fish ear bones — or otoliths. The researchers began by measuring how much of the element strontium was present in the water in different parts of the basin. Most tributaries have very distinct strontium signatures.

“When juvenile salmon rear in the basin, depending on where they are, they’re picking up these strontium signatures in their ear bones,” he explains. “When they come back as adults and they spawn and die, we pull the carcasses out of the river, remove their otoliths, and send them to the lab to be analyzed.” Based on the strontium values, they can learn where the juveniles spent their time.

Working with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Yurok Tribe, they’ve spent two years collecting otoliths.

“This will provide a baseline of understanding how fish use the basin below the dams now,” he says. After the dams come out, they’ll be able to track returning fish to understand how they’re moving back into the longer reach of the river and tributaries they couldn’t reach before.

Lusardi is also involved in another project with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Klamath Tribes, the National Marine Fishery Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to better understand how spring-run Chinook will use the basin.

Once numerous throughout the watershed, these native fish are now limited to only one tributary below the dams. Last year the researchers released 1,500 acoustically tagged juveniles above the dams by Upper Klamath Lake and have followed how and when they’re out-migrating. They’re set to do another release this spring.

Photo of earthen dam with reservoir in background.
The earth-filled hydroelectric Iron Gate Dam, powerhouse and spillway on the lower Klamtha River near Hornbrook, Calif. in 1962. Photo: D.L. Christensen / California Department of Water Resources

“We’ve got a really good idea of when they were leaving the tributaries, when they’re moving into Upper Klamath Lake, and how quickly they’re moving through the lake,” he says. “It’s giving us a really good idea of how spring-run Chinook might use the basin [after dam removal] and should be really useful for adaptively managing them in the future.”

Science, People and Decisions

Another area of study enabled by funding from Oregon Sea Grant pairs university researchers from Oregon State University with University of Montana’s Genzoli and the Yurok Tribe to look at how dam removal will affect water quality, the aquatic food web, and water use by the diverse groups that live in the basin.

“We’re partnering with the Yurok Tribe to expand our knowledge about the river and about how decisions can be more equitable,” says project leader Desiree Tullos, a professor of river engineering at Oregon State University.

There are three parts to the project. The first is understanding the connections between water quality and the food web, which can create good or bad habitat for fish, aquatic plants and toxic algae.

Second is the people part. They’re working with stakeholders in the basin, including Tribal members, landowners, ranchers, irrigators and environmental advocates to inform decision making about managing water quality with an eye toward equity.

That scientific and social research will then inform the third part of the project — decision modeling.

“We’re going to bring all those data on the people and the ecosystem together and run a bunch of computer simulations,” she says. That might include looking at how recreation or opportunities for Tribes could change if water quality is managed in a different way.

Models can tell them “if we restore 1,000 acres of wetland in the upper basin, would that get us to a place where there’s no longer toxic algal blooms, or do we need 10,000 acres of wetland?” she says. “And then how does that change if there’s more droughts or more wildfires in the future? Or how does it change if we use a decision process that the Tribe follows, or a local NGO, or the Bureau of Reclamation?”

Funding Issues

All of this research is just a sampling of what’s being undertaken on the river. And while much of it is done in collaboration, there’s no overarching entity — or fund — responsible for overseeing pre-dam removal study.

Last year an op-ed from two well-known experts, fish scientist Peter Moyle and geomorphologist Jeffrey Mount, lamented as much.

“Although more than $450 million has been allocated for the dam removal, to our knowledge, little has been allocated to fund the science needed to evaluate it,” they wrote. “This is a mistake.”

Despite that, researchers have found money from disparate sources — government agencies, universities, nonprofits, private foundations. And they’ve established their own working groups and conferences to share information and drive further collaboration.

“People are sticking with it and dedicated to continuing to do what we can to try to collect data and understand how these changes are affecting the river,” says Genzoli. But she admits that some bigger picture connections could be missed between areas of specialty.

Making sure the science is funded, “is the most important thing,” says Lusardi. “Not just to document what’s happening, but to adaptably manage the river [after dam removal] too.”

Tribal Leadership

While researchers may lack a central — and robust — monetary fund, they do have another valuable resource that’s helped deepen their understanding of the river: Tribes.

Three women hold sign saying "bring the salmon home, remove the Klamath Dams."
Klamath Basin Tribes and allies rally in 2006 for dam removal. Photo: Patrick McCully, (CC BY 2.0)

“Tribal members were essential in driving the politics of dam removal forward, but they have also been maintaining long-term water quality, fisheries and wildlife records of this river in a way we don’t see on most rivers,” says Genzoli.

And it’s not just the western scientific data Tribes have collected, but their traditional knowledge of the ecosystem.

“Tribes have been on the landscape since time immemorial,” says Tullos. “They can tell us things about what a wet versus a dry year is that don’t rely on discharge measurements, but on their observations of where the river was or how bad the algae was in that year. We can get these really full data sets by piling on what we, western scientists measure, with what Indigenous folks understand about the system. By bringing together these multiple ways of knowing, that gives us a much richer understanding.”

And that can help drive an ambitious goal.

“A lot of people would say that this is just a huge fish-restoration project and it’s going to really be great for salmon,” says McCovey. “But for me, it’s so much more than that.”

It’s in their culture as Yurok people to restore balance to the world and ecosystem, he says. To be “people who fix the world.”

“The act of removing those dams and restoring that energy flow from the upper basin to the lower basin is an act of our cultural identity,” he says. “From a Tribal perspective, we are helping to restore that balance, and in a small way, we’re helping to fix the world.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

Drones, Algae and Fish Ears: What We’re Learning Before the World’s Largest Dam-removal Project — and What We Could Miss