Water and Cooperation Breathe New Life Into Klamath Basin Wildlife Refuges

Agriculture drained this ecosystem. Now, under the specter of future drought, the same systems have started to bring back both water and wildlife.

Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, located in far Northern California, harbors what remains of a once vast, shallow lake. On a recent April morning, I toured the area with John Vradenburg, supervisory fish and wildlife biologist for the Klamath Basin Refuges. A few months earlier, birds had all but abandoned Tule Lake. Now they were back in the thousands: clumps of eared grebes; dipping swallows; black-necked stilts with their impossibly spindly legs.

As we drove along the edge of the refuge’s largest wetland — evocatively called “Sump 1A” — pairs of Canada geese swam away from shore, followed by fluffy goslings. Vradenburg stopped the truck to rescue one that was trapped behind a headgate. He gently tossed the ball of fluff into the water, where it made a beeline for its two siblings.

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A few yards later Vradenburg stopped again to point out a pair of western grebes. Facing each other, they took turns dipping their needle-like bills into the water, then shook them off. They were getting ready to dance, side by side, across the water — part of their spectacular courtship ritual.

“It’s just so good to see birds moving around in here again,” he said.

A Transformed Ecosystem

The Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges are a complex of six refuges straddling the Oregon-California border — remnants of vast wetlands that once expanded and contracted with the seasons, breathing an almost unfathomable abundance of life into the dry region. A century or so ago, flocks of geese and swans darkened the sky. There were masses of white pelicans; hordes of grebes, ducks, and ibises; eagles and hawks in profusion. On Lower Klamath Lake, which sprawled nearly 100,000 acres, boats conveyed tourists from the Klamath River to the lake’s southern tip.

In typical early 20th century fashion, the Bureau of Reclamation remade the basin into a network of dikes, canals, drains, sumps and pumps called the Klamath Reclamation Project. Both Lower Klamath Lake and Tule Lake were drained to feed new farms established by homesteaders, including veterans returning from both World Wars.

To preserve what remained of the shrinking habitat, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 established the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. At nearly 47,000 acres, it was the nation’s first wildlife refuge dedicated to waterfowl. The 39,000-acre Tule Lake refuge was established in 1928 to protect what was left of the drained expanse.

Though a fraction of their former splendor, these wetlands still serve as a vital stopover for the millions of birds that use the Pacific Flyway every year.

The region has always experienced periodic drought, but the past 20 years have been drier than usual, culminating in several years of extreme to exceptional drought. Between 2019 and 2022, the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake refuges received essentially no water. Wetlands like Sump 1A turned to cracked expanses of dry mud. The birds disappeared.

Now, thanks to two decent water years in a row and a surge of funding for restoration projects across the Klamath Basin, a new optimism about reconnecting this broken ecosystem has emerged.

Reconnecting the Pieces

On March 24 members of the Tulelake Irrigation District gathered in front of a blocky concrete building for an unlikely ceremony: the revving up of “D plant,” a series of pumps that route water from Tule Lake to the Lower Klamath refuge via a 6,000-foot tunnel. The plant used to run nearly continuously, moving some 80,000 acre-feet of water per year, but it had been silent since 2020. (One acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons.)

Ironically, this ecosystem now needs D Plant, says Brad Kirby, manager of the Tulelake Irrigation District. In this remade basin, the Lower Klamath refuge is cut off from the Klamath River; D Plant functions like a heart, powering an artificial artery that delivers lifeblood to the refuge. This water also helps recharge the aquifer and eventually drains back to the Klamath River underground.

A man stands in front of large industrial equipment — D Plant. Photo: Juliet Grable

Typically, irrigators want to conserve every drop. Encouraging the “flow through” of water among farmland, wetlands, and the river is a “new goal, counter to when I first started, when our goal was to minimize drainage,” says Kirby.

The Klamath Refuge system and farmers of the Klamath Project have long been intertwined. Farmland surrounds the refuges; in addition, 21,000 acres within the refuges are leased for agriculture.

Even though the refuges hold a senior water right — an older right with higher priority — they are the last to receive water.

First priority goes to three endangered species. The Bureau of Reclamation must manage flows in the Klamath River to protect coho salmon and levels in Upper Klamath Lake to ensure the survival of c’waam and koptu — sucker fish that are of critical importance to the Klamath Tribes.

Next the agency must fulfill contracts with irrigators. The refuges largely depend on drain water from the irrigation districts — and that’s in good years.

The Klamath Basin has a fraught history, with Tribes, irrigators, and wildlife advocates fighting over scarce and precious resources. The recent drought showed everyone — refuge staff, irrigators, tribes, hunters — the unthinkable: the “Everglades of the West” transformed into a desert. This vision scared stakeholders to the table to hammer out solutions that benefit the landscape as a whole, and, they hope, everyone.

“It’s the first time — at least since I’ve seen here — where you see everyone interested in what everyone else has going on, and everyone participating in a proactive, collaborative way,” says Vradenburg. “You hear a lot about co-benefits.” Wetlands absorb and slowly release water, filter out pollutants, recharge groundwater, and provide habitat for birds and fish.

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“The thing that’s different from the historic Klamath Basin to today is the connectivity,” says Vradenburg. “Can we look at the infrastructure that we have in this highly modified system and bring that connectivity back?”

Across the basin working groups are looking at ways to restore wetlands and “re-wet the sponge.” Ducks Unlimited, which helped secure funding to run D Plant, is working with area irrigation districts to improve water conveyance and management. The nonprofit has secured funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to install new pumping stations to deliver agricultural drain water to the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge. Money from that same pot will go to improve management of the wetlands — or “sumps” — on Tule Lake refuge.

The current infrastructure “is not set up to handle this new paradigm of less water,” says Amelia Raquel, a regional biologist at Ducks Unlimited.

It’s not just the quantity of wet ground that’s important — it’s the timing. Prolonged drying can be devastating, allowing invasive species to take root and even causing land to sink, or subside. But managing wetlands so they go dry for shorter periods “resets the whole health of that wetland,” says Raquel. “This allows the seedbank in wetland soils to germinate, starts succession [and] brings in invertebrates food for waterfowl and fish.”

A man in a baseball cap stands on cracked, dry ground — Photo: Juliet Grable

The Klamath Drainage District has proposed modifying one of the main diversions that delivers irrigation water from the Klamath River so that it first enters a large wetland in the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge. This would provide important habitat for ducks and other waterfowl, especially during spring and summer molting and breeding seasons. It would also benefit fish, including salmon that will have access to the Upper Basin once dams on the Klamath River are removed this year.

“The reason we started thinking about this is we had a dry refuge,” says Scott White, general manager of the Klamath Drainage District. Birds need habitat in spring. “If they’re not going to the refuge, then they’re out in the fields as the little baby plants are starting to grow, munching away. They just wreak havoc on a crop.”

The district is also looking at using some of their private farmlands as floodplain habitat, similar to the way rice fields in California’s Central Valley function.

This project is one part of a new memorandum of understanding signed between the Klamath Water Users Association, Klamath Tribes, Yurok Tribe, and Karuk Tribe. In it the parties agreed to work together on projects that support their common goals, and the Department of Interior pledged to help secure funding.

Some of the old tension remains. Irrigators are disappointed with the Bureau of Reclamation’s latest water allocation, announced in April; they feel they should have received more water on the heels of such a wet winter. Clayton Dumont, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, is also worried about the allocation. He supports projects that restore wetlands and functionality of the ecosystem, but he also wants to make sure none of these projects further compromise c’waam and koptu in Upper Klamath Lake.

“We’re not interested in having the refuges fill at the expense of suckers in the upper basin,” he says.

And the shadow of the next drought is never far.

A Resilient Landscape

The refuge wetlands are still recovering from being dry for so long. At Tule Lake submerged aquatic vegetation is starting to return — a good sign, says Vradenburg. “That’s a really a big driver for a lot of our waterbird communities, especially diving ducks and grebes, those birds that like to nest on top of the water.”

On our way back to refuge headquarters, we stopped to watch a small flock of ibis pick through the mud, their glossy backs flashing green and rust. Then we stopped yet again to listen to the insistent murmur of hundreds, maybe thousands, of white-fronted geese. While the Canada geese are already rearing families, these birds still have to make it all the way to their breeding grounds in Alaska.

It’s a different landscape from just two years ago. During the drought going to work every day was heartbreak, says Vradenburg. “The refuge staff was so beaten down. Now people are grabbing keys to a work vehicle just so they can see the birds flying at sunrise.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

The Monumental Effort to Replant the Klamath River Dam Reservoirs

Can Collecting Stamps Help Rare and Endangered Species?

One scientist’s passion for owl stamps shows: It’s not just about the collection. It’s about what you do with it.

Another article from the “Extinction Countdown” archives. Originally published in 2016, but still relevant to today.

Like a lot of folks out there, I’m a collector. I spend much of my free time tracking down rare comic books, out-of-print novels, animal-themed carvings and artwork by my favorite cartoonists. I even tried stamp collecting a few years back, but I just never found the bug.

Maybe I was doing it wrong. You see, my small stamp collection was achingly random. I had stamps from around the world, but they were collected willy-nilly, without much thought or planning. A theme, on the other hand, might have not only grabbed my long-term attention, it might have done some good in the world.

That’s the point made by M. Eric Ramanujam, principal investigator for Pitchandikulam Bioresource Centre in India, in a delightful paper published in 2016 in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.

Ramanujam, you see, is a researcher studying the Indian eagle owl (Bubo bengalensis). He’s also a philatelist, the term for a person who collects rare stamps.

Stamps are where Ramanujam’s two passions collide. He doesn’t have an un-themed, easily neglected collection. The stamps he has acquired over the years all depict owls from around the world.

Their images, and their stories, illustrate almost every page of Ramanujam’s paper. There’s the greater sooty owl (Tyto tenebricosa), depicted with haunting eyes in a stamp from Papua New Guinea. A stamp from Zimbabwe presents us with an image of the mysterious-looking African scops owl (Otus senegalensis). Another stamp from Tanzanian honors the extinct South Island whekau (Sceloglaux albifacies albifacies) of New Zealand. A Blakiston’s fish owl (Bubo blakistoni) sits atop a snow-covered tree in a stamp from Japan. An entire series showcases the owls of Namibia.

Photo: Owl stamps collected by M. Eric Ramanujam. Source: Journal of Threatened Taxa

Of course, a scientific paper such as this isn’t the only opportunity philatelists have to share their collections. As the paper points out, philatelists can join philatelic societies and display or even competitively exhibit their stamps. Many collectors have unique niches — Ramanujam says he’s one of the few owl-stamp collectors — so displaying them draws attention and maybe even awards.

The display may also inspire a broader message. As he writes, the satisfaction one gains from a collection — especially an owl-themed one such as his — may derive from the “impact it has on those who view and appreciate a collection.” He doesn’t mention if his own collection has had that particular impact, but he cites a 16-year-old philatelist named Jesse Chevrier of Canada whose own owl-themed collection exhibit “was given the 2013 ‘Youth Grand Champion of Champions’ award by the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors.” (You can see Chevrier’s collection and his notes about each stamp here.)

I don’t know how many people will suddenly become philatelists upon reading this paper, but I can say that Ramanujam’s collection presents a wonderful opportunity for education and illumination. His captions for the illustrations in his paper bring both the stamps and the owls they depict to life.

Ramanujam writes that stamp collecting can be financially draining, but the emotional satisfaction created by a successful display can help to offset that cost. And as people read about the stamps in philatelists’ collections, it may also inspire them to learn more about the creatures they depict. Will that turn them into conservationists? That’s hard to say, of course, but it certainly can’t hurt.

Do you have a nature-themed collection? Email me. We may showcase your answers in an upcoming article.

Previously in The Revelator:

Project Animalia: A Year in 365 Animal Paintings

Could Brazil’s Catastrophic Flooding Cause Extinctions?

Rising sea levels may cause the local extinction of three small, threatened vertebrates in southern Brazil.

In southern Brazil, especially the state of Rio Grande do Sul, severe flooding has caused an emergency being reported around the world. Human losses and homelessness there represent the biggest socioenvironmental catastrophe affecting the country.

One aspect that hasn’t yet garnered much media attention is the impact of these floods on rare and at-risk wildlife. For 11 years I worked on Marinheiros Island, situated on the estuary of Patos Lagoon in the heart of the now-flooded areas. On this island I identified the presence of three species of small vertebrates threatened with extinction, whose populations there are of great conservation importance.

Patos Lagoon is the most extensive lagoonal system in the world. Within this estuary Marinheiros is the largest island, covering an area of about 62 square kilometers (24 square miles).

The marginal belt, vegetated dunes, and a seasonal lagoon of Marinheiros Islands. Photo: Rafael M. Pinheiro. Used with permission.

Even before the current crisis, over the past few years, Marinheiros has experienced harsh flooding associated with massive rainfall. The floods are even more intense during El Niño phenomena, which produce heavy rain in southern Brazil. Three main factors there, together, result in the rapid rise of estuarine water levels and consequent flooding of the lagoon’s islands and marginal mainland:

1. The low elevations of marginal areas.
2. Heavy rains that increase the flow of rivers into the Patos Lagoon system and the subsequent discharge of water in the choked estuary.
3. Wind directions against the water flow from the estuary to the Atlantic Ocean, acting as a barrier for water discharging into the ocean.

The year 2023 saw a severe flood in Marinheiros Island and the marginal mainland of the Patos Lagoon estuary. This year has been even more calamitous. Flooding of 70% of the municipalities of Rio Grande do Sul — which includes the whole extension of the Patos Lagoon marginal zone — has, as of this writing, caused 149 people to lose their lives and forced more than 615,000 to leave their homes. Many of the more than 1,100 inhabitants of Marinheiros Island were rescued and sent to temporary shelters.

But rescuing the wildlife of Marinheiros Island has not become a priority. Three species deserve to be highlighted due to their very restricted distribution, habitat specificity, and conservation status.

A Toad, a Glass Snake and a Guinea Pig

The tiny red-bellied toad (Melanophryniscus dorsalis) — with a body length about 2 centimeters (just .78 inches) — can be considered a flagship species of Marinheiros Island.

The species’ existence on the island was only discovered in 2006, and it’s the southernmost known population of the species. Red-bellied toads are restricted to the coastal, marshy fields of the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina and are considered threatened both regionally and nationally.

A black toad with red streaks against a sandy background — Red-bellied toad (Melanophryniscus dorsalis). Photo: Jorge S. Bernardo-Silva. Used with permission.

The estuarine glass snake (Ophiodes enso) was described only in 2017, and it is known from only three localities in the estuary of Patos Lagoon, one of which is Marinheiros Island. Like other reptiles commonly known as “glass snakes,” these animals are, in fact, legless lizards.

This species’ conservation status has not yet been officially evaluated by specialists at national and global levels. In the paper on the species description, however, Ophiodes enso is suggested as “critically endangered” given the small area of occurrence and the human-induced impacts on its habitats.

A close-up of a legless lizard head and part of its body, green with yellow and blue stripes, against a leaf-litter background — Estuarine grass snake (Ophiodes enso). Photo: Fernando M. Quintela. Used with permission.

Finally, the greater guinea pig (Cavia magna) is a medium-sized rodent with a body length reaching 30 centimeters (about 1 foot). It lives on the borders of marshes and wet fields of a narrow coastal strip of Uruguay and southern Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina states.

The species is classified as “endangered” in Uruguay and “vulnerable” in Rio Grande do Sul. Importantly, greater guinea pigs from Marinheiros Island are genetically distinct from other populations in terms of the number of chromosomes (individuals from Marinheiros Island have 64 chromosomes, while mainland populations have 62).

A small, brown rodent against a sandy ground with a few leafs or plants nearby — Greater guinea pig (Cavia magna). Photo: Klaus Rudloff. Used with permission.

Floods, Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise, and Loss of Habitats

Marinheiros Island is located in a low-elevation region. The estuarine glass snake and greater guinea pig are found in wet fields of the island’s marginal zone, where elevation does not exceed three meters (10 feet) above sea level. The red-bellied toad occurs in the marginal zone, in addition to more interior sandy fields and dunes, where elevations can reach about 10 meters (33 feet).

While the current rain-related floods are expected — and desired — to be a short-term condition, rising sea levels could cause the island to be permanently submerged. A study conducted in 2010 found that the entire marginal zone of Marinheiros Island — the area where these three species live — is highly susceptible to sea-level rise. This suggests that the ecosystems inhabited by these three small vertebrate species may be completely underwater in the next few decades.

The impacts of short-term floods on the red-bellied toad, estuarine glass snake and greater guinea pig remain unknown. These events induce disturbances to the species’ habitats, causing the loss of shelters and nesting sites and forcing individuals to migrate to more elevated island areas. In the tragic scenario of the sinking of the marginal lands, the species’ populations will indeed be forced to move to higher grounds.

The question remains: Will these areas of higher elevation present environmental suitability for establishing the three species?

The lands of higher elevation within Marinheiros Island currently comprise sand fields and dunes, which consist of drier habitats due to the high porosity of sandy soils. These conditions are difficult mainly for red-bellied toads and greater guinea pigs, who are associated with wet (palustrine) habitats.

Even if new wet areas appear in the remaining emerged lands, salinization is a major factor. Studies have demonstrated that seawater intrusion leads to the salinization of surface freshwater systems and groundwater of coastal zones.

So will red-bellied toad tadpoles develop in waters with increased salinity? Will the vegetation consumed by greater guinea pigs grow in salinized soils? Will the invertebrates consumed by estuarine glass snakes occur in a habitat drastically modified by seawater intrusion? I raise these ecological questions in hopes that species will successfully adapt to the new conditions. Otherwise, I expect, local extinctions will occur.

As has been observed in oceanic islands, rising sea levels will cause the loss of emerged lands and habitats on Marinheiros and other islands in the Patos Lagoon estuary. Populations of unique animal species from subtropical domains of South America are left to their own devices. Currently there’s no management plan aimed at local populations of endangered species in Marinheiros and other estuarine islands of Patos Lagoon. Local officials have ignored proposals for studies on the feasibility of a conservation unit establishment in interior areas of higher elevation and more suitable hydrological and phytophysiognomic conditions. Although it wouldn’t be a guarantee for the maintenance of the threatened populations, such a strategy could open paths for translocation and other conservation interventions.

The effects of climate change on the Marinheiros Islands go far beyond the local extinction of red-bellied toads, estuarine glass snakes and greater guinea pigs. The cultivation areas of the island’s marginal belt provide a livelihood to many families, whose way of life is now threatened. So the sinking of the Marinheiros Islands is of social as well as biological concern.

Marinheiros Island may seem large now, but rising sea levels threaten to make it a far smaller place.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Previously in The Revelator:

Storms and Rising Seas Threaten Coastal Ecosystems — Here’s What We Can Do

Burning Trees: As the Biomass Industry Grows, Its Carbon Emissions Go Uncounted

Wood-pellet companies have devastated forests in the Southeast and New England. Now they’re looking to expand.

The port of Longview, Washington has served as a bustling hub of commerce for more than a century. Ships carrying everything from grain to wind turbine parts pass through it every day headed for distant places — but it’s to the timber industry that Longview owes its existence. Located at the confluence of the Columbia and Cowlitz rivers, this town of 38,000 was founded by the Long-Bell Lumber Company in the early 1920s to house workers at its nearby mills.

Today the community is at the center of a political debate with immense implications for the region’s forests.

Longview is one of at least four locations on the U.S. West Coast where companies hope to begin manufacturing wood pellets — compressed wood used as fuel for power generation or home heating — for export on an industrial scale. By turning trees into energy, this growing biomass industry seeks to benefit from subsidies established in Europe and Asia to encourage renewables. If the UK-based Drax Group gets its way, Longview will house a plant capable of producing 450,000 metric tons of pellets annually, enough to run a small power plant for a year.

Piles and piles of logs and cut trees by a river — Logs awaiting export at the port of Longview. Photo: Sam Beebe (CC BY 2.0 Deed)

Drax and other biomass companies say they’re promoting carbon neutral energy while practicing sustainable forestry to harvest the wood fuel referred to as biomass energy. However, the industry’s behavior in places where it has long operated appears to undermine this claim.

“It starts with logging whole trees and grinding them up in polluting plants,” says Brenna Bell, forest climate manager for 350PDX, an environmental group based in Portland that opposes the Longview project. “The resulting pellets are shipped overseas.” The pellets are then often burned, or “cofired,” with coal, supposedly reducing coal’s emissions, and have more recently replaced coal in some power plants. “The most counterintuitive part is none of the associated carbon emissions are counted by governments who classify biomass as clean energy.”

Faulty accounting methods have allowed biomass companies to sell themselves as climate-friendly even as they seek to convert carbon-rich natural forests into tree plantations in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Nowhere are the on-the-ground impacts clearer than in the Southeast, where large wood biomass export projects have operated longer than anywhere else in the United States.

Selling the Biomass Story

The Drax power generating station looms over North Yorkshire, England, tall as a city high-rise. For decades the plant was Western Europe’s largest coal polluter, but in 2003 Drax began converting the first of four boilers to cofire wood. Last year the company finished replacing coal at its plant with wood pellets, hailing the milestone as a step toward a “zero-carbon energy future.”

Communities in the American Southeast, where Drax sources much of the wood for its plant, weren’t celebrating.

“The biomass industry in the Southeast expanded from barely anything 15 years ago to exporting over 9 million tons of wood pellets annually today,” says Adam Colette of Dogwood Alliance, which works to protect southern forests. “We’re talking over 100,000 acres of forest being cleared solely for this purpose every year. And that’s a conservative estimate.”

The South has long been among the most logged regions in the country, but the arrival of biomass companies put new pressure on remaining natural forests. A study commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center showed forest loss has increased significantly in the area surrounding biomass pellet plants in Virginia and North Carolina.

“The industry calls biomass a climate solution,” Colette says. “Smart people in government, even some well-intentioned people in the climate movement, support giving it hundreds of billions in subsidies. You’ve got to ask, how is that possible? It’s not that biomass is as powerful as the fossil fuel industry.”

Fossil fuel companies amassed immense political clout over centuries. By contrast, the biomass industry is only decades old. Yet biomass companies have won political favor by peddling a narrative with immense allure for policymakers who want quick fixes to the climate crisis.

On paper, converting existing coal plants to run on wood pellets looks like an easy climate win. But burning wood produces even more carbon than coal per unit of energy generated. Because this carbon can theoretically be reabsorbed if forests grow back, some governments consider the process carbon neutral — but continually cut and regrown forests never achieve the carbon storage potential of older trees. And even if the carbon released during deforestation is eventually reabsorbed, it stays in the atmosphere for decades in the meantime. None of this is accounted for by policymakers who see biomass as green energy.

Nor is it only foreign governments subsidizing the industry. In parts of the United States, too, trees are burned for electricity. Ironically these include jurisdictions that regard themselves as among the world’s greenest.

Burning the Forest

“We’ve been deluded about biomass in Burlington, Vermont,” says Zack Porter, executive director of the New England-based Standing Trees. “We’re supposedly America’s first city to run entirely on carbon-neutral renewable electricity. Yet our leaders tout that title knowing we still rely on Vermont’s largest point source of carbon emissions: the McNeil biomass power plant.”

Burlington’s Joseph C. McNeil generating station pumps close to half a million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year but is considered carbon neutral energy under Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act. This designation has been justified partly by biomass companies’ claim that they burn mainly “waste wood,” or branches and other tree parts leftover from logging, as well as wood residues such as sawdust.

A series of off-white buildings and a tall smokestack against a cloudy sky. A few bare trees on either side. — The McNeil generating station. Photo: Nick Engelfried

“The problem is, to timber companies ‘waste’ is any wood they can’t find a higher value use for,” says Porter. “They see old or crooked trees that can’t be sold for lumber as waste. But we actually have a scarcity of ecologically important logs and snags in New England forests, and creating more demand to remove them worsens the problem.” Wildlife species that depend on woody debris for habitat include marbled and Jefferson salamanders, both of whom are considered imperiled across parts of their New England range.

At a hearing in Burlington last year, a proposal to heat University of Vermont medical center buildings with steam from McNeil drew intense opposition, suggesting climate groups have momentum as they push policymakers to rethink the role of biomass in Vermont’s grid.

There would be precedent for such a move. New York and Massachusetts have taken steps to exclude forest biomass from benefiting off clean energy incentives, and advocates like Porter think other Northeast states should follow suit.

In fact, there’s a growing national movement to make climate policies more accurately reflect the carbon footprint of wood biomass, both in U.S. circles and beyond. This goal has taken on increased importance as the industry seeks to expand beyond the South and Northeast into regions where it has yet to establish a major presence.

Stopping the Expansion

Back in Longview, climate activists prepare to fight what could become the state’s first industrial-scale wood-pellet manufacturing plant. Locals plan to speak out against Drax’s Longview project at a hearing expected later this year. Across the Columbia River, 350PDX has been educating the public about impacts of the biomass industry by tabling at public events and hosting a screening of the documentary Burned. Other West Coast biomass plants have also drawn opposition.

At the port of Grays Harbor, two hours’ north of Longview, Pacific Northwest Renewable Energy wants to build a pellet plant comparable in size to the Drax project. Two more plants, with a combined ability to produce about a million tons of pellets annually, are proposed by Golden State Natural Resources in California.

To bolster political support for these plants in green-leaning West Coast states, the companies involved have leaned into a new talking point: that removing “waste” wood from forests will somehow blunt increasingly devastating fire seasons.

“This industry is playing on people’s justified fear of fire,” said Rita Vaughan Frost, an Oregon-based forest advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But their demand for a product to constantly deliver to customers will actually shift resources away from fire-management regimes based on the best science, such as Indigenous practices that include prescribed burns.”

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Despite purporting concern about fire, the biomass industry on the West Coast has proposed doing something very similar to what it’s already done in the Southeast and New England: turning carbon-rich, biodiverse forests into tree plantations whose purpose is to grow wood as fast as possible for conversion into fuel.

Ironically, this is happening even as the climate benefits of intact forests are drawing unprecedented attention.

In December the Biden administration announced it will amend national forest management plans all over the country with the intent of protecting old-growth forests. And in Washington State there’s a growing movement to protect mature “legacy forests” that don’t yet qualify as old growth but provide significant carbon storage benefits. The biomass industry’s goals complicate such efforts.

“I want people to know we have a precious opportunity right now to keep this destructive industry out of our region before it gets established and expands,” says Bell of 350PDX. “We need to focus on that, because if we let them gain a foothold our work will get that much harder.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

How Low-Income Families Can Reap Rewards From Solar Energy

How Does Habitat Fragmentation Harm Wildlife?

To understand the problem, look to three monkey species, each of whom face the threat in different (and not always successful) ways.

Imagine a vast agricultural field, endless rows of soy or corn running for acres in every direction. Now imagine that this field grows where a mighty forest once stood. The forest, long since chopped down by human hands and machines, now exists in just a handful of pockets, a few spots here and there where the original trees — and their inhabitants — still live.

It shouldn’t be a hard image to visualize. We’ve all seen it: the lonely patches of forest, grassland or other natural systems squeezed between farmland, buildings or highways.

These pockets of undeveloped land may be small, but for many wild plants or animals, they’re all that remains. Those often-endangered species depend on fragmented habitats for their continued survival.

But although the sites serve as vital refuges for wildlife, fragmented habitat comes with a cost — sometimes many costs — and species carry those burdens unevenly.

To understand how habitat fragmentation affects wildlife, I often think of a study I first covered in 2016 about three monkey species — the white-fronted capuchin (Cebus albifrons), the Venezuelan red howler (Alouatta seniculus), and the critically endangered brown spider monkey (Ateles hybridus). All three live in Colombia’s Magdalena Valley, where they’ve been forced to adapt to life in and around massive cattle ranches.

During the study researchers visited 10 forest fragments that had become isolated from each other by the cattle pastures, the San Juan River and natural savanna. They studied each area for signs of the three monkeys and the health of the forest itself.

In the process they developed three case studies about the ways species adapt — or fail to adapt — to habitat fragmentation. They also provided insight into how other animals might fare in similar situations.

Case 1: The White-Fronted Capuchin

Capuchins, gorgeous, cream-colored monkeys who weigh about 7 pounds, seemed to fare best. The researchers found about 130 groups of them living in all but the smallest forest fragment. A highly adaptable species, capuchins are omnivores — eating everything from fruits to small mammals — and forage both in trees and on the ground. They’re also capable of traveling great distances.

A brown and white monkey hangs upside-down on branches — White-fronted capuchin (Cebus albifrons) by Rodrigo Diaz Lupanow (CC BY 2.0 Deed)

Those traits add up: The researchers concluded that the species is “not strongly affected by anthropogenic disturbance.” They even observed groups of capuchins traveling from one forest fragment to another, a sign that they’ve adapted to short bursts of time in the human-dominated parts of the landscape.

Capuchins have one other key advantage. They only breed every other year, and they mature slowly, but this appears to give them time to develop “individual learning and [the] ability to adjust to environmental variation,” according to the study.

Case 2: The Venezuelan Red Howler

Howler monkeys (who, despite the nation in their name, live in at least five countries) also did well, although not quite as well as capuchins. Researchers documented 87 groups of these primates. Again, they appeared in all but the smallest of the 10 forest fragments, but they displayed a tendency to stick close to the bigger trees at each site.

A red monkey stares into the camera, long tail wrapped around a branch — Venezuelan red howler (Alouatta seniculus) by Mario A. Santana-Tobar via Mamíferos de Colombia (CC BY-NC 2.0 Deed)

Those big trees provide most of what the animals need. As the researchers note, arboreal howlers are extremely slow-moving primates who are very careful about the way they exert their energy. That’s the point of their famous howl, which can be heard for miles: It warns off other howler groups and prevents fighting over food resources.

As for that food, they’re primarily leaf-eaters — the big trees provide a steady supply of food without the need to keep moving around during the day — although howlers can adapt to different food sources. But they didn’t venture out into the fields, as they aren’t adapted to life on the ground. In time this will limit each group’s success.

Case 3: The Brown Spider Monkey

Critically endangered spider monkeys fared worst. The researchers only made 33 observations for this species, all in the “best” five forest fragments, with high-quality canopy density that supported the highly arboreal primates.

A brown/gray monkey with bright eyes against a leafy background — Brown spider monkey by Alianza para Ecosistemas Criticos via the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Public domain.

These spider monkeys, a large-bodied species reaching up to 20 pounds, only eat ripe fruits, which they prefer to forage high in the tree canopy. This means their diet is extremely limited, as are the types of habitats they can inhabit.

Interestingly, spider monkeys appear to be very social, but groups in the study actively dispersed from each other to avoid individual competition for food. Which is a good thing, because there wasn’t a lot of it.

What Can We Learn From This?

Based on these observations, researchers concluded that forest fragment quality may be more important for some species than the size of the fragment or how isolated it is from other forests.

Size did matter, though. The smallest fragment, which was only 0.7 hectares (1.7 acres), had no monkeys of any species. That suggests that there must be a threshold beneath which a forest fragment becomes inhospitable to primates.

Although the capuchins appear to have adapted about as well as they could, the researchers did note that the forest fragmentation in the Magdalena Valley took place recently, so long-term negative effects may still be waiting in the wings.

Meanwhile, the study offered important clues to protecting critically endangered brown spider monkeys, previously considered one of the world’s most endangered primates (they only fell off that list in recent years because other species were doing so much worse). They remain threatened by habitat destruction, hunting, and the illegal pet trade. As the 2014 “Primates in Peril” report pointed out, the species at the time was restricted to less than 18% of its historic habitat in Colombia, and less than 1% percent of that habitat was protected. This study provided conservationists with some strategies to pick which of those remaining habitats (the biggest ones with the biggest trees) needed to be protected.

Tiny Habitats, Bigger Lessons

We can also learn a lot about other species — and our broader conservation priorities — from these three monkey species.

Many other species face similar threats from habitat fragmentation. As the natural world gets squeezed into smaller and smaller refugia (last-chance habitat fragments), we’ll need to pay attention to what species and habitats remain and plan for their long-term survival.

That’s because small groups can disappear in the blink of an eye. The arrival of a disease, predator, natural disaster or other threat can wipe out an isolated species population or an entire habitat fragment. Constant monitoring will help conservationists adapt and respond to these threats before they become crises.

Most species will need some sort of connectivity between habitat fragments, allowing them to move as food supplies (and the seasons) shift. They’ll also need to find other populations of their kind, to prevent the inbreeding common in isolated groups. Many conservationists devote their careers to figuring out issues related to migration and connectivity.

Speaking of migration, understanding a fragment’s role on the greater landscape remains an essential piece of the puzzle. Think of birds, for example. As they migrate, they need places to land, feed and rest on every leg of their journey. That means preserving multiple habitats, even if they’re all fragments, across the landscape.

Specialist species will need the most help. Like the spider monkey, if a species relies on a specific food or a particular quality of tree, those needs will require conservation prioritization. If a species is a generalist, able to adapt to its circumstances — think about the racoons or deer in your suburban neighborhood, or the capuchin in this study — it may need less help. Although even then, preserving green space remains important.

Fragments also risk further degradation because they butt up against fences, roads or other forms of human development, which allow noise, pollution, introduced species, human hunters, dogs and cats, and a variety of other threats to make their way inside (a process of further degradation known as the edge effect). Any of these threats can chip away at a habitat’s unique qualities until it becomes uninhabitable. To preserve the most important fragments, we may need to establish buffer zones — think of them as the DMZ between nature and humanity — or find other ways to mitigate ongoing risks.

And of course, some species will never do well in fragments — for instance, wide-ranging creatures like grizzly bears, mountain lions and wolverines, who each require large territories without competition from others of their kind. We need to preserve large swathes of land and water for species like this to survive.

This may sound insurmountable in an ever-expanding human world, but there’s one more important lesson to consider: Fragmentation doesn’t have to be forever.

That’s why whenever I think about habitat fragmentation, I also think of the conservation group Saving Nature, which buys up farmland and other degraded lands, replants them, and recreates habitats and migration corridors. One of their most notable successes has been in Colombia (the nation where the study of the three monkeys took place), where they’ve secured nearly 4,500 acres toward a goal of creating a vital forest corridor.

florida panther — A Florida panther in the middle of a road. Photo: National Parks Service

Closer to home, I also look to the example of the Florida Wildlife Corridor, which since 2021 has promoted the conservation of more than 170,000 acres to help enable species such as the Florida panther to flow freely through the Sunshine State. This work, according to a new report, also protects people by reducing the threat of wildfires and increasing Florida’s climate resilience.

Then there’s the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, which aims to connect and preserve more than half a million square miles across western North America. They’ve already made great progress and, in the process, helped a wide range of species.

Dozens if not hundreds of other connectivity projects, both large and small, are taking place right now around the world — such as the world’s largest wildlife bridge, due to open near Los Angeles in 2026. And everywhere you look, you’ll find people working to remove dams or fences, or to make green spaces — parks, refuges, rivers or their own backyards — more hospitable to local and migrating wildlife, and to connect the green dots of fragmented habitats whenever they can.

We’re repairing the damage, one acre at a time, while we also fight a war against further attrition. We can’t do it fast enough, and many species and habitats don’t have much time to wait. But for rare plants and animals, every inch counts.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Why Climate Grief Is an Essential for Climate Action

Conservation Works — and Science Just Proved It

But at the same time, it doesn’t take much to do tremendous damage to endangered species.

Science just proved it: Conservation efforts around the world are working.

According to a study published April 26 in the journal Science, human efforts to help endangered and at-risk species have proven overwhelmingly successful at improving their status.

The researchers — 33 authors from universities and conservation groups — examined 186 studies that measured the effectiveness of conservation efforts over time. The meta-study put the results clearly:

“In two-thirds of cases, conservation either improved the state of biodiversity or at least slowed declines. Specifically, we find that interventions targeted at species and ecosystems, such as invasive species control, habitat loss reduction and restoration, protected areas, and sustainable management, are highly effective and have large effect sizes.”

Interestingly, the study found that more recent conservation projects were the most likely to have gone well. We’ve learned a lot over the past few decades, which means we’re doing better all the time.

Toward that point, the paper found that even conservation efforts that don’t work can provide critical information to help future programs, as two of the study authors wrote for The Conversation: “For example, in India, removing an invasive algae simply caused it to spread elsewhere. Conservationists can now try a different strategy that may be more successful.”

And here’s the even bigger takeaway: The benefits aren’t just for the species that are direct targets of conservation efforts. “One of the most interesting findings was that even when a conservation intervention didn’t work for the species that is was intended, other species unintentionally benefited,” lead author Penny Langhammer, executive vice president of the conservation group Re:wild, told BBC News. That often happens when conservationists mitigate a threat in order to help one species but help other nearby plants or animals in the process.

Of course, we could be doing even better: Even though we know conservation works, there’s just nowhere nearly enough funding to help every species in need. As the authors wrote in The Conversation:

“…a comprehensive global conservation program would require an investment of between $178 and $524 billion. By comparison, in 2022 alone, subsidies for the production and use of fossil fuels — which are ultimately destructive to nature as fossil fuel burning is the leading cause of climate change — totaled $7 trillion globally. That is 13 times the upper estimate of what is needed annually to fund the protection and restoration of biodiversity. Today, just $121 billion is invested annually in conservation worldwide.”

The paper itself lists dozens of great conservation examples, but you can find even more in recent news:

- Critically endangered red wolves (Canis rufus) have enjoyed a much-needed baby boom, with eight new cubs born to a pack in North Carolina last month. Red wolves only have one breeding male left in the wild, so these cubs represent the future of the species. (The proud papa came from a conservation breeding center in Washington state after the previous male was killed by a car — further proof that these wolves wouldn’t continue to exist without dedicated humans looking out for their future.)
- Devil’s Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) are also having a helluva good time and have reached their highest spring population level in 25 years. At just 191 tiny fish, they’re not exactly populous, but this is a huge boost from 2013, when the species’ spring population plummeted to a low of just 35. This sets them up for a good breeding season ahead, when their population (which fluctuates according to the time of year) could hit 500 or more.
- Meanwhile giant ground pangolins (Smutsia gigantea) have returned to Kenya for the first time in more than half a century. Conservationists put the current population at just 30-80 animals, but it’s a start, and it’s all due to the nonprofit Project Pangolin’s work to remove electric fences and other threats that prevented the return of these heavily poached animals.
- Similarly, spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) have taken up residence in Gabon for the first time since 1949. A few individuals had briefly wandered into the country over the past few decades, but none of these important predators had stuck around. Now a new study reveals that some of them have finally decided to call their former country home once again — a call for scientists to understand how they did it so others can follow.
- Also in Gabon, a new study shows that forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council in that country and the Republic of Congo now enjoy greater abundances of large mammals such as elephants and gorillas, as well as other critically endangered species.
- Asian elephants living in recently protected habitats in Cambodia appear to have increased in number and now travel in groups of up to 20 or 30, compared to groups of 3-5 just a few years ago.
- In the UK 150 harvest mice (Micromys minutus) have been reintroduced into a nature reserve near London, the first time they’ve lived in the area since 1979. Conservationists have protected meadows and created wildlife corridors to make the wooded reserve more hospitable to the rewilded mice.

That just scratches the surface, but it proves a point: Humans pushed most of these species toward extinction, but we can also lift them back, given enough time, effort and funding.

Counterpoint

Of course, not everything goes well for imperiled wildlife.

As Mongabay reports, a single gang of poachers may have killed at least 10% of the entire Javan rhino species (Rhinoceros sondaicus) since 2019. A 2021 camera-trap survey put the Javan rhino population at 34 confirmed individuals, although a government report earlier that year estimated the number at 76. Either count was bad enough, and now this gang is suspected to have killed at least seven of the rhinos, according to government officials, pushing the species ever closer to extinction.

This brutal news hit the environmental media like a lead balloon. Other than Mongabay, no media outlets covered the story in English in the week that followed, according to freelance journalist Jeremy Hance broke the news and later wrote on social media, “How can we do anything about the mass extinction crisis if the news refuses to cover it?”

A week ago @MongabayOrg published the news that a poaching gang killed 10% of the remaining Javan rhinos on Earth. A week later no one else has covered this.

How can we do anything about the mass extinction crisis if the news refuses to cover it? https://t.co/J2ll0D2JUc

— Jeremy Hance (@jeremy_hance) May 3, 2024

This story — and the journalistic apathy around it — cuts deep. I’ve long been vocal in my criticism that environmental journalism doesn’t do enough to cover wildlife issues and the extinction crisis. Climate change — as critical as it is — has sucked much of the air from the room and left little space for covering other topics.

Part of the challenge is that bad news about endangered species and wildlife is often so heart-wrenching. Stories like poachers killing Javan rhinos embody the cruelest aspects of human character and social conditions. Faced with painful facts and few actionable solutions, many readers tune it out and turn the page.

But we can’t turn a blind eye to the multiple crises around the world. The media needs to cover them, and people who care need to read and share them along with the good-news stories — to help inspire further action and fight the overwhelming ennui that can settle on us in the face of destruction.

If the bad news makes you angry, use that anger. And look to the success stories to keep you going and build on what’s already been done.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Species Spotlight: The Haunting Tale of Kagu, the Ghosts of the Forest

The Silent Tragedy of Local Restrictions on Renewable Energy

New research shows how policies blocking cleaner energy sources, often inspired by persistent disinformation, harm the communities that adopt them.

Communities across the United States may soon find themselves facing a grim scenario. By adopted local ordinances that obstruct the development of new renewable energy resources within their borders, they have put themselves at risk of missing out on the next big technology-driven economic revolution: the clean energy transition.

As you read this, rapidly advancing renewable energy technology is transforming how we power the U.S. economy in the 21st century, bringing with it new economic opportunities and social and environmental benefits. Yet the communities that have enacted or are considering anti-renewable energy ordinances may be left watching as the better jobs, cheaper electricity, and cleaner environment that come with this transition pass them by.

Many of these communities already face high unemployment and poverty rates, among other economic and social challenges, making the consequences of their legislation even more tragic.

The press and energy policy researchers have focused on these policies’ potential impact on achieving our nation’s broader decarbonization goals, but to date they’ve overlooked these broader consequences of anti-renewable energy ordinances.

It’s crucial that we closely watch how the benefits and costs of the clean energy transition are distributed, because previous technology-driven economic revolutions — such as those brought about by steam engines, electrification, and digital computers — have tended to reinforce preexisting socioeconomic inequities. The clean energy transition offers a critical opportunity not just to break this pattern, but to reverse it.

Can we imagine the clean energy transition unfolding in a way that reduces inequality?

In our recently published report, my co-author and I explored these issues by creating a new tool called the Risk of Missing Out Index, which scores each county in the continental United States based on the extent of harm its residents are likely to face because of local restrictions on renewable energy. The ROMO Index takes into account county-level data on employment and income, the amount of money that households spend on energy costs (their “energy burden”), and the presence of anti-renewable energy ordinances and other indicators of local opposition to renewable energy.

We also released an interactive map that allows users to see what, if any, clean energy restrictions exist in their communities and the impacts those restrictions might be having for them and their neighbors.

Our analysis reveals that anti-renewable energy ordinances are causing significant economic and social harms to communities across the United States, including some of the poorest and most economically distressed in the nation. One-quarter of all counties in the continental United States have restrictions in place targeting the development of wind, solar, or battery storage. Nearly a third of these communities are already experiencing substantially higher unemployment, lower per capita income, and other socioeconomic risks relative to comparable areas. And more than a third contain households facing high levels of “energy burden.”

To be clear, the point of this research is not to malign all local policies affecting renewable energy development. Plenty of room exists for sensible policies aimed at ensuring this development takes place at the pace needed to meet the challenge of the climate crisis without sacrificing the public interest. Many of the ordinances covered in our report, though, had the effect and intent of thwarting most renewable energy projects in a given community.

One County’s Story

Iroquois County in eastern Illinois illustrates the potential harms of these local restrictions. The county has a relatively high ROMO index due to its large low-income population, high unemployment rate, and low educational attainment level compared to the rest of the United States. Economic conditions there are at risk of getting even worse. Agriculture, the county’s dominant industry, has been left increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. As a result, agricultural output has decreased significantly in recent years, putting the livelihoods of farmers in jeopardy.

Renewable energy development would seem to offer Iroquois County residents a badly needed economic lifeline, providing a pathway for diversifying local income sources and fortifying the community’s tax base. Thanks to its unique geography, the county ranks high for wind energy potential. Unfortunately its county government has adopted ordinances that significantly limit the development of both solar- and wind-power generation.

The good news for Iroquois County is that the Illinois state legislature has recently taken action to prevent the harms of these kinds of local ordinances. In January 2023 it enacted legislation that established statewide zoning standards for renewable energy development, preempting those restrictions imposed by Iroquois County’s government (although the Iroquois County restrictions still remain on the books). Time will tell whether this measure provides renewable energy developers with the legal certainty they need to commence utility-scale projects in Iroquois County.

Optimism vs. Misinformation

Significantly, our research also uncovered other reasons for optimism. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers enhanced tax credits for renewable energy development in places deemed to be “energy communities” due to their weak economic performance and heavy dependence on fossil fuel extraction and use as a source of employment. Our analysis confirmed that relatively few energy communities (fewer than 1 in 5 overall) had adopted restrictive polies on renewable energy development. These results suggest that the IRA’s enhanced tax program has a lot of potential help diversify and strengthen their economies.

Still, these findings raise an important question of their own: Why would so many communities adopt policies that go against their own citizens’ welfare?

Our research indicates that in some cases these ordinances may reflect good faith misunderstandings about the pros and cons of hosting renewable energy infrastructure.

In many cases, though, they’re the result of misinformation efforts designed to thwart renewable energy development. For example, our report identifies several campaigns carried out with the material support of the fossil fuel industry or organizations opposed to renewable energy on ideological grounds.

Whatever the explanation, it appears these restrictions are rarely the result of a well-functioning local democratic process — one capable of addressing mistakes or misinformation. Accordingly, our report offers recommendations for strengthening these processes so authentic community choice is better aligned with a just clean energy transition. They include better outreach strategies to rural communities by lawmakers and project developers, a greater commitment to using Communities Benefits Agreements, and better planning for land stewardship in conjunction with renewable energy infrastructure development.

The clean energy transition offers the United States a valuable opportunity to build a fairer, stronger, and more inclusive economy. The path for achieving this goal must begin with replacing misguided local opposition with meaningful and durable local support.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

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Previously in The Revelator:

30 Ways Environmentalists Can Participate in Democracy

Species Spotlight: The Haunting Tale of Kagu, the Ghosts of the Forest

For this national symbol of New Caledonia and one-of-a-kind avian species, time may be running short.

Known as the “Ghosts of the Forest” due to their pale color and ghostly cries, the elusive and endangered kagu of New Caledonia are haunted by the apparitions of human interference, invasive predators, and habitat destruction as the past transgressions of humans threaten to erase them from the land of the living.

Species Name:

Kagu or cagou (Rhynochetos jubatus)

Description:

Nearly flightless, the kagu is a large, ground-dwelling bird with whiteish- or blueish-gray feathers, dark bands on its primaries, and bright-red legs and beak. Adults stand around 22 inches in height and have a wingspan up to 32 inches, while their weight ranges between 1.5 to 2.5 pounds depending on the season. Adorned with a long, heron-like beak, erectile crest, and covered in a powdered down to protect them from rain and extreme temperatures, they are the only known bird species to have nasal corns — thick skin flaps that protect their nostrils as they root around in the soil for small insects to eat. Their only known living relative are the sunbitterns of South and Central America.

Where It’s Found:

Kagu are endemic to the dense mountain forests and shrub lands of New Caledonia. Among that island chain, they are found only on the main island of Grande Terre. If sufficient prey is available, kagu can thrive in environments ranging from rainforests to dry lowland forests. They have even been known to survive in the drier shrublands associated with New Caledonia’s ultramafic rocks.

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A post shared by Coexist by Alia Bhatt (@tocoexist)

Major Threats:

Because kagu are restricted to such a small and isolated geographic range, they’re more susceptible to threats and less resilient to population declines than other species who live on the mainland.

Discovered by Europeans in 1852, when the French colonized New Caledonia, the first kagu was described as a specimen when a live bird was brought to the Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1860. The scientific intrigue that followed resulted in hundreds of birds being trapped and shipped off for display to zoos and museums around the world. To go along with this trapping, the colonizers began to find other uses for kagu. They became a local delicacy and cherished pets due to their beauty and personable behavior. Locals also prized their ghostly gray feathers, which they used for fashionable women’s hats in the 1900s, leading to even further declines of the wild population.

Along with these threats, the French also brought invasive mammal species to Grande Terre in the form of pigs, rats, cats and dogs. Before these animals arrived, the only mammals on the island were bats, and the kagu lived with no natural predators. But once these voracious animals arrived, they decimated the kagu population. Pigs and rats were observed raiding the ground-dwelling kagu nests and consuming their eggs (kagu only lay a single egg per season), while cats and dogs preyed on both young and adult kagu. Rats alone were responsible for over 50% of nestling losses.

These invasive mammals nearly caused the outright extinction of the species in 2017, when two stray dogs entered the Parc des Grandes Fougeres wildlife refuge of New Caledonia and went on an unparalleled killing spree. This catastrophic event lasted over two months, resulting in the deaths of over half of all radio-tagged individuals in the park and more than 75% of kagu families being destroyed.

Today the kagu face a new threat in the form of habitat loss due to the urbanization of New Caledonia’s forests and wetlands. Activities such as mining, agriculture, and logging have resulted in a significant loss of suitable habitats for the kagu, leaving less than half of the island’s rainforest untouched and safe for foraging and nesting.

IUCN Red List Status:

Once listed as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) when the wild population was estimated at under 1,000 birds, the kagu’s conservation status has since been updated to “endangered” with a current estimation of fewer than 2,000 individuals in the wild.

Notable Conservation Programs or Legal Protections:

Due to its relative anonymity outside dedicated wildlife circles and a lack of detailed studies, conservation efforts for the kagu have progressed slowly since concern about its population first arose in 1904. But noticeable positive impacts on wild populations are finally being seen.

The attempt made to protect this species ran from 1977 to 1982; a campaign to phase out the kagu pet trade was initiated by the New Caledonian government, and successful captive breeding and reintroduction efforts began in 1978. Now the kagu is recognized as the national bird of New Caledonia and is afforded its full protection.

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A post shared by Verena Burger (@verena.burger)

From 2009 to 2020, a Kagu Species Action Plan was compiled to further protect the species, encompassing the wildlife reserves of Parc des Grandes Fougere, Pac Provincial Riviere Blue, and Reserve Speciale de Faune et de Flore de la Nodela. These reserves have been successfully tagging, breeding, and releasing kagu since 2011. Despite being protected reserves, the occasional deaths by invasive wildlife still happen within these parks. Only Riviere Bleue enjoys the additional benefit of being a dog-controlled area. Current legislations and educational programs are in place to limit incidental captures or killings caused by hunting dogs. To assist in these legislations, a pilot study began in 2013 to study wandering dog tribes in Massif des Levres.

Many zoos around the world — such as the Toledo Zoo and Aquarium and the world-famous San Diego Zoo — are doing their part to help save the kagu by engaging in carefully monitored breeding programs. San Diego Zoo Global has taken things a step further by compiling a highly detailed database of kagu DNA, in cooperation with the New Caledonia government, to help keep the captive kagu population diverse and prevent unwanted inbreeding.

In addition to captive-breeding and reintroduction programs, predator mitigation, and dog ownership education, recent conservation efforts center on habitat restoration, replanting of native trees, and strictly monitoring mining operations to prevent further destruction, but there’s still a long way to go before the kagu can rest easy.

My Favorite Experience:

As a bird keeper at the Toledo Zoo and Aquarium, I had the immense pleasure of working closely with our mated pair of kagu, whom I named Alfred and Ethel. It was a daunting task at first as I’d never seen, or even heard of, kagu before. Here I was, stepping in the open aviary with them after just two days of training, suddenly in charge of caring for these highly endangered birds: monitoring their breeding behaviors, recording their weights and diets, and making sure they stayed as healthy as possible.

It didn’t help that Alfred was highly territorial and liked to sneak up and jab at your legs with his incredibly sharp beak to let you know he was boss, making it difficult to do routine work inside the aviary.

Instead of being intimidated by his territorial nature, as some of the other keepers were, I decided to make friends with him in hopes that he would feel more at ease with my presence and his surroundings, improving the chance of successful breeding. This process started out slowly, with me bringing worms (his and Ethel’s favorite snack) with me every time I entered the aviary and tossing them on the ground while I went about cleaning the enclosure. This routine produced surprisingly good results, and our relationship quickly improved.

Once Alfred and Ethel realized I’d bring worms for them every time I came into the aviary, they began to wait for me just inside the door each morning and would follow me around until I gave them what they wanted. Ethel was the shier of the two and would usually only take the worm after I stepped away; but with time she began to hover, like Alfred. With the birds’ focus on the yummy treats, I used the worms to train the kagu for checkups, placing the worms by the scale so they’d step onto it without having to be restrained and stressed. I’d also use them to keep the birds in one place while I trimmed their nails and checked their feathers or as a distraction while I rearranged their enclosure to make it more like their natural habitat.

This routine went on for about a month — and then something amazing happened. One morning while I was cleaning the large pond in their enclosure, Alfred came up to watch what I was doing. This in itself was nothing new, since he was always curious, but this time he stood right up against my leg, leaning into it. He was willingly touching me without pecking me! Not wanting to ruin the moment or scare him, I slowly sat down at the edge of the pond while it filled and waited to see what he would do next. He did the same exact same thing, settling down right beside me and staring at me with his big black eyes. To see if he would let me, I reached out and gently scratched the top of his head. He froze, perhaps unsure how to react, but didn’t move away or try to peck at me. I kept scratching and talking quietly, and he started to make a soft cooing sound I’d never heard before from deep inside his chest. And as I slowly worked my way down toward his keel (a useful area to check to see if a bird is getting enough nourishment), Alfred began to lean into my scratches, his eyes closing. He was loving it.

From that day forward, Alfred and I developed a ritual each morning: He’d wait for me by the door, do what I needed him to do for training to get his worms, follow and stand next to me while I cleaned the aviary, and finally, settle beside me while I gave him some head and chest scratches as we waited for his pond to fill. It was a routine we both looked forward to and a memory I will carry with me forever.

What Else Do We Need to Understand or Do to Protect This Species?

There are a few things we can do to help continue the upward growth in kagu populations.

We should pay strict attention to population size, distribution, and behavioral trends, as well as evaluate the gene flow and fragmentation between subpopulations to eliminate inbreeding within territories and ensure a healthier, more successful gene pool.

Also, we should study the current effects and volume of rat predation on kagu nests to come up with a long-term solution, as well as perform further studies of dog groups within the island.

We can survey poorly known forest areas for habitat viability and restore deforested or mined areas so that released kagu have new, predator-free territories to breed in, or consider a reintroduction of the species on Panie Mountain or other islands within New Caledonia.

Last, we can continue to offer educational programs about the kagu, the dangers it faces, and what people can do to help, such as spaying and neutering their dogs and not allowing them to roam free.

Share your stories: Do you live in or near a threatened habitat or community, or have you worked to study or protect endangered wildlife? You’re invited to share your stories in our ongoing features, Protect This Place and Species Spotlight.

Previously in The Revelator:

Breeding the ‘Snot Otter’

How Do You Protect Something Most People Will Never See?

Meet the Fab Five: A combination of visual and virtual community engagement tools using charismatic species to help win hearts and minds toward saving the ocean.

How do you get people to care about something they can’t see?

That has always presented a challenge in environmental conservation messaging, where a consumer’s decisions can affect people or species on the other side of the planet. It can be hard to connect the dots between a candy bar containing palm oil sold in Indiana to the destruction of an orangutan’s habitat in Indonesia, or how purchasing a cheeseburger in Nebraska contributes to deforestation of the Amazon.

While advocates have had some notable successes communicating these threats, promoting similar efforts to protect ocean life has proven even harder — even for communities that live right next to those waters.

“For many people in the public, thinking about what lives in marine environments is a foreign concept,” says Nina Wootton, a marine researcher at the University of Adelaide. “Unless you’re a fisher or you love to SCUBA dive, the chance of you ever seeing the marine environment is low, especially for offshore areas. The benefits of protecting the ocean … are unknown and unseen to many people.”

A new study hopes to turn that around.

The (Hidden) Value of MPAs

Two of the biggest threats to marine biodiversity come from unsustainable overfishing and habitat loss — both of which also threaten the food security and livelihoods of coastal communities.

To fight these threats, governments have increasingly turned to creating marine protected areas (MPAs), essentially underwater national parks that protect habitats and organisms that live within them.

Well-designed and well-implemented MPAs have more fish, bigger fish, and more species of fish than in similar unprotected areas, allowing recovery of once-overfished species and benefitting surrounding waters. Recovered species don’t stay in MPAs — they expand their habitats through what is known as the “spillover effect.”

But misunderstandings about the goals of MPAs, and a sometimes top-down heavy-handed approach to implementing them, can make no-fishing zones a tough sell in coastal communities which depend on fishing. This, in turn, can reduce an MPA’s effectiveness, or make it impossible to establish them in the first place.

What can we do to build local support for MPAs and enhance their success? Wootton and her colleagues tried using an innovative collection of virtual and visual tools to persuade people of the benefits of an MPA. It focused on beloved marine species that would be protected by an MPA network, which the researchers called the “Fab Five.”

A study about their efforts was published this March in the journal Biological Conservation.

The Fab Five

As previous work has shown, persuading people of the need to protect the environment is complex and difficult, and simply presenting a dry and technical list of facts doesn’t do the trick. Generating public support for the implementation of marine protected areas is vitally important to their success.

“In the end it’s mostly community members who use those MPAs, so it is essential that everyone is on board,” says Wootton. “Many coastal communities rely on marine resources, such as fishing and marine tourism, for their livelihoods, and implementing an MPA without community input leads to conflict and potential economic losses. But when we engage with the community during the MPA planning process, it can help address concerns and mitigate negative economic impacts.”

Past efforts to generate community buy-in for new protected areas have shown that the process is complex, time-consuming, and can meet with mixed results. The communities’ costs from limiting fishing are clear and immediate, while the benefits are uncertain. And for people who don’t depend directly on fishing for their livelihoods, it can be hard to get them to think about marine biodiversity at all.

Wootton and a team of marine scientists, in partnership with First Nations Sea Country peoples, wanted to assess what gets community members to care about the ocean and support an MPA. Working in South Australia, which has 26 commonwealth or state marine parks, they picked five iconic local species who benefit from the MPA, including the Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea), giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama), white-bellied sea eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster), great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), and southern right whale (Eubalaena australis).

Two sea lions against a sandy beach bellowing at each other — Australian sea lions. Photo: Graham Winterflood (CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed)

With these charismatic but varied species in hand, they then engaged in a large outreach project involving virtual tools and artwork featuring those animals.

And it worked. The authors report that the visually engaging narrative created by their “Fab Five” tools not only got people engaged in the discussion, but they contained to engage over time. Schools held “Fab Five” art contests, community festivals featured “Fab Five” mascots, and museums planned exhibits around the animals. Volunteers at each event handed out educational materials directing people to learn more about the MPA.

This had a collective effect, too. Media coverage of the South Australia MPAs and associated issues dramatically increased, spreading once-low background awareness far and wide.

Marketing for a Good Cause

“The Fab Five is based on the big 5 safari animals from Africa,” Wootton says, referring to the most famous and beloved species that people want to see (and originally wanted to hunt) when visiting Africa. “By choosing five charismatic animals that are particularly important to South Australia, we were able to get the public to form a connection with the marine environment, which helped in guided a deeper understanding of what MPAs do and why they’re good.”

Graphic used in community outreach (including on t-shirts and stickers) by the research team, courtesy of the authors.

The use of these “Fab Five” beloved Australian marine animals was an example of conservation marketing.

“Conservation marketing is leveraging the same tools and techniques that businesses use to sell us products, but for social good like the conservation of biodiversity,” says Diogo Verissimo, a research fellow at the University of Oxford who was not involved with this study. “Threats to biodiversity come from things people do, and stopping or mitigating these threats means we need to get people to think or act a little bit differently. Marketing tools are great for that.”

And while Verissimo suggests taking a step back and doing some initial marketing research to see which species would be most effective at generating public support for an MPA, he was pleased with some of the selections.

“Anyone who is involved in conservation tends to assume that a given species is beloved by all, but even with really popular animals there will be people who dislike them, so it’s very important to understand local cultural and social contexts when using featured animals,” he says. “Whales and seals are used very widely as featured animals, but species like sharks are more polarizing, with some people who love them and some people who really dislike them. And it was really nice to see a cuttlefish featured, because not many invertebrates make the cut in conservation marketing.”

Check out our recent paper on engaging communities with marine parks. We used the ‘Fab 5’ to help students connect with all the wonders of the ocean. Read the paper here: https://t.co/VSCDwIisXM 🦈🐙🦭🐳🦅 #MPA #Scicomm #SciArt pic.twitter.com/8w561W7rAU

— Nina Wootton (@DrNinaMarina) March 18, 2024

Strikingly, this new paper reports that traditional community advisory panels, often used to establish a formal place for community input on a proposed MPA, did not work here — people didn’t even show up to have the conversation. And surprisingly, despite the importance of coastal resources to local communities, many of the people her team spoke with had no opinion about the MPA because they had never heard of it.

This failure of traditional outreach makes the success of the Fab Five campaign even more valuable.

“We found that visual engagement, including the use of artwork, helped significantly in getting the public to connect with the marine environment,” Wootton says.

Two women hold aloft a large painted canvas in a schoolroom setting — Emmalene Richards and Nina Wootton in Barngarla Country with an artwork created with Port Lincoln High School students. Photo courtesy Nina Wootton

With this success in South Australia, Wootton says she believes that the Fab Five model could easily be adapted to other locations, focusing on species found there.

“I suggest trying to include a range of animals, some of which are well known and some of which are not, so you can get people interested while also teaching them something new,” she says. “And try to pick a few species that are a little bit whacky and weird. It makes it more fun!”

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Previously in The Revelator:

Should the Ocean Have Legal Rights?

Smothered by Seaweed: Sargassum Wreaks Havoc on Caribbean Ecosystems

Its growth driven to epic levels by climate change and fertilizer runoff, sargassum puts dozens of species — and people — at risk.

Originally published by Centro de Periodismo Investigativo with The BVI Beacon, The Virgin Islands Daily News, America Futura – El País América, Jamaica and the RCI Guadeloupe.

For more than 20 years, Mexican biologist María del Carmen García Rivas has led a crusade to protect the coral lining the Yucatan Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea.

As director of the Puerto Morelos Reefs National Park in México, she has advocated for reforms to reduce runoff and other pollution from coastal development.

She has spearheaded efforts to control lionfish, an introduced species that has put at risk the nearly 670 species of marine fauna that inhabit the park. And since 2018, she has organized brigades to restore reefs damaged by tissue-destroying coral diseases known as white syndromes. But now, yet another threat has been keeping her awake at night: massive blooms of sargassum seaweed reaching the coast of the park.

“When the sargassum, a macroalgae that usually floats, reaches the coasts, it begins to decompose, generating an environment without oxygen that kills different organisms,” she said. “It mainly affects species that cannot move or move very little, such as some starfish, sea urchins, the sea grasses themselves, and of course corals.”

Along the coast of Quintana Roo, the Mexican state where the Puerto Morelos Reefs National Park is based, the local government collected 70 tons of sargassum during 2023 alone, said Huguette Hernández Gómez, the state’s Secretary of Ecology and Environment. Added to what they collected during the last four years, the figure reaches 200 tons.

Regional Problem

This story is familiar across the Caribbean. Though modest amounts of sargassum benefit marine life in the region, massive influxes arriving since 2011 have upset the ecological balance in some areas in ways that could be irreversible. Scientists blame the explosive growth of the seaweed on global pollution, climate change, and other international problems that Caribbean islands did little to cause and lack the political power to resolve.

The seaweed has exacerbated existing stress on the region’s reefs, which last year faced a massive bleaching event linked also to warming waters associated with climate change. Exposure to extreme temperatures for extended periods breaks down the relationship between the corals and the algae living inside of them. Corals are left pale or white, and the lack of food from algae can lead them to die, according to the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sargassum mats have also blocked sea turtle nesting sites and inundated mangroves, which serve as crucial nurseries for countless aquatic species.

Birds feed on small fish caught in seaweed mat along the South-Eastern coast of the Portmore Causeway in St. Catherine, Jamaica on May 2, 2023.
Photo by Kirk Wright | Television Jamaica

In some areas, beaches have been eroded by the seaweed and by the heavy machinery used to remove it. Many fishers complain that their catch has dwindled sharply.

But because of the magnitude of the relatively recent problem — which is affecting coastlines from West Africa to the Americas — the true extent of the environmental damage is poorly understood, according to Dr. Brian LaPointe, a biologist and sargassum expert at Florida Atlantic University.

“We haven’t gotten very far in the research to understand the causes or how to deal with it and manage and mitigate the impacts on the environment,” LaPointe said.

Second Largest Barrier Reef

The effects that García Rivas has seen in Mexico illustrate the implications for the entire region. The park she oversees is part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, which stretches along more than 600 miles of coastline in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras.

As the second longest barrier reef in the world — only the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is longer, at about 1,400 miles — the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef is home to some 500 species of fish and 60 species of stony corals, according to the World Wildlife Fund. It also supports the livelihoods of one to two million people in the region, the WWF states.

Floating sargassum can provide a healthy habitat, but when it washes against the shore in mass quantities it often suffocates certain organisms, said James Foley, director of oceans for The Nature Conservancy.

“In coastal areas like Belize, the problem is further exacerbated by the fact that the sargassum also attracts a lot of marine rubbish: local garbage that runs off from the rivers that come into the Caribbean from Central America. So it ends up being a pretty toxic environment,” he said.

The sargassum also creates a barrier that blocks light and prevents organisms below it from photosynthesizing, according to Foley.

A 2021 study published in the scientific journal Climate Change Ecology, which analyzed the situation in three bays in Quintana Roo, Mexico, found that under the sargassum mats the light seepage decreased up to 73% and the water temperature could be as much as 5 degrees Celsius warmer.

Bacterial Diseases

In addition, García Rivas said, bacteria carried by the sargassum may be affecting the corals as well.

“Some of the diseases suffered by the corals could be related to all the bacteria brought in by the sargassum or that arise during its decomposition,” she said. “Although it becomes an environment without oxygen, there are bacteria that may be able to survive, affecting not only the corals but also generating fish mortality.”

Such effects exacerbate existing threats to the reef, she said, noting that the worst historical damage has come from coastal development and inadequate management of sewage and other waste.

“In general, contaminated seawater does not allow corals to live properly,” she said. “It weakens them. And when they present diseases or are stressed by heat, it is easier for them to die.”

A similar scenario has played out in Jamaica, according to Dr. Camilo Trench, a marine biologist at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica.

“The problem is that the seaweed grows fast and the corals grow slowly,” Trench said. “So if the sargassum is in the area with other macroalgae, it can overgrow the coral reef area quite quickly. So now it will not only reduce the space that the corals will have to grow: It will also reduce the settlement area of the coral nursery.”

Sargassum Smothers Other Species

Coral might be one of the most visible animals affected by sargassum, but is not the only one. A study published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin analyzed a massive sargassum influx that swamped the shores of the Mexican Caribbean in 2018, decomposing and turning the water cloudy. As a result, the researchers found, organisms from 78 wildlife species died. The worst affected were demersal neritic fish, which live at the bottom of shallow areas of the sea, and crustaceans.

Other scientists have raised concerns about sargassum’s effects on turtle nests. In 2017, Briggite Gavio, a professor of marine biology at the National University of Colombia, visited Cayo Serranilla, a tiny 600-by-400-meter island at the northernmost tip of the Colombian Caribbean. The island is only inhabited by military personnel and it’s a perfect place for sea turtles to nest.

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A post shared by Sargassum Monitoring® (@sargassum_monitoring)

But when Gavio was there as part of a scientific expedition, sargassum had formed a mat up to 40 centimeters (16 inches) high on the beaches. “We were able to observe that some turtle hatchlings had trouble getting past the barrier posed by the sargassum mat, and were vulnerable to predation by ghost crabs, rats and other predators,” she wrote in a 2018 paper about her observations.

Similar observations about the effects of sargassum in sea turtles have been made by scientists on other islands such as Antigua and Barbuda.

Killing Mangroves, Too

Sargassum also appears to have a potentially lethal impact on Caribbean mangroves, an important natural barrier for extreme hurricanes.

“These are plants that live on the seashore and are tidal plants, but they depend on their aerial roots and their respiratory roots, which are underground, for oxygen,” said Trench, the biologist in Jamaica. “Now imagine a mat covering those roots and preventing oxygen from flowing through them. It can definitely cause death if it is long-term and similar to the impact of something like oil slicks on the mangrove or litter, such as solid waste.”

As with corals, mangroves sometimes end up smothered, sustaining damage themselves and putting at risk other species that depend on them.

No ‘Virtuous Circle’

For García Rivas, the biologist in Mexico, one fact is particularly alarming: Unlike many other problems facing the reefs she oversees, the sargassum influx has no clear solution.

“We haven’t come up with a virtuous circle as we have, for example, with lionfish,” she said. “Despite being an invasive species, [lionfish] can be fished and eaten, which mitigates the problem.”

Local Government Looks for Solutions

Faced with this problem, last year the state of Quintana Roo created a committee of 60 experts from different areas that worked for seven months to help create what is now known as the Integral Strategy for the Management and Use of Sargassum in Quintana Roo.

The strategy covers eight areas: health; research and monitoring; knowledge management, processes and logistics; utilization; legal framework; economic instruments and cross-cutting axes. Its key advances include designating the state of Quintana Roo as the authority in charge of granting permits to researchers and companies working to turn sargassum into a product.

“The state government is the one that gives all the permits for issues ranging from transportation, collection to final destination. With that we avoid that companies are going around in circles between whether to ask the federal or municipal government where to acquire the permits,” said Hernández Gómez, the ecology and environment secretary.

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A post shared by Ronald Lusk (@ronaldlusk)

The response is costly. Last year, she said, the Secretariat of the Navy was assigned about $3 million to collect sargassum at sea using its ships and anchorage barriers, while the Federal Maritime Terrestrial Zone was assigned about $7 million more to collect it from beaches. In Quintana Roo, through the Secretariat headed by Hernandez Gómez, another $1.7 million is coming in to address the problem.

“And this year that investment will be maintained,” she said.

This investigation is the result of a fellowship awarded by the Center for Investigative Journalism’s Training Institute and was made possible in part with the support of Open Society Foundations. Read the rest of the stories in this series.

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New Hope for Horseshoe Crabs — and the Shorebirds That Depend on Them