In June, we witnessed the earliest ever category 5 hurricane to form in the Atlantic Ocean. The storm caused more than 1 million people to lose power for more than four days and caused deaths as far away as Vermont.
The climate crisis isn’t coming — it’s here now. We see it all around us — in cities and rural areas, and on the coasts and in every state in between. It impacts everything, from our economy to our national security.
Each passing year brings unprecedented heatwaves, wildfires, and extreme weather events that wreak havoc on our communities in more ways than one. Rising temperatures strain energy resources, escalate health care costs due to heat-related illnesses, and displace vulnerable populations from their homes.
The climate crisis demands swift and decisive action — like bolstering public transportation.
The dirty secret is that the transportation sector is the largest source of U.S. climate pollution — and 80% of transportation emissions come from the cars and trucks on our roads. It’s one of the only major sectors where emissions are still rising.
Because of this, investing in public transit is one of the most sensible and impactful things we can do to address the climate crisis on the scale that’s needed.
First and foremost, public transit offers a direct solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike personal vehicles, which contribute significantly to carbon dioxide and other pollutants, public transit systems can transport large numbers of people efficiently and with reduced environmental impact per capita. Robust public transit networks decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, curbing emissions that drive climate change.
Moreover, investing in public transit promotes sustainable development. By prioritizing accessible, reliable transit options, cities can mitigate urban sprawl and reduce the need for expansive road networks and parking infrastructure.
Public transit also promotes more equitable access to opportunities.
In much of the country, transportation remains a barrier that limits access to jobs, education, and health care, particularly for marginalized communities. By expanding and improving public transit services, policymakers can enhance mobility options for all residents, promoting economic inclusivity and reducing disparities exacerbated by car-centric planning.
Investing in public transit also bolsters resilience against the impacts of climate change. As extreme weather events become more frequent, public transit can serve as a critical lifeline, ensuring that communities remain connected and functional during emergencies. From evacuations to disaster response efforts, a robust transit system enhances a city’s ability to respond swiftly and effectively to crises.
Despite this, for far too long, policymakers in Washington have prioritized highways and cars over public transit.
Luckily, there’s new legislation in Congress to fix this. Bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate to provide more money to states and municipalities to increase their transit options. Congress should pass these bills without delay.
The climate crisis necessitates bold and proactive measures. Investing in public transit isn’t merely an option — it’s a moral imperative and a practical solution to combat climate change while fostering equitable and sustainable urban development. By prioritizing public transit, policymakers can chart a course towards a more resilient, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable future for all.
The time to act is now. As this summer has shown, we don’t have a moment to spare.
Science says many types of animals can serve as “umbrella species.” But donors and the public pay the most attention to tigers, orangutans and other charismatic megafauna.
Scientists have started to debate the long-held notion that conserving so-called “umbrella species” — typically charismatic megafauna — offers the best opportunities to protect ecosystems and the rest of their wild inhabitants. We see this in a new study published in the journal Biological Conservation titled “Selecting umbrella species as mammal biodiversity indicators in tropical forest,” which focuses on the 2.6 million hectare Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra, the last place on Earth where four classic umbrella species — orangutans, tigers, rhinoceroses, and elephants — are still found together in the wild.
The traditional idea goes like this: If species such as tigers and orangutans are protected, then all the smaller taxa beneath them enjoy protection as well. That approach still holds, but the authors of the study argue that smaller species — in this case Sunda clouded leopards and Sambar deer, as well as amphibians and invertebrates — are in fact better umbrella indicators because they tend to be found in areas with greater levels of species richness and ecological function.
As important as these “less charismatic” species are, there are several problems with the debate over broadening the definition of umbrella species.
As someone who has spent over a decade fundraising and doing fieldwork to survey and protect wildlife, and to develop ecotourism in Sumatra and Cambodia to get local community buy-in for conservation efforts, I can attest that charismatic megafauna are essential for habitats, particularly “protected areas,” to survive in Southeast Asia. It is surely no coincidence that the presence of these four charismatic species is why the Leuser Ecosystem, and the rest of its forest denizens, still exists.
A friend and I founded a small NGO called Habitat ID, and our first project was in Virachey National Park in northeastern Cambodia. At the time we started in 2012, it was the Kingdom’s largest national park but deemed a “paper park” — a term often used to describe protected areas that exist on maps but lack real protections. In this case poachers flooded into Virachey over the borders from Vietnam and Laos and from within Cambodia itself. The park was considered hopeless because its topography made it nearly impossible to patrol, and there were also allegations of mismanagement.
But an important question lingered over Virachey: Did it contain tigers?
Tigers had not yet been declared extinct in Cambodia (that happened in 2016), but at the time we held out hope that some of the big cats remained in the park. Having done my doctoral work studying the animist spirit mountains that form a pantheon along the Cambodia-Laos border, an area that had never been surveyed — and seeing that forest-smothered expanse of mountains from the panoramic Phnom Veal Thom Grasslands — I was willing to believe it was possible that a few tigers hung on there.
We held various fundraisers — actual in-person parties, as well as outreaches through online platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. We explained the vast remoteness to potential donors, and soon funding came through to buy camera traps, batteries, and protective cases, and provide money to pay the guides and porters (we paid for our own flights for this survey project, which spanned six years, and never earned a salary from it).
Tigers were never uncovered, but we did find a lost population of wild elephants; they hadn’t been confirmed in the park for well over a decade when we camera-trapped a herd of 17 in 2017. A paper about our elephant records appeared in The Cambodian Journal of Natural History, and today, largely thanks to our work searching for tigers, the long-established British NGO Fauna & Flora International is working in Virachey on a variety of programs, researching and protecting everything from frogs to the large-antlered muntjac to gibbons. Their involvement is set to be long term and to benefit the entire Virachey ecosystem.
None of this would likely have happened had Habitat ID not gone looking for tigers who, unfortunately, weren’t there. Tigers, even in their absence, provided conservation investment, benefitting less-charismatic species.
Another case in point comes from Sumatra, the focus of the new study. Numerous conservation NGOs work in the famous Leuser Ecosystem, striving to preserve the Sumatran elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and orangutan species that coexist there and nowhere else, so we never felt the need to piggyback on whatever they were working on. Instead Habitat ID centered on a neglected landscape in a mountain range south of Lake Toba called the Hadabuan Hills. With just four camera traps, we quickly confirmed the presence of Sumatran tigers and Malayan tapirs.
This endeavor, which is today expanding under PRCF’s stewardship, is working not only protect the obscure area’s tigers, but also other species listed as critically endangered by the IUCN such as helmeted hornbills and Sunda pangolins, as well as endangered species such as the Malayan tapirs, Sunda clouded leopards, marbled cats, Siamang gibbons, and everything “beneath” them on the conservation radar.
Again, it took a charismatic megafauna species to make this happen. And this is only our work.
Around the world charismatic megafauna attract money for conservation. The millions of dollars required to pay rangers to patrol, remove snares, and combat illegal logging and agricultural encroachment are not going to be raised by advertising the need to save deer, hog badgers, and wriggly worms, as important as they are to an ecosystem and as accurate as they may be as overlooked indicators of ecosystem health. Clouded leopards are beautiful animals, but it’s doubtful they could pull in the tens of millions of dollars desperately needed in besieged critical landscapes like the Leuser. On the contrary, donors piled in millions of dollars to protect Leuser’s “big four” within the last few years alone. Without them, the ecosystem would almost certainly suffer severe neglect.
These umbrella species also motivate action against one of the most serious threats to all wildlife and their forest habitats: infrastructure development in form of roads, dams, and palm oil plantations. When development plans are announced (or even unannounced, as is the case with the thousands of miles of “ghost roads” carving up Asia’s forests), there has to be a call to action in an attempt to halt them. Such was the case with the Tapanuli orangutan in Sumatra’s Batang Toru Ecosystem, designated as a new species in an effort to draw attention to a Chinese-funded dam project that would level much of forest landscape. While that designation of a new charismatic megafauna species has not stopped the dam — or the construction of a gold mine in the area, either — it has forced the government to take a closer look at what is going on in this ecologically important region. The outcome remains uncertain; but the matter is, at least, very much on the conservation and government radar.
Other cases are easy to find. In Thailand it’s largely believed that camera-trap images of a tigress with six young cubs in Mae Wong National Park in 2017 stopped or postponed the construction of a large hydroelectric dam that would have had devastating effects on the ecosystem and its wildlife. Kaziranga National Park in India exists because it’s home to a highly successful (if controversial) conservation program to protect its astounding population of 2,400 Indian one-horned rhinos; the park is also home to tigers, elephants, and plethora of other species. Many more protected areas in countries across Asia follow similar patterns.
Exciting news: Recent camera trap footage shows the presence of a new female tiger in Mae Wong National Park. Learn more about what this means for tigers: https://t.co/aJJ67gOiQrpic.twitter.com/5hKKSW3yW1
— World Wildlife Fund (@World_Wildlife) June 29, 2021
And megafauna umbrella species have an oversized ecological impact. Protection and even reintroduction of umbrella species such as leopards in India and wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the United States have been proven to be scientifically successful, and highly so.
In his 2021 book Leopard Diaries, Sanjay Gubbi writes: “The kingly mammal, a symbol of a healthy ecosystem, effectively helps in the conservation of smaller, lower-profile predators as well as other species that live in and make up its home range,” and he lists jungle cats, rusty-spotted cats, civets, four-horned antelopes, chinkara, pangolins, and porcupines among the beneficiaries of the presence of leopards (who are certainly considered “charismatic megafauna” in Sri Lanka and increasingly in Thailand’s Kaeng Krachan National Park, one of the Indochinese leopard’s final strongholds). Gubbi explains that leopards are superb seed dispersers — much more effective than often-cited primates, as leopards have home ranges nearly 10 times that of the primates of India. As such, roaming leopards keep forests healthy and even expand them.
Likewise, the wolves of Yellowstone, reintroduced in 1995, have had a transformative impact on the ecosystem, essentially saving the park’s ecology. By keeping the elk population in check, wolves have enabled riparian forests to regrow, allowing fish and amphibians to flourish in landscapes that had been denuded by the explosion in herbivore populations that thrived when the wolves had been hunted to extinction. The elk that the wolves don’t kill are fearful of the apex predators’ presence and don’t breed as much, allowing willow trees to grow unmolested again, which has helped beaver populations bounce back, with a complex cascading effect of benefits to all manner of smaller species.
The same thing happened in southern India when leopards were reintroduced, writes Gubbi: “The elimination of leopards ‘had created a landscape of fearlessness,’ where herbivores browse freely, impacting local vegetation. However, as soon as the large predators were reintroduced the area began to regain its vegetation, as the carnivores controlled where the herbivores browsed, bringing back a balance in the entire ecosystem.”
Umbrella species also inspire the public. Tourists from around the world fly to places like Sabah, Kalimantan, Sumatra, Thailand, Nepal, India, and many more countries specifically because they want to have a chance to see orangutans, tigers, rhinos, and elephants. The authors of the study would do well to ask the guesthouse owners, jungle guides, and protected area officials in places like Bukit Lawang or Ketambe in Sumatra, the Kinabatangan River Wildlife Sanctuary in Sabah, or Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan if they think tourists would fly from halfway across the world and spend money on their services if they didn’t have a shot at seeing orangutans and other large species. Locals need tourism money, and it’s the megafauna that draws international tourists in.
Finally, a new study in the journal Science argues that conservation does work, and umbrella species are a big reason why that’s true. Titled “The positive impact of conservation action,” the authors posit, among other things, that the establishment of protected areas is key to long-term conservation success. Relevant to the case for focusing on megafauna, the authors write: “Even when conservation interventions didn’t work for the species or ecosystem that they were intended to benefit, other species either often unintentionally benefited, or we learned from the result, ensuring that our next project or conservation action would be successful.”
At the very least, smaller species are not neglected by the emphasis on megafauna, at least in the sense that efforts are made to protect the large natural habitats needed for megafauna to live in the wild, and this is especially true in Asia. From the protection of hawksbill sea turtles in Bangladesh to the preservation of fishing cats across Asia’s dwindling wetlands to the last rhinoceros in Java, a strong focus on the preservation of charismatic megafauna will continue to play in vital role in overall conservation well into the future.
A veteran conservationist once put it to me bluntly: If the forest doesn’t have tigers or other big animals, then it’s shit. Most conservation scientists would disagree with that, but donors, activists and ecotourists probably won’t. And without them on board first, we may never get around to protecting everything else.
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.
A single Franciscan manzanita plant nicknamed Francie, the last of its kind from the wild, charts an unlikely comeback in San Francisco.
Most visitors to San Francisco’s famed Presidio have no idea they’re strolling through the latest setting in a most implausible botanical story.
The star of the tale is a shrubby, red-limbed Franciscan manzanita, nicknamed Francie, and the fate of its kind may well rest on a combination of protection, the latest science, and the whims of reproduction.
But don’t go looking for Francie or its offspring just yet. The plant’s exact location remains a secret, its very existence fragile and its future not yet guaranteed.
In October 2009 a botanist driving along a busy San Francisco freeway spotted something growing in a traffic island surrounded by ramps near the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a “fairly ugly” bush, as Dan Gluesenkamp described it later, but he knew it was a manzanita — a genus of evergreen shrubs and small trees — and suspected it was the long-lost Franciscan manzanita, last seen more than 60 years earlier.
While California is home to 95 species and subspecies of manzanita, only two have been documented to live exclusively in the Bay Area. Both are exceedingly rare specialists adapted to that place’s soil configurations and fog. They are the Raven’s manzanita (Arctostaphylos montana ravenii) and the Franciscan manzanita (A. franciscana), named for the only city where it has ever grown in the wild and thought to have gone extinct in the wild in 1947.
Gluesenkamp was spot-on with his identification that day, and his timing couldn’t have been better: That section of Highway 101 was undergoing renovation. In fact, it was thanks in part to the project that Gluesenkamp could spot the bush at all. Before construction started, roadside trees had concealed the bush. Now those trees were being churned into wood chips, but a patrol car parked on the traffic island during the chipping operation spared the bush from being buried under the chip pile. For the first time in decades, the small island’s remaining vegetation had become visible from the road.
It was a little patch of serpentine substrate, caused by the state’s complicated geologic history. Serpentinite is California’s state rock, apple-green to black, often shiny and mottled with light and dark areas. Thanks to past earthquakes, San Francisco is laced with rocky outcrops of this unusual soil that stretch through the city. It’s rotten soil for most plants because it’s high in heavy metals, but manzanitas are adapted to it, thrive in it, and that’s where Franciscan manzanitas used to grow, on hills and ridges throughout San Francisco.
The traffic island had been disturbed just enough by earlier road crews that the single shrub was able to germinate and survive. But highway construction would soon doom its home to destruction. For this plant to survive, something had to be done — and fast.
Since they couldn’t build the new highway around the bush, the California Department of Transportation worked alongside conservationists to move it in 2010. Knowing that the last wild plant of its kind might not survive the ordeal, scientists took many precautions, including stem cuttings that could be rooted and cloned in a lab. The cuttings then went to six different institutions in the region, mostly botanical gardens. Scientists also took rooted branches that could be grown into separate shrubs. And the plant was in fruit, so they collected seeds and soil.
Then the last-known wild Franciscan manzanita was dug up and trucked about a mile away to a secret location in the Presidio, the old military post that had become part of Golden Gate National Park in 1994. The freeway-rescue was planted there and nicknamed “Francie.”
And the transplant was a success. Away from the freeway exhaust, the plant thrived. But could Francie reproduce?
Friends With Benefits
Michael Chassé is an ecologist with the National Park Service. He coordinates both the rare-plant monitoring program in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and weekly volunteer programs that engage the community in habitat restoration. At the time Francie was found, he was working on a master’s thesis about San Francisco’s two endangered manzanitas. “The existing Franciscan manzanita is one genetic individual,” he says. “You can clone it. But if you have a second genetic individual, you’re expanding the genetic capacity for the individual. When you have cross-pollination, you have genetic recombination.”
Each unique genetic individual is what’s called a genotype. Bringing different genotypes together allows for greater diversity.
Francie was already producing seeds before she was relocated in 2010. Manzanitas have both male and female reproductive parts, but they still need to cross-pollinate to produce viable seeds.
“You want to avoid inbreeding depression,” explains Chassé. “Some naturally rare species have the ability to exist with a small number of individuals, but with ecological restoration you want to maximize their ability to adapt to change over time.”
While Francie may have been the last plant of its kind in the wild, it was not the sole surviving Franciscan manzanita. Turns out there were others, salvaged during the Great Depression from a San Francisco cemetery slated for destruction.
“We’re fortunate in that folks back in the 1930s saw that habitat for these rare manzanitas was being lost pretty rapidly,” Chassé says.
Thanks to prescient botanists nearly a century ago, those salvaged plants still live in Bay Area botanical gardens. What’s more, they’re genetically distinct, meaning they can cross-pollinate with Francie. Park staff planted cuttings from the cemetery survivors nearby, hoping that in time cross-pollination would occur.
Franciscan Manzanita cuttings are taking root at the Presidio Nursery in hopes of growing our rare plant populations. pic.twitter.com/5sIDzSdrrJ
Genetic diversity is Chassé’s biggest concern for the survival of these endangered plants. “We face an uncertain climate future, so we need to maximize genetic diversity to adapt to changes over time. That’s true for a common plant like yarrow and true for a rare plant like the Franciscan manzanita.”
The Presidio is working with California State University East Bay, looking at the genetics of the Franciscan manzanita to determine how many distinct individuals there are in the world.
“It’s a small number. We think there are maybe four,” Chassé says.
So far, despite flowering and occasional fruits, staff have seen no reproduction, according to Lew Stringer, associate director of landscape stewardship at Presidio Trust. Along with Chassé, Stringer helped identify Francie in its original location. If Francie can’t reproduce, is there a different scenario that might constitute recovery?
Perhaps, Stringer says. In attempting to recover certain endangered plants, scientists may be shifting away from a focus on pure gene strains and shifting toward “gene flow,” allowing different but closely-related species — some nearly lost, some not — to cross and thus create new strains of manzanitas able to survive over time.
Enter a second endangered manzanita, even more hard-up than the last.
What Constitutes Survival?
The Raven’s manzanita is named after Peter Raven, who made botanical history at age 13 when he rediscovered the species. That was in 1952; not another living specimen of its kind has been seen since. Many a last-of-its-kind has perished over the past century, so the recovery plan for the Raven’s manzanita is still more challenging than the one for its kin.
The end goal here, Stringer says, is gene flow. For the Raven’s manzanita to carry on, scientists will intentionally cross its genes with those of its closest relative (not the Franciscan, although Raven’s has the potential to cross with that and other manzanitas). Next they’ll analyze the genes of those offspring and determine which crosses align best with Raven’s.
The blossoms of the Raven’s manzanita must be pollinated by another plant in order to produce berries and seeds. Photo: Michael Chasse/NPS
At this point in time, the genetic prospects for the Franciscan manzanita probably look brighter. But even if Francie manages to produce viable offspring, there remains the same challenge faced by so many recovering species: vanishing habitat.
Both manzanitas once cascaded down hillsides, growing out of rocky outcrops and ridges of serpentine substrate that stretch through the city. But in San Francisco, habitat is also real estate, and much of that land is now covered in buildings. Parks are the closest thing left to the wild, so that’s where Chassé and other staff are focusing their efforts, clearing out invasive plants to restore what habitat remains. So far they’ve placed more than 150 Franciscan manzanita plantings in six sites, all within the Presidio.
It’s a small world. But in the case of the Franciscan manzanita, it was a small world to begin with. The plant’s natural habitat probably never extended far beyond San Francisco. Compare this to bison, a species that once roamed most of the continental United States. Which recovery has further to go?
Some might argue that a plant that only lives within the confines of one park isn’t living in the wild. Yet Chassé, who leads efforts to recover both species, cites our love of national parks as one of the challenges to doing that. While the location of both plants is undisclosed, San Francisco is a very popular tourist destination, he says, and “the habitats are pretty sensitive. Keeping people on trails, making sure they’re not trampling rare plants like these, is a concern.”
One species she discovered, a critically endangered plant, eluded modern researchers for decades but has recently been rediscovered — as has Barber herself.
As my “Extinction Countdown” column approaches its 20th anniversary, I’m revisiting some past stories that still resonate today. Here’s one that’s been adapted, updated and expanded from an article originally published in April 2016.
Mary Elizabeth Barber, South Africa’s first woman ornithologist and botanist and a correspondent of Charles Darwin, described dozens of birds, plants and insect species over the course of her lifetime. More than a century after her death in 1899, several of those species still bear her name.
Barber herself, however, has all but been forgotten, like so many pioneering women scientists whose accomplishments have been eclipsed by their male colleagues.
But one species Barber discovered in 1862 may help to change that.
The striking plant called Mrs. Barber’s beauty (Lotononis harveyi) has long been a bit of a mystery. Although the samples Barber collected can still be examined in museums, the living flowers eluded rediscovery for more than a century.
But flash forward a few decades, and the beautiful white flower with densely hairy petals was finally found once again and photographed for the very first time in 2014.
Vincent Ralph Clark of Rhodes University in South Africa actually rediscovered Lotononis harveyi in 2009 — 147 years after Barber’s description was first published — while conducting field work in the Great Winterberg mountain range for his Ph.D. At the time he didn’t realize exactly what he had seen. A sample he collected that year was reexamined in 2014 by University of Johannesburg botany professor Ben-Erik Van Wyk, who suggested the white flower could be the lost species.
With that encouragement, Clark returned to the Winterbergs later that year and extended his search. He not only found the individual plant he saw in 2009 but also located several others. The confirmed rediscovery was finally published in 2016 in the journal PhytoKeys.
Clark also found that Mrs. Barber’s beauty probably eluded rediscovery not just because of its remote location but also due to its slow growth rate and rarity. He found just six specimens, two of which had damaged stems, and no evidence of recruitment of the next generation of plants. This, along with potential threats from fire and livestock, led him to suggest that the flower should be considered critically endangered.
There could be more than just those six plants out there, of course, since the steep mountain does a pretty good job of keeping its secrets. Additional expeditions would be required to find them, as well as to learn more about the elusive Mrs. Barber’s beauty. The 2016 paper noted that we know “virtually nothing about its biology.” That means that although this rare flower has now finally been found once again, we don’t know what it would take to preserve it or its habitat.
Eight years later we still don’t know much. No additional scientific papers have been published about Mrs. Barber’s beauty, and no observations of the species have been recorded on iNaturalist. However, the South African National Biodiversity Institute officially declared it critically endangered in 2021, noting that it’s “potentially threatened by grazing, fire, and competition from alien invasive species, which occur at low densities in some parts of its range.” The assessment still noted just six known examples of the plant.
But at least it’s been found. That’s just one step toward reaffirming the legacy of Mary Elizabeth Barber, whose scientific writings and artwork have enjoyed a bit of a posthumous resurgence since the rediscovery of the plant that bears her name. Historian Tanja Hammel published a 360-page monograph about her in 2019, which notes:
She would ultimately paint many more than the one hundred watercolors of plants, butterflies, birds, reptiles and landscapes that remain to this day. Sixteen of her scientific articles as well as a volume of poems were published. To achieve the publication of her articles, she corresponded with some of the most distinguished British experts in her fields, such as the entomologist Roland Trimen, the botanists William Henry Harvey and Joseph Dalton Hooker, and the ornithologist Edgar Leopold Layard. In doing so, she contributed not only to botany but also to entomology, ornithology, geology, archaeology and paleontology.
Meanwhile a 303-page collection of Barber’s correspondence — edited by Hammel, Alan Cohen, and Jasmin Rindlisbacher — was published in 2020. The book, Growing Wild — titled to symbolize “how Barber emancipated herself both from her wider social environment and from the ideal of the Victorian ‘angel in the house’ in order to publish her work and have her research archived and her life and career remembered” — reveals her pioneering feminism and unflinching determination.
At the same time, these new examinations of Barber’s history and legacy also shine a light on her disturbing 19th-century colonialist attitudes. For instance, as Hammel wrote in a 2015 paper, Barber greatly benefited from traditional knowledge and labor from her African collaborators but “she silenced or obscured [their] share in her work as part of a tactic to keep her credibility among urban and metropolitan scientists and to stress her authority as local expert.”
This last aspect, which Hammel puts into a broader historic context in her monograph, darkens the legacy of Barber, as it does other naturalists of her day. That’s one reason why so many peoples’ names are being removed from the species they described.
Maybe Mrs. Barber’s beauty will one day also be renamed. For now, though, this rediscovered plant serves a reminder of a groundbreaking feminist naturalist history has all but ignored or forgotten — like so many other women in science — and who, like the flower that bears her name, should not be allowed to fade into extinction.
There’s never been more momentum for ocean conservation, but new research finds that many efforts fail to protect endangered species — or have barely gotten off the drawing board.
Ocean ecosystems and the marine wildlife that depend on them are under threat as never before. Between overfishing, climate change, plastic pollution, and habitat destruction, it’s a bad time to be a prawn, cod, seabird, or whale.
There’s no single silver bullet solution to the biodiversity crisis, but in recent years, many people in the environmental community have focused on the goal of “30 x 30”: protecting 30% of the planet by the year 2030. Many nations have made promises toward that goal, including the United States, which has adapted it into the “America the Beautiful” initiative.
Measurable goals like this provide nations with clear, quantifiable conservation goals that others in the international community can follow, verify, or use to identify shortfalls and push for more action.
At the same time, many experts warn that number-based targets like “protect 30%” lend themselves to incentives to arguably-kinda-sorta protect as much as possible, rather than protecting the most ecologically important areas. Governments, for instance, can use what’s euphemistically referred to as “creative accounting” — counting things as protected that probably should not be considered protected.
Two new research papers examine some of this creative accounting in the ocean. Together, they stress important things to keep in mind when creating protected areas and when assessing their usefulness.
To Protect a Species, Protect Areas Where They Actually Live
A surprisingly common issue in area-based conservation happens when a government declares a new protected area to help save a threatened species of concern…without first checking to see if the species actually lives within those boundaries.
It happens more often than you might think. A new study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology looked at 89 marine protected areas in Europe that are supposed to protect diadromous fish species (those that migrate between ocean and fresh water, like salmon or some eels) of conservation concern.
Their findings are shocking: Many of these areas protect habitats where those fish species do not live, and very few of them protect the most important core habitat for any diadromous fish species.
“A marine protected area should be an area that protects part of the marine environment,” says Sophie Elliott of the Wildlife Conservation Trust, the study’s lead author. “I say ‘should’ because there are a lot of parks that don’t have enough thought put into them. Quite often things are done quickly without thinking or understanding the situation.”
Sometimes this happens because of limited resources for scientific study. In other words, according to Elliot, we simply don’t know enough about species’ habitat use to protect their key habitat, at least not yet. This is known as the rare-species paradox: Endangered species are often hard to find and study, especially in the vast ocean, so it can be hard to understand what habitat qualities they need to thrive, even if we can hypothesize that protecting certain regions will mitigate some of the threats the species face.
Other times government officials, in search of positive publicity, announce a new protected area that was studied but wasn’t intended to protect a species.
“We had a series of MPAs that were supposed to have measures in place to protect certain species,” Elliott says. “But then an extra species got tacked on to the stated goals of the MPA, and it wasn’t effective for that species.” She declined to identify examples, given the political sensitivities of some of these protected areas.
In addition to gathering more data and always basing protected-area design on the best available data, Elliott recommends a more holistic approach to designating future protected areas.
“When people think about putting MPAs in place, look at the whole range of biodiversity that exists within it, because there might be many endangered and protected species,” she says. “You need to know what’s in that MPA and do ecosystem-based management” — management focusing on the whole ecosystem and not just individual species. It’s the difference between protecting cod by establishing fishing quotas versus protecting cod by also managing their habitat and predators and food and other things that eat that food. “We’ve long been calling for that, but we aren’t really working toward it at all,” she says.
What Counts As ‘Protected’ Varies More Than You Think
Another key issue in marine protected area management is what should count as “protected.”
Some areas restrict oil and gas extraction but allow any and all fishing. Some allow swimmers and other recreation, while others say people can’t even go scuba diving.
In one glaring recent example, the advocacy group Oceana U.K. found evidence that the United Kingdom allows bottom trawling in many of its MPAs. Bottom trawling is a fishing method that’s extremely destructive to sensitive habitat types; it’s been compared to clear-cutting forests to catch rabbits.
“At the end of the day … there’s no one clear definition of what conservation means around the world,” says Angelo Villagomez, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who has studied the issue. “One of the negative externalities of the global push to protect 30% of the ocean is that some governments are more concerned with being able to say that they protected 30% of the ocean than they are concerned with delivering meaningful biodiversity protections.”
Villagomez and his colleagues have identified another big issue: According to their new analysis in the journal Conservation Letters, fully one-quarter of the 100 largest marine protected areas — as catalogued in the United Nations’ and IUCN’s world database of protected areas — are announced but not yet implemented. Many have no clear timeline of when they formal protections might be put into place, or what those regulations might look like.
For now, those areas exist on paper but remain unprotected in the real world. For example, the paper cites the OSPAR MPA network covering 7% of the Northeast Atlantic, which currently appears to have no concrete protections.
This wide range of rules and inconsistent protections makes it harder to protect the ocean — or to count it toward 30×30 goals.
Governments are not supposed to submit anything to the world database of protected areas until something is designated, “but they do, and that’s just the reality,” says Villagomez.
But here’s the biggest problem: The study found that many of the world’s largest MPAs lack the scientific knowledge, funding, and political support to be effective.
“We know that MPAs work when they are well designed and provided the funding to operate,” Villagomez told me. “But for about one-third of the MPAs we studied, based on everything we know about protected area science, they will never result in positive outcomes for biodiversity.”
The conclusions of these two papers are clear: Too many marine protected areas are poorly designed and sited in places where the species they’re ostensibly trying to protect do not actually live. Also, too many allow destructive extractive industries to operate, limiting the benefits of any protection.
Despite these setbacks Villagomez remains optimistic about the future of MPA-based protections.
“The good news is that this works really well about one-third of the time — if you play baseball and you hit the ball 300 out of 1,000 times, you’re going to the Hall of Fame,” he says. “There’s a ton of science that shows that well-designed well-implemented MPAs work, and for one-quarter of the MPAS we looked at, they’re well designed and are just lacking funding for implementation.”
The Inyambo’s importance to Rwandan culture can’t protect them from threats like diseases, international conflict, and inbreeding.
Visitors to the King’s Palace Museum in Rwanda can locate the nation’s prized cows by following the sounds of singing.
Called Inyambo in Rwanda and Bihogo in Uganda, these massive cattle are known for the white, symmetrical horns that stretch into the air several feet above their heads. They’re bred for ceremonial purposes — not milk or meat, like most cattle. The museum’s herd of 15 cows, each adorned in jewelry and ribbons, stand as symbols of their longstanding significance in Rwandan culture and history.
With crooning shepherds living on site at the museum full time and a dedicated veterinarian on call 24 hours a day, these cows have the best possible care. But, like many rare livestock breeds around the world, they face challenges to their survival, including climate change, habitat erosion, disease, and international conflicts. The United Nations estimates that at least 17% of worldwide livestock breeds are threatened with extinction, and it advocates for preserving genetic lines that may have a better chance of survival in a warming, pandemic-prone world.
Conserving culturally important breeds like the Inyambo in the face of these threats presents its own set of challenges. Planning for their future starts with understanding their past — as well as their present place in Rwandan culture.
It also requires answering a tricky question: Are Inyambo an endangered species?
A recreation of the King’s palace at the museum in Rwanda. Photo by Molly McCluskey
Counting the Uncountable
There are no monarchs in Rwanda anymore. Rwanda’s monarchy ended in 1962, when the country gained independence from Belgium. The King’s Palace Museum is a recreation of the last site of the formerly mobile monarchy, which previously moved around the country before settling in Nyanza in 1899 and establishing it as the first permanent capital of the kingdom.
The Inyambo — who roamed with the ruler until they, too, came to settle in Nyanza — are a subset of the long-horned Ankole, a breed of cattle found in Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania. The Ankole themselves are a subset of Sanga cattle, indigenous breeds from southern Africa.
During the period of the traditional Rwandan monarchy, Inyambo were bred and trained for royal parades. They would be presented as dignitaries during ceremonies honoring the king.
They’re still treated like royalty today. Shepherds croon love songs to the animals to keep them peaceful and obedient. The cows, who each have a name and are tended to like members of the family, are trained to listen to their shepherds’ songs as a means of following their commands.
While the Inyambo at the King’s Palace arguably may be the happiest and most peaceful of their kind, they aren’t the only ones in existence. Small herds live in several places in Rwanda and Uganda. But calculating exactly how many Inyambo exist outside of this protected herd is difficult.
For one thing, Rwandan culture suggests that asking a shepherd how many cows he owns is akin to asking how rich he is. Boasting about the number of one’s cattle is seen as rude and puts a shepherd at risk of theft.
Beyond that, many shepherds have a deeply held cultural belief that counting animals leads to those animals’ death. Because of this, the Inyambo are not typically tagged. Recordkeeping can also vary greatly among shepherds, with some knowing the names of each animal like they’d know the names of their children and others taking a more relaxed approach.
A third challenge: With the exception of closed herds like the one at the royal palace, the cattle roam over large territories, often moving across international borders.
This makes knowing if Inyambo are endangered, or at risk of extinction, nearly impossible, although we do know they aren’t exactly plentiful.
Donald Rugira-Kugonza, an associate professor of animal sciences at Makerere University in Uganda, has attempted to count the Inyambo as part of his research. He says that in addition to the lack of recordkeeping and the reluctance to inventory the cattle, there’s a more fundamental challenge in knowing how many exist — a difference of opinion on what, exactly, constitutes an Inyambo.
“Part of the problem is we don’t have it well defined,” Rugira-Kugonza says. “This is what we are trying to do. Let’s document what makes this special animal, how tall should it be, how long should the horns be, at what angles, and so on.”
That’s a normal process for determining breeds — of everything from farm animals to dogs and cats — but trying to doing the same thing for Inyambo isn’t easy.
“The trouble comes when you bring one set of farmers and say, ‘Identify for me the animals that you say are Inyambo.’ They pick out two. Another person says, ‘No, all those ten,’” Rugira-Kugonza says. “So what we need really to conserve this breed [is] to have people agree, ‘This is it. That’s how it looks.’”
Two adorned Inyambo drink from a trough while a third, unadorned Inyambo looks directly at the camera. Photo by Molly McCluskey
Descendants of the King’s Herd
Even carefully maintained heritage records can’t solve every problem for rare breeds. Rugira-Kugonza and his research team found evidence of inbreeding issues with the open herds they studied, and he expresses concern for closed herds, like the one at the King’s Palace.
“If you keep only the nucleus, like at Nyanza, it’s a small herd,” Rugira-Kugonza says. “And then it means any time there is a serious disease, it can easily bring down the whole herd. It’s likely to go inbred, and then it will disappear.”
And the threat of disease isn’t hypothetical.
“We have foot-and-mouth disease, lumpy skin disease, because of animals coming in across the borders,” Rugira-Kugonza says. Other health threats documented in Rwanda include anthrax, brucellosis, tuberculosis, East Coast fever, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, trypanosomiasis, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, and parasites, according to a report from USAID and the University of Florida.
Concerns about disease traveling from one herd to another across international borders have prompted Rwanda to conduct ambitious disease surveillance throughout the country. As a result, the country is allowing access to fewer cows from neighboring countries.
“Now Rwanda is becoming more closed because they’re also doing some disease surveillance,” Rugira-Kugonza says. “They have been almost closing the border with Tanzania. Between Uganda and Rwanda maybe no more animals are crossing.”
But the future of the Inyambo doesn’t necessarily rely on animals themselves traveling. The National Animal Genetic Resources Centre and Data Bank, a regional gene bank in Entebbe created under the African Union, makes it possible for countries to share genetic material while limiting the risk of diseases.
“The movement of live animals may become more restricted as we go forward, but there is opportunity now for genetic material moving in the form of embryos,” Rugira-Kugonza says. “South Africa has recently imported the Ankole by embryo,” he points out.
Parallels With Mountain Gorillas?
Although Inyambo don’t live in the wild, they have a lot in common with another of Rwanda’s famous species: mountain gorillas. Both species exist in very small numbers, face the risk of disease, and are culturally and economically important.
While Rwanda has had success protecting its mountain gorilla population by cooperating with its neighbors to protect their habitat, protecting the Inyambo comes with more logistical hurdles.
“The good thing with the gorilla is that there is already a geographically defined area at the border of the three countries,” Rugira-Kugonza says. “The problem with the cows is that they move.”
Inyambo conservation can take a lesson from the successful efforts to stabilize and grow the gorilla population. A combination of government subsidies, NGO grants, and tourism revenue made it more financially rewarding to protect the gorillas than to poach them, and the population increased. The same model can be applied to farmers raising large cattle without the usual economic stability of selling their milk and meat. There’s already a growing Inyambo tourism industry, with eco-lodges inviting tourists to see them, festivals celebrating them, and artwork depicting the revered animals.
But as the range of the cattle becomes restricted, the risk of inbreeding heightens. Combined with the many challenges of counting them or even clearly identifying the breed, it soon may be too difficult to know how many Inyambo are left.
But Rugira-Kugonza says the efforts of farmers along Uganda’s Cattle Corridor and elsewhere in the region indicate that Inyambo aren’t likely to become extinct anytime soon. While there may not be many opportunities for royal herds like the one at the King’s Palace, there are many farmers throughout the region — including the controversial president of Uganda — who are passionate about the Inyambo and remain committed to continuing to raise them.
That passion may be the key to their survival.
“The best way to say we can conserve them is to say they can stay outside royal hands by a group of passionate people, and then they are conserving it following a standard procedure,” Rugira-Kugonza says. “There cannot be just one group, but maybe 20, 30, 40 farmers keeping them gainfully, earning from them. Then we can conserve the Inyambo.”
Molly McCluskey traveled to Rwanda at the invitation of the Embassy of Rwanda in Washington.
This month’s best and worst environmental stories also include a rebounding lynx, a climate lawsuit boom, and a spa for frogs.
Earlier this month I visited some friends at their home on the banks of the Columbia River — a house that could soon be under the Columbia River due to climate change and sea-level rise.
That same week we got news about Hurricane Beryl causing destructive floods around the United States, along with devastating floods in Brazil, India, China, and Kenya. Other floods this month caused destruction and fatalities in Liberia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and several other U.S. states.
Is it any wonder that the sound of dripping water plunges me into a panic attack?
Welcome to Links From the Brink.
Best News of the Month:
When I last wrote about the Florida grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus) in 2018, the critically endangered bird species had experienced a devastating population crash, leaving fewer than 100 individuals in the wild. As one conservationist told me at the time, “This is going to be North America’s next extinct bird if we do nothing.”
Well, we did do something. Some of the last birds were brought into captivity before they could die out, and even since then they’ve been breeding like there’s no tomorrow. As a result, they have a tomorrow. This month the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and partner organizations released their 1,000th captive-bred grasshopper sparrow into the wild. This seems to indicate that these rare birds have been saved from what just a few years ago seemed like an extinction in the making.
There’s a lesson in this amazing milestone: “These little birds represent a big beacon of hope that our commitment, partnership and holistic approach can save vulnerable wildlife from the brink of extinction,” as Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida president Andrew Walker told The Guardian.
Of course, all the captive breeding in the world can’t save a species if it has nowhere to live. Florida remains one of the most development-hungry places in the United States, and grasshopper sparrows’ habitat still needs protection and restoration. But 1,000 birds in six years is an amazing achievement, and it’s one worthy of celebration and emulation.
More Good News That May Have Fallen Through the Cracks:
Lynx from the brink: The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus), once critically endangered, has recovered thanks to decades of intense conservation effort. The IUCN last month reassessed the species as merely “vulnerable to extinction.” In 2005 the lynx population had fallen to an estimated 84 mature cats; the most recent count put them at a healthy (but still risky) 648.
The small predators benefitted from efforts to increase previously overhunted rabbit populations, which, once restored, finally gave the lynx plenty to eat and thrive. The IUCN warns, though, that another rabbit crash, a disease, or high mortality from roads could quickly undo this conservation victory.
Wolves: When wolves returned to Washington state in 2008, many hunters bemoaned that white-tail deer populations would suffer. Well, guess what — it didn’t happen. New research shows that wolves have had a minimal effect on deer in the Evergreen State — far below that of cougars (which also get a bad rap in WA) and habitat loss (i.e., development — the bane of communities throughout the West as people flock to this part of the country).
Meanwhile Washington rejected a push to remove state endangered-species status for wolves and lowered its previously lax cougar-hunting quotas to more sustainable levels. Conservationists praised both decisions. We imagine wolves and mountain lions were pretty happy, too.
Europe: After two years of debate, the European Union passed its Nature Restoration Law last month — which, according to news site Euractiv, “will set legally binding targets to restore 20% of the EU’s degraded land and sea ecosystems by 2030 and all ecosystems by 2050.” The bill got watered down a bit (farmers get a bit of a pass), but this seems like a good model for other 30×30 goals. (Speaking of which, six years is still a pretty tight deadline … )
Sued: A new report finds that the number of companies facing climate-related lawsuits keeps rising dramatically — and that most of these corporations are losing in court. Most of the recent lawsuits target so-called “climate-washing” — a willful misrepresentation of their progress toward promised climate goals. (The lessons: Lies cost you $$$.)
Fined: More losing: Marathon Oil just got socked with a $64.5 million fine for Clean Air Act violations at the Fort Berhold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, in the heart of the Bakken shale oil fields. The company must also pay another $177 million toward reducing its future emissions. General Motors, meanwhile, must pony up $146 million in fines because its vehicles emitted at least 10% more carbon dioxide than their compliance reports claimed. (Either of these items could actually go in the “bad news” category, since the spewing of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants went on so long before either company got caught and punished, but we’ll leave them in with the other wins for now as a warning to other gasbag corporations.)
Fined, part 2: French regulators this month fined conservative broadcaster CNews €20,000 (about $22,000) for allowing a pundit to spread climate skepticism (aka disinformation) without editorial follow-up or rebuttal.
I’ll admit, as an advocate of free speech and the free press, I have doubts about this approach to forcing balance from news outlets. For one thing, it seems the right wing could have weaponized this approach to water down good climate reporting if they’d come to power in France in this month’s narrowly won elections. Still, I’m intrigued and wonder if this could help stem the tide of further disinformation or if it will just cause pundits to double down on their lies. (Probably the latter, alas.)
Spa day: “Frog saunas” could help an endangered Australian species, the green and golden bell frog (Ranoidea aurea), recover from the deadly chytrid fungus, which has caused dozens of amphibian extinctions over the past few years. (This technique hasn’t proven helpful for other species, unfortunately.)
Frogs enjoy their day in the sun. Photo courtesy Macquarie University
Vroom vroom: Another new report finds that rural families are saving thousands of dollars a year with electric vehicles. (Yes, these are the same rural families who many people assumed would resist transitioning away from gas-powered cars, trucks, and farm equipment. Shows what the “experts” know.)
Renewables: China is building twice as much renewable energy (specifically wind and solar) as every other country combined. (How do you say “This should light a fire under everyone else’s ass” in a carbon-neutral manner?)
(Seriously though, I don’t want to blindly praise China for this; its environmental record is terrible. But so is ours, so c’mon folks, catch up.)
And finally, a peak: Even fossil-fuel companies predict the world will hit peak oil demand next year. They see the writing on the wall (and the lawsuits in the wings?).
Worst News of the Month:
Getting back to that theme of flooding, the United States just lost its first species due to sea-level rise: the Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii).
Despite its geographically based monicker, this rare cactus grows on a handful of scattered islands in the Caribbean. But it’s no longer found in its namesake Key Largo — storm surges inundated the limestone outcrop where it once grew, increasing salt levels beyond what the plants could tolerate. The storms also washed away a lot of soil, which is kind of a basic need for plants.
It wasn’t just the salt water that caused problems. These cacti stored fresh water in their bodies, which then became a source of hydration for thirsty animals when the coasts became inundated with undrinkable sea water.
The cactus declined quickly amidst this one-two-three punch. In 2021 the Key Largo population — previously described as “thriving” — had deteriorated to just six stands. This month scientists announced that even those last individuals had disappeared.
But the species still exists on other islands, and scientists harvested the last Key Largo plants’ flowers and fruits in 2021 to cultivate them in a greenhouse setting. So far they’re doing fine, but the chance of replanting them in their native habitat appears slim.
This isn’t a full-on species extinction, but it is a local extinction caused by sea-level rise, the first of its kind identified to date in the United States. And it could be a portent of things to come, as botanist Jennifer Possley said in a press release: “Unfortunately, the Key Largo tree cactus may be a bellwether for how other low-lying coastal plants will respond to climate change.”
That said, I’m going to nudge this back into the “kinda-good” category, because at least scientists recognized the problem in time, saved what they could, and took the opportunity to warn us about future threats. That’s the type of proactive conservation that we should all aspire to and celebrate, even if it’s a part of the ongoing extinction crisis.
Bad News Quick Hits:
(Sorry. Let’s not dwell, but let’s not look away, either.)
“Inside your trash can is the possibility to change the world if you apply some creativity and some love. All trash is treasure.” — Troll artist Thomas Dambo, in The Washington Post
That’s it for this edition of Links From the Brink. We’ll be back in a month or two with another roundup of under-the-radar news stories. Until then, keep an eye on the 2024 election, watch out for heat waves and wildfire smoke (not to mention floods), and check in on your neighbors in need (both human and wild).
Meanwhile, mark your calendars for International Owl Awareness Day on Aug. 4, World Krill Day on Aug. 11, Panamanian Golden Frog Day on Aug. 14, and (my favorite) International Orangutan Day on Aug. 19.
Animals, plants, and fungi depend on this humble tree, but its future — and theirs — is all but certain.
At first glance the hills and valleys covered in coastal sage scrub oak are little more than a featureless green swath. On closer inspection, however, you can recognize it for what it truly is: the beating heart of one of the most genetically rich ecosystems on the planet. Birds, insects, mammals, fungi, and even some other plants find refuge under the boughs of coastal sage scrub oak, while water drawn up from its deep roots spreads out to sustain ground-dwelling organisms.
Species name:
Coastal sage scrub oak or Nuttall’s scrub oak (Quercus dumosa)
Description:
The coastal sage scrub oak rarely grows more than about 7 feet tall, but it can spread outward a great distance thanks to its lateral branches and multiple trunks. The trees’ small, spiny leaves emerge in the spring soft and bright green, but gradually toughen and darken to a dusty dark green by summer. Their acorns tend to be thin and elongated, almost conical.
Q. dumosa acorn. Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Where it’s found:
The coastal sage scrub oak, as its name implies, is found along coastal areas in Southern and Baja California. The full extent of its range is the subject of spirited debate, as it shares many similar physical characteristics with other scrub oaks found more inland. In San Diego County, the remaining populations of coastal sage scrub oak exist in fragmented populations, usually in wildlife reserves, like islands in a sea of urban development.
IUCN Red List status:
Endangered
Major threats:
Urban development destroyed much of this tree’s habitat, and its remnant population still faces this threat, along with several others. The introduction of grasses and other highly flammable nonnative species, like eucalyptus, have increased fire frequency and intensity. Escaped ornamental plants and grasses can outcompete oak saplings for light, space, and water. And climate change is resulting in disruptions to precipitation, which stresses all populations.
Notable conservation programs or legal protections:
The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is spearheading the development of new ex situ conservation methods, including the use of tissue culture and cryopreservation, to prevent further loss of the coastal sage scrub oak’s genetic diversity. Through partner networks, such as the Global Conservation Consortium – Oak and the Center for Plant Conservation, we exchange information and know-how with many partner organizations. Each organization can specialize in some method of preventing the loss of a species, whether that be working with local, state, or federal authorities; technology development and implementation; reforestation and land restoration; or what might be eventually the most important method, reaching out to the general public to show them how they can make a difference, large or small. The coastal sage scrub oak, as well as the other endangered species native to the coastal sage scrub and chaparral ecosystem, requires focused and sustained effort from all these methods, so, by participating in networks, we effectively pool our strengths.
My favorite experience:
While collecting tissue samples after a spring rain, I took a moment to look at the tracks imprinted into the soft ground. Animal prints were everywhere — mule deer, raccoon, fox, opossum, roadrunner, and what I hoped were those of an exceedingly large bobcat and not a mountain lion. I rarely saw any of these animals during the day but, thanks to the rain, it was clear that they were all around me — present but hidden within the oaks.
Q. dumosa amidst a rocky backdrop. Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
What I could see, however, were the many birds flying from tree to tree, reminding me of fish swimming among outcrops of coral. Insects buzzed all around. Galls created by tiny wasps were starting to grow from some of the oaks. By summer, some of these galls would grow to the size and color of a peach, bobbing slowly in wind scented with wildflowers, sunbaked dust, and sagebrush. I knew that under my feet deep roots reached toward the precious groundwater that would sustain the forest during the dry season, and spreading from those roots were mycorrhizal fungi that would work with the oaks to support each other.
I grew up among the firs, cedars, hemlocks, and maples of the Pacific Northwest. I always thought forests needed to be composed of tall, majestic trees christened with carpets of rolling moss. Yet this sea of small, scraggly oaks held so much life. My perspective grew. It’s one thing to read about this ecosystem and another matter entirely to truly see it and understand how precious it is.
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.
Citizen scientists are helping restore the ecosystem engineers to the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
“What do you think about this?” My friend, Sonya Daw, had called out to me from where she was standing at the edge of Beaver Creek. I joined her. I had just scrambled over a massive log and was grateful for an excuse to catch my breath.
“Hmm,” I said, still breathing hard. In front of us, water burbled over some branches that had fallen across the creek. Had they fallen, though? Or had they possibly been placed there by beavers?
As one of 11 teams taking part in a “beaver scavenger hunt” across the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southwest Oregon, we were looking for any sign of beavers — willow stumps, sticks with “corn-on-the-cob”-style teeth marks, or even scent mounds, which beavers use to mark territories. What we and the other teams discovered would help the nonprofit Project Beaver focus their beaver-restoration efforts.
My team included Sonya, who writes for the National Park Service, her husband Charlie Schelz, the former monument ecologist, and Barb Settles, a spry 78-year-old and avid naturalist.
Photo: Juliet Grable
Charlie joined us, and we contemplated the creek. “I don’t think that’s anything,” he said. “But look how the sediment is piling up behind the branches; how cool is that?”
It was June 1 — not just a beautiful time to be hiking through the forest but the ideal window for beaver activity. Beaver moms have their babies in late spring and then send their older offspring packing. These dispersing youngsters are on the move, exploring new creeks and sampling the buffet of plants.
We took our time in flatter areas, especially where willows or red osier dogwood — beaver “dessert plants” — grew in clumps near the banks. We weren’t likely to find beavers along this steep stretch, but it was still fun to look and marvel at the enormous sugar pines, Douglas firs, and incense cedars that had escaped loggers’ chainsaws last century.
Wanted: Ecosystem Engineers
The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument encompasses 114,000 acres, mostly in southwest Oregon. The Klamath and Cascade Mountains converge here, creating a patchwork of oak woodlands, forests, grasslands, and wetlands support a dazzling array of butterflies, bees, birds, and plants, including many that are found nowhere else.
President Bill Clinton designated the monument in 2000, not for its stunning canyons or breathtaking vistas but its “outstanding biological diversity.” In 2017 President Barack Obama expanded the monument by another 48,000 acres.
Beavers undoubtedly once populated the many streams and meadows, but by the time the monument was designated, they had been all but eradicated — the case all over Oregon. Now there is only one known established beaver family in the entire monument, says Jakob Shockey, executive director at Project Beaver. There could be others; Shockey says he’s seen evidence of random individuals on several creeks.
The Bureau of Land Management manages the monument but has partnered with the nonprofit to help bring beavers back. The task has become more urgent in the face of recent drought, which has left its mark in swaths of dead conifers. This part of southwest Oregon is dry and hot in summer, and getting more so. Beaver dams could help hold more moisture on the landscape, attracting more birds in the process. Wet meadows engineered by beavers could even serve as a firebreak, helping tame the spread of catastrophic wildfires.
Friends of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, the group that hosted the scavenger hunt, is a key player in the project.
“We see our role as letting people know what makes the monument special and what’s needed to support the ecological integrity of this special place,” says Friends’ executive director Collette Streight.
Friends has hosted several “bio-blitz” events, where volunteers fan out in search of butterflies or reptiles. Streight wanted to create an event with the “juicy” energy of a bio-blitz that produced data with practical applications. After talking with Schelz, Shockey, and others, she honed in on beavers.
Photo: Friends of Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument
Pond of Dreams
Ultimately, the key to attracting beavers — and more importantly, convincing them to stay and set up shop — is restoring habitat. This “build it and they will come” approach can attract beavers from miles away.
“One of the first steps is to get information: Where are the beavers, and what are they doing right now?” says Streight.
Last summer, they beta-tested the scavenger hunt with a “Hike and Learn” led by Shockey.
“We need to know this information, and it really will impact future restoration work,” says Shockey. “What I don’t have is the ability to walk a bunch of creeks by myself.”
We didn’t find any evidence of beavers on our steep stretch of creek, but after clambering back to the car, we had just enough time to check out a meadow on the upper portion of Beaver Creek, where last fall Project Beaver installed a series of post-assisted log structures, or PALS.
The broad, flat meadow was a totally different landscape from where we’d been searching. Our boots squished as we wandered through clumps of sodden grass. Soon Sonya and I were reaching for our binoculars. Birdsong filled the meadow: Lazuli buntings called from the willows; robins chortled from a massive pine at the meadow’s edge. I broke out the Merlin bird-identification app to sort through the confounding songs of warblers.
Charlie pointed out one of the PALS — several small posts pounded into the creek bottom, with willows woven between them. Water had pooled behind the structure, creating a shallow, murky pond full of bugs.
Photo: Juliet Grable
“This is great to see,” he said, as he bent low to admire butterflies dancing across the surface and examine willow stakes that had been planted there. They were starting to leaf out. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a beaver setting up shop here, and not just for the scenery.
“Beavers like to surround themselves with water; it helps keep them from being eaten,” Charlie told us. Without that buffer, beavers are an easy (and meaty) target for a host of predators, including cougars, bobcats, bears, coyotes, wolves, and of course, humans.
A Rebranding Campaign
Beavers, once pilloried as pests, have undergone an image makeover in the Beaver State, thanks in part to legislative champions. Last year Oregon’s governor signed the “Beaver Believer” bill, which recognizes the rodent’s potential role in mitigating climate change. Beavers, whom the state had perplexingly classified as predators (they’re vegetarians), have now been rebranded as furbearers. As of this July, private landowners must obtain a permit before they can trap or kill so-called “nuisance” beavers. For the first time, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will also begin collecting data on all beavers killed in Oregon.
Some conservationists have been lobbying the Biden administration to ban hunting and trapping of beavers on federal lands. More locally, advocates have pushed for a trapping ban within the monument’s borders. They hoped it would be included in a new draft “Resource Management Plan” released by the BLM this year, but it was nixed.
Shockey has mixed feelings about such a proposal.
“Traditionally, trapping bans have been used as a wedge issue between those who hunt and those who don’t,” says Shockey. Increasingly, anglers and hunters are coming to appreciate beavers’ good work in streams and meadows — the places they fish and hunt.
And, as Shockey points out, a trapping ban won’t matter if beavers are shot out of spite. Having more beaver advocates actively monitoring in the monument might be the most effective way to protect the animals. Events like the scavenger hunt help by elevating their profile, making more people aware of their presence and importance.
“Beavers are so interesting in the way that people relate them,” says Shockey. “They’re kind of a charismatic animal and they’re easy to find compared to a lot of wildlife that people care about, yet they’re still pretty invisible.”
Setting the Stage
Late in the afternoon, after the scavenger hunt had run its course, 50 or so tired but happy citizen scientists reconvened at the local elementary school to share their findings. A few teams had discovered fresh sign, including along one stretch of creek where Shockey had never detected beavers before. Teams that found no fresh beaver signs shared other sightings — a snake skin, a junco nest, blooming lilies, chewed willow stumps from years past.
Shockey was pleased. “The data are going to directly inform where we’re going to do restoration,” he said, after he’d thanked the volunteers.
“I’m incredibly proud about what we accomplished,” says Streight. From the fundraising campaign to last-minute scrambling when two team leaders cancelled, the scavenger hunt had required a huge amount of effort. Best of all, no one had twisted an ankle or succumbed to heatstroke.
She hopes to capitalize on the scavenger hunt’s momentum. “We feel we could have volunteers at the ready” to help Shockey’s crew monitor sites or plant willow stakes, she says. “They are really jazzed.”
Project Beaver and the BLM have secured $227,000 for beaver restoration, which is enough to support an eight-person crew for three years. Each spring and fall, they will spend two weeks building and repairing structures in creeks, with the ultimate goal of enticing beavers back. They hope to allow beavers to find the habitat on their own and start breeding.
“Can we increase the amount of beaver activity through our restoration work? That’s how we’re going to measure success,” says Shockey.
A new law will allow the state’s wildlife agency to reintroduce the endangered species.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has signed a law to allow wildlife authorities to reintroduce the North American wolverine to the state. Under the law Colorado Parks and Wildlife is expected to create new rules for a wolverine reintroduction program, as well as set guidelines for compensating ranchers and farmers for potential financial losses from any damage to livestock. (Wolverines typically prey on rabbits and other small mammals but have been known to take down animals are large as elk or moose; experts say they rarely prey on livestock.)
Colorado has been attempting to reintroduce wolverines for nearly 15 years. The state first floated a potential program in 2010, but officials opted to reintroduce lynx first. The state wildlife agency estimates Colorado is now home to as many as 250 lynx.
The Northern American wolverine’s natural habitat includes snowy, cold climates. They’ve traditionally been found in the northern Rockies and North Cascade mountain ranges and parts of Alaska and Canada. However, due to aggressive hunting, climate change, and habitat fragmentation, they have been virtually eliminated across the United States. In November 2023 the North American wolverine received federal protection as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Meanwhile, the species has recently started to expand its range — one wandering wolverine was even spotted last year near Portland, Oregon, and may still be patrolling the region.
Most people will never have an opportunity to see reclusive wolverines in the wild, but they’ve appeared several times in the pages of The Revelator. Here’s some of our previous coverage of this fascinating species:
What’s Needed to Save Wolverines? A New Study Has Answers
Wolverines are notoriously elusive, which has made them hard to study. And harder to protect.
Often dwelling in high mountain reaches and denning in deep snow, wolverines (Gulo gulo) prefer to stay away from people. Although evidence has long suggested their populations have declined, some scientists and policymakers have, for years, fallen back on a common trope that not enough is known about them to warrant protective action.
But a new study published in Global Ecology and Conservation flips this narrative — and renews the call for conservation.
Carnivore Conservation Is Tougher in the Mountains
When the Yakama Nation detected a wolverine on Washington’s Mt. Adams in 2005, outside the animal’s known distribution, Jocelyn Akins wanted to learn more. Was it part of a population that hadn’t been previously known or a lone animal seeking new territory?
To answer those questions, Akins, who had previously studied wolverines and grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountains, launched the Cascades Carnivore Project in 2008. Studying these elusive and rare mountain carnivores is no easy feat. After setting up remote camera traps with the help of friends and other volunteers, it was 15 months before they got their first photograph of a wolverine. And it wasn’t until 2018 when field researchers working with Akins documented the first female wolverine in 75 years in Washington’s South Cascade Mountains.
Wolverine is Gulo gulo; the glutton so nice they named it twice. Across their range, they are known to eat goats, grouse, goose eggs and everything between. People have been picking apart their scat for half a century. I had never heard of anyone finding fish scales.
In the coming days, to my amazement, Nimbus marched back to the channel and sat at its center for hours, accumulating GPS locations at a baffling rate. From camp, I inspected our photos of the barren ice, imagining him there. What on earth was he doing?
Road to Nowhere: Highways Pose Existential Threat to Wolverines
This is not a good time to be a wolverine.
The infamously scrappy, snow-adapted mustelid — a relation of badgers, martens and otters — is barely hanging on in the contiguous United States, where its population has dipped to mere hundreds. Decades of habitat loss and trapping reduced the wolverine’s numbers, and now diminishing snowpack from climate change is adding insult to injury.
And we can add one more surprising threat to the list: roads.
Yes, even though wolverines thrive in remote, snowy wildernesses, roads can still pose a problem — but perhaps not in the way you might think.
As my “Extinction Countdown” column approaches its 20th anniversary, I’m revisiting some past stories that still resonate today. Here’s one that’s been adapted, updated and expanded from an article originally published in April 2016.
At first glance the hills and valleys covered in coastal sage scrub oak are little more than a featureless green swath. On closer inspection, however, you can recognize it for what it truly is: the beating heart of one of the most genetically rich ecosystems on the planet. Birds, insects, mammals, fungi, and even some other plants find refuge under the boughs of coastal sage scrub oak, while water drawn up from its deep roots spreads out to sustain ground-dwelling organisms.
