‘Like a Dead Zone’: Undoing Decades of Environmental Harm on a California River

A major restoration effort by a coalition of Tribes and government agencies could help imperiled fish and other animals on the Trinity River.

In late September 2023, a one-mile stretch of the Trinity River in northern California looks and sounds like a construction site. Large yellow machines crawl across bare ground, the steady growl punctuated with warning beeps. Behind pyramids of stockpiled materials — mulch, gravel, logs — the river flows serenely.

Aldaron McCovey manipulates his excavator, using the back of the bucket to deftly smooth out fine material on a bare new bank.

“It was a little overcut, so we’re filling it in so that there’s no standing water,” he explains.

A fisheries restoration technician for the Yurok Tribe, McCovey is working on an ambitious restoration project called Oregon Gulch, just east of Junction City, Calif. Here, crews from the Yurok Tribe Construction Company are rerouting a straightened stretch of the Trinity River into a newly sculpted meander to help restore the river’s form and function.

Getting to a clean slate required moving mountains of cobbles and gravel — the legacy of 20th-century dredge mining. Seventy years ago, monstrous machines chewed through river and valley, funneling rocks, mud, sand and water into a sluice, extracting the gold and dumping the spoils behind in pile after pile after pile.

“This time last year we’d be standing on 30 feet of tailings,” says McCovey. “It was like a dead zone.”

In August 2022, a procession of trucks began transferring the tailings to a quarry half a mile down the road. In total, they have removed 580,000 cubic yards of material from the site — a staggering 30,000 truckloads.

Aerial view of river with tailings piles — Prior to restoration, the Trinity River at Oregon Gulch ran in a straight line and mountains of mining tailings blockaded the bank. Photo: Aaron Martin, Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department

Now large machines are once again moving through the valley, this time with the aim of creating floodplain habitat that will sustain young salmon before they migrate to the ocean.

“We have this nice meander, some deep holes and some off-channel habitat,” says McCovey. “I think it’s going to be great for fish.”

The project is part of the Trinity River Restoration Program, a long-term collaborative effort involving the Yurok Tribe, Hoopa Valley Tribe, and state and federal agencies to restore 40 miles of the Trinity River below Lewiston Dam. Oregon Gulch is the partners’ 40th project; it’s also the largest, and the first to take on the legacy of dredge mining at such a scale.

A River Turned Upside Down

The Trinity River originates in the granite Trinity Alps, flowing 165 miles before joining the Klamath River in Weitchpec, Calif. For thousands of years Indigenous peoples — ancestors of today’s Hoopa River and Yurok Tribes — fished the river.

Gold seekers first arrived in 1848; before long, they had set up mining operations on every bar of the river, using water wheels, diversion dams, water cannons and finally, large dredges to extract every ounce of precious metal.

The massive floating platforms worked the Trinity and its larger tributaries, chewing through valley bottoms down to bedrock. The operation literally turned rivers upside down, and while much of the sediment washed downstream, some of the finer material lay trapped underneath gravel and larger cobbles.

In 1955 mining was supplanted with another catastrophe when Congress concluded that excess water in the Trinity River that was “wasting to the Pacific Ocean” could be diverted to the Central Valley “without detrimental effect to the fishery resources.” By 1963 two dams had been built and the Trinity River Diversion began transferring water to the Sacramento River watershed.

The dams blocked over 100 miles of habitat for salmon and steelhead, and in the early years, 90% of the water impounded by the dams was diverted to the Central Valley Project. What little water was sent downstream was artificially managed. Flows flatlined, and the river no longer ebbed and flowed with the seasons and storms.

Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead plummeted. As the consequences of the diversions, compounded by mining and logging, became clear, the Department of Interior began amending its management strategy, and in 2000, the agency called for the restoration of Trinity River anadromous fish populations. The Trinity River Restoration Program was set up to carry out the directive by actively restoring the 40 miles below Lewiston dam and managing the timing and volume of water released from upstream.

Letting the River Decide

The Yurok Tribe has been implementing those restoration projects for years; in 2020, the Yurok Tribe Construction Company officially formed as a separate entity. The company occupies a specialized niche, with operators like McCovey who have years of experience operating heavy equipment specifically for restoration work.

Man stand on an excavator on sand next to river — Heavy equipment operator and Yurok Tribal member Aldaron McCovey has been involved in restoration work since 2009. Photo: Juliet Grable

To help fund the $12.5 million project, the Yurok Tribe captured a $4 million grant from the state of California. The Tribe also led the design, though, like all of the program’s projects, all of the partners were involved.

The most engineered aspect of the project is a constructed landslide, called the “plug,” designed to prevent the river from routing back into the straight channel.

“The bulk of cost was material moving,” says Chris Laskodi, fish ecologist for the program. “It’s one of our simplest designs because we’re basically telling the river to do what it wants to do.”

A newly created floodplain is designed to sit just above the river level.

“That’s the exciting part,” says Wes Scribner, executive director of the Yurok Tribe Construction Company. “Any time you have increased flows, it will basically turn into a lake.”

The inundated valley will host an abundance of aquatic insects — a banquet for young Chinook salmon to feast on before heading out to the ocean. An area like this will also be warmer in spring, an ideal nursery when the mainstem of the river is still frigid from snowmelt.

Eventually the river will find its own route, depositing trees, brush and rock along the way.

The partners have seen a four-fold increase in juvenile salmon on the 40-mile “restoration reach” since 2005, but this hasn’t translated into an increase in adults returning to spawn just yet. Poor ocean conditions, prolonged drought and perennial water-quality issues on the Klamath River have taken a grim toll. Last spring, in anticipation of woeful returns of adult salmon to California’s rivers, the state canceled commercial and recreational Chinook salmon fishing for the year.

There is hope: By the end of 2024, four dams on the Klamath River will be completely removed. This monumental act of restoration should help improve water quality and hopefully reduce fish diseases, eventually translating into more fish on both the mainstem and tributaries like the Trinity. In the meantime, project partners on the Trinity are using adaptive management to improve their projects, such as making sure floodplains are low enough to be regularly inundated.

They’re making other tweaks, too, like ensuring that the floodplain banquet is available when young fish need it most. Today the Trinity River is allotted about half of the water that’s captured by the dams, and springtime flows are managed to mimic surges from storms and snowmelt.

In 2023, for the first time, the partners increased flows earlier, from February to April. Though it’s hard to draw solid conclusions from a single year, the partners observed that the inundated floodplains grew more fish food and increased the physical space where young fish can be. Fish also grew measurably larger.

This timing is critical.

“We need to start using the water [we have allotted to us] earlier in the year,” says Mike Dixon, executive director of the Trinity River Restoration Program. “In any given year, 60 to 80% of Chinook have left the reach once we start putting water onto floodplain habitat we’ve created.”

The Hoopa Tribe has opposed the winter flows out of concern that the practice won’t leave enough water to keep the river from becoming lethally warm in summer. The Trinity Management Council voted against implementing variable flows this coming winter. However, new biological opinions for both the Central Valley Project and for the operation of the Trinity River dams are being developed, which could impact both the timing and volume of water the restoration partners have to work with.

“The trend has been to send more and more water down the Trinity River,” says Laskodi. “This will hopefully be the next step towards a better fishery.”

Green and Fuzzy

For half a century, the flows in the Trinity River were essentially flatlined. This meant that narrow-leaf willows, which grow closest to the riverbank, were not subjected to regular scouring. The willows grew in thickly, outcompeting other plants and creating narrow berms that prevented the river from spreading out into its floodplain.

Person holds seeds in hand over bucket — Native seed mixes are carefully prepared so that a crew from the Hoopa Valley Tribe can revegetate the site. Photo: Juliet Grable

During construction, a crew from the Hoopa Valley Tribe began planting clusters of willow stakes and cottonwood trees, which readily take root, in the bare banks. They are using several different native species, since each thrives at slightly different elevations above the river.

On October 15 when the dumping, spreading and scraping of material ceased, the crew began the quiet work of seeding and planting the raw banks and floodplain. The Tribe has been vegetating the program’s restoration projects since 2015. Under the direction of riparian ecologist Veronica Yates, they are working with 45 native species, planting shrubs and trees and using seed mixes tailored for each location. The vegetation will help support a variety of birds and wildlife while reducing erosion.

Over much of the site, they’re planting in a layer of fine material mixed with fragrant wood chips — a “luxury” compared to the substrate they usually work with, says Yates. The fine material was recovered from the tailing piles; the chips from fire-killed trees processed by the California Department of Transportation.

“Next spring we’ll come back and it will be all green and fuzzy,” says Scribner. “That’s the neat thing about our projects; over time, it’s getting harder and harder to tell what it used to look like.”

Previously in The Revelator:

A Lifeline for Winter-Run Chinook

We’re Taking a Break

…but we’ll be back soon, rested and ready to take on the biggest environmental and conservation challenges of the day.

“Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” —John Muir

I don’t remember where I first came across that quote, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately ever since I re-encountered it a few weeks ago — scribbled in a reporter’s notebook, buried beneath strata of ancient papers on my desk.

Those papers have now been cleaned up, and it’s time to wash my spirit clean too. Next week The Revelator goes on a short break. We’ll start publishing again in mid-December.

We’ve spent the past few months quietly planning this sabbatical, with the understanding that 2024 will be an eventful year for democracy and the planet. But you don’t need me to tell you this; just look at what we’ve already experienced in 2023. Expect more of that, with a force multiplier (or three) thrown in for good measure.

We’re going to have to work all the harder to find effective solutions, have critical conversations, promote the wonder of life on Earth, and support each other.

Look for us again in December. We already have a lot of great stories and commentaries in the works, so make sure you don’t miss any of them: Sign up for our newsletter, which will let you know the latest headlines as soon as we start publishing again.

You can also follow us on social media (Facebook and Twitter/X, with potentially more platforms to come), where we’ll keep promoting our archival stories over the next few months.

And if you can take your own opportunities to journey into the woods or mountains, well, maybe we’ll all be a bit stronger for it.

“The environment we create will determine what prevails. In other words, what we nurture and encourage wins.” —Jane Goodall

What Can We Learn From Jaguar Poop? A Lot

Molecular and isotope analysis of scat can help researchers study elusive wild cats without disturbing, capturing or handling them.

Poop is fertile ground for research.

Scientists have found that analyzing the DNA of a predator’s scat, for example, can reveal the kind of prey they’re eating. And that’s not all. “Fecal samples are commonly used for disease and hormone studies, which reveal information on animal health, reproductive status, stress levels, and other physiological processes,” says Claudia Wultsch, a wildlife biologist at the American Museum of Natural History.

Wultsch has used these methods for years to better understand jaguars (Panthera onca) in Belize, which is an important stronghold for the wild cats in Central America. But a recent collaboration with Brooke Crowley, a professor of geosciences at the University of Cincinnati who specializes in stable isotope biogeochemistry, has provided even more insight.

What they learned was important — but even more important was how they did it.

Hands-Off Methods

Jaguars have suffered from a depletion of prey, habitat loss and fragmentation, and conflict with people. The cats are now listed as near threatened by the IUCN and have disappeared from parts of their historic range, which stretched from South America to the United States, where they have been largely extirpated.

Belize may play a key role in restoring those populations. “Belize is part of the Mesoamerican Corridor Initiative, which aims to conserve jaguars and maintain connectivity between different jaguar populations,” says Wultsch.

But studying the elusive animals there isn’t exactly easy. Some scientists have turned to radio or GPS collars to track jaguar movement, but capturing and tranquilizing wild animals to attach a collar can stress them severely.

Jaguar face up close and cut off on the lower part. — A jaguar caught on a camera trap in Belize. Photo: jmeerman, (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Wultsch’s work there, which began more than a decade ago, took a different tack. With the aid of a conservation detector dog, she gathered fecal samples across several protected areas to learn more about the genetic diversity and connectivity of the country’s jaguars.

“Our research methods provide insights into their space use, and also provide information on how much and if they use anthropogenic resources in some areas,” she says.

A few years ago she teamed up with Crowley to include isotope analysis. Examining the values of carbon, nitrogen and strontium in scat samples, they hoped, could help reveal where an animal’s prey spent their time and therefore where the predators had foraged. That information could guide conservation initiatives.

In a recent study, published in July in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, they collected 80 jaguar scats, most of which belonged to four males, to help determine where the animals ranged. Unlike radio or GPS collars, all of their methods were noninvasive.

“We used fecal samples combined with genetic and isotope analysis to learn more about the spatial ecology of several free-ranging jaguars without ever disturbing, capturing or handling the animals,” explains Wultsch. “Spatial ecology studies based on noninvasive data such as fecal samples are rare, and we hope that our study will encourage more researchers to apply these techniques together.”

The research focused on the Mountain Pine Ridge Reserve in the Maya Mountains. “I wanted to see if the jaguars regularly utilized adjacent protected areas in Central Belize, and I also wanted to determine if they regularly hunt in agricultural areas to the west of the reserve,” says Crowley.

Analyzing the DNA of poop, also known as molecular scatology, doesn’t provide as much spatial detail as GPS collars, but it does provide genetic and health information. Adding isotopic analysis is also a key complement.

“It can extend the spatial information provided by the location and genetic composition of a specific scat by clarifying where the individual that produced the scat consumed its meal — for example, [whether it was] within or beyond the bounds of a particular geographic area with a specific set of habitats or geologies,” she says.

Looking at carbon, nitrogen and strontium values can help researchers know what an animal’s diet consists of and even the environment where it’s foraging. The methods help the researchers “learn more about the complex feeding ecology of elusive wildlife species such as the jaguar,” says Wultsch.

Far-Ranging Findings

Their findings revealed the four male jaguars had some overlapping ranges, varying in size from about 50 to 60 miles — about three times larger than estimates from home ranges of other males in a neighboring wildlife sanctuary. But they also used areas distinct from each other. None appeared to have spent time in the western or southwestern parts of the reserve, which are areas disturbed by wildfire and military activities.

“This could mean that the effective size of Mountain Pine Ridge may be smaller than its demarcated boundaries,” says Crowley. “Data like these should help inform decisions about how to manage protected areas. I am hopeful that [it] will be useful for park managers in Belize and elsewhere in Central and South America.”

She also hopes the research contributes to broader conservation goals and efforts to better understand how people have affected rare and elusive animals like jaguars.

“Humans have done an excellent job of colonizing and modifying even the remotest regions of our planet,” says Crowley. “I think it’s our responsibility to determine if animals are able to cope with these modifications or if they’re in trouble. If they are in trouble, we need to act quickly to ensure they have a future.”

Previously in The Revelator:

7 Exciting Ways Researchers Study Elusive and Endangered Wildlife

Species Spotlight: The Chinese Three-Striped Box Turtle

Illegal wildlife trade has made these beautiful animals one of the most endangered turtle species in the world.

Species name:

Chinese three-striped box turtle (Cuora trifasciata)

Description:

Chinese three-striped box turtles are quite colorful, of relatively small size (about three-quarters the size of a football), with a yellow head and three dark stripes running the length of the shell.

Their habitats include freshwater ecosystems and surrounding tropical and subtropical forests, and they’re omnivorous, eating a variety of invertebrates, small frogs and fish, with some fruits and mushrooms.

Females usually lay 1-3 eggs per clutch and can lay 1-2 times per year.

A colorful turtle pokes its head out of the water — Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo.

Where it’s found:

Smaller creeks and river tributaries throughout more densely forested habitat on the island of Hainan, as well as Hong Kong. It is extirpated from the mainland provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian.

IUCN Red List status:

Critically endangered. It is one of the most endangered turtle species in the world, according to a 2003 assessment by the IUCN, and remains listed among the Turtle Conservation Coalition’s 25 most endangered tortoises and freshwater turtles.

Major threats:

Unsustainable harvest for use in traditional folk medicines, including a Chinese medicinal dessert, has pushed this species toward extinction. The pet trade and habitat destruction are the other primary threats to the species, often a target of illicit wildlife trade.

My favorite experience:

I’m passionate about helping to combat the illegal trade in wildlife. This led to San Diego Zoo’s involvement in helping rescue confiscated wildlife, and in particular turtles. The group of turtles from the genus Cuora, which includes this turtle, are some of the most highly sought after and most frequently smuggled turtles. It has been very rewarding to be able to work with our partner agencies to help combat wildlife trafficking, in part by collaborating when confiscations occur and animals are rescued from the trade. We can place the turtles here at the San Diego Zoo or send our experienced staff to the field to help provide triage care and rehabilitate the animals.

We also conduct education and outreach to help reduce the demand for these species. We partner with the Wildlife Trafficking Alliance, are an active member of the Southern California Confiscations Network, and support other turtle conservation organizations such as the AZA-accredited Turtle Survival Alliance.

One day, if demand goes down, I hope not to have the need to help as much. Until then some of my most meaningful time caring for wildlife comes from helping animals who have been part of confiscations.

What else do we need to understand or do to protect this species?

We need more fieldwork and monitoring of remaining populations in the wild in China, along with more regional protections of habitats and long-term critical protected areas with stronger enforcement. We also need to implement best care practices for confiscated turtles and repatriation methods — plans to safely return them to the wild when possible.

Lastly, better understanding the turtle’s genetic diversity is critical for us to help zoo populations form assurance colonies. These can act as source populations for wild reintroductions — if their habitats are preserved.

Previously in The Revelator:

A Virus Wiped Out 90% of This Turtle Species. Can It Recover?

A Promise to a Utah Prairie Dog

On the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, looking back to look forward.

Excerpted with permission from the introduction to A Wild Promise: An Illustrated Celebration of The Endangered Species Act by Allen Crawford, published by Tin House.

As a child, I watched the men I loved in my family lift their high-powered rifles and shoot one prairie dog after another and another for fun, and then walk away. They called them “pop-guts.” On the way back to our camp, I stepped over their small blood-soaked, blown-apart bodies left in the matted grasses of their prairie dog town. And then, a single prairie dog raised her head out of a burrow and stood up and faced me. I froze in place, unable to avoid her gaze. She disappeared underground.

On that day, I made a vow, short of standing in front of my father’s rifle, that I would be their ally. I have tried to keep that vow.

I graduated from high school in 1973, the same year the Endangered Species Act was signed into law. At that time only 3,300 Utah prairie dogs remained in 37 isolated colonies. Due to political pressure from ranchers and developers, they were not listed on the original endangered species list. Prairie dogs were seen as vermin.

In 1977, I lobbied the Utah legislature as a graduate student in education from the University of Utah. I had created a Utah Prairie Dog curriculum for the Salt Lake City school district. At the State Capitol, I was met with incredulity and disdain by representatives who insisted on calling prairie dogs “varmints,” the Speaker of the House handed me a recipe for “Prairie Dog Stew.”

Finally in 1984, the Utah prairie dog was added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Endangered Species List and remains on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

But in 2000, in a special millennial issue of The New York Times Magazine, the Utah prairie dog was featured as one of 10 species most likely to become extinct by the next millennium. Their fate was to become a ghost species. I wrote a book on prairie dogs. Every month I sent a picture of prairie dogs in different poses (one with a helmet and bazooka) to friends at The Utah Nature Conservancy, a playful nudge for protection. Did any of these gestures make a difference? It made a difference to me. This was my wild promise that became a vow I made to the lone Utah prairie dog who survived my family’s massacre.

What is the difference between a promise and a vow? A promise is “a specific declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen.” A vow is “a solemn promise” — a deepening gesture that one makes with one’s whole being. Both are nouns. But what if we see them as verbs, as actions that grows out of a commitment?

A promise becomes giving one’s word — “assuring someone that one will definitely do, give, or arrange something; undertake or declare that something will happen.” A vow is an open-ended commitment over time that moves into the realm of a sacred obligation — “dedicated to someone or something, especially a deity.” If one believes, as I do that the Divine resides in all living things, then there are many gods among us, in a myriad of shapes and sizes and forms.

What Wild Promise Will We Make?

Artist Allen Crawford has created A Wild Promise, an illustrated celebration of the Endangered Species Act, vibrant and instructive by featuring 80 vulnerable species. He is a visionary artist who not only cares about the survival and sustaining grace of the “more than human world” but has chosen to put his gifts to use with the intention of inspiring us to care more deeply and act more consciously on behalf of these vulnerable creatures.

Perhaps as you come to know their stories, and others like them, you will be moved to seek out an endangered or threatened species that lives close to you, learn their natural history and give them not only your attention, but your devotion. Or maybe you know of a species in your state or a particular ecosystem that needs federal protection. You can support a specific species campaign addressed to the Fish and Wildlife Service to nominate newly threatened plants and animals to be concerned for protection under the endangered species list.

The Endangered Species Act is an act of love that asks for our engagement, each in our own way with the gifts that are ours in the places we call home. Learn their names. Speak their names. Remember their names. Act.

Eels, Cocaine and Climate Change

Forget ‘Cocaine Bear’ and ‘Cocaine Shark.’ To really understand the environmental threat of illicit drugs, look to eels.

This summer many media outlets smelled blood in the water and went on a feeding frenzy, publishing sensationalized reports about sharks getting high on cocaine off the coast of Florida.

The story originated with a Discovery Channel “Shark Week” program, which posited that odd, manic shark behavior observed off the Florida Keys originated after the predators consumed bales of cocaine dropped in the water by smugglers.

Shark scientists quickly debunked this theory by pointing out that sharks would only be attracted to cocaine if it smelled like meat, and that cocaine has never been found in wild sharks’ systems.

Still, the damage was done: The media had drummed up one more excuse to be afraid of sharks.

But cocaine in the water — that’s something we should still be afraid of. Only it’s not coming from bales of drugs dropped from the sky. It’s coming from human urine, the same way antidepressants and other pharmaceuticals end up in our sewers and waterways.

And it’s not causing the animals who consume it to get high or stoned. New research published in the journal Fishes reveals that this human-excreted cocaine could cause a host of health problems for wildlife — and people.

Cocaine’s a Hell of a Drug

To understand this potential threat, researchers looked to the critically endangered European eel (Anguilla anguilla), a species known to science for its usefulness in studying environmental pollutants.

“Eels are excellent biomonitors,” says Anna Capaldo, a biology professor at the University of Naples Federico II and the study’s senior author. “They are very sensitive to aquatic contaminants, live in the same place for many years, and have a large percentage of fat that promotes the accumulation of many contaminants. They also represent a source of food for humans.”

European eel by Lorenz-Seebauer via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Eels regularly swim in waterways where cocaine has been detected, like the Thames River in London. Previous studies have detected the drug in eels’ systems, but Capaldo and her team wanted to find out exactly what that meant. They exposed young eels to levels of cocaine equivalent to those found in the environment (20 ng/L⁻¹) for 30-50 days. (All experiments were conducted under ethical guidelines for animal experimentation.)

The result: The cocaine accumulated at various levels in — and caused damage to — the eels’ brains, muscles, livers, kidneys, digestive tracts, gills, skin, spleens and gonads.

“That cocaine could cause damage to a living organism, such as an eel, was somewhat predictable,” Capaldo says. “However, the fact that this damage was also induced by a chronic exposure to very low concentrations of cocaine (20 ng of cocaine per liter of water equals 20 billionths of a gram of cocaine per liter) surprised us.”

The study concluded that even this relatively low concentration of cocaine could put European eels further at risk in the wild. “[T]he alterations in nervous and endocrine systems, and in peripheral tissues, induced by cocaine, could decrease its ability to survive and its reproductive fitness,” the authors wrote. “Moreover, the presence of cocaine in the muscle, which is the edible part of the animal, can be a problem not only for the eel, which needs a healthy muscle to complete reproductive migration, but also for human consumption of this fish.”

As for the “Cocaine Shark” effect? That remains to be seen.

“Drugs are particularly dangerous because they affect mood and behavior of living organisms, and this in turn can interfere with their survival skills,” Capaldo says. “In this regard, there are many studies concerning the effects of antidepressants on behavior of aquatic fauna. The effects of cocaine on eels’ behavior are a topic that we’d like to explore with further studies.”

They also hope to repeat the study using more than one contaminant, so they can better understand the compound effect of multiple pollutants or drugs on animals’ health.

The eels in this study were actually lucky. They were weaned off the cocaine, and many of the health effects receded. But eels encountering illicit drugs in the wild would remain exposed to environmental cocaine throughout their time in a polluted habitat — a situation that’s likely to worsen as the world gets hotter.

The Climate-Cocaine Connection

Capaldo points out that pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are just one threat to European eels; climate change poses a danger to all eel species across the world. But the two threats remain linked, as temperature fluctuations can cause chemical interactions to change and become more toxic.

“All these findings would suggest that climate change, and in particular the rise in temperatures, could pose a problem for eels’ survival,” she says.

Meanwhile the study cites research that points out how cocaine poses its own threat to the climate — and a major one, at that:

“It is estimated that 1982 tons of pure cocaine were produced in 2020, an increase of 11% over the previous year. The carbon footprint … of cocaine, related to cultivation of coca plants, processing of cocaine, disposal of waste generated in the manufacturing process and land-use change, is 4500 kg CO₂e per kg of cocaine produced. Therefore, referring to the 2020 data, we obtain a mean value of the total emissions per year of 1.9 million tons of CO₂e, a value significantly higher than that of other crops, as sugar cane or cocoa beans.”

And the problem is only going to get worse. Cocaine production increased another 35% between 2021 and 2022, according to a recent United Nations report. Meanwhile a commentary published this July in the Journal of Addiction Medicine predicts that climate change — and its resulting human suffering — will worsen the opioid epidemic and increase abuse of fentanyl, cocaine, and other legal and illegal stimulants.

Embed from Getty Images

Which just goes to show: It’s all connected.

“We are all linked by our environment,” says Dr. Emily Einstein, chief of the Science Policy Branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who was not affiliated with either study. “The idea that the behaviors of humans end up in the water and impact our ecosystems and endangered species is an important one to keep in mind. Much like we share a water supply, we also share a drug supply. I think this idea that humanity is kind of linked by these shared resources is an important one to remember. We all have to care about each other, the impact we’re having on each other, and on our environment as well.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Endangered Wildlife Are Getting Dosed With Rat Poisons

Time to Dance the Salmon Home

This summer a Tribal ceremony celebrated the return of sacred fish, lost for generations.

Late in the morning on July 12, a helicopter landed in a field near the entrance to AhDiNa, a campground on the McCloud River in Northern California. Children ran ahead to greet the craft, and soon the road was lined with spectators waiting to witness the delivery of precious cargo: an insulated bucket containing 25,000 fertilized winter-run Chinook salmon eggs.

These eggs would not only bring the Winnemem Wintu Tribe one step closer to bringing salmon, or Nur, back to their ancestral waters, but could also help save the species from extinction.

Winter-run Chinook spawn in summer, but the spring-fed McCloud River runs cold all year round, buffering eggs and young salmon from even the worst summer drought. For 80 years the formidable Shasta Dam has blocked Chinook from the McCloud. Now fish are stuck in California’s Central Valley, where sizzling temperatures and water withdrawals make the Sacramento River lethal.

An adult winter Chinook salmon at the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery. Photo: Laura Mahoney/USFWS

Winter-run Chinook eggs were first brought to the McCloud River last summer, as part of an emergency plan spearheaded by NOAA Fisheries, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Winnemem Wintu to help the fish survive a third straight year of drought.

“We were flying by the seat of our pants,” says Cathy Marcinkevage, assistant regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region. “We had no idea what was going to happen last year. We had no idea if any of them would survive.”

The young salmon released into the McCloud River not only survived — they thrived, growing larger than those that reared in the Sacramento River below Shasta Dam.

Late last year the California Department of Fish and Wildlife captured and trucked 1,600 of the fry downstream so they could continue their journeys to the ocean. This year — with a new juvenile collection system, a novel streamside incubation system designed by the Tribe, and agreements in place that recognize the Winnemem Wintu as co-equal decision-makers — the partners hoped to build on their success.

Together Marcinkevage and Marine Sisk, fisheries supervisor for the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, carried the bucket to the ceremony grounds, a caravan of children and adults in their wake. Later in the afternoon, the partners would deliver the eggs to incubators on the riverbank.

First, it was time to dance the salmon home.

Warriors and Eggs

AhDiNa is at the end of a bone-juddering road south of the town of McCloud. On that July day, the campground was full of Winnemem Wintu, agency folk and their families, and people with Run4Salmon, a movement and prayer journey started by Winnemem Wintu Chief Caleen Sisk in 2016 to call salmon home to the McCloud River.

The ceremony took place in a circular arbor made from wood poles and conifer boughs. A fire in the center burned throughout the day, and as the sun rose higher, the circle had to be sprayed with water before the barefoot dancers could enter.

Between dances Chief Sisk invited partners from the agencies and organizations to join her in the circle. While a tribal member blew sage on each person, Chief Sisk asked the partners to open their hearts and minds and pressed for her two most urgent goals: building a “fishway” around Shasta Dam and bringing salmon, or Nur, from New Zealand back to the McCloud River.

Chinook eggs from the McCloud River were exported to New Zealand in the early 1900s, where runs formed in streams on the South Island. In 2010 Māori tribal members invited the Winnemem Wintu to come to New Zealand and see the fish, who Chief Sisk believes are the true relatives of McCloud River Nur.

In their agreements NOAA Fisheries and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have vowed to work with the Tribe to determine whether Nur can be safely imported from New Zealand to California and reintroduced in the McCloud River. Both the state wildlife department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would have to sign off on the plan. Some of the questions they will need to answer: Would the fish bring new pathogens to the McCloud? Would they compete with the other reintroduced Chinook for the same resources?

“Bringing the fish back to the U.S. doesn’t necessarily fulfill the recovery objective that we have for winter-run because, to our understanding, [the New Zealand fish] are not genetically the same as the winter-run Chinook that we have now and are trying to recover,” says Marcinkevage. “But we understand they are culturally significant fish for the Tribe and there’s probably a feasible opportunity to have a dual reintroduction that would support both of these species.”

Chief Sisk says that if it weren’t for regulatory barriers, the Māori could deliver 20,000 fertilized eggs as early as next year.

“Some of the rules are wrong for salmon, and they need to be changed,” she says.

For now the eggs come from U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Livingstone Stone hatchery on the Sacramento River. To the people gathered at AhDiNa, they were still worth celebrating.

Gathering around the eggs. Photo: Juliet Grable

The Salmon Dance was the last dance of the ceremony. While the women sang and men drummed, two dancers entered the circle, stepping lightly, undulating like fish. Next came a pair of warriors, their steps more emphatic, underscored by the clatter of anklets. A fifth dancer weaved in and out of the others.

The fifth dancer was the Salmon Spirit, dance captain Rick Wilson explained. First he dances with the salmon and thanks them for presenting themselves. Then he dances with the warriors in the same style.

“He makes sure they’re doing it for the right reason,” says Wilson. “He’s saying, ‘It’s okay; you’re good to go.’ ”

Stronger, Faster, Larger

Down by the river after the ceremony, a small crowd of adults and children pressed around a shade structure, where two vertical stacks of trays were set up. A pipe trickled water continuously through the stack. Each tray can accommodate thousands of salmon eggs. Used in virtually all hatcheries, the system is an efficient if unnatural way to grow fish.

Adjacent the shade structure was a second incubator system designed by Chief Sisk and built with the help of scientists from UC Davis.

Chief Sisk doesn’t like how the fry in the hatchery trays are stacked on top of each other; she wants them to have access to gravel and more agency. Her system, called the Nur Nature Base, has a much larger footprint than the hatchery trays and resembles a backyard water feature. Two deep square basins, lined with gravel, connect to a central pool that is planted with rocks and willow shoots. A sloping chute leads from the pool to a shallow, cobble-lined basin alongside the river.

Chief Sisk demonstrates the Nur Nature Base. Photo: Juliet Grable

Once the eggs hatch, the fish can swim over the lip of the basin into the pool, Chief Sisk explained to the crowd. “And when they’re ready, they’ll swim into this side channel, which the Winnemem Wintu have always built.”

Children crowded around Chief Sisk and her daughter, Marine, waiting for their turn to scoop cups of the orange, BB-sized eggs into the hatchery trays, then into one of the basins of the Nur Nature Base. By the time they completed the task, there were 11,000 eggs in the hatchery trays and 14,000 in the Nature Base.

Chief Sisk is confident that the Nur Nature Base will give the young fish a jump-start. “They’ll be stronger, faster, and larger,” she says.

In a few years, the team will know if she’s correct. Because the fertilized eggs come from the hatchery, the scientists know the identities of their parents and have segregated eggs from unique families between the hatchery trays and the Nur Nature Base. This way any fish that survive and return to the Sacramento River as spawning adults can be genetically traced back to one of the two rearing systems.

Eggs were delivered again in late July and early August, for a total of up to 80,000. Using two different systems and three simulated spawning dates will help the partners learn which strategies work best.

“We’ll know and learn better ways of setting up rearing and incubation,” says Rachel Johnson, salmon life history program lead for NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “What I also love is we are braiding natural science with spiritual and culturally relevant practices.”

Later this summer, the state wildlife department and the Tribe will place a rotary screw sampling trap downstream so they can estimate the number of fry that make it downstream. The agency also hopes to test an experimental in-river fish-trapping station where the McCloud River fattens into an arm of Shasta Lake. Finally, the California Department of Water Resources will install its Juvenile Salmonid Collection System to catch any fish the other traps miss. The system, which the agency piloted last year, uses cold water to funnel young salmon to a collection point, where they can then be trapped and transported below the dam.

Though this is the first project to reintroduce salmon to historical habitat above a large dam in California. Marc Commandatore, environmental program manager at the Department of Water Resources, says the winter-run project is “just the beginning.”

NOAA Fisheries has identified reintroducing fish to high-elevation tributaries as a key climate resilience strategy, especially for salmon languishing in the Central Valley.

“Fish are in the frying pan in the valley,” says Commandatore. “They want to be this beautiful cold water.”

The partnership with the Winnemem Wintu is also a welcome sign of new respect and collaboration among Western scientists and the region’s original salmon stewards. “To bring tribal knowledge into decision-making…I’m humbled by it,” says Commandatore. “We wouldn’t be here if science and engineering and belief hadn’t all come together.”

Previously in The Revelator:

https://therevelator.org/lifeline-winter-run-chinook/

Playing Matchmaker for Corals

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think of it as sort of fertility treatment for corals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coral spawning and restoration training. Photo courtesy SECORE International.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously in The Revelator

Planting Coral Gardens to Save Florida’s Reefs

A Lifeline for Winter-Run Chinook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More recently state and federal agencies have joined that effort.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously in The Revelator:

5 Things to Know About the Fate of Wild Salmon

Three Ways Congress Could Act to Protect Imperiled Wildlife

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funding Conservation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Brink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boosting Birds

Our feathered friends could use help, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously in The Revelator:

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