How Cities Are Preparing for the ‘Silent Killer’ of Extreme Heat

New solutions are being tested to combat health risks from heat waves, particularly in urban “heat islands.”

In the northern United States, weatherizing programs have historically focused on the colder months of the year, and the word itself likely conjures thoughts of long and frigid winters.

But warming temperatures from climate change mean the concept increasingly pertains to the other end of the calendar too: the summer months, which are getting hotter and putting more people at risk of potentially deadly heat-related illnesses.

With even New England cities like Boston expected to see as many as 42 days a year when temperatures crest 90 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, it and others around the world are developing new approaches and adapting old ones to help people cope.

The need is great.

Extreme heat kills more people each year than any other type of weather-related event. Last year when the Biden administration launched a federal plan to address the problem, White House climate advisor Gina McCarthy called extreme heat a “silent killer.” Statistics show that annual heat-related deaths in the United States surpass mortalities from tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, and cold winter weather combined, though the problem gets much less attention.

Those risks can be amplified in “heat islands” — urban areas where temperatures can be 10 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than in other parts of the same city. Disasters of our own design, they occur in places with few shade-supplying trees and a lot of buildings and pavement.

Climate change is making heat islands worse. And it’s a problem that extends well beyond Boston and the Northeast.

“Urban heat islands are a phenomenon that we’re seeing occurring pretty much in every city across the globe,” says Yusuf Jameel, research manager at Project Drawdown, an international organization working on solutions to climate change.

The Danger

Heat waves — and the concentrated effects of heat islands — pose grave health risks like dehydration, mental stress and even death. Last summer about 800 people died in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia when a heatwave hit the Pacific Northwest.

Experts say the true death rate associated with heat emergencies may in fact be even higher than reported, since exposure to heat extremes can precipitate medical emergencies in people with conditions including diabetes and heart, respiratory and kidney ailments. These health events aren’t always included in official statistics of heat-induced emergencies.

The very young and very old, pregnant women, and people who spend a lot of time in the heat — such as people who work outdoors, the unhoused, and people who can’t afford to cool their homes — also face higher risks than people who spend all their time in air-conditioned homes, offices and cars whenever temperatures spike.

“We have to take little breaks to get out of the sun,” says a building custodian in D.C.’s Columbia Heights neighborhood — one of the hottest places in the city — who asked to remain anonymous. “I get dizzy,” she adds. “Sometimes I feel like I’m going to vomit,” due to exposure to too much heat.

Some medications can also increase heat sensitivity, and extreme heat can amplify drug side effects. Exposure to heat can also diminish cognitive function, even in healthy young adults, according to researchers, which could cause life-long consequences by limiting academic and professional achievement and earnings potential.

It’s also an environmental justice issue.

Row houses with no shade — Rowhouses are hit by direct afternoon sunlight in East Baltimore. Photo: Will Parson/ Chesapeake Bay Program

A growing body of research shows worldwide urban heat islands are predominantly located in low-income neighborhoods. In the United States, those neighborhoods are overwhelmingly home to people of color and immigrants.

Compounding matters, these same low-income areas tend to have higher percentages of people with medical conditions that make them particularly susceptible to heat-related illness.

Research has also linked heat islands to the country’s history of discriminatory lending practices and a past federal housing policy known as “redlining,” which led to much less public and private investment and access to home loans in many communities of color over the last century.

While redlining was outlawed in 1968, the past policies, experts say, continue have negative consequences in these communities today. In the past few years, scientists have published multiple studies documenting the heat islands that exist today in formerly redlined areas of more than 100 U.S. cities, even while adjacent neighborhoods remain much cooler.

A Global Issue

It’s not just communities in the United States that are feeling the heat — or the inequity.

Poorer countries, says Jameel, have huge challenges for people living in heat islands, particularly those who work outdoors.

“The stakes are very, very high,” he says. For example, heat waves in India and Pakistan earlier this year saw temperatures as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit and claimed at least 90 lives. “People were unable to work. There was a higher incidence of people being hospitalized. Kids were unable to go to school.”

He also notes that children going to school in consistently hot indoor spaces can end up with both health problems and long-term economic impacts if the heat impairs their ability to learn and function.

alley with air conditioning units — A Singapore street with air conditioning units. Photo: Schezar (CC BY 2.0)

As heatwaves become more severe and more frequent with climate warming, the economic toll can be high, as well.

“Right now, it’s happening maybe two weeks a year, where the temperatures are so high that people are unable to work outside,” he says. “But in five to 10 years, if it becomes a month [per year], that will affect the economic growth of the country.”

Those days, however, may already be here. In Delhi, the heatwave this spring resulted in nearly 100 days with temperatures breaking 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s why climate change — and the associated heat risks — are “fundamentally an issue of justice and equality,” he says. “Children born in sub-Saharan African countries in 2020 are projected to experience six times more extreme climate events compared to those born in the 1960s.”

The countries that will be hardest hit by climate change are also among those that have contributed least to the problem.

Finding Solutions

Work has begun in some places to tackle the heat.

Ahmedabad, India has been leading this work in South Asia, with the first Heat Action Plan established in 2013. It includes a citywide Cool Roof program that uses light-colored roofing materials or paints to reflect the sun’s rays rather than absorb them.

Retrofitting solutions are good. But longer term, Jameel says, cities need to prioritize green space, not just more buildings.

Such urban-planning solutions are challenging in developing countries, he says, where new urban neighborhoods often spring up spontaneously, without formal planning.

Nevertheless, the Global South has one advantage over the North: long experience with the heat. One place to look for solutions, Jameel says, is local knowledge passed down for generations. For example, traditional building designs strategically placed windows to allow indoor heat to escape outdoors and encourage cross ventilation.

But while these types of traditional building designs may continue to get built one at a time, Jameel said such projects are not being built “at scale” by real estate developers, who could have a greater impact.

He and other experts say much more needs to be done to raise general awareness about heat and health, help vulnerable residents, and spark building-code changes to address the leading cause of weather-related deaths.

The U.S. Response

In the United States, the federal government and some cities have begun to act, too.

In Boston’s Heat Resilience Solutions Plan, 90% of respondents to the city’s online survey said it’s too hot in their homes during very hot summer days. The plan, published in April after more than a year of citywide public consultations, also found that 42% of Black and 36% of Latino residents reported that it was “always” too hot at home, compared to 24% of white residents.

In response to these risks, government authorities are adapting programs originally created to help low-income residents keep the heat on during the winter months.

The Mayor’s Office on Housing is considering providing “income-qualified residents” not just with air-conditioning units, but with summer utility bill subsidies, too — similar to what’s already available to help heat homes in the winter. That proposal is an acknowledgment that paying the higher monthly bills for running those ACs has become a bigger barrier to household cooling than just acquiring an air conditioner.

Boston is not alone. After deadly heat waves last year in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon passed new legislation that will direct $5 million toward purchasing air-conditioning units for vulnerable residents.

At the national level, the Department of Health and Human Services this spring announced plans to send states an infusion of $385 million in new funds from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. A portion of the funds were to cover utility payments, “including summer cooling” for households that need help catching up on unpaid bills.

Areas of pavement painted in light colors — Berkeley Lab’s Heat Island Group has converted a portion of a new temporary parking lot into a cool pavement exhibit. Photo: Berkeley Lab (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

City, state and federal governments are also starting to roll out new weatherizing assistance and interest-free home-improvement loan programs to help residents pay for adding or upgrading air conditioning.

A Comprehensive Approach

More air conditioning, however, is hardly a long-term solution, since the exhaust from indoor climate control heats up the air outside and the electricity needed to run them fuels more climate change. Experts say we need to redesign our homes, offices and entire cities, a costly undertaking that is still in its incipient stages even in the resource-rich Global North.

Some of that work is underway.

Many U.S. cities, such as New York, Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles, are adding “cool roof” or “green roof” programs to bring down indoor temperatures and decrease air-conditioning costs by using reflective roofing materials or planting vegetation on roofs.

Some cities are going even further. In 2018 Washington, D.C., passed tougher new standards to increase building energy performance in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption by 50% by 2032.

Meanwhile Boston is spending $20 million on a retrofit pilot that focuses on providing owners of multifamily buildings with affordable help to upgrade their cooling and heating systems. The program is expected to fund “deep energy retrofits” designed to improve efficiency for about 300 “housing units” in public housing buildings or those otherwise deemed “affordable” by the city.

The city’s heat plan also calls for the formation of a task force to address the immediate problem, as well as developing “the broader heat relief strategy,” with long-term solutions.

Working with nonprofit partners, it’s providing households and small businesses in the city’s low-income areas with help paying for equipment upgrades and retrofits. The plan details 26 strategies it plans to implement, working through community organizations and directly with city residents. The strategies include grant programs to help building owners afford energy efficient heat pumps and cool roofs, as well as planting trees and adding awnings to provide shade at bus stops.

Assisted by new data analysis and mapping technology, many cities are homing in on urban heat islands to better understand the history and historic discrimination that has led to dramatically higher temperatures from neighborhood to neighborhood — and to tailor solutions to local realities.

King County Metro Transit, in the Seattle area, is using heat-mapping data to guide bus stop design and amenities with consideration to extreme weather — especially in communities most acutely affected by climate change.

And Chelsea, Massachusetts, has launched a “Cool Block” project that involves planting trees, repaving dark asphalt streets in lighter gray material, and revamping sidewalks with white concrete, porous pavers and planters.

It’s possible to address climate-related health threats and historic wrongs at the same time, says Jeremy Hoffman, the David and Jane Cohn scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia, who has lead heat islands studies in several U.S. cities and worked on research studies linking redlining and historic discrimination with the locations of today’s heat islands in cities across the country.

“These decisions that were made a century ago by a few people have affected a ton of people in the present day,” he says. “Collectively we still have a long way to go, but if communities and local governments work together, we can make decisions that will have positive impact for the next century or beyond.”

Learn more about urban heat islands from “The Climate Divide,” a 9-episode heat islands podcast from Hola Cultura.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Closing the Tree Equity Divide

5 Big Threats to Rivers

Human activities have imperiled our waterways — along with almost one-third of freshwater fish and many other aquatic species.

If we needed any more motivation to help save our ailing rivers, it should have come with the findings of a recent study, which revealed that “Nowhere is the biodiversity crisis more acute than in freshwater ecosystems.”

Rivers, lakes and inland wetlands cover 1% of the Earth but provide homes for 10% of all its species, including one-third of all vertebrates. And many of those species are imperiled — some 27% of the nearly 30,000 freshwater species so far assessed by the IUCN Red List. This includes nearly one-third of all freshwater fish.

How did things get so bad? For some species it’s a single action — like building a dam. But for most, it’s a confluence of factors — an accumulation of harm — that builds for years or decades.

1. Dam Obstructions

One of the single largest threats to river biodiversity comes from dams, which provide humans with electricity, water reserves and other benefits but come with ecological costs. The loss of free-flowing rivers divides watersheds into unconnected fragments and changes water flow, quality and temperature. It also blocks the transport of sediment, and can obstruct the movement of animals, including migratory fish — and the species like freshwater mussels — which depend on those fish.

In the United States, dam-building has imperiled Atlantic salmon on the East Coast as well as many runs of the West Coast’s five salmon species. But the ripple effects can extend to aquatic insects, birds and riparian plants.

2. Pollution

What happens on land doesn’t stay on land.

The Clean Water Act, passed 50 years ago, has done a lot to improve the water quality of rivers in the United States, as have similar regulations around the world. But we still have a long way to go.

Some waterways remain a dumping ground for toxic chemicals, even decades after those threats were identified. Others face new threats from pharmaceuticals that pass through water treatment facilities (after passing through our bladders) and accumulate in the bodies of aquatic animals. Fish full of antidepressants is no joking matter. Neither are PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals,” that end up in rivers — and aquatic animals — after leaching from industrial sites, military bases or incinerators.

The nutrients we use on farms and livestock operations also wash into rivers and streams. That runoff, full of nitrogen and phosphorus, fuels an overgrowth of algae which deprive the waters of oxygen, driving away or killing marine life in so-called “dead zones.” The situation is likely to get worse as climate change fuels stronger storms and warmer waters.

Dairy cows — USDA Photo by Preston Keres

3. Grazing

Waste from animal feedlots pollutes rivers, but cattle that graze on millions of acres of public and private lands across the American West — and in many other nations — are a threat, too.

The livestock can overgraze and trample riparian areas, leading to the loss of plants, an increase in erosion and reduced stability of streambanks. A loss of vegetation along banks increases water temperature — a detriment to cold-water fish. And the sediment — and sometimes waste-fill runoff — threatens water quality and fish, including native trout.

4. Climate Change

The effects of climate warming are already being felt around the world, with rivers drying up in the United States, China, Germany, France and many other nations over the past few months.

That’s only going to get worse: In the United States, where projections show western mountains will experience a significant loss of snowpack in the next 35 to 60 years. Less snow and an earlier snowmelt will alter river flows and groundwater, which will affect numerous plants and animals across the region.

Some of those same species are already suffering from other harms from human development. Salmon, for example, that have been cut off from cold-water upstream habitat by dams are now further imperiled as low water flows heat up the rivers to temperatures that endangered the fish.

Heavy rainstorms supercharged by climate change can also cause flooding that sweeps sediment, chemicals and other harmful runoff into rivers and creeks. These storms can cause municipal sewage systems to be overwhelmed and discharge untreated water into rivers.

Warming temperatures can also exacerbate droughts, limiting water for drinking, irrigation and maintaining healthy flows in rivers and streams to support wildlife.

5. Not Enough Protections

We may love our rivers, but we simply don’t afford them enough protection. Laws and regulations offer piecemeal measures, and funding for river-conservation programs remains elusive. Efforts to establish legal “personhood” for rivers haven’t gained much traction and some of our existing tools haven’t been utilized effectively.

In the United States, far less than one-half of 1% of the country’s river miles have been protected under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, established in 1968. The law can help protect rivers and their banks from new dams and mining claims, and often from logging and roadbuildling. New legislative efforts in Congress to expand the program, including the River Democracy Act, have yet to move forward. Other nations have proposed their own new laws, but whether they’ll pass — or do enough — remains to be seen.

_____________

Of course, the risks to waterways are as varied as the ecosystems themselves. To find out more about threats to our rivers — and ways to protect and restore them — check out this selection of stories from our archives:

Set It Back: Moving Levees to Benefit Rivers, Wildlife and Communities

A Historic Chance to Protect America’s Free-Flowing Rivers

Another Dam(n) Extinction

Let Rivers Flood: Communities Adopt New Strategies for Resilience

Hundreds of Planned Dams Threaten Central America’s Last Free-Flowing Rivers

What Happens to Wildlife Swimming in a Sea of Our Drug Residues?

Strengthening Mussels for Cleaner Rivers

Granting Legal Rights to Rivers: Is International Law Ready?

Is it Too Late to Save ‘America’s Amazon’?

Could Cleaning the Tigris River Help Repair Iraq’s Damaged Reputation?

On the Clean Water Act’s 50th Birthday, What Should We Celebrate?

California’s Reliance on Dams Puts Fish in Hot Water

‘There’s No Memory of the Joy.’ Why 40 Years of Superfund Work Hasn’t Saved Tar Creek

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Previously in The Revelator:

Let Rivers Flood: Communities Adopt New Strategies for Resilience

Back the Frack Off, ‘We Can’t Advertise the Meats’ and Other Links From the Brink

Don’t miss these environmental news stories about innovative laws, rising renewables and a “climate king.”

When monarchs die and knock everything else out of the headlines, it gets harder than usual to stay informed about critical environmental issues. That’s when we start to collect the news items that fall through the cracks.

Welcome to Links From the Brink

Step Back:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a suite of new climate bills into law this month, including a long-overdue requirement that will create a 3,200-foot buffer zone between oil wells and homes, schools, parks, and public-facing businesses.

This represents a major environmental justice victory for the Black, Latino, Indigenous and low-income communities most affected by the pollution for these wells — as well as a major setback for the fossil fuel industry and its advocates, who claimed the bill would lead to “energy poverty.” (Oh, their poor corporate pocketbooks.)

Other states should now follow California’s lead, because this isn’t an uncommon problem. I remember visiting a Colorado elementary school in 2019, as part of a tour organized by the Society of Environmental Journalists, where a fracking plant loomed 1,000 feet behind an empty baseball diamond and playground. Residents spoke to us about noise pollution and a host of health issues from the well’s emissions. That fracking site — built in a poor community of color — made worldwide headlines (residents even got their story onto The Daily Show earlier that year), but similarly affected neighborhoods around the country remain in need.

No More ‘We Have the Meats’?

Here’s another innovative new law: The Dutch city of Haarlem just passed legislation to ban advertisements for meat in public spaces — part of a broader effort to restrict marketing efforts for products and services that contribute to climate change.

Also on the chopping block: ads for oil and gas, fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, vacation flights and more.

Alas, the ban will take two years to kick in (gotta respect those long-term contracts), and it won’t affect messages sent over the airwaves. But still, we’ll take more of this to go, please.

Haarlem is a city on the water — Haarlem. Photo: Nicholas Vigier (public domain)

Innovative Idea # 3:

A tax on meat. It’s theoretical for now, but it’s an idea so crazy — and so potentially beneficial to the climate — that it just might work.

As Long As We’re Talking About Food…

Over the past few months, a lot of our friends and colleagues have made the switch from “natural gas” powered burners to induction cooktops — devices that cook with a combination of electricity and magnetics.

Induction has a reputation for being more energy efficient than so-called “natural gas” (methane and ethane, mostly), but the devices remain pricey in the United States, where they’re still a niche item. Grist crunched the numbers and found that energy and emission savings are, indeed, worth a look, especially if you live in an area that gets more of its electricity from renewables.

At the same time, though, they found the current high cost to buy a new induction cooktop negates some of the savings, and that other choices might have a bigger overall impact on the planet:

Emissions from cooking overall are relatively small compared to things like transportation, travel or home heating. If you want to limit your carbon footprint, buying an induction stove is probably not the best bang for your buck. Something like getting an electric bike, an electric vehicle, or switching your home heating system over from fossil fuels to heat pumps might go a little bit further.

But if you’re looking to improve your indoor air quality — and through that, your health — getting rid of natural gas makes even more sense, as environmental health expert Jonathan Levy wrote in The Conversation:

If you live in a smaller home or one with a smaller closed kitchen, and if someone in your home has a respiratory disease like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, exposures may still be concerning even with good ventilation. Swapping out a gas stove for one that uses magnetic induction would eliminate this exposure while also providing climate benefits.

Whatever choice you make, this serves as a reminder that natural gas is bad for both the planet and our bodies. (It also reminds me that sometimes raw food works, too. Pass the carrots.)

One Last Word in Food

Climate change and extreme weather have already dramatically increased hunger and starvation around the world, so every little bit we can cut back on emissions and food waste helps.

This Month’s Top Three Victories:

1. The proposed Formosa Plastics plant in Louisiana got its air permits yanked by a federal judge — a big setback for the petrochemical industry and a major victory for polluted communities who have fought the plant for years.
2. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and his family donated the entire $3 billion company toward fighting climate change. In a statement the company said “every dollar that is not reinvested back into Patagonia will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet.” That’s expected to total about $100 million a year.
3. The United States got 24% of its electricity from renewable sources in the first half of 2022. That only includes power generated at the utility scale, not from sources such as home solar, but it’s still up from 21% during the first six months of 2021.

Not too shabby … and think how much more we could accomplish if we really put our minds to it.

S Is for Solar

Some victories are local. Case in point: More and more schools have turned to solar power to cut their energy costs. As The New York Times reports, these savings really add up, allowing cash-strapped schools “to upgrade facilities, help their communities and give teachers raises — often with no cost to taxpayers.”

Now that’s a lesson for the history books.

Royal Thoughts

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II marks the end of an era. Does the ascension of King Charles the III signal the start of something new? Well, as they say in the UK, ‘tis complicated. We’ve collected some of the best reading on the connections between the monarchy and the environment:

Let’s End on a Serious Note (Cough, Cough)

The persistent wildfire smoke here in the Pacific Northwest got the better of me recently, forcing me to take a day off — my first climate change-induced sick day.

Damn, that made me angry. I don’t have the time — or the resilience — to deal with the headaches, tightness of breath, allergies, anxiety and other health problems thrust upon my body and mind by the actions (or inactions) of dishonest corporations and do-nothing elected officials.

And I’m one of the lucky ones. I work indoors, with decent air filtration and air purifiers. I have a job where I can take the occasional sick day. I have health insurance if things get even worse. I didn’t need to flee my home due to fire or floods — floods like the ones that killed thousands this month in Pakistan; fires like the ones that destroyed houses and communities around the country; or storms like the ones that have washed away homes in Puerto Rico and Alaska.

I also didn’t experience temperatures so high I passed out while trying to my job — and that’s not a rarity anymore. Study after study points to the health risks climate change poses to workers. Meanwhile pundit after pundit complains about the shrinking economy, the lack of people willing to work dangerous, demeaning jobs, and politicians in the pockets of big business complain about the “cost” of climate legislation.

The real cost is people, lives, and the destruction of our ecosystems and communities. The cost ain’t economic growth; growth is the disease.

Expect more sick days in the not-so-distant future, and worse: too many funerals accompanying them.

Previously in The Revelator:

Links From the American Brink: Abortion, Insurrection, Pollution

Solar Sovereignty: The Promise of Native-Led Renewables

“We’re training a workforce of solar warriors,” says the cofounder of Indigenized Energy Initiative.

The lands of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe sit atop the largest remaining seam of low-sulfur coal in the country. Despite decades of pressure from coal companies, and sometimes even its own Tribal members, the Northern Cheyenne has rebuffed the industry — and its promised riches.

To help keep the coal in the ground, the grassroots group ecoCheyenne, founded by Tribal member Vanessa Braided Hair, went door to door across the 450,000-acre reservation to raise awareness about the harms — both local and global — to mining their coal deposits. The work paid off in 2016 when the Tribal Council passed resolutions against coal and in favor of clean energy.

It was a big environmental win — and no small feat for a community that could use both jobs and money. But after saying “no” for so long, the Tribe needed something to say “yes” to.

A few phone calls led them to Chéri Smith, a descendant of the Mi’Kmaq Tribe, who at the time was working as the head of workforce strategy and training development for renewable-energy company Solar City (later acquired by Tesla).

With the help of the company’s charitable foundation, she established a team that installed an 8-kilowatt solar system on the home of a Tribal elder. The small project made a big difference in reducing the elder’s energy bills, but it also led to much more.

“In that moment, it was like my ancestors spoke to me,” Smith told The Revelator. “I knew I had the skills, a network, experience and resources that could make a difference and help change the trajectory of this Tribe and others.”

Smith left Tesla and started her own nonprofit to help guide further solar development on Native lands — including more projects with the Northern Cheyenne.

“I spent five years gathering this team and trying to flesh out an approach to developing renewable energy as a means to mitigate climate change, eliminate poverty and restore sovereignty in Tribal communities,” she says. That team, now called Indigenized Energy Initiative, also includes Vanessa Braided Hair, her father Otto Braided Hair Jr., a traditional Tribal leader, and Cody Two Bears — who helped lead the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock as the youngest Tribal council member of the Standing Sioux Tribe.

The Revelator spoke with Smith about why jobs should come with clean energy, how to scale Native-led solar projects, and what hope looks like for young Tribal members.

How does Indigenized Energy Initiative work?

There’s been a lot of solar development recently on Tribal lands that’s philanthropically funded. It’s good. It’s well-intentioned, but it doesn’t take a holistic, systems-based approach and it often leaves Tribes worse off than before.

woman wearing glasses — Indigenized Energy Initiative cofound Cheri Smith. Photo: Camryn Olf

Our solution takes a very culturally sensitive, inclusive and systems-based approach to addressing the economic, climate and energy challenges that Tribes have with solar and, in the future, other renewables.

We only build projects with philanthropy as a demonstration of what’s possible. The rest of it is done with federal money and Tribal money. And we — Indigenized Energy Initiative — run on philanthropy so that we can offer our services to Tribes at no cost.

When a Tribe approaches us, they say, “How much does it cost to have your help?” We say “Nothing.” We can do the initial energy planning and work with them to build their capacity, develop projects, help them procure federal funding, and help administer those funds at no cost.

Many are skeptical, of course. But because we’re Native-led, and we have Otto Braided Hair and Cody Two Bears visit a Tribe for the first time, there’s a trust level that’s higher than if we were to just walk in off the street.

That’s the first step.

There’s also a ton of federal funding available right now, but most Tribes historically haven’t had the resources to take advantage of that. There are some — and a few that have established their own utilities. That’s now the end goal for most of the Tribes that we work with — they want to become sovereign.

How can a Tribe be sovereign if they’re dependent on the very colonial construct that puts them in this predicament in the first place? It’s really important that this development be done by Native people, for Native people, because solar and other renewables can be almost as extractive as fossil development if they aren’t done right.

Why focus on solar?

Three factors are really converging to make this the ideal time to deploy this new approach to solar development in Tribal communities.

The first is that — and I’m speaking in the words of Otto, my cofounder — he and many other Indigenous people feel that they’re on a trajectory toward extinction and are desperately in need of life-changing interventions, as opposed to Band-Aid remedies.

Second, as coal and other fossil fuels continue to become less economically viable, displaced workers from these industries — including many members of Tribes who have been working for the coal mines and coal plants in the area — are well positioned to become the workforce that’s needed to deploy these renewable technologies in their own community.

Third, solar is now the lowest cost form of energy. And it’s a well-established and reliable investment.

We’re taking advantage of this convergence of these powerful dynamics and we’re working to secure the place that Indian countries should hold in this global effort to advance solar and renewable technologies in communities that can really benefit the most from their effects.

What are the obstacles for growing solar systems on Native land?

Developers recognize the tremendous value of the land that these Tribes have and they’re bringing in their own people, importing their own labor. They leave the Tribe with a lease payment [for the solar project]. That’s OK. That’s nice. But it doesn’t transform the economy for the Tribe. It doesn’t employ Tribal members and it doesn’t establish businesses.

Usually how it works is that an external developer approaches a Tribe and says, “Hey, there’s this funding available. Let us work with you.” And they end up milking consulting fees and everything else out of that grant. The Tribe ends up with a very small amount of solar, and it’s the developer that gets the bulk of the profit.

Our approach is different. For example, the Northern Cheyenne that we’ve been working with for the longest time — a subset of us for 10 years now — we’re doing a $4 million Department of Energy project there.

When we come in, we’ll help them procure the solar. We may take a small amount from the federal grant. For example, this $4 million project, we’re making $75,000, but we’ve put in four years of work.

This year we’ll be erecting — depending on the supply chain — 1.25 megawatts. That includes 15 10-kilowatt residential systems on the home of elders whom the Tribe identified as being in need. Then we’re doing three larger, commercial-sized systems on a water-pump facility, a Head Start childcare facility, and a high school. And then we’re doing a 1-megawatt array that will be in the shape of the morning star — the Cheyenne are known as the morning star people.

That’s just the start. The Tribal energy manager’s vision is the creation of a Tribal utility and that’s the end game, but there’s a big delta in between now and when the Tribe can disconnect from the utility.

We also just signed a memorandum of understanding with the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. They’re one of the richest fossil fuel developing Tribes in the nation, and they called us and said that they need to divest. I was just in the Menominee homelands — so-called Wisconsin — in August for a signing with the Menominee Tribe. They have a sawmill and a small casino. We’re going to be electrifying their mill with solar, and their goal is a Tribal utility.

And there are others. We’re working with eight Tribes now. The number of Tribes that we can help depends on our capacity, and right now we’re limited only by funding.

The Inflation Reduction Act will make developing solar on Tribal land more beneficial. It’s momentous. But with that also comes the potential for exploitation of Tribes. And this is where we come in. Our most beneficial role that we play is that of a buffer between Tribes and colonial, Western energy business utilities, developers and even policymakers.

How does your effort help provide jobs?

Young Native peoples’ lives are so difficult. Every day is filled with trauma. Historical trauma and present-day trauma, depression, suicide, poverty, racism and being basically exiled to the most godforsaken parcels of land. It’s not like when reservations were formed, they gave them the cream of the crop as far as land. It’s hard. Things don’t grow. It’s hard to make a living. The sustenance lifestyle doesn’t really work well.

That’s why our first step is to go to the community and talk with young men and women about our Native-led training programs. The work is very physical, so it’s mostly young men and women that tend to be attracted to it, but we do have older folks.

two people in foreground and solar panels in the background — IEI residential project on Standing Rock at the home of Tribal elders. Photo: Sarah Yeoman

We’re training a workforce of solar warriors who are installing this infrastructure on their own homeland, for their own people. They have well-paying jobs. And while they’re waiting for all the work to begin on their reservations, they’re working for solar companies right now.

It’s especially poignant when you have a Tribal member who says to you, “I was planning to commit suicide this week, and you guys came, and now this is hope.”

Not only is it hope, it’s happening. I can’t express the power of it. It is a beautiful thing. To be able to have a well-paying job that’s doing something that’s good for the Earth, good for their people, and they don’t have to leave the reservation to get the job — it’s life-changing.

What can people do to help scale Native-led solar projects?

Awareness is the first step. I’m not kidding, there are actually people who aren’t even aware that Indians still exist.

There are 574 federally recognized Tribes in this country. We want all of them to be able to have these skills and to be able to do this themselves. We are working closely with the federal government. We have excellent relationships with the Department of Energy, Interior, the National Renewable Energy Lab. They’re just now seeing that they need NGOs like mine to bridge that trust gap and help bring this funding into Indian country in a way that is logical, feasible, and that Tribes can use effectively.

What was happening before was that money was being thrown at Tribes with a match requirement.

For example, this $4 million project on the Northern Cheyenne, the federal government wanted the Tribe to pay $2 million of it. The Tribe doesn’t have $2 million. So we negotiated on their behalf and got the match down to $800,000, which we’re in the process of raising. I still have $300,000 left to raise, and that shouldn’t even be the case.

We also need philanthropy to step up — and they are, but it’s not enough yet. Native American causes only receive 0.6% of philanthropic donations in this country. We need an endowment for this. We need $10 million a year for 10 years and then we can bring this to every Tribe. It’s time for the people with the money in this country to make reparations in this way. We’re a first-of-its-kind initiative. We need support and we need partners of all kinds.

The most important thing is that Tribes want to do this. They’ve stood bravely in the destructive path of fossil development. But few possess the capabilities to pursue clean energy in a way that is beneficial and inclusive. And this is that way.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Why Indigenous Knowledge Matters to the Future of Fisheries

Truths We Can’t Bear Alone: Facing an ‘Inconvenient Apocalypse’

We can’t — and shouldn’t — hide from the reality of multiple ecological and social crises, say the authors of a new book.

This essay is adapted from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity.

Allow us to be blunt about the current state affairs within the human family and in the larger living world: Things are bad, getting worse, and getting worse faster than we expected.

The human species faces multiple cascading social and ecological crises that will not be solved by virtuous individuals making moral judgments of others’ failures or by frugal people exhorting the profligate to lessen their consumption. This is happening not just because of a few bad people or bad systems, though there are plenty of people doing bad things in bad systems that reward people for doing those bad things. At the core of the problem is our human-carbon nature, the scramble for energy-rich carbon that defines life. Saying “no” to dense energy is hard.

Technological innovations can help us cope but cannot indefinitely forestall the dramatic changes that will test our ability to hold onto our humanity in the face of dislocation and deprivation. Although the worst effects of the crises are being experienced today in developing societies, more affluent societies aren’t exempt indefinitely. Ironically, in those more developed societies with greater dependency on high energy and high technology, the eventual crash might be the most unpredictable and disruptive. Affluent people tend to know the least about how to get by on less.

When presenting an analysis like this, we get two common responses from friends and allies who share our progressive politics and ecological concerns. The first is the claim that fear appeals don’t work. The second is to agree with the assessment but advise against saying such things in public because people can’t handle it.

On fear appeals: The reference is to public education campaigns that seek, for example, to reduce drunk driving by scaring people about the potentially fatal consequences. Well, sometimes fear appeals work and sometimes they don’t, but that isn’t relevant to our point. We are not focused on a single behavior, such as using tobacco, nor are we trying to develop a campaign to scare people into a specific behavior, such as quitting smoking. We are not trying to scare people at all. We are not proposing a strategy using the tricks of advertising and marketing, the polite terms in our society for propaganda. We are simply reporting the conclusions we have reached through our reading of the research and personal experience. We do not expect that a majority of people will agree with us today, but we see no alternative to speaking honestly. It is because others have spoken honestly to us over the years that we have been able to continue on this path. Friends and allies have treated us as rational adults capable of evaluating evidence and reaching conclusions, however tentative, and we believe we all owe each other that kind of respect.

We are not creating fear but simply acknowledging a fear that a growing number of people already feel, a fear that is based on an honest assessment of material realities and people’s behavior within existing social systems. Why would it be good strategy to help people bury legitimate fears that are based on rational evaluation of evidence? An obsession with so-called positive thinking not only undermines critical thinking but also produces anxiety of its own. Fear is counterproductive if it leads to paralysis but productive if it leads to inquiry and appropriate action to deal with a threat. Productive action is much more likely if we can imagine the possibility of a collective effort, and collective effort is impossible if we are left alone in our fear. The problem isn’t fear but the failure to face our fear together.

On handling it: It’s easy for people — ourselves included — to project our own fears onto others, to cover up our own inability to face difficult realities by suggesting the deficiency is in others. Both of us have given lectures or presented this perspective to friends and been told something like, “I agree with your assessment, but you shouldn’t say it publicly because people can’t handle it.” It’s never entirely clear who is in the category of “people.” Who are these people who are either cognitively or emotionally incapable of engaging these issues? These allegedly deficient folks are sometimes called “the masses,” implying a category of people not as smart as the people who are labeling them as such. We assume that whenever someone asserts that people can’t handle it, the person speaking really is confessing, “I can’t handle it.” Rather than confront their own limitations, many find it easier to displace their fears onto others.

We may not be able to handle the social and ecological problems that humans have created, if by “handle” we mean considering only those so-called solutions that allow us to imagine that we can continue the high-energy/high-technology living to which affluent people have become accustomed and to which others aspire. But we have no choice but to handle reality, since we can’t wish it away. We increase our chances of handling it sensibly if we face reality together.

In a culture that encourages, even demands, optimism no matter what the facts, it is important to consider plausible alternative endings. Anything that blocks us from looking honestly at reality, no matter how harsh the reality, must be rejected. To borrow an often-quoted line of James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” The line is from an essay titled “As Much Truth as One Can Bear” about the struggles of artists to help a society, such as white supremacist America, face the depth of its pathology. Baldwin, writing with a focus on relationships between humans, suggested that a great writer attempts “to tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more.”

We would take Baldwin a step further. Many people can tell only those truths that the power system can bear to hear. Others will dare to tell as much of the truth as one can bear and then a little more. But in the face of multiple cascading crises, we have to tell as much of the truth as one can bear, then a little more, and then all the rest of the truth, whether one can bear it or not.

If it seems like all the rest of the truth is more than one can bear, that’s because it is. We are facing new, more expansive challenges than ever before in history. Never have potential catastrophes been so global. Never have social and ecological crises of this scale threatened at the same time. Never have we had so much information about the threats that we must come to terms with.

If that seems overwhelming, that’s because it is overwhelming. No one living at this moment in history — including the two of us — can really bear all of the truth. But we stand a better chance of fashioning a sensible path forward if we help each other bear all of that unbearable truth.

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

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Previously in The Revelator:

How We Got Here: Ecological Restoration’s Surprising History

What History Can Teach Us About the Conservation of Endangered Species

Saving endangered species sometimes means knowing where they used to live — before scientists started studying them. For that, we need historical ecologists.

One of the most fascinating challenges of endangered species management is the concept of shifting baselines — the idea that how much worse a problem has gotten, and what your recovery goal should be, depends on when you start measuring the problem. In many cases we need scientific data on the population and distribution of endangered species from before anyone started collecting scientific data.

So what do we do?

Solving this challenge has required the creation of an entirely new field called historical ecology, which looks at human interactions with the environment over long periods of time using historical research methods.

“Historical ecology sits at the intersection of a number of disciplines, including archaeology, history, anthropology and paleoecology,” says Ruth Thurstan of the University of Exeter, a leader in the field. “It is particularly useful for understanding the scale of changes that occurred before we started to scientifically monitor ecosystems.”

Take fish populations, for example. The impacts of fishing have occurred over hundreds of years, but we’ve only been monitoring some of these populations for decades. By using historical ecology, says Thurstan, “We find that deeper historical perspectives show a far greater magnitude of ecosystem change compared to the modern scientific evidence alone.”

Shark History

The same techniques can be helpful in trying to understand the historical range of a now-endangered species. Just knowing where a species lives now doesn’t tell you where it used to live — or will likely need to live again as its numbers recover.

One example of this challenge can be found in a new study that uses historical ecology methods to understand the historical range of the critically endangered angel shark.

Study co-authors Jan Geert Hiddink, a professor of marine biology at Bangor University, and Alec Moore, a postdoctoral researcher at Bangor University, found a copy of the 1686 natural history book “De Historia Piscium” filled with detailed handwritten notes made by Lewis Morris, a Welsh Customs officer who died in 1765. They also found several other documents from Morris’s career that contain detailed descriptions of angel sharks found along coastal Wales.

cover of historical book — “De Historia Piscuim” by Francis Willughby. Photo: Wellcome Library, London, Wellcome Images (CC BY 4.0)

“We found several records of angel sharks in 275-year-old notes documenting shingle reefs in Wales,” says Hiddink. “The locations where these sharks were recorded coincide with the areas in Wales where they are still present now, showing that these reefs are core habitat for angel sharks.”

Without these tools we’d know only that the sharks use this habitat now. Knowing that they’ve used this habitat in centuries past, as well, makes it much more critical to protect the reefs — and we’d never have known without historical ecology approaches.

“Detecting changes in the distribution and abundance of rare species is difficult, especially for marine species, but it’s essential for identifying where management actions are required,” says Hiddink. “These unique observations highlight the value that historical material has for conservation.”

Looking Back

To uncover the information, Hiddink and Moore tapped skills not commonly used by ecologists. “There was a long process that involved reading a lot of work outside of modern scientific literature, as well as talking with people who had local expertise and sources, including historians and archivists,” says Moore.

We may have a lot more sophisticated tools for scientific inquiry today, but historical ecology shows that we shouldn’t discount the past, either.

“This paper shows that people have made thoughtful observations of marine species, and that these sources remain very relevant today,” says Loren McClenachan, the Canada Research Chair in Ocean History in Sustainability at the University of Victoria.

McClenachan wasn’t involved in the angel shark study but has used historical ecology in her own research for years, including a 2009 analysis of how the size of fish in the Florida Keys are shrinking and the species composition of communities is changing.

To determine that, she used a clever source of data: photographs taken by charter-fishing captains from 1956 to 2007, which show the daily catch from their fishing boats.

Thurstan called this paper one of her favorite examples of historical ecology work, because it “uses sources that most natural scientists wouldn’t traditionally consider scientific data, but captures peoples’ attention immediately,” she says.

Examples of using historical ecology to inform ocean conservation by other researchers include an analysis of old restaurant menus showing that commonly available fish had changed, an analysis of old fishing magazine articles that showed a massive decline in Australian snapper, and a look at coastal change in Brazil through historical newspaper articles.

Guiding Conservation

These research techniques are useful beyond the marine environment, too.

Similar methods have helped to identify the pre-exploitation range of wolves in Europe and have been used to help demonstrate the impact of climate change on seasons.

For those willing to delve into historical datasets, there are countless interesting and relevant questions these tools can answer. But we also need to preserve the information, which includes a long-term investment in data management, researchers say.

Historical ecology can’t tell us everything we need to know to save a species, but it can jog our memory.

“Historical records can point us to locations that might be important for helping threatened species to recover, even if we’ve forgotten about them,” says Moore.

Because we’ve been changing ecosystems since long before scientists began recording those changes, “ecological observations alone can’t capture the full magnitude of change,” says McClenachan. But “history can tell us where to focus efforts for conservation and management, and to help set appropriate recovery targets.”

With the magnitude of the biodiversity crisis we face, that information is a welcome addition.

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Previously in The Revelator:

How We Got Here: Ecological Restoration’s Surprising History

Left Out to Dry: Wildlife Threatened by Colorado River Basin Water Crisis

Lost in much of the coverage of the region’s water woes is the ecological crisis caused by prolonged drought, climate warming and development.

In the Colorado River basin, our past has come back to haunt us.

We’re not just talking about the dead bodies emerging from the drying shoreline of Lake Mead. The river’s water crisis has caused the nation’s two biggest reservoirs to sink to historic lows.

It’s a problem of our own making — in more ways than one.

The Colorado River Compact, signed a century ago, overallocated the river’s water. Experts have long warned that nature can’t continue to deliver the water that the government has promised to farms, cities and towns.

A drying West, warmed by climate change, has now made that shortage impossible to ignore.

For years demand has outstripped natural flows on the river, and some states and Tribes have already taken cuts to their allocations. Additional conservation measures were expected as the seven U.S. states that share the river — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California and Nevada — have been working on hammering out a new deal. The region’s more than two dozen federally recognized Tribes have also been fighting for a seat at that table and a hand in the river’s management. But the deadline for a revised agreement between all the parties came and went this summer with no resolution in sight.

To say there’s a lot at stake would be an understatement.

Some 40 million people rely on the 1,400-mile-long river in the United States and Mexico, including in many of the West’s biggest cities. It also greens 5 million acres of irrigated agriculture.

But that’s come at a cost. Long before cities and industrial farms emerged, the river supported diverse mountain and desert ecosystems, providing refuge and resources for countless animals and plants.

Many of those species now struggle to survive the cumulative pressures from drought, climate warming and human developments. And they remain an overlooked part of the region’s water crisis.

“The story continues to be about water supply and water management, and how to continue to drain the river to support the growth economy,” says Gary Wockner, executive director of the nonprofit Save the Colorado. “There’s been very little discussion about the ecological health, wildlife and habitat.”

Hot Drought

A lot can happen in two decades.

In 2000 Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which help manage water supplies along the Colorado, were nearly full. Today they’re both hovering just above one-quarter capacity — the lowest ever since being filled.

dry lake with buoy in the sand — Echo Bay Marina in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, 2014. Photo: James Marvin Phelps (CC BY-NC 2.0)

In the intervening 20 years the Colorado River basin has seen a prolonged drought that’s now believed to be the driest period in the region in the last 1,200 years. River flows have fallen 20% compared to the last century’s average.

And it’s not just from a lack of precipitation. Researchers attributed one-third of that reduced river flow to climate change. Warming temperatures increase evaporation, as well as evapotranspiration by plants. So even when the Rocky Mountains do receive snow or rain, less of that runoff makes it to the Colorado River and its tributaries.

Experts say we’ll see more of these so-called “hot droughts” as the climate continues to warm. The basin is expected to see a five degree-Fahrenheit jump by 2050. That will make things not just hotter but drier. If we don’t dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions, the Colorado’s flow could drop 35% to 55% by the end of the century.

Years ago the region’s prolonged drought was dubbed a “megadrought,” but some of the region’s top scientists say “aridity” may be a better term. That means that the combination of warming and drying will be much more permanent.

Aridity and Animals

The region’s ecosystems — and those who live in them — are feeling the heat.

“Climate warming is just hammering this basin, and part of what we see in addition to the water disappearing is this protracted wildfire season,” says Jennifer Pitt, the Colorado River program director for Audubon, the bird-conservation organization. “The fires are more intense and cover ever-larger landscapes, that in turn has the possibility to severely impact the health of the watershed.”

Millions of trees have also been lost to insects and disease exacerbated by drought, including along riverbanks, where less shade is warming streams. Many desert plants, like ocotillos, Washington fan palms and Joshua trees, are also declining from warming temperatures, less precipitation and thirstier animals.

Across the region streams and springs are drying up, too, leading to declines in populations of aquatic amphibians, fish and insects that make up the base of the food chain.

“We haven’t seen any entire species go extinct yet,” says Michael Bogan, an assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona. “But if you project this into the future, that’s certainly something we’re worried about.”

His concern includes the fate of endangered desert pupfish and Gila topminnows.

“They used to be present in large river systems, but the changes in the habitat and the introduction of non-native fishes have basically excluded them from all of those large historic habitats,” he says. “Now the only refuge where they can survive is these smaller habitats — these headwater streams and springs — and those are the exact types of places that are disappearing now.”

Birds are at risk, too, a recent study found. The researchers visited areas of the Mojave Desert that had been studied in the previous century and found that, on average, the sites lost 43% of their species. The main driver, they believe, is decreased precipitation from climate change.

Birds who live in the desert already endure harsh conditions, but climate change could push them past tolerable limits, causing lethal hyperthermia or dehydration. A lack of water can also cause reduced fitness and or force birds to skip a breeding cycle.

We already see this happening with burrowing owls. A study by researchers from the University of New Mexico looked at how increasing air temperature and aridity affected the species.

two burrowing owls standing side-by-side — Burrowing owls. Photo: Wendy Miller (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Between 1998 and 2013 the birds at their study area in New Mexico experienced a decline in the number of young that left the nest and a precipitous 98.1% drop — from 52 breeding pairs to just one.

The researchers associated the declines with the effects of decreased precipitation and increased temperature. “An increasingly warm and dry climate may contribute to this species’ decline and may already be a driving force of their apparent decline in the desert Southwest,” they concluded.

Mammals aren’t immune to the changes, either. Another recent study found grave threats to pronghorn across the region. Their models predicted that half of the 18 populations they studied would disappear by 2090.

A decrease in water supply affects animals’ health but can also cause behavioral changes that could put them in harm’s way. If animals need to move outside their normal range in search of declining food or water, it could lead to more interactions with predators or more human-wildlife conflicts, especially if animals look for resources in more urbanized areas.

Fewer sources of water also force a greater number of animals to congregate at the remaining watering holes. Experts say this increases the risk of disease outbreaks like the one that happened in 2020 along the Pacific flyway in California and Oregon, when 60,000 birds crowded into sparse wetlands perished from avian botulism.

An Altered River

Many of the most severe ecosystem impacts currently affecting the Colorado basin predate the 20-year drought.

Hoover Dam’s construction in 1936, followed by the building of Glen Canyon Dam 30 years later, dramatically altered river’s flow, blocked sediment that creates riparian habitat, and changed the temperature of the river.

aerial view of river going into dam — Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. Photo: Simon Morris (CC BY-ND 2.0)

“The Grand Canyon is a completely different hydrologic and ecological cycle than it was before [Glen Canyon] dam was built,” says Wockner.

Today the 360 miles between the two dams, which include the Grand Canyon, have become “a river that’s managed to pool-to-pool,” says Pitt. “There’s not much flowing river once you get below Hoover Dam.” That’s caused a loss of riparian forest, which supported birds and other wildlife, and pushed four native fish — humpback chub, bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker — to the brink of extinction.

“There’s concern for quite a number of species because of the historically altered river flow,” says Pitt.

It also decimated 1.5 million acres of wetlands downstream at the Colorado River Delta in Mexico.

“For most of the last 50 years, the river has not flowed to the sea,” says Pitt. “An untold wealth of wildlife disappeared off the map because of the desiccation of that landscape.”

Compounding Problems

Development, dams and water diversions along the Colorado, along with today’s drought and climate warming, have pushed many species to the razor’s edge. Some are barely hanging on.

Of particular concern right now are humpback chub, which suffered after Glen Canyon Dam’s construction. Managers have spent decades trying to recover the fish — with some recent success.

But now the species faces a new threat: non-native largemouth bass — a voracious predator of humpback chub — who thrive in the warmer water that’s being released from the diminished reservoir.

In June researchers detected the fish downstream of Glen Canyon Dam, in the same habitat where humpback chub numbers were finally improving.

“The National Park Service is really worried that if those populations of non-native fish get established in the Colorado River downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, that could be catastrophic for the humpback chub,” says Pitt.

fish being held in hand after caught in net — Juvenile humpback chub are translocated to Shinumo Creek as part of a multi-year conservation experiment to establish a second spawning aggregation of this endangered fish in Grand Canyon National Park. Photo: Grand Canyon National Park (CC BY 2.0)

The situation is emblematic of the larger ecological consequences stemming from our river management.

“How we manage the dams and the water levels is directly affecting the ecology of the Colorado River itself,” says Bogan.

And while that imperiled ecology may not be the headline news regarding the Colorado River crisis, its significance shouldn’t be understated.

Millions of people visit the Grand Canyon each year to peer over the canyon’s lip and glimpse the Colorado’s path through the ancient towering walls. They come, too, to see California condors, bald eagles and southwestern willow flycatchers — all of whom could disappear if the river does.

The loss of plants and animals across the basin is also a loss of cultural resources for the region’s Tribes.

And as the river declines, so does everything around it.

“The hydrological cycle is the cycle of life on the Earth,” says Wockner. “That’s true everywhere, but it’s especially easy to see in a desert environment like the southwestern United States where so much diversity and abundance happens in streams, at the edges of streams, near streams. As you drain the river, you drain the life off the land that depended on that water.”

Worse Before It Gets Better

As states work to deal with shortages of water from the Colorado River, there’s a chance that things could get worse before they get better.

One concern is an overdrafting of groundwater, particularly in Arizona, which legally bears the brunt of shortages on the Colorado and has many areas where groundwater pumping is not regulated.

That can leave groundwater-dependent springs and streams at risk of drying.

Another area of concern is California’s Salton Sea — the famously saline lake in the desert fed now only through agricultural runoff from the neighboring irrigation districts. One of those is the Imperial Irrigation District, which gets the biggest chunk of California’s Colorado River allotment. As the region attempts to work out a new plan to decrease water use, there’s pressure on the agency to fallow some of its 475,000 acres, but that would also mean less runoff making it to the Salton Sea.

birds line shore of lake — Birds at the Salton Sea. Photo: Anthony Dolce (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“The Salton Sea is some of the only remaining habitat for migrating water birds and shorebirds in interior California,” says Pitt. “The Central Valley was that habitat once upon a time, but has been completely developed. So it’s a critical habitat for many species.”

It’s also a public health threat. As winds sweep across the drying lake, particles of dust and pollution are swept into neighboring communities where residents suffer from high rates of asthma and respiratory problems.

“The answer is not that we can’t reduce any water use from the Imperial Irrigation District,” she says. “As uses of water are reduced in irrigated agriculture that drains to the sea, there needs to be mitigation.”

A plan, that includes habitat restoration and dust mitigation suppression projects, created decades ago to do just that has been slow to get off the ground. It needs to “ramp up quickly to protect wildlife and to protect public health,” she says.

The Path Forward

There is some good news.

Agreements between Mexico and the United States in the past decade have enabled “pulse flows” of water to flow downstream to repair a small amount of the lost wetland habitat in Mexico’s California River Delta. And in the desert, fortunately, a little can go a long way.

“We’re seeing improvements in both the number of bird species detected there and the populations of those species,” says Pitt. She’s optimistic that the two governments will continue to support that environmental program in the future.

It’s an idea that could help upstream habitat as well.

“I think really the most important thing that’s being done at both the state level and at the local level is trying to get dedicated flows in streams that are explicitly for the conservation of aquatic species,” says Bogan. Although right now, because of the complexities of water rights, that work is limited and usually local in scope.

“But it’s something that at least has given me a little bit of hope,” he says.

Another strategy, says Pitt, is “natural distributed storage,” which means restoring wetlands and high-elevation meadows to slow water down as it runs across the landscape. That can help recharge groundwater and provide moisture to soil and plants.

“The more moisture we’re keeping around the less vulnerable these areas are to fire,” she says. “It will have an incredible wildlife benefit because those meadows are rich habitat.”

It’s akin to the work that beavers do naturally, but people can replicate.

“It sounds small if you look at it on one little creek,” she says, “but if we can start to see it implemented across the upper basin, I think it could really scale up to make a difference.”

With the cumulative impacts of human development and climate change adding up, Pitt says we should look to the federal government and states to make sure that Endangered Species Act programs are supported to help protect and restore habitat for the dozens of already at-risk species in the basin. This means going beyond supplementing the number of endangered wild fish with hatchery-raised fish, which is the current management strategy.

And of course, the region still needs to grapple with how it allocates and manages the Colorado River’s water. Pitts says she’d like to see a greater role for Tribes in that process and the inclusion of adequate water to maintain healthy ecosystems.

“Environmental water needs to be recognized as part of our objectives for water management,” says Pitt.

“It’s both extremely challenging at this moment because there’s so much less water available to carve up between users,” she says. “But it’s a moment to really rethink how we do things.”

That rethinking should include changing how the river’s water is valued, says Wockner. If economy continues to trump ecology, the river basin will continue to decline.

“I don’t see environmental protection or ecological health rising to the forefront in any of the discussions,” he says. “I think as the chaos and crisis escalates, the environment is going to continue to be the biggest loser without a voice at the table. Because it’s all about trying to save the economies in the southwest United States that are dependent on the draining of the river.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

‘Science Be Dammed’: Learning From History’s Mistake on the Colorado River

What Do Ocean Preserves Really Safeguard? That Depends

Many nations have created or promised to create marine protected areas, but they don't all carry the same level of protections.

Billions of people around the world rely on the ocean for food, income and cultural identity. But climate change, overfishing and habitat destruction are unraveling ocean ecosystems.

As a marine ecologist, I study ways to improve ocean conservation and management by protecting key areas of the ocean. Many nations have created or promised to create marine protected areas — zones that may restrict activities like fishing, shipping and aquaculture. But decades of research have shown that not all marine protected areas are created equal, and that the most effective preserves restrict damaging activities.

Tallying Pledges

Many governing bodies around the world have responded to the ocean crisis by pledging to protect swaths of ocean within their territories. To see how these commitments added up, my colleagues and I recently evaluated ocean conservation commitments announced from 2014 through 2019 at the yearly Our Ocean Conferences — high-level international meetings initiated by the U.S. State Department. (More recent meetings were canceled during the COVID-19 pandemic.)

A number of countries have made ambitious commitments. At the Our Ocean Conferences from 2014 through 2019, 62 countries pledged to protect areas of their ocean. Fourteen nations, including the Seychelles and Chile, committed to protect more than 38,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometers) within their waters.

Unfortunately, even if all of these commitments are fully implemented, they will protect only 4% of the world’s ocean. Adding in all other protected areas and outstanding commitments made in other forums raises that figure to 8.9%.

The number is likely to rise as additional countries join in. For example, on May 30 the South Pacific island nation of Niue pledged to protect 100% of its national waters. They cover 122,000 square miles — an area roughly the size of Vietnam.

Most recently, the Biden administration proposed on June 8 to designate Hudson Canyon, which lies southeast of New York City in the Atlantic and is one of the largest underwater canyons in the world, as a national marine sanctuary. The canyon provides habitat for sperm whales, sea turtles, deep-sea corals and other sensitive species.

Adding urgency to this effort, negotiations at the United Nations continue around a proposed target to protect at least 30% of Earth’s land and sea areas by 2030. More than 90 countries, including the U.S., have endorsed this goal.

Clearly this is strong progress, but much work remains. Nations have failed to carry out past international conservation pledges. And meaningful marine protection involves more than stating high-level commitments.

black and white and yellow fish swimming alongside a coral reef — Reef fish swim in the waters of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Photo: James Watt (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Promises, Promises

Today some marine protected areas offer significant protection for fish and other sea life, but others exist mainly on paper.

For example, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica is one of the least-altered marine zones on Earth, but fishing is expanding there, and only 5% of it is currently protected. Deliberations over two proposed protected areas there, in the East Antarctic and the Weddell Sea, have continued for years.

In many protected areas, damaging activities are permitted. For example, the Habitat Protection Zones of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park allow multiple types of fishing.

I served on an international team that published a broad framework for planning and assessing marine protected areas in 2021. Our key message was that effectively conserving ocean habitats and marine life will require working together with local communities and governments to create more marine protected areas and set tighter curbs on destructive activities.

map of protected area off coast — President Barack Obama designated Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean in 2016 to protect fragile and largely pristine deep marine ecosystems and rich biodiversity. Credit: NOAA

These Books Are for the Birds (and Bugs)

Winged wonders get the spotlight in these new environmental books covering our relationship with nature.

Where would we be without the birds and the bees?

A flock of new books explores that question, while also looking at our relationship with our fine feathered friends and discussing how to save our winged wonder neighbors.

Below you’ll find capsule reviews and the publishers’ descriptions of more than a dozen new books — all released so far this year or just about to land on shelves — along with links to even more new titles. Many of these books explore our human relationship with wildlife and offer insight into the biodiversity flying above and around us. Some use birds as a lens to look at broader issues, like the extinction crisis or biomimicry. Others talk about the science or history of conservation, while a few seek to inform or inspire the next group of humans getting ready to leave the nest.

As usual, all links are to publishers’ or authors’ sites, but you can also find most of these titles from your local bookseller or library.

Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction

by David George Haskell

Our take: Imagine the added music we’d experience in our daily lives if we weren’t wiping out birds and other wildlife at a record pace. Recent research revealed that North America has lost a staggering 2.9 billion birds since 1970. With the decline of their songs goes a piece of our soul, but maybe this new book can help us find the strength to recover some of what we’ve lost.

From the publisher: “We live on a planet alive with song, music and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments… Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans and loud city streets, and shows that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, just and beautiful. The appreciation of the beauty and brokenness of sound is therefore an important guide in today’s convulsions and crises of change and inequity.”

Related book — The Private Lives of Public Birds: Learning to Listen to the Birds Where We Live by Jack Gedney

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

by Kate Beaton

Our take: The titular ducks don’t appear in the publishers’ description below, and they barely show up on the graphic novel’s cover, but they play an essential, heartbreaking role in the narrative of this stunning memoir. Through the ducks, and through Beaton’s experiences working in a dehumanizing profession, the author shines a light on so much of what’s wrong (yet hidden from most eyes) about the fossil-fuel industry.

From the publisher: “Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddle and Gaelic folk songs. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush — part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.” (Available Sept. 12)

The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird

by Jack E. Davis

Our take: The new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea feels especially timely, with several new bird extinctions announced last year and the need to counter those losses with tales of conservation success.

From the publisher: “Filled with spectacular stories of Founding Fathers, rapacious hunters, heroic bird rescuers, and the lives of bald eagles themselves — monogamous creatures, considered among the animal world’s finest parents — The Bald Eagle is a much-awaited cultural and natural history that demonstrates how this bird’s wondrous journey may provide inspiration today, as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.”

Vultures of the World: Essential Ecology and Conservation

by Keith L. Bildstein

Our take: Vultures have faces that only a mother hen could love, and their taste in food is rather…unappetizing. Yet their inner beauty shines through in the critical role they play in the environment — one we’re losing as nearly all vultures and related species face rapid declines. This book offers insight into how to save them.

From the publisher: “Based on decades of personal experience, dozens of case studies and numerous up-to-date examples of cutting-edge science, this book introduces readers to the essential nature of vultures and condors. Not only do these most proficient of all vertebrate scavengers clean up natural and man-made organic waste but they also recycle ecologically essential elements back into both wild and human landscapes, allowing our ecosystems to function successfully across generations of organisms… Vultures and condors possess numerous adaptions that characteristically serve them well but at times also make them particularly vulnerable to human actions. Vultures of the World is a truly global treatment of vultures, offering a roadmap of how best to protect these birds and their important ecology.”

The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World

by Oliver Milman

Our take: The insect apocalypse gets a big, terrifying book that also helps fill the reader with wonder for the insect kingdom.

From the publisher: “Acclaimed journalist Oliver Milman dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. What is causing the collapse of the insect world? Why does this alarming decline pose such a threat to us? And what can be done to stem the loss of the miniature empires that hold aloft life as we know it?”

Related kids’ book — Buzzkill: A Wild Wander Through the Weird and Threatened World of Bugs by Brenna Maloney; illustrated by Dave Mottram (available Oct. 11)

Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher

by Marina Richie

Our take: A very personal journey illuminates not just the species but, through the process of discovery, the writer.

From the publisher: “More than one hundred species of kingfishers brighten every continent but Antarctica. Not all are fishing birds. They range in size from the African dwarf kingfisher to the laughing kookaburra of Australia. This first book to feature North America’s belted kingfisher is a lyrical story of observation, revelation and curiosity in the presence of flowing waters.”

Related memoir — Learning the Birds: A Midlife Adventure by Susan Fox Rogers

The Market in Birds: Commercial Hunting, Conservation and the Origins of Wildlife Consumerism, 1850–1920

by Andrea L. Smalley with Henry M. Reeves

Our take: Given the continued decline of North American birds, this historical perspective on how we worked together to stem the tide of previous loss feels well-timed. Can we do it again?

From the publisher: “Touching on ecology, economics, law and culture, the authors reveal how commercial hunting set the terms for wildlife conservation and the first federal wildlife legislation at the turn of the twentieth century. Smalley and Reeves delve into the ground-level interactions among market hunters, game dealers, consumers, sportsmen, conservationists and the wild birds they all wanted. Ultimately, they argue, wildfowl commercialization represented a revolutionary shift in wildlife use, turning what had been a mostly limited, local and seasonal trade into an interstate industrial-capitalist enterprise. In the process, it provoked a critical public debate over the value of wildlife in a modern consumer culture.”

Related book — Wilted Wings: A Hunter’s Fight for Eagles by Mike McTee

Bird Brother: A Falconer’s Journey and the Healing Power of Wildlife

by Rodney Stotts with Kate Pipkin

Our take: Think of this as “F Is for Falcon.” In this moving memoir, we see how nature heals — but only if you’re given the chance to experience it.

From the publisher: “To escape the tough streets of Southeast Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s, young Rodney Stotts would ride the metro to the Smithsonian National Zoo. There, the bald eagles and other birds of prey captured his imagination for the first time. In Bird Brother, Rodney shares his unlikely journey to becoming a conservationist and one of America’s few Black master falconers.”

30 Animals That Made Us Smarter: Stories of the Natural World That Inspired Human Ingenuity

by Patrick Aryee

Our take: Birds and bugs take up nearly a third of this fun, wide-ranging book that reveals dozens of ways humans have developed new techniques and technologies — many of them lifesaving — by observing and mimicking the animal kingdom. That’s hardly the only reason to stop the extinction crisis, but it’s a pretty good one.

From the publisher: “Woodpeckers can face up to 1,2000 Gs of force, but they’re protected from brain damage by the design of their beaks and skulls. These marvels of nature have inspired an array of cutting-edge ideas, from an advanced black box recorder for airplanes to an exceptionally strong bike helmet. In 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter, join wildlife biologist, TV host and BBC podcaster Patrick Aryee as he tells stories of biomimicry, or innovations inspired by the natural world, which enrich our lives every day — and in some cases, save them.”

Related book — Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World by Kristin Ohlson

Extinction: Our Fragile Relationship with Life on Earth

by Marc Schlossman

Our take: Schlossman, whom I interviewed in 2019, spent more than a decade photographing museum specimens of extinct and endangered species like the ivory-billed woodpecker and the Coontie hairstreak butterfly. The results, compiled at last in this beautiful book, could have been maudlin. Instead the photos and accompanying stories serve as a celebration of life through looking at death.

From the publisher: “Schlossman combines unique photographs of specimens from the Field Museum in Chicago with informative and insightful text about the species themselves, reasons for decline and the conservation efforts in place to prevent further extinction. The specimens revealed in this book are not on public display and the only way to see many of them is through these photographs, the result of ten years cataloguing key species from the museum’s zoology and botany collections. The images lead the reader to the species’ stories, promoting a greater understanding of mankind’s stewardship of life on Earth at a critical time in history.” (Published in the UK in June, available in the U.S. in Sept.)

Audubon at Sea: The Coastal and Transatlantic Adventures of John James Audubon

edited by Richard J. King and Christoph Irmscher

Our take: This collection of Audubon’s own writings reminds us why he’s both a celebrated conservation icon and a deeply flawed historic figure. That makes for essential reading at a time when some Audubon Society chapters, and even the international organization, struggle with the legacy of the slave-owning, bird-slaughtering conservationist for whom they are named.

From the publisher: “Charting the course of Audubon’s life and work, from his birth in Haiti to his death in New York City, Irmscher and King’s sweeping introduction and carefully drawn commentary confront the challenges Audubon’s legacy poses for us today, including his participation in American slavery and the thousands of birds he killed for his art. Rounded out by hundreds of historical and ornithological notes and beautiful illustrations, and with a foreword by distinguished photographer and conservationist Subhankar Banerjee, Audubon at Sea is the most comprehensively annotated collection of Audubon’s work ever published.”

Related kids’ book — John Audubon and the World of Birds for Kids: His Life and Works, with 21 Activities by Michael Elsohn Ross

Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps

by Seirian Sumner

Our take: This gave me a new appreciation for a group of species that most of us seem to go out of our way to ignore.

From the publisher: “Wasps are 100 million years older than bees; there are ten times more wasp species than there are bees. There are wasps that spend their entire lives sealed inside a fig; wasps that turn cockroaches into living zombies; wasps that live inside other wasps. There are wasps that build citadels that put our own societies to shame, marked by division of labor, rebellions and policing, monarchies, leadership contests, undertakers, police, negotiators and social parasites. Wasps are nature’s most misunderstood insect: as predators and pollinators, they keep the planet’s ecological balance in check. Wasps are nature’s pest controllers; a world without wasps would be just as ecologically devastating as losing the bees, or beetles or butterflies.”

The Last Beekeeper

by Pablo Cartaya

Our take: A fun science-fiction novel for middle-grade readers with strong messages about fighting against climate change, extinction and authoritarianism.

From the publisher: “In a future shaken by climate disasters, Yolanda Cicerón knows that nature is something to be feared. While life in the Valley is brutal and harsh, Yoly dreams of leaving her farm to live in Silo — the most advanced town for miles around. But first, Yoly will need to prove she belongs in a place where only the smartest and most useful are welcomed… As she cracks long-guarded secrets, Yoly, along with those closest to her, is put in grave peril and the only chance of surviving may lie in the rediscovery of a long-extinct species — the honeybee.”

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

by Ed Yong

Our take: Birds do it, bees do it, even science journalists do it — they all look at and interact with the world in unique ways. Yong reminds us to break out of our limited worldview and experience our surroundings through someone else’s eyes, ears, tongues and additional sensory inputs.

From the publisher: “The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses… We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.”

Related book — The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent by Danielle J. Whittaker

No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies

by Julian Aguon

Our take: A lot has been written about Guam’s silent forests, where invasive snakes have killed virtually all the island’s native birds. Less has been written about Guam’s other declining species, let alone the people who grew up with them. This book of essays and poetry isn’t as wildlife-focused as the title would have you believe, but it’s powerful, essential reading often related to the loss of birds, bugs and nature as a whole.

From the publisher: “A collection of essays on resistance, resilience and collective power in the age of climate disaster from Chamorro human rights lawyer and organizer Julian Aguon… In bracing poetry and compelling prose, Aguon weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

Saving Mother Earth: New Books About Feminism and Women Protecting the Planet

Divert or Die: Louisiana’s Controversial Plan to Save Coastal Communities and Ecosystems

An upcoming project would change the flow of the Mississippi River and its sediment to make up for land the coast is losing due to climate change and sea-level rise.

A football field full of moss-covered bald cypress trees gone every 90 minutes, along with delicate purple irises, tide-tattooed barrier islands, and marsh grasses. That’s the common estimate of how much land Louisiana’s coast is losing — the fastest rate of land loss in North America. From 1932 to 2016 almost 1.2 million square acres of land disappeared, and more vanishes every day.

The state faces a confluence of threats. Accelerated sea-level rise due to climate change, subsidence, oil and gas drilling, and relentless tropical activity constantly loosen the sediment and allow the land and whatever was growing on top of it to be carried away in the current.

Today the Barataria Bay — one of the major outlet regions of the mighty Mississippi River and one of the areas worst affected by erosion — is muddy but still blue. Small fishing vessels dot the horizon as anglers haul in their catch of the season. A sticky heat beats down 11 months of the year, allowing tropical species like orchids and even some carnivorous plants to thrive alongside egrets and tree frogs.

All of it is at risk as the shore slowly melts into the Gulf of Mexico.

“The Bay has gotten larger. As land eroded away, many smaller and distinct bodies of water disappeared,” says Rosina Philippe, an elder of the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe who lives near the Bay.

Deteriorating marsh — Ponds increase in size as marsh disappears in this 1988 file photo.
Terry McTigue/NOAA (public domain)

Since the 1980s a collective of scientists, state lawmakers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have brainstormed ways to revive and rebuild the lost wetlands. In 2012 Army Corps officials released the master plan for the largest, most expensive, and most controversial potential solution: the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project.

The diversion would re-channel part of the Mississippi into swamps and marshes of the Barataria Basin near the towns of Ironton and Lafitte, about 25 miles south of New Orleans. This, officials argue, would allow the natural process of the river to bring in more freshwater — and with it the sediment necessary to rebuild land.

coastal diversion — Source: Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority

After an initial five years of construction, this diversion would build and sustain 10,000 to 30,000 acres of coastal swamps and marshes over a 50-year period, according to Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Ten years after its proposal, the project looms on the horizon. Already five of its nine permits and certifications are complete. The Army Corps is expected to release its final Environmental Impact Statement in September, the approval of which would likely trigger consent for the final three permissions.

But like every coin and every story, there are at least two sides. Some say the diversion project is necessary to benefit future generations, while others argue that alternative projects could build more land.

Rising Water, Vanishing Culture

Eugene Turner, a coastal scientist professor at Louisiana State University, expresses concerns that diverting the Mississippi into the Barataria Basin would immediately raise water levels — as much as two to three feet when the water is flowing. That would, in turn, force much higher storm surges through the Bay during tropical activity.

Embed from Getty Images

That’s on top of the current risk from climate change. If nothing is done and the planet continues its current warming trajectory, coastal Louisiana could see sea-level rise of 2.8 feet by 2100, according to estimates from the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program’s 2020 climate adaptation report. The coast would also be more susceptible to flooding during tropical storms and hurricanes, which are expected to rush ashore with higher intensities.

The storm surges, both from the diversion and projected sea-level rise, would threaten people who live nearby, including several Louisiana coastal Indigenous Tribes such as the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha, traditional hunters and trappers who rely on the life within the swamps and marshes for survival. Even though the main goal of the diversion is to restore wetlands, many Tribe members oppose it. If the project goes through, the communities could lose their livelihoods.

Rosina Philippe, of the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe in Grand Bayou, is the president of First People’s Conservation Council. The council’s mission is clear: “to make federal and state conservation programs with the First Peoples for the restoration of our land, water and air through education and demonstration.”

“If the true intent is to protect, preserve and restore lands and habitats, listen to the people who inhabit these lands,” she says. “We are a water people. Our lives are integrated with all that the waters provide. We belong to these waters; it’s our lifeblood.”

The Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha, like many who reside on the coast, have long since adapted to life in the surge zone. Homes in the village are already raised as high as 13 feet as a storm surge precaution.

But 13 feet may no longer be enough. The diversion-risen water levels would also likely flood the only roadway that allows vehicles to access the village, says Philippe, rendering it impassable. Medical emergencies and evacuations would be more difficult and dangerous. The people may be forced to adapt further — or relocate.

Many expressed concern that these Indigenous groups have been ignored in the diversion project’s planning — and in many other aspects of Louisiana government.

“People don’t realize that they’re out there,” Turner says. “They’re just invisible in a lot of ways, and that’s been the historical problem.”

Some nontribal members have fishing camps in the Barataria Basin. The rickety wooden houses full of sleeping cots, nonperishable food and antique fishing decor teeter on the water’s edge, lifted by support beams. Many of the shacks — which families have passed down for generations and provide anglers with a place to crash during the busiest seasons — would wash away.

Coastal scientist John Lopez agrees that the project would raise water levels. He’s been involved with the diversion project since the beginning, first with the Army Corps, then as the lead for coastal projects at Pontchartrain Conservancy, a nonprofit focused on environmental sustainability in Southeast Louisiana. He recently left the conservancy and started his own consulting business, but he still says this project is necessary to benefit future generations.

The people who live out there, “frankly already have problems with storms and even high tides,” he says.

The area is unsuitable to build a levee, so some Barataria Basin communities have tried to mitigate the impacts of storm surge and already-rising sea levels by placing boulders in the way of the water. But Lopez fears that won’t be enough.

“I’ve never seen someone come up with a way to protect those communities from major storm surge,” Lopez says.

An Alternative Approach

When Turner isn’t writing scientific articles on alternative land-building projects, he’s working with three Indigenous communities in the Barataria Basin, including the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha, to backfill the canals.

“Backfilling and closing canals should be the first project and will serve as a complement to other proposed projects, even the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project,” Philippe says.

Generally, when crews build canals for oil and gas production, they discard the sediment and soil onto the banks. Turner and his colleagues take these creatively deemed “soil banks” — or what’s left of them after erosion takes its toll — and simply return them to the canal.

It’s a six-month process, but he says it improves water quality, reintroduces freshwater, and allows a wetland ecosystem to take root. Grasses and herbaceous plants, like irises and some species of hibiscus, begin to flourish while crustaceans, redfish and speckled drum make a home.

The Tribes aren’t the only ones doing this. A federally funded project began this year at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, just outside of New Orleans, to backfill canals within the park.

Turner has followed 33 instances of backfilling canals since the 1980s, and in those canals that never reopened, “the soil bank gets colonized immediately, within one to two years, by wetlands again.”

Would this work on a broader scale? Instead of considering this option, the only alternatives listed for the sediment-diversion project are to either regulate the diversion so less water and sediment flow through — or do nothing.

Nature Plus Manpower

Lopez sits up in his chair, his voice becoming serious as he says, there’s no “silver bullet” to fix Louisiana’s coastal land-loss problem.

“You need an array of different projects,” he says.

Though backfilling canals would ultimately cost less than the $1.4 billion project — about $12,000 per canal — the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion would make a bigger difference. By using the natural energy and potential of the river to deliver sediment, the state can avoid the use of fossil fuels to move the precious soils. Lopez says this is more cost- and climate-efficient.

But nature can only undo so much damage on its own. Restoring wetlands, he says, will still require some manpower.

“The river only has so much reach when you divert the sediment and can only deliver it so far,” Lopez says. “For areas that are critical to rebuild, where it’s beyond the reach of the river, you go into your toolbox to mechanically rebuild those wetlands. Use a river where you can, and if you can’t, go to Plan B: dredging.”

The project has elements of both. The plan calls for crews to dredge areas farther from the diversion but still in proximity of the project, as well as when necessary for conveyance channels.

The Risks of Action

Although the biggest threat to the region comes from inaction, moving forward also has potential for pain. One risk from this massive river diversion project could come from the smallest organisms that live in the water.

Turner, who describes himself as an “activist scientist,” recently tracked data from a smaller-scale diversion.

“We track the nutrients going in and out of it and also what happens downstream,” he says.

In this case, the diversion created a new problem. The increased nutrient content caused algal blooms and eutrophication, or excessive nutrients that help plants flourish to the point where the animals living in the water suffocate. The pond in the small-scale diversion — the entire scope of the project — turned deep green and dead fish floated to the surface.

Turner fears a diversion as big as the one proposed for Barataria Bay could result in a continuous algal bloom that would choke out animal life from thriving in the wetlands.

Many people in Louisiana depend on that wetland diversity. The state is known for its seafood industry: Its healthy swamps allow crabs, shrimp, oyster, alligators, crawfish, and various species of fish to prosper.

“No wetlands, no shrimp,” Turner says. The point of the project is, in fact, to build wetlands.

The diversion would also freshen up the estuary water, eventually creating an ideally perfect home for meandering crustaceans and gleaming fish. But Philippe worries that the change would be detrimental to those who make a living in Barataria Basin.

“The project would put more freshwater into the bayous, causing saltwater species to migrate,” she says. “Local traditional fishermen would have to incur added expense during harvest season.”

Alongside traditional anglers, hundreds of commercial seafood fishermen, some third- or fourth-generation, live season to season, relying on the profit from each harvest to feed their families. The project would gamble their livelihoods. What if it doesn’t work?

The industry contributes around $2.4 billion annually to the state’s economy, so the state would likely suffer a deficit.

Other marine life could also deteriorate. The now-salty marshes of Barataria Bay are home to more than 1,000 bottlenose dolphins. Biologists warn that the introduction of freshwater through the diversion project could kill off hundreds of the marine mammals.

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In consideration of these concerns, the plan includes wildlife protection efforts and roughly $300 million in mitigation costs to the commercial fishing industry.

Lopez acknowledges the risk coastal commercial fishermen face but says some can put the potential suffering aside in hopes of a brighter future.

“They realize this hurts them in the short run, but they care about their great-grandkids, their families,” Lopez says. “But it’s hard, and it’s unfair to expect someone to make that kind of tradeoff.”

A Diversion Track Record

There’s no chance the project would not work, counters Lopez.

“Zero,” he laughs, folding his fingers into an egg for the camera. “You can’t stop a diversion from building land,” he adds.

Here’s a close-up of the West Bay Mississippi River Diversion- from Sentinel Image I posted yesterday. This diversion was opened in 2002, augmented with artificial islands from about 2009-2015. The islands developing tails, are is partial conformation to the river’s flow. pic.twitter.com/i9ILlxAAUW

— Alex Kolker (@AlexSKolker) March 4, 2021

Previous, smaller diversion projects point to the potential for success. A 2012 study on the impacts of salinity from previous Mississippi River diversions found the levels varied, depending on the season and weather. The shift in salinity had different effects on different species, with some animals and plants better tolerating the salt-water.

The Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Project, for example, began operating in 1991 after three years of construction. During its 11 years of operation, alligators creeped back to claim the terrain, waterfowl flocked to nest, and oysters thrived with lower mortality rates.

There are, however, examples of species that have not that good luck: Blue crabs and brown shrimp appeared to be less abundant after the diversion.

Overall, though, Lopez says, “diversions are the core processes that fundamentally make our estuary as productive as it is.”

Time for Action

Scientists and activists say without progressive restoration, the Gulf of Mexico shoreline will lap along the edges of New Orleans within 100 years. The Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha will be forced to relocate, leaving parts of their history and heritage to the water. Louisiana would not only lose the Mississippi River Delta, but the river channel as well. The state would lose the port of New Orleans, threatening the city’s economy.

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A post shared by Tristan Baurick (@tristanbaurick)

The fate of what happens over the next century may depend on what happens over the next several weeks.

This September the Army Corps of Engineers expects to make public the diversion project’s final Environmental Impact Statement. After that, the public will have the opportunity to submit comments. The Corps will then determine whether the project meets the requirements of the Clean Water Act, the Rivers and Harbors Act, and other regulations.

All of this will move quickly. The Corps plans to issue its Record of Decision in December, and if it approves the project the Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority can start scheduling operations. Construction could begin within two years.

Meanwhile, Philippe, Lopez and Turner race to have their voices heard — all to bring back some of the million lost acres.

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Set It Back: Moving Levees to Benefit Rivers, Wildlife and Communities

The Danger

A Global Issue

Finding Solutions

The U.S. Response

A Comprehensive Approach

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Step Back:

No More ‘We Have the Meats’?

Innovative Idea # 3:

As Long As We’re Talking About Food…

One Last Word in Food

This Month’s Top Three Victories:

S Is for Solar

Royal Thoughts

Let’s End on a Serious Note (Cough, Cough)

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Shark History

Looking Back

Guiding Conservation

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Hot Drought

Aridity and Animals

An Altered River

Compounding Problems

Worse Before It Gets Better

The Path Forward

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Tallying Pledges

Promises, Promises

Raising the Bar

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Rising Water, Vanishing Culture

An Alternative Approach

Nature Plus Manpower

The Risks of Action

A Diversion Track Record

Time for Action

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