Saving the planet is tough work. Let’s finish the season right and come out stronger for the environmental fights ahead.
It’s been quite a year so far — and we expect the last four months of the year to be even more tumultuous.
In light of the battles ahead, we’re about to take a short recharge break. We hope you have a chance to do the same. As I like to say, “recreation = re-creation.”
We’ll be back with new articles and commentaries on Sept. 6, but we won’t exactly be resting on our laurels during our two-week break. We have stories to research and write, pieces to edit, messages to share and inspiration to draw in close.
And meanwhile, we have an assignment (or 15) for you — things you can do over the next couple of weeks to help set the path for an eventful and powerful rest of the year:
Thank someone for helping the planet. It could be a politician, scientist, activist, journalist, or even a neighbor. Too many good deeds go unrecognized, and even the briefest appreciation can do wonders to help someone keep moving forward.
Write to someone in power and ask them to do more (or better). Never underestimate the power of a well-argued personal note.
Plan your autumn activism or set your environmental goals for the rest of the year. There’s so much happening: Protests, petitions, cleanups, tree planting, op-ed writing — the sky’s the limit.
Write something for us! We’re always looking for op-eds, submissions to our Species Spotlight and Protect This Place features, or freelance pitches. Full details here.
Take a walk, open a window — enjoy the sounds of nature however you’re able. Listen to the wind, birdcalls, bees buzzing…and let them help you remember what’s worth fighting to save.
Walk a mile in a climate-disaster survivor’s shoes (or an endangered species’ paws/flippers/hooves). The more we think about what others go through as their homes, communities and ecosystems are destroyed, the better we’re able to advocate for them before the next disaster.
Donate to an environmental group or disaster-recovery organization. Time, money and expertise are all needed and valued.
Share your favorite Revelator article with a friend or on social media. We have more than 1,000 to choose from.
Send us your favorite recent nature photo.We like mail.
Submit a public comment on pending environmental legislation or regulations. If you don’t speak up, who will?
Participate in democracy. Make your plan to vote in the upcoming midterms. If you already know where and how to cast your ballot, consider signing up to be a poll worker or watcher. We expect some tomfoolery in upcoming election cycles.
Think about history. Looking back helps us to look forward, and there are several ways to do this. Consider how the environmental qualities where you live have changed over the past few years or decades. If you’re not Indigenous, find out on whose land you reside, how it was stolen and what recognition local Tribes still need. Reflect on recent environmental wins and losses. Think about species you haven’t seen or heard about lately that may have experienced invisible declines. Or maybe ask yourself: How can I make history in the months ahead?
Subscribe to our newsletter. Be prepared for the latest headlines as we return from our publishing break.
That’s it for now. We’ll see you on Sept. 6. Until then, stay safe and stay connected.
Addressing environmental threats in Antarctica could help spur global action, an expert says.
Most of us will never make it to Antarctica, the ice-covered continent at Earth’s southern tip. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore its pressing environmental challenges, says Claire Christian, the executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition.
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming regions, with average summer temperatures climbing 3 degrees C in the last 50 years. That’s bad news for Adélie penguins, whose populations have declined by as much as 90% in some areas. It’s also affecting the Southern Ocean, which plays a large role in the global ocean circulation system on which we all depend.
Unlike every other continent, Antarctica has no national government. Rules for fishing, tourism and protections for the environment come from treaties signed by several dozen countries. While consensus-based governing comes with challenges, Christian says that international cooperation in the region could be a model of how we deal with global climate challenges.
But first, we have to get things right there.
The Revelator spoke to Christian about the region’s most pressing threats, the animals beyond charismatic penguins who reside there, and what the international community needs to do to protect it.
What’s it like to visit Antarctica?
When you’re down there, you feel like you’re a guest.
I think in many parts of the world, we treat nature as if it’s something we need to manage or something that we allow to flourish or don’t allow to flourish, depending on our needs. But when you’re in Antarctica, there are a lot of rules you have to follow to make sure that when you’re observing wildlife, you’re not disturbing them. You don’t want to get between penguins and seals and the ocean, for example, because they’re trying to go feed their young. Penguins take pretty regular paths, which they refer to as “penguin highways,” and you’re not allowed to block a penguin highway.
Feeling like a guest is an unusual experience for most people. I think it’s actually a nice reminder of how we could interact with the natural world in a different way. Instead of assuming that we can go everywhere, we can try to think about how we can step back and let nature thrive, rather than trying to figure out how much of the forest will we tear down today.
How is warming changing Antarctica?
There are some temperature records that have recently been set in the Antarctic Peninsula. We’re learning more and more about how various glaciers and ice sheets are becoming more unstable. We’re also seeing direct impacts to wildlife.
Adélie penguins and chinstrap penguins are declining in some of their colonies, and it’s largely thought to be due to warming. We’re still trying to understand how climate change will affect krill, which is the primary food source for a lot of penguins. We’re even seeing changes in the chemistry of the ocean due to ocean acidification.
We like to think of these animals as being very tough because they live in one of the harshest environments on the planet, but at the same time they can be very vulnerable to disturbance.
Claire Christian. Photo: Courtesy of Claire Christian
They’re adapted to live in very cold climates, so when it gets warmer, for some species that actually changes their environment so much that it’s harmful to them.
We’re seeing massive changes and shifts in every aspect of the ecosystem. There will be some species that can adapt, and there will be some that can’t. It’s a big question mark as to what Antarctica will look like in a few decades if we don’t reduce our carbon emissions.
Penguins get a lot of attention — but what about some of the other species?
We see penguins, seals and whales on the surface, and even maybe a few fish occasionally, but the majority of the species in Antarctica are underwater. A lot of them live on the sea floor on or near the sea floor, so they’re not very visible to the naked eye. But when we do get down there, we’re finding a lot of incredible biodiversity hotspots.
Recently one of our member organizations, Greenpeace, took a submersible down on some deep dives in the Weddell Sea. They found what are called “vulnerable marine ecosystems”: basically, dense aggregations of underwater species. That includes sponges and starfish and all kinds of things.
German scientists in the Weddell Sea also recently found the largest site of fish nests on the planet. There are icefish that build little nests on the seafloor to lay their eggs and tend to their young. It’s not a very common phenomenon, and it was previously thought to be limited to maybe a few small sites. Instead they found millions of nests.
It’s a great example of how much is out there in Antarctica — all these weird and wonderful creatures. There are starfish that have a lot of arms and will sometimes dangle a few out to catch a little krill from the water. That’s a very kind of unusual behavior as well.
There’s also the colossal squid, which hardly anybody ever sees because they’re so cryptic and mysterious.
Every time we send submersibles or cameras down there, it seems like we’re finding new hotspots for life. That really drives home to me how important it is to protect Antarctica. We may be causing changes to all these very cool and unique species without even realizing it, because we don’t even know they’re out there.
What are some other threats?
The biggest threat is global climate change. And that’s something that we can’t stop just in Antarctica. Action for that has to be taken on a global level.
But there are a lot of things that can be done locally in the Antarctic to improve the resiliency of ecosystems, particularly at a time when interest in fishing and tourism is growing.
Photographing penguins in Antarctica. Photo: Christopher Michel (CC BY 2.0)
This upcoming tourist season, there’s predicted to be over 100,000 tourists. That may not sound like a lot, but it would be the first time that many have gone there in a single season. And they’re all going to the Antarctic Peninsula, which is one of the fastest-warming areas on the planet.
There’s also an interest in expanding the krill fishing industry. Coincidentally, most krill fishing takes place in the Antarctic Peninsula, where all the tourism is happening, where the climate change is happening. It often takes place in the very same areas where penguins, whales and seals like to feed, because that’s where the most krill are.
If you’re looking at this big, vast continent and thinking, How can a few thousand scientists, 100,000 tourists and a few fishing boats make a difference? The important thing to remember is that a lot of this is concentrated in very small places and places that are already under stress from rapid climate change.
We need to be precautionary. We need to make sure that if we’re fishing, it’s not too much in areas where penguins like to feed, because fishing boats can go somewhere else and get more krill. Penguins can only travel so far in a day, and if they don’t get enough food, their chicks aren’t going to make it.
With tourism we need to be making sure that it’s being planned in a systematic way that looks at where the ecosystems are being the most affected by climate change and making sure that we’re not steering people towards sensitive areas.
A single human footprint can last for decades there. So it’s really important that we get it right.
How do you do that in a place with no national government?
There are a few treaties that govern most of the activities in Antarctica. There’s the Antarctic Treaty and the Environment Protocol that deals with things like tourism and scientific research. It’s not exclusively terrestrial, but its main focus is on activities that happen on land.
The countries that signed those treaties meet once a year for each treaty and make decisions.
The treaties have a lot of great principles in them. The Antarctic Treaty and the Protocol have a whole annex on how to set aside protected areas to accomplish a number of conservation goals, like protecting biodiversity.
It has all the underlying legal framework to do that, but it’s not really being implemented very quickly. And the same thing with CCAMLR. It has conservation measures that allow for the establishment of marine protected areas, but so far they’ve only established two.
Many of the countries within the treaty system want to take action. But both of those treaties are consensus based. That means one or two countries can block any decision. And unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a lot of countries that understand the threat of climate change — they understand what the treaties can do to build resilience for ecosystems — but all of their proposals are blocked because a few other countries don’t want to take action. They don’t want to limit fishing options — that kind of thing.
For example, at the most recent Antarctic Treaty meeting, there was a proposal to designate emperor penguins a specially protected species because they’re highly threatened by climate change. That proposal didn’t go through because China objected to it. Marine Protected Areas most recently have been blocked by Russia and China.
It’s very frustrating when you have generally a lot of goodwill and a lot of countries that are committed to the protection of Antarctica, but they can’t make progress even as we’re experiencing a global climate and biodiversity crisis.
What would you like to see happen?
The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition supports the 30×30 goal of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. Antarctica is in the Southern Ocean, which is 10% of the global ocean. We need to have more Marine Protected Areas there to help meet the global goal.
There have been proposals for protected areas in the Antarctic Peninsula, the Weddell Sea and East Antarctica that would go a long way towards building a network of Marine Protected Areas that fully represents the biodiversity of the Southern Ocean. But those proposals have been on the table for a number of years, and they haven’t been adopted due to a lack of consensus.
Right now, obviously, we’re in a difficult geopolitical situation with the invasion of Ukraine. I think that’s making a lot of international cooperation on major environmental issues — whether it’s Antarctica or anything else — kind of difficult.
We hear a lot about urgency on climate matters, but it’s not reflected in the policies that are being implemented. We really need our leaders to make this a priority, even though there are many other very important priorities right now. What’s the point of surviving the global pandemic if we’ve destroyed the life support system that keeps us healthy?
What we really need is big action. We don’t need a commitment to more electric vehicles. We need meaningful protections that stop biodiversity loss and dramatically reduce our emissions.
Even though Antarctica is far away, what happens there doesn’t stay there. The Southern Ocean is a major part of the global ocean circulation system. Antarctica is kind of like the world’s refrigerator in a lot of ways. So even you don’t plan to go to Antarctica, and all you want to do is look at pictures of penguins, I hope people feel that Antarctica is part of the Earth that we depend on for our survival. They should let their leaders know that they want action to protect this amazing wilderness that belongs to everybody.
This is an important moment for the planet. Taking action in Antarctica is actually a great way to get started on some of these other goals, because all of the things we need to do require a lot of international cooperation and leadership. We can start in Antarctica and prove that it can be done, and then tackle some of these other problems in other places.
Antarctica is the world’s last great wilderness.
This is a place where we haven’t messed everything up yet. If we do the right things, we can avoid making the same kind of mistakes we’ve made everywhere else.
These weasel-like small cats haven’t been documented in the country since 1986. A new study suggests it’s time to reintroduce them.
A few times a year, wildlife officials in Texas receive excited phone calls.
“I just saw something that looks like a really big cat, or maybe a giant weasel,” a caller might say. “Was it a jaguarundi?”
No, they’re not reporting a sighting of a mythical beast like the chupacabra. But they might as well be.
The elusive, secretive jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) is a small, bizarre-looking feline species, not much bigger than a house cat, with weasel-like features, short legs, and an extremely long tail. Native to South and Central America, its range once extended to the southern tip of Texas, but it hasn’t been officially observed in the Lone Star State since 1986. The last one we know of was killed that year by the world’s most fearsome predator: a car.
Texas wildlife officials still dutifully investigate every sighting, and to date they’ve debunked every one of them. The “jaguarundis” people think they saw, biologists explain, were simply house cats or other wild felids — or sometimes just squirrels — out stalking in the dark.
That hasn’t stopped people stopped looking for the jaguarundi in Texas or hoping to spot one. In fact, one group of scientists just finished an exhaustive, decades-long study seeking evidence of the species’ persistence at the northernmost edges of its range, which also extends south all the way to Argentina.
The researchers, mostly from the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University, spent 18 years setting up motion-activated cameras at 685 sites in the cats’ most likely locations in their historic range in northern Mexico and southern Texas. Over that time, they captured 126 photos of the cats in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state bordering southernmost Texas, indicating that remains a healthy part of the animals’ range.
In Texas the camera traps caught images of a wide range of other carnivores, including ocelots, bobcats, coyotes and hog-nosed skunks — but not a single jaguarundi in 18 years.
Based on their thousands of photos and the lack of verifiable sightings, the researchers concluded that “the jaguarundi is likely extirpated from the United States.” They published their findings earlier this year in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
“This is unfortunate news for jaguarundis in the U.S.,” says Wai-Ming Wong, director of the small-cats program at Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization, who was not involved in the study.
“Although disappointed, I’m not overly surprised by the findings,” Wong adds. “Southern Texas represented the northernmost part of the jaguarundi distribution, and for many cases, it’s at these extreme marginal areas of species’ distributions where they are most sensitive to threats.” Aside from highways, agricultural expansion and intensification likely drove the jaguarundi extinct in this country.
Time to Bring Them Back?
Could this sad news also serve as an opportunity?
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally protected the Gulf Coast jaguarundi under the Endangered Species Act in 1976, just three years after the legislation took effect. It’s been listed as an endangered species in this country ever since, although not much has happened during the ensuing years. By the time the Service finally published its first draft jaguarundi recovery plan in 2012 — a not-atypical delay — no one had officially seen the species in the United States in more than a quarter-century.
That recovery plan, finalized in December 2013, made it clear how little we knew about jaguarundi at the time — something that’s still true today. “Information on life history aspects of jaguarundi in the wild, including age of sexual maturity, minimum and maximum breeding age, and mating behavior, is limited,” the recovery plan stated.
That’s not unusual, since big cats like lions and tigers attract the most conservation attention and research funding. “Jaguarundis, like many other small cat species, are understudied and poorly known,” says Wong. Without the right data on a species’ ecology, it’s much harder to conserve them.
The 2013 plan called for closing those information gaps, as well as investigating whether jaguarundis could resettle Texas from Mexico or if the species would benefit from proactive reintroduction efforts.
The new study says it’s time to put that last option into action.
“We suggest,” the authors wrote, “that federal and state agencies follow recovery strategies as outlined in the Gulf Coast jaguarundi recovery plan. These recovery efforts include restoring, protecting and reconnecting habitat, public outreach and education, reducing risk of road mortality, and evaluating the feasibility of jaguarundi reintroduction into South Texas.”
That probably requires rethinking of the border wall between the United States and Mexico. The 2013 recovery plan acknowledged that “increased border monitoring associated with illegal immigration, and homeland security, may impact future jaguarundi recovery efforts” — and that was long before the Trump administration waived dozens of environmental laws to accelerate border-wall construction.
Wong agrees that reintroduction needs further discussion, “particularly in the context of the jaguarundi action plans as well as the U.S. Recovering America’s Wildlife Act,” he says. “The authors make strong recommendations for the next steps. It’s crucial to implement spatial and population surveys to better understand their fundamental ecology and conservation needs, which would inform reintroduction plans and make them more effective.”
Federal officials disagree, though.
“Given our limited resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works to focus recovery efforts where we can have the greatest impact for listed species,” Fish and Wildlife public affairs specialist Aubry Buzek says by email. “At this time, we do not have plans to implement a reintroduction of jaguarundi into the United States.”
More Effort Needed
Nonetheless, the species remains officially endangered in the United States — an important classification should the wild cats wander back into their traditional northern territory.
It’s not an unlikely scenario. Their larger, similarly named cousin, the jaguar, has extended its range back into the United States in recent years, a trend that’s expected to continue.
Meanwhile, the threats that likely drove the jaguarundi out of the country still exist, and they’re probably worse than they were 30 years ago. Those risks need mitigation, not just for jaguarundi but all Texas wildlife.
Road mortality, habitat loss, roads and hunting remain threats to jaguarundis south of the border, too. Although the IUCN Red List assesses the species’ extinction risk as “least concern,” they’re not always doing well, and their legal protection varies throughout their range. “In many parts of their distribution, their populations are declining,” says Wong.
But knowing how much they’re declining, and what they need to thrive, remains under-researched. Fewer than 20 scientific studies of the jaguarundi have been published since 2018. During that same period, researchers have published hundreds of studies about lions and other charismatic mega-felines.
Ultimately, that’s what makes this study of the jaguarundi’s potential extirpation from Texas so important. It’s a reminder that we’re leaving many interesting species unstudied and under-protected.
Wong says he hopes this makes a difference for the mysterious, neglected jaguarundi.
“Any information that increases the conservation awareness of the species will be beneficial,” he says.
Even protected places face threats from climate change and encroaching development.
The place:
Nestled at the very edge of the toe of mainland Italy you’ll find Aspromonte National Park, one of the wildest places in Italy. It sits at the end of the Apennines, which start just below the western Alps and run through central Italy to the toe of the country’s “boot.”
The name Aspromonte means “white mountain.” The area is known for its rugged granite mountains that reach 6,500 feet and the forests that cover 60% of the park’s lowlands and some peaks.
Aspromonte was designated a national park in 1989, but the history of this natural area runs deep. Archaeological evidence from Greek and Roman civilizations has been found in the park and local villages, including early prehistoric agricultural and pastoral tools and musical instruments.
Today the villages that border the park also preserve its unique heritage. The local dialect of Italian has been influenced by Greek settlements, as have local crafts such as byzantine fabrics and crochet work.
Why it matters:
While Aspromonte is known for its rugged beauty, it is its placement within the UNESCO World Heritage Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests that makes it unique.
These forests are the southernmost component of the UNESCO world heritage serial site that helps protect ancient beech forests across 18 countries.
European beech forest. Photo: Tobias Mandt (CC BY 2.0)
The European beech (Fagus sylvatica), found throughout the continent from Germany to Ukraine to Italy, has survived tumultuous temperature fluctuations over a million years. The remaining old-growth trees — including in Aspromonte— are a testament to its resilience. But that’s being put to the test with climate change.
At the heart of the park’s forests is Valle Infernale — the infernal valley — where Aspromonte’s old-growth European beech trees are found. The forest transitioned from evergreens to the old-growth mixed stands that are seen today. The ages of the beech trees reach more than 200 years.
Since they’re high on a steep, ragged ridge, their inaccessibility has allowed these trees to escape extensive logging. Today what remains is an exemplary beech forest habitat, showing what an undisturbed forest can be: resistant, resilient and full of life. Italian wolves, peregrine falcons and goshawks make their homes here. The old-growth forests also help provide clean water and air, store vast amounts of carbon, and support the rich biodiversity. The benefits of old growth extend beyond the park and are necessary to help mitigate global climate change in the future.
Protecting old-growth forests ensures that carbon dioxide remains stored, instead of further emitted into the atmosphere. Furthermore, because the forests are rich, unique habitats, the protection of these ecosystems ensures that they remain stable habitats for the species that rely on them.
The threat:
Valle Infernale’s forest may have escaped previous logging activity, but there are other current threats. Our work showed that a human-caused wildfire in 2021 didn’t touch the core area of the old-growth beech (thankfully), but it came as close as it could and burned other parts of the surrounding forest. Wildfires, which could be made worse by climate change, pose a future risk.
The health of neighboring trees — a mix of pine and other broadleaf species — is important to the health of the beech forest. Damage to these neighboring habitats, whether from fire, climate change or development, could result in irreversible fragmentation of the broader interior habitat. Italy is approximately one-third forested, and these pockets of old-growth are of the utmost importance, particularly in a changing climate. The species that make their homes here rely on the unique environmental conditions provided by the integrity of the old-growth structure.
While the beech tree is considered adaptable and robust, the future with climate change remains unknown.
Agriculture and logging have forced the conversion of forests worldwide, notably in Italy, a country known for its abundant food culture. Over time, that trend changed, and Italy gained forest cover from 1990 to 2010. But the threat is not over. According to Global Forest Watch, Italy lost forest cover in 2021. Development continues to threaten forests surrounding the park. Fragmentation even outside of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites leads to disrupted habitats for animals, erosion and other adverse effects.
My place in this place:
Vermont writer John Elder’s book, Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, follows George Perkins Marsh’s journey from Vermont to Italy, comparing the environmental conditions of the U.S. East Coast to those of Italy. As a New Englander, I see the strong connections between these two landscapes that may look vastly different. Both regions have been exposed to repeated human influence in the form of agriculture, logging, and human displacement and migration. Now both face the pressures of a changing climate. These forest areas are irreplaceable carbon sinks, biodiversity hotspots and unique habitats.
Ancient beech trees in Italy. Photo: Gianluca Piovesan
Working in these ecosystems changed how I think about cultural and natural resource management. As a Fulbright student researcher, I’ve spent only a brief time here — just nine months. Compared to the lifespan of these trees, that’s especially short. But joining the landscape and ecological planning lab in Viterbo, Italy, has allowed me to gain an even wider perspective on these forests and why they matter. In Italy, the cultural history is valued everywhere from museums and architecture to the forest. Forest management must involve diverse stakeholders — the foresters, townspeople, local farmers and artisans. The future of forest health relies on dialogue among these diverse groups.
Climate change will cause harsher temperatures and species’ livelihoods to be compromised. But storytelling and communicating the value of these places can, and must, continue.
What this place needs:
Communicating the value of old-growth forests is one of the most important things that scientists and citizens alike can do. Academic research and reports warn of the severity of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, but there is an essential need to better communicate these issues to the public.
Stories about these forests and villages can help connect people to these old-growth systems and their irreplaceable worth and inspire people to continue to work to protect them. The stories that need telling should come from all angles — from those who make their lives working in the park, those who visit, and those who protect them.
Do you live in or near a threatened habitat or community, or have you worked to study or protect endangered wildlife? Share your stories in our ongoing features, Protect This Place and Species Spotlight.
A massive new plastics plant will soon start operating in Pennsylvania, even as support grows for international limits on plastic production.
The interlacing pipelines of a massive new plastics facility gleam in the sunshine beside the rolling waters of the Ohio River. I’m sitting on a hilltop above it, among poplars and birdsongs in rural Beaver County, Pennsylvania, 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. The area has experienced tremendous change over the past few years — with more soon to come.
The ethane “cracker plant” belongs to Royal Dutch Shell, and after 10 years and $6 billion it’s about to go online. Soon it will transform a steady flow of fracked Marcellus gas into billions of plastic pellets — a projected 1.6 million tons of them per year, each the size of a pea. From this northern Appalachia birthplace, they’ll travel the globe to make the plastic goods of modern life, from single-use bags to longer-lasting sports equipment.
The factory. Photo: Tim Lydon
The plant’s construction has lifted a hardscrabble local economy, but it also embodies an epic global struggle.
Earlier this year and half a world away, United Nations negotiators meeting in Kenya pledged to draft a legally binding international plastics treaty by 2024. Many hope it will cap global plastics production while also addressing plastic’s impacts on environments and people. When treaty talks begin later this year, they’ll have everything to do with plants like this one and hundreds like it popping up around the world.
But the plants, and their powerful backers in the plastics and fossil fuel industries, will also shape the talks.
“They will work very hard to make sure that the treaty is not effective,” says Judith Enck, former EPA regional administrator in the Northeast and president of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit that seeks to stem plastics pollution.
Enck describes plastics as a “Plan B” for fossil fuels, at a time when renewables and efficiency erode industry profits. To Shell and its peers, plastics production can secure assets like Pennsylvania’s seemingly bottomless Marcellus gas field, which might otherwise go untapped as the world retreats from fossils in the face of climate change.
Plastic waste collects in a drainage ditch in 2021. Photo: Ivan Radic (CC BY 2.0)
But Enck notes that plastics also drive climate change. A 2021 Beyond Plastics report estimated that U.S. plastics production now puts out heat-trapping emissions equivalent to 116 coal-fired power plants. With more facilities like the one in Pennsylvania coming, the report says, U.S. plastics could exceed the climate impact of domestic coal-fired energy by 2030.
The International Panel on Climate Change and others echo the concern, saying that global plastics production could reach 20% of oil consumption in the coming decades, surpassing concrete, food waste, and other heavy heaters. Today the United States, China, Saudi Arabia and Japan lead the trend as the world’s top producers of plastic.
Waste is another concern. With little plastic ever recycled, it’s now found from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains. One estimate has its volume in marine waters surpassing that of fish by mid-century. And while images of plastics in the bellies of birds, fish and whales have become old news, new research shows microplastics ingested by trees, deposited on Arctic sea ice, and entering the developing brains of human babies.
Plastic waste also emits greenhouse gases as it breaks down or when it’s incinerated.
Enck also calls it an environmental justice issue, with plastics production and disposal disproportionately impacting poorer communities.
But Enck sees rising awareness, too.
“I have met climate change skeptics, but I have never met a plastic pollution skeptic,” she says. People see the problem firsthand and want governments to act.
To her, one solution to the crisis is a binding international treaty that addresses plastics production, use and disposal.
The Promise of Plastic
My hilltop perch sits near new townhomes, and residents of the community come and go. They include two older men who grew up nearby and have come to release happy birthday balloons, which they then watch fade into blue sky through binoculars.
Around the same time Jeff Coleman, candidate for lieutenant governor, arrives with local officials to film a campaign spot. They discuss “downstream” manufacturers that could spring up near the plant, which itself will soon employ 600 people.
Below us the plant dominates the landscape. Neatly squeezed onto 400 acres, it hosts its own gas power plant, a string of cylindrical polyethylene reactors, and miles of convoluted pipeline, along with warehouses, offices and room for more than 3,000 railcars to shuttle the tiny pellets away.
To build it, Shell remediated an old zinc smelter, redirected a local highway, built a railroad spur and laid the 97-mile Falcon Ethane Pipeline to access nearby Marcellus gas. During construction, more than 8,000 workers clocked in every day.
Land clearing at the Shell site in 2016. Photo (uncredited) via Gov. Tom Wolf/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
“It put our county on the map,” says Beaver County commissioner Jack Manning.
He says construction sustained pandemic-strapped businesses and attracted investment in hotels, malls and even housing, like the new townhomes overlooking the plant. Manning also expects years of both direct and indirect job creation.
For many community leaders of this one-time manufacturing epicenter, which has struggled since steel moved away in the 1980s, these are welcome developments.
But others counter Manning’s rosy assessments, pointing to continued economic stagnation in the region since construction began. Still, state and local governments have bet big on Shell by awarding it the largest corporate tax break in Pennsylvania history.
The government support matters. In the United States and other countries that will soon negotiate the global plastics treaty, local investment translates into political power for plastics. That was clear when then-President Trump gave a 2019 campaign-style speech at the Shell plant, touting his commitment to U.S. manufacturing.
Manning says that behind such support are real benefits for the community, including the young families he sees buying townhomes and reinvigorating local communities.
As for environmental effects, Manning, who spent 35 years in the petrochemical industry, believes Shell’s state-of-the-art technology will protect local air and waters. He shares activists’ broader concerns about climate change and ocean pollution, but says the pellets made here will create products that improve lives, such as replacement knee joints, lightweight parts for electric cars and packaging that prevents food spoilage.
And he’s confident a global plastics treaty won’t hurt locally. If anything, global initiatives to reduce plastic production could secure demand from existing plants by limiting the construction of new ones, he says.
Stiffening Headwinds
Jace Tunnell of the University of Texas Marine Science Institute offers another take.
In 2018 Tunnell discovered plastic pellets — called nurdles in the plastic-waste world — washed up on local beaches. When he learned they came from nearby plastics facilities, he created the nonprofit Nurdle Patrol to enlist citizens in monitoring pellet pollution along the Gulf of Mexico. The work is raising awareness and contributing to stricter permitting rules.
Nurdles and other plastic waste at a beach cleanup event. Photo: Hillary Daniels (CC BY 2.0)
Groups in Beaver County have since taken similar action to gather baseline environmental data before the Shell plant goes online.
“I haven’t seen a facility yet where there aren’t pellets in the environment,” says Tunnell. Their small size enables dispersal by wind, rain, storm drains and the pneumatic equipment that blows them onto railcars at production facilities. They can also wind up along railroad routes, at shipyards and in the ocean, depending on shipping practices.
Tunnell offers the example of former Gulf of Mexico shrimper Diane Wilson, who in 2019 won a $50 million settlement from a Formosa plastics facility in Texas that discharged billions of pellets and other pollutants.
And he points to a 2021 Sri Lankan cargo ship disaster that left beaches knee-deep in nurdles.
“They’re still cleaning them up,” he says.
Events like that have contributed to a tide of negative press that — along with inflation, the pandemic and other factors — have slowed the plastics boom. That’s evident in Pennsylvania. Only a few years ago, plastics makers had sketched out five new plants for the region to tie into Marcellus gas, plus two ethane-storage facilities. But three plants are now canceled, and neither storage facility has been built.
Governmental pushback, including momentum toward a global treaty, is also mounting, as seen by China’s 2017 decision to stop importing plastic waste for recycling. That policy change stranded plastic waste in U.S. communities and has contributed to federal and state efforts to hold retailers of single-use plastics accountable for the waste, something the European Union achieved in 2021.
For its part, the plastics industry claims a positive economic impact and commitments to environmental safety, which include its voluntary Operation Clean Sweep, designed to minimize pellet pollution. Shell representatives in Pennsylvania did not respond to interview requests but cited their participation in Clean Sweep and directed questions to their website, which describes mitigations for noise, air pollution and other plastics production issues.
But for Enck, industry-led initiatives fall short. She believes they distract from climate, equity, and other broader problems that she hopes are addressed in upcoming treaty talks.
As the treaty framework came together last February, industry allies pushed for an emphasis on waste management, including mitigating marine debris and improving recycling, which remains technologically difficult.
But delegates from Rwanda and Peru successfully advanced a more ambitious resolution that will consider the full life cycle of plastics, including production, disposal and its pollution impact on all environments, not just oceans. The resolution’s inclusion of a possible cap on virgin plastics production was supported by letters from international scientists and corporations such as Walmart and Coca-Cola.
In March delegates from 175 counties approved the Rwanda-Peru framework. Procedures and timelines were established at June meetings in Senegal, and negotiations are slated to begin in Uruguay in November. Although a treaty is expected in 2024, its true effect will depend on ratification from the United States and other top plastics producers and whether member nations will adhere to it.
In the meantime, political and market forces will continue determining how many more facilities like Pennsylvania’s Shell plant are built.
As I leave my Beaver County hillside, I ask the two men what will become of the balloons they’re releasing. They look at me for a moment, then one tells me with a shrug that they’ll eventually explode and fall to the ground.
That reminds me of something Enck said: “We’re leaving a mess for future generations.”
New research supports efforts to designate more land and water to save biodiversity and fight climate change — but we need to protect better, as well as more.
As the world faces cascading extinctions and runaway climate change, a growing body of scientific research has found that we should set aside more areas as protected spaces.
That message got hammered home by a study published in June in the National Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences that says current protected areas won’t stop the extinction crisis — because we haven’t set aside nearly enough land to date.
“Our analysis shows that a large proportion of the world’s mammals are unlikely to be adequately protected from extinction by the current global protected areas network,” the study’s authors warned.
Globally we’ve protected nearly 17% of our lands and 7% of the ocean, but support is growing for protecting 30% of the land and ocean by 2030 — the amount many scientists estimate we need to set aside to protect biodiversity and the climate. The Biden administration has announced its general support for the policy, known in shorthand as 30×30, and so have around 100 other countries. In December it could officially become part of the Global Biodiversity Framework that will be negotiated in Montreal as part of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
Can mammals’ plight help build the necessary support for 30×30? The researchers looked at nearly 4,000 land-based and non-flying mammal species living in protected areas and found many of these areas were too small or poorly connected for the animals to thrive.
Protected areas are critically important for conservation if managed well and can help protect against habitat loss and other human disturbances. In many areas they may be the only places that can support the survival of some species, the researchers found.
“It is plausible that the long-term survival of much of Earth’s biodiversity will ultimately hinge on the network of protected areas that are established and properly functioning in the near future,” they wrote.
Coming Up Short
The PNAS study found that current protected areas on their own aren’t sufficient to ensure the long-term survival of about half of all mammals studied — between 1,700 and 2,500 species. This includes a staggering 91% of those already listed as threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. These at-risk species range in size from the largest land-based animals, such as elephants, to the tiny Sri Lankan shrew.
The researchers also estimated that more than 1,000 additional mammal species that aren’t currently listed as threatened may also be at risk. This includes white rhinoceroses, American bison, jungle cats, several howler monkey species, and hundreds of small-bodied species of rodents and insect-eaters.
American bison. Photo: Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The largest proportion of underprotected species was highest in areas with the most biodiversity, including South, Southeast, and East Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; Africa; and Oceania.
A Better Strategy
So if current protected areas don’t do enough, how do we do it better?
The research suggests that first we need to increase the size and number of protected areas and improve the connectivity between them.
But that’s not all: They also need to be in the right places and managed with a clear understanding of the animals’ habitat needs.
“This finding supports previous calls for the strategic expansion of protected areas into specific ecosystems that require additional protection, rather than relying on arbitrary area-based targets,” they wrote.
The researchers warn that simply aiming for a percentage of land and water protected isn’t the best way to ensure species’ survival. In other words, achieving 30×30 won’t be a success if it’s not in the right places or managed appropriately with adequate staff and budgets.
Another recent study, published in Nature, echoes that conclusion. Researchers looked at how 1,500 protected areas have affected 27,000 waterbird populations in 68 countries and found that just the designation of a protected area won’t necessarily bring benefits to populations.
As in the mammal paper, researchers found that areas that were actively managed for waterbirds — such as by removing invasive species, restoring wetlands or preventing hunting —were more successful, and often those that were larger had better results, too.
“Halting biodiversity loss requires improvements to the performance of existing protected areas, and action to address ubiquitous threats beyond area borders,” the researchers concluded. “Ever-increasing area-based targets must be accompanied by equally ambitious targets that ensure protected area effectiveness.”
Oceans, Too
When it comes to protection for animals that make their home in the ocean, we have a much longer way to go. While only 7% of the ocean is protected, less than 3% of that has strong safeguards.
But a study published this month in Nature developed a framework for how to establish marine protected areas in places that can help ensure protection for biodiversity, increase fish populations that support food security, and help secure marine carbon stocks that are at risk from bottom trawling and other industrial activities.
The researchers found that most of the top 10% priority locations for establishing marine protected areas are within the 200-mile exclusive economic zones that coastal nations manage. These areas are “home to irreplaceable biodiversity and are often heavily affected by human activities that can be abated by marine protected areas.”
A swimming sea cucumber in the Inés María Mendoza Nature Reserve, a marine protected area off the coast of of Puerto Rico. Photo: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Their findings also show that marine protected areas can help restore populations that have been overfished, and in the long run can support food security even if fishing doesn’t occur in protected areas.
It’s also better if nations don’t go it alone. “We find that a globally coordinated effort could achieve 90% of the maximum possible biodiversity benefit with less than half the ocean area of a protection strategy that is based solely on national priorities,” the study found.
Multiple Goals
The good news is that if we do it right, we can not only protect biodiversity but also achieve other important benefits. Those conclusions come from another recent study, published in the journal Science Advances.
One of those benefits is climate change mitigation. Protecting 30% of lands, the study found, could provide one-third of the reductions needed to limit global warming emissions to under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Water quality and aquatic biodiversity would also be boosted, the study found, as more protected areas would decrease nutrient pollution that runs off from fertilizer waste and threatens watershed health.
“If species conservation is prioritized, greater biodiversity conservation, climate-change mitigation, and nutrient-regulation benefits can be realized,” the Science authors wrote. “This supports previous findings on the multiple co-benefits of conservation and reflects the importance of biological diversity for delivering multiple ecosystem services.”
Getting Support
Of course, this work won’t be easy.
“Expanding or relocating the world’s protected areas comes fraught with very real risks to human wellbeing,” wrote the PNAS study’s lead author, David Williams, a lecturer in sustainability and the environment, University of Leeds. “These areas are based on stopping people from doing things: from chopping down trees, from hunting certain species, from mining, or from farming.”
But understanding and communicating the multiple benefits of increasing protected areas, he said, can help drive more support from government and local communities.
Williams and others have urged that establishing more protected areas not come at the expense of Indigenous communities, many of whom have already been disenfranchised or displaced by previous conservation efforts.
The nonprofit Project Expedite Justice calls for including Indigenous people at the center of conservation efforts with equal decision-making authority. As a report from the organization finds, “It has been demonstrated that protected areas with strong Indigenous peoples involvement in management and decision-making deliver better results in conservation and human rights protection.”
We’ll also need to take steps to get at the root causes that are driving extinction and climate change in the first place — or we won’t have additional lands to conserve.
“Without rapid shifts towards healthier, plant-rich diets, reductions in food waste and sustainable yield increases, there simply won’t be enough spare land to protect,” Williams wrote.
But there are steps we can take to bring nature to our communities and empower them to protect it.
Since the start of the pandemic, more members of the public than ever have visited and recreated on our public lands, coasts and waterways. But for Latinos and many other communities of color, barriers to enjoying the outdoors remain.
For one, our neighborhood green spaces and natural areas are rapidly disappearing. U.S. communities of color are three times as likely to live somewhere that is “nature deprived” than white communities. This means there are far fewer parks, forests, streams, beaches and other natural places near Black, Latino and Asian communities.
What’s more, parks in neighborhoods of color are half as large and serve nearly five times more people than parks in majority white neighborhoods. And parks serving majority low-income households are, on average, four times smaller and serve nearly four times more people than parks that serve majority high-income households.
This “Nature Gap” has left a legacy of poorer health and COVID-19 severity, higher stress levels, worse educational outcomes, lack of recreation and business opportunities, and greater vulnerability to extreme heat and flooding in these nature-deprived neighborhoods.
But even in ideally located and park-rich communities, Latinos face socioeconomic and other barriers of access to nature. These include a lack of time for low-income residents struggling with multiple jobs and caring for households; lack of money for appropriate clothing and gear for recreational activities; and a lack of transportation. Latinos are disproportionately likely to lack access to a car and rely on public transit for getting around, and it’s not easy to get to nature trails without a car.
Other characteristics of certain parks can make visitation and recreation an unwelcoming experience for Latinos and others. The signage and personnel may not speak the languages of the communities they serve; entry points may not be convenient to the community; lack of walking paths and facilities like bathrooms and disability accommodations may make the green space unusable; or the space may be polluted, poorly maintained, or perceived as unsafe.
Nationwide, the representation and visibility of Latinos in the outdoors still lags. To an extent, this reflects the history of conservation as a white-dominated profession and field of study, which until recently was outright exclusionary to people of color. As a result, it’s difficult for many Latinos to envision themselves in the outdoors and working or studying conservation fields.
Latino Outdoors Group at Crystal Mountain, Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest. Photo: U.S. Forest Service (uncredited)
In addition, the histories told in our national parks are frequently from a colonialist viewpoint, and many have offensive and derogatory place names or feature monuments that make visitors feel unwelcome and alienated. Park rangers and other uniformed personnel may be perceived as more of a threat than a safety feature to some populations due to the history of police violence toward Black and Latino people and/or a fear of Border Patrol and deportation among communities of color.
For all these reasons, it’s clear that many of us do not have the time, resources, physical abilities or perceived safety it takes to visit parks and recreate outdoors as it is traditionally envisioned. In fact, the most accessible form of outdoor recreation may be simply taking a walk in your neighborhood.
So if we’re asking how to bring Latinos to the outdoors, we may in fact be asking the wrong question. What if we asked instead, how can we bring nature and “the outdoors” to our communities?
The implications of this line of thought are widespread. It means we need to think about the way our neighborhoods are constructed. They’re often designed for cars, not people, and are unsafe for pedestrians — and polluted to boot (especially in communities of color, which are disproportionately located near oil and gas wells, highways and industrial facilities). They are redlined, with opportunities and services concentrated in white neighborhoods. They are concrete, with neighborhoods of color lacking street trees and other forms of urban nature. They are not ready for climate change — they are vulnerable to heat, flooding and wildfire.
Climate change in and of itself also poses a threat to outdoor recreation and diversity in the outdoors. It will create more challenges and barriers of access to communities who are already struggling to unlock nature’s benefits. For example, Latinos are more likely to suffer health consequences from extreme heat — which becomes more likely when you live in a heat island and far away from parks and greenery (something Latinos are disproportionately likely to experience). Flooding, caused by more intense storms and precipitation, is washing away trails and facilities and making hiking more dangerous in some areas. We are also losing coastland, beaches and cultural heritage sites to sea-level rise. In addition, the ever-increasing danger of wildfires is not only due to the damage to ecosystems but in the smoke and air pollution they generate. This is unhealthy for everyone, but especially to populations with existing respiratory conditions — which Latinos are more likely to have.
So how do we overcome existing barriers, while also addressing new threats to communities trying to access the outdoors? It’s a big ask. To make the outdoors more accessible to disinvested communities, we must invest in those communities, address climate change with a deep energy transition, clean up sources of pollution, and control public health threats like COVID. We can bring nature to our urban, degraded, fenceline, frontline and redlined neighborhoods. And when it’s not possible to bring nature, we can bring public transit to it instead.
Students from Liberty High School Interact Club help link Latino families to nature by using their bilingual skills to reach out to families about wildlife and hiking at Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: USFWS (uncredited)
We can go further — and give communities a stake in the process through the opportunity to protect the areas they care about and have a hand in managing them. To address the career gap, create career pipelines starting from educational and academic institutions. Hire people of color to conservation agencies, support them, and put them in leadership roles.
The Biden administration’s America the Beautiful initiative and Justice40 initiative have the potential to be the kind of bold, collective action we need to ensure a healthy and equitable future. Earlier this summer, prospects for a potential new congressional bill with hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in clean energy stalled in Congress, but climate progress must continue regardless. If Congress is not up to the task, then the Biden administration must be.
Half-measures and incremental changes are not enough for the challenges our communities face. This year we demand impact.
The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.
A misguided attempt to control mosquito populations has nearly driven this tiny fish to extinction.
When humans try to exert control over nature, it often comes with unintended consequences. In this case, it nearly wiped out a once-populous fish species.
Species name:
Barrens topminnow (Fundulus julisia)
Description:
The Barrens topminnow, one of the most endangered fish of its kind, grows to just under 4 inches long. It has an upturned mouth and flattened dorsum, like all killifish. Females and juveniles are pale brown, but adult males have red-orange spots on an iridescent blue-green body with bluish fins with yellow and black margins. All have a mid-dorsal gold streak highly visible from above the water, which appears as an exclamation point (!) on young fish before fusing to a single streak on adults. This makes sightings and surveys easy with the naked eye or binoculars.
This species is only known from the Barrens Plateau in middle Tennessee, near Manchester and Bonnaroo.
Status:
Listed as federally endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2019.
Major threat:
Western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), introduced to the area to eat pesky mosquitoes, now appear to be out-reproducing and replacing Barrens topminnow populations everywhere they come into contact. The aggressive, live-bearing mosquitofish eat topminnow eggs and young, so few of the minnows reach adulthood. They are a native fish but were not known on the Barrens Plateau until introduced above waterfall barriers. And it’s not just a Tennessee problem: Mosquitofish have caused the same problem globally with other aquatic wildlife.
Other factors putting this species at risk include climate change, drought, and stream degradation due to nearby livestock pastures.
Legal protections:
Federal Endangered Species Act listing provides no legal protection on private lands or waters. Public purchase of property and permanent maintenance of aquatic barriers to mosquitofish following elimination can be effective. Today only two or three Barrens topminnow populations remain on private lands with barriers. The tiny Barrens Topminnow National Wildlife Refuge is currently the only existing publicly owned refuge. Ironically, the refuge currently holds none of the fish for which it’s named; a flood allowed mosquitofish to circumvent a river barrier, and they quickly eliminated the resident topminnows.
My favorite experience:
I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to study the life history and ecology of this fish for my master’s thesis. One of my study sites, the massive Pond Spring near Hillsboro, Tennessee, was once of the few places where Barrens topminnow and mosquitofish had coexisted. Here I spent many happy hours observing and studying the topminnow and co-occurring species.
I am not thankful that this population has now been extirpated due to poor land use that’s benefited mosquitofish over the topminnow. Fortunately, although this population was lost in the wild, we still have “ark” populations at Conservation Fisheries and elsewhere, and the possibility remains for public land acquisition, restoration and reintroduction.
Barrens topminnow (male)/Conservation Fisheries, Inc.
What else do we need to understand or do to protect this species?
This species serves as a spotlight for what we should not ever do. We need to eliminate or minimize the effects of agriculture (and development, and silviculture) on all aquatic life. Captive fish (indeed, all wildlife) should never be released where they don’t belong and may never have occurred. Havoc, extirpation and extinction can result.
Although I’ve never been an advocate for genetic engineering, it may be the only hope for future thriving wild populations of Barrens topminnows. If we can introduce genetically modified, nonbreeding mosquitofish to the region, like what’s now being attempted in other areas where mosquitos carry diseases harmful to humans (like Zika), we could eliminate the fish with sterile individuals. Only by doing removing the invaders, through one method or another, can we help save this endangered species.
Do you live in or near a threatened habitat or community, or have you worked to study or protect endangered wildlife? Share your stories in our ongoing features, Protect This Place and Species Spotlight.
A rare “orchid of the falls” plant has been declared extinct after a hydroelectric dam destroyed its only habitat. Could others soon follow?
What do we lose when we lose a waterfall?
When the waters stop flowing, a waterfall’s natural beauty quickly disappears. With it goes unique geological and hydrological systems built up over centuries or millennia, as well as the species that have evolved to thrive in and around the rough-and-tumble waters and rocky formations.
Some of those species have nowhere else to go. When a waterfall vanishes, the plants and wildlife that depend on it can go extinct in the blink of an eye.
That fate appears to have befallen a rare plant in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa. And scientists warn it could be the first of many.
Watery Life, Watery Grave
Denise Molmou, a botanist with the UGAN-National Herbarium of Guinea, discovered this plant — which has since been named Saxicolella deniseae after her — in 2018. At the time, it grew in a single known waterfall along the Konkouré River.
That’s not unusual for Saxicolella plants, aquatic herbs that grow on rocks (“Saxicolella” translates to “stone inhabitant”) in the fast-flowing, heavily aerated waters of falls and rapids. Most of the species in this genus have evolved in unique waterfall microclimates and grow in just a handful of locations. Without the right conditions, the plants can’t thrive or reproduce.
Their fragility earned the genus the nickname “orchids of the falls” from naturalist Sir David Attenborough, who showcased them and other rare plants earlier this year in the Green Planet documentary series. (They’re not actually orchids, though; they belong to Podostemaceae, the same taxonomic family as St. John’s wort.)
Attenborough didn’t witness S. deniseae itself for his program, and now it appears no one else will. According to a paper published this May, that waterfall along the Konkouré no longer exists. The entire region was permanently flooded to create a new hydroelectric dam soon after Molmou discovered the plant species. Satellite images from Google Earth reveal a massive reservoir where a river and forest once sat.
Before-and-after satellite photos reveal the plant’s watery grave. Photos via Google Earth courtesy of Royal Gardens Kew.
As happens all too often lately, the scientific paper contains both the first published description of S. deniseae as well as the news of its probable extinction.
“While it is a great honor to have a species I discovered in the wild named after me, it is really sad that it is almost certainly extinct,” Molmou said in a prepared release. “I will look to see if we can find it in other waterfalls, even though the chance of finding it alive is not very high.”
Renewable Threats
The paper describes several other Saxicolella species for the first time and warns that this may not be the last time that dam construction floods these plants into extinction, along with other never-described species. Many additional hydro projects are in various stages of development throughout the region to provide West Africa with much-needed electricity.
That power comes with a cost. As dams block rivers and reservoirs fill behind them, habitats and wildlife disappear. Sadly, S. deniseae isn’t the first this has happened to. Hydroelectric dams are believed to have contributed to the extinction of the baiji (Lipotes vexillifer), a Yangtze River dolphin. In the United States, habitat destruction by dams has also led to the loss of freshwater mussels like the flat pigtoe. Numerous fish and other aquatic species have also been pushed to the brink with the loss of free-flowing rivers.
Now we have a plant, if not many plant species, to add to the list.
“I am in mourning for the other, now eternally unknown species of the Konkouré River, with its falls and rapids now nearly completely under reservoirs after we had only just begun to find out what Podostemaceae species were present there,” says Martin Cheek, the paper’s lead author, who leads efforts to identify and name new African plants for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. “Too late now, so sadly.”
Costly Delays and Funding Gaps
Cheek says the pandemic and Guinea’s 2021 military coup prevented them from returning to the site to collect and store any S. deniseae seeds, which could have been used to preserve its unique genetics or even to propagate the species.
Ironically, the pandemic may have given a few other species a temporary reprieve — although temporary is the operative word.
“The good news about the pandemic was that lots of ‘development’ was suspended,” Cheek says. “However, now projects are moving ahead. And thanks to the energy crisis due to Russia, it looks like ‘renewable energy’ projects like hydropower are going to get a boost. That means in the tropics more rapid extinctions of waterfall species, especially Podostemaceae, even before we know they exist.”
The dams also have a human cost: Residents of more than 100 villages and hamlets were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands to make way for Guinea’s 450 megawatt Souapiti dam, which went online in 2020.
But even as the destruction continues, so do other conservation efforts. And some have made exciting progress.
“We have succeeded in sowing seed to produce new populations of one threatened Podostemaceae species — a global first for this family — in nearby Sierra Leone,” Cheek reports. “This gives hope that if seed is collected correctly, so it remains viable in storage, it might save the species.”
That’s a big “if,” given the world’s current lack of conservation commitment and the short shrift given to endangered plants, which receive far less attention or funding than charismatic megafauna like tigers and elephants.
“Unless my team gets funding, and can then direct and organize seed collection, it just does not happen,” Cheek says. “Capacity and confidence are so low among our partners in so many countries in tropical Africa, sadly.”
They’re not alone. The experience of identifying, naming and then potentially losing so many plant species weighs heavily on Cheek.
“With the almost certain loss of this species,” he says, “my mentality is shifting to the view that while uncovering and publishing new species to science gives us a better chance of getting them protected, in practice it is more realistic to accept that we cannot always save species.” He acknowledges this sounds defeatist, but adds, “At least with our work, we are recording for posterity more of what is going extinct, which otherwise we would never know existed.”
An important new survey — the first nationwide test of new technology — also reveals critical conservation priorities.
In 2013 our colleagues Fiona Maisels and Samantha Strindberg, working with several other conservation partners, documented a devastating decline in forest elephants in Central Africa. Their work revealed that approximately 65% of all remaining African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) had perished between 2002 and 2013 — in large part to feed the burgeoning global trade in elephant ivory.
Their work resulted in new calls to protect forest elephants, but it also proved an important broader point: Protecting elephants, like protecting all wildlife, depends on having good before and after pictures. That is, we have to develop an accurate population baseline to measure against any changes so that we can assess the impact of conservation efforts and, when needed, adapt our strategies.
But gathering this information for forest elephants — who, despite their size, remain elusive — presents more than a few challenges. Traditionally researchers would survey the species by crisscrossing an area by foot, counting any elephant dung they encounter, and then converting these dung counts to elephant counts. Finally, they’d interpolate that data to estimate the total population.
These line-transect distance sampling surveys take time and rely on interpreting things like dung decay rates. This means they can result in an over- or underestimation of elephant density unless site and time-specific estimates of each are carried out for each survey. That adds to the cost and effort of each monitoring cycle.
WCS Gabon researchers collecting dung samples. Photo: Harrison Thane
What’s different about the new survey method? We used a non-invasive technique in which we collected DNA from elephant dung and used that highly individualized genetic material to accurately identify elements of the population.
We chose Gabon to test this technology due to the relatively high percentage of remaining forest elephants suspected to live there and the high-quality habitat available. The fieldwork was carried out by teams recruited and trained by WCS, with the support of the ecoguards of Gabon’s Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux.
To gather the necessary data, the teams walked more than 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) over the course of two years and collected close to 5,000 dung samples from 18 sites across Gabon. Genotypic matching revealed the samples came from a total of 1,757 individual elephants. It also revealed information on their sex. A spatially explicit capture-recapture model then allowed us to estimate forest elephant density for each site, which was transformed into an overall forest elephant abundance estimate by multiplying the average density by the total area occupied by the species.
Key to our success was ANPN’s wildlife genetics laboratory in Libreville, which was crucial in optimizing the workflow necessary to determine individual identity — a basic requirement for spatial capture-recapture analysis. The in-country lab also allowed genetic analyses to be carried out locally, reducing sample storage time and ensuring better DNA quality.
The results of this study provide a useful national benchmark and update on the status of forest elephants in Gabon that will inform adaptive management and stewardship of one of Africa’s last remaining forest elephant strongholds.
Our new estimates will play an essential role in efforts by local, national and international decision-makers concerned with a range of issues that include the conservation of this species and its habitat, the important ecological role of forest elephants on climate regulation potential of forests, and the role of forest elephants as a useful indicator for healthy, intact and well-governed forests.
WCS researcher observing forest elephants in Gabon. CREDIT: WCS GabonWCS researcher observing forest elephants in Gabon. Photo: WCS Gabon
Our study suggests several recommendations moving forward. Specifically, the design of future surveys should include more sites to improve accuracy nationwide. Sex ratios, via DNA or direct observation, should be monitored along with density to detect any population decline early. Law-enforcement efforts should be intensified and broadened to cover areas outside national parks and protect forest elephants against poachers and ivory trafficking, which threaten their survival. Finally, prevention and mitigation measures should be applied to reduce conflict and promote coexistence between rural communities and the elephants.
There’s a broader conservation lesson, as well: The implementation and success of a nationwide study was made possible by the combination of strong political will, the existence of robust scientific expertise and laboratory capacity in the country, and a collaborative decision-making process guided by science. The result was a synchronized, nationwide approach, as opposed to the site-based estimates that preceded them.
Moving Forward
Gabon’s political leaders have welcomed our results. President Ali Bongo Ondimba has attributed these population numbers to the hard work of incorruptible staff responsible for the protection of the forests. Lee White — Gabon’s minister of water, forests, the sea and environment, who’s also responsible for its climate-change and land-use plans — highlights that in Africa this is a sign of good natural resource governance, linked to peace and security.
Forest elephant in Gabon. Photo: WCS Gabon
We recommend repeating a national survey every five years through the same partnership model (government representatives, WCS and funders) using the same method to be able to compare the estimates and evaluate trends in the population.
But for now, it’s very exciting to have what we believe to be the most accurate baseline estimate for this magnificent species that remains so endangered in the wild. The application of the new DNA technology and the collaborate process that enabled it are a reminder of the importance of science to the practice of conservation.
The opinions expressed above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.
No, they’re not reporting a sighting of a mythical beast like the chupacabra. But they might as well be.
When humans try to exert control over nature, it often comes with unintended consequences. In this case, it nearly wiped out a once-populous fish species.
