‘We Found Plastic on the Seabed in Antarctica and I Just Cried’

As Antarctica faces a host of human-caused threats, a marine biologist calls for action.

Emily Cunningham could hear the sounds of whales breathing and the creaking of ice. The marine biologist — bursting with excitement — had just arrived in Antarctica aboard an expedition ship but found the peninsula cloaked in fog. As she set out in a small Zodiac boat to test some scientific equipment for the next day’s work, the fog slowly lifted, unveiling spectacular beauty.

“It felt like Antarctica wasn’t quite ready to reveal herself,” says Cunningham. “And then all of a sudden, she showed off in all her glory.”

Cunningham, co-founder of the Motion for the Ocean initiative that supports local ocean conservation efforts, would spend the next six months aboard a ship in Antarctica teaching science to visitors and helping inspire them to advocate for Antarctic conservation and engage in climate action.

After she returned to her home in the United Kingdom this spring, The Revelator spoke to her about balancing tourism with conservation, how wildlife in Antarctica are coping with climate change, and what global efforts are needed to protect the ocean.

What were you doing in Antarctica?

I was working on board an expedition ship that takes paying guests to Antarctica. We arrived there in October. We have a resident science team on board, of which I’m a member, and then we also have visiting researchers from institutions around the world. My job was citizen science coordinator, which involves developing ways to engage the guests with the scientific research in an authentic, hands-on way.

We have a study looking at the effect of melting glaciers on the phytoplankton populations that’s led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina. We have our own project in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute for Water Research looking at the presence of microfibers in seawater in Antarctica. Then there’s a project that the chief scientist on my ship developed this year looking at the effect of penguin colonies on nearby fish populations using a remotely operated vehicle.

And I developed a project which I called Extreme Citizen Science. We’ve got two submersibles on board. The guests go in the submersibles and take photos for us to develop a baseline understanding of the seabed communities at a number of sites we go to multiple times over the season.

Join Dr @DanielMMoore_ and myself on an underwater survey in Antarctica 🤩

What will we find? 🤔

Spoiler alert: 🐧 pic.twitter.com/4CpwynUdoj

— Emily G Cunningham (@EG_Cunningham) March 9, 2023

How do guests react to these science projects?

It’s a real spectrum. Some people chose this trip specifically because they wanted to get that hands-on experience and came after they had really done their homework. And then you get people who just thought it looked cool and didn’t realize that there was any science happening at all — they wanted to go in a submersible, or they just wanted to see penguins — but they didn’t really know a lot about Antarctica.

I designed the program to be accessible to everybody, no background in science needed. We do three to four lectures a day. There’s workshops all the time. It’s very educational. I would hope that everybody left knowing more than when they came. And often the people who ended up enjoying it the most were the ones who had no idea about the science projects or perhaps took some convincing to participate.

Over the course of a 10-day trip you really get to know people and see how their mindsets are shifting from perhaps just thinking that this is a nice thing to do, to then genuine awe and genuine concern.

The program is designed to balance understanding what stands to be lost, but also empowering them. So when they go home, they have some citizen science projects or some actions they can do.

What’s the balance of getting people to understand the gravity of what’s happening in Antarctica but not having too many visitors that it’s further imperiled?

That’s a really big one that I struggled with. I have some concerns about mass tourism, mass cruising to Antarctica. I decided I needed to go and see it with my own eyes to really understand it and form an opinion.

The rate at which the industry is growing is deeply concerning to me. There were 100,000 visitors this season, and it’s likely to continue to increase. Most companies are commissioning more ships at the moment. The rule is that if you have more than 500 passengers, you can’t land your guests. But even our ship with nearly 400 passengers, that’s a lot of people. Some of the sites will have two ships a day visiting. Penguin colonies throughout the most important time of the year have visitors traipsing through from dawn till dusk.

From what I saw, it was well regulated and responsibly delivered. But I would be concerned if it got much bigger. And there’s lots of things related to mass tourism that aren’t necessarily visible: the carbon footprint, the consumerism, the impact from the soot of the engines on the snowmelt and lots more.

Like you say, it’s the balance. How many of those thousands of visitors feel inspired and want to go home and do something? I think we need to understand whether people go away and actually change their behavior. I’m still forming my thoughts on the Antarctic tourism industry because I really see both sides of the coin, but it has to continue to be very strictly regulated and it does concern me if it continues to grow at the pace that’s projected.

What environmental changes did you see?

When I got to dive in our submersible as part of the seabed studies, it’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever had the privilege to do. I didn’t really know what to expect. I’ve seen pictures, I’ve seen survey transacts, but they don’t prepare you for what it looks like to be able to see a seascape.

It’s just a sight to behold. It’s a living carpet, just full of color and life. Everywhere you looked, there were soft coral sponges, all different colors. There are sea spiders the size of your hand. And seeing all that and then realizing that this incredible seascape, which has evolved over millions of years, is going to change in my lifetime because of warming …

The Antarctic peninsula is warming five times faster than the global average. And with that warming, we’re seeing an increase in invasive species.

We have found microfibres (small plastic fibres) in EVERY SINGLE SAMPLE we have taken in Antarctica as part of our microplastics project.

This important research from @BAS_News shows how prevalent microplastics are in the Southern Ocean. https://t.co/mlTn2OqLER

— Emily G Cunningham (@EG_Cunningham) March 29, 2023

We talked about the increasing number of ships for tourism and other purposes — those are also going to increase that invasion risk. There’s research that connected Antarctica to 1,500 ports around the world because of refueling, et cetera. There’s a lot of nooks and crannies on ships that things can stow away in.

Another [climate-induced change] is the starving penguin chicks. The last two years we’ve had much later snow than usual. The snow is falling later into the spring. The penguins should be laying in late November, early December, but most of the sites were still covered in snow. So they can’t lay their eggs. By the time the parent penguins come to molt towards February time, the chicks aren’t fledged because they’ve had to lay so late. If the parents are molting they can’t get wet, so they can’t go and forage.

So you have starving penguin chicks. The parents can’t do anything about it. Reading about a starving penguin chick is very different from watching a starving penguin chick. With all these things I think, “I’m a scientist, I should be able to decouple myself from this thing.” But of course you can’t. And when you know that it’s something that is anthropogenically driven, it’s even harder to bear.

When people want to take action, what do you tell them?

We talk about climate change, the effects that it’s having on the ocean and Antarctica. Climate action is key to a lot of what we talk about to our guests and we explain that it’s not in the distance, it’s something that needs to happen now.

We try to empower people to use their voice to protect this incredible place, even if sometimes it takes being uncomfortable to do so.

For me personally, I realized I needed to take every opportunity to try and spread the word and use this experience to try and raise awareness. Antarctica can feel very far away. But there are things that you can do personally or in your own community — local action, national action —that will have relevance to Antarctica.

Because what happens in Antarctica is going to affect us all. A campaign I’ve been running for a long time is something called the Motion for the Ocean. It’s an initiative to help local governments step up and play their part in recovering the health of the ocean.

It renewed the importance of that kind of “act local, think global” mindset to tackling these kinds of problems. I’m trying to piggyback off the interest in Antarctica to try and get better local action here in the UK and offering that as a blueprint for other places in the world as well.

What would you like to see at the global level for ocean protection?

I’m excited about the United Nations Plastics Treaty. We need to shift the thinking around plastics. We need to design out the waste before it’s created and think about the whole life cycle of an item. If the plastic treaty can get that right, I think that’s going to be game changing for the plastic pollution problem all around the world.

We found plastic on the seabed in Antarctica and I just cried because, if it’s there, it’s everywhere. I’ve been down in the submersible and seen huge clouds of krill, and then I think, well, there’ll be microfibers in the krill. If they’re in the krill, then they’re in those penguins that had been walking around my feet yesterday and then they’re in those seals that I’m seeing lounging on the ice flows, and they’re in the whales that are swimming past.

You can’t get away from it.

And then there’s the High Seas Treaty, which is at the ratification stage. It could also be game changing. But I’m holding my judgment until we get a little bit further down the line.

There’s lots of things I think that are giving me hope at the moment, but we have to make sure they’re actually effective rather than just a sound bite.

I also think we need a moratorium on deep-sea mining until we know more. We’re running before we can walk. A lack of good governance should not be a reason to proceed with something. It should be the reason not to proceed with something.

If I had one wish with a genie, it would be a moratorium on deep-sea mining.

Previously on The Revelator:

Action for Antarctica: Saving the World’s Last Great Wilderness

We Asked an AI Chatbot How to Fight the Extinction Crisis

…and it did a halfway decent job. But algorithms alone can’t save endangered species. For that you need people who care and who act.

When a certain search engine recently asked me to test out its new artificial intelligence chatbot, I thought “How bad will this be?”

After all, tech companies love to position their AI systems as solutions, but many experts fear they will result in waves of bad data and disinformation. That’s not going to help a world plagued by runaway climate change and an extinction crisis that threatens to push a million species into oblivion.

But at the same time, artificial intelligence and machine learning have some truly wonderful implications for conservation — anything that speeds up data analysis is welcome, for example. Could that potential benefit carry over to a chatbot designed to spit out easy answers to users’ questions?

I wanted to see how good the systems really are, so I gave it a test — I asked the chatbot how to solve the extinction crisis.

No small task.

So here they are: the chatbot’s 10 ways to fight the extinction crisis (in italics), along with my interpretation and response.

1. Reduce your consumption of meat and animal products. Animal agriculture is a major driver of habitat loss, deforestation and climate change. By eating less meat and more plant-based foods, you can help to reduce the impact of your diet on the environment.

A surprisingly strong start right out of the gate. Animal agriculture is one of the leading factors in the extinction crisis, and while I wouldn’t necessarily have put this at number one, it certainly deserves to be in the top three. Good job, chatbot.

2. Support sustainable farming practices. When you buy food, choose products that were grown or raised using sustainable methods. This helps to protect wildlife habitat and reduce pollution.

This is vague and possibly redundant, but it’s useful for the chatbot to lay out causality. Unsustainable farming does destroy habitat and create enormous pollution, often enough to be seen from space. But what “sustainable” methods is it recommending, and how is this recommendation actionable? At the very least consumers should look for the USDA Organic label, but there are a host of other labels out there, some of which are more misleading than others. (Hmm, could be worth digging into that in a future article. Thanks for the idea, chatbot.)

3. Get involved in local conservation efforts. There are many ways to get involved in conservation efforts in your community. You can volunteer for a local environmental organization, donate to conservation groups, or simply spread the word about the importance of protecting wildlife.

Fair enough. Local efforts can do a lot to benefit native or migratory species, but a vague reference to “many ways” doesn’t provide any actionable ideas or talk about why local efforts matters. That’s important, since to most people extinction feels like something that happens half a world away, not in their own backyards.

4. Advocate for environmental policies. Contact your elected officials and let them know that you support policies that protect wildlife and the environment.

Good advice, chatbot, but the devil’s in the details: What are those policies? Here in the United States, it’s a good idea to actively call for support of the Endangered Species Act, which is chronically underfunded and under threat. There are other regulations and policies — both existing and proposed — that will benefit wildlife, but people will need to do their own digging to find out what those are. (Our suggestion: Start by calling for support for the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.)

5. Reduce your energy consumption. By turning off lights when you leave a room, unplugging appliances when you’re not using them, and weatherizing your home, you can help to reduce your energy consumption and save money.

Okay, here’s where the chatbot starts to get a little … off. Reducing energy consumption is a great goal, but this answer doesn’t connect that with benefiting wildlife. It’s more of a climate solution, which in turn can help address the extinction crisis. However, reducing home energy consumption simply by turning off a light doesn’t address the severe waste and devastation of the fossil fuel industry, which destroys habitats, poisons ecosystems and drives the climate change that causes even more chaos. That needs to be addressed on a systematic level, not by unplugging your blender.

6. Recycle and compost. Recycling and composting help to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfills, where it can release harmful methane gas into the atmosphere.

Decent advice, but why? Chatbot, don’t be afraid to spell out the fact that methane is a greenhouse gas that worsens climate change — and why that’s harmful to wildlife.

7. Support sustainable businesses. When you shop, choose businesses that are committed to sustainability. This helps to send a message to businesses that consumers care about the environment.

Vague. Vague, vague, vague.

8. Educate yourself and others about the extinction crisis. The more people who know about the extinction crisis, the more likely we are to take action to address it.

This echoes things I’ve said for years. It’s why we always ask people to share our articles — so friends and colleagues who might not seek out this kind of reporting on their own can also see what’s going on. We may be intimately familiar with certain environmental topics ourselves but should never assume other people have the same knowledge base.

9. Get creative. There are many ways to get involved in the fight against extinction. Come up with your own ideas and share them with others.

Sure. I guess that’s helpful?

10. Never give up. The extinction crisis is a serious problem, but it’s not insurmountable. By working together, we can make a difference.

Color me impressed: While still vague, this may be the best advice on the whole list, albeit the hardest to live up to. The extinction crisis is excruciating, but it can be stopped. After all, almost every species that has received endangered species protection in time to do something about it has been saved from extinction. That’s why the Endangered Species Act has been such a massive success in the United States, why we need similar laws around the world, and why we need to communicate our successes — so people see that the things they do can have a lifesaving impact.

There you go. Not the worst list, but evidence that chatbots don’t obviate the need for human wisdom, experience and proven solutions.

Why does this matter? For now, these chatbots are isolated — you need to know where to go to use them — but search engines have already announced they plan to integrate the technology into average search results. That means that sometimes, instead of a link to an article answering your question, you’ll get a chatbot’s answer. Those answers may or may not come from a reliable authority or be correct.

Many publishers worry that these chatbot answers will supersede links to authoritative web pages where readers can find the correct information. That could wipe out critical web traffic and harm the already struggling news business — which in turn could cause publications to go out of business.

Artificial intelligence is a tool that could do a lot of good when deployed correctly and cautiously. But if it kills off expert sources, it could drive knowledge itself extinct. We’ve already had a bitter taste of that, here in the “post-truth” era. We may not survive much more.

What are the real solutions to the extinction crisis, and how can we each help? We’ll have an article with some answers for you soon — and they won’t be the kind that can be served up by a chatbot.

Is Kelp the Next Ocean Hero? Only if We Can Protect It.

New research shows we’ve long underestimated the environmental benefits from kelp forests. Now these important ecosystems are threatened.

Floridians are bracing for an unwanted visitor this summer: sargassum. A 5,000-mile-long island of this rootless seaweed is floating around the Atlantic, and large swathes of it are expected to wash ashore in Florida and other states in the coming months. Smaller amounts have already arrived, and the rotting clumps of algae on the beach release hydrogen sulfide, giving off the smell of rotten eggs.

A large landfall will be a health hazard — and a deterrent for tourists and nesting sea turtles alike. It’s also expected to cost communities millions in lost revenue and cleanup.

Out at sea, sargassum isn’t bad: It’s a life raft and food pantry for a variety of ocean organisms. It’s also a reminder of the myriad benefits that algae can provide.

Kelp, in particular, is having a moment.

“Kelp” is a loose designation that encompasses roughly 100 species of brown seaweeds that grow in the cool waters along nearly one-third of the world’s coastlines. The thick algae form underwater forests, providing food and refuge for numerous animals, as well as numerous environmental benefits.

Kelp forests are one of the “most widespread and valuable marine ecosystems on the planet,” according to a United Nations Environment Programme report released in April.

New initiatives aim to tap these resources. But before we can reap the benefits, we need to ensure kelp forests aren’t destroyed.

The Benefits

Kelp has been applied as fertilizer, eaten as food, and used medicinally by coastal peoples for thousands of years. Now researchers are beginning to tally more of its environmental benefits.

Kelp provides habitat and food for ocean dwellers like abalone, lobsters, crabs, octopuses, fish, sea otters, sea lions and whales. It also helps reduce damage from storms, stores carbon, produces oxygen and reduces nutrient pollution in the ocean.

Fish on sea floor surrounded by kelp — A kelp forest in the Great Southern Reef, Australia. Photo: Stefan Andrews / Ocean Image Bank

A new study in Nature Communications found that kelp forests contribute about $500 billion globally to fisheries production, carbon capture, and nutrient-pollution reduction, which can help limit toxic algal blooms and improve water quality. When it comes to mitigating climate change, the researchers estimated that kelp forests sequester nearly 5 megatons of carbon from the atmosphere annually. That’s roughly the emissions from burning 2 billion gallons of gasoline.

This is probably news to most people.

“While kelp forests are valued to some degree by ocean users, they are not perceived to be high-value ecosystems to the public, which can limit public support for kelp conservation and restoration,” the study’s researchers wrote. “We found that kelp forests are on average over 3 times more valuable than previously acknowledged and expect these evaluations to increase as more market and non-market services are assessed.”

Tallying economic contributions, they say, isn’t meant to commodify kelp forests but to help spur conservation efforts and draw attention from policymakers who have overlooked these important ecosystems.

“To date, no global legal or policy instruments have focused explicitly on kelp,” the U.N. report found. “There are, however, many international frameworks and national laws and policies in place that could, in principle, support the conservation and effective management of kelp.”

If we are to draw on those, it will need to happen quickly.

The Threats

Kelp forests across the world are in decline. Around half have been degraded in the past 50 years by a combination of local pressures and climate change. Nutrients, pollutants and sediments that wash into coastal waters from urban developments and agriculture can harm kelp forests.

Climate change also poses big challenges.

Kelp thrive in cool waters and are stressed by marine heat waves and ocean warming. More extensive losses of kelp forests are being found at the warm ends of its ranges. Climate change is also causing kelp species that like warmer water to replace those that prefer colder temperatures, causing a shift in the composition and diversity of kelp forests. In some cases, kelp forests are losing out altogether to mats of turf algae, which don’t provide the same nutrients and habitat complexity.

Warming ocean temperatures are also changing the distribution and abundance of animals that eat kelp. So has hunting or overfishing of their predators. Sea urchins, for example, have been blamed for overgrazing kelp forests in Alaskan waters after their predators — sea otters — were hunted extensively.

Dark purple urchin between rocks and kelp — Urchin and kelp in the Great Southern Reef, Australia. Photo: Stefan Andrews / Ocean Image Bank

One imbalance in the ocean can create another.

“Destructive grazing of kelp has been recorded among many different kinds of herbivores including sea urchins, fish, crustaceans and snails,” the U.N. report found.

The Opportunity

Indigenous peoples have harvested kelp for thousands of years, and many continue to do so. It’s also become the fastest-growing segment of the aquaculture industry.

That’s because a kelp extract called alginic acid, also referred to as algin or alginate, can be used as a thickening and emulsifying agent. It’s found in animal feed, pharmaceuticals, toothpastes, shampoos, salad dressings, frozen foods, dairy products, paper, charcoal and more.

Long strands of kelp being unloaded from truck and hung to dry. — Collecting seaweed and drying it to be processed to make alginate. Photo: Michael, (CC BY-NC 2.0)

But ensuring kelp forests continue to provide important environmental functions means that harvesting wild and cultivated kelp needs to be done sustainably, which isn’t always the case. The U.N. report called attention to unsustainable methods, including industrial harvesting in Norway where trawlers tear kelp from the seafloor, leaving 10-foot-wide gouges. This not only destroys kelp but can harm invertebrates and fish who depend on it, as well as the birds who eat them.

As kelp industries grow, policymakers in the United States hope to provide some ground rules. In March Rep. Jared Huffman of California and Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska introduced the Coastal Seaweed Farm Act of 2023, which calls on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Agriculture to “carry out a study on coastal seaweed farming, issue regulation relating to such farming, and establish an Indigenous seaweed farming fund.”

The latter would help reduce the cost barriers for Indigenous communities to participate in coastal seaweed farming and use the methods to help restore ecological functions.

“We also want to ensure equity in this field so that Indigenous people can continue benefiting from the industry — so our bill creates a grant program to reduce cost barriers for native communities, many of whom have farmed seaweed for thousands of years,” Huffman said in a statement.

Globally, other efforts are underway as well. The Kelp Forest Alliance aims to protect and restore nearly 10 million acres of kelp forests by 2040. “This is a call for governments to meet their commitments to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and act now to save these ecosystems,” Aaron Eger, lead author of the Nature Communications study and founder of the alliance, wrote in The Conversation.

Kelp needs much more.

The U.N. report provides a list of recommendations, including: taking action to address climate change; investing in mapping and long-term monitoring of kelp forests; better quantifying the ecosystem functions kelp forests provide and how they’re affected by climate change and other human pressures; incentivizing kelp protection and restoration through a monetary value on carbon; assessing practices used for harvesting and making necessary changes; using existing international frameworks to recognize kelp forest values and threats; and ensuring broad partnerships and stakeholder involvement, including with women, local communities, and Indigenous communities.

“The battle to save our kelp forests is just getting started,” wrote Eger. “And we need greater action to protect these intrinsically and economically valuable marine ecosystems.”

Previously in The Revelator:

The Top 10 Ocean Biodiversity Hotspots to Protect

The Perils of Capitalism and Disinformation: 4 Critical New Books

You can’t stop climate change or the extinction crisis without fighting inequality, injustice and conspiracies.

Not every environmental book is an environmental book. Sometimes the best wisdom on how to protect the planet comes from books on other subjects.

Take the four books in this month’s column, for example. None of them are wholly about environmental issues, but they do focus on capitalism, misinformation, inequality and corruption — among the root causes of climate change, environmental injustice and the extinction crisis.

We can’t solve any of these crises without addressing the problems that created them in the first place, so let’s dig into these new books about the “wolves of Wall Street” and other critical topics so we can better protect wolves in the wild — not to mention ourselves.

It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism

By Sen. Bernie Sanders with John Nichols

Sanders does two things with this new book: relitigate the 2020 presidential election season and set the stage for the progressive agenda for election seasons to come. As you might expect from the title, the majority of the book addresses the failure of big business and the government that’s supposed to regulate it. At the same time, a smaller yet significant portion of the book covers climate change and environmental justice, which were key elements of Sanders’ platform. I’d love to have seen him cover other crucial subjects like endangered species, but all the same, this is a rousing call to action for the next for the next generation of leaders — or potential leaders.

From the publisher: “Senator Bernie Sanders takes on the billionaire class and speaks blunt truths about our country’s failure to address the destructive nature of a system that is fueled by uncontrolled greed and rigidly committed to prioritizing corporate profits over the needs of ordinary Americans.”

Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity

by Sander van der Linden

No lie — this is an important book. Disinformation helps fuel the climate crisis, as well as so many other problems we face today, from election denial and anti-vaccine attitudes to QAnon and anti-LGBTQ policies. Countering these threats require everyone to operate on the same baseline of truth, and that also requires understanding why mistruth is so easily duplicated from brain to brain. Reading this book will help you to fight the tendrils of misinformation working their way into your perceptions, as well as enable you to prevent them from reaching others. Whether that will help your already infected crazy uncle remains to be seen, but the fact is that this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of truth.

From the publisher: “Like a virus, misinformation infects our minds, exploiting shortcuts in how we see and process information to alter our beliefs, modify our memories, and replicate at astonishing rates. Once the virus takes hold, it’s very hard to cure. Strategies like fact-checking and debunking can leave a falsehood still festering or, at worst, even strengthen its hold. But we aren’t helpless. As van der Linden shows based on award-winning original research, we can cultivate immunity through the innovative science of “prebunking”: inoculating people against false information by preemptively exposing them to a weakened dose, thus empowering them to identify and fend off its manipulative tactics. Deconstructing the characteristic techniques of conspiracies and misinformation, van der Linden gives readers practical tools to defend themselves and others against nefarious persuasion — whether at scale or around their own dinner table.”

Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading and Public Speaking

By Mehdi Hasan

This is most definitely not an environmental book, and yet I would argue that it is. Getting to a safer, cleaner future will depend on being able to convince people of the science of climate change and the danger we face. That means breaking through disinformation — much of which is, itself, well-argued by design — and the bubbles around people’s minds. This book may offer a road map for many activists, politicians and journalists trying to have those world-saving arguments and discussions.

From the publisher: “MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan isn’t one to avoid arguments. He relishes them as the lifeblood of democracy and the only surefire way to establish the truth. Arguments help us solve problems, uncover new ideas we might not have considered, and nudge our disagreements toward mutual understanding. A good argument, made in good faith, has intrinsic value — and can also simply be fun.”

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

By Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway

No one knows more about fighting unfettered capitalism than Oreskes and Conway, the authors of the classic Merchants of Doubt. Their latest book serves as a potent reminder that you can’t address the climate crisis without addressing injustice, inequality, corruption, misinformation, big business and oligarchy. It’s all connected — but then again, so are the solutions.

From the publisher: “In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with ‘big government’ and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions and defend child labor… By the 1970s, this propaganda was succeeding. Free market ideology would define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic administrations, giving us a housing crisis, the opioid scourge, climate destruction and a baleful response to the covid-19 pandemic. Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy.”

What other non-environmental books are you reading that help illuminate the problems facing the planet? Send your suggestions to [email protected].

Previously in The Revelator:

The First Must-Read Environmental Books of 2023 Have Arrived

Our Addiction to Online Shopping Is Poisoning These Neighborhoods

The warehouse boom — and its resulting air pollution — causes dangerous health risks in California’s Inland Empire.

A scene from the HBO miniseries Chernobyl keeps me awake some nights. It takes place just a couple of hours after the explosion of Number Four RBMK’s nuclear reactor core. A group of family and friends gather on a bridge to watch the burning power plant on the horizon as if it’s a Fourth of July firework show. “It is beautiful,” a woman remarks. People close their eyes in a seeming act of reverence as the falling dust coats their faces like snowflakes, oblivious to its radioactivity. Children dance in a sandbox to celebrate the impromptu neighborhood gathering and unexpected faux snowfall.

Forty years later, viewers watch this fictionalized re-creation with a suffocating sense of heartache and helplessness — a retrospective knowledge of the cancer deaths that were to come.

There’s an added layer of injustice when the threat is invisible.

I felt a similar eeriness a few months ago walking through Esplanade Park, in California’s Riverside County. I’m an environmental consultant focusing largely on on developments in Southern California, and I was visiting the area to observe some projects we’ve worked on. It was a February afternoon — 82 degrees and sunny — and my colleagues and I sat at a lunch table in the middle of the park. We found ourselves surrounded by an ordinary playground scene: a father and son playing catch, two girls competing to see who could swing the highest, a man riding a bike with his daughter sitting on the handlebars. A monotonous suburban neighborhood enveloped the park, reinstating an air of comfort and safety.

And yet, only 1,500 feet from Esplanade’s edge — 125 feet from the nearest backyard — is the corner of these sprawling acres of highly polluting warehouses.

Embed from Getty Images

I felt a familiar melancholy trying to rationalize the industry infringing on the innocent: a threat, though not radioactive, that you couldn’t see or smell. The warehouses were hidden behind the homes, and the invading air toxics were, of course, invisible.

“Do these people even know?” I asked my colleagues on our drive away from Esplanade.

“I think some might know and care, but feel like they have no other choice,” one said.

An Empire of Diesel

In recent decades the Inland Empire — comprised of San Bernardino and Riverside counties — has been the primary victim of America’s warehouse boom. As demand for online shopping has surged — e-commerce sales grew 50% to $870 billion during the pandemic alone — this region has served as a billionaire’s dumping ground. Those are the words of Tom Dolan, executive director of Inland Congregations United for Change. “Now it’s no longer just Warren Buffet, it’s Jeff Bezos and Amazon,” Dolan told The Guardian in 2021. “And we’re paying the cost of doing their business.”

That business is only made possible by taking out a nonconsensual loan from the residents of surrounding communities. It’s a coercive trade: the health and safety of citizens for the profits they’ll never share. And no worthwhile efforts have been made to pay off that debt.

In order to fulfill the glamorous promises of expedited, overnight and same-day deliveries, diesel trucks conduct over 600,000 daily trips through the Inland Empire alone, carrying roughly 40% of the nation’s goods. These vehicles emit 1,000 pounds of diesel particulate matter every day (alongside 100,000 pounds of nitric oxide and 50,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide).

Embed from Getty Images

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified diesel particulate matter as a Group 1 carcinogen — the most severe category — due to sufficient evidence linking diesel exposure to lung cancer. (Other studies have suggested a relationship to cancers of the bladder, larynx, esophagus, stomach, pancreas and blood, alongside asthma, other respiratory disease, heart attacks and premature mortality.) The region bordering the warehouse hub in one Inland Empire city, Ontario, ranks in the 95th percentile of cancer. A 2015 study estimated that 70% of the total cancer risk from air pollution in California is caused by diesel exhaust alone.

An Undue Burden

The people who suffer the consequences of our online shopping are not typically over-consumers themselves. The South Coast Air Quality Management District found that the 2.4 million people living within half a mile of a warehouse are also disproportionately Black and Latino communities below the poverty line. In 2012 San Bernardino ranked as the second poorest city in America with over 34.6% of people living in poverty. And of all the residents living within a mile of the average Amazon warehouse, 80% are people of color.

In January a coalition of over 60 environmental groups (including the Center for Biological Diversity, publisher of The Revelator) wrote to Gov. Gavin Newsom and asked him to declare a public health state of emergency in the Inland Empire. The request included testimony from residents on their firsthand experiences dealing with the everyday reality of increased asthma attacks, nose bleeds, hospitalizations, and coronary episodes. Given “nowhere else to turn,” they’re demanding government intervention, alongside a moratorium on new warehouse construction until the health consequences can be better understood.

Inland Empire warehouse moratorium pitched to @GavinNewsom https://t.co/7glIIvhfuA pic.twitter.com/AV5ciTQPSR

— Jeff Horseman (@JeffHorseman) January 31, 2023

It is now May, and they have not yet heard back.

“It’s been very scary fighting all of this,” an advocate from Colton said in a Pitzer College student documentary about the Inland Empire. “It feels like no one is listening.”

Natives of Southern California drive by acres of warehouses without blinking an eye. The buildings are mundane, unassuming, even inviting: Walmart’s fulfillment center is decorated with banners of sunshine logos and sky-blue font that reads, “Hi There. We’re Hiring,” with the familiar warmth of a neighbor knocking on your door.

No Choice

Even for residents who are well aware of the health consequences associated with these warehouses, it can be hard to ignore the knock. Along with introducing air toxins and environmental degradation, the warehouse boom has brought a blanket of economic security. As of 2021 the logistics industry was responsible for 1 in 8 Inland workers’ employment, adding more jobs here than any other part of the state. The region has also traditionally served as a refuge from ultra-high Los Angeles rent. The low cost of living and the influx of jobs have served as a siren call to new residents — who now find themselves victim to invisible poison, much like the workers who lived in the communities around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

And so the warehouses build on — and with remarkable speed. Warehouses are currently increasing at five times the rate of population growth. In 1980 the Inland Empire was home to just 237 warehouses. Today there are more than 4,000.

Embed from Getty Images

Before our site visit, we planned our stops by researching neighborhoods located closest to large warehouse clusters. We found Edenglen — a residential community with a similar sensation of a Disney movie set — located just 1,400 feet from what our online maps told us was a 13-warehouse lot. However, upon arrival, it became clear that even satellite images can’t keep up with the stark reality. We stood in the barren, grassy lot separating Edenglen from the industrial site and counted not just the 13 warehouses but five new ones under construction — this time, just 200 feet from the nearest backyard.

We watched a worker coat the gray building with a slightly-less-gray layer of paint. The sun was cruel, and the freshly painted walls were blinding.

My boss suggested we stop for a beer on the ride home.

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

Previously in The Revelator:

What a New Jersey Creek Taught Us About How Animals Respond to Pollution

Why Tree-Planting Schemes Aren’t a Silver Bullet

Numerous global reforestation efforts are underway, but research suggests getting long-term benefits is harder than it looks, and some projects can do more harm than good.

The race is on to plant trees. The World Economic Forum launched a 1 trillion trees initiative in 2020. The Bonn Challenge aims to restore 865 million acres of deforested landscapes by 2030. Individual countries have set their own targets, too, like Canada’s announcement to plant 2 billion trees in 10 years.

These reforestation efforts have been spurred by the need to store more carbon to fight climate change and help create habitat for dwindling biodiversity. Planting more trees can also help reduce air pollution, prevent erosion, and provide cooling shade for everyone from city dwellers to creek-swimming salmon.

Seems like a perfect solution to a lot of problems, including two of our biggest: climate change and biodiversity loss. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it may seem.

Wrong Place

There are a lot of ways that tree planting can go awry — especially as people aim to hit arbitrary metrics. This includes planting trees in the wrong places, like in native grasslands or wetlands. Or planting nonnative trees that take up too much water or create other dangerous conditions.

Alberta, Canada has learned that lesson. In the 1980s the government decided to create forests out of peat bogs by swapping swamps for black spruce. Here the goal wasn’t to help the environment — it was to create loggable forests — but it should still serve a warning.

“The new spruce trees gorged themselves on the groundwater out of the swamps, growing unusually wide canopies — which choked out the peat moss,” the Pulitzer Center and National Geographic reported in 2019. “A different, drier moss replaced it — kindling in the place of fire retardant — and as the land dried the trees grew into enormous stores of fuel.”

The result was a massive forest fire in 2016 that tore through the town of Fort McMurray, destroying 2,400 homes.

Short-Lived

Even tree planting with good intentions can come up short. And about half do.

A recent study in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences examined 176 restoration sites in tropical and subtropical forests in Asia where the most common restoration practice is planting nursery-grown saplings. On average, researchers found that tree mortality was 18% after one year, but that jumped nearly 50% beyond 10 years.

“In practice, there has been an over-emphasis on numbers of trees planted as a metric for forest restoration success, rather than managing, protecting and monitoring how these planted trees perform over longer timescales,” the researchers wrote.

Getting trees in the soil is only part of forest restoration. Caring for those trees is also crucial.

“We recommend that tree-growing efforts set targets for the area of forest restored after 10, 20 or 50 years, rather than focusing on numbers of seedlings planted,” restoration ecologists Karen D. Holl, of the University of California, Santa Cruz and Pedro Brancalion of the Universidade de São Paulo wrote in The Conversation.

rows of tiny green plants growing in greenhouse. — Acai nursery in Acre, Brazil to aid reforestation. Photo: Kate Evans/CIFOR, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

But even a lot of living trees doesn’t make a forest if efforts are short on diversity. Many reforestation projects function more like plantations.

The researchers of the Philosophical Transactions study found that 625 tree species had been planted at the sites they studied, but the richness at most sites was low. That’s problematic for biodiversity, but also for carbon sequestration, as another study published in Nature in April confirmed. Those researchers found that “greater tree diversity is associated with higher soil carbon and nitrogen accumulation.” If tree planting is done with the goal of sequestering more carbon, species diversity should be a consideration, they say.

Ensuring Funding

Success also requires sustained effort and money.

This can be hard to achieve. Most projects are allotted short-term funding, but restoration is a long-term endeavor. “Currently, funding is typically provided only for the restoration intervention to be implemented, as opposed to ongoing maintenance, and the various infrastructure requirements around a project,” found another study in Philosophical Transactions. There’s also a lack of information about how much money is required to sustain these long-term efforts.

It’s a lesson being learned now by backers of “one of the world’s most ambitious ecological-restoration schemes,” according to Nature.

Africa’s Great Green Wall initiative aims to restore nearly 250 million degraded acres across the Sahel by 2030. The project was initially planned as a 4,300-mile swathe of trees across 11 countries from Senegal to Djibouti, but now includes an additional focus on protecting existing forests, improving soils and other restoration efforts.

As it’s going now, it’s on track to achieve only 30% of its target. Part of the problem is stable and equitable funding, a United Nations report found. “The report suggests that trust between the African Union and international donors is in short supply,” reported Nature. “Donor nations seem to be picking and choosing which countries to invest in, with a preference for those in relatively stable regions.”

That means the areas that are being passed over are the ones that need the most help.

Enabling Success

There are ways to ensure better outcomes from reforestation efforts by addressing ecological and social factors.

It starts with understanding what native trees should grow well in an area and having a plan — and funding — for who will manage the project for years after planting.

When it comes to ecological issues, researchers of the Philosophical Transactions study about restoration efforts in Asia found that larger seedlings often fare better, and restoration was more successful when the previous disturbance was less intensive.

Aerial view showing areas of forest next to clearcuts. — Clearcuts on the Oregon Coast. Photo: Eric Prado, (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The proximity of newly planted trees to those already growing can be beneficial.

“An established tree canopy facilitates rapid colonization of planted seedlings’ root systems by mutualistic fungi, which are known to enhance seedling survival and growth, whereas soil physical, chemical and biological properties may be more disturbed in open sites as a result of their disturbance history,” the researchers explained.

There are also a lot of social factors, including land tenure, governance and community buy-in.

Local people should be involved in planning and monitoring of projects. “Initiating projects without appropriate engagement and buy-in from local communities may lead to social conflict, lost income, and displacement of people, which can actually increase deforestation,” wrote Holl in Climate & Capital Media.

Sometimes economic incentives are required, but that too, demands careful consideration.

A tree-planting program in Chile from 1974 to 2012 subsidized 75% of the cost of planting new forests. But it didn’t go as hoped.

“While it was intended not to apply to existing forests, lax enforcement and budgetary limitations meant that some landowners simply replaced native forests with more profitable new tree plantations,” the BBC reported. “Their study found the subsidy scheme expanded the area covered by trees, but decreased the area of native forest.” And that in turn led to more biodiversity loss and didn’t increase carbon storage.

It’s an important reminder that protecting existing forests is crucial. Any biodiversity and climate mitigation gains from new restoration efforts are offset by each acre of forest we continue to raze. And we know that older trees are even better at storing carbon than younger ones, which makes protecting old-growth and mature forests even more crucial.

“It is much more effective to prevent clearing of existing forests than to try to put them back together again,” wrote Holl and Brancalion. “And existing forests provide benefits now, rather than decades into the future after trees mature.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Protecting Mature Forests Slows Climate Change, So Why Is Biden Still Allowing Them to Be Logged?

Is Life for Wild Animals Really ‘Red in Tooth and Claw’?

New research argues that most animals enjoy positive experiences throughout their lives, and that can help their conservation.

By Heather Browning and Walter Veit

If you know anything about the experiences of animals reared in captivity for food, fur or human amusement, you might imagine that the lives of wild animals are idyllic. If nature is conceived as a sort of Garden of Eden then animals which live in it, free of human interference, are presumably living their best possible lives.

Others see life in the wild as far harsher. Nature is “red in tooth and claw” as poet Alfred Tennyson once put it. According to this view, the average life of a wild animal can be best understood as a desperate search for food and shelter, enduring pain and sickness and burdened with the ever-present prospect of a savage death.

This latter view is arguably dominant among those who ponder questions of wild animal ethics and welfare. Scholars like Yew-Kwang Ng and Oscar Horta have aimed in part to debunk the view that wild animals have it pretty good by evoking the prevalence of vicious predators and other sources of harm. Yet this picture may be just as inaccurate.

In our recent paper, we argued that the real experience of wild animal life most likely sits somewhere between these two extremes – though it’s probably a lot better than many researchers think.

The popular view of wild animals being consumed by suffering has been influenced by a preoccupation with their experiences at the time of their deaths. Too little attention has been paid to the range of positive experiences available to wild animals throughout their lives.

Death Is Fleeting

Consider an antelope pursued by a pack of hungry hyenas: it eventually tires, is captured and eaten alive. The common occurrence of predation like this suggests animal suffering is widespread. But it is worth thinking about these events a little more closely, as they may not cause as much suffering as it first seems.

A hyena searching a grassland with an antelope in the background. — Though unpleasant, death is only ever a small part of an animal’s life. Paco Como/Shutterstock

Some animals follow a breeding strategy in which they produce lots of offspring, most of which will die off very quickly and never make it to maturity. For these animals, with short lives and violent ends, is the balance more likely to be negative? Perhaps, in some cases. But it is important even in these instances not to underestimate the potential for positive experiences in the time they have.

The Joy of Living

To judge the quality of an animal’s life we must consider the whole experience, not just select the worst parts.

A life contains a range of experiences – many negative ones, as researchers who document wild animal suffering point out – but also a range of positive ones. We could make a list of all the bad things that wild animals encounter: predation, starvation, thirst, disease, parasites, poor weather, aggression from members of their own species. Looking at this list might convince us that their lives must be bad. But we can write an alternative list of the good things they also enjoy: social contact, eating, mating, resting comfortably, playing, exploring, perceiving vistas or sounds or smells that they like.

One concept that may be important here is that of the joy of living. This idea describes the possibility of a baseline experience that all animals have that is itself positive. This could help animals stay motivated.

We can see in cases of human depression that one of the main symptoms is a lack of motivation and an unwillingness to move. For an animal needing to acquire food and other things necessary to live, this could mean death. So for evolutionary reasons it would be logical for the baseline experience of animals to be at least slightly positive. It is plausible that just being alive, perceiving, exploring, and experiencing the world, could itself bring happiness to animals.

Putting the lists side-by-side, it’s no longer so obvious that wild animal lives are, on balance, bad ones. It becomes far more dependent on the interplay of positive and negative experiences, their intensity, how often they occur and for how long, and how the animal weights their importance. Some species might have substantially better lives than others.

A superficial look at the lives of animals in the wild will not allow researchers to draw meaningful conclusions about what this balance is like for them. Instead, empirical research conducted in the field could uncover the intensity and duration of the different experiences wild animals face and how they affect their welfare. Researchers in the emerging field of wild animal welfare research already do this, supported by organisations like the Wild Animal Initiative.

This is not idle musing. Understanding the lives of wild animals could make interventions to alleviate some widespread sources of suffering – such as disease outbreaks or pest control – more accurate and infringe less on positive experiences.

We won’t know for sure until more information is gathered, but we have argued that there are several good reasons to suspect that such research will show that many – if not most – wild animals do in fact have happy lives.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Human Activities Have Drastically Reduced Habitat for Asian Elephants

New research shows when human actions started to fragment elephant habitat in Asia and how that could help conservation efforts.

Despite their iconic status and long association with humans, Asian elephants are one of the most endangered large mammals. Believed to number between 45,000 and 50,000 individuals worldwide, they are at risk throughout Asia due to human activities such as deforestation, mining, dam building and road construction, which have damaged numerous ecosystems.

My colleagues and I wanted to know when human actions started to fragment wildlife habitats and populations to the degree seen today. We quantified these impacts by considering them through the needs of this species.

In a newly published study, we examined the centuries-long history of Asian landscapes that once were suitable elephant habitat and often were managed by local communities prior to the colonial era. In our view, understanding this history and restoring some of these relationships may be the key to living with elephants and other large wild animals in the future.

How Have Humans Affected Wildlife?

It isn’t easy to measure human impacts on wildlife across a region as large and diverse as Asia and more than a century ago. Historical data for many species is sparse. Museums, for instance, only contain specimens collected from certain locations.

Many animals also have very specific ecological requirements, and there often isn’t sufficient data on these features at a fine scale going far into the past. For instance, a species might prefer particular microclimates or vegetation types that occur only at particular elevations.

For nearly two decades I’ve been studying Asian elephants. As a species, these animals are breathtakingly adaptable: They can live in seasonally dry forests, grasslands or the densest of rain forests. If we could match the habitat requirements of elephants to data sets showing how these habitats changed over time, we knew that we could understand how land-use changes have affected elephants and other wildlife in these environments.

Defining Elephant Ecosystems

The home-range sizes of Asian elephants can vary anywhere from a few hundred square miles to a few thousand. But since we couldn’t know exactly where elephants would have been centuries ago, we had to model the possibilities based on where they occur today.

By identifying the environmental features that correspond to locations where wild elephants live now, we can distinguish places where they could potentially have lived in the past. In principle, this should represent “good” habitat.

Today many scientists are using this kind of model to identify particular species’ climatic requirements and predict how areas suitable for those species might shift under future climate change scenarios. We applied the same logic retrospectively, using land-use and land-cover types instead of climate change projections.

We drew this information from the Land-Use Harmonization (LUH2) data set, released by a research group at the University of Maryland. The group mapped historical land-use categories by type, starting in the year 850 — long before the advent of nations as we know them today, with fewer large population centers — and extending up to 2015.

Map of elephant ranges in the region. — Asian elephants live in countries with large human populations, and their range has been shrunk and fragmented. Hedges et al., 2008, via Trunks & Leaves, CC BY-ND

My co-authors and I first compiled records of where Asian elephants have been observed in the recent past. We limited our study to the 13 countries that today still contain wild elephants: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

We excluded areas where elephant populations are prone to clashing with people, such as intensively farmed landscapes and plantations, in order to avoid classifying these zones as “good” elephant habitat. We included areas with lighter human influence, such as selectively logged forests, because they actually contain great food for elephants.

Next, we used a machine-learning algorithm to determine what types of land use and land cover existed at our remaining locations. This allowed us to map out where elephants could potentially live as of the year 2000. By applying our model to earlier and later years, we were able to generate maps of areas that contained suitable habitat for elephants and to see how those areas had changed over the centuries.

Dramatic Declines

Land-use patterns changed significantly on every continent starting with the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s and extending through the colonial era into the mid-20th century. Asia was no exception.

For most areas, we found that suitable elephant habitat took a steep dive around this time. We estimated that from 1700 through 2015 the total amount of suitable habitat decreased by 64%. More than 1.2 million square miles of land were converted for plantations, industry and urban development. With respect to potential elephant habitat, most of the change occurred in India and China, each of which saw conversion in more than 80% of these landscapes.

In other areas of Southeast Asia — such as a large hot spot of elephant habitat in central Thailand, which was never colonized — habitat loss happened more recently, in the mid-20th century. This timing corresponds to logging concurrent with the so-called Green Revolution, which introduced industrial agriculture to many parts of the world.

Could the Past Be the Key to the Future?

Looking back at land-use change over centuries makes it clear just how drastically human actions have reduced habitat for Asian elephants. The losses that we measured greatly exceed estimates of “catastrophic” human impacts on so-called wilderness or forests within recent decades.

Our analysis shows that if you were an elephant in the 1700s, you might have been able to range across 40% of the available habitat in Asia with no problem, because it was one large, contiguous area that contained many ecosystems where you could live. This enabled gene flow among many elephant populations. But by 2015, human activities had so drastically fragmented the total suitable area for elephants that the largest patch of good habitat represented less than 7% of it.

Sri Lanka and peninsular Malaysia have a disproportionately high share of Asia’s wild elephant population, relative to available elephant habitat area. Thailand and Myanmar have smaller populations relative to area. Interestingly, the latter are countries known for their large captive or semi-captive elephant populations.

Less than half of the areas that contain wild elephants today have adequate habitat for them. Elephants’ resulting use of increasingly human-dominated landscapes leads to confrontations that are harmful for both elephants and people.

However, this long view of history reminds us that protected areas alone are not the answer, since they simply cannot be large enough to support elephant populations. Indeed, human societies have shaped these very landscapes for millennia.

Today there is a pressing challenge to balance human subsistence and livelihood requirements with the needs of wildlife. Restoring traditional forms of land management and local stewardship of these landscapes can be an essential part of protecting and recovering ecosystems that serve both people and wildlife in the future.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Previously in The Revelator:

A New Way to Count African Forest Elephants: DNA From Dung

Species Spotlight: Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo — an Elusive, Arboreal Marsupial

This remarkable species lives in forests of towering trees. Locals call it the “ghost of the forest,” because it’s so hard to find and moves so quickly.

No one is exactly sure when this marsupial in the kangaroo family took to the trees, but it’s clearly well adapted for life on high — with long, bark-gripping claws, strong limbs for climbing, and a long tail for balance. These are good traits to have for an animal that spends most of its time 100 feet or more above the ground, nibbling ferns and orchids and looking out at dizzying views over the forest canopy.

Species name:

Matschie’s tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus matschiei)

Description:

The Matschie’s tree kangaroo has thick, reddish mahogany fur on its back and a dark stripe down its spine. Its limbs, feet and ear tips are yellow, and its face is white or cream-colored. Stocky in build, a Matschie’s tree kangaroo has muscular forelimbs approximately the same length as its hind legs and long, sharp claws on both front and hind feet that help them climb trees. An adult female weighs between 15 and 20 pounds, while an adult male weighs between 20 and 25 pounds. They measure from 20 to 32 inches in height.

Where it’s found:

Native to Papua New Guinea and endemic to the Huon Peninsula, Matschie’s tree kangaroos live in elevations of up to 11,000 feet and spend most of their time in trees, eating leaves, vines, ferns, orchids, shrubs and herbs. Little is known about Matschie’s tree kangaroos in their native habitat, but they are believed to be solitary animals, except when a mother is raising offspring.

IUCN Red List status:

Endangered. It is estimated that there are fewer than 2,500 adults left in their native habitat, and their population is decreasing.

Major threats:

Matschie’s tree kangaroos are hunted by humans for food and trade. Habitat loss due to expanding agriculture further threatens their population.

Notable conservation programs:

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo Species Survival Plan is designed to help save this species from the brink of extinction. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance also donates to the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program, which supports in situ conservation, scientific research, land protection and local community livelihoods in Papua New Guinea.

My favorite experience:

We have three Matschie’s tree kangaroos at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and in August 2022 saw the birth of the newest joey. On average, a female Matschie’s tree kangaroo cycles about every 55 days for about 48 hours, providing very limited time for the female and male to breed. We knew Arona, the female, and Beks, the male, had mated, but we didn’t know if the outcome would be successful. We began watching Arona on cameras placed in her den and anxiously waited for signs that she might be pregnant and give birth.

Arona participates in her own healthcare, and she has choice and control of what she wants or does not want to do. She has a great relationship with her wildlife care specialists, and because of this, we were able to look inside her pouch and discover the joey. Our team was so excited. This birth helps contribute to the world’s population of Matschie’s tree kangaroos, and we are proud of the work we do for the conservation of this species.

As a first-time mom, Arona is very attentive to her joey, and both are doing very well. The joey will remain in the pouch for up to 10 months or so, exiting the pouch for extended periods and returning to nurse. Arona will wean her joey when it’s about a year old, but the joey will stay close to mom for about a year and a half.

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

These animals need our help. Habitat loss through deforestation and poaching are pushing Matschie’s tree kangaroos to the brink of extinction. People can help the species by supporting organizations like San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and others working to conserve this species. Also, when buying wood or furniture, ask if the wood is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified. This means the wood was taken in a way approved by forestry experts.

Previously in The Revelator:

Species Spotlight: Baird’s Tapir, Our Allies Against Climate Change

Youths to G7: Protect Our Generation

What if governments finally decided to act on climate change and environmental degradation?

Later this month world leaders will gather in Hiroshima, Japan for the 49th G7 summit, the annual meeting devoted to issues of global diplomacy. Will they listen to the voices of their youngest constituents and act on climate change?

A few weeks ago the Y7 — the G7’s official youth engagement group — concluded work on our Youth Communiqué. Developed by youth representatives from each country in the group, it proposes policies to heads of state on pressing global issues like climate and environment, peace and security, global health, economic resilience, and digital innovation.

This year’s Y7 Climate and Environment discussions, in which I represent European Union youth, call on the G7 to ensure a just and orderly transition, restore biodiversity and protect ecosystems, and prioritize and finance resilient human settlements. After months of youth consultations, those recommendations have now been handed over to the Japanese G7 presidency, Prime Minister Fumia Kishida.

While leaders read our recommendations as part of their stated aim to take an intergenerational approach, one question continues to spiral in my head: What if our governments decided to act on climate change and environmental degradation as if this will affect our generation?

Several rows of people sitting and standing in a formal pose — Youth delegates with Prime Minister Fumia Kishida.

We’re left with seven years to act for life within planetary boundaries, as shown by the latest IPCC report. Considering the rapidly closing window of opportunity to limit the global average temperature rise to below 1.5°C, the viability of humanity rests on the actions we take today.

High-income and high-pollution countries need to lead the transition, granting our generation the basic human need to walk on healthy soils and breathe clean air. Our G7 Youth Communiqué asks for nothing more than this.

In truth 1.5°C should not be considered a target but a ceiling. Overshooting this means entering a blind spot: overstepping planetary limits in which life has flourished for millions of years.

The difference between 1.5°C and 2°C is not just a temperature rise of 0.5°C. It means that climate risks will be at least twice as disruptive. Considering nearly half of the world’s population lives in the danger zone of climate impacts, every fraction of a degree counts.

We already see the disproportionate effect of 1.1°C warming above preindustrial levels, particularly on the lives of vulnerable communities — those that have contributed the least emissions and pollution.

At the same time, public and private financing of fossil fuels is still greater than for climate adaptation and mitigation.

As governments continue to shake hands with the fossil fuel industry, current climate policies are projected to increase global warming by 3.2°C in 2100.

A row of people at a table, one speaking into a microphone — Youth representatives discuss climate issues. Photo: Maxime van Hoeve

The Y7 Communiqué will not be the last message from my generation demanding change. Another scientific report, youth engagement group and United Nations initiative will follow — all repeating the same message.

Yet what we need is the political will to comply with Earth’s nine planetary boundaries.

These boundaries — climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, biogeochemical flows of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, freshwater use, change in land use, erosion of biodiversity, atmospheric aerosol loading, and novel entities — are required for us to live in harmony with nature. By now, 6 out of 9 have been crossed due to human activity, particularly in high-income countries.

So unless we substantially change our socioeconomic structures — how we work, move, produce and communicate — the stability of global ecosystems is put at stake.

True action asks us to give up current economic models requiring unrelenting growth to produce and consume products and services which conflict with the planet’s natural metabolism.

True action asks us to rethink our relationship with nature as an integrated part of life whilst moving towards absolute resource use reduction.

True action allows our and future generations the basic human need for breathable air, clean water, and sustainable food systems.

With these goals in mind, our Y7 Communiqué calls on the G7 to:

- Phase out and commit to no new investment in the exploration or production of fossil fuels by endorsing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, redirecting investments into renewable energy projects and prioritising energy demand reduction.
- Strengthen loan-free climate financing mechanisms — and embed the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, intergenerational dialogues, and decolonial frameworks in all climate policies.
- Deliver socially equitable commitments to reverse biodiversity loss, deforestation, and soil degradation by acting on the Global Biodiversity Framework’s 30×30 target and endorsing responsible nature-based solutions.
- Lead the transition to regenerative agriculture and plant-based food systems by divesting from intensive monocultures, acting on the Global Methane Pledge and establishing ambitious animal welfare standards for livestock.
- Support the United Nations Convention for the Laws of the Seas by enforcing international surveillance systems against illegal, unregulated and unreported fisheries, ending dangerous indiscriminate fishing techniques, and banning deep sea mining.

In the next seven years, high-income countries like the G7 can and must decide to act on climate change and environmental degradation — taking an active stance for climate justice by limiting unfolding damage.

Our generation depends on it.

Get more from The Revelator. Subscribe to our newsletter, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.