Species Spotlight: The Lord Howe Island Stick Insect Is Holding Its Ground — for Now

A shiny black insect returns from the dead and inspires intercontinental collaboration to make its way back home.

Lord Howe Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site several miles off the coast of Australia, was once home to numerous endemic species found nowhere else on Earth. Among them were stick insects that had historically been so abundant fishermen used them as bait. When rats arrived with a grounded ship in 1918, sightings of these stick insects declined precipitously. By the early 1930s, they were presumed to be extinct.

But there were rumors that the big, black bug was present on Ball’s Pyramid, a tiny, sheer-faced volcanic sea stack about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Lord Howe Island. In 2001 a team of scientists traveled to the pyramid to investigate. After a treacherous night climb, they were astonished to find a tiny population of the insects surviving on a scruffy melaleuca shrub, clinging to life on a 60-degree slope of the barren rock.

Upon the insect’s “rediscovery,” two pairs were brought to the Australian mainland for breeding — one to the Melbourne Zoo, which has successfully maintained this species in managed care and pioneered best practices for its recovery. Years later two other zoos — including the San Diego Zoo — are now also participating in recovering the rarest insect on the planet. These breeding populations will serve as insurance, in case something catastrophic occurs on their tiny island or to the group at the Melbourne Zoo.

Species name:

Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis)

Description:

The Lord Howe Island stick insect is a large, flightless, nocturnal insect that can measure up to 8 inches in length. It has a stout body — females have a broad abdomen that tapers to a conspicuous ovipositor, while males are slimmer, but with longer and thicker antennae and more robust hind legs with prominent spines. Juveniles, called nymphs, are bright green for the first few months of life and active during the day; as they mature, they begin to darken to greenish-brown and seek shelter during the day. Adults are a dark, glossy brown-black and are strictly herbivorous, foraging at night on host plants like melaleuca and fig.

A long, bright green insect perches on a branch — Photo: San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

Where it’s found:

Lord Howe Island stick insects are endemic to the Lord Howe Island Group, a cluster of volcanic islands in a crescent shape in the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand.

IUCN Red List status:

Lord Howe Island stick insects are listed as Critically Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. The native population exists only on Ball’s Pyramid, in extremely low numbers.

Major threats:

Lord Howe Island stick insects are threatened in their native habitat by the presence of invasive plants and non-native predators, including the rats that originally extirpated them from Lord Howe Island. Their tiny habitat on Ball’s Pyramid is subject to catastrophic weather events, and the fragility and low abundance of the existing host plants is of critical concern.

A highly infectious plant fungus called myrtle rust was detected on Lord Howe Island in February 2023, threatening the plant biodiversity there — in particular, an important group of Lord Howe Island stick insect host plants. It’s a grim reminder of the challenges all ecosystems face, and that the best-laid plans must be flexible in the face of uncertainty.

Notable conservation programs or legal protections:

The Lord Howe Island stick insect was listed as critically endangered in Australia under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act in 2002. The Melbourne Zoo has spearheaded a breeding program since 2003 and, along with the government of Australia, engaged additional partners for the global collaboration, which includes assurance populations, habitat restoration and rat eradication. The Lord Howe Island Board and residents have been key partners in the decades-long preparation to one day return this animal to its ancestral home on Lord Howe Island.

My favorite experience:

My most vivid memory has to be the very surreal experience of flying back to the San Diego Zoo in 2016 with 300 critically endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect eggs in my backpack. We had a bumpy start and a low hatch rate the first time we received eggs in 2012, and we spent the next four years building greater capacity to support them in North America. Many of the plant species preferences were different at our zoo, so we sent a horticulturist from our team to Australia to acquire seeds and cuttings of key host plants we couldn’t get here. When we finally felt confident that we had sufficient resources of the new plants and were ready to go pick up our eggs in Melbourne, a disease outbreak in the adult stick insects threatened that plan, and we had to pivot again.

I’ll never forget counting out the eggs with the Melbourne wildlife health and care teams, who surface-sterilized them pre-flight, so that they could come home with me with a lowered risk upon hatching. The idea that we were finally bringing this incredibly rare species back to San Diego to make their global population a little more secure made me hug that backpack closer. And yes, I did take them to the bathroom with me on the flight.

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.

Previously in The Revelator:

Species Spotlight: The Barrens Topminnow — Doomed by Humans?

Climate Change Threatens Insects — And Us

Researchers warn we risk losing a sustainable future if we don’t take action to conserve insects and address climate change. They also offer solutions.

Maybe you’ve noticed summer night skies dimmed by the loss of fireflies, or a lack of bug splatter on your windshield. Or perhaps you’ve been urged to plant milkweed to help monarch butterflies recover. Those are just small glimpses at the insect declines happening globally.

In the United States research has documented American bumblebees down 90% since 2000. Moth populations have fallen 33% since 1968; the western population of migratory monarch butterflies has plummeted by 90% in the past 50 years. In Germany researchers measured a 76% reduction in the biomass of flying insects, and research in East Asia showed the summertime number of predator insects had fallen by 20%.

A look at the bigger picture isn’t much better: A 2019 study concluded that we could lose 40% of the world’s insect species to extinction in the next few decades.

This mounting body of scientific evidence prompted a 2018 New York Times story, “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here,” which caused a storm of media attention.

New research since then only adds to the concern. It also hones in on the additional pressure of climate change, which amplifies other threats already facing many insect species.

“We have enough data to know we are in a critical moment because many of the insects we know are declining, and Earth is experiencing transformations that will make it even more inhospitable to insects as we know them,” says Mariana Abarca, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Smith College. She’s the coauthor of a paper published in November in Ecological Monographs called, “Scientists’ Warning on Climate Change and Insects,” which summarizes the effects of gradual global surface temperature increases on insects, as well as the effects of increased extreme events.

“We warn that, if no action is taken to better understand and reduce the action of climate change on insects, we will drastically reduce our ability to build a sustainable future based on healthy, functional ecosystems,” the authors of the study concluded.

That’s bad news not just for insects but for all wildlife — and for us.

Life as we know it relies on insects doing what they do: pollinating plants, including three-quarters of the crops we eat and 80% of wild plants; controlling pests; breaking down organic matter and recycling the nutrients; and being eaten. Insects make up the base of the aquatic and terrestrial food webs. Salmon, birds, people — and countless other animals — would all go hungry without them.

How Bad Is It?

Are concerns of an “apocalypse” justified? The answer may be somewhere between “not sure” and “not yet.”

To be certain, we’d need more information.

“In order to know what proportion of insect populations are declining and how geographically widespread these declines are, we would need long-term monitoring data from multiple locations in the globe,” says Abarca. “Only a subset of insects in a restricted geographic range have been properly monitored, so of those, we know many are experiencing serious declines and that is concerning.”

But signs are strong that we’re headed into dangerous territory.

Butterfly with brown wings with orange and white markings on a purple flower. — A butterfly on a butterfly bush. Photo: Michele Dorsey Walfred (CC BY 2.0)

“If we don’t change what we’re doing, the areas and groups that are declining will spread,” says Carol Boggs, a professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina, and another coauthor of the study.

The Threats

Climate change will hurry that process along.

Some of the biggest threats to insects are habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, invasive species and land-use changes like deforestation, urbanization and industrial agriculture. Climate change adds another compounding layer.

Warming temperatures will force some species to migrate, but that’s a prospect that gets harder as we convert natural areas — and potential climate refugia — into roads, housing developments and chemical-intensive farms.

Most insects are ectothermic, making them unable to control their own body heat and therefore vulnerable to changing temperatures or moisture levels.

When temperatures get too high insects can suffer a range of injuries, including development failures and negative effects on longevity, dispersal and fecundity. “All of which can reduce their resilience in the face of climate change and in the worst-case scenarios lead to population crashes,” the researchers wrote.

Many insects also rely on temperature signals to initiate stages of life, including diapause, a necessary period when development is suspended in winter. More summer heatwaves or warmer winter spells could trigger mistimed biological cues, resulting in “trophic mismatch” where a lack of synchronous resource availability affects organisms’ survival.

“I’ve collaborated with Dr. David Inouye to show that early snowmelt in montane regions can lead to flowering plants starting to grow earlier; those plants’ flower buds can then get aborted due to late spring freezes,” says Boggs. “A lack of flowers leads to reduced egg laying by the Mormon fritillary butterfly, which leads to decreases in population. This phenomenon likely applies to other butterflies as well.”

Extreme Weather

It’s not just long-term warming trends. More climatic extremes can be dangerous for insects, too.

Climatic extremes pose “a short-term threat to insects, with long-term consequences for ecosystems,” the researchers write.

Heat waves can impair reproduction and fertility. Extreme rainfall and floods can dislodge insects from plants, change soil properties, and force those who live underground to come to the surface, increasing the risk of predation.

Drought also threatens insects and the plants they rely on. For example, the study found “a recent mega-drought in western North America had negative and long-lasting effects on montane butterfly communities that were comparable in magnitude to the combined effects of decades of habitat loss and degradation at lower elevations.”

woodpecker in tree — Black-backed woodpeckers eat beetles on fire-burned trees. Photo: budgora, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

One exception may be wildfires, the aftereffects of which are a boon for wood-boring beetles (and the birds who eat them). Emergent vegetation after a fire can boost the understory and bugs attracted to that new growth — though even for these species, researchers warn, big changes to fire regimes can still be problematic.

But smoke from wildfires can also negatively affect some insects, a recent study found, including blocking antennal receptors in bees and decreasing flying abilities of painted lady butterflies.

Winners and Losers

That’s an important reminder that climate change won’t affect all species the same way — insects included.

Tropical insect species have been found to be at a greater risk than those in temperate areas, who are more adapted to a greater range in temperature. But insects in the coldest places, like areas in front of receding glaciers, also face habitat change.

Some insects could benefit — in some cases the ones we least want to see proliferate. Warming winter temperatures are leading to more forest and crop pests that were previously held in check by cold weather. In Hawai‘i native birds like the ‘akikiki, a kind of honeycreeper, are endangered by the avian malaria spread by invasive mosquitoes that are now increasing their range to higher elevations with warming temperatures.

“Winners tended to be generalist/invasive species, good dispersers, generally colonizing from downstream or downslope, such as grasshoppers,” they write. “Conversely, the losers are often specialist species, adapted to cold habitats, among which some were restricted to isolated glacier-influenced ecosystems.”

Taking Action

Despite a lot of concerning findings, there’s also some good news if we act quickly. “Most insects have short generations and lay hundreds of eggs, so they have a better chance of bouncing back than other imperiled animals, such as rhinos or tigers,” says Abarca. “I’m optimistic about the success of insect conservation programs — we just have to start them.”

Some of that can be small, like “microclimatic refugia.” This includes flower strips, hedgerows, woodlots, and diverse agricultural areas and cover cropping.

Fields of wheat with strips of green and pink flowers. — Wheat fields bordered with flowers to attract pollinating insects. Photo: Paul van de Velde (CC BY 2.0)

Insect needs also vary at different times of the year.

“Overwintering insects need the protection that leaf litter and organic debris provide,” she says. “It’s important to not only provide native flowers for pollen and nectar during the growing season, but also to let caterpillars and other larvae to eat the foliage of trees and to leave the leaves where they fall in autumn, so they host pupae until the following spring.”

People can help this process in their own yards by using a diverse mix of native plants, forgoing pesticides, sowing native wildflowers, limiting mowing and leaving plant debris on the ground.

“I would like to change the image of a neat, tidy yard as something desirable and replace it with the image of a rich, messy, biodiverse yard,” says Abarca.

We also need actions on a much larger scale.

“It’s vitally important that factors such as habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive species, intensive agricultural practices, various forms of pollution, and other stresses are fully integrated into conservation management approaches,” the researchers write. “Only in this way will declines in insects be stabilized or reversed.”

Curbing climate change will be needed to help insects, too. The study highlights a range of actions along those lines, including reducing and eliminating the use of fossil fuels, curbing short-lived pollutants like methane, restoring and permanently protecting ecosystems to safeguard biodiversity and store carbon, embracing a circular economy and growth within ecological limits, and stabilizing human population levels.

“Scientific progress alone is unlikely to result in desirable outcomes and needs to be paired with enabling policies, broad awareness-raising, and stakeholder education,” it reads. “The evidence is clear and the onus is on governing bodies to act now. With species and habitats being lost every day, a refusal or delay to act is not a wise choice.”

There’s also one more way we can all help: Tell stories about insects. “Insects are so different from mammals that we don’t typically connect with them,” says Abarca. “But once people learn more about their ways of life and their ecological importance, they change their minds.”

Previously in The Revelator:

A Surprising Effect of Light Pollution: It Disrupts Aquatic Insects

The Solution to Extinction Is You

Every crisis is connected. We must address the biodiversity crisis, the climate emergency, and poverty and injustice at the same time.

People ask me all the time: What can I do to help stop extinction?

As a scientist working to protect endangered species, I hear the frustration in their voices. But I also know how to answer. It’s not simple, it’s not quick, but it’s essential — and it will help more than threatened animals and plants.

First and foremost, we can’t think of biodiversity protection as isolated from everything else, something that only environmentalists or scientists handle while society goes on as usual. We have to address the biodiversity crisis, the climate emergency, and poverty and injustice simultaneously. And we can accomplish that by integrating biodiversity protection into the mainstream, into concerts, sports, fashion, business, education, transportation, everything everywhere all at once.

Habitat loss is still the biggest driver of extinction, and all our purchases and activities affect habitat somewhere. For all the things we purchase and consume, it’s important to ask where they came from, whose lives they affected — wildlife and human alike — and what byproducts are involved.

Our dollars are actions. If we see a terrible product — like a living frog or fish in a sealed plastic container in a toy aisle, a trinket made out of a dead animal, or invasive landscaping plants like nandina, tropical milkweed, or Bradford pears — there’s a whole ladder of actions to take. First off, we can ask the store to stop selling them and ask the company to stop producing them. Most companies have parent companies that have a sustainability statement on their website but little knowledge of what the smaller brands they own are actually doing. They may not even know if we don’t tell them.

We can also work to promote legislation and rules at the state, local and national levels that ban the sale of exploitative products, invasive plants and toxic ingredients. Supporting proactive initiatives that advance environmental justice and safeguard wildlife and wild places is an evergreen need.

At the macro level, we need to re-examine happiness and wellbeing. We must step back and look at the big picture — how our culture pushes consumerism and destroys self-esteem. We need to actively cultivate ideas of high quality of life that aren’t based on accumulating wealth and stuff: bigger houses, more cars, more outfits, more products, more gadgets.

If we delve into our motivations for buying things, we’ll likely find that we don’t need them; we just get a quick dopamine hit from acquiring something new. Instead of going to a department store we can volunteer with a community group, explore a library or thrift store, organize an outdoor adventure with friends, gather and watch a documentary, or make a game plan for positive change.

Saving biodiversity doesn’t have to be boring or doom-and-gloom. We need to enjoy the creativity of breaking out of cultural norms and looking at solutions as solving a puzzle or going on a quest.

It’s essential to find community to support each other and share ideas and small victories. To get started, I’d suggest picking a challenge of interest and approaching it from multiple angles, including looking for neighborhood allies. Cleaning up a park, say, could include planting native plants, pressuring the city not to use pesticides, hosting fun environmental education and community-building games, preparing tasty plant-based snacks, having a clothing or book swap, sharing seeds and vegetable starts, or building “catios” to encourage people to keep their cats away from native birds and wildlife. There are so many ways to forge new connections.

And there are endless options and opportunities to act. You could stand up to development or urban sprawl, fight pollution from factory farms, start a grassroots campaign to repeal unjust legislation — the world is your (endangered) oyster.

And along with taking action, we need to look at cultural attitudes. We have to overcome the pessimism that we’re just doomed so nothing we do matters, but we also need to look out for the optimism that everything will be okay because someone, somewhere will figure out how to make it all work out.

Everything we do does make a difference. It’s easy to think that our individual actions don’t matter, but it’s precisely because there are so many of us that they do.

The silver lining in that ominous-looking cloud is this — every action has the potential to create change. That’s the answer on how to help: It’s me, hi, I’m the solution. It’s me.

3 Billion Birds Lost: What Will It Take to Halt the Staggering Decline?

A new book looks at efforts to recover dwindling populations and what more is needed.

In 2019 a staggering study revealed North America had lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970 — almost 30% of the total population, with declines in both common and rare species. Grassland birds were down more than 50% and shorebirds by around one-third.

The figures floored even the researchers.

It also provided a jolt to avid birders and retired journalists Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal. They wanted to know what had happened — and what could be done.

To find out the couple took off on a cross-country trip, meeting with 300 experts and other people working to recover birds. They have now chronicled their journey in their new book, A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds.

The Revelator spoke with the Gyllenhaals about who’s saving birds, how technology helps, and what more we need to do.

Why write this book now?

Beverly Gyllenhaal: We’re those people whose hobby took over their lives. Anders is a banjo player and a photographer, and I like to read. We’d go to bluegrass festivals on the weekends, pulling this tiny fiberglass bubble of a trailer. And as we were in these campsites, all of a sudden we started to notice the birds.

Anders started taking pictures and we started identifying them. One thing led to another. Fast forward 10 years, and we’d given up our condo in the city and were immersing ourselves for about half the year in birds.

Then in 2019 when the 3 billion birds report came out, we became aware that approximately one-third of the breeding birds in North America had disappeared. We were surprised, and we were surprised that we were surprised. So we put on our journalists’ hats and started asking ourselves questions.

Head shot of white woman with brown hair and blue shirt and white man with black shirt and tan hat and glasses. — Beverly and Anders Gyllenhaal. Photo: Courtesy of Anders Gyllenhaal

Anders Gyllenhaal: The interesting thing about the report was that everyone knew that birds and other wildlife were declining, but when you put a specific number on it and really get into the granule details, it has a real power.

There’s so much wonderful writing about birds, but we didn’t see anything that tried to look at the bigger picture: Where is all this going? And is it possible to influence it and alter the direction? So that’s the thing we wanted to try to do with this book.

What kind of impact do you think that report had on the general public?

Beverly: I think that it really helped that it was right before the pandemic, when everyone ended up being at home. People looked out their windows, saw birds and got interested in them. Did it stay in the headlines? Well, if you look at The Washington Post, they have all kinds of bird stories now. The New York Times is writing about birds. So I think it ratcheted up a notch on the hobby list for sure.

Anders: I think the question that was hard to answer, and as it is with so many environmental stories, is whether we’re powerless against this? Is this just too much [to fix]? Part of the answer with birds is that it’s a discrete element of the broader environmental story, where there are in fact myriad things that can be done — and myriad things that aren’t being done that could be done to try to change the situation.

That’s one of the things we’re trying to get across: the stories behind this that can help people understand what they can do in response.

What did you find?

Beverly: It all kind of comes underneath the umbrella of how birds get saved in the United States. How does that happen? And it took us a long time to begin to try to get perspective on that. When we started out we had no idea that politics really plays any part in it, and we didn’t really understand the breadth and depth of the Endangered Species Act.

We talked with more than 300 people to get a fix on how birds do get recovered — and many do. It’s a fascinating story in of itself, and much more complicated than we thought.

How much of that work is government agencies versus nonprofits and foundations?

Anders: It’s this amalgam of different things, and that’s both good and not so good.

We’re at a point now where if there’s going to be real impact, there needs to be more coordination. There needs to be a broader strategy to try to say what can have the most impact?

Close up of owl in the branches of a tree — Barred owl. Photo by Anders Gyllenhaal

The system we built really primarily through the 1960s and 70s into the 80s was designed for one period of time, one landscape of birds, which is really focusing chiefly on those that are at the very brink of extinction. That was successful for some period of time, as birds began to enter that sort of final phase.

But now that 50% of species are in some form of decline, there needs to be a new look at how you start trying to have an impact earlier in this regime.

What role is technology playing in this work?

Beverly: You can’t save a bird if you don’t know where it is and where it goes.

When they put tracking backpacks on prothonotary warblers in Louisiana, they thought that it migrated across the Gulf of Mexico and only stopped in the one place where it was going. But they found that this bird would stop for sometimes as long as a week in multiple places and in different countries. That was really important, because it meant that you have got to go into all those places and see what the problems are and try to help fix them.

Anders: In some ways the most interesting piece of technology is allowing people to tune in to birds and other wildlife in ways that really put you close up. Birds are always trying to hide from us. They’re hard to see. The best birds are almost invisible, but when you can see them in cameras and in satellite imagery, that helps us better understand what’s undermining them, and we can also learn about what will better safeguard them.

But it doesn’t do the whole job. There still needs to be concrete work done in the field — figuring out if there’s a pesticide that’s impacting a species in particular, or that there’s a predator that has gotten out of hand. But the technology has enormous power that I think is encouraging.

What did you find that was hopeful?

Anders: The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for birds.

Legislators put forward a really interesting proposal for funding that will probably reach about $1.4 billion a year that will go to birds and other wildlife that aren’t necessarily being funded now. The legislation had kind of stalled in Congress, but it’s [just been] reintroduced.

There’s a lot going on in Congress that makes it hard to produce this kind of legislation, but if you think about the level of support that most people hold for conservation, this is a sound and bipartisan effort.

If you want to ask, is it possible to have a strategic, science-based strategy for helping birds, just look at what has happened on behalf of waterfowl over the last 80 years. They did exactly what was needed, but that needs to be extended to other birds.

Beverly: At the end of the day, that worked because there was funding. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to make a difference with anything if there is no money behind it.

That’s the frustrating part for me as a birder — and as someone who cares about the air I breathe and the water I drink. It’s crazy that we’re not willing to spend what’s needed to help save birds, because we can do it.

Previously in The Revelator:

Birding for All: How to Make Enjoying Birds More Accessible

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

Federal agencies are implementing numerous logging projects in mature and old forests despite calling for forest protections.

Forests are critically important for slowing climate change. They remove huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — 30% of all fossil fuel emissions annually — and store carbon in trees and soils. Old and mature forests are especially important: They handle droughts, storms and wildfires better than young trees, and they store more carbon.

In a 2022 executive order, President Joe Biden called for conserving mature and old-growth forests on federal lands. Recently Biden protected nearly half of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska from road-building and logging.

The Biden administration is compiling an inventory of mature and old-growth forests on public lands that will support further conservation actions. But at the same time, federal agencies are initiating and implementing numerous logging projects in mature and old forests without accounting for how these projects will affect climate change or forest species.

As scientists who have spent decades studying forest ecosystems and climate change impacts, we find that to effectively slow climate change, it is essential to increase carbon storage in these forests, not reduce it. A first step toward this goal would be to halt logging federal forests with relatively high-biomass carbon per acre until the Biden administration develops a plan for conserving them.

Balancing Timber and Climate Change

Many of the 640 million acres that the federal government owns and manages are used for multiple purposes, including protecting biodiversity and water quality, recreation, mining, grazing and logging. Sometimes these uses conflict with one another.

Legal mandates to manage land for multiple uses do not explicitly mention climate change, and federal agencies have not consistently factored climate change science into their plans. However, at the beginning of 2023, the White House Council on Environmental Quality directed federal agencies to consider the effects of climate change when they propose major federal actions that significantly affect the environment.

Some logging projects fall into this category. But many large logging projects that affect thousands of acres have been legally exempted from such analysis.

What’s Lost When Old Trees Are Cut

Most forests in the continental U.S. have been harvested multiple times. Today, fewer than 5% of these forests are more than 100 years old. Old, very large trees are the ones that hold the most carbon, and harvesting forests is the main driver of forest carbon loss.

Truck stacked with cut trees. — A logging truck entering U.S. Highway 50 in Gunnison County, Colorado. Photo: Jeffrey Beall (CC BY-SA 2.0)

For example, in Oregon’s national forests east of the Cascades crest, a 1990s policy formerly spared trees larger than 21 inches in diameter – but the rule was rolled back in 2021 so that large trees could be cut. A recent analysis found that these larger trees comprised just 3% of all trees in the six national forests, but accounted for 42% of living tree carbon.

In the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont, federal officials have approved 40,000 acres of harvest since 2016, targeting many mature and old trees. One 14,270-acre area that was approved for harvest in 2019 contained more than 130 stands older than 100 years. This project required the construction of 25 miles of logging roads, which can have harmful effects, including fragmenting forests, polluting streams and making forests more vulnerable to human-caused wildfires.

Canada is also allowing large, mature trees to be harvested. In British Columbia, mature forests that include old-growth trees historically absorbed more carbon than they released to the atmosphere, resulting in a net carbon sink annually. But since 2002, these tracts have emitted more carbon than they removed from the atmosphere, primarily because of logging, beetle attacks and wildfires. According to British Columbia’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory, these forests now emit more carbon than the province’s energy sector.

In eastern Canada, the Pacific Northwest and the southeastern U.S., timber companies have removed many old trees and replaced them with plantations that contain just one or two tree species. This shift has reduced the structural diversity of the forest canopy — the ecologically important layer formed by the crowns of trees — and the diversity of tree species. Losing old-forest habitat has also caused broad-scale population declines among many forest bird species in eastern Canada, and is likely having the same effect in the U.S.

More Harvesting Releases More Carbon

One argument forest product companies make to support logging is that wood can be regrown, and it releases less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than other building materials. Such claims often make optimistic assumptions that overstate the carbon benefits of harvesting trees by factors of 2 to 100.

Large, mossy trees. — Old-growth forest on Vancouver Island. Photo: Thomas_H_foto (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Some studies indicate that thinning forests by harvesting some trees and reintroducing low-intensity fires can reduce the intensity of future wildfires, leaving more carbon stored in trees. But these studies don’t account for the large amount of carbon that is released to the atmosphere after trees are cut.

In a review published in 2019, we worked with colleagues to estimate how much carbon was contained in trees that were harvested in Washington, Oregon and California from 1900 through 2015, and what happened to it after the trees were logged. We calculated that just 19% of the harvested carbon was in long-lived wood products like timber in buildings. Another 16% was in landfills, and the remaining 65% was released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

In contrast, in 2011 the Australian state of Tasmania suspended logging on half of its old-growth forest area. Within less than a decade, Tasmania was storing more carbon than it released because it was avoiding harvest emissions and the mature trees it saved were accumulating so much carbon.

In the U.S. Pacific Northwest, implementation of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, which the Clinton administration developed to protect endangered species in old-growth forests on public lands, significantly increased carbon storage over the next 17 years. In contrast, privately managed lands in the region accumulated virtually no additional carbon after accounting for losses from wildfire and harvesting.

The Cheapest and Simplest Way to Capture Carbon

President Biden has set a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. To reach that goal, U.S. forests, lands and oceans will have to remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as the nation emits from fossil fuels, industry and agriculture.

In the western U.S., our research shows that protecting half of the mature carbon-dense forests in zones that are relatively less vulnerable to drought and fire could triple carbon stocks and accumulation on protected forests by 2050. A majority of these forests are on public lands.

The carbon dioxide that human activities are releasing into the atmosphere today will elevate global temperatures and raise sea levels for 1,000 years or more, unless societies can find ways to remove it. In its 2022 climate assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that protecting existing natural forests was “the highest priority for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Conserving forests is one of the lowest-cost options for managing carbon dioxide emissions, and it doesn’t require expensive or complex energy-consuming technologies. In our view, sufficient science exists to justify a moratorium on harvesting mature trees on federal lands so that these forests can keep performing their invaluable work.

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

Previously in the Revelator:

Can Roadless Areas Help Stem the Extinction Crisis in the United States?

Species Spotlight: ʻAkikiki On the Brink

Conservationists racing to save one of Hawai‘i’s last honeycreeper species get creative, allowing birds to choose their own mates.

The ʻakikiki is a critically endangered species of Hawaiian honeycreeper endemic to the island of Kauaʻi. Populations have shown rapid decline in the past five years. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance operates a conservation-breeding program on the islands of Maui and Hawaiʻi in an effort to save the species. Researchers have studied mate choice selection as a means of increasing reproductive success and the number of individuals in the population.

Species name:

ʻAkikiki (Oreomystis bairdi)

Description:

A small (12-15 grams) creeper species. Light-cream to pale-gray underside with a dark-gray back. A small, pointed beak for gleaning insects from branches and leaves.

Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

Where it’s found:

High-elevation forest in the Alakaʻi Swamp on Kauaʻi. The population is restricted to an area less than 7 square miles.

IUCN Red List status:

Critically endangered. The population faces rapid decline: Scientists estimate that only 40 birds remain in the wild.

Major threats:

Avian malaria and avian poxvirus have spread to the birds through mosquitos that were introduced to the islands. The birds evolved in isolation from these diseases and have no immunity. Climate change has exacerbated the problem, allowing the mosquitos to increase their range and reach the last strongholds in the cooler mountain forests.

Notable conservation programs or legal protections:

Federal listing under the Endangered Species Act in 2010. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance works in conjunction with Kaua’i Forest Bird Recovery Project, State of Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife, and others to protect the species. The first ‘akikiki eggs were brought into human care for conservation breeding in 2015 as a last-ditch effort.

My favorite experience:

I’ll never forget traveling to the remote regions of Kauaʻi and collecting ʻakikiki eggs from nests in conjunction with Kauaʻi Forest Bird Recovery Project. We set out in the hopes of establishing conservation-breeding flocks in case the species goes extinct in the wild. It was my first opportunity to see ʻakikiki in the wild, and the views from the helicopter were amazing. Being high up in the canopy collecting the tiny ʻakikiki eggs from nests was an adrenaline rush.

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

Mate choice is an important component when managing species in a conservation-breeding program. Although genetic pairings are also critical to take into consideration, behavioral compatibility is important for picking pairs that will breed successfully. Like many species, when female ʻakikiki are allowed to have choice in selecting a preferred male, it increases overall reproductive success. My colleagues and I discovered this after conducting a study on the conservation-breeding flock of ʻakikiki over a span of three years.

Key research:

Alverson, D., Martin, M., Hebebrand, C.T., Greggor, A.L., Masuda, B., Swaisgood, R.R. (in review). Designing a mate choice program: tactics trialed and lessons learned with the critically endangered honeycreeper, ‘akikiki (Oreomystis bairdi). Conservation Science and Practice.

Paxton, E. H., Crampton, L. H., Vetter, J. P., Laut, M., Berry, L., & Morey, S. (2022). Minimizing extinction risk in the face of uncertainty: Developing conservation strategies for 2 rapidly declining forest bird species on Kaua‘i Island. Wildlife Society Bulletin 46.

Why Climate Grief Is an Essential for Climate Action

Climate activism is most effective when it taps into the pain of grieving instead of repeating statistics that overwhelm people into numbness.

When I read news about the latest IPCC climate assessment report, or predictions of imminent mass extinction, I admit that the statistics — the exact degree of warming, the number of feet sea levels will rise, how many species will die — find fewer footholds in my brain than the overwhelming sorrow they elicit.

To paraphrase Maya Angelou, I don’t always remember the numbers, but I remember how they make me feel.

It’s hard to focus on the individual words when your eyes are blurry with tears.

It’s love that makes me run my hands along tree bark ridges. It’s love that moves me to feed the birds that grace our house in winter. And it’s grief — love’s counterpoint — that makes me care so passionately about what threatens the neighbors I love.

That somatic experience informs why I believe climate activism is most effective when it taps into the climate grief, instead of repeating statistics that too often overwhelm people into numbness.

I wrote a book called Cry, Baby: Why Our Tears Matter that will be published this May, and I think the science of crying has important lessons to teach organizers about how to motivate people. That may sound counterintuitive: Crying is a deeply personal act and climate action is, fundamentally, about mobilizing collective action. But that framing obscures both the social dimensions of weeping and the ways in which personal psychology is at the core of large-scale change.

There’s some disagreement among psychologists about why we cry emotional tears. In 1985 William H. Frey published the much-heralded Crying: The Mystery of Tears, in which he found emotional tears contain higher concentrations of certain neurotransmitters than tears caused by chopping onions. He hypothesized that the reason we evolved the ability to cry from deep feeling — and why we often feel better afterward — is that our tear ducts help release chemicals from the brain. More recently researchers like Ad Vingerhoets have cast doubt on this theory, instead suggesting that tears primarily serve a social function. The jury is still out about Frey’s work, but evidence that tears facilitate interpersonal bonds is undeniable.

One recent experiment found that in 41 countries across six continents, in every country, seeing someone cry made people more likely to offer help. Qualitative studies also affirm this link: In a paper analyzing 89 “crying events” at a Hong Kong shelter for abused domestic workers, Hans Ladegaard found that tears helped participants talk about their trauma, and increased the emotional support provided by other members. In my own research, people I interviewed regularly described times when a stranger offered them assistance or comfort after seeing them cry.

There’s something about seeing palpable evidence of other people’s grief that sparks a response.

Dead leaf in the foreground, a lone person walking away in the distance — Photo: Pixabay

So what light does this shed for climate activism? One takeaway is how important it is for people to see the climate grief their neighbors carry. It can seem, as we move about our lives, that other people do not share the overwhelming sorrow and anguish we feel when thinking about our ecological future. Certainly we’re not all equally concerned, but more pain lurks beneath the surface — particularly for young people — than we see or name. Providing avenues to discuss this hurt can help move people through their emotions toward action.

This underscores the importance of storytelling: Narratives about climate activists transforming pain into resistance against the forces that are killing us help people see how they can do the same.

One counterintuitive lesson I learned from my crying interviews, however, is that often people don’t cry when they’re most overwhelmed. It seems, broadly speaking, that loss increases weeping to a point, but once pain becomes too intense and a threshold is crossed, people report crying less and retreating into numbness.

I fear this dynamic is very much at play in our climate crisis. The scale of death projected in scientists’ reports is so staggering that it can be paralyzing. To contemplate, for example, projections that one-third of the planet’s species could go extinct by 2050 can provoke an immobilizing anguish. To consider there may 1.2 billion climate refugees in that same time span is a disaster so enormous that any action we take can feel insignificant. But this is, of course, a lie. What we do matters.

Claiming that truth requires not just acknowledging suffering but affirming our collective power to change how much we suffer. This isn’t just an intellectual exercise, it’s emotional work.

But here’s the last truth I’ll share about crying: When we cry, we deepen our relationship to the object of our grief. And, right now, that’s essential. The forces of extractivism deliberately inculcate and depend on our isolation and despair. They want us to feel alone in our anxiety, separated from community that can do something about it.

As Indigenous writer Kaitlin Curtice shared in an interview for Cry, Baby, “As we get older, we start learning lessons of colonization — the land is not someone you interact with, the land is a commodity. We lose the emotional connection we had to the Earth as a being, as our mother, as a friend.” For example, we are trained to think about climate refugees as problems, not as people who deserve an abundant future.

Moving through grief is an opportunity to reforge these bonds, to feel them in our body and honor the claim they make upon our life.

Previously in The Revelator:

Why Every City Needs a Climate Storyteller

Standing Up for Freshwater Biodiversity

We rely on freshwater plants and animals for clean water, food, recreation and other needs. And yet they’re often overlooked in conservation.

Nearly two dozen experts from around the world have issued a call to action to protect freshwater biodiversity.

“It’s our collective opinion that freshwater biodiversity is really important, but it’s often forgotten,” says Steven J. Cooke, a professor of biology at Carleton University and a coauthor of the paper published in the journal WIREs Water.

Globally at least one-third of freshwater species are threatened with extinction, and they’re disappearing twice as fast as species in the ocean or on land. Habitat loss and degradation, pollution, river fragmentation, invasive species, climate change, mining, microplastics and pharmaceuticals are just some of the threats driving these losses.

And they’re taking a big toll. Freshwater vertebrates declined 84% from 1970 to 2016. And invertebrates and aquatic plants are perpetually forgotten in discussions about biodiversity, says Cooke. “There are many organisms that get relatively little attention.”

That might be because many of these plants and animals are out of sight, in frothing rapids or deep lakes or turbid rivers. We don’t see life below the surface, so we don’t act to protect it.

Freshwater species also aren’t as colorful and showy as those in the marine realm.

“When it comes to freshwater, it’s kind of a blind spot because a lot of the life there is cryptic,” says Cooke.

Freshwater biodiversity is greatest in the Global South, but that’s also where there’s the least amount of money for research that could help protect it. “We’re losing species there before we’re able to document their existence,” says Cooke.

But the Global North doesn’t have everything sorted, either.

In Canada, where Cooke is a fish biologist, there are 10 million lakes. “We don’t have 10 million biologists,” he says. “We don’t have 1 million biologists. That means each resource manager is responsible for hundreds of kilometers of rivers and hundreds if not thousands of lakes and wetlands. You can’t do it all.”

But there’s still a lot that can be done to help protect freshwater biodiversity — especially if people better understand the benefits these plants and animals provide.

“We wanted to flip the more common conservation narrative that only focuses on declines to populations to instead show the importance of freshwater biodiversity by highlighting the benefits that are being lost,” says Abigail Lynch, a research fish biologist with the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center and the paper’s lead author.

Woman holding sun umbrella walks across green rice paddy. — Nepali woman crosses the rice paddy in Sitapur, Nepal. Photo: Robin Johnson/USAID (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Here are some of the reasons, according to the paper, to protect freshwater ecosystems:

Individual freshwater species help keep ecosystems healthy — along with the human communities they support. Aquatic plants like sedges, reeds and rushes help control runoff, capture sediment, and filter pollutants.
These ecosystems also have key roles in fighting climate change by sequestering carbon and methane. “It is estimated that wetland ecosystems contain about 20% to 30% of the global carbon pool and contribute a significant role in the atmospheric carbon cycle,” the researchers write.
Wetlands are also hailed for their role in cleaning water by filtering pathogens and pollutants, like nitrates which can cause harmful algal blooms.
Freshwater plants and animals are important food sources. More than 90% of fish caught in inland waters are for human consumption. And rice, grown in freshwater, feeds half the world.
We rely on freshwater organisms for medicinal, veterinary and pharmacological products.
Freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity are deeply linked to culture in many places.
Lakes and rivers provide opportunities for angling, swimming, birdwatching, photography, snorkeling and other recreation activities.

We have a long way to go to make sure that these important areas and diverse species are protected. But one significant step was made last December’s at the global Convention of Biological Diversity, where the international community recognized “inland waters”as a realm worthy of protection for the first time.

“Freshwaters are not seas and they need to be managed differently and thought of differently,” says Cooke.

There’s also an opportunity to pair freshwater biodiversity solutions with climate solutions. One way to do that is building more “nature-based solutions,” like constructed wetlands that store carbon, support aquatic life, clean water and control pollution.

We need to take action now, and with an eye toward practitioners, says Cooke.

“Restoration ecologists, watershed planners and environmental managers who are making decisions on a day-to-day basis affect the future of our freshwater resources,” he says. “We need to make sure they’ve got the right information to be making good decisions, and that they are supported behind the scenes with good legislation and with public interest that generates the political will to actually invest the resources and end up with real action.”

We need functional freshwater systems to ensure clean water, food security and wellness.

“Investing now just makes good sense,” says Cooke. “Fix it before it’s entirely lost, or the costs are going to be truly massive.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Freshwater Species Are Disappearing Fast — This Year Is Critical for Saving Them

Protect This Place: Fracking Threatens the Allegheny Plateau and Its Biodiversity

A region historically plagued by industrial pollution is overwhelmed with unconventional oil and gas development.

The Place:

The Allegheny Plateau is a lower-lying portion of the Appalachian Mountain Range that extends from southern and central New York to northern and western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, northern and western West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky.

Why it matters:

The plateau consists of areas of gently sloping hills in the north and west of the region as well as rugged valleys in the south and east. It overlies the Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale, sedimentary rock formations. The region is rich in natural resources, including hardwoods, iron ore, silica, coal, oil and natural gas.

The abundance of these resources supported development in the region and were integral to the local steel, glass, rail and extraction industries.

Prior to widespread logging between 1890 and 1920, the area hosted old-growth forests containing red spruce, eastern white pine, eastern hemlock, sugar maple, black oak, white oak, yellow birch and American beech.

But the forest’s makeup is now different, favoring oaks, maples, hickories, American beech and yellow birch. Though fragmented and much less mature than the old-growth forests, today’s forests continue to play a vital role in ecosystems, serving as habitats for the federally endangered Indiana bat as well as locally endangered or at-risk species such as little brown bats, northern flying squirrels and blackpoll warblers.

A stream surrounded by greens — Shippenville, Pa. Photo: Lisa C. Lieb

The region hosts the Ohio River watershed and confluence, the Allegheny National Forest in New York and Pennsylvania, and the Wayne National Forest in Ohio.

The threat:

Unconventional oil and gas development has boomed in the region over the past decade. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Marcellus and Utica shale plays contain approximately 214 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, making the Allegheny Plateau a lucrative location for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Already more than 13,000 unconventional wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania. Fracking itself is a resource intense process, requiring between 2 and 20 million gallons of water per well. A 2014 study estimated that in Pennsylvania, 80% of the water used for fracking comes from streams, rivers, and lakes, thus potentially altering water temperature and levels of dissolved oxygen. This water is combined with sand and a mixture of hazardous chemicals, which may include methanol, ethylene glycol and propargyl alcohol.

Between 20-25% of the water that is injected into the well returns to the surface. This flowback water often has higher salinity and has been known to contain barium, arsenic, benzene and radium. While recycling of flowback is becoming more common, other methods of disposal include underground injection, application to road surfaces, treatment at public waste facilities, and discharging it onto rivers, streams and lakes.

Near fracking sites in West Virginia, elevated levels of barium and strontium were found in feathers of Louisiana waterthrushes, native songbirds who make their home in brooks and wooded swamps. In northwestern Pennsylvania, crayfish and brook trout living in fracked streams were found to have increased levels of mercury. Fish diversity is also reduced in streams that have been fracked.

Fracking consumes land, too. Each fracking well requires 3-7 acres. In Pennsylvania over 700,000 acres of state forest land are leased or available for gas production. Well pads, pipelines and other fracking infrastructure fragment forests, alter their ecology, and reduce biodiversity. Appalachian azure butterflies and federally threatened northern wild monkshood — purple-flowering herbaceous perennials found in New York and Ohio — are both sensitive to forest fragmentation.

In addition to the direct impacts of fracking, the availability of natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays attracts petrochemical development to the region. Shell Polymers Monaca initiated operations in November 2022 at a newly constructed 386-acre petrochemical complex in southwestern Pennsylvania, along the Ohio River.

The plant manufactures virgin polyethylene pellets, which will be largely be used for production of single-use plastic products. In addition to releasing hazardous air pollutants, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter, this ethane “cracker” plant will emit 2.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

The plant’s existence will also fuel fracking in the region; it is anticipated that it will require between 100 and 200 new wells each year in order to supply natural gas for its productions. Other petrochemical companies, including Exxon, PTT Global and Odebrecht, have reportedly been considering building similar complexes in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

Aerial view of large lot with tanks and buildings surrounded by forest. — Fracking waste disposal in Guernsey County, OH.
Photo: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

My place in this place:

I was born and raised in the area, and my family’s roots in southwestern Pennsylvania go back several generations. Some of my most cherished memories involve Pennsylvania’s forests, rivers and streams. As a child I loved my family’s summer pilgrimages to our cabin, a rustic building that had been converted from a one-room schoolhouse in the Pennsylvania Wilds. At “camp” we fished for yellow perch, smallmouth bass and walleye in the Sinnemahoning Creek and caught crayfish by hand. We sunned ourselves on the rocks along the river bank when the water was warm. In the evenings we walked on quiet, narrow roads in hopes of spotting an eastern elk in a grassy field.

I now live in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, one mile from the Shell cracker plant. I can observe the plant’s flaring from my kitchen window, which often creates an ominous orange glow in the night sky. To me the plant doesn’t symbolize job creation or a rebounding local economy, despite the assertions of local and state politicians. I see the plant as the perpetuation of a hopeless dependence on fossil fuels and corporate profit at the expense of ecological integrity. I worry that fracking and an associated petrochemical buildout will destroy already fragile ecosystems throughout my home in the Allegheny Plateau.

Who’s protecting it now:

There are a variety of environmental groups located in the region. No Petro PA is an organization that resists fracking and pipeline development in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. More locally the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community in western Pennsylvania opposes fracking and seeks to protect local community members from its harmful effects.

With the rise of the Shell cracker plant, the group also formed Eyes on Shell, a community organization that aims to hold Shell accountable for its activity and advocates for the surrounding communities’ health and safety. These are just three of the many grassroots organizations working to protect the air, soil, water, wildlife and communities in the region.

The national organization, FracTracker, also provides extensive data on oil and natural gas wells, pipelines, legislation and environmental health.

What this place needs:

Ideally Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will follow in the footsteps of New York and institute a ban on fracking in light of the environmental and health risks associated with unconventional gas and oil development. However, given their strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, it is unlikely that this will occur. Banning fracking on public land in the region, such as in state forests and county parks, in a practical first step in combatting forest fragmentation and pollution.

At a regional level, regulations should be put in place to protect the water quality of the Ohio River. The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, a multistate organization working with the federal government, could ban fracking in the Ohio River Basin in order to protect the river and its watershed. The Delaware River Basin Commission has successfully prohibited fracking within the Delaware River Basin; the rules developed by the commission could be adapted for use by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission.

Additional government oversight would help to protect water quality in the region. Presently fracking is exempt from the Safe Water Drinking Act and therefore isn’t regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ending this exemption could increase water quality and safety within the Allegheny Plateau.

Increased transparency from oil and gas companies is also required to protect the region’s water. As of July 2022, California is the only state in the country that requires full public disclosure of all chemicals used in fracking. Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio must implement policies that require full public disclosure of chemicals used in all phases of the fracking process.

Previously in The Revelator:

We’re Just Starting to Learn How Fracking Harms Wildlife

A Hidden Threat to Bats: Hunting

New research finds that at least 254 bat species face pressure from hunters, and that could push some of them into extinction.

The Malaysian flying fox, one of the world’s largest bat species, boasts a wingspan of nearly 5 feet and an ominous taxonomic name: Pteropus vampyrus.

But despite its bloodthirsty moniker and imposing appearance, the flying fox isn’t a threat, let alone a vampire. As a frugivore it only eats fruit, flowers and nectar. And as it feeds and travels, the bat helps pollinate trees and spread seeds throughout the forest. The famously pricey durian fruit, an Asian delicacy, depends in part on the bats’ role in the ecosystem.

That doesn’t stop people from killing them, though. Last year the IUCN Red List, which assesses the extinction risk of species around the world, listed the Malaysian flying fox as endangered due to habitat loss and “intensive and unsustainable hunting pressure across its range.”

It’s not alone. According to a new study, hunting poses a little-recognized threat to at least 19% of the world’s 1,400 bat species. Many of these bats are hunted for food, while others face persecution as “pest” species that eat agricultural crops. Some die simply due to negative cultural perceptions.

The study’s authors have seen the scope of the problem firsthand.

“In some areas of the Southern Philippines where I live, I have witnessed fruit bats being harvested in a massive number from caves or trees where they roost,” says Krizler Cejuela Tanalgo, a biologist with the University of Southern Mindanao. And Alice C. Hughes, a biologist with the University of Hong Kong, says she’s seen signs of hunting at “one-third to half of the caves I have surveyed in Asia.”

Several cute bats hand upside-down inside a cave. — Photo: Krizler Cejuela Tanalgo. Used with permission.

Other researchers have published warnings about bat hunting, but this new paper finds that the problem is significantly worse than previously thought. Hunting could even contribute to many species’ extinction, the authors warn.

Species at highest risk include large-bodied bats like flying foxes, bats in tropical locations, and those with limited distribution, like bats who evolved on islands. Hunting is also particularly bad for bats already suffering declines due to deforestation, agriculture, climate change and extreme weather events.

Economics matter, too. Hunting poses a greater threat in countries where subsistence hunting is the norm or nations that lack resources to protect forests or national parks or enforce endangered-species regulations.

But the greatest threat hunting poses to bats is that we’re simply not talking about it as much as we talk about other heavily hunted species like wolves, rhinos, pangolins and ducks.

In fact, the problem has gone mostly overlooked in conservation circles, say the authors.

“Most conservation prioritization is too focused on species that are perceived as charismatic, such as megafauna,” says Tanalgo. “Bats are often neglected and feared species because they are often associated with negative perceptions and beliefs, and the global Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated this.”

That’s why they conducted the study — “to highlight the conservation status and needs of bats so we can attract the attention of policymakers and effectively conserve them,” he says.

Dozens if not hundreds of bats cluster as they hang upside-down inside a cave. — Photo: Krizler Cejuela Tanalgo. Used with permission.

So what do we do to keep bats flying?

One answer is communicating their value. “Bats are amazing animals that fulfil many important services, from pollination to pest control,” says Hughes. “Reducing hunting maintains those services.”

She also suggests education campaigns to inform people about the risk of eating bats in regions where the animals may carry pathogens or parasites. “Eating and hunting bats includes a risk of spillover, so highlighting this across all sectors is critical,” Hughes says.

Bats also need more research to further identify which species are at risk from hunting. “In global analyses of bushmeat and hunting, the hunting of bats is frequently overlooked,” Hughes says. “Understanding the dimensions of trade is critical.”

But most of all, they need simply to be seen and safeguarded, something the authors say their study aims to help correct. “We hope that bats will receive more attention when it comes to conservation prioritization and protection,” Tanalgo says.

That starts with updating more IUCN Red List entries to reflect hunting risks. The Malaysian flying fox is a good start: The paper suggests the species should have been listed as endangered “decades” ago, when there was more time to address the hunting threat.

Tanalgo says uncontrolled hunting could be causing other species currently perceived as “common” — and are therefore unprotected — to decline while no one is watching.

“This can lead to ‘passenger-pigeon fiasco effects,’ where a common and abundant species may become extinct as a result of continuous human activities,” he warns. And as bats decline and disappear, a lot of other species — including humans — could suffer.

Previously in The Revelator:

Speak Up for Bats — Even in the Pandemic