Hope for Coral Reefs

A new book tracks scientific research and restoration efforts around the world that are focused on saving this critical ocean ecosystem.

Juli Berwald’s love affair with coral began when she saw her first reef in college — and it changed her life. Mesmerized by the beauty of these underwater animals, she set out on a path to study marine biology, eventually earning a Ph.D.

But events took her away from the sea and ocean research. Living in landlocked Austin, Texas, she became a science writer. Years later, on a family trip to the Caribbean, she dipped beneath the surface of the water again. This time she wasn’t greeted by vibrant colors and teeming life but by the quiet horror of a dead reef.

All the news she’d read about bleaching reefs and the myriad environmental pressures facing coral came viscerally to life. The grief from that experience stayed with her — along with a renewed concern for the future of the world’s coral reefs.

She channeled all that into a new book, Life on the Rocks, about the search for solutions and the science that’s driving “nuggets of hope” even in the face of a grave prognosis for corals. Already three-quarters of the world’s reefs have been damaged by warming ocean waters. Climate change poses existential threats to corals, and so do other human activities.

The book is also firmly rooted in time. In the years that Berwald spent researching and writing, her own life was a bit on the rocks as well. The story of coral is interwoven with a narrative about Berwald’s daughter suffering from a mental illness, a global pandemic upending life around the world, and a nation erupting in outrage over the murder of George Floyd and ongoing violence against Black Americans.

Berwald at first hesitated to include all those threads, but realized that climate change, racial justice and health are firmly intertwined. And sometimes, she says, we forget that science isn’t separate from the rest of life.

“Scientists are affected by sick children and political events, and I think we do a disservice to science when we don’t see it as part of what it is to be human,” she told The Revelator.

We talked to her about whether restoration efforts can be scaled, why the ocean needs an advertising agency, and what gives her hope.

You’ve been interested in ocean life for a long time. Why a book about coral and why now?

I grew up in the Midwest, and the first time I really realized there was an ocean on this planet was in college. I went to Israel and I was miserable with the program I was on. There was a marine ecology course offered for a week in the Red Sea, so I signed up on a lark.

When I put my head in the water for the first time and saw coral, I couldn’t believe we lived on the same planet with these animals. And these were animals that were building these forests, but they were like fairy lands. The incredible diversity of shape and form and texture I saw — it just changes you forever.

I fell in love with the ocean because of the coral. And then, of course, your career doesn’t always take you exactly where you want it to go. I thought I would study coral biomechanics because I was a math major, but that didn’t work out. I instead studied satellite imagery.

Sometimes you have to leave something behind in your life. And so I did. But then after my book Spineless, about jellyfish, came out in 2019, I’d sort of found an audience. I decided with a lot of trepidation that I needed to go back to the coral because it’s really the first great ecosystem on our planet that is threatened by climate change in a very critical and existential way.

I really wanted to go back and see how these animals — these great ecosystems that I first fell in love — are doing. What is the hope and what is the reality of what they’re up against?

What did you find are the biggest threats facing coral reefs?

Climate change is definitely number one on the list. If we don’t deal with climate change, the coral reefs have really big problems in front of them. It’s worth saying, though, that geneticists are finding incredible amounts of genetic diversity on the reef, and we don’t yet know how much that will allow them to adapt to this future warmer world.

Another big problem is water quality. Coral evolved in tropical waters where there aren’t a lot of nutrients. But once we started fertilizing land and having more people creating sanitation issues, there’s more nutrients in tropical places now and that’s hard for the coral to tolerate. It has led to a whole flurry of diseases that have knocked out a lot of coral.

The other thing that’s been really bad is overfishing and illegal fishing, which destabilizes ecosystems. But practices like blast fishing and cyanide fishing and just dragging nets and anchors over reefs can also physically damage reefs.

Author facing camera — Juli Berwald. Photo: Madeleine Tilin

What is the role that algae play in coral reefs, and how is that changing with warming waters?

The reason that coral can exist and create these incredibly rich ecosystems in tropical places is because they form this amazing alliance with algae that live in their tissues. And those algae photosynthesize, and they feed up to 90% of the sugar that they make directly to the coral.

That gives coral this incredible power source, and with that they make the great limestone reefs everywhere.

But what happens is when the water temperature increases by a few degrees for a few weeks, that alliance breaks up. And that’s what bleaching is — the color of the coral comes from the algae, and without the algae the corals are just clear.

The question of why the alliance breaks up is a super-active area of research. We really don’t even know who throws the switch, which one goes first. Is it the coral kicking the algae out? Or is the algae saying, “See you, I don’t like being in this stressed animal”?

The cool thing is that it turns out the coral can make alliances with several different kinds of algae, and what the scientists are finding is that after bleaching sometimes a different species of algae will colonize the coral. And some of those species actually have higher thermal tolerances, so they can remain in the coral under hotter conditions. But some of these new algae are actually more selfish and they feed the coral less sugar. So there’s a lot of tradeoffs happening.

It could be that the coral can survive on these more limited energy supplies until we’re able to deal with climate change. It also may be that some coral can switch to these new algae and some can’t. There’s lots of possibilities, but it’s what scientists call a “nugget of hope.” It’s really an evolving story that’s fascinating.

white corals on reef — Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, 2017. Photo: The Ocean Agency / Ocean Image Bank

You visited projects around the world focused on reef restoration. Which of those did you find particularly hopeful … and scalable?

The scalable issue is the hardest part because reefs are massive. The Great Barrier Reef is bigger than Italy. When we think about restoring a few acres, and you compare that to the size of Italy, you see what a massive issue it is.

But one place where I saw a lot of hope was in Indonesia with a project by Mars, the candy bar company. It’s right in the middle of the coral triangle, which is the place of the highest diversity of coral in the world. This is between the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. There’s about 400 or 500 species of coral that live in that region compared to in the Caribbean where there’s about 40.

The problem in this part of Indonesia is blast fishing, where fishermen, driven by poverty, use explosives to collect fish, and that destroys coral. Even though it’s illegal, I heard one or two bombs explode every time I dove. But Mars, which has chocolate factories there, wanted to do something to bring back the coral reefs in this region.

They came up with this really simple rebar structure that’s about as big as if you put your arms out in a circle. It has six legs on it and you tie broken pieces of corals to each of the legs in certain places. And then network a whole bunch of them, like 100 or 200 or 300 together underwater, and stake them down on these reefs that have become rubble.

Within 18 months the corals regrow, and within three years, you can’t even see the rebar structures at all. And it feels like a very vibrant, beautiful, intricate reef. The cost per coral planted is about $1 to $2. That’s a great number because you have to replant hundreds of thousands of corals in order to make a reef healthy.

Then in the Caribbean, a lot of the corals aren’t really reproducing like they need to sustain themselves. So there’s neat projects going on with massive in-lab fertilizations, like these huge orgies, where they collect the coral spawn. Then they mix them all together and you get these larvae that they plant on Tinkertoy-shaped ceramic pieces.

Then they protect the coral and let them lay down their little baby skeletons and get big enough to have a better chance of survival once they put them on the reef. They’re able to replant tens of thousands at a time. Those projects are still ongoing, but hopefully that will help bulk up the amount of coral out there.

In the past we’ve sort of just looked at conservation in the ocean, like “let’s just protect regions and the ocean will come back.” But scientists have realized that coral are in such dire conditions, and it’s such a critical time for them, that we have to actively go out there and do things to make the reef more healthy [while efforts are ongoing to fight climate change].

At the same time coral scientists are actively looking for genetic strains that are more resilient to the thermal changes that are happening.

It seems there’s more reporting and concern now about climate change — at least as it concerns what’s happening on land. Is the story about what’s happening in the ocean being conveyed well enough?

I would say no. In the book one of the people who I follow is Richard Vevers, who’s in the documentary Chasing Coral, which follows the terrible coral bleachings in 2016 and 2017. He’s an advertising executive who started an advertising firm — the Ocean Agency — to get information to people about what’s happening to coral.

As I’ve followed him, I’ve seen his frustration at trying to get people to understand just how dire things are, and also how important coral is as an ecosystem. The numbers are stunning. A quarter of all marine species depend on coral at some point in their life. And between a half a billion and a billion people depend on coral ecosystems for their primary source of protein.

He gets so frustrated that some see coral as a lost cause already and throw up their hands. And that politicians are just not taking climate change as seriously as they should be. I recently spoke to him about the next [international global climate meeting] COP 27, which will be in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. That’s on the edge of the coral reef where I first fell in love with corals.

These corals — their lives, their futures — will be decided just a few miles away up on land by people sitting in these convention halls. Richard wants to take the people from that meeting out onto this reef to say, “This is literally what’s at stake here.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Vanishing: The Bleaching in My Backyard

How to Stop Wildlife Trafficking in Its Tracks

The rich countries that fuel demand for wildlife products must step up to fulfill their enforcement responsibilities and support developing countries and vulnerable communities.

In 1973, when environmental consciousness was only just dawning in the international community, representatives of 80 nations gathered to finalize a new treaty called the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which entered into force in 1975. As human-driven species endangerment and extinction became difficult to ignore, these states were driven to regulate the lucrative international wildlife trade to guarantee the survival of species involved. Such plants and animals were still seen as a resource to exploit, but not to the point of disappearance.

Extinction is, after all, bad for business.

The global environmental movement has transformed unrecognizably in the intervening years, becoming a glorious cacophony of diverse voices and priorities. Many of us no longer see the natural world as a reservoir of untapped wealth to be managed and exploited at will but recognize our responsibilities to all living beings who share this planet with us, even as we heat and pollute it.

Despite almost 50 years of CITES efforts, the global wildlife trade is booming, with the legal trade worth at least $107 billion and illegal trafficking as much as one-quarter of this figure.

Stored illegal wildlife products. Photo: Ryan Moehring/USFWS

Wildlife trafficking poses one of the most pressing global threats to biodiversity. It also devastates human communities by fueling organized criminal networks, armed conflict, and other environmentally destructive practices such as illegal mining. In addition, commercial markets in live wildlife — whether the trade itself is legal or illegal — present serious risks of pathogen spillover and epidemics and pandemics of zoonotic origin.

If CITES is to stay relevant in the global fight against the destruction of nature, the next big meeting of the Parties — COP19, scheduled to be held in Panama this November — must address the structural issues undermining its commitment to the protection of threatened and endangered species.

Currently the CITES framework presupposes that member states possess equal means to regulate the legal trade — and sanction the illegal trade — in wildlife products. This simply does not correspond to the reality of today’s deeply unequal world. Furthermore, national trade interests often hold sway over conservation imperatives. This is particularly problematic, given that the Parties (member states) together must vote on which species can come under CITES protection, with decisions often politically or economically motivated irrespective of the conservation imperatives. Among high-income countries — often the source of the demand for luxury wildlife products — we observe a culture of complacence, with widespread practices of underreporting trade in protected species and insufficient resources committed to shutting down illegal trafficking networks.

Looking at the trade in rosewood, the most widely trafficked wild product in the world by both volume and value, provides an example of many of these problems. Exported for the most part from Africa, Madagascar and Central America, much of the world’s rosewood is destined to become luxury furniture, including in China. Much less elegant are the implications of the trade — both legal and illegal — in funding armed conflict in Senegal, fueling corruption and organized criminal networks, and decimating forest habitats for local communities and wildlife.

Despite the inclusion of all rosewood on CITES Appendix II in 2016 — which allows international trade only if it’s determined to be legal and sustainable — the rosewood trade has continued to grow at an alarming rate. CITES does not have its own enforcement bodies, and the cost of regulating and enforcing wildlife trade falls disproportionately on the shoulders of the exporting country. All too often these nations lack sufficient resources to carry out necessary monitoring exercises and scientific activities. Furthermore, rampant corruption in some countries often undermines the entire system, with quotas and permits issued to traders based on commercial needs rather than conservation determinations.

The pattern repeats itself for many different species and wildlife products — from ivory to parrots, big cats to turtles — reflecting a complacency amongst CITES member states in the policing of trafficking. Some consumer countries that fuel the market in wildlife products are frequently not living up to their enforcement responsibilities, even as developing countries find themselves burdened with preventing illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade at its source and coping with the consequences.

While rosewood, ivory and other wildlife products are destined to be consumed by the world’s richest, the trade’s impacts tend to fall on vulnerable communities that depend on a healthy ecosystem for their livelihoods, food security and cultural identification. The rampant overexploitation of their wildlife and lands leaves such communities exposed to increased poverty and the violence of criminal networks as well as, in many cases, the worst impacts of climate change.

Wildlife trafficking reveals how the commoditization of living beings not only destroys the natural world, but also dehumanizes those who partake in it. In March the CITES Standing Committee made several encouraging decisions at a meeting in Lyon to enhance international cooperation, reinforce the potential of investigations, and improve the fight against trafficking of multiple species.

Seized wildlife products — Seized furs and other wildlife products. Photo: Catherine J. Hibbard/USFWS

It’s still not enough. If CITES parties are to stop wildlife trafficking in its tracks, there must be a commitment of resources and political will commensurate with the problem. High-income countries must recognize their responsibilities to support both vulnerable communities and overrun states at the front lines of the trade through financial and technical support. They must also face up to their role in markets fueling demand for illegally obtained animals, plants or their products. All actors must be mobilized in this fight, from customs workers to transporters to judicial services and the consumers of wildlife products who are fueling demand.

This concerted effort can only be achieved when CITES Parties change their perspective. Wildlife can no longer be reduced just to tradable goods in need of regulation. Governments must leave national interests at the doors of the negotiating rooms in Panama and, as the first line of the CITES treaty so poignantly reminds us, recognize “that wild fauna and flora in their many beautiful and varied forms are an irreplaceable part of the natural systems of the earth which must be protected for this and the generations to come.”

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

Previously in The Revelator:

Wildlife Trafficking: 10 Things Everyone Needs to Know

The Legacy of Lake Pedder: How the World’s First Green Political Party Was Born in Tasmania 50 Years Ago

A modern movement to restore the lake symbolizes the broader contest between unsustainable industrialization and challenges such as climate change.

Fifty years ago this week, the world’s first “green” political party was born in Tasmania after the state government purposefully flooded the magnificent Lake Pedder.

The flooding made way for a hydro-electricity scheme, transforming the nearly 4-square-mile lake into a reservoir spanning almost 96 square miles today. This damaged the surrounding wilderness — now recognized as part of Tasmania’s World Heritage Area — and greatly tarnished its natural beauty.

Gordon Dam. Photo: Ben Cordia (CC BY 2.0)

The controversial move sparked nationwide outcry. In an effort to save the lake, the United Tasmania Group was formed on March 23, 1972 by fielding candidates in the state election that year. The party was the forerunner to the Australian Greens and saw other green-oriented political parties soon follow worldwide, including New Zealand’s Values Party and Switzerland’s Popular Movement for the Environment.

Now, half a century later, environmentalists are upping their campaign to restore the lake to its former glory. It symbolizes the broader contest between unsustainable industrialization and a greener economy that addresses challenges such as climate change.

The Lake Was Once Beautiful

Before 1972, Pedder was a remnant glacial lake flanked by a spectacular, pink-quartzite beach and mossy rivulets.

Nestled amid a primeval mountain range 1,000 feet above sea level, the alpine lake had geomorphological significance as it was formed in the outwash of a glacier an estimated 1 million years ago, when ice sheets covered much of the planet.

And it was spectacularly wild. Prior to the flooding, Lake Pedder was difficult to access, known best to serious bushwalkers and tourists chartering light aircraft. These tourists and hikers brought the lake’s beauty and geological significance to a broader public when threats of flooding began to materialize.

The flooding saw heavy ecological losses. The massive hydropower dam drowned about 95 square miles of surrounding wilderness. This included a mosaic of diverse ecosystems including wetlands, temperate rainforest and buttongrass moorlands, along with several rare plant species.

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The Lake Pedder galaxias (Galaxias pedderensis), a fish once endemic to the lake, is now considered extinct in its natural habitat after 350,000 trout, a predator, were put in.

Four other species of invertebrate fauna, also endemic to the original Lake Pedder, have disappeared or dramatically declined due to the altered habitat.

The Birth of Green Politics

The loss of Pedder helped trigger the formation of the United Tasmania Group (UTG), which is generally credited as the world’s first political party with a foundation in environmental values.

While the UTG didn’t win seats in that or subsequent elections it contested during the 1970s, it was the forerunner to the Tasmanian Greens and, nationally, the Australian Greens.

But the UTG didn’t spring purely from the Lake Pedder controversy. As historian and journalist Paddy Manning identifies in his book on the history of the Greens, the UTG was part of broader global shift to greater environmental awareness in the 1970s. For example, the first Earth Day was held in 1970, and saw 20 million people in the United States demonstrate against the impacts of industrial development.

The name “Green” for environmentally minded political parties, however, came later. Indeed, it was derived from another Australian-first: the “Green Ban” movement in Sydney in the 1970s that united building workers and community groups to save cultural and natural heritage from destruction.

Restoring the Lake Today

The former Australian Greens leader Christine Milne is presently leading the campaign to restore Lake Pedder. This campaign actually began in the immediate aftermath of the damming for the hydropower scheme, when the Whitlam government appointed an inquiry in 1973 to advise on the area’s future, including possible restoration.

In 1994 the Pedder 2000 initiative was launched, which sought federal assistance to reinstate the lake by the start of the new century. A year later a federal parliamentary inquiry confirmed the scientific feasibility of restoring the lake.

However, the inquiry concluded that the most compelling reasons to restore the lake were aesthetic rather than for nature conservation. It said the economic costs and opposition by Tasmania’s major political parties meant restoration had “no real prospect of proceeding in the foreseeable future.”

Now, over two decades later, the campaign is once again gaining traction. The United Nations declared 2021-2030 the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, calling for projects to replant forests, remove dams, rehabilitate wetlands and more. The 2021 Glasgow Climate Conference reinforced this message by affirming the importance of ecological restoration in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

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Restoring Lake Pedder would entail more than pulling the plug on the dams, and it would likely take several decades for the original ecosystems to flourish again. Yet, the major geomorphological features such as the lake’s iconic beach would quickly return as the waters retreated.

The arguments against Pedder’s restoration today primarily rest on its contribution to Tasmania’s electricity generation and its desire to be Australia’s “battery of the nation.”

But the economic advantages from Lake Pedder’s restoration may outweigh its value for electricity production, as new renewable energy projects step in to meet demand, coupled with the benefit of foregoing the growing cost of maintaining the ageing dams.

What’s more, once it is restored, the lake could become a major international tourist attraction. It truly was a scenic wonder on par with Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef, one we should fight to bring back.

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

Previously in The Revelator:

A Dam Comes Down — and Tribes, Cities, Salmon and Orcas Could All Benefit

Ukrainian Conservation Organizations Shift Missions to Humanitarian Support

Environmental groups fight Russia’s invasion by hosting refugees, delivering medical supplies and using drones to document war crimes.

Ukrainian conservation organizations have largely shifted their efforts to support refugees and other citizens in need, even as the environmental toll from the Russian invasion continues to loom over the country’s future.

“Almost all our projects are frozen now,” Bohdan Prots, CEO of the Danube Carpathian Programme, said March 17 during a webinar organized by Eurosite (the European Land Conservation Network). The event aimed to address the war’s effects on both people and nature. “After the first day… we changed from major conservation activity to mainly humanitarian support until the war is over,” he continued.

That includes raising money, as well as delivering medical supplies and other goods to hospitals, people in shelters and others in need.

Some conservation groups have put their existing infrastructure to good use. “Many of the [national] parks are also hosting refugees in their buildings,” said Ivan Timofeiev, head of the Ukrainian office of the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union. “They try to make the life of people as comfortable as possible right now.”

The Institute of Ecological and Religious Studies, meanwhile, has moved from its normal education efforts to hosting refugees and holding events for children to “make, for a few hours, more happy times, to forget this horror, this nightmare,” said Natalia Kluia, manager with the organization.

While some webinar participants live in relatively safe parts of Ukraine, the invasion has put many conservation professionals at direct risk. “Our colleagues in the northern part of the country are in the heart of the war,” said Yulia Bodarenko with the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Birds. “One of them have no light or water. The roads also are not safe, so they cannot move out.” Bodarenko herself joined the webinar after escaping to Poland with her son.

Wherever they’ve ended up, their organizational skills and technical knowledge and systems have proven valuable to the resistance. Drones that would normally be used to track wildlife and photograph habitats are being redeployed to help refugees find clear escape route, locate wounded citizens, and even document evidence of war crimes — “which is quite often,” Prots said.

The evidence of damage to the environment, meanwhile, has yet to be fully collected — and the worst could be yet to come. “Most of Ukraine’s largest cites are next to rivers or wetlands,” said webinar moderator Tilmann Disselhoff, president of Eurosite. “So whatever happens there also affects the water system and can cause immense pollution.”

For now, though, “we cannot assess all these damages and pollution and ecological catastrophes,” said Bodarenko. “Our first task is to stop it, because each day it brings us more suffering, for people and environment.”

You can watch the full webinar below:

Previously in The Revelator:

10 Ways War Harms Wildlife

5 Reasons to Love (and Protect) Freshwater Mussels

These aquatic heroes do so much to keep freshwater ecosystems healthy — and we’re killing them off at a record pace.

In September the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing 23 species from the federal list of endangered species — not because they’d rebounded, sadly, but because they are believed to be extinct.

News reports about the announcement highlighted some of the more well-known names among the group, including birds like ivory-billed woodpeckers and Bachman’s warblers.

Less mentioned, but no less important, were eight species of freshwater mussel: the flat pigtoe, green-blossom pearly mussel, southern acornshell, stirrupshell, tubercled-blossom pearly mussel, turgid-blossom pearly mussel, upland combshell and yellow-blossom pearly mussel.

The loss of these creatively named mussels is symptomatic of a much bigger problem.

North America has the greatest diversity of freshwater mussels in the world, with some 300 species, but they’re also among the planet’s most imperiled animal groups. More than 35 of the continent’s mussel species have already been lost, and 65% of those remaining are vulnerable to extinction.

Invasive species, pollution, and land-use changes such as dam building have taken a heavy toll.

That’s bad news because these unassuming mollusks, who often spend much of their lives partially buried in sediment, play a major role in keeping our rivers and streams healthy. When mussel populations decline, it’s an indication that our freshwater ecosystems are also in trouble.

Better protecting mussels will help protect rivers and streams. But first, it’s important for activists and policymakers to understand their value. Here are some of the important roles they play:

1. Water Purifiers

Mussels are like tiny water-treatment plants. They have an inhalant aperture, also called a siphon, that allows them to filter bacteria, pathogens and algae out of the water column. Mussels eat many of these particles as part of their diet, but some mussels have also been shown to remove pharmaceuticals, personal care products, herbicides and flame retardants. That can help clean our waterways, but it doesn’t mean it’s good for mussels. Pollutants can bioaccumulate in their tissues, harming functions like reproduction.

Filtration rates vary by species and conditions, but research has found that a single adult mussel can clean more than 10 gallons of water a day. And when they reduce the level of algae in the water and make it clearer, more light reaches plants below the surface, which in turn helps provide food for invertebrates, fishes, ducks and other aquatic organisms.

“There’s a lot of interest in restoring mussels so that it costs less money to treat water,” says Caryn Vaughn, a biology professor at the University of Oklahoma and an expert on freshwater mussels.

Improving water quality and curbing runoff would also help protect imperiled mussels.

One of the places at the forefront of this new field of research is the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, which runs the Mussels for Clean Water Initiative. The program propagates and outplants mussels in order to help support ecosystem health and clean water. The Partnership released its first 30,000 captive-raised mussels in 2018.

Freshwater mussel on the stream bottom. Photo: Gary Peeples/USFWS (CC BY 2.0)

2. Chefs and Pantries

It might not sound tasty, but what comes out of a mussel is good food for the ecosystem, too: Their fecal pellets nourish aquatic invertebrates at the base of the food chain.

“Because mussels excrete nutrients, they create little gardens of algae on their shells that other organisms eat,” explains Vaughn. “And with their feces — their biodeposits — they’re providing organic matter to the bacterial community in the sediment.”

Mussels themselves also become food for a variety of predators, including fishes, turtles, birds, racoons, otters and muskrats who, in due course, also return nutrients to the ecosystem. And the cycle continues…

3. Aquatic Architects

Mussels in healthy streams often cluster together, which makes them “a living part of the substrate,” according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. The infrastructure created by these mussel beds — and the spaces between them — provide shelter to small fish, algae, insect larvae, aquatic worms and snails, and other invertebrates.

A 2019 study found that “both mussels and empty shells increase interstitial spaces in the substrate, which are important habitats for fish and their prey,” the researchers wrote. This even pays off after mussels die or get eaten, as “their spent shells might offer refuge from larger aquatic predators.”

The rivers and their banks also benefit, as additional research has shown that living mussels help to stabilize sediments and prevent erosion or species displacement. “When you have a good healthy mussel bed, that actually helps all the organisms stay in place during a flood event,” says Vaughn.

4. Refuge Creators

When times get tough for fish, being near freshwater mussels can help, according to a 2019 study. The researchers, including Vaughn, found that fish caught in drying pools along with freshwater mussels survive longer, likely because of the other organisms supported by mussels that fish can eat.

different sizes and colors of mussels in shallow water — Freshwater mussels of the lower Missouri River. Photo: USFWS (CC BY 2.0)

“The presence of adult mussels and the resources that increase in their presence potentially mitigate stress to fish in ‘ecological crunch times,’” the researchers wrote. “By conserving mussels, fish populations might withstand droughts more easily.”

That’s something that’s going to become even more important as climate change exacerbates drought conditions and reduces stream flows on which fish depend.

5. Historians

Mussels also make excellent recordkeepers of the natural environment.

“Freshwater mussels have the potential to serve as important sentinels or biomonitors of environmental change, revealing past conditions and monitoring future change,” Vaughn wrote in the journal Hydrobiologia.

That’s because many of these species are long-lived, some with lifespans of 70 years or more. They move very little and burrow into the streambed; they absorb nutrients and chemicals from the water. This means that their body tissue and shells become a record of water quality in a given spot over a long period of time.

“You can actually go back and look at mussel-shell rings and see what chemicals were in a river 60 or 70 years ago,” Vaughn tells us.

That’s not all. A 2019 study done in the U.K. found that the annual bands on mussel shells, much like tree rings, can also document seasonal water temperatures. This can help “establish baselines for understanding future climatic change and support conservation efforts aimed at protecting temperature-sensitive taxa,” the researchers concluded.

Other researchers are working on putting an economic value on the jobs that mussels play in freshwater habitats, but it’s not easy.

“Most people are worried that by doing that, we’re undervaluing them,” says Vaughn.

But it may also be necessary.

“Despite uncertainty about the precise value of freshwater mussels, it is clear that they have substantial value to humans, possibly many millions of dollars in individual ecosystems, which should be taken into account in environmental decision making,” wrote freshwater ecologist David Strayer in a 2017 research paper. “Mussel ecologists and biologists can play important roles in helping society better value freshwater mussels.”

The rest of us can, too.

Previously in The Revelator:

This Unsung Aquatic Hero Could Get a Big Boost From Dam Removals

Gas Flaring Can Harm People 60 Miles Away, Study Finds

Researchers found that people don't have to be right next to oil and gas fields to experience respiratory distress from flaring.

This story was originally published by NM Political Report.

A new paper looking at the health impacts of flaring in the Bakken area of North Dakota found that people 60 miles away can experience respiratory distress because of flaring. The impacts have significant economic effects that should be considered in regulatory policy, the researchers said.

The lead author, Wesley Blundell, said these impacts could be even more pronounced in the Permian Basin in Texas, where flaring in 2020 was greater than the flaring in the Bakken during the study time period and population density, at least in west Texas, is greater than in North Dakota.

Blundell is an assistant professor at the School of Economics at Washington State University and said he approached the topic largely from an economic perspective, including placing a dollar value on the public health impacts of flaring. This estimated dollar impact is based on the amount of natural gas flared.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Public Economics. Blundell said he accessed proprietary hospital data and looked into the hospitalizations for respiratory illness. He and his co-author also gathered the GPS locations of wells and monthly flaring reports from those sites.

“We were able to start really digging into what the relationship was and how big the relationship was between the flaring of this unprocessed natural gas and all the contaminants that come with it and the respiratory health of the individuals who live up to 60 miles downwind,” he said.

They found that an increase in flaring of 1% can lead to a 0.73% increase in hospitalizations. In North Dakota, the study found an increase of 11,000 hospital visits. The time period examined was early in the Bakken boom from 2007 to 2015.

The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association states in a report that flaring is done in an “attempt to eliminate potentially unsafe, flammable vapors and to destroy unwanted emissions of methane and [volatile organic compounds.]”

The reason behind flaring is usually safety concerns or transportation constraints, the organization states. NMOGA further states that the alternative to flaring is often venting, which leads to more emissions.

Flaring also occurs after a well is completed because the natural gas that is initially produced can’t be handled by the production facilities as it includes flowback, or components from the fracking process like sand.

Lack of infrastructure capacity, including pipelines to transport the natural gas, can also lead companies to flare natural gas.

Blundell said his study did not look at why the companies were flaring natural gas, but he said that is something that needs to be examined.

New Mexico

Barbara Webber, executive director of Health Action New Mexico, said there is a lack of data in New Mexico, but that the state does have high asthma rates and the oil producing region in the southern part of the state has high rates of hospitalization due to asthma. She said she expects that the findings of the North Dakota study would hold true in New Mexico as well.

Respiratory illness is only one of the health impacts associated with the oil and gas industry, Webber said. She highlighted studies finding links to cancer as well as preterm and low-weight births, which tend to be more common in New Mexico than in many other states.

Under Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, regulations have been promulgated to address flaring and emissions from oil and gas.

“We’re excited to see that hopefully there’s going to be more oversight and inspection,” Webber said.

At the same time, the Legislature did not fully fund the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department’s request and New Mexico has a low ratio of inspectors to ensure that companies are complying with regulations, Webber said.

New Mexico has regulations in place to address flaring, including the natural gas waste rule adopted last year by the Oil Conservation Commission. This rule required companies to capture 98% of methane emissions by the end of 2026. The first quarterly reports were due Feb. 15. Just three days after that deadline, EMNRD’s Oil Conservation Division published a list of operators who failed to comply on its compliance website and provided notices to more than 400 operators.

Gas being flared at a drilling site in Powder River Basin, Wyo. (Photo by Tara Lohan)

According to information provided by EMNRD, some of the operators notified reached out to the OCD and the division has worked with them to rectify problems and answer questions. As a result, 158 of those operators were able to file, thus achieving compliance with the requirements. EMNRD reports that the operators who have filed those reports represent nearly 99 percent of the produced gas in the state and 88 percent of wells.

On March 10, the OCD issued five notices of violation as well as civil penalties to operators who failed to file the report required by the new rules.

Clean Air Task Force Study

Another recent study done by the environment-focused non-profit Clean Air Task Force in coordination with Rice University found that flaring of natural gas contributed to between 26 and 53 deaths in 2019. This study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Atmosphere in late February, looked at black carbon, or small particulate matter produced through flaring.

Lesley Fleischman, a senior analyst at Clean Air Task Force and one of the authors, said that Texas, North Dakota and New Mexico had higher levels of mortality associated with flaring. She said the researchers used satellite imagery as well as modeling.

“The problem is pretty clear that there’s a health impact concentrated in areas where flaring is occurring,” Fleischman said, adding that the health impacts are unnecessary.

Clean Air Task Force is pushing for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to pass regulations ending the practice of routine venting and flaring. While New Mexico has regulations in place to address flaring, including the natural gas waste rule adopted last year by the Oil Conservation Commission, neighboring states like Texas do not necessarily have the same level of regulations. Having EPA rules in place would protect New Mexicans from health impacts from flaring that occurs out of state, she said.

“Flaring is a waste of a resource, a valuable resource and it’s causing pollution and there’s no reason for it,” she said.

Marginalized Communities

Marginalized communities, such as minorities and low-income households, often bear a larger share of the pollution burden. Webber gave the example of Native Americans in northern New Mexico who live close to oil and gas development.

These health impacts can lead to reduced work days, children missing school and increased medical expenses. Webber said these impacts can keep people in poverty.

Typically, Blundell said, people think that those most impacted by oil and gas are the people who are also getting the economic benefits from that development. But, in the case of the Bakken, he said that is not necessarily true. This is one of the things he said surprised him the most while doing the study. He said 50 percent of the impacts from flaring were in areas where 20 percent of the resources were extracted.

“Those who are bearing the environmental impact aren’t necessarily those who are getting the economic benefit,” he said.

Previously in The Revelator

States Take Action to Curb Oil Industry’s Most Glaring Problem

Now Read This: Stop Doomscrolling and Save the Planet

Seven new environmental books offer practical advice, lessons from successful conservation projects and inspiration in troubled times.

These are the times that try our souls — and our Facebook feeds.

So if you’re tired of the horrors unfolding hour after hour on social media and TV news, stop doomscrolling and point your eyes somewhere more useful: seven new environmental books that offer vital lessons on saving the planet and the creatures that live here.

Some of these books — all of which have come out since the beginning of the year — provide practical advice for people working in specific conservation areas. Others offer experience that we can put to good use in multiple avenues. All offer inspiration at a time when that’s all too fleeting — and important to hold on to.

The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet

by Leah Thomas

The Revelator’s take: If you’ve ever heard the term “intersectional environmentalism,” you have Thomas to thank. The writer-activist focuses on the relationship between social justice and the environment, and she has a lot to say and learn from in this vital new book.

From the publisher: “From the activist who coined the term comes a primer on intersectional environmentalism for the next generation of activists looking to create meaningful, inclusive and sustainable change. Thomas shows how not only are Black, Indigenous and people of color unequally and unfairly impacted by environmental injustices, but she argues that the fight for the planet lies in tandem to the fight for civil rights; and in fact, that one cannot exist without the other. An essential read, this book addresses the most pressing issues that the people and our planet face, examines and dismantles privilege and looks to the future as the voice of a movement that will define a generation.”

Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet

by John W. Reid and Thomas E Lovejoy

The Revelator’s take: Lovejoy, a groundbreaking biologist, died late last year, but his ideas and influence live on. They’re also more important than ever, with deforestation increasing both in rate and climate impact.

From the publisher: “Megaforests serve an essential role in decarbonizing the atmosphere — the boreal alone holds 1.8 trillion metric tons of carbon in its deep soils and peat layers, 190 years’ worth of global emissions at 2019 levels — and saving them is the most immediate and affordable large-scale solution to our planet’s most formidable ongoing crisis. Reid and Lovejoy offer practical solutions to address the biggest challenges these forests face, from vastly expanding protected areas, to supporting Indigenous forest stewards to planning smarter road networks.”

Effective Conservation: Parks, Rewilding and Local Development

by Ignacio Jiménez

The Revelator’s take: This book speaks to a specific type of reader — the people directly working on conserving parks — but shouldn’t that be all of us, anyway?

From the publisher: “Jiménez offers a pragmatic approach to conservation that puts the focus on working with people — neighbors, governments, politicians, businesses, media — to ensure they have a long-term stake in protecting and restoring parks and wildlife. This highly readable manual, newly translated into English after successful Spanish and Portuguese editions, provides a groundbreaking and time-proven formula for successful conservation projects around the world that bring together parks, people and nature.”

Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction

by Helen Anne Curry

The Revelator’s take: As we’ve written, agricultural crops face increasing pressure from climate change, pathogens and other threats, and the wild varieties of these common foods may provide the answer to avoiding mass hunger.

From the publisher: “Through the contours of efforts to preserve diversity in one of the world’s most important crops, Curry reveals how those who sought to protect native, traditional, and heritage crops forged their methods around the expectation that social, political, and economic transformations would eliminate diverse communities and cultures. In this fascinating study of how cultural narratives shape science, Curry argues for new understandings of endangerment and alternative strategies to protect and preserve crop diversity.”

Was It Worth It? A Wilderness Warrior’s Long Trail Home

by Doug Peacock

The Revelator’s take: I’ve been dipping in and out of this beautifully produced book ever since I received a review copy a few months ago. At 80 Peacock has a lot to say as he looks back in a way that helps us look forward.

From the publisher: “In a collection of gripping stories of adventure, bestselling author Doug Peacock — loner, iconoclast, environmentalist and contemporary of Edward Abbey — reflects on a life lived in the wild, considering the question many ask in their twilight years: Was It Worth It?”

Ecoart in Action: Activities, Case Studies and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities

edited by Amara Geffen, Ann Rosenthal, Chris Fremantle and Aviva Rahmani

The Revelator’s take: Here’s another way to stop doomscrolling by breaking out your pens, markers and paint (or graphics software if you’re digitally inclined) and getting ready to make a difference.

From the publisher: “How do we educate those who feel an urgency to address our environmental and social challenges? What ethical concerns do art-makers face who are committed to a deep green agenda? How can we refocus education to emphasize integrative thinking and inspire hope? What role might art play in actualizing environmental resilience? Compiled from 67 members of the Ecoart Network, a group of more than 200 internationally established practitioners, Ecoart in Action stands as a field guide that offers practical solutions to critical environmental challenges.”

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

by Jack E. Davis

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

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

Previously in The Revelator:

Hot Reads: Ten Essential New Books About Fighting Climate Change

Wolves as Teachers

Community ecologist Cristina Eisenberg explains how we can use both Native and western science to help solve our toughest environmental problems.

When Cristina Eisenberg left the Central Coast of California in the 1990s looking for a wilder place to raise her children, she found it in a remote part of northwest Montana. The first night in their cabin — adjacent to more than 2 million acres of wilderness — she fell asleep to the sound of wolves howling.

Over the years she watched newly arriving wolves transform the ecology of her backyard — and the trajectory of her life. Wanting to better understand how the presence or absence of wolves can change a landscape, she went back to school, earning a master’s in conservation biology and then a Ph.D. in forestry and wildlife.

“It was because of the wolves,” she says. “They’re teachers.”

Today she’s a graduate faculty member at Oregon State University and works as a community ecologist. Her recent efforts include a grassland restoration project with the Fort Belknap Indian Community and the Bureau of Land Management in Montana, and a study of bison, fire and wolf ecology with the Kainai (Blackfoot) First Nation in Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park.

The Revelator spoke to her about ecological restoration, her biggest surprise as a scientist, and the importance of using western and Native science to solve our toughest environmental challenges.

How did you end up becoming a scientist?

We were living in California in the mid-’90s on the Central Coast and all of a sudden it got super developed. I knew that I didn’t want to raise my kids there. So my family and I moved to this [remote] part of Montana.

We live in a funky, small log cabin and our backyard is 2.7 million acres of federally protected wilderness. Our first night in our cabin it was summer, so I opened the window and I heard this sound. I felt like I’d been hearing it all my life, but it was the first time I’d really heard it. It was the sound of wolves howling.

I knew they weren’t supposed to be there, but we started seeing wolves running through our land. They had come down from Canada. We had a big meadow, and the deer and the elk used to come and eat. We thought that was lovely. Little did I know that those animals were tame, because there were no wolves around yet.

But when wolves started denning near us, we saw everything on our land change. Within three years that meadow ceased to exist — it just filled in. And all these birds showed up that were never there before, and the deer and elk disappeared. Not because the wolves wiped them out — it was because they got rewilded in order to stay alive.

My kids said, “Mom, you should go back to school and study this.” So I did. I got my master’s degree and then I realized that in order to be able to help create change in terms of conservation, I really needed to get a Ph.D., and I needed to get it from a very conservative institution. So I got my Ph.D. at Oregon State University studying wolves and trophic cascades.

What does it mean to be a community ecologist?

I’m Native American and I also have a background as a formally trained western scientist as a community ecologist. This is a field in western science that arose around 1980. It’s very different from the single species approach to doing ecology. It looks at how energy flows to the whole system and the relationships between the different components.

To do that you collect data on the plants, animals, birds. You look at what the trees are doing. I’ve used GPS collars on wolves and elks, for example. My research partner, Tom DeLuca, is a soil scientist, so we’re looking at soils, too.

What does all this look like in action?

One of my projects is working with the Fort Belknap Indian community, which is the Aaaniih and the Nakoda Tribes.

My work in Fort Belknap and on surrounding federal lands looks at how climate change is affecting the grassland there, focusing on culturally significant traditional plants. This is in response to the catastrophic fires that have been occurring as a result of climate change.

Part of what we do is we collect seeds of native plants. We assess the ecological conditions of tribal lands and federal lands, and we’re working on creating an ecocultural restoration plan for both federal lands and tribal lands.

I have at-risk tribal youth join me in the field, and I provide well-paying jobs for them as technicians. I train them, but really, we’re learning from each other because it’s their land. And nobody knows it better than they do.

These young people who have deep transgenerational trauma caused by all the stuff that came with settler colonialism — the genocide, the disease, the residential schools — they just thrive.

They blossom because their knowledge is being respected by me and others. And they’re collecting real data that are vital. They’re just completely engaged, and many of them go on to college. Some of them over the years have become major leaders.

What have you and your research partners found there?

Two technicians in high grasses collecting seeds — Technicians with the Fort Belknap grassland restoration project collecting sweetgrass seeds. Photo: Erin LaMer

Fort Belknap is a nearly 700,000-acre reservation that was created around 1870. It’s surrounded almost completely by federal lands managed by the BLM. Last summer we had a Category 4 drought, which is an extreme drought, in our study site. A top priority for us is to collect seeds of native plants for two reasons — to use them to restore areas and also to establish a bank of seeds that are genetically tied to certain areas, because they may go extinct.

We went out to collect seeds on the federal land last June, and in many sites there was nothing growing taller than my ankles. These are important prairie grasses that stabilize the soil and provide excellent food for wildlife.

In one place they had grown to as high as my knees, and it looked like they had bloomed and made seed pods. But when I looked at the seed pods, they were hollow. They had not formed a cotyledon, which is like a fetus.

Then I went on reservation land, and I found the prairie grasses were as tall as my shoulders. The populations of native species that had seeds in them that were suitable for collecting extended from horizon to horizon. We collected 23 pounds of seeds.

You couldn’t even tell there had been a drought on the tribal land. I’d never experienced anything so surprising in my career as a scientist.

These sites are adjacent. This is the same habitat, the same plant community, the same amount of precipitation, the same slope and aspect in elevation. What was the difference? We had trail cameras put into our plots because I thought maybe it has to do with cattle grazing on public lands. We found that on tribal lands, there were quite a few cattle grazing there, so it wasn’t driven entirely by cattle grazing. There’re also bison on the tribal lands.

What my colleagues and I have concluded is that it probably has to do with the tribal land being managed using traditional ecological knowledge, which includes things like use of prescribed fire.

But we’re going to figure this out using western science. We’re going to do a really intensive study of what goes on in the soil, because every time there’s a fire, it leaves a legacy of carbon in the soil, and you can measure that. We’re going to go back this summer and try to determine what it is that makes those tribal lands so much more resilient.

What have you learned looking at restoration with the wide lens of a community ecologist and also with traditional ecological knowledge?

What has become really clear to me is that in order to respond to the ecological crisis we’re facing — global warming and all of the implications of that, plus unsustainable use of natural resources and the extinction crisis — the ancient knowledge held by Indigenous people offers a lot of solutions.

As an ecologist, I don’t think we are capable of finding the solution [to our environment problems] using western science without incorporating traditional ecological knowledge or Native science.

Humans lived very sustainably on the planet. There was a large population of humans before colonization in North America, for example. And these ways of relating to the natural world were very much grounded in ethics and spiritual beliefs about the human’s role in the world. And those values are intrinsic to Native science.

If we’re going to save the world, we need to save ourselves. And that means we need to address things like racism and really come together because we need each other. All of the traditional ecological knowledge by itself can’t really create the change that we need, unless we partner with western scientists and vice versa. And in order to do that, we have to treat each other as equals.

10 Ways War Harms Wildlife

Bombs and bullets are just the beginning.

As war and conflicts rage on in Ukraine, Yemen, South Sudan, Libya and other places around the globe, it’s important to look at the long-term effects of military strife, which can destroy the environment as easily as it destroys lives.

Here are 10 of the most dangerous ways war affects the animals and plants around us — many of which also harm humans in the process.

1. Bullets and bombs

The military may aim at people and infrastructure, but other life gets in the way. This can be hard to track, but a study published in Nature in 2018 found that even a one-year conflict can cause local wildlife populations to crash. And a 2013 paper from PLoS One speculated that the Barbary lion may have gone extinct when its last forest refuge was destroyed during the 1958 French-Algerian War.

2. Toxics and pollution

Heavy metals like lead can stay in the environment long after a bullet has been fired or a bomb exploded. Chemical agents like herbicides (often used in war to defoliate forested hideouts) can harm a wide range of species, either immediately or for decades after. The use of Agent Orange in Vietnam contaminated the soil for generations, affecting fish and birds before traveling up the food chain to humans.

A U.S. helicopter sprays Agent Orange in Vietnam. Photo: Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. (public domain)

Other damage can come from what gets destroyed during war. We see that on display in Ukraine right now, as hundreds of experts and organizations expressed their concerns March 3 in an open letter released through the Environmental Peacebuilding Association: “Russia’s military operations in a heavily industrialized, densely populated nation containing numerous refineries, chemical plants, and metallurgical facilities further compounds the threat of these hostilities for Ukraine’s people and their environment, both now and for years to come.”

3. Noise pollution

Those explosions, fighter jets, tanks and other weapons of war don’t have to hit you to hurt you. Firearms, missiles and vehicles make a lot of noise. This constant cacophony can disrupt the patterns of wild animals, affecting sleep, migration and the ability to hear and track prey. A 2016 study I covered for Audubon magazine found that owls could not hear their prey when manmade sound levels reached just 61 decibels. Many military rifles, by comparison, produce noise at around 150 decibels — and that’s quiet compared to some weapons or vehicles.

4. Habitat destruction and degradation

How would your home fare after a line of tanks rolled through your front yard? Not well, I presume.

And that’s true in war. A 2002 paper published in Conservation Biology documented the environmental damage from conflicts between 1961 and 2000, including deforestation, erosion, encroachment on wildlife reserves, pollution, oil spills, marshland drainage, the release of invasive species and more. The authors described many of these conditions as “severe.” Some nations have never recovered.

Flamethrower — Marines employ a to clear a path through what was once a thick jungle in Tarawa in 1943. (public domain)

5. Poaching, subsistence hunting, firewood collection and other ways of “living off the land” by hungry soldiers, locals and refugees

An army travels on its stomach — and, as we’re seeing in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, those soldiers aren’t always well fed, either through lack of planning or supply-chain disruptions. This can cause…problems. During World War II, stranded and starving Japanese soldiers ate a flightless bird called the Wake Island rail out of existence. Wars have also caused widely documented declines in elephants, gorillas, bonobos, a range of ungulates and hundreds of other species.

6. Domino effect

Let’s say those hungry soldiers eat all the local herbivores — what happens to the ecosystem after they’re gone?

In Gorongosa National Park, the disappearance of elephants and other large vegetation-eating species during the 1977-1992 Mozambican Civil War resulted in a 34% increase in tree cover, according to a 2015 study published in the Journal of Ecology. This might seem like a good thing, but as the authors wrote it’s a sign of an ecosystem out of balance:

“Woody encroachment is a significant conservation and management concern in savannas, grasslands and rangelands where it threatens native herbaceous plant species and the animals and ecosystem processes that depend on them. Further tree-cover expansion in Gorongosa could inhibit recolonization of some areas by species that prefer open habitats (including buffalo, wildebeest and zebra).”

7. Killing of civilian conservation workers and destruction of conservation facilities and infrastructure

Who will help species in need if trained and experienced professionals are killed or displaced? In 2012 efforts to conserve the okapi (a giraffe relative that looks like a cross between a zebra and a horse) suffered a devastating setback when a militia attack killed six people at the Okapi Conservation Project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rebels also killed all 14 of the project’s resident okapi, burned buildings and looted supplies.

More recently, six rangers protecting the DRC’s famous mountain gorillas were ambushed and killed last year by the Mai-Mai militia group — one of many such attacks. The Thin Green Line Foundation, which supports wildlife rangers, estimates that 100 rangers are murdered every year on average.

As wartimes threatens these conservation personnel, they become ever-more important, as the authors of the 2002 Conservation Biology paper wrote:

“It is local conservationists and field staff who must maintain continuity of presence during periods of political instability, establish lines of communication with local government officials and military administrators in rapidly shifting political landscapes, and provide much-needed material and moral support to besieged reserve personnel in regions beset by war and civil conflict. In instances where government institutions have been overthrown or ceased to function, local nongovernmental organizations and conservationists can help maintain continuity in conservation programs.”

8. Epidemics affecting people, livestock and wildlife

War has long been a breeding ground for disease (and the advent of bioweapons makes things even worse). Just last week health experts warned that the invasion of Ukraine could speed the spread of Covid-19 and other diseases. Historical wildlife disease outbreaks documented during wartime include rinderpest, anthrax, rabies, human monkeypox, bubonic plague and foot-and-mouth disease. Many of these diseases either directly threatened people or pushed them further toward starvation.

9. Resource extraction

Too many wars have been fought over gold, oil or other lucrative natural resources. War also makes illegal extraction easier, whether it’s mining in conflict zones or poaching in lawless zones. The militia that attacked the Okapi Conservation Center in 2012 was retaliating against efforts to restrict their illegal ivory trading and gold mining.

There’s another angle to this, of course: Oil and gas extraction are the heart of the Ukraine conflict, and that’s just making climate change worse. How many more conflicts over food, water and other scarce resources will this fuel in the future?

10. Disruption of government services, financial and human capital, and political instability

If you’re busy fighting for your survival, patrolling for poachers or polluters is the least of your worries. Meanwhile death, exhaustion and trauma take their toll at every level of society.

Those are probably the biggest messages of the 2002 Conservation Biology paper, which should ring true in this time of war two decades later.

And the effects, the authors warned, won’t be short term. War causes scarcity, which furthers social and political conflict, which begets more war. The loss of wildlife can have cascading environmental consequences, ranging from extinctions to outbreaks of disease and invasive species. Opportunistic corporations and criminals use the cover of war to increase their environmentally destructive activities. Conservation funding gets shifted to military and police operations — perhaps permanently. Wartime disruptions to sanitation and medical infrastructure can cause long-term epidemics, while destruction of waste facilities or oil, gas or nuclear operations can poison the landscape for generations.

So can the human trauma of war. Just ask the millions of people fleeing Ukraine today, many of whom are descendants of refugees of earlier wars and already carry their ancestors’ stories in their hearts, minds, history and culture.

Previously in The Revelator:

20 Endangered Species at Risk in Ukraine

Listening to the Sounds of Extinct Birds

Digital audio recordings of species we've lost let us hear what the world used to sound like and could inspire efforts to protect what's left.

When people think of extinct animals, they may picture taxidermy, skeletons, 19th-century illustrations or perhaps grainy black-and-white photographs. Until very recently, these were our only ways to encounter lost beings.

However, technological advances are making it possible to encounter extinct species in new ways. With a few clicks, we can listen to their voices.

In September 2021, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recommended removing 23 apparently extinct species from the endangered species list. This group included 11 species of birds, as well as various aquatic creatures, a fruit bat and a Hawaiian plant.

Of the birds listed as likely extinct, six were recorded while they were still present: the Bachman’s warbler, ivory-billed woodpecker and four native Hawaiian and Pacific Island species: the bridled white-eye, Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, large Kauaʻi thrush (kāmaʻo), and poʻouli. Technology capable of recording bird sounds was developed only about a century ago, so these are some of the first now-extinct species whose songs have been preserved.

Bachman’s warbler on a tree branch — A photo from 1958 of a male Bachman’s warbler. Photo: Jerry A. Payne, USDA Agricultural Research Service (CC BY 3.0 US)

A Not-So-Silent Spring

These recordings are available on the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library website, a giant multimedia wildlife archive that holds more than 1 million audio recordings. It includes the sounds of 89% of all bird species on Earth as of 2020, along with photos and videos. The site includes modern sound recordings uploaded by hobbyists, professional sound recorders and scientists, as well as digitized historical recordings captured as long ago as 1929.

Scientists use these recordings to study questions such as how bird song evolved and how animals behave. The recordings are also accessible to the public. Macaulay Library director Mike Webster told me that he thinks of the recordings as time capsules: They let us hear what the world used to sound like and preserve our current sounds for the future.

In his view, all of the library’s recordings are precious. But sounds made by lost species are akin to priceless artworks, like a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh – the very definition of irreplaceable.

Sadly, this new genre of extinct animal sounds is expected to grow. Birds have been hard hit by the current ecological crisis: In Canada and the U.S. alone, threats including habitat loss, toxic pesticides and free-ranging domestic cats have reduced bird populations by nearly 3 billion since 1970.

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring” inspired a generation of American environmentalists by asserting that if humans continued the destructive behaviors Carson described, such as widespread use of pesticides, the nation could face a spring without birdsong. Sound recordings of extinct birds add a twist to this prediction by letting us hear what’s been lost.

To see the value of these recordings, let’s listen to two species: the ivory-billed woodpecker and the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō.

The Lord God Bird

The ivory-billed woodpecker, or ivorybill for short, is an iconic woodpecker species known as the “Lord God Bird” or “Holy Grail Bird” because of its striking appearance and extreme rarity. It was present in the southeastern U.S., with a subspecies in Cuba, but has dipped in and out of presumed extinction since the 1800s. The main causes of its decline are thought to be rapid large-scale deforestation after the Civil War and widespread culling by museum collectors.

This species is the most controversial on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service list. Some people believe that ivorybills still exist in southeast U.S. forests. The last universally accepted sighting was in 1944, but many others have since been reported, including some by scientists from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in the 2000s.

Sound recordings of ivorybills were collected in Louisiana in 1935 by Cornell ornithologists, who set out on a cross-country sound recording expedition to capture sounds and images of “vanishing birds” before they were gone. There have been several other claimed sound recordings of ivorybills over the years, including one in 1968 and some in 2006, but only the 1935 recording series is universally accepted by ornithologists and birders.

For those still searching for the ivorybill, the 1935 recording is an important tool, especially since it’s freely available online. People train their ears on the recording before their searches, and some even use it for “playback” – a technique where the recording is played in potential habitats in the hope that surviving ivorybills will respond. Scientists have also compared contemporary sound recordings they think might be ivorybills with the 1935 recording to suggest that the species is not extinct yet.

A Haunting, One-Sided Duet

The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō (pronounced ‘kuh-wai-ee oh-oh’) is a small, dark-colored bird endemic to the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi and known for its intricate, flutelike “oh-oh” song. It is one of 11 Hawaiian and Pacific Island species on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service list.

Hawaii has been particularly devastated by environmental loss because of European and American colonizers who tore up delicate island habitats to plant sugar cane and other cash crops. Introduced predators, malaria-carrying mosquitoes and Hurricane Iniki in 1992 also contributed to the birds’ demise.

Ornithologist Jim Jacobi made a famous recording in 1986 of an individual male Kauaʻi ʻōʻō singing one-half of a duet – with no response. We have no way of knowing if this was the very last bird, but it’s hard not to listen as if it were.

A remix of a Kauaʻi ʻōʻō song was uploaded to YouTube by Robert Davis in 2009, with an added echo and what he described as “the shrill sounds of commercial exploitation.” This remix, which juxtaposes the bird’s haunting calls with the cause of their decline, has been viewed over 1.5 million times.

In my Ph.D. research about historical bird sound recordings, people frequently bring up their emotional connection to this species’ song. One scientist told me he finds it difficult to listen to the recording without crying. Another plays it in lectures to bring home the emotional dimensions of bird loss to students.

The Sounds of Saving the World

Sound recordings give a voice to animals. They help to demonstrate their unique spirits and personalities. They remind us that these beings are invaluable, and that humans have a duty to preserve them. I hope that listening to the voices of extinct birds will lead people to lament those that are already lost, and strive to keep other species singing.

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