Amazon Freshwater Stingrays Gain Much-Needed Protection — Will It Be Enough?

Experts say new international trade restrictions will help, but they leave several problems unsolved.

Two little-known and rarely studied species of freshwater stingrays — yes, such a thing exists — just gained enhanced international protections, but will it be enough to save them?

That’s the debate echoing out of the latest meeting of the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species, which in November voted to protect two colorful species of Amazon stingrays: the Xingu River ray (Potamotrygon leopoldi) and the Rio Negro Hystrix ray (P. wallacei).

The move represents a rare victory for freshwater stingrays, who are relatives of sharks, says Patricia Charvet from Federal University of Ceará’s program on biodiversity conservation. She has spent decades advocating to protect these species.

“It’s a big challenge,” she says. “People only think about the sharks and rays that live in marine ecosystems, while freshwater species get ignored.”

While some, like Charvet, consider this a big victory, other experts expressed concerns that the situation for freshwater stingrays in the Amazon is more complicated, and that these new CITES listings leave other related species unprotected from the same threats.

Unstudied Species

Amazon stingrays live in most of South America’s river basins, not just the Amazon, and are the only group of sharks or rays adapted to live their entire lives in freshwater.

This sets them apart from species such as bull sharks, which can enter freshwater but spend most of their lives at sea.

“They’ve lost the ability to accumulate urea in their blood, which is the main strategy used by sharks and rays to keep their body fluids in equilibrium with seawater,” says Luis Lucifora of Argentina’s Instituto Nacional de Limnologia.

In other words, it’s not that they don’t enter the ocean. It’s that they can’t.

A Potamotrygon leopoldi at the National Aquarium’s Amazon tank, Baltimore, Maryland. Photo taken by the author.

Another thing that sets them apart: They’re less well-known and less protected than their marine cousins.

But here’s what we do know: There are about 40 currently recognized species of these freshwater stingrays in four genera, although Charvet says there are some new species being described. The Rio Negro Hystrix ray, for example, did not receive scientific description until 2016. Meanwhile there are still ongoing taxonomic arguments over whether certain stingrays are different enough to count as separate species.

Regardless of how many species exist, researchers have observed some striking stingray behavior. Some specialize in prey that we don’t usually think of sharks and rays eating, like insects. They’re capable of some basic mathematical problem solving and may be the only species of shark or ray that engages in any kind of maternal care.

Just out!! Revision the the P. scobina complex and three new freshwater stingrays from the Amazon! https://t.co/NtHpQDlLUq pic.twitter.com/QrlAZOgNhV

— J P Fontenelle (@jpf_ishes) August 21, 2017

But the biological characteristic that has gotten these animals into conservation trouble is one not normally associated with threats to sharks and rays: Their spot patterns are absolutely beautiful. And that makes them very much in demand for the ornamental fish trade for home aquariums.

Every species has slightly different spot patterns, and hybrids, who can be bred in captivity, have all kinds of complex patterns. Some of these spots can even look like letters or numbers, which are requested by collectors with certain initials.

While these spot patterns from captive-bred hybrids are gorgeous, for a certain type of hardcore hobbyist it’s just not the same. “Some people color their dog pink, and it looks cool, but that’s not what a dog looks like, and some people want the real thing,” Charvet says.

That puts more pressure on wild populations, but at the same time it doesn’t stop determined collectors: She points out that one individual freshwater stingray with an especially rare pattern recently sold for $30,000.

The Ornamental Fish Trade

While habitat loss is the biggest conservation threat facing many freshwater fish, for some species it’s the aquarium trade, which involves thousands of species and is worth billions of dollars, that poses a big problem for some populations — especially those already threatened by habitat loss.

“Uncontrolled unregulated fisheries are never good, and there are examples of fishing endemic species at really high levels,” says Andrew Rhynne, a professor of marine biology at Roger Williams University. “By the time we realize that something is going on, it can be too late.”

Among hardcore aquarium hobbyists, trends can shift fast, resulting in rapid growth in demand. Eventually, captive breeding can reduce conservation issues associated with the aquarium trade, but until then the trade places too much pressure on wild specimens.

“When a species is newly discovered, a big market can develop for them immediately, before there’s a chance to perfect captive breeding,” says Michael Baltzer, executive director of SHOAL, a freshwater fish conservation organization. “This is a case for being cautious, because there’s often very little regulation on the trade in these species, and it can be very easy for people to collect fish and sell them all over the globe.”

Ironically, this trade exploits Brazilian workers when collectors in the country buy animals on the international market, after prices have been raised by a chain of middlemen. “Nowadays, Brazil imports some of the most expensive aquarium fish, even though they’re from Brazilian waters,” Charvet says. “We’re exporting today what our fishermen won’t be paid to catch tomorrow.”

Imperfect Protections?

All Amazon stingrays were previously listed under what’s known as CITES Appendix III. This gets less attention than Appendix I, which bans all international trade in a species, or II, which strictly regulates all international trade, requiring both import and export permits. Appendix III does not require an international vote at a CITES Conference of the Parties, and instead just requires a nation to declare that it’s adding an additional level of protection on this species found in its territory.

The new regulations elevated the two species — P. leopoldi and P. wallacei — to Appendix II. They also protected five “lookalike” species — those who are not as threatened as the target species but look similar enough to cause trouble at the level of customs import inspections and are therefore granted the same type of protections.

The Appendix II listing of some freshwater stingrays now means that more regulation and documentation is required to export or import these animals.

Two men measure stingrays on shore. — Scientists sample a fisher’s catch. Photo: Luis Lucifora. Used with permission.

Many shark and ray species previously listed on CITES are threatened by overfishing that targets these animals due to people wanting to eat their meat and fins. The listing of Amazon freshwater stingrays is a little different, since they’re targeted for the live-animal trade, but the mechanisms are the same.

Not all experts interviewed for this piece were strongly supportive of the Appendix II CITES listing, with some noting that these species were already listed on Appendix III, which means that export permits from Brazil were already required.

“An Appendix III listing makes it just as illegal as Appendix II if you don’t have the paperwork,” Rhynne says. But he acknowledges that Appendix II, which requires an international vote, increases the profile of the species and the issues involved in their conservation. That can lead to more resources for enforcement.

And Charvet tells me that the Appendix III listing did not result in improved reporting or reduce illegal trade. Brazil enforced regulations associated with the Appendix III listing poorly, and illegal trade remained common. Rays were often smuggled over the border to Colombia and exported from there. She believes that stronger protections are necessary and has pushed for them at several CITES Conferences of the Parties prior to this year’s successful listing.

Spot these freshwater ocellate or peacock-eye stingrays (native to the rivers of S. America) in our Amazon flooded forest gallery. 👀 / 🎥TimW pic.twitter.com/oLnQmoLlx1

— California Academy of Sciences (@calacademy) May 25, 2017

For now, only the few species endemic to Brazil have gained these protections, leaving out their cousins in other South American river basins.

“The listing leaves out all the species from other countries,” Lucifora tells me. “If one keeps in mind the taxonomic problems that still affect South American freshwater stingrays, and the problem of international smuggling of species whose capture is illegal in one country to be exported from another country with less protections, then the most reasonable solution to me is to list the entire family, not just these species.” He points to requiem sharks, just protected by CITES at the family level.

And CITES listing doesn’t have an impact on problems of local conservation. Brazil and other nations still need stronger national laws to address habitat loss due to coastal development and dam construction, local consumption for meat, and targeting killings by locals who don’t want an animal that can give a painful sting living in their backyards.

If we fix these problems, experts say, ray populations may be healthy enough to withstand sustainable levels of harvesting for the aquarium trade.

“If we properly protect their habitat, a few collectors with dip nets probably won’t make a species go extinct,” Rhynne says.

The improved CITES regulation also doesn’t change the facts that not enough people are studying these species and current research on these threatened, ecologically important and evolutionarily unique animals is underfunded.

But this is still an important start. And after many years of trying to get freshwater stingrays listed on CITES, Charvet says seeing the proposal to protect them pass was “the best feeling in the world.”

She continues, “If I had to die tomorrow, I’d die happy because now I’ve done my part to help conservation.”

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

Rekindling the Practice of Cultural Burning: An Act of Climate Hope

Indigenous-led prescribed fire is helping to restore depleted lands and long-suppressed cultural practices.

After more than 100 years of suppressing the West’s fires, land managers and government agencies are finally warming to the idea that fire can be beneficial — and necessary — for many landscapes.

This idea is far from new among Indigenous communities in the region. For many Tribes, the use of fire to manage plant communities was common practice until it was outlawed by colonizers.

Today, as climate change increases threats of more severe and more frequent large-scale wildfires, Tribes are re-engaging with the practice of Indigenous-led fire — also referred to as cultural burning. These smaller and lower intensity burns can help replenish soil nutrients that aid native plants and restore the land.

“There’s this inherent fear of fire right now that’s totally justifiable,” says Melinda Adams, who is studying the reclamation of cultural burns as a doctoral student in the department of Native American Studies at University of California, Davis. “So what we try to do as practitioners is to work on reestablishing that good relationship, that respectful relationship, because fire is a relative too.”

The Revelator spoke with Adams about how cultural burning changes the land, why attitudes about it are shifting, and what it can do for communities.

How did you become interested in cultural burning?

I come from a Tribe in Arizona, and I grew up in New Mexico, and I went to a Tribal college in Lawrence, Kansas. It was in the Midwest that I started being interested in fire through research with biochar. I’ve worked with pyrolysis and making soil amendments, creating them and putting them back into the soils to regenerate some of the more highly degraded soils that we have in the Midwest due to mining or over-usage by agriculture.

I did prairie burns, which are culturally significant to Tribes in the Midwest for food, medicine and basket materials.

Now at U.C. Davis my dissertation topic concentrates on land-stewardship practices that have been created and sustained by Indigenous peoples of what we now know as the United States, and specifically in what we know as California.

I am a trained ecologist and environmental scientist. I’m studying the physical and chemical soil responses of what we’re calling “good fire” — that’s cultural fire led by Native practitioners. These burns differ from what a government agency would consider a prescribed burn or a controlled burn because they are rooted in Indigenous knowledge and practices.

Being a Native person and taking up space in scientific fields, I also am called upon to talk about colonization, land dispossession, erasure of our histories, and our lived experiences. So with cultural fire, I use that as an entry point to talk about the history of California, of Native peoples of the United States, and how we’ve always held these land stewardship tools.

What’s different about cultural fire?

Cultural fire that’s a slow and low-intensity burn helps provide nutrients that native plants favor. Those chemical reactions from those lower-intensity burns provide better and more fertile areas for the plants, soil and microbes.

Cultural fire is also more guided. In the burns that I participate in, we tend to back away from using heavy fuels or machinery. With cultural fire, there’s more time spent getting ready for the burns and cleaning up afterwards than when fire is actually on the ground. That end care is huge and it makes a big difference.

I was at one of the practitioner’s properties and I could see where people didn’t prep the piles or they used fuels, and there’s white ash that looks like the ground has been scorched. There weren’t any plants coming back on that plot.

Then 100 feet to the right, I could see a cultural burn that was prepped — where we cut the plant materials, piled it and lead the burn. Then we went in after and mixed the soils. Native plants came back on that plot.

How are attitudes about cultural burning changing?

Most of the ways that [federal and state] agencies are trained to work with fire is suppression. And it’s been that way for a very long time. The very first piece of California state legislature in 1850 was to remove “Indian fire” based on very skewed misconceptions about Indigenous people’s relationship to the land.

When John Muir set foot here and saw these wonderful mosaics of different plants growing together, he didn’t give credit to Indigenous peoples for stewarding those lands and maintaining that biodiversity.

The California legislature prohibited small burns or family burns, and they’ve more or less been upheld until now, when legislation [in 2022] changed that. On top of physical violence to remove us from our lands, there was also the removal of stewardship practices, land tending, water care, and relationships with relatives other than humans. All of that was removed once colonizers arrived.

Today, in the West, an increase in the amount of catastrophic wildfire has been created because of the buildup of fuel and the under-utilization of prescribed burns. We’re feeling the effects of no-burn policies that have been upheld for close to 200 years now. And with climate change, when things burn, the large-scale wildfires are emitting greenhouse gases. And it’s creating higher-risk living areas where wildfire can consume entire homes, entire communities.

But we’re seeing some change [in practices] and more inclusion of voices that haven’t had a say in decision-making before. Biden just acknowledged traditional ecological knowledge that’s supposed to be in government training and working relationships with Tribes. It also helps that we have Secretary Deb Haaland as the head of the Department of Interior, who controls the vast majority of public lands.

There are shifts in perceptions of the intelligence and knowledge that our communities hold. And they’re being called upon now, although maybe not at the speed and scale that our communities have been waiting for since colonization.

Where is cultural burning taking place?

I’ve been a part of these cultural burn demonstrations since 2018, and we work with Chairman Ron Goode of the North Fork Mono Tribe near what we know as the Yosemite area. I also have partnerships and friendships with the Karuk, Yurok and Hoopa Tribes that are far north in California. They’re doing some amazing cultural fire work. They’re training people in the art and the science of good fire. They’re leading the way with a lot of the knowledge building and reclamation of larger-scale cultural fire.

Melinda Adams lights a field of deergrass on fire during the Tending and Gathering Garden Indigenous fire Wworkshop at the Cache Creek Nature Preserve in Woodland, Calif. Photo: Alysha Beck/UC Davis

I also work at the Cache Creek Nature Preserve, which has a small section that’s called Attending and Gathering Garden. That space came about specifically for Patwin practitioners, harvesters, traditional gatherers and Native peoples of the greater community to gather basketry materials.

It was envisioned 25 years ago by a geography student at U.C. Davis and the Native elders as a space to do cultural reclamation. The fires started to be planned and implemented more regularly when I came there in 2018.

What we’re burning is tule, a reed wetland species. It’s hollow on the inside and dry on the outside. So it’s the perfect igniter and the perfect carrier of fire. We don’t need propane and fuels. When we do our burns, we just use tule.

When we burn, it’s on an island and the water dries up [part of the year], so you can see the soil layers that these women have created — the rich, dark charred materials on the top, then some organic material underneath, and then some gray material from the water trickling in and out, and some orange from oxidation.

I love soil profiles and horizons. They’re amazing because as Native people, we’re storytellers, and you can see the story of the land if you look at the layers.

It’s also a former gravel-mining site with degraded soils that don’t hold nutrients very well. It makes it interesting to apply good fire to the space to replenish those soil nutrients. We have burned every year in that space, and I’m tracking the changes in soil and the yield in the plants.

What the practitioners who harvest these plants for basketry are seeing is that the plants are growing back taller, they’re growing back stronger, in more dense stands, and the color is more vibrant.

In addition, my qualitative data is telling me that there’s an increase of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium — the big ones that you tend to need when you’re trying to grow anything.

I’m also measuring culturally significant plants for their aboveground yield over the course of a year. Because most of these are perennials, we’re looking at a snapshot of their regeneration.

What do you hope cultural burning can do?

The hope with this work is to rebuild our relationship with fire.

But this is also about more than fire. It’s about our time on the land and reclaiming parts of ourselves that were taken away a long time ago — and having the space to do that. The word that keeps coming up is healing. We’re healing these landscapes with fire, which is tied to water, animals and pollinators.

I’m participating in something that my ancestors did hundreds of years ago that was taken away. So that’s so powerful for me as a Native woman.

I just want people to know these are healing fires, they’re healing stewardship lessons — and not just for Native peoples. We’re privileged in the fact that it’s part of our culture, but there’s definitely space for allies, for people who are working towards improvement in our environment and the mitigation of climate change.

The practitioners that I work with are so excited to share their knowledge, their practices, their worldviews, and their time with allied scholars. This is climate hope. This is hope for our future actualized on the land and together.

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

Previously in The Revelator:

Can Native American Tribes Protect Their Land If They’re Not Recognized by the Federal Government?

Book of the Dead: The Species Declared Extinct in 2022

This year we bid farewell to two lost frogs, the Chinese paddlefish, a plant from New Hampshire, and many others.

Last July scientists in Texas announced some surprising news: They had rediscovered an oak tree species previously believed to be extinct. Until then the last known Quercus tardifolia tree was believed to have died more than a decade earlier. But lo and behold, one more tree was discovered in Big Bend National Park, meaning the species wasn’t extinct after all.

The rest of the news wasn’t as good: That lone tree isn’t doing so well. It’s been burned by fire and shows signs of a fungal infection. Scientists say it’s in need of “immediate conservation.”

This situation isn’t that atypical in the world of wildlife conservation, where species that have avoided extinction in the Anthropocene still need dramatic support. A recent study found that more than half of all known endangered species require targeted recovery efforts if they’re to avert “human-induced extinction.”

If that doesn’t happen, we’re going to lose more species — a lot of them. Despite rediscoveries like the oak tree in Texas, the world is still losing biodiversity at dangerously high rates. In 2022, scientists announced that they had given up efforts to find dozens of long-lost species, including two frogs, one of the world’s biggest fish, an orchid from Florida, a grass from New Hampshire and many others.

And those are just the ones we know about. Another 2022 study warned about the threat of “dark extinction,” the loss of species science has never even identified as having existed in the first place. By conservative estimates, millions of species are yet to be discovered, identified and named, and most are at risk of disappearing before that ever happens as humanity continues its relentless expansion. And if we don’t know they exist, we can’t do anything to save them.

So let’s take a moment to talk about the ones we do know that we’ve lost, to remember their names, to add them to the Book of the Dead, and to use their lessons to prevent others from suffering the same fate. We’ve compiled dozens of stories of extinction from the past year, including species that have been declared lost after many decades of looking, other species that have vanished from key ranges of their habitat, and others that are now extinct in the wild and exist only in captivity.

But before we get to those names, let’s take a lesson from the Endangered Species Act here in the United States — a law that turns 50 this year. Virtually every species that has been protected under the Act has had its extinction prevented. Some were added to the list too late, and they died out as a result. Many are still hanging on by a thread, but active conservation efforts are preventing them from disappearing any further. Many have recovered — most recently two plants from the Channel Islands — and more are likely to do so in the future. That is the ultimate lesson of the extinction crisis: It’s preventable if we work hard enough.

Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) — The declared extinction of this iconic fish shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Last seen in 2003, these massive beasts — who reportedly reached up to 23 feet in length — were already on the decline due to overfishing and habitat degradation before the Gezhouba Dam was built in 1981. That dam cut off their migration route in the Yangtze River and doomed the species. People have been looking for them ever since but, given their gigantic stature and the fact that no one has spotted any in that time, the species was declared extinct this past year. As the only member of its genus, the Chinese paddlefish’s extinction represents the loss of an entire evolutionary line.

Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus) — An extinction in the making, or recovery on the cusp? Either of those could be the fate of the Yangtze sturgeon. No mature fish have been seen in the wild in years, and the species was declared extinct in the wild this year by the IUCN. Ongoing captive-propagation efforts have produced tens of thousands of young sturgeon, who are released annually into the Yangtze River, but so far that hasn’t paid off in terms of wild reproduction. The species initially declined due to a long list of threats, including overfishing, shipping, dams, pollution and other habitat degradations, and few of those dangers have faded. Those same threats affect all other sturgeon species: Two-thirds are now critically endangered.

Florida govenia (Govenia floridana) — This large orchid, native to Everglades National Park in Florida, was mistakenly identified as another species when it was first discovered in 1957. That delay in recognition probably doomed it. At the time of discovery, only 25 plants existed. Poaching probably quickly wiped them out before they could be protected. The IUCN declared the species extinct in 2022, decades after its last verified sighting in 1964.

Sharp-snouted day frog (Taudactylus acutirostris) — Gone in the blink of an eye. It took just five years for this once-common Australian amphibian species to decline and ultimately disappear, probably due to the deadly chytrid fungus, which is causing frog extinctions all around the world. Last seen in 1997, the day frog was declared extinct this past year following two decades of extensive searches.

Mountain mist frog (Litoria nyakalensis) — Another Australian frog, another probable victim of the chytrid fungus. This one was last seen in 1990, and extensive searches have failed to prove it still exists.

A small plant clings to the rocks — Photo: Denise Molmou via Kew Gardens

Saxicolella deniseae — Known from a single waterfall in the Republic of Guinea, this herb appears to have gone extinct after its only habitat was flooded during construction of a hydroelectric dam.

Raiatean ground partula snail (Partula navigatoria) and Garrett’s tree snail (P. garrettii) — These species from French Polynesia were nearly eaten into extinction by the notorious, carnivorous rosy wolf snail, an invasive species around the planet. The last live animals were found and brought into a captive-breeding program in the early 1990s. A reintroduction program began in 2016 at a site that (unfortunately) was later found to contain another predatory invasive species, the New Guinea flatworm. Pending the success of future reintroductions, these species have been assessed as extinct in the wild, joining other snails from French Polynesia in that purgatory-like category.

jaguarini on a leafy forest floor — A jaguarini photographed in Belize in June 2022. Photo: © giana521 via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC)

Jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) in the United States — One of the major regional extinctions on this year’s list. The jaguarundi, a small feline, was last officially seen in the United States — the northernmost part of its range — in 1986. In 2022 a major 18-year study reported no evidence the species still exists in the country and declared it ripe for reintroduction efforts.

Beilschmiedia ningmingensis — This tree was last seen in China in 1935, in an area that has long since been converted to agriculture and plantations. China already considered it extinct; the IUCN added it to the list of extinct species this year after extensive recent surveys.

Coote’s tree snail (Partula cootei) — Last seen in French Polynesia in 1934, this snail probably disappeared slowly as it hybridized with another introduced species. Researchers assessed it as extinct in 2017, but the information wasn’t published or added to the IUCN Red List until this past year.

A gibbon hangs from a branch — White-handed gibbon. Photo: Bernard Dupont (CC BY-SA 2.0)

White-handed gibbon (Hylobates lar) and northern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys) — China formally declared both these primates extinct in the wild within their borders this past September, at least a decade after they were last seen in the country. Researchers blamed “human activities” (including hunting, deforestation and the pet trade) for their disappearance. Each species still exists in other countries in Southeast Asia, although the white-handed gibbon is endangered, and the northern white-cheeked gibbon is critically endangered.

Dugong (Dugong dugon) in China — These gentle manatee relatives, who are considered “vulnerable to extinction” through most of their range, have all but disappeared from China, another major extirpation for the country this year. A paper published in July declared dugongs “functionally extinct” in Chinese waters, meaning some of them still exist there but not enough to form a healthy population. This, according to researchers, represents “the first reported functional extinction of a large vertebrate in Chinese marine waters” and serves as a “sobering reminder” of the threats faced by other species.

Poecilobothrus majesticus — What little we know about this long-legged fly from the United Kingdom stems from a single male specimen collected on the Essex coast in 1907. Scientists didn’t taxonomically name it until 1976, and a 2018 report on UK flies of the Dolichopodidae family concluded that it was probably extinct, as “one would have expected them to have been encountered by now.” The IUCN added it to the Red List as extinct this past year.

Luciobarbus nasus — This fish was known from just a single river system in western Morocco, where it hasn’t been seen since 1874. Pollution from a nearby city may have done it in, but that remains unclear. Here’s the good news though: After years of scientific debate, this species has now been reclassified into four species, with three of them remaining in existence (and one of those endangered).

Chott el Djerid barbel (Luciobarbus antinorii) — When you use too much water, don’t expect fish to stay alive much longer. That’s what happened in Tunisia, where this rare fish disappeared sometime around the 1990s or 2000s. It was listed under the IUCN Red list as a data deficient for many years but was declared extinct in 2022.

Syzygium humblotii — This tree, a member of the myrtle family, hasn’t been seen in about 130 years. It grew in Mayotte, an overseas department of France located in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique, in an area that has since been degraded by farms, livestock and other nonnative species. Searches over the past three decades have failed to turn up signs of its existence, so this year the IUCN declared it extinct.

Kalanchoe fadeniorum — Relatives of this long-lost Kenyan plant are grown as houseplants around the world. This species isn’t as lucky. Known from just one site, it hasn’t been seen since 1977. The areas surrounding where it grew aren’t very well surveyed, so scientists are hedging their bets and calling it “extinct in the wild.”

Heenan’s cycad (Encephalartos heenanii) — Every member of this plant genus (commonly referred to as bread trees or bread palms) is endangered due to overcollection, sometimes for food, sometimes for traditional medicine, sometimes just to own them. Previously listed as critically endangered, Heenan’s cyad was reassessed as extinct in the wild in 2022 due to “persistent pressure from plant collectors.”

Giant Atlas barbel (Labeobarbus reinii) — Although this Moroccan fish was last seen in 2001, it was listed on the IUCN Red List as “vulnerable to extinction” for several years. Well, that prediction has come true: This year the IUCN declared it extinct. It was known from just one small stretch of river that suffered from pollution and runoff from a nearby city, as well as a dam that separated populations. These factors undoubtedly affected the fish, but the exact reason for its extinction remain unknown.

A rounded bird sits in the undergrowth — By Grahame Bowland, CC BY 3.0, Link

Abrolhos painted button-quail (Turnix varius scintillans) — This Australian bird subspecies is known from just three islands. Now it’s down to two. The population on North Island in the Houtman Abrolhos Archipelago has been “eaten out of house and home” by introduced invasive species, which degraded the habitat. Researchers spent nearly 13,000 nights camera trapping the island between 2018 and 2021 and concluded in a 2022 paper that the bird no longer exists there. The quail is considered one of the five Australian species most likely to face extinction in the coming years, so this extirpation represents a major blow for its conservation.

Cystophora — Not one extinction, but many? A 2022 paper declares several species of this algae genus “functionally extinct” along the coast of southern Australia. At least seven species are reportedly now absent from the warmest edges of their historical range. The causes of their decline and disappearance are not known, but the paper cites slightly likely impacts from “gradual warming, marine heatwaves and rapid urbanization.”

Smooth slender crabgrass (Digitaria filiformis var. laeviglumis) — Known from a single park in Manchester, New Hampshire, this rare plant was last seen in 1931. The New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau declared it extinct this past June. Other varieties of the crabgrass species still exist in neighboring New England states, but this version was unique and is now considered lost.

Mollinedia myriantha — This Brazilian tree has a sad history. It was discovered in 1992, then lost for 123 years. A sole individual tree was rediscovered in 2015, but fieldwork conducted in the following years found that the lonely tree had died. Researchers officially declared it “critically endangered, possibly extinct” this past year. The same paper warns that the genus faces a wide range of threats and many species remain unassessed, meaning they too could soon face extinction.

An Irrawaddy dolphin jumping in the Mekong River — Dan Koehl, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris) in Laos — The last individual of this species in Laos was found dead on Feb. 15. It had been injured by being caught in fishing gear — it escaped, but only after receiving injuries that left it unable to hunt. Irrawaddy dolphins remain in other countries, but the species is endangered, and its loss in Laos represents a major population gone.

And 562 more? — Proving an extinction is never easy — it’s easier to see something than it is to not see something. But many species have gone unseen for decades, and while scientists still look for them every year, hope begins to dwindle after a time.

Is it time to give up hope for 562 lost species? That’s the question raised by a paper published this May, which examines long-unseen species listed on the IUCN Red List. It identifies 137 amphibians, 257 reptiles, 38 birds and 130 mammals that have not been seen for at least 50 years and asks if that half-century of no sightings means they’re extinct. Maybe, maybe not. We need to be prepared for that possibility, but the paper suggests this analysis actually provides something positive: a way to prioritize geographic “hotspots” where scientists can target their searches for long-lost species.

In other words, let’s find these lost species while there’s still time.

Previously in The Revelator:

The Lord God Bird and Dozens of Other Species Declared Extinct in 2021

One River Dies, Another Is Born

In north Brazil, the combined effects of a hydroelectric dam and earth-shifting livestock have altered the landscape — and upended peoples’ lives.

Jaime Lucian dos Santos Filho was born and raised in a stilt house on the Araguari River, in the north Brazil village of Bom Amigo. His family and the several dozen other inhabitants of the town ate fish from the Araguari, ranched buffalo on its banks, and watered subsistence gardens with it. When they went shopping, they took a boat.

In flood season the Araguari became a mighty torrent, more than two miles across. The rest of the year it just flowed along. That started to change in the early 2000s, when Filho noticed the river’s current slackening. Sand bars began to appear off the town’s docks, and then gradually grew. By 2013 the riverbed of the Araguari — all the way to its mouth at the Atlantic, 12 miles away — had filled with silt, and the river no longer flowed past Bom Amigo.

Filho says extra land appeared, but it was a mixed blessing. “The fields opened up for cattle. There are some more land for us to plant. But the water became scarcer.”

Today, miles of the Araguari’s old bed flood for a few rainy months. They turn dry and stone-hard the rest of the year.

Robbed of the reason for the town’s existence, residents moved away.

Fihlo’s daughter-in-law, Joselina Barbosa Tavares, said, “I never imagined that a mighty river like that could ever dry.”

A maritime buoy rests on a floodplain that was once Araguari riverbed north of Bom Amigo village. (Dado Galdieri/Hilaea Media)

At about the same time, villagers 20 miles away in a town called Junco were uprooted by a different river’s transformation. In that case they were inundated with water, not deprived of it.

In 2012 Domingo Maciel da Costa was hired to guard a water buffalo ranch just east of Junco, on the north branch of the Amazon. A small river called the Urucurituba Channel ran through the land.

The Urucurituba has changed dramatically during da Costa’s life. In the mid 1990s, before it even had an official name, it was about 200 feet across and ran only a few miles from its headwaters in a palm jungle to its mouth, where it emptied into the Amazon. After that it started metastasizing. By the time da Costa took the ranching job, the river was a quarter of a mile from shore to shore and 25 miles long.

And it kept growing. On some days it grew half a dozen feet wider.

Sitting in a boat bobbing in the Urucurituba, half a mile from the nearest land, and recalling his years at the ranch, da Costa waves his hand around. “In a short time, it became this monster you see here,” he says.

He was floating on top of where he used to work, which had long ago been swallowed up by the river. “This is where our house, our pasture, our land, stood,” he says, looking into the water.

A man sits in a boat atop heavily churning water. — Former buffalo herder Domingo Maciel da Costa floats on a boat over where his land plot once stood. (Dado Galdieri/Hilaea Media)

Where did this monster come from? Brazilian scientists studying the Araguari River and the Urucurituba Channel have concluded that the silting up of the former and the ongoing expansion of the latter are flip sides of the same coin, caused by the same process: the combined consequence of a hydroelectric dam built far up the Araguari and the introduction of water buffalo into its flood plain.

James Leonard Best, a geology professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says he’s startled by the rapidity of the Urucurituba and Araguari’s metamorphoses. Still, he expects more surprises such as these in the future, as human encroachment on the channels and shores of the world’s rivers increases. In a 2019 paper he published in the journal Nature Geoscience, he warned about extensive river-sand extraction, accelerated hydroelectric power plant construction, introduction of non-native species and other, “anthropogenic stressors.” He predicted that “large-scale, and potentially irreparable, transformations may ensue in periods of years to decades, with ecosystem collapse being possible in some big rivers.”

Last April I traveled with Brazilian photojournalist Dado Galdieri to see what forces blocked the Araguari and gnaw the shores of Junco. We hired a squat wooden freighter and crew in Macapá, the capital of the state of Amapá, and set off.

Twelve hours downstream of Macapá, Marlon Pantoja Cardoso, our captain, steered into the north fork of the Amazon. Right past Junco we entered a gap in the shore that looked to me like a broad bay burrowing into the jungle. Cardoso said this was the mouth of the Urucurituba Channel, nearly a mile across. He’d heard that the blockage of the Araguari’s mouth caused the Urucurituba to swell, and it made sense to him.

“The water had to go somewhere, and it came here,” he said.

We headed up the Urucurituba. Where the forest had once stood, broad wetlands flanked the river’s deep channel. A flock of scarlet ibis, startled by our motor’s throaty roar, took flight in a shimmering cloud of neon orange. Water buffalo chewed water hyacinth and eyed us warily. Some of them trudged in small groups snout-to-tail through the muck.

Before leaving Macapá, I’d heard that these listless creatures — an Asian species introduced to Brazil in the 19th century — had broken down the shallow divide that had kept the Araguari and Amazon basins separate and created the Urucurituba’s Niagara-Falls-scale flow.

Alan Cunha, a professor of civil engineering at the Federal University of Amapá, explained how this had happened.

Cunha has been studying the Araguari for decades. He said the buffalo were one of two powerful forces that together stoppered the lower Araguari and opened the Urucurituba.

The Amazon and Araguari rivers occupy adjacent flood plains. Until about the early 2000s, a feeble berm a few feet high kept the rivers apart in separate basins, the former originating in the Andes and the latter in a range called the Tumucumaque mountains.

The base of these flood plains is geologically young, made of sediment too recently deposited to have solidified — or, in geologists’ terms, “consolidated.” So, Cunha said, the natural berm is “extremely fragile and vulnerable” and easy to disturb.

Encouraged by subsidies from Brazil’s military government in the 1980s, ranchers began setting water buffalo lose to graze in this region. Nobody predicted how much mischief they’d cause. About 200,000 buffalo now wander freely there. The ones we saw from the boat demonstrated why ranchers prize them: The livestock happily wade in the marshes and shallow streams. Compared to cattle, they swim better and eat more kinds of grass.

Cunha says one behavior has made water buffalo particularly damaging to the divide between the Amazon and the Araguari. He says that they march in troop-like single file, gouging trenches in soil.

An aerial shot of water buffalo walking through a flooded plane. — Herds of buffalo roam freely around the areas between the Amazon and Araguari river basins. (Dado Galdieri/Hilaea Media)

In the decades after buffalo were introduced, their relentless hooves turned natural creeks that fill and drain with each tidal cycle into a dendritic network of waterways that extended the embryonic Urucurituba. Then, sometime in the late 2000s, the incessant stomping, compounded by ranchers’ forest-clearing and ditch-digging, broke open a path between the Urucurituba and the Araguari. The two rivers became linked, and the Araguari’s flow started running through the Urucurituba into the Amazon.

Cunha was the first scientist to report that the Urucurituba was draining the Araguari. In 2012, he took a speedboat from the upper Araguari toward the Atlantic. Near the mouth, he noticed shoals where he expected deep water. The current was far lower there than it had been where he’d started, a finding that puzzled him. River discharge generally increases downriver, with contributions from tributaries.

“How is that possible,” he thought. “Where is the water going?”

He retraced his route back upstream, looking for a missing branch draining the river. Forty-five miles from the mouth, he noticed what seemed at first like a small creek breaking away. He tied a device for measuring the current to a tree. A week later he returned to get the data. But the device was gone. So was the tree. Both had been carried off when a big hunk of shoreline slipped into the mysterious river.

“That’s when we started connecting the dots,” Cunha says. He’d discovered the headwaters of the Urucurituba Channel. And it was on its way to draining the Araguari’s full current.

He discovered that the Urucurituba was growing wider at breakneck speed. Between late 2011 and mid-2016 it widened an average of 16 feet every month. Soon it had become as wide and deep, and half as long, as the Panama Canal. The Araguari’s entire current was going through the Urucurituba to the Amazon.

“It was a huge surprise,” Cunha says. In scientific terms, the Amazon had “captured” the Araguari.

Maps data: Google, Image Landsat/Copernicus

Grazing buffalo kicked, and their ditch-digging ranchers opened, the natural dike separating the Amazon and Araguari basins. But Cunha says the animals and their keepers didn’t silt up the lower Araguari and open the Urucurituba all by themselves. They got help from the Coaracy Nunes power plant, the first of three large hydroelectric installations built on the Araguari.

Valdenira Santos, a geologist at the Institute of Scientific and Technological Research in Macapá, says the builders of the dams “did not consider the downstream effect the hydroelectrical plants would cause.” Santos wrote her graduate dissertation on the Araguari. The flow of water just upstream of the Araguari’s power plants, she says, varies greatly between rainy and dry seasons. Reservoirs built for each of these plants smooth out these variations, stabilizing power production. But suppressing natural extremes in river flow also altered the movement of sediment near the river’s mouth.

One day soon after our excursion up the Urucurituba, Galdieri and I sat in a speedboat mid-river in the Amazon’s north channel. Railan Souza, the boat’s pilot, scanned the line where the river met the sky. We were on a mission to see one of the region’s natural wonders, which also plays a role in explaining changes in the region’s plumbing.

A wave sprinted toward us, rising higher and cresting in a line of white spray. It was the tidal bore, known in Brazil as the pororoca, a train of waves that race up Amazon twice a day. When the moon is full, as it had been the previous night, the waves are biggest. The frothing torrent soon licked at our prop. It must have been at least six feet high. Souza cast a nervous glance behind us, first gunning the engine, then slowing down to let the wave lift us up. Hooting with joy, he matched our speed to it, perching us atop the wall of water. The crest’s alabaster color belied the contents of the liquid. Tidal bores bear incredible amounts of sediment mixed into their convulsions, sometimes 50 times as much silt as smoothly moving water.

Every year the Amazon discharges half a billion tons of silt into the Atlantic, about 10 times the annual mass of sand and gravel mined in the United State. A plume of this material, easily seen from space, spreads 60 miles out to sea and up the coast, right past the Araguari’s old mouth, like coffee grounds spilled on a sheet of blue glass.

An oceanic canal enters the sedimented Araguari river mouth in Amapa, Brazil, April 22, 2022. (Dado Galdieri/Hilaea Media)

Before the Araguari got clogged, it also had pororocas. Visitors came from all over the world to surf on them. The waves also carried thousands of tons of sediment from the Amazon’s silt plume upstream and dropped it on the riverbed.

Cunha says the river’s current and ebb tides used to wash these deposits back to sea, keeping the Araguari’s channel and mouth clear. But he says the natural process of deposition and removal of sediment was upset when the Coaracy Nunes plant went online in 1976. During the dry season, when the river was already running at its slowest, powerplant operators held back water to let it accumulate in its reservoir.

There’s virtually no data about the Araguari from back then, but Cunha says it seems that when enfeebled by power plant operators, the river could no longer flush accumulated sediment out its mouth. As silt filled the Araguari’s lower reach, the river’s original bed was no longer the easiest path for the current, and so a portion of the flow drained into the Urucurituba instead. He suspects that silt released by the gradually widening Urucurituba compounded the problem. This material, suspended in the flow, was carried up the Urucurituba with tides running up from the Amazon’s mouth and then dropped into the lower Araguari. And, in a vicious cycle, this extra load blocked the river’s mouth more and coaxed even more water into the Uricurituba, eventually completely blocking the Araguari’s passage to the Atlantic.

The Urucurituba continues growing wider, flooding forests on either shore and advancing deeper into Junco. Da Costa, who first showed me the “monster,” says the town has also lost 25 acres of palms, about 14 soccer fields’ worth, that once produced lucrative açaí berries, the superfood that is among the region’s major cash crops.

Cunha says the Araguari near where the Urucurituba Channel begins is also widening. In the town of Pracúuba, a short distance upstream from that fork, many residents are in constant fear that their houses will collapse into the river. Scores of people have dismantled their homes and rebuilt them farther inland.

José Freitas, who lives near the Urucurituba, says he’s collecting construction materials for building a new house when the river gets too close. But he can’t say how he’ll afford a move.

“Everywhere we’d go there’s already an owner. And we don’t have money buy new land.”

James Best, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign geologist, says millions of people across the planet could soon find themselves uprooted like the residents of Junco, Bom Amigo and Pracúuba. Rivers everywhere are straining under the combined assault of multitudes of insults — from dams to pollution to shoreline disturbance.

“These are going to impact humans living in riverine corridors big-time.”

Geologist Valdenira Santos sees the transformation of the region as a cautionary tale — and not just for people living in river basins.

“Our biggest challenge now, as planet, is to be able to coexist along these natural processes in a wiser fashion,” she says. “Human beings shouldn’t have the illusion that we can tame all of nature. It will be always stronger than us.”

Reporting for this story was funded with support from the Pulitzer Center, and Abby Rockefeller and Lee Halprin.

Previously in The Revelator:

5 Reasons to Rethink the Future of Dams

The EV Revolution Brings Environmental Uncertainty at Every Turn

As demand for electric vehicles ramps up, environmental stumbling blocks have emerged.

Manufacturers, governments and consumers are lining up behind electric vehicles — with sales rising 60% in 2022, and at least 17 states considering a California-style ban on gas cars in the years ahead. Scientists say the trend is a key part of driving down the transportation sector’s carbon emissions, which could fall by as much as 80% by 2050 under aggressive policies. But while EVs are cleaner than gas cars in the long run, they still carry environmental and human-rights baggage, especially associated with mining.

“If you want a lot of EVs, you need to get minerals out of the ground,” says Ian Lange, director of the Energy and Economics Program at the Colorado School of Mines.

That’s because manufacturing EVs requires about six times more minerals than traditional cars. That requirement — coupled with growth in consumer electronics and renewable energy infrastructure — will double global mineral demand over the next two decades, according to the International Energy Agency.

And that’s only under current trends. The IEA says meeting the Paris Climate Accord goals for decarbonization will require even more — far more — minerals: as much as four to six times present amounts.

That will mean a lot of mining, with much of it for EV batteries. And at least some of it will happen in the United States, as the Biden administration and many Republicans want more EV materials sourced at home, both to act on climate change and to wrest some control of supply chains from China.

Lange, who served as an economic advisor in the Trump administration, says it will be a big change for the country, which “got out of the minerals game” in recent decades. And it will bring challenges — including obtaining permits for minerals development, developing the needed workforce, and building processing capacity. The Biden administration hopes that funding from the landmark Inflation Reduction Act and other sources will help overcome these obstacles.

But the rush for renewables will also bring another big hurdle: environmental impacts. Already, as the search for EV materials ramps up, Tribes, landowners and communities find themselves wrestling with the not-so-green side of green energy.

Environmental Considerations

For a sense of things, consider cobalt. About 30 pounds of it go into each EV battery to boost performance and energy storage, which are key to luring consumers from dirtier gas cars. But today 70% of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an estimated 40,000 children as young as 6 work in dangerous mines. The mines also bring deforestation, habitat fragmentation and high carbon emissions from mining and refinery processes that rely heavily on fossil fuels to produce electricity and drive heavy machinery. Some sources say cobalt mining’s CO₂ emissions could double by 2030.

EV boosters are eager to put mileage between their products and human rights abuses, which fuel Republican and oil industry criticisms of battery power. Although efforts are underway to improve overseas practices, another way to tackle the issue would be to mine cobalt in the United States, which would also increase domestic sources of EV materials. But today the country has only one cobalt mine, and building others would likely raise environmental concerns.

Lange says that’s certainly the case in Alaska, where copper and cobalt rest beneath rolling tundra in the Ambler district south of the Brooks Range. Accessing it would require a 200-mile road through traditional Alaska Native lands, caribou habitat and Gates of the Arctic National Park, with gravel quarries dug every 10 miles. It’s something state leaders support but state and national environmental groups and several Indigenous communities oppose. Permitting for the road began during the Obama administration and was approved under Trump, but it’s now under reconsideration by Biden.

According to Lange, such regulatory sagas breed uncertainty within the minerals industry that slows investment in the minerals needed for EV batteries. He offers up the Twin Metals Mine near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Wilderness as another example. Here the target is nickel, another important EV metal mined in only one U.S. location. In a political tug-of-war, the mine’s long-held leases were denied renewal by Obama, reinstated under Trump, and then canceled under Biden.

In both cases, concerns over compliance with the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act led to lawsuits and claims of rushed environmental analysis. Lange says these bedrock environmental laws have improved air quality and human health conditions in the United States, but at the same time they may also contribute to the lag in sustainable production of EV materials.

“When we restrict access to natural resources, these international companies can choose to go elsewhere,” he says — often to countries with lax environmental and human rights laws.

The tension between environmental protection and renewables development is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Adam Bronstein of Western Watersheds Project sees it in northern Nevada, where his group has joined a lawsuit against a proposed open-pit lithium mine in Thacker Pass, an area of remote desert that’s home to sage grouse, antelope, Lahontan cutthroat trout and other sensitive species, including some only found locally. It also holds hundreds of Native American heritage sites that remain important to Tribes today.

Ridgetop view down valley. — Thacker Pass looking toward Kings River Valley. Photo: Ian Bigley (CC BY-NC 2.0).

“It’s a very remote and undeveloped landscape, where the stars are still bright and the air is quiet,” he says.

Bronstein says the West is quickly losing such landscapes to development, including large-scale solar projects and renewable energy mining. At Thacker Pass, for instance, the lithium mine would entail a 2-mile-long open pit with waste ore, acid dumps and massive water usage. Like opponents of Alaska’s Ambler Road, some also worry it would open access to additional claims, spreading impacts to further wildlands.

Mine proponents say Thacker Pass lithium could support more than a million EVs annually and would add jobs and tax revenue.

Bronstein questions the notion that ecologically valuable areas must be sacrificed for climate goals. Others agree, including a rising chorus who say solar and wind development in Nevada and California are eliminating vast areas of wildlife habitat, contributing to biodiversity loss worldwide.

As a judge considers the Thacker Pass lawsuit, nearly 2,000 miles away, residents of Coosa County, Alabama, express similar concerns over plans to mine graphite, an EV mineral not currently produced in the United States.

“It’s going to be a mess,” says Chris DiGiorgio, a lifelong resident of the area and a board member of Coosa Riverkeeper, which protects, promotes and restores the Coosa River.

DiGiorgio says graphite mining will level forest, disrupt hydrology, and leave chemical pollution that could last generations. Yet he also acknowledges the need for minerals to support renewable energy.

“We all want to stop climate change,” he says.

Still, DiGiorgio feels that state officials unjustifiably fast-tracked the mine’s permits, and he questions whether graphite demand will still be high by the time mining starts in 2028. But whereas Western Watersheds Project is fighting the Thacker Pass mine, Coosa Waterkeeper appears settled into guarded acceptance and a commitment to playing a watchdog role over the mine.

Navigating the Transition

Josh Johnson with the Idaho Conservation League has taken yet another approach. As Australia-based Jervois Mining prepared to open the United States’ only cobalt mine in Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, he helped secure $150,000 in annual funding from the company for local conservation work — money that can also be leveraged to help secure matching funds from state and federal grants. Two years in, the funding has helped restore overgrazed streambanks and supported acquisition of vital fish habitat. Each year, the organization determines where the funding goes, with input from Tribes, agencies and others.

Johnson says that the cobalt mine connects to the league’s conservation goals, which include promoting renewable energy and adopting EVs. And while he recommends that environmental groups take a nuanced look at such mines, he stresses that his partnership doesn’t compromise Idaho Conservation League’s watchdog role as mining gets underway.

But it’s also important to consider what happens after Idaho’s cobalt meets daylight. With no processing plants in the United States, it will be shipped to Brazil, then to China for manufacturing, and eventually back to the United States tucked inside a new EV battery.

Generous incentives for EVs in the Inflation Reduction Act aim to tighten that supply chain — and ease reliance on strategic adversaries like China to reach U.S. climate goals. They join funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the Defense Production Act and other sources in a strategy that aligns with IEA recommendations for diversifying global mineral sources. And while this all-in approach on industrialization raises biodiversity and other concerns, it could move the United States closer to reaching Paris Climate Accord goals and the Biden administration’s target to cut economy-wide carbon emission by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.

BREAKING NEWS: USPS Intends To Deploy Over 66,000 Electric Vehicles by 2028, Making One of the Largest Electric Vehicle Fleets in the Nation. https://t.co/7N6GpTkFlt pic.twitter.com/6rPiBHSrh9

— U.S. Postal Service (@USPS) December 20, 2022

Lange agrees the funding will boost research, development and processing capacity, but he questions whether it moves the needle on EV mineral production in the United States.

Inevitably, technology should resolve some of the issues surrounding EVs. Scientists worldwide are tinkering with EV batteries to improve efficiency and replace problematic metals like cobalt, nickel and perhaps even lithium. Other research highlights better ways to mine, including by salvaging EV materials currently discarded as waste at existing mines. This is happening at a Rio Tinto mine in California’s Mojave Desert, which has long produced minerals for soaps and cosmetics but is now also pulling lithium out of its old tailings.

Lange says advances in recycling may also help. The IEA anticipates a surge in recyclable minerals as first-generation EVs reach the end of their lifespan, perhaps meeting 10% of demand by 2040. It could help ease shortages, stabilize prices, diversify sources, and chip away at harmful mining, including deep-sea mining in sensitive ocean ecosystems. Yet as with everything else related to EVs, Lange says the United States lags behind China and other countries in recycling research, development and capacity.

To Bronstein and others, placing solar at already developed areas like canals and parking lots and developing smarter cities that disincentivize driving will also remain important strategies for adopting clean energy in ways that minimize impacts on undisturbed wildlands.

Cities and the federal government can also shape strategic adoption of EVs by working to replace fleet and transit vehicles first. This recently happened in Antelope Valley, California, where the local transit authority became the first in the country to replace its fleet of diesel buses. Since its 87 new electric buses, vans and coaches are cheaper to operate and maintain than dirtier diesel buses, the city is now using the savings to expand public transit and build a solar field to power the fleet. Similarly, in December the U.S. Postal Service committed to buying at least 45,000 electric delivery trucks and to explore how to electrify its entire fleet.

The approaches replace the vehicles that log the most miles first, rather than relying on individual drivers to adopt EVs.

Whatever path it takes, says Bronstein, “the renewable energy future is coming.”

Scientists, activists and other experts have spent decades advocating for this change, even as the dangers of burning fossil fuels have increased. The future has finally started to arrive. But as Bronstein reminds us, making the transition to cleaner fuels still requires careful planning and restraint to protect our already beleaguered biodiversity and other natural resources.

Previously in The Revelator:

Will the Race for Electric Vehicles Endanger the Earth’s Most Sensitive Ecosystem?

Protect This Place: Oregon’s Twin Lake

A proposed high-voltage power line threatens a mountain lake and its surrounding wetlands.

The Place:

Atop a ridge in the Blue Mountains, just west of the small town of La Grande in northeast Oregon, hides a beautiful small lake and associated wetland. What we now call Twin Lake or Little Morgan Lake — its Indigenous name is unknown to me — offers the promise of secluded summer breeding habitat for aquatic species, as well as food and respite for many birds following ancient migration routes. Clean, perennial water supports a complex community of aquatic plants, invertebrates and amphibians.

Why it matters:

Twin Lake hides behind its larger sister, Morgan Lake, on Glass Hill. Construction of a small dam in the early 1900s increased the size and depth of Morgan Lake, creating a reservoir for irrigation and, soon thereafter, electrical power. Water released from the dam tumbled down 1,000 feet, passing through turbines to generate electricity for the growing town below. Twin Lake, however, escaped development and remains a place of peaceful natural beauty.

By the 1960s local power no longer depended on the dam, and Morgan Lake reservoir appeared to be doomed to become an exclusive, gated development of waterfront homes. Against long odds, a dedicated group of local conservationists affiliated with the Isaak Walton League helped to forestall this plan. The lakes and remaining wetlands were deeded to the city of La Grande in 1967, providing some measure of protection for native vegetation, wildlife, and recreation.

Today the city of La Grande owns and manages the property as Morgan Lake Park. Stocked with fish each summer, Morgan Lake attracts boaters, fishers and picnickers. Twin Lake, though part of the park, has largely escaped public attention. Somewhat hidden to the west, it remains in near pristine condition, where it provides refuge for an extraordinary diversity of emergent aquatic plants, invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, and countless seasonal nesting birds and annual migrants.

These ridgetop wetlands harbor secrets of some ancient geologic magic. No inlet stream enters either lake, yet both Twin and Morgan lakes remain wet year-round. Subterranean springs pump water upward from an active aquifer hidden somewhere below. Snowmelt also contributes moisture to the system.

Twin Lake comprises a broad, shallow pond filled with emergent plants that exhibit surprising botanical diversity. A lush growth of native great yellow pond-lilies (Nuphar polysepala) thrust their large flowers up through dense mats of floating leaves. Common bladderwort (Utricularia vulgaris) catches and digests tiny insects and crustaceans in trapdoor bladders hidden among their leaves submerged beneath the water. An unusual plant known as bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata), found nowhere else along Glass Hill, flourishes in Twin Lake.

The threat:

Idaho Power Company has applied for a permit to construct a 500-kilovolt power line that would run through the property directly adjacent to Twin and Morgan Lakes. Following official condemnation of the surrounding private lands, deep blasting will commence in order to set the footings prior to construction of immense towers. In addition to a higher wildfire threat from the high-voltage lines, construction and operation of the power line will introduce invasive plant species and possibly alter the area’s hydrology irreparably.

The underlying geology of Glass Hill is complicated and not well understood. No one knows exactly how the flow of subterranean water to Twin and Morgan Lakes might be altered by tower construction. Without life-sustaining spring water, Twin Lake may dry up quickly, leaving behind only a dry, fire- and weed-prone field of little ecological value.

My place in this place:

The origin story of Glass Hill includes explosive volcanic eruptions, lava flows from ancient fissures in the underlying rock, and faults thrusting layers of basalt upward in seismic events buried in long, geologic time. Next, layers of fine volcanic ash spewing from the great eruptions of Mt. Mazama 7,700 years ago added layers of fertile soil throughout the forests of northeast Oregon. Indigenous people walked this ridge for many thousands of years, creating their stories and life histories in harmony with the land. People from the Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla and Nez Perce Tribes arrived to harvest abundant camas bulbs and fish in the Grande Ronde Valley below.

Eventually wagon trains following the Oregon Trail westward from Missouri brought many new people to this place, including some of my own ancestors. Changes to the landscape were profound, as farming, mining and railroads replaced sustainable hunting and gathering. As a botanist, I grieve the many losses and acknowledge that what remains is precious.

Long distance view of lake. — Plants emerge from Twin Lake. Photo: Karen Antell

Innumerable stories could be told about the complex web of interactions of any native ecosystem. These stories inform the collective wisdom and experiences of the communities they embrace. Our lives, like those of Indigenous people before us, become impoverished when these connections disappear from living memory. I feel protective of this place and have sought to keep knowledge of the natural ecosystems alive through public education. The unique wetlands springing to life along this obscure ridge top might continue to fill us with wonder and inspiration for many more generations, if we can only keep it whole.

Who’s protecting it now:

Twin Lake has no official protection beyond its inclusion within Morgan Lake Park. A grassroots organization, the Stop B2H Coalition, has formed in opposition to the transmission line, which will run 305 miles and require 1,200 towers.

What this place needs:

Strong environmental protection ultimately requires time, money, political savvy, and sustained community involvement. The economic forces driving big energy projects like this one quickly overwhelm small communities. Twin Lake needs the legal protections that a strong conservation easement might provide. Legal documents require attorneys. Attorneys require fees. Fundraising requires dedicated volunteers, donors, and an engaged community.

Lessons from the fight:

We must practice constant vigilance. Concerned residents and the Isaak Walton League helped save this area once before from commercial development. We became complacent, assuming that this special, peaceful place would always be here for morning birdwatching, afternoon walks, and summer star-gazing. No one ever imagined that the day would come in which the very existence of this important wetland would be threatened by construction of high-voltage electrical power lines. Special places require special protections, and once the threat appears, it may be too late.

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

Previously in The Revelator:

Protect This Place: Kenya’s Kinangop Grasslands

Birding for All: How to Make Enjoying Birds More Accessible

Disability is too often left out of the conversation about equity and inclusion in the outdoors. We can change that.

Freya McGregor is adamant that anyone can be a birder. You don’t have to be able to identify the birds you see or keep lists of the rarities you’ve spotted. You don’t need binoculars — or even sight.

A broad definition of birding makes for a more inclusive community. So too, does attention to accessibility needs. McGregor knows this well — she’s a birder with a disability. She’s also an occupational therapist who works with people with blindness and low vision. And she runs a consulting company, Access Birding, that helps train staff and volunteers at nature organizations and public lands to improve access and inclusion for birders with disabilities.

“Disability is remarkably often left out of the conversation when talking about equity, diversity and inclusion in the outdoors — and in general,” she says. “Which is bizarre when you think about the fact that 1 in 4 Americans has a disability. It’s the only minority you can join at any time.” An estimated 5% of Americans experience short-term disability each year, and the rates of vision, cognitive and mobility disabilities rise as lifespans increase.

The Revelator spoke with McGregor about the joys of birding, what land managers can do to make birding more accessible and why we all benefit from inclusivity.

What is it that you enjoy about birding?

I grew up in Australia. My parents were birders, so I’ve had binoculars in my hand since I was a little kid. But then I was a teenager and it wasn’t really cool to be doing the things your parents enjoyed doing. So I was defiantly not a birder for most of my life.

Then I fell in love with an American and moved to the United States, and suddenly there were all these birds around that I didn’t just know what they were. I discovered that woodpeckers and hummingbirds are real. These are two families of birds we don’t have in Australia. My mind was blown. The transformation from not-a-birder to a birder was pretty quick after that.

I like wondering who is around, what birds are out and about today. I’m a military spouse, so I’ve lived in four states so far and there’s different birds in different places.

I love that birds can be the prompt to explore new places. Wondering what birds are out there can be a reason to broaden your horizons. For some folks that’s a new park or a new state or a new country. But it also could just be a trail in the neighborhood that you’ve never wandered down or that nice little patch of woods that you’ve just never checked out before.

Birds are an excuse to get outside and be out in nature. There are so many benefits to spending time in nature, including therapeutic ones, which I’m particularly interested in as an occupational therapist.

Woman holding binoculars — Freya McGregor. Photo: Patrick Oaks

There are 45 million birders in the United States and a lot of folks go birding in community — in groups, as part of local bird outings and Audubon chapters. You can meet people and make friends.

How do we make it more accessible for people with disabilities?

Disability is so diverse and different folks with different disabilities have different access needs, but [for many] things like trail surface is important. Dirt trails that can get muddy are challenging to navigate. Getting stuck in gravel, grass and sandy trails isn’t super fun if you’re using a mobility device like a wheelchair or crutches or if you have balance issues.

Things like benches are also important. There are so many different people who need benches to have a rest. Every bench you add makes a difference.

There are also bird blinds — buildings that you go into and look at birds through windows that maybe are only at the height of standing people. So we need to have windows that are lower down for folks who are seated or folks who use wheelchairs. With observation platforms, hopefully there’s a ramp, not just stairs.

The safety barrier that’s trying to help you not fall off the edge is a good thing, but sometimes that top railing is really thick and if you’re in a wheelchair or a scooter there’s this five-inch piece of wood at your eye line. That’s a totally unnecessary barrier because there are all kinds of ways to design safety barriers that still keep visitors safe but don’t need to create such a big visual obstruction.

Maintenance is another really big one. Just because you build a really wonderfully accessible birding location, it won’t stay that way. Nature happens — trees fall and shrubs grow and start encroaching on the trail widths and potholes develop. If you’re not maintaining the area, it’s not going to stay as accessible as it could be.

There are all kinds of different access features of birding locations that can be really supportive or can create barriers that often they just don’t need to be there. It’s not that the land managers are trying to exclude folks, they often just didn’t think about it, which is a real shame.

Learning from the disability community is also important. Anytime you’re trying to serve a particular group of folks, you need to be learning from them because they’re the experts in what they need, not you.

What’s the best way to find out about whether a birding location is accessible?

The biggest thing is for nature preserves [or other public lands] to describe on their websites the access features that are present and to provide trail descriptions for all trails — not just the ones that they think are accessible. Share that information so people can make informed decisions about where they want to go. Is it worth driving two hours or is that observation blind steps-only and I can’t get in after all?

Tell me about every trail because everyone has different access needs. I have a dodgy knee, but I can do some slopes if my knee is doing well that day.

A state park might say on its website that a trail is “easy,” but what does that mean? Easy for whom? Are there benches? How many are there? What’s the surface? What’s the trail width? Are there any steep slopes?

Birdability is a nonprofit that I cofounded two years ago, and with National Audubon Society, we created the Birdability map to provide information about the accessibility of birding locations. Anyone can access it and find out that information ahead of time or submit a site review to the map of somewhere they visited.

Different adaptive sports or adaptive outdoor groups sometimes have this kind of information on their website too, although it’s often more local in scope.

I’m also working on a bird travel book. It’s the first one by a disabled birder for disabled birders and I’m writing about the physical accessibility of locations across North America.

I hope that will be a really helpful resource for disabled birders to find places that they should be able to be confident that they can visit with success and have a great experience. I hope it will also prompt other bird travel guide authors to consider this kind of information when they’re writing their books.

Room with windows overlooking water and marsh. — Floor-to-ceiling windows of the accessible observation building at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama. Photo: Freya McGregor

Who can be a birder?

Anyone. There are so many different ways to enjoy birds and birding. Any way you do it is valid, and you don’t have to do it in a particular way.

We can keep lists, or we don’t have to keep lists. We might enjoy the birds at our feeders. We might travel for birds. We might bird by car. We might bird through our computer by looking at nest cams and feeder cams because maybe you have chronic illness and can’t get out and go hike a trail. You can enjoy birds virtually.

You don’t even need binoculars. They’re helpful, but some people can’t use binoculars. They can’t hold them up. They’re too heavy. They don’t have upper limb strength or stability. They’re expensive, too. Not everyone can afford binoculars.

You don’t even need to see. My clinical background as an occupational therapist is in blindness and low vision services. And bird watching is only one way to enjoy wild birds because birds make sounds. And bird listening is just as valid as bird watching. Lots of folks who are fully sighted bird by ear just as much as birding by sight.

It’s really easy to make this hobby more inclusive and accessible. We just have to start thinking about what we’re actually trying to do and who we’re trying to serve.

What do we gain by more people being able to access nature and go birding?

There are individual benefits. We know that spending time in nature can help decrease feelings of anxiety and combat depression. It can also increase our attentional capacity, which is how much brain space you have to focus on something. We know that listening to bird songs can help improve people’s moods.

Even just seeing a tree out a window has therapeutic benefits. There’s research with women going through chemotherapy for breast cancer and sitting for 10 minutes on a bench in a garden helped improve their attentional capacity during treatment.

You don’t have to hike a mountain for five days. You just need little bits of nature. This is equity — everybody should be able to access those health and wellness benefits whether you have a disability or not. It should be a fundamental human right.

There are also community benefits, too. Birding can be a way to find a local community group to tap into and get social support.

The other really big reason to make nature and birding more accessible is that the more people who we can convince that birds are awesome and nature is cool, the more people they’ll be who can take action to help protect it. And the more people who are doing that, the better off we’re going to be on a planet that really needs as many people as possible helping care for it and act on behalf of it.

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

Previously in The Revelator:

These Books Are for the Birds (and Bugs)

Species to Watch in 2023

This will be a critical year for several endangered and threatened species, as well as a time of opportunity for others.

Here at The Revelator, we spend our days reading and writing about endangered species and our nights worrying about them. At the same time, we spend our days talking to and writing about people working to save these species from extinction — and that helps us sleep better at night.

As we move into 2023, here are more than a dozen species we’ll be watching in the year ahead. They represent species on the brink, those awaiting protection, those recovering, and those whose habitat could be disrupted in the coming year. They don’t represent everything — there’s no way one list could encapsulate every threat facing endangered species, or every species deserving attention — but this should give you an idea of some of the reasons wildlife on this planet are suffering and the things we can do to help them.

Piping plover on a beach — Photo: Bri Benvenuti/USFWS

Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus)

A rebounding population of Great Lakes piping plovers provides a glimpse at the success of dedicated conservation efforts and endangered species protections.

The Great Lakes population of these shorebirds was listed as endangered in 1985 after it was lost from all of its range except Michigan, with just 19 pairs remaining. Habitat destruction from shoreline development and recreation likely played a big role in the decline.

But years of dedicated recovery efforts helped make 2022 a banner year for these plovers, with 150 chicks fledgling in the wild — the most since they were protected as endangered. These efforts included “nest protection via enclosures and fencing, site monitoring, education and outreach, captive rearing, and annual banding,” reported Audubon.

It’s a bright spot in a dim overall outlook for birds across the United States. A 2022 State of the Birds report found bird populations declining in virtually every type of habitat, and 70 species have lost two-thirds of their populations in the past 50 years. The one habitat exception was wetlands, where conservation dollars have poured in to help ducks and geese, who are popular with hunters. The biggest losses have been felt among grassland birds, where agriculture has destroyed native grasslands and introduced toxic pesticides. Shorebirds have suffered major declines as well — 10 species had population declines above 70% since 1980.

We’ll be watching to see if the numbers of Great Lakes piping plovers continue to climb and if their recipe for success can be applied to more at-risk birds.

Wolf laying down. — Gray wolf. Photo: John & Karen Hollingsworth/USFWS

Wolves (Canis lupus)

To understand why we included wolves on this year’s list, just look back to 2022. Colorado moved forward on plans to reintroduce wolves to the state (and perhaps kill too many of them in the process). Wolf populations increased in California and Oregon. Poachers killed animals in Oregon and other states. Idaho and Montana moved forward on more plans to legally hunt more wolves. Conservationists sued to restore national protections to wolves under the Endangered Species Act, after a judge reinstated protection for some populations outside the Rockies. Scientists outlined a plan to restore more wolves to more parts of the American West. Mexican gray wolves got a revised, if imperfect, restoration plan. Red wolves got a new draft plan, too, and the first red wolf cubs since 2018 were born in the wild.

On top of that, few species represent the breadth of conservation issues that we see in wolves. They’ve gained and lost protection more times than we can count, and the constant push between conservation, hunting and other interests remains potent. Meanwhile wolves — who have enormous value for numerous human cultures — display a resilience that allows them to continue to spread and regain territory in places where they were once exterminated. We expect more of all of that — on all these fronts — in 2023.

Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus)

These pachyderms make our list this year because, well, no one else around here seems to be talking about them.

Asian elephants don’t get nearly the same scientific or media attention as their larger African cousins, but they face the same — if not worse — pressures from habitat loss, conflict with humans, population fragmentation, disease, poaching and other exploitations. A recent paper calls this a “charisma failure” and finds that it results in less public awareness of Asian elephants’ endangered status. This, in turn, results in lower conservation funding and prioritization, especially in comparison to other charismatic megafauna species. It also restricts the size and effectiveness of protected areas available to Asian elephants, which leads to more elephant-human conflict, according to a recent study in Malaysia.

The media doesn’t help in this regard. Most of the recent media articles we found mentioning Asian elephants concerned cute baby animals in zoos, and the majority of those fail to mention the species’ endangered status or conservation challenges.

We expect Asian elephants to have a unique opportunity in the year ahead, with 30×30 dominating many top-level conservation discussions. Will it pay off for this oft-neglected species? We’ll be watching.

Vaquitas (Phocoena sinus)

With maybe 10 of these small porpoises left alive in their only habitat, the Gulf of California, all eyes should be on the Mexican government to see what it does next. Tragically, “what it does next” has traditionally amounted to “nothing.” Pay attention: Every further vaquita death matters.

Sea Pangolins (Chrysomallon squamiferum)

Hydrothermal vents, where mineral-rich waters spew from cracks in the seafloor miles below the surface of the water, support a unique and diverse array of animal life on par with the biodiversity of rainforests and coral reefs. Scaly-foot snails, also known as sea pangolin, are among these deep-sea residents.

In 2018 the IUCN listed the mollusks as endangered — not because of an existing threat, but because of one on the horizon. Two of the snails’ three known microhabitats in the Indian Ocean are being investigated as potential sites for deep-sea mining by companies looking to cash in on the demand for minerals needed for electric car batteries. “If mining is permitted the habitat could be severely reduced or destroyed,” the IUCN assessment found. “Even the initial exploration is likely to cause disruption to the habitat.”

Unfortunately sea pangolins are in good company. A 2021 global assessment of mollusks endemic to hydrothermal vents led to 184 being added to the IUCN Red List.

Time may be running out to save them. Despite calls for a moratorium, deep-seabed mining in international waters could begin as early as July, and the testing of mining equipment on the seafloor has already begun.

Guizhou Snub-Nosed Monkeys (Rhinopithecus brelichi)

There are easily a few dozen primates that could end up on this year’s list, but for now let’s focus on this bizarre-looking species. Native to China, only about 125 to 336 of these monkeys are left alive, crammed into a single nature reserve — one that was created to protect them. But that promise has failed, and the population has plummeted over the past decade as tourism and nearby agriculture have soared. Now researchers have called on China to place immediate limits on tourism in the reserve, reconnect a migration corridor to improve genetic health, and create additional populations in case the first one crashes further. “Without immediate action,” they warn, “the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey could go extinct.”

The snub-nosed monkey is not alone in its plight: Primates around the world are generally in peril, and the species in China are often at the tip of that spear of extinction. Will China take action to protect this species — and others within its borders — before it’s too late? Will other countries stand up to conserve their own native primates, to set aside nature for them and other species to live, and to reestablish migration corridors?

If the nations of the world don’t address these issues, we’ll be asking another question: How long until the next primate extinction is announced?

Pillar Corals (Dendrogyra cylindrus)

Mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef has signaled dire times for corals, but there’s more bad news in the Atlantic, too.

Pillar corals, found in the western Atlantic from Florida to the Caribbean, are in peril. These stony corals have been moved from vulnerable to critically endangered on the IUCN Red List as their populations fell 80% across much of their range since 1990, with most of the loss being much more recent.

The biggest threat is a relatively new one: stony coral tissue loss disease, which was discovered on the Florida reef tract in 2014 and rendered pillar corals there “functionally extinct” a few years later. The disease has since spread south to the Caribbean.

It’s not just pillar corals at risk, either. At least 22 species of reef-building corals are vulnerable, and the disease can kill within weeks or months after infection.

Pollution, destructive fishing practices, and climate change add to the problem by weakening corals.

As scientists work to prevent the disease from spreading further, other corals face grave threats as well. Globally, one-third of all coral species are now listed as endangered. Climate change is a primary contributor in many places.

If we don’t work to stem rising sea temperatures, the biodiversity implications of coral loss will be massive. Reefs support 25% of marine species. Without them entire ecosystems could collapse, and thousands of species of fish, birds, sea turtles, plants, invertebrates and marine mammals could be without the food or shelter that reefs help create.

caribou herd — Woodland caribou in northern Ontario. Photo: J.H., (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Caribou (Two subspecies of Rangifer tarandus)

Climate change poses one of the biggest threats to Dolphin and Union caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus), a distinct population of barren-ground caribou native to Canada’s northern territories. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the caribou as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in December. Their population has alarmingly dropped 75% between 2015 and 2018.

The caribou migrate across sea ice between the mainland and Victoria Island. Warming temperatures weaken the ice, making the journey to their breeding, feeding and wintering grounds potentially fatal. A decrease in sea ice has also brought more shipping and industrial activity, which further disrupts sea ice formation and threatens the animals with “mass drowning events,” according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

As climate change drives more warming, expect more trouble for these caribou.

But these northern subspecies aren’t the only ones facing grave dangers. Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) once ranged across half of Canada and some northern U.S. states. But they’re now mostly gone from their southern range. In Canada’s boreal forests, they’re listed as threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act, Canada’s version of the Endangered Species Act.

Their biggest threat is habitat fragmentation driven by logging, mining, and oil and gas development.

While Canada’s boreal woodland caribou try to hang on, in the United States the damage has already been done. Here southern mountain caribou, a distinct population segment of woodland caribou, were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, but none are believed to still be living in the wild.

Will Canada increase protection efforts and safeguard caribou habitat? A recent announcement at the U.N. biodiversity conference in December suggests that some help could be on the way with an agreement between Canada’s federal government and Yukon to increase protected areas in the far north. “Barren-ground and boreal caribou, along with wood bison are at-risk species the agreement says will be prioritized,” the CBC reported.

Quick Hits:

Our colleagues, the activists at the Center for Biological Diversity, suggested several additional species to add to this year’s list, chief among them a toad and a rare plant.

Both the Dixie Valley toad and Tiehm’s buckwheat just gained Endangered Species Act status in December, which could protect their habitats from potential renewable energy projects. The world desperately needs more renewable energy, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of endangered species or even extinction — a fate that could await these two species if their habitats are destroyed for geothermal energy or lithium mining.

Meanwhile, coal still causes problems for a lot of wildlife, including the yellow-spotted woodland salamander, who lives only on an outcrop of Appalachian rock that’s due for mountaintop removal.

Jaguars are starting to wander back into the United States decades after they were eradicated here. In December the Center filed a petition to have the government more actively reintroduce the species. They’re trickling in slowly on their own but need plenty of help to re-establish themselves in their ancestral homes.

The fish of the Colorado River will need some attention as the drought there continues. Wildlife have traditionally gotten short shrift when it comes to Colorado River water allocation, and now several species are paying the price. New rules currently in the works could be all it takes to end several of the river’s key fish species.

We’re eager to learn the fate of the regal fritillary, a large, colorful butterfly that relies on Prairie remnants across the upper Midwest. Conservationists petitioned to protect it way back in 2013; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is supposedly going to finally look into that this year. We hope the news is worth the wait.

And what list would be complete without the eastern hellbender? The Fish and Wildlife Service denied a petition to protect that species last year; conservationists hope this year will bring a reversal. Hellbenders are some of the world’s biggest salamanders, and they’re at risk from a wide range of environmental threats that also affect humans. Saving them would be heavenly news for us all.

What species will you be watching in the months ahead? Drop us a line anytime.

Our Best Articles of 2022

Looking back at environmental loss — and more than a few successes — helps us look ahead to healing the planet.

Looking back at the year that was, we can’t help but also look forward. That’s what the best of our articles and commentaries did in 2022: They visualized the next steps toward a better future for wildlife, the planet and us.

Of course, sometimes getting to that point means looking at the pain, and there was plenty of that in 2022. But we remain resolute in our beliefs that good people can change the world for the better and that journalism is often the lens through which that echoes and amplifies.

So here are some of our best articles of 2022. They cover heavy topics like the extinction crisis, environmental justice and climate change, but they also celebrate those working to reverse the threats all of us face.

Learning to Love — and Protect — Burned Trees — A much-needed reminder that we don’t have to keep doing things the same way we always have.

solar panels — Native Renewables solar project. (Courtesy of Native Renewables)

Solar Sovereignty: The Promise of Native-Led Renewables — Renewable energy isn’t always easy, which is why we focus on folks who are making a difference, especially for underserved communities.

30 Ways Environmentalists Can Participate in Democracy — The midterms may be over, but the buildup to 2024 has just begun, and there’s still a lot left to do on all fronts. Environmentalists often bemoan the political process, but we should never underestimate our power and potential.

Left Out to Dry: Wildlife Threatened by Colorado River Basin Water Crisis — One of the biggest crises facing the country right now. It’s easy to ignore wildlife when people are suffering, which is why this look behind the curtain is important.

Collision Course: Will the Plastics Treaty Slow the Plastics Rush? — Plastic pollution threatens us on a cellular level, and plastic production worsens the climate crisis. The United Nations could finally step in to help.

Another Dam(n) Extinction — Sad news, but a call for change. And a warning of what else could come if we’re not watching closely.

10 Ways War Harms Wildlife — With war in Ukraine raging on, we need to look at the effects of violence on the planet.

Cargo, With a Side of Hornets, Flies and Crabs — Your online shopping comes with a cost, and not always the one you might expect.

Dam Accounting: Taking Stock of Methane Emissions From Reservoirs — Hydropower often gets presented as a clean energy solution. It pays to examine those assertions.

On the Clean Water Act’s 50th Birthday, What Should We Celebrate? — One of the country’s milestone environmental laws celebrated an important anniversary this year, which serves as a reminder of what we can accomplish and what we’re still missing.

The Fight for an Invisible Fish — What you can’t see is still worth protecting.

Rainbows from Bunsen Peak, Mammoth Hot Springs. Photo: Neal Herbert/NPS

Environmental Groups: Earn Your Place at Pride — The environmental movement is still too white, too straight, and too willing to overlook its own diversity and equity problems. This op-ed challenges us to be better.

Is the Jaguarundi Extinct in the United States? — Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve lost until it’s gone. But sometimes there are opportunities to bring it back.

Armadillos Make Great Neighbors — We’re all connected.

Six Ways to Talk About Extinction — The more we talk about it, and the better we talk about it, the more opportunity we’ll have to prevent future loss.

How to Stop Wildlife Trafficking in Its Tracks — An important roadmap for the future.

Thanks for reading in 2022. Thanks, too, for your comments, questions, suggestions, shares and general support. We couldn’t keep running The Revelator without you, our valued readers and writers.

Here’s to more moving forward in 2023 — and beyond.

Our Favorite Environmental Books of 2022

From big bears to the boreal forests, here are some books that moved us and helped illuminate what’s worth fighting for.

In a world where news is often reduced to soundbites, 3-minute videos or 280-character tweets, the art of book writing has somehow endured. We couldn’t be happier — except that it’s made narrowing down our favorite nonfiction environmental books this year a bit tough.

We interviewed numerous authors this year and reviewed dozens of books. Below are some that stood out for us, but it’s in no way exhaustive. If you’re looking for more recommendations, we also rounded up great reads for kids, and books about our winged friends, feminism and the environment, and more.

A History Lesson

Let’s start with hope. Environmental historian Laura Martin’s Wild by Design focuses on ecological restoration. There’s much we can do to minimize and alleviate some of the harm we’ve caused to this planet. But to do a good job of that, we should know how we got here. Martin traces the history of ecological restoration in the United States and how the scientific field of ecology got its start. It’s not all a pretty picture.

“I wanted to put the history of ecological restoration in dialogue with the future of ecological restoration,” she told The Revelator in an interview. “There are so many times I’ve heard people say, ‘It’s been done this way for decades.’ But when I dug into the archives I found that wasn’t always the case.”

People and Planet

To better understand why we need social justice and environmental action in tandem, Leah Thomas’ book The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet is the perfect primer.

“The book serves as an introduction to the intersection between environmentalism, racism, and privilege, and as an acknowledgment of the fundamental truth that we cannot save the planet without protecting all of its people,” her website explains.

Slow Water

The concept of slow water may not yet be as common as slow food, but journalist Erica Gies has done much to help it gain needed recognition with her book Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge.

“In all of the cases I looked at,” she explained to The Revelator, “The water detectives were trying to give water access to its slow phases again, whether that meant restoring or protecting wetlands, or reclaiming floodplains, or protecting wet meadows, or in a city, creating something like bioswales.”

Standing Up for Sharks

Sharks are much maligned in the media and scientist David Shiffman helps set the record straight in Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive With the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator.

He explains sharks’ importance, why many are threatened and what we can do to help them. (Bonus: He also offered us his tips for a successful book tour.)

Graphic Images

Cartoonist Kate Beaton provides an intimate and heartbreaking look at life in Alberta, Canada’s dirtiest industry in her graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. In a year packed with environmentally themed graphic novels, this one packed the biggest punch.

The book “is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people,” explains the publisher.

Big Bears

It’s been 11,000 years since giant short-faced bears — which stood 10-feet-tall on their hind legs and weighed nearly a ton — disappeared from the planet. Author and Center for Biological Diversity creative director Mike Stark brings them back to life in Chasing the Ghost Bear: On the Trail of America’s Lost Super Beast.

This meditation on a long-lost species also offers us a chance to examine the cost of today’s extinction crisis.

North Woods

“The trees are on the move. They shouldn’t be. And this sinister fact has enormous consequences for all life on Earth,” writes journalist Ben Rawlence in The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth.

The book tells the complex ecological story of how climate change is already affecting the northernmost forests by focusing on seven tree species in seven different boreal ecotones. His reporting is both fascinating and terrifying. And he provides a much-needed examination not of what climate warming might mean for future ecosystems, but what change it has already wrought.

Boreal forests, he told The Revelator, are “going to be key players in what comes next.”

A Legacy

Celebrated nature writer Barry Lopez died in 2020, but his posthumously published collection of essays, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World, adds to his literary legacy and includes some previously unpublished works.

“Thrilling encounters with wolves and killer walruses notwithstanding, Lopez wasn’t after Animal Planet-worthy adventures,” writes Ben Ehrenreich in a review for The New York Times. “He wanted us to seek out the human histories that reside in the landscape, too: the legacies of atrocity and exploitation that bounce around the rocks and valleys of this country as much as elks and coyotes do.”

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

Previously in The Revelator:

How the Media Stokes Needless Fears About Sharks