Summer Reads: Lost Birds, Pummeled Pumas and Climate Anxiety

We have the word on several great new books, including a look at how to fight climate disinformation and a satire of the extinction crisis.

I’ll admit it: sometimes I get anxious about climate change. Other times I get anxious about climate disinformation. And still other times I just want to look at birds or have a comedian make me laugh at the folly of humanity.

This month’s new environmental books support all those feelings and needs, and more.

The links below all go to publishers’ websites, but you should also be able to find any of them through your local bookseller or library (which may offer books in print, audio or digital formats).

Lessons From the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth: How to Live with Care and Purpose in an Endangered World by Kate Schapira

I’ve been an admirer of Schapira ever since we profiled her in 2018. She’s spent the past few years setting up booths in public parks to help talk everyday people through their climate anxieties. Now she’s taken her experience — and the stories she’s heard along the way — to a broader audience with this insightful, easy-to-digest book. It’s full of expert thoughts on dealing with trauma and fear, and information to help you understand the reality of the climate crisis. It’s also packed with questions you can ask yourself to kickstart some useful self-examination — not just of your mindset, but of the systems in place around you. Importantly, each batch of questions is followed by a section offering guidance on putting your answers into practice. Along the way, you’ll realize you’re not alone in your anxieties — as Schapira notes, we’re all “part of an ecosystem.” That’s my favorite part of this book: You can use it to sooth your own anxieties or to work through them as a group. Because we’re all afraid, and we have a right to that fear, but we can turn our collective anxiety, grief and anger into positive action.

Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World by Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant

Wynn-Grant first came to my attention on recently rebooted Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, the iconic wildlife TV show, where she serves as the first Black, female wildlife ecologist to host any major program of its kind. Around the same time, I devoured her PBS podcast Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, which is overdue for a new season. But those two multimedia efforts didn’t prepare for this powerful memoir, which follows her around the world and through the challenges of becoming a Black, female scientist in a world that often undervalues all of those. The book is full of valuable lessons; in particular, I keep returning to the chapter about the grief of losing her grandfather, how a Maasai chief helped her deal with that grief by letting her tears water a 1,000-year-old baobab tree, and how her experiences with both elders shaped her approach to life and career. “My grandfather and his generation left a better world for me and my Black peers, but by no means a perfect one,” she writes. “Through my work with animals, ecosystems, and humans, I want to leave the world a little better than I found it.”

Tales of the Urban Wild: A Puma’s Journey by Dr. Tiffany Yap & Meital Smith

This nonfiction graphic novel, told mostly in shades of yellow and brown, takes us on our own journey through the difficult life of a mountain lion in the modern world. We see how they hunt, breed, and face increasing pressures from human highways, vehicles and development (not to mention rat poisons and wildfires). The book also visits the scientists and other people trying to make life a little bit easier for pumas and the wildlife around them (and maybe ourselves in the process). In a rarity for books of this type, the creators manage to convey the big cats’ personalities and struggles without anthropomorphizing them; instead, they use the human characters to convey the seriousness of the situation. The result is a science-based book with heart and hope. (Full disclosure: Yap is a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, the publisher of The Revelator.)

On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy by Lee McIntyre

This slim book, published last year while I was on sabbatical, is obviously modeled on Timothy Snyder’s must-read On Tyranny, but it’s no pale imitation. This is an effective primer on how to deal with lies, propaganda, and the resulting deeply held (if inaccurate) beliefs that plague modern society, notably (for our purposes) when it comes to climate and election denial. You can probably read this book in an hour; the wisdom it offers will shape your communication for a lifetime. (Pair this with Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity by Sander van der Linden for even more tools and strategies.)

The Birds That Audubon Missed by Kenn Kaufman

What a fascinating book. Kaufman writes about, and paints, several bird species ignored, invented or overlooked by John James Audubon, while reassessing the complicated legacy of the famed 19th-century naturalist. At the same time, Kaufman asks several deep questions about what it means to be a naturalist or a birder in the 21st century. He draws upon the history of scientific “discovery” of species, along with the internecine rivalries between competing naturalists, many of whom don’t get the modern attention they deserve (the book could almost be subtitled “and the naturalists Audubon eclipsed”). He writes movingly about his own journey to becoming a nature artist and his travels around the country to observe more and more birds, which he ties into Audubon’s own historic travels. And of course, he writes about the extinction crisis, which early naturalists helped fuel through their practice of shooting the birds they would paint or collecting them for display. This history (and personal perspective) serves to put modern birding into a broader context and illuminates not just the birds themselves but their roles in our cultures. (Pair this with The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan, which just landed on my desk.)

Groo: In the Wild by Sergio Aragonés & Mark Evanier

For more than four decades, Aragonés (Mad Magazine) and Evanier (Garfield & Friends) have used their comic books and graphic novels about Groo — a fray-loving barbarian so stupid and destructive he can’t set foot on a boat without sinking it — to satirize capitalism, religion, politics, racism and other matters of human arrogance. This time Groo once again cluelessly slices and stabs his way through armies and cities while the creators smartly skewer the extinction crisis, destructive farming techniques, overfishing, dams, the ivory trade, deforestation, wildlife trafficking, forced Indigenous relocation and other tough environmental topics. I’ll admit, that doesn’t sound like much fun, but it takes a talented creative team to lampoon human-caused extinction while telling a story this laugh-out-loud funny. Along the way, Aragonés and Evanier show that even a brain-addled mendicant like Groo isn’t dumb enough to eat or exploit a species into extinction. That takes a special kind of stupid.

In Brief:

But wait, there’s more! Here are seven more worthy environmental books, including one horrifying novel, that recently crossed our paths:

That’s it for this month, but you can find hundreds of additional book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Revelator Reads: 15 Random Books That Every Environmentalist Should Read

Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Block Progress Again — This Time on Plastics

Before the next global meeting on plastics, we need more transparency and disclosure around the corporate stakeholders wielding influence there.

The fourth session of the United Nations Environment Program’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, held in April in Ottawa, was intended to address one of the most pressing, widespread pollution problems of our time. But the influence of fossil fuel and chemical industries on the meetings stymied progress on efforts to protect human health and the natural world.

In seeking to disrupt meaningful progress to tackle plastic pollution, lobbyists used the same playbook as the thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists whose presence has become routine at critical global environmental conferences. At the most recent climate CoP in Dubai, for instance, the fossil fuel industry bloc was bigger than any country’s delegation save Brazil and the UAE.

In Ottawa industry exerted its power in numbers, but also in its infiltration of high-level meetings. Sixteen lobbyists registered across nine different country delegations, giving them access to Member State-only sessions and influence in key negotiations. In other meetings, some lobbyists adopted an aggressive approach, with independent scientists from the Scientists’ Coalition reporting acts of intimidation and harassment to the U.N.

Various oil-producing states fortified industry efforts by working to water down the ambition of the treaty. Certain states, including Saudi Arabia, India, Kuwait and Qatar, reportedly attempted to undermine the progress already made on definitions in the hope of restricting the scope of a full lifecycle of plastics to waste alone.

plastic litter
Plastic litter found on a beach in Norway. (Photo by Bo Eide, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Plastic production has increased nearly 230-fold in the past 70 years, with this persistent, mostly petrochemical-based material now found in ecosystems across the globe and the bodies of countless species, including our own. Fossil fuel and chemical companies have invested billions of dollars into large-scale plastic production projects over the last decade.

As a result, a staggering 196 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists signed up for the most recent round of meetings in Ottawa, a 37% increase since the third wave of negotiations at the end of 2023. Their group was seven times larger than the Indigenous Peoples Caucus and three times larger than the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastic Treaty.

This power imbalance makes it all the more unjust that industry crowded out the voices of those most affected by plastic pollution. Despite ambitious efforts by states such as Rwanda and Peru, tactics of deliberate obstruction and delay by vested interests resulted in a draft text muddled with uncertainties. Proposed intersessional work also fails to address the critical issue of primary plastic polymer production and makes the role of observers — including frontline communities and Indigenous people — unclear.

With no first draft of the Global Plastics Treaty decided, lobbyists and oil-producing states continue to protect their right to produce plastic without cleaning it up — and communities around the world remain burdened by an escalating waste crisis.

It is patently obvious that progress is more difficult, if not impossible, when those profiting from the planetary emergency enjoy so much influence over how — and whether — we address it. The industry lobby too often gains a preferential platform due to its vast funds and position in government backrooms, and that needs to end.

Only complete transparency in international environmental conferences stands a chance of making a dent. Progress has been made by the U.N. in disclosing affiliations, but this remains largely voluntary and lacks the strength needed to end industry’s undue influence.

Ahead of the next session of the UNEP’s INC on plastics, scheduled to take place from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, 2024, in Busan, Republic of Korea, the U.N. should implement its own version of the OECD recommendations on transparency in lobbying. This should include full disclosure of all lobbying and influence activities, producing a clear footprint of who lobbyists represent, how and what they are paid, and who they meet. To prevent industry lobbyists from dominating negotiations, there should also be a more selective process for assigning conference presidencies and sponsorships, and industry stakeholders should be banned from official delegations.

Vitally, we must prioritize the involvement of frontline groups such as Indigenous peoples and communities in the Global South. Representatives from some of the hardest-hit places often struggle to acquire badges and secure funding for travel and accommodation; often they can’t even access key negotiations. Their presence at conferences and access to the higher levels of negotiations must be guaranteed.

To secure a stable climate, protect global biodiversity, and support human health, we cannot delay systemic change any longer. We’re at a breaking point: Plastics are found from the deepest ocean to the highest peak; we’re set to blow past the targets of the Paris Agreement; and the U.N. has repeatedly sounded the alarm that the next few years will make or break our chances of a sustainable future.

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

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Help the Youth Believe There’s More: A Reflection on Higher Risk Environments and Climate Crisis in the Black Community

If we want to change behavior and protect our communities, we need to change belief. That requires mentorship — and embracing Black culture and history.

Adapted from the books Youth Change Agent by Keith Strickland and Before the Streetlights Come On by Heather McTeer Toney.

From Youth Change Agent by Keith Strickland

A change agent cannot free someone from something they won’t release. Before a change agent can work on changing youth behaviors, they have to change the youth’s beliefs. A person’s beliefs are much more deeply rooted than most of us realize. Our beliefs guide our actions, morals, ethics, and norms. Everything we do is motivated by something we believe.

Case in Point

Growing up, we had very few food choices in our community. We had a fast-food burger place at one point, but it closed after multiple people were killed in the parking lot in a short period of time. We also had a pizza chain restaurant, but it also closed after it was robbed over and over. We had a restaurant that sold fried chicken, which we all ate pretty much daily. When I was almost thirteen years old, a hot-wing restaurant opened. I was the first customer. Chicken was my favorite food because I ate mostly chicken. The thought of chicken served in more than a dozen flavors was like heaven to me. Now, after I’ve experienced food from around the world, I’ve come to realize I do not like hot wings or fried chicken nearly as much as I thought I did. In the hood, we are forced to eat certain foods because it’s all we have, but you never really know what you do or don’t like if you’ve only had limited exposure.

A few years later, I opened a barbershop in our neighborhood and a car detailing shop. A fish restaurant right up the street from both of my businesses decided to support me. The restaurant was a chain and very popular. I had flyers printed for my companies, one on each side. They put my flyer in every bag when someone ordered food. Because they supported me so heavily, I ate there at least three times a week. One day, I was in an upscale neighborhood out of town. I was slightly uncomfortable because I felt out of place. I saw the same restaurant as the one in my neighborhood, so I went there since it reminded me of home. I ordered the same exact side dish (broccoli) with my meal. However, I took it back twice because something was wrong. The second time, I had a slight attitude. I told them that the broccoli was hot, and everyone gave me a strange look. But actually, it was meant to be served hot. For years, I only had it from the restaurant in my neighborhood — it was never hot. I had grown so used to that, I had no idea it could be served differently or was being served incorrectly based on the restaurant’s own standards.

Most of our beliefs were given to us; we didn’t create them for ourselves. What we hear other people say influences our beliefs. If our parents say it, if our peers believe it, if our culture embraces it, we most likely will believe it as well. As a result, we have countless beliefs that we are not aware of, and many of these beliefs don’t serve us well. We do not see the damage our beliefs may be causing us because we aren’t even aware of them. Even if we are, we may not know anything else, so we think what we believe is the only way to think.

Creating a New Vision

Youth need exposure and visibility to a world outside of their own to be successful. Why did I keep doing the same things I saw that caused each of my friends to lose their life? Watching people just like me being murdered for doing the same exact things as me — it is the most hurtful and horrifying thing I have ever lived through. I felt hopeless and wanted a better life. I decided it would be better to be dead than to live trapped in poverty for the rest of my life. What was the point of being alive if I was forced to live a life where I was poor, hungry, and never had access to any of the things I wanted? So, why wasn’t losing my freedom enough motivation to change? Prison is only a threat when you feel like you are not already in one. When you are born into a toxic home, in a dangerous community, then forced to live around violence and crime, you are already in a prison. The only difference between hopelessness and a jail cell is one has bars and walls. If someone only knows one way to do something, that is what they are going to do. The odds of someone accomplishing a goal are very low if they cannot clearly see their goal or the route to success, which is why creating a clear vision and a thorough plan is critical. So, what did I need but didn’t have access to that kept me from being able to change my life? My vision was the beginning of my problems.

I saw the world as a negative place, that you have to do whatever it takes to survive and make your way in. What I needed more than anything was a positive vision I could believe in and buy into. A positive vision would have stopped the entire process before it started because all of the negative actions would not have aligned with the positive mindset built around my vision.

Exposure

The next thing I needed was exposure. Exposure reinforces what is possible. Without exposure, youth will believe the only thing that is possible is what they have seen. If they have only seen the world as hard and a place where you have to do anything to survive, that is exactly what our youth will do. If our youth can see a world outside of theirs, a place where people survive without having to commit a crime and are relatively happy, our youth will know they can live that way too.

What I’m not saying, is to take higher risk youth away from their homes. Instead, I’m saying we must show youth a way to live differently, so they can believe there is more and appreciate their interconnectedness and role in a big world. A vision their ancestors had.

In her book, Before the Streetlights Come On, author and environmental activist Heather McTeer Toney, writes about this intersection of the environment and the inner city, where many higher risk Black youth live, due to a history of racism, segregation, and redlining. She says:

From Before the Streetlights Come On by Heather McTeer Toney

In the Black community, we have other things to worry about besides climate change. The idea gets lost in the cloud of issues we muddle through daily. When listed next to job security, food insecurity, gun violence and the blatant racism faced daily by African Americans, climate change ranks low among problems competing for our attention.

But as African Americans, we are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change. Black people make up 13% of the US population, but breathe 40% more dirty air than our white counterparts. We live in areas four times as likely to be impacted by hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, and we are twice as likely to be hospitalized or die from climate-related health disparities. Surviving traumatic change is part of our lived history, not new to our experience.

Our history underscores the value of Black people’s role in the climate movement. We know how to adapt to change. I love the example of recycling and reuse. Recycling isn’t a “new” method to reduce plastics and waste in Black households. Enslaved Africans creatively recycled and reused every item they encountered. Our great-grandmothers repurposed leftover materials to create beautiful quilts, patterned with the stories of struggle and survival. They wrapped us in the warmth of their love and legacy. Scraps of meat and vegetables were turned into succulent dishes prepared with care and prayers for nourishment. A plastic bag from the grocery store was also a trash bag, hair conditioner cap, lunch box, Halloween bucket, stuffing for mailing breakable items and what you wrapped the lotion bottle in when traveling so it wouldn’t spill on clothes. For us, recycling and reuse isn’t just to protect the planet. It is a way of life, a nod to our memories, a way to protect what we had and keep what we have. Today, these recycle and reuse lessons remain in our culture regardless of how much money we have. While it wasn’t right, we managed to survive historical climate and environmental injustices while addressing the multitudes of social justice issues plaguing minority and often marginalized people. This is one example of the ways we have naturally responded to climate crisis.

Climate and environmental issues have always been intertwined with our struggles for justice. Trust me, making sure there are equitable climate solutions that speak to the experience of all people is tantamount. Black academics, community leaders and scientists who work in environmental and climate issues don’t get a break from other injustices that impact Black America. Working in climate doesn’t make us immune to the varied injustices that hurt our sons and daughters. After talking about climate change, I go home to concerns of my husband being pulled over by the police or my sweet five-year-old son being categorized as too aggressive when he’s playing. Before giving a speech on environmental justice, I worry that my daughter has to deal with bullying because she’s in a majority-white school and people either pick on her stunning African features or question her Blackness because of her brilliance. The multitude of social justice issues that weigh on Black people never gives way to one or the other, nor to environmental and climate injustice. Despite the myriad of persistent struggles faced by Black American climate advocates, we still press the focus on the environment and climate change. We do this because the science is clear—the climate has changed and continues to do so now. Devastation is taking place as we speak. Time waits for no one. Climate degradation and environmental injustice are deadly factors in Black communities, not unlike killer cops and uncontrolled access to firearms. The difference between mainstream majority-white environmental movements and minority-led Black, brown and Indigenous environmental movements is that the latter does not have the luxury of silo. Our issues coexist.

Our foremothers and forefathers made it the business of the village to ensure that the next generation understood the importance of doing our best to keep everyone safe. Our history serves as a clarion call to environmental consciousness. African Americans have always been molded or influenced by our environment.

Previously in The Revelator:

16 Essential Books About Environmental Justice, Racism and Activism

 

Cities Respond to Global Pollinator Decline

From pocket parks to large-scale projects, cities around the world are working to reverse a troubling trend.

Every June, cities around the globe celebrate Pollinator Week, an international event to raise awareness about the important roles that birds, bats, bees, butterflies, beetles, and other small mammals serve in pollinating our food systems and landscapes. These crucial species are declining worldwide, with many on the brink of extinction.

Cities have responded to this crisis with a variety of urban initiatives designed to foster pollinator habitats and in the process transform once-stark cement landscapes — as well as pocket parks, curb strips, and highway dividers — into lush, welcoming areas for pollinators and humans alike.

In Washington, D.C., ambitious pollinator projects are abundant on rooftops of public, office, and private spaces, ranging from the renovated D.C. Public Library’s main branch to National Public Radio’s headquarters, which hosts an apiary. Throughout the District of Columbia, municipal code requires buildings to maintain the tree boxes and curb strips outside their properties. This often leads to creative landscaping on the smallest of scales.

A prairie meadow in Fargo, North Dakota.
Image by Sam DeMarais, Fargo Parks

In the city’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District, a LEED-certified community, an annual competition to engage the neighborhood’s corporate residents in showcasing their tree-box gardening skills has evolved to focus on pollinator habitats.

“For the last four years, the theme of the competition has been ‘happy habitats’,” says Patrick Revord, the director of planning and urban design for the Business Improvement District.

The district published guidelines and scorecards, with specific requirements for pollinators. Building owners and tenants worked with landscape architects to design micro habitats, bee hotels, and other insect shelters.

“Now we have 200 properties who are all doing pollinators because we asked them to,” says Revord. “It’s a much greater reach than we’re able to do as an organization by ourselves.”

One advantage: Creating pollinator habitats is relatively easy. “A lot of places already put plants out in planters and in front of buildings nationwide,” he says. “It’s just a matter of giving people the tools to put the right plants in, and then deputizing them and enabling them to go and make those good decisions.”

A brightly-colored block-long parklet has pink and yellow seating and tables, a protected bike lane and bike racks, and large planters with pollinators plants and a tree.
A block-long parklet in Washington, D.C. incorporates pollinator-friendly plants into a seating area with protected bike lanes and racks. Photo by Molly McCluskey

It’s not just businesses. Parks and other public spaces also play an important role. For example, Fargo, North Dakota’s Urban Pollinator Plots Project aims to establish more than 50 acres of high diversity, forb-rich, native prairie plantings in urban parklands.

“I think some of the bigger challenges are just simply the establishment of the prairie,” says Sam DeMarais, a park forester in the Fargo Park District, who oversees the program. “It’s a skill set and a knowledge base that really takes a keen eye and some diligence on doing it properly. Everyone thinks you can just plant the prairie and let it go, but that’s not really the case.”

Fargo’s city council has a Sustainability and Resiliency Committee that has helped elevate the public awareness of the program. But for DeMarais it’s an ongoing challenge.

“We have to help people understand, you know, there’s an intent to letting these areas grow,” he says, even if some unexpected or unfamiliar plants pop up along the way. “They’re not just weeds. They’re important pollinator plants. Some weeds are going to come along with that, but a little bit of Canada thistle here and there along with the prairie restoration isn’t such a bad thing.”

Fargo’s Urban Pollinator Plots program. Photo by Sam DeMarais.

Fargo’s and Washington, D.C.’s programs are each over 10 years old, and time has brought knowledge of what works and doesn’t, and the ability to adapt. But less-established initiatives across the country could provide even more clues. A new project at the Port of Vancouver, in Washington state, aims to add a small native plant and flower pollinator garden in the port’s mitigation bank in the Lower Columbia River watershed. It could serve as a case study in introducing pollinators into industrial areas. In Michigan, the nonprofit organization Detroit Hives showcases how to transform vacant lots into pollinator-friendly habitat, a program that recently contributed to Detroit joining the Bee City USA program. Researchers in Puerto Rico are examining the relationships between animal and plant resources in urban areas on the island, and conducting interviews to learn more about public perspectives on plants and wildlife.

But why stop at the city level? Pollinator programs around the world can look to Ireland, where the entire island, north and south, has implemented the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan, a program that brings together community groups, local authorities, councils, businesses, farmers, and others to create a pollinator-friendly landscape.

“We’ve got over 100 different types of wild bee in Ireland and a third of their numbers are going down,” says Kate Chandler, the communities and engagement pollinator officer with Biodiversity Ireland, which manages the program. “The idea is that there’s a series of actions that we can take to change the way we manage our landscape.” The program puts out a series of guidelines, all resources are free, and participation is voluntary. Not everyone has opted in yet, but Chandler is hopeful.

“What we are seeing is that in places where actions have been taken to help them, local pollinator populations are increasing, which is really encouraging,” she says. “Because it shows that what we’re doing is working.”

Getting Started, Avoiding Pitfalls

For communities wanting to start a pollinator project, large or small, Patrick Powell, the chief of staff at the Golden Triangle BID, recommends bringing teams together at the very start of the ideation process. “You have to develop the project in collaboration with your maintenance and planning teams,” he says. “You can’t have something built by your planning or construction department and then have it just dumped on the maintenance folks. And then they’re like, well, this isn’t going to grow here, or this tree is going to get too large and be in the roadway, or this type of drain system is impossible to maintain.”

With a fond chuckle, Powell stresses the importance of streamlining the number of plants used in any particular project for ease of ongoing maintenance.

“Landscape architects, it’s like they get paid by the variety, but sometimes they need some reality,” he says. “I think our initial design for our rain garden had like 60 different bulbs. We were like, we can’t even acquire these. Having construction, design, and maintenance working together, from the beginning, is the best for these types of projects.”

DeMarais also stresses the importance of choosing the correct plants for a restoration or pollinator project.

“A lot of state agencies do native restoration work, so use your local extension services and things like that, or Game and Fish or Department of Natural Resources, to gather information on some of the best practices,” he says. “Also, use true native plants that are local ecotype to your region or your specific area. Those plants are going to provide the best benefits and thrive in your area.” In their case, that meant avoiding prairie species that looked right but which might have functioned differently in their ecosystem. “You can get a common blanket flower, for example, but it may be a blanket flower and the seed came from Texas versus finding seed of a blanket flower that came from North Dakota.”

Chandler echoes that: “Whether you’re talking about different areas of the globe or different areas of the country or even different areas of the city, the habitats that you have in a particular local area will be unique,” she says. “And there will be a unique mixture of species, a unique diversity of flora and fauna, some of which will already be providing a service for pollinators and other biodiversity as well.”

In Fargo, DeMarais says he has seen an increase in pollinators, particularly monarchs, in areas where his team has implemented the program. It’s an encouraging sign that the work they’re doing to restore the prairie is having a positive effect.

“Prairie is being lost by tens of thousands of acres every year,” he says. “It’s almost disappeared from our landscape. And I think as stewards of the land, we need to do our part to make sure that our environments as healthy as possible.”

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Indigenous Artist Meryl McMaster: Lost In, and Crafted by, the Natural World

The Canadian photographer travels to remote areas to explore identity and our relationship with nature.

The first time I saw Meryl McMaster’s work was in the spring of 2022. The Ottawa-based artist was one of 12 Indigenous artists from the Arctic region exhibiting in the House of Sweden, the building on Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown waterfront that serves as the country’s embassy. Her contributions to the exhibit were enormous photographic prints — self-portraits, with dramatic costumes, set in vast, expansive and remote landscapes, the kind of art that can almost be stepped into, and the kind that leaves an impression even when they’re out of sight.

McMaster herself seems both lost in the environment, and crafted from it, which is the entire point.

Her photographs and sculptures — now on display at a solo exhibit at the Embassy of Canada and a group show at the National Museum of Women in the Arts — also strive to explore her conflicting sense of identity as a Canadian with Nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), British and Dutch lineage.

In a conversation with The Revelator, McMaster spoke of her process, her connection to the landscape, and her evolution as an artist, as well as what advice she has for people pursuing creative paths that might scare them.

Your work has this very ethereal, visceral quality. It has both a very soft, dreamy edge, but also a sharp impact. What do you want folks to leave with the experience of viewing one of your exhibits?

I really welcome the viewer to engage with the work, sometimes just as simply as using their imagination to fill in the blanks, and travel in this quick moment that they have with the work, and this own storyline in their own head.

On a simpler level, it’s just also having this moment, to escape, and forget the outside world.

I’d want them to think about our connections to each other, and also our disconnections from our cultures, and explore in their head the wonderment of these really immersive landscapes.

I just think of our natural world, and just how in awe of it I am, and how small we are in this natural world, and how it’s so important to think about protecting these spaces that we all live in.

Also I’d like them to think about how I’m representing, in these photographs, the generations before us and what these previous generations have sacrificed, and went through, in order for us to be in these spaces, and places today.

These are vastly panoramic landscapes that you’re working in, with very elaborate designs. What goes into staging your photographs?

(laughs) It’s definitely a process that’s taken many years to nail down, because it’s tricky. In a lot of cases, I have to hike into some of these locations. I don’t have a huge team that works with me. It’s usually friends or family, depending on where I’m photographing. So with the help of one or two other people, I’m carrying in the objects you’re seeing in these photographs. I try to keep my camera kit very small. I’m not taking lights or anything like that.

I’m usually up early because I’m photographing a lot in the morning, or in those golden hours.

It’s a lot of research into these site-specific locations, looking at historical photographs. When I get to these sites, I’m usually there for a couple days, to allow for contingency, for weather. A lot of times, I’m dealing with some tricky weather, high winds especially, although you can’t see that in the photograph.

 

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It’s a lot to prepare for, even just mentally and physically. It’s physically draining afterwards. Sometimes I’m photographing in the middle of winter, so it’s quite cold. Being the photographer, being the one that’s thinking about all the technical aspects, as well as also being the subject, and thinking about how to kind of get across that narrative through the image — it’s definitely not easy.

You’ve spoken previously of the conflicts between your Euro-Canadian and Indigenous identities. Why do you focus on these issues, and how do they manifest in your work?

From a really young age, I was aware of my different backgrounds, and knowing about my ancestry, family history, and stories. I was really interested in getting to know, and imagine, who those families were. That grew into learning about our broader history and how it went from these smaller family stories to these broader, more complex relationships that my ancestors had. That got me really curious, and it started to create these questions about my belonging and identity to these very different histories and cultures. Then, when I was trying to figure out what was I going to explore as an artist, I really wanted to do something that I could relate to, and, coming from a very personal place, something that I could speak to from my own personal experience.

That’s where I really gravitated toward exploring this complexity of family, and kin, and looking at this bicultural heritage of mine. I was thinking about these fuzzy edges of these multiple histories and thinking about time and memory, and those complex questions. I’m trying to create, through this influence of storytelling, these magical moments, these narratives that look at actual events and experiences mixed with these imagined experiences, in order to draw the viewer in, in a different way, to start to think about these conversations, and these harder histories that we all share.

 

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Meryl, your first professional exhibit was in 2010. How has your work as an artist grown from your first exhibition to now, when you’re exhibiting across Washington and around the world? How do you see that evolution?

Well, I didn’t expect [to be] exploring personal and direct family stories. In my earlier works, I was working more broadly with historical events, not working with site-specific locations, partly just because of budget. I was working in and around where I lived, and the costumes maybe weren’t as elaborate as what I do now, or the objects. My abilities to create the different elements within the images has grown a lot.

You know, I still in a lot of ways feel like this emerging artist, and when I think back, it’s just amazing how time flies, and all the ideas that I have explored over my work, it’s interesting to see them evolve, and maybe become more deeper, more enriched through time.

Because of grants, I’m able to travel to site-specific locations that influence the ideas that I’m working with, to travel to these places, and also back to where my family’s from in Saskatchewan. And I can see how my work has grown as a result.

 

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What advice do you have for other artists as they’re choosing subjects and themes — things that maybe are a little bit more intimate than they want, or comfortable with, or a little bit scarier, a bit of a stretch — about stepping into that space?

To really inspire, I think it has to come from something that you’re really passionate about, and interested in exploring, and lending your voice to. If you’re just really interested and passionate about exploring certain questions and ideas, I think that will shine through in the works.

Try not to listen to too many outside voices. Follow your gut as much as possible. I think something that I’ve trusted more over the years, as I’ve evolved as an artist, is just when something doesn’t feel right, don’t be afraid to pivot. When an idea is not working out for me, or a sculpture’s not working out for me, sometimes it’s heartbreaking to have to start from scratch. But taking those risks and trusting yourself, that’s part of the creative process of an artist.

Letting there be that freedom for ideas to just change and evolve, I think, is something that takes a bit of the pressure off and also puts more kind of excitement and joy into that process. I think just as a young artist, just don’t feel like you have to finish the idea at the beginning. Start experimenting and let those ideas evolve.

As an artist you express yourself through your photography and your work, and you’ve been written about over the years in different capacities. What do you want people to know about you and your work that hasn’t already been put out there?

Within my work, it’s almost like this different side of me that you see that maybe you wouldn’t when we’re just talking normally. When I make these images, it gives me a different kind of confidence, or maybe kind of different outlook on the world. I take my time with these images to have these feelings, and even these insecurities, these harder questions, that I put into this work.

Meryl McMaster’s exhibit, “On the Edge of This Immensity,” will be on display at the Embassy of Canada’s art gallery through the summer. The National Museum of Women in the Arts’ “Women to Watch” exhibit will be on display through August 11. Additional events are listed on her website. Follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

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Species Spotlight: The Laguna Mountains Skipper Butterfly — What’s in a Name, Anyway?

These butterflies are no longer present in their namesake range, but a collaboration aims to bring them back.

Species SpotlightSince 2021 the San Diego Zoo Entomology team has reared larvae of Laguna Mountains skippers in the Butterfly Conservation Lab at the San Diego Zoo. Adult female butterflies collected from Palomar Mountain lay eggs in the lab each spring, and we release them as larvae or pupae at the reintroduction site in the Laguna Mountains Recreation Area. This process is called “headstarting.” Rearing the larvae in the lab allows us to protect them from threats at a vulnerable life stage and to gather life history and behavioral data — nearly impossible to capture in the field — that inform future efforts.

Species name:

Laguna Mountains skipper, Pyrgus ruralis lagunae (LMS for short)

Description:

This tiny butterfly has a wingspan measuring about 1 inch across, with a checkered white and grayish-brown coloration. Though it isn’t likely to draw much attention from non-lepidopterists, like many small butterflies it’s a critical component of its native ecosystem’s food web. Unfortunately only one such ecosystem remains in the United States.

Where it’s found:

Montane meadows of San Diego County in Southern California. Though it’s no longer found in the Laguna Mountains, a small population persists in the Palomar Mountain area. The Laguna Mountains skipper requires the presence of its host plant Horkelia clevelandii, a perennial herb in the rose family, to survive.

Laguna Mountains skipper eggs are laid singly on their host plant, Horkelia clevelandii. They are about the size of a pin head. © Michael Ready / San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

IUCN Red List status:

Like most insects Laguna Mountains skippers have not been assessed by IUCN for the Red List. However, they’re protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act and appears on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s list of California Terrestrial and Vernal Pool Invertebrates of Conservation Priority.

Major threats:

Habitat destruction, drought, climate change, and related phenological mismatch between butterflies and host/nectar plants.

Notable conservation programs or legal protections:

These butterflies were protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1997. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA Forest Service, Wildspring Ecology, Osborne Biological Consulting and the Urban Wildlands Group have collaborated to coordinate head starting, release and monitoring of this species, in hopes of facilitating their recovery. As the result of this partnership, the Laguna Mountains skipper butterfly took flight in its former range in 2021 for the first time since the late 1990s.

My favorite experience:

Not many people get to bear witness to every life stage of an endangered species, especially one so tiny. I remember a newly hatched LMS larva that became entangled in webbing from a spider mite and needed help getting free, something that was only possible to detect under a microscope and required a tiny paintbrush to correct! We learned quickly that helping this species required getting small — really, really small.

Larva under magnification. © Michael Ready

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

As is the case for many endangered and threatened species, habitat loss is the main culprit in the decline of the Laguna Mountains skipper. Reintroduction efforts are nascent and adaptive, and progress is made each season to identify the best approach to recovery.

Key research:

Livestock Grazing Shapes the Vegetation Structure and Subsequent Habitat Use by the Endangered Skipper Pyrgus ruralis lagunae (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae)

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Do you live in or near a threatened habitat or community, or have you worked to study or protect endangered wildlife? You’re invited to share your stories in our ongoing features, Protect This Place and Species Spotlight. 

Titicaca in Crisis: Climate Change Is Drying Up the Biggest Lake in the Andes

Persistent drought has caused havoc for the Indigenous peoples who live on floating islands and depend on rains that have stopped falling.

“We call it Puno York,” says Augusto Parodi, a local architect, as the bus rolls down the hill. There’s no irony in his voice, yet the name is obviously a joke. Despite being one of the largest cities in Peru, Puno only counts around 140,000 residents, and — in Parodi’s words — “is but a speck of dust” when compared to the Big Apple.

Dust seems an appropriate word. Since the fall of 2022, the region has suffered from a drought that turned the nearby mountains into a barren wasteland and covered the crooked streets and slanted houses in a reddish-brown grime.

Like other towns peppering the Peruvian highlands, Puno is no stranger to dry spells. But this one has proved to be one of the worst in recorded history, continuing into 2023 and — thanks to the global climate phenomenon known as El Niño — even early 2024, affecting agriculture, fishing, livestock, tourism, and just about every other industry.

Some of the worst effects were felt by the Uros, an Indigenous people living on Lake Titicaca, the 3,200-square-mile body of water that stretches from Puno to the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia. The lake — the biggest in the Andes, and the highest navigable water body in the world — shrank significantly during the past two years, with the water receding up to 1.25 miles in some areas.

“We are going through a crisis,” Nelson Coila Lujando, a member of the Uros community, told me back in February. As per custom, he and his family live on manmade floating islands in the middle of the lake. The islands, lashed together by water-resistant totora roots and reeds, have been the Uros’ refuge for centuries and allowed them to move their homes to fertile fishing grounds and avoid threats.

You can’t move a floating island to avoid droughts this bad.

Boats made of reeds, Uros Island, Lake Titicaca

The Uros, who call themselves the Guardians of Titicaca, subsist on fish, waterbirds, and the sale of handcrafted souvenirs. Their traditional existence can be traced back to the dawn of the Inca Empire, when the Uros’ are said to have moved onto the lake to escape subjugation on land. Their history and culture are now at risk of being wiped out by climate change.

“The reeds that we use to build our islands aren’t growing,” Lujando says. “The lake is drying up and we can’t move. The birds — they have gone in search of water, leaving behind only a few eggs. The fish are also gone.”

Surviving the Drought

The 2022-2023 drought rendered Titicaca almost unrecognizable. In November 2023, Flores Sancho, director of the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service of Peru (Senamhi) announced that the amount of rainfall in the region had fallen by 49%, causing the water flowing through the tributaries that feed the lake to drop by almost 80%. At its peak Titicaca’s overall water level fell by over 19 inches, with 120 metric tons evaporating per year.

As the water retreated, Puno’s bay quickly ran dry, leaving dozens of fishing and touring boats stuck in the waste-filled dirt.

In November 2023, reporters from the French newspaper Le Monde managed to make it to the floating home of Maruja Mamani, where she spoke of the growing shortage of totora reeds, a species of bulrush sage the Uros use to build their 9-feet-thick base of their islands.

“Our islands need a lot of maintenance,” she told the paper. “Every two weeks we have to add green reeds and every three months have to completely rebuild our houses.” According to Le Monde, more than 90% of the lake’s reeds had dried out, making them unusable. To harvest the remainder of fresh plants, the Uros had to sail to the far end of the lake, a journey that — on a good day — takes almost three hours, placing them far away from the resources they need.

 

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Totora forms the basis of Titicaca’s ecosystem. As the reeds disappeared, so did the animals that depend on them for food and egg laying: the native carachi, a small, yellowish fish of the Cyprinodontidae family; trout, introduced to the lake in the 20th century; the Puneño duck (Spatula puna), with its black-spotted head and green-streaked wings; and the fuzzy-haired grebe known as the Zambullidor del Titicaca (Rollandia microptera), currently endangered.

Unable to grow crops on the open water, the Uros have historically lived as hunter-gatherers, cooking their catch or trading it on the Puno market. When drought struck and there was nothing to hunt or barter, the islanders with money were forced to eat through their savings, provided they were able to make it to Puno, while those without went hungry.

The situation on the mainland wasn’t much better, though. The drought ruined harvests, shortening the supply of quinoa and potatoes, as well as the oats used to feed livestock. In neighboring Bolivia, the government attempted to irrigate crops by pumping water from the lake. Not only did this further contribute to Titicaca’s depletion, farmers say the lake water — saltier than rainfall — ended up burning many of their seeds.

In normal circumstances, Uros members travel to the city almost every day, buying food at the market, taking their children to high school and university, and picking up tourists for guided tours of the islands. Without access to Puno, the islanders were isolated from their education, food supply, and main source of income.

In late 2023 conditions got so dire that some 1,500 Uros — approximately 75% of the entire community — banded together to dig a canal that would reconnect their islands to the dried up Puno bay. They raised money to rent construction equipment, but, according to Bogotá-based photojournalist Yader Guzman, the Peruvian government forced them to quit before the project could finish. Guzman documented the aftermath of their Sisyphean endeavor: an abandoned CAT excavation machine strapped to a barge, drifting between the dried-up reeds.

 

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Beyond El Niño

This isn’t the first time El Niño has wreaked havoc in the Puno region.

“Really big El Niño events can cause dry conditions on the Altiplano,” says Paul Baker, a professor of earth and climate sciences at Duke University who studied the geological history of Lake Titicaca, referring to the Andean plateau that covers southern Peru. “In 1982-1983, a huge Eastern Pacific El Niño brought about terrible conditions at the lake. There was no rain in December, January and February. No crops survived, livestock were devastated, and people from the highlands were forced to migrate.”

Migrations also took place during El Niño cycles in 1991 and 1943, when Titicaca’s water levels fell by more than 8 feet — the largest drop in recorded history.

As global warming increases, scientists fear future El Niño cycles — which occur roughly every three to five years and are connected to shifting trade winds — are only going to get worse.

Asked about the severity of this particular cycle, Jhan Carlo Espinoza Villar, director at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, points the finger at deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

The 2022-2023 El Niño, he says, “was characterized by an exceptional lack of moisture from the Amazon basin to the Altiplano.” Currently the Amazon is shrinking at a pace of roughly 4,466 square miles per year. If deforestation continues, as it did during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, the Andean highlands can expect longer, harsher droughts.

Villar’s remark about the effects of Amazon deforestation on the Altiplano highlights an important but occasionally overlooked fact: While El Niño worsened the drought around Titicaca, the drought’s underlying cause is climate change. The truth, says Flores, is that rainy seasons in the Peruvian Andes have been getting shorter since 2013. Titicaca’s fish populations have also been in steady decline, falling 90% in just 30 years, a development attributed in part to overfishing and demographic pressure, but also to pollution and climate breakdown.

While the current El Niño cycle is predicted to fizzle out in June, the drought terrorizing Lake Titicaca shows no sign of stopping. According to a report shared with the Peruvian newspaper La República, scientists expect the summer of 2024 to bring above-normal rainfall in the northwestern part of the country — possibly creating dangerous flooding — but below-average precipitation in the south, where Puno and Titicaca are located.

While Stéphane Guedron, who studies paleoenvironmental geochemistry Université Grenoble Alpes in France, told The Revelator that 2024 has thus far been “a crazy rainy one, even though it was expected to stay dry,” the Uros would beg to differ.

“We don’t know if it’s summer or winter,” Nelson says, watching passing storm clouds with the same level of anticipation and dread as one would watch the little white ball on a roulette table. “The reeds have not grown back. This is a very serious problem, as we won’t be able to maintain our houses and make handicrafts. Our future, the future of the Guardians of Lake Titicaca, is at risk.”

If the rate of global warming can’t be slowed, the communities living in and around Titicaca will be reliant on federal aid to make it through future droughts. While the Bolivian government allocated $17 million last October to purchase and distribute drinking water, people living on the Peruvian side have yet to receive such help.

There, Puno’s majority Aymara population — another Peruvian Indigenous group, larger than the Uros — hired a shaman to make an offering to Pachamama, the Mother Earth deity worshiped by the Incas.

A sacrifice was made, but when the rain finally came, it was too late and too little.

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Páramos at Risk: The Interconnected Threats to a Biodiversity Hotspot

Should Tourists Swim with Endangered Sea Turtles?

Researchers in Barbados found that ecotourism sea-turtle encounters created some very human problems for the animals.

extinction countdownAnother updated article from the “Extinction Countdown” archives. Originally published in 2016, but still relevant to today.

Is wildlife tourism safe for wildlife? It all depends on how it’s done. According to one study, green turtles (Chelonia mydas) featured in eco-tourism operations can experience a few interesting benefits as well as some potentially dangerous downsides.

The study, published in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases, was conducted in Barbados, where a thriving tourist industry features numerous opportunities for visitors to jump in the water and swim with wild sea turtles. A team of researchers from the West Indies, U.S. and United Kingdom wanted to see how those endangered turtles fared amidst this well-intentioned activity. The researchers selected 29 green turtles from four sites around Barbados and gave them each a full medical workup.

The results depended on where the turtles lived. As the researchers wrote in their paper, many of these attractions allow tourists to hand-feed the animals, an activity widely promoted in official Barbados tourism marketing.

Screenshot April 9, 2024

This food — which “supplements” the turtles’ natural diet, according to the researchers — includes whole or chopped up fish, chicken, hot dogs, bread and “various other leftovers.”

The juvenile sea turtles who received this food enjoyed more than a tasty meal. They also grew bigger, faster. According to the paper, they had significantly larger carapaces and body weights about three times as heavy as the turtles that came from areas where their natural diets were not enhanced by human handouts. That rapid growth means they potentially have better chances of survival from predators.

But blood panels and other tests revealed something else. The turtles with supplemented diets also had much higher levels of triglycerides, blood urea nitrogen and cholesterol. In fact, just about everything the researchers tested for in the diet-supplemented turtles existed at higher levels. This, the researchers wrote, leaves the turtles at risk of health conditions including liver disease, gout and cardiovascular issues — you know, the same health problems humans face from our atrocious diets.

Barbados

And that’s not all: Previous research cited in the paper already indicated that feeding green turtles in Barbados puts the animals at greater risk. The animals learn that humans are a friendly food source, which makes them more vulnerable to boat strikes and other injuries, or to being captured when they swim outside of protected waters.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the researchers thought the industry should be shut down. In fact, they wrote that such an action is unlikely because tourism is an important source of income in Barbados.

But they warned that existing codes of conduct may not be enough. The authors suggested that operators should provide turtles with more natural food on a limited basis, perhaps once a day. They also recommended establishing a health-monitoring program to ensure that sea turtles who receive supplemental food aren’t suffering as a result.

So should tourists swim with sea turtles, or participate in other wildlife encounters? The paper doesn’t make a recommendation either way, but as someone who’s been writing about wildlife issues for 20 years, I think the conclusions are clear:

    • Select activities that don’t stress out or change the behavior of the animals you want to see.
    • Keep your distance. If an animal approaches you, fine. But don’t approach them on your own, and don’t chase them down just to get the perfect camera shot.
    • Pack a mask, and skip the trip if you’re sick. Many species are susceptible to human diseases.
    • Choose operations that devote a portion of their revenue to conservation efforts, research and habitat preservation. (Wildlife rescue centers or sanctuaries are often, but not always, a good option.)
    • Don’t support facilities that offer (or sell) opportunities to hold, touch, pet or pose with wild animals. These activities often support unethical breeding programs, or discard animals once they grow to big and feisty for photo ops.
    • Expect to learn something. The best ecotourism operations include an educational element.
    • Leave no trace. The last thing a wild animal needs is the plastic wrapper from your snack, or an introduced plant seed from the sole of your shoe.
    • Opt for the low-carbon option. Climate change puts many species at risk, and burning fossil fuels to see them does more harm than good in the long run.
    • Don’t share photos of people touching or holding wild animals. That encourages bad behavior.
    • And don’t feed the animals.

In other words, if you want to snorkel with green turtles, go for it — just leave the hot dogs on the boat.

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How to Account for Offshore Wind Impacts on Oceanic Wildlife? Make a Plan.

As wind energy develops in the Atlantic Ocean, experts unite to ensure it’s done in the most eco-friendly and environmentally responsible way.

Offshore wind turbines have become a major element of advancing renewable energy goals, but we still have a lot to learn about how these structures will affect the hundreds of marine species that will have to interact with them. As government agencies, nonprofits, researchers and industry representatives rush to document their scientific observations, one major hurdle looms over their efforts: These disparate groups might not traditionally talk to each other — let alone use the same timetables, technology or terminology.

Enter the Integrated Science Plan for Offshore Wind, Wildlife and Habitat in U.S. Atlantic Waters. Released earlier this year, this first-of-its-kind effort aims to provide a common framework and system to fill the gaps in our knowledge and secure a future for both wind power and ocean species.

The plan makes a striking argument for setting up a coordinated network up and down the East Coast to observe and study the organisms found in and around offshore wind farms.

The result of two years of research and a public-comment period, the plan was developed by the Regional Wildlife Science Collaborative for Offshore Wind, a coalition led by 19 offshore wind companies, 14 environmental nonprofits, 12 coastal states, and eight federal entities. It emphasizes the need for consistent funding, standardized language and current resource lists, with shared expertise from seven subcommittees, all in an effort to address wind development off the Atlantic coast of the U.S.

RWSC says all creatures — from the biggest whales to the smallest fish — stand to benefit from the plan.

“What it signals to the general public is that scientists and funding entities are interested in answering these questions and solving these problems,” says Emily Shumchenia, director of RWSC. “And it provides a plan and a way to do that in a systematic and organized way to use public funds and private funds as efficiently as we can — and as quickly as we can — to get the answers to some of these questions.”

Collecting and Understanding Data

Although offshore wind energy is a relatively new industry, we already know some details about how it affects ocean organisms. As on land, birds and offshore migratory bats can fatally collide with turbine blades. The presence of offshore wind construction and operations can cause stress for marine mammals like whales and dolphins, while artificial reefs created by offshore wind infrastructure may attract sea turtles, bringing them into conflict with commercial fisheries. Electromagnetic fields around offshore wind power cables may affect the electro-receptive organs of sharks and rays, potentially causing changes in behavior. And sediment stirred up by pile driving, a stage of construction when a hydraulic hammer pounds turbine support structures into the seafloor, leaves little room in the water for visibility and oxygen. When that sediment settles, eggs and larvae may be buried underneath.

Wind_Turbine_Legs_2

Offshore wind could bring other threats, such as habitat deterioration or destruction, or potential introduction of nonnative species.

RWSC’s science plan addresses the potential to understand these and other risks, and not just on a site-by-site basis, as has traditionally been the case. Its data-collection toolbox allows participants to combine local information with collaborative efforts across regions.

“Sometimes there are projects that are ongoing, let’s say in Maine, and there might be similar projects in Maryland,” says Nikelene Mclean, coordinator of the RWSC habitat and ecosystem subcommittee. “It’s really important for us to be able to keep tabs on all of the research that’s ongoing and to be able to engage with all of these entities.”

That research takes numerous forms: Visual aerial surveys and underwater microphones monitor marine mammals both above and below the waves. Automated radio telemetry tagging records signals from radio transmitters to detect smaller species like birds and bats, while environmental DNA can help determine the abundance of fish.

Offshore wind companies are already collecting oceanographic data with assistance from the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System. And Mclean’s habitat and ecosystem subcommittee is working on major projects determining how to best map hard bottom habitat and deep-sea corals, as well as producing a regional habitat map from Maine to Florida.

The science plan also looks to the future, with plans to evaluate new technologies in the works for monitoring and mitigation purposes, from uncrewed aerial vehicles and thermal cameras to artificially intelligent image classification and bubble curtains that absorb sound energy during turbine construction.

“Once we start having large-scale wind farms constructed and in existence, I think we’ll start to see a shift to different types of data collection,” says Shumchenia. “Again, still doing that baseline monitoring for who’s in the area and what they’re doing — but perhaps starting to look at direct impact assessment and studies that are just a little bit more targeted.”

Responsible Development From Coast to Coast

Implementing and tracking the plan’s contents and progress remains an ongoing process. Subcommittees come together at regular intervals to discuss updates, with meetings open to the public. RWSC posts shared files and a searchable research database online for anyone to access. And as a living document, RWSC experts will revise the plan every five years as new information and data becomes available.

Part of that new information may relate to offshore wind development in general. While the federal government intends to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy in the U.S. by 2030, achieving that goal was delayed last year when several offshore wind companies and developers canceled contracts. But progress is still possible — many offshore wind leases remain active along the East Coast, and the U.S. Department of the Interior recently approved two offshore wind farms off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

 

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New York, in particular, stands out as a leader in offshore wind, although three projects were canceled in April. Just before that the country’s first commercial offshore wind farm opened near Montauk, with the capacity to power over 70,000 homes on Long Island. Other states are following in New York’s footsteps; New Jersey recently announced $3.7 million in funding to study the effects of offshore wind on marine mammals, other wildlife and the environment.

New York was the first state to mandate that offshore wind projects contribute $10,000 per megawatt toward regional research, says Kate McClellan Press, a senior project manager with the environmental research team at New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, a founding member of RWSC and a member on its steering committee this year.

“We have seen New Jersey put that requirement into their contracts, as well as some other states who have offshore wind solicitation coming, so it’s exciting to see some of the standards that New York has developed be adopted by other states,” says McClellan Press.

Those working in other parts of the United States share the science plan’s overarching goal to help advance environmentally responsible offshore wind through research and data collection. For instance, as California finalizes its Offshore Wind Strategic Plan and invests $4.59 billion in transmission lines to transport offshore wind energy to major metropolitan areas, the environmental nonprofit Point Blue Conservation Science has released its own updated report about where to best site the state’s offshore wind for maximum energy potential and minimum environmental impact.

According to Cotton Rockwood, senior marine ecologist with Point Blue’s California Current Group, the report — for which he served as lead author — was not necessarily spurred by the East Coast plan, but it does share similar sentiments regarding regional collaboration. And the California Ocean Protection Council is spearheading an effort to establish best practices and guidelines with scientific experts for offshore wind development, echoing the structure of RWSC.

“It’s important to make sure that there are focused components of a broader effort like the RWSC to address the West Coast versus other regions,” Rockwood says. For example, the geography of the West Coast makes the use of floating offshore wind turbines more feasible. “That’s a big difference in and of itself,” he adds.

Climate Change Still on Top

Compared to the rest of the world, U.S. offshore wind farms are lagging at 13th place as of 2023. Experts say one of the reasons for this is the continued use of barges for transporting turbine blades, as opposed to specialized wind turbine installation vessels the country has yet to finish building. On the bright side, the delay in deployment may allow U.S. wind farms to take advantage of data from elsewhere, including information on wildlife impacts.

“There’s a lot of offshore wind that’s been developed in the North Sea and the United Kingdom and elsewhere,” says Rockwood. “We can see the results of the studies that have happened there, and the reality is that there can be impacts, but for the most part, they appear to be quite minimal.”

Understanding the intensity of offshore wind impacts remains a priority in a world exacerbated by global warming. For example, RWSC’s plan recommends collecting data on a host of factors related to offshore wind infrastructure, from food availability and water quality to wave effects and light penetration. And while climate change does modify a great many of these characteristics, the lines between the climate crisis and offshore wind can often turn blurry.

When humpback whales began stranding and dying in greater numbers along East Coast shorelines last year, many mistakenly claimed it was due to offshore wind operations. In truth, the whales had been moving closer to shore in search of prey like menhaden fish whose distribution had shifted in response to warming temperatures, according to NOAA. This put the whales in the path of shipping lanes and fishing fleets, which brought at least 40% of attributable deaths — many whale bodies were too decomposed for forensic analysis. The false claim that offshore wind structures kill whales, which many attribute to misinformation from fossil-fuel industry-linked groups — compared to the actual leading cause of vessel strikes — serves only to demonstrate how the two issues can become entangled.

“We do always have to think about the potential impacts of offshore wind in the context of a dynamic ocean environment, and climate is one of those factors,” says McClellan Press. “We are seeing changing ocean temperatures and differences in oceanographic processes, and that is happening at the same time as other industries are operating in the ocean and as offshore wind is being developed.”

 

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In addition, scientists observe the interlink between climate change and offshore wind more acutely on the sub-regional level. The Gulf of Maine, which is warming faster than 99% of the global ocean, serves as a key feeding habitat for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, of whom fewer than 400 remain. As the whales’ preferred prey — copepod crustaceans — shift their distribution in response to the heat, the whales must change the timing of their movements to follow them.

At the same time, few federal buoys collect data in the offshore wind planning area of the Gulf, and once development ramps up, threats like noise exposure and entanglement in fishing gear attached to structures could make life even harder for the whales. So the combined impacts of offshore wind and climate change could result in an environmental “double whammy.”

Still, there’s hope on the horizon: if a responsible offshore wind industry can safeguard the ocean and its inhabitants, then the science plan will have done what it set out to do.

“It’s really a landmark study, and there hasn’t been a publication of this caliber,” says Mclean. “It provides a one-stop-shop for the data and research that’s needed to ensure that offshore wind development is done in a manner that is not detrimental to the wildlife and the ecosystems upon which they depend.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

The Race to Build Solar Power in the Desert — and Protect Rare Plants and Animals

Goldenrod Isn’t Causing Your Spring Allergies — But It Is Killing Europe’s Ants and Butterflies

The North American plants look pretty, but they also causes havoc in places where humans have allowed them to spread.

extinction countdownAnother article from the “Extinction Countdown” archives. Originally published in 2016, but still painfully relevant.

Here in North America, the ubiquitous plants known as goldenrod (from the genus Solidago) get a bad rap for causing spring allergies. They don’t, though — you’re thinking of ragweed. Goldenrod are actually incredibly valuable plants to their local ecologies, where they play host to literally hundreds of insects, providing shelter or food to bees, butterflies, spiders, praying mantises and all kinds of other species. They’re also culturally important; in the 18th century, American revolutionaries brewed goldenrod into so-called “liberty tea” as a protest against British taxation. (You can still buy goldenrod tea. It’s quite good.)

In other parts of the world, however, the relationship is more complex. Goldenrod is beloved as an ornamental plant, and many people grow it thinking local bees will produce honey with special medicinal qualities (FYI: that, like the allergies you think you’re experiencing, is misinformation).

But at the same time, goldenrod — a remarkably adaptable group of plants — have taken over fields throughout Europe and Asia, putting native species at risk wherever they grow. Goldenrod can reach more than six feet in height, so they block the sun from reaching smaller plants. They’re also prodigious reproducers, with each adult plant capable of releasing up to 10,000 tiny, wind-dispersed seeds. Finally, their roots produce a group of chemicals that can inhibit the growth of other plants around them, a process called allelopathy. Those three factors alone have been enough to label goldenrod as some of the world’s worst invasive plants.

Recent research shows that the effect of goldenrod invasions is even more dangerous than we previously knew. According to a paper published in 2016 in the Journal of Insect Conservation, invasive goldenrod in Europe are killing off ant and butterfly species.

Researchers from Poland’s Jagiellonian University discovered this insect decline by examining ten semi-natural grasslands located southeast of Krakow. Five of those meadows, the authors wrote, have “a serious problem with uncontrolled spreading of goldenrod populations.”

The researchers looked at a total of 60 plots within those meadows. And within each plot, they looked at ants, finding seven different species, the most common of which came from the genus Myrmica.

Well, they were the most common ants in the plots that didn’t contain goldenrod. In plots where the misplaced plants were present, Myrmica populations were reduced by at least 50% and up to 81%.

Myrmica scabrinodis. Photo: Gillies San Martin (CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed)

The most striking effect was on a species called M. scabrinodis, which the authors wrote should have adapted to the cool shade provided by goldenrod. Unfortunately goldenrod produces nectar later in the season than native plants, which apparently forces the ants to travel further and use more energy to search for food.

Why does that matter? For one thing, ants play an important role in the ecosystem. As the authors wrote in their paper, ants in general consume 3% of a meadow’s biomass each season and in the process affect the chemical composition of the surrounding soil. Their corridors and nests also serve to make the soil more porous, enhance decomposition, and allow colonization of microbiota and fungi that plants need as parts of their diet.

More pressingly, the three Myrmica ant species also play an important part in the lifecycle of three threatened or endangered butterflies in the Phengaris genus, which lay their eggs in ant nests and often feed on the ants. Two of the three species fully depend on this parasitic relationship for their survival.

Phengaris butterfly. Photo: David Short (CC BY 2.0 Deed)

The authors wrote that a change in Phengaris butterflies had not yet been observed in the area of the study, although warned that it could cause declines in at least two species. A more recent study, published in 2023, did document Phengaris butterfly declines in the same region due to goldenrod crowding out the insects’ traditional host plants.

Goldenrod is just one piece of the picture of Europe’s declining meadowlands. A paper published in 2014 estimated that Europe has lost as much as 80% of its ecologically important meadows over the past century due to development, mowing and cattle grazing.

The full effect of that meadow loss is still being determined, but the ants and the butterflies are just the beginning, and the goldenrod is still spreading. The authors warn that Europe needs to take serious attempts to stem goldenrod before the ecological damage can no longer be undone.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Trump’s Border Wall Threatens Rare Butterflies and Native Bees