Protect This Place: Lianyungang, an Underrated Pearl in the Yellow Sea

Shrinking tidal flat habitats in eastern China threaten critical stopover sites for migratory shorebirds.

The place:

The Linhong tidal flat in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, is on the east coast of China. Jiangsu is one of the wealthiest provinces in the country, so there has always been serious tension between economic development and environmental protection.

Asian dowitchers at Qingkou tidal flat, Lianyungang. The birds were in beautiful chestnut-red breeding plumage. Photo courtesy of Ziyou Yang.

Why it matters:

Every summer shorebirds on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway arrive at the Arctic tundra to attract mates, breed, and care for their young. Then they follow an inner biological clock and head south. They spend the winter in regions at lower latitudes, including East Asia and Southeast Asia. The journey is long and arduous, often covering distances of 3,000 to 5,000 miles.

Most shorebirds must take a break somewhere to rest and refuel during these travels. That’s why Lianyungang’s tidal flats, on the west coast of the Yellow Sea — located near the midpoint of many shorebirds’ migratory journey — are critically important stopover sites for many species. The tidal flats were previously fed by two of the longest rivers in Asia, making them rich in benthic organisms that serve as valuable fuel for the long-distance flights.

There’s one bird that relies most heavily on Lianyungang: the Asian dowitcher (Limnodromus semipalmatus), a shorebird about 12-14 inches in size. It breeds in steppe regions in Mongolia and northeast China and winters mainly in Indonesia. The current estimated global population of the species is 23,000 — nearly all of whom fly to Lianyungang’s Linhong and Qingkou tidal flats each year.

Asian dowitchers (center) congregate near the Linhong tidal flat during high tide. Photo courtesy of Ziyou Yang.

Unfortunately this makes them extremely vulnerable. Anything that threatens their habitat in Lianyungang could devastate the entire global population.

The threat:

The Linhong tidal flat is being reclaimed by a so-called “ecological restoration” project. The project is ostensibly aimed at restoring the natural environment of a “dirty” wetland, but in fact it converts nearly 6 square miles of natural muddy tidal flats into sandy beaches and deep water for human recreational activities.

The new habitat is completely unsuitable for the Asian dowitcher and many other seabird species. If the project goes ahead, it will destroy one-third of the Asian dowitcher’s foraging habitat here.

Meanwhile Linhong and Qingkou tidal flats are also being encroached upon by an invasive species called the smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora). The plant spreads quickly, turns mudflats into dense meadows, and kills most benthic organisms, so the area and quality of the remaining habitats for Asian dowitchers are also decreasing.

My place in this place:

I remember the day we first discovered the huge number of Asian dowitchers at Lianyungang’s Linhong and Qingkou tidal flats. Back then we split the waterbird surveyors into two groups and counted the number of Asian dowitchers at the two locations simultaneously. When both groups reported their count number in the radio, none of us could believe our ears. While we were still processing the record-breaking count result, the tens of thousands of Asian dowitchers were calling beside us as if cheering our discovery.

The moment felt so miraculous. We really hope more people will get to experience something like this in the future.

With its chestnut-red breeding plumage and sewing-machine like feeding behavior, the Asian dowitcher is beautiful in its own way. But it’s still unlike charismatic species such as giant pandas or spoon-billed sandpipers that can instantly catch people’s attention.

That hasn’t stopped my colleagues and me from dedicating a tremendous amount of effort to improving awareness about this species and its highly concentrated population in Lianyungang. For example, we made a series of outreach products, including an adorable plush toy.

We spent an entire year developing the design to ensure the toy is likeable while accurately mimicking the species’ key characteristics. We were short on funding at the beginning and unfortunately fell far short of the minimum order quantity. Luckily, our conservation work gained recognition from several foundations and companies, and they all helped contribute to the toy’s production.

After all the challenges we’d faced and conquered, the toy was finally launched at the end of 2021 and it was a hit in the market. The public — and I’m not only talking about us birdwatching people — absolutely love it.

The cute Asian dowitcher plush toy near its natural habitat in Lianyungang. Photo courtesy of Yongxiang Han.

While it’s exciting that more people will get to know the Asian dowitcher through this toy, my colleagues and I do have mixed feelings. With the project construction being carried out at a fast pace on the species’ most important foraging ground, we fear that the species’ population will decrease precipitously not long after people get to know these birds and their precious stopover site — and the foraging ground will deteriorate or even disappear.

Who’s protecting it now:

Friends of Nature is a Chinese NGO specializing in environmental protection using public-interest litigation. In early 2021, after several rounds of unsuccessful negotiation with the local government departments and the project construction company, Friends of Nature led an environmental litigation against the project construction company and the environmental impact assessment company. The judge is still processing the evidence. Meanwhile, the project construction is being carried out at an unprecedented pace and it’s looking likely to be completed by June 2022.

In addition, the nonprofit Spoon-billed Sandpiper in China (my employer) is dedicated to the conservation of waterbirds living on the Yellow Sea tidal flats. The team has provided valuable data to support the global importance and irreplaceability of Lianyungang’s Linhong tidal flat. These data serve as critical evidence for the public interest litigation case.

What this place needs:

We have enough data and solid science to prove that the construction project will cause considerable damage to the Asian dowitcher population.

Currently many self-proclaimed “ecological restoration” projects are being undertaken across China, and a good majority of them are doing more harm than good to the environment. We need better legislation and stricter project assessment standards to prevent similar tragedies elsewhere.

In 2020 the green peafowl case in China’s Yunnan province became the country’s first preventive public-interest litigation concerning wildlife protection. Our Asian dowitcher case is the second of its kind. Unlike green peafowl, who live in forests, Asian dowitchers inhabit coastal tidal flats. We hope our case can set a precedent for other coastal “ecological restoration” projects in China and draw people’s attention to gaps in the current legislation.

Lessons from the fight:

Take action early: It’s best to discover such projects early and nip them in the bud.

Try collaborating: It’s always helpful to talk to different stakeholders (e.g. media, politicians, chief scientists). They may help support your case from a different angle.

Follow the fight:

The Facebook page for Spoon-billed Sandpiper in China

The social media page of Friends of Nature (in Chinese)

Previously in The Revelator:

Protect This Place: Kenya’s Kinangop Grasslands

Oil and Gas Industry Tries to Hold Public Schools Hostage

Fossil fuel interest groups are telling New Mexicans: Let us keep drilling or the state’s education system will collapse.

This story is part of “Climate Crimes,” a special series by The Guardian and Covering Climate Now focused on investigating how the fossil fuel industry contributed to the climate crisis and lied to the American public.

The oil and gas industry wants to play a word-and-picture association game with you. Think of four images: a brightly colored backpack stuffed with pencils, a smiling teacher with a tablet tucked under her arm, a pair of glasses resting on a stack of pastel notebooks, and a gleaming school bus welcoming a young student aboard.

“What do all of these have in common?” an April 6 Facebook post by the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association (NMOGA), asked. “They are powered by oil and natural gas!”

Facebook image promoting oil and gas funding of education — Source: Facebook

Here in New Mexico — the fastest-warming and most water-stressed state in the continental United States, where wildfires have recently devoured over 120,000 acres and remain uncontained — the oil and gas industry is coming out in force to deepen the region’s dependence on fossil fuels. Their latest tactic: to position oil and gas as a patron saint of education. Powerful interest groups have deployed a months-long campaign to depict schools and children’s wellbeing as under threat if government officials infringe upon fossil fuel production.

In a video spot exemplary of this strategy, Ashley Niman, a fourth grade teacher at Enchanted Hills elementary school, tells viewers that the industry is what enables her to do her job.

“Without oil and gas, we would not have the resources to provide an exemplary education for our students,” she says. “The partnership we have with the oil and gas industry makes me a better teacher.”

The video, from September of last year, is part of a PR campaign by NMOGA called “Safer and Stronger.” It’s one of many similar strategies The Guardian tracked across social media, television and audio formats that employs a rhetorical strategy social scientists refer to as the “fossil fuel savior frame.”

“What NMOGA and the oil and gas industry are saying is that we hold New Mexico’s public education system hostage to our profit-motivated interests,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “There’s an implied threat there.”

Last year New Mexico brought in $1.1 billion from mineral leasing on federal lands — more than any other state. But the tides may be turning for the fossil fuel industry as officials grapple with the need to halve greenhouse gas emissions this decade. Prior to mid-April, the Biden administration had paused all new oil and gas leasing and the number of drilling permits on public lands plummeted.

In response, pro-industry groups are pushing out what some experts have called “sky is falling” messaging that generates the impression that without oil and gas revenue, the state’s education system is on a chopping block. (NMOGA did not respond for comment).

Since February NMOGA has flooded its social media pages with school-related motifs like buses and books, but also with images of empty, abandoned classrooms accompanied by reminders about how the state’s schools “rely on oil and gas production on federal land for more than $700 million in funding.”

Elected officials have parroted this framing.

“This is a matter of critical importance to all, but especially to New Mexico’s schoolchildren, who have suffered greatly during the pandemic,” state representative Yvette Herrell co-wrote in the Santa Fe New Mexican in February.

But tax, budget and public education funding experts say linking the federal leasing pause to a grave, immediate risk to public education is deceptive.

“Any slight reductions stemming from pauses or other so-called ‘adverse’ actions would have zero immediate effect on school funding overall, much less whether students get the services they need to recover from the ill effects on their learning from the pandemic,” said Charles Goodmacher, former government and media relations director at the National Education Association, now a consultant. The sale of leases does not lead to immediate drilling, he said. Often, companies sit on leases for months or years before production occurs.

And as it happens, New Mexico currently has a budget surplus from record production.

Industry attempts to convince New Mexicans that the state’s public education system is wholly dependent on oil and gas are based on a tough truth: decades of steep tax cuts have indeed positioned fossil fuels as the thunder behind Democratic-led New Mexico’s economy. In 2021, 15% of the state’s general fund came from royalties, rents and other fees that the Department of Interior collects from mineral extraction on federal lands. Oil and gas activity across federal, state and private lands contributes around a third of the state’s general fund of $7.2 billion, as well as a third of its education budget.

Commissioner of public lands Stephanie Garcia Richard, herself a former classroom teacher, has been at the forefront of efforts to diversify the New Mexican economy since she was elected to manage the state’s 13 million acres of public lands in 2018.

“When I ran, in my first campaign, we talked a lot about how a schoolteacher really understands what every dime that this office makes means to a classroom.”

Garcia Richard takes pride in being the first woman, Latina and teacher to have been elected to head the office, which oversees around $1 billion in revenue generation each year. Since 2019 she’s launched a renewable energy office and outdoor recreation office to raise money from those activities, though Garcia Richard doesn’t believe that money will ever fully make up for oil and gas revenue. “I don’t want anybody ever to think that I have some notion that the revenue diversification strategies we’re pursuing right now somehow make a billion dollars.”

New Mexico attorney general Hector Balderas, a Democrat, is another top state official charged with managing the state’s energy and economic transition.

Given the same geographic features that make New Mexico the “land of enchantment,” the state is positioned to become a national leader in solar energy, Balderas said. But four of the state’s major solar farms are severely behind schedule.

Balderas, who has accepted $49,900 in campaign contributions from oil and gas over seven election cycles, said that a sudden disruption in new oil and gas leasing — such as the blanket moratorium the Biden administration originally proposed in January last year — would have an outsized impact on New Mexico’s most vulnerable.

“You would cut out nearly a third of the revenue that we rely on to fund our schools and our roads and our law enforcement community,” he said. “I don’t think environmental activists really think about that perspective: How progressives have cleaner air but then thrust original Americans like Native American pueblos into further economic poverty.”

Some on the receiving end of oil and gas revenue stress that not all educators and students embrace fossil fuel industry money in public schools. Mary Bissell is an algebra teacher at Cleveland high school in Rio Rancho, who cosigned a letter in November, along with more than 200 educators, asking NMOGA to “stop using New Mexico’s teachers and kids as excuses for more oil and gas development.”

Bissell says in spite of how cash-strapped schools may be, many of her colleagues don’t want oil and gas money.

“I’m not going to teach my kids how to find slope based on fracking,” she said of her math courses. Bissel characterized NMOGA’s attempt to portray educators as a unified force beholden to oil and gas funding as “disgusting.”

In some states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts, state attorneys general have taken it upon themselves, as the leading law enforcement and consumer protection officials, to sue oil and gas companies for deceiving consumers and investors about climate change through their marketing. Balderas’s office said it is not actively pursuing that strategy at this time.

Seneca Johnson, 20, a student leader with Youth United for Climate Action, is from the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. Johnson grew up in New Mexico and knows first-hand about the state’s underfunded schools.

“I remember in elementary school we would have a list: bring three boxes of tissues, or colored pencils,” she said, speaking of Chaparral Elementary School in Santa Fe. “As students and as teachers, [you’re] buying the supplies for the classroom.”

Johnson remembers being told as a child that the schools she attended ranked second worst in the nation. If New Mexico’s education system is indeed that bad, she said, how can officials continue to think that accepting a funding structure that delivers such a consistently poor result is a good idea?

“At the end of the day the system that we have now that is being paid for by oil and gas doesn’t work, and we know it doesn’t work,” Johnson said. “It’s the whole ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ kind of mentality,” she said, linking the industry’s patronizing messaging around its support for schools to a direct legacy of colonization.

“I don’t want to have to rely on this outside entity. I don’t want to have to rely on this broken system. I want better for my kids and their kids and my whole community.”

Kids and Climate Change: New Book Exposes Why Some Schools Fail to Teach the Science

Ukraine’s Nuclear Power Plants Caught in the Crossfire of War With Russia

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered fears of another nuclear power disaster in the region, 36 years after the world’s largest nuclear accident.

It took less than a minute after an unexpected power surge for one of the nuclear reactors at Chornobyl (Chernobyl in the Russian spelling) to explode on April 26, 1986, ripping the roof off and spewing dangerous chemicals into the air.

The event, and emergency cleanup that followed, left 30 workers dead, thousands exposed to cancer-causing nuclear material, and a legacy of radiation. Now, 36 years later and with war raging, Ukraine is desperate to prevent another nuclear disaster.

Nuclear reactors generate more than half of the country’s power. Ukraine is the first country with such a large and established nuclear energy program to experience war, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The country’s 15 nuclear reactors, housed in four power plants, have layers of safeguards to prevent core meltdowns like the one that happened in 1986, when Chornobyl was part of the Soviet Union. But wartime is far from normal conditions, and experts warn that Russian military action poses numerous threats to these facilities.

Andrey Ozharovsky, a Russian engineer turned anti-nuclear activist, said Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure is “quite vulnerable” to the chaos surrounding military attacks.

Chornobyl, Again

Those attacks have already begun.

The Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the 20-mile exclusion zone around it, set up to limit further spread of radioactive material following the 1986 disaster, were captured by Russian forces on Feb. 24. It was in their control until they withdrew from the site on March 31.

Although Chornobyl is not an active nuclear power plant, the massive cap covering the reactor that exploded decades ago still needs to be maintained to prevent further radiation leakage.

aerial view showing industrial facility next to water — Aerial view Chornobyl nuclear power plant with sarcophagus. Photo: Vadim Mouchkin / IAEA (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sensors put in place by the Ukrainian Ecocentre in case of an accident reported a spike in radiation levels shortly after the capture, likely due to Russian military vehicles stirring up radiation in the environment.

The IAEA said the rise wasn’t enough to pose a public health hazard.

Ozharovsky, who was one of the first to raise an alarm about the recent spike at Chornobyl, said he’s concerned that radioactive dust from the site could spread across the continent.

“The most dangerous thing is that they can bring radioactive particles in their hair, in their clothes and their boots,” he says.

Olga Kosharna, a member of the Ukraine Nuclear Society, urged experts to create an updated map of radioactive contamination in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and to restrict movement in the area.

Ukrainian officials released footage, recorded since Russia’s withdrawal, which appears to show that Russian troops had built trenches and other fortifications in parts of the exclusion zone. Those actions may have further disturbed radioactive material in the soil and plants.

On April 26 Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the IAEA, and a team of agency experts arrived in Chornobyl “to conduct nuclear safety, security and radiological assessments, deliver vital equipment and repair the agency’s remote safeguards monitoring systems,” according to a statement from the agency.

Grossi says radioactivity levels at Chornobyl have returned to “normal” after the “very, very dangerous” Russian occupation of the site.

Nuclear Plant Captured

Chornobyl isn’t the only concern. Ukraine’s active nuclear-power facilities are also at risk.

On March 4, Russian forces captured Europe’s largest active nuclear-power plant, Zaporizhzhia, located in southeastern Ukraine. During intense fighting one of the site’s buildings caught fire, but didn’t harm the plant’s six reactors, and no radiation was released.

Ukrainian technicians continue to monitor Zaporizhzhia, but the country’s regulators have claimed that Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear power company, has engineers at the plant who are giving orders to staff. Further, Ukraine reports that plant management actions require approval from the Russian commander, according to the IAEA.

“Who is now in charge of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant?” asks Ozharovsky. “The Russian army is around, but armies aren’t nuclear engineers.”

Rosatom released a statement on March 12 and denied that they’re managing the operation of Zaporizhzhia. They characterized their staff’s presence at the plant as “consultative assistance” that takes place “on a regular basis.”

Grossi expressed “deep concern” about the situation in a statement last month.

Man in a dark suit with white shirt — Rafael Mariano Grossi, IAEA Director General, holds a press conference as he briefs the international press and media upon his return from the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant. April 1, 2022. Photo: Dean Calma / IAEA (CC BY 2.0)

Further Threats

Since then, there’s been more reason for alarm.

On April 16, three missiles flew over the South Ukrainian nuclear power plant, Yuzhnoukrainsk, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company.

Then on April 26 Energoatom reported that two cruise missiles flew over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

“The flight of missiles at low altitudes directly above the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site, where 7 nuclear facilities with a huge amount of nuclear material are located, poses huge risks,” says Petro Kotin, Energoatom’s acting president, in a statement released on the company’s Telegram channel. “After all, missiles can hit one or more nuclear facilities, and this threatens a nuclear and radiation catastrophe around the world.”

The day before, Energoatom reported that Russia fired missiles over the cooling pond of the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant in northwest Ukraine.

Pipelines running across foreground and power plant building with three stacks in backgrond — Khmelnitskiy Nuclear Power Plant, 2013. Photo: Rluts (CC BY 3.0)

Russia hasn’t commented on Energoatom’s claims.

Kosharna wrote in an email that if a missile would’ve hit one of the plants the consequences would have been “catastrophic” for the world.

A stray missile damaging the plant could cause an explosion that would disrupt the power supply. Power is needed to ensure continuous cooling of the fuel rods to prevent a meltdown.

Typically nuclear plants use back-up generators to maintain power with a grid disruption and keep the cooling systems functioning normally. In wartime fuel shortages are common, and this risks the stability of the generators. Ukraine’s current shortage is only getting worse, according to the Gas Transmission Operator of Ukraine, a gas pipeline operator.

If the grid goes down and the generators are out of fuel and the cooling systems fail, there’s a last resort to prevent radiation from spreading. Containment structures around the reactors are designed to block any release of radiation, but they’re also vulnerable to missile attacks.

Reactor failure isn’t the only significant risk to the operation.

Staff operating facilities under extreme stress also poses a problem, Ozharovsky says, because any mistake they make on the job could be calamitous.

There are also other onsite dangers. Spent nuclear fuel storage pools that are a part of the waste-disposal system contain radioactive material. If they’re damaged the liquid could be released from containment, causing a massive spread of radiation. Japanese scientists considered this to be the “worst-case scenario” of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which had a series of meltdowns after a tsunami struck the plant in 2011.

Ozharovsky said he doesn’t believe the Russian military would deliberately sabotage one of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants because it would threaten their interests. But he added that even the possibility that the nuclear power plants could be harmed accidentally should trigger worldwide alarm.

“For me it’s scary,” he says. “All the other nuclear power plants, like Khmelnytskyi, like Rivne, like South Ukraine (Yuzhnoukrainsk); they can be damaged during this war. And the international community needs to take care of that.”

Any attack on a nuclear plant is a breach of international humanitarian law. The Geneva Convention’s Article 56 considers attacking a nuclear power plant a war crime.

“I hope that many other countries who still have nuclear energy on their territory will rethink physical safety, military safety,” Ozharovsky says. “That’s a challenge no one country can solve.”

Developing the Hills Won’t Solve the West’s Housing Crisis

Building millions of needed residential units could destroy vital wildlands. We can house people and protect the environment at the same time.

California was born in the valleys. Like a sheltered bay amid stormy seas, valleys drew the first inhabitants of this land of topographical upheaval. They remained the center of human habitation even as subsequent arrivals forcibly transformed existing settlements, from Miwok village to Spanish mission, cattle ranch to suburban subdivision. Because the surrounding hills were explored but rarely occupied, they largely retained their character. Today they provide the last remnant of wildness in most of the state, as in much of the West.

California’s housing crisis, with its soaring real estate prices and 160,000 unhoused people, threatens these hills. It also threatens the remaining marshes and wetlands, coastal bluffs and mountain meadows. Any open space not yet protected by park or preserve is at risk.

In three years as a California land-use attorney, I saw this crisis unfold due to market forces and outdated approaches. And I continue to observe from afar how current policies meant to solve the problem promote unsustainable development in the wildlands, beyond existing boundaries.

Eleven million Californians already live in this wildland-urban interface. Meanwhile the only solution to the housing crisis is building millions of residential units — 3.5 million by 2025, according to Gov. Newsom.

As the gap between demand and supply widens, shooting prices beyond affordability for so many, appetites for building in the wildland-urban interface grow — not just in California but across the West. You see it everywhere — new homes in the hills above Orange County, the desert beyond Phoenix, the woods of western Oregon and southern Washington.

Given the rapid rates of growth reflected in the latest census, the problem only stands to worsen. But building in the wildland-urban interface is not the answer to the housing crisis. It cannot be.

Wildfire is only the most visible of the many harmful repercussions of development. More people living in or near the forest means more sources of ignition and more fires. It also means more life and property are at risk when fires inevitably spark, requiring budget-busting resources to quench them. Letting a fire burn out naturally and consume what is often decades of tinder buildup ceases to be an option, raising the likelihood and intensity of future fires.

Thomas Fire in the hills — The Thomas Fire burns in the hills above Los Padres National Forest on December 20, 2017. (Forest Service photo by Stuart Palley)

Building farther out from population centers also strains other public resources. As demand expands for energy, emergency services and water, so must the infrastructure to provide them. Longer commutes increase both conventional air pollution and the atmospheric carbon responsible for climate change, while construction in the wild fringes inevitably destroys habitat for non-human life. And while some people acquire their own personal green space, one single-family parcel at a time, the rest of us lose the breathing room so fundamental to life in the West.

Savvy developers and their political supporters are now using the housing shortage to promote projects and associated policies in the wildland-urban interface, even as they resist more beneficial measures like affordable housing requirements and limits on short-term rentals. Yet their efforts to undo environmental protections — particularly the much-maligned California Environmental Quality Act — long predate the housing crisis. It may be hard to blame them for using the situation to their advantage — and there’s some logic, however cynical, in their positions — but the choice they present, between open space and housing, between sustainability and affordability, must be called out as a false one.

This is not to say that the status quo is acceptable, only that there are better, more equitable solutions. Among them are building on vacant or underutilized parcels in city centers. Another involves converting empty office buildings to mixed use, since remote working has emptied many of these locations. Suburban areas, especially those connected to public transit, can increase density through construction of apartments, condos and townhouses that are more affordable to middle-income households. Investment in additional public transit is essential because it allows for denser development in areas where parking is hard to come by. Upgrading parks and other green space amenities is also critical — otherwise it will be hard to attract new residents to these developments.

Colorful tiny houses for the unhoused — Youth Spirit’s Tiny House Village in Oakland in 2021. Photo: Daniel Arauz (CC BY 2.0)

These are hardly novel suggestions, but they remain the best way to close the housing gap while limiting environmental impacts. Only by making communities more centralized and connected can we relieve the pressure to build ever outward.

Enabling the market to produce solutions, rather than hurdles, requires significant policy change. A recent University of California study identifies zoning regulations and discretionary local review as the biggest obstacles to the kind of infill development California needs. And while the California Environmental Quality Act serves a vital function, adjustments could ensure the law does not discourage projects that ultimately benefit the environment. Of the many legislative fixes proposed in recent years, only the more modest have been adopted — including SB 9, the California Housing Opportunity and More Efficiency (HOME) Act, which streamlined the process for subdividing single-family lots and allowed construction of up to four units in place of one. Proponents of more dramatic measures — such as mandatory upzoning of neighborhoods near public-transit stops or job hubs — still seek the public and political support needed to get over the hump.

The time for large-scale change is here. Our current course leads to a future where a home is a luxury good, where all but the wealthy live hopelessly distant from green space. California, long touted for the boldness of its policies, has the chance to show the rest of the West that there are solutions to this insidious crisis. It won’t be easy, but it must be done. There’s more at stake than just the wildness of the hills.

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

Previously in The Revelator:

Protect This Place: Tallahassee’s Towering English Forest Faces Imminent Destruction

Why We Need Slow Solutions to Solve Our Water Problems

A new book explains why “Slow Water” projects can help us tackle our climate, water and biodiversity crises.

The world got a reminder of the beauty and importance of going slowly with the advent of the Slow Food movement that kicked off in Italy in the 1980s and spread throughout the world. Ditching fast food for locally sourced meals comes with myriad benefits for people and the planet.

The same can be said for embracing slow water, although the concept hasn’t achieved the same international recognition just yet. As we face a future of climate worsened droughts and floods, of continuing water pollution and crashing biodiversity, rethinking our relationship to water is central to thriving — and even surviving.

Science journalist Erica Gies found that many innovative projects working to solve our most challenging water problems all have a central premise in common: slowing water down. She explains how that’s done in her new book Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge (available to U.S. readers in June), which tracks the work of “water detectives” enacting these changes across the world.

The Revelator spoke with Gies about what’s required to make Slow Water projects successful, who benefits, and why we’ll need to rethink more than just our engineering.

What does Slow Water mean?

In our attempt to control water we’re often trying to eradicate the slow phases and move it a lot more quickly. We’re putting up levees so that it won’t settle on floodplains. We’re filling in wetlands so that we can build or farm on top of them. We’re cutting down mountain forests that act as water towers, generating water and releasing it slowly.

In all of the cases I looked at, 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.

Slow Water is really giving water access to its slow places as much as possible within our human habitat or near our human habitat. It’s thinking of water as an entity with its own agency. It’s systems thinking.

How do we begin to do this? It seems like it’s about more than just changing engineering.

There’s a kind of a fundamental attitude shift behind the concept of Slow Water, which is instead of having this sort of hubris or human supremacist attitude, the water detectives are looking at water as an entity that has its own relationship with rocks, microbes, beavers and humans across the ages.

Erica Gies. Photo by Jill Beale

That idea is very common in many Indigenous cultures around the world. That’s why you hear water protectors say things like “water is life.” Some people will talk about water as a relative, as a grandmother. That kind of attitude has a real strength when it comes to interacting with water, because water is part of a very complex system. There’s the water cycle, of course, but also all of these relationships with the different ecosystems and animals, including us.

The problem with our control-of-water mindset is that we’re often focused on single-minded problem solving. If we live in a dry area and we want to have water for later, we build a dam and a big reservoir. Or if we want to stop a town from flooding, we build a levee.

But if you’re only focused on solving that one problem, you’re not considering the system in which it works. And that’s why you have a lot of these unintended consequences, like building a levee that then pushes the water to another community nearby that doesn’t have a levee. And dams are an environmental justice issue as well.

It’s also very place-specific. This isn’t a solution that you want to scale up and stamp out in a real cookie-cutter kind of way. There are definitely commonalities in different projects, but every single place is unique in its hydrology, its ecology, its rocks, its people, and what its people need.

Slow Water projects are bespoke and, ideally, they’re local. They are more like [distributed] renewable energy — like solar panels on everybody’s roof where a lot of panels add up to a meaningful amount of electricity.

You traveled all over the world for this book. What common threads did you see?

I think the common thread is that you have to try to understand water rather than just try to make water do what you want it to do. You have to understand what water was doing before we dramatically altered the landscape. What is water likely to want to continue to do?

And how can we accommodate that within this landscape?

One of the places I talk about is Chennai, which is on the southeast coast of India. The people who live there are Tamils. They have this incredibly innovative water system that they’ve been doing for at least 2,000 years. But in the last 40-50 years, they’ve really gone down the kind of mainstream development path, as their city has expanded massively.

They have three rivers that go through the city and wetlands, backwaters, salt marshes and a whole series of human-built ponds that were relics of the great Tamil water infrastructure. But as they expanded, they built over many of those, and the city has begun to flood more and more regularly.

I was there in December and there was a small rainstorm and it immediately started flooding. During monsoon season there is nowhere for the water to go. But like us, their impulse now is to move water away — we can’t have it lingering here. We can’t have it flooding.

That’s created another problem. After the monsoon season is a long dry season when they need water. Now they’re drilling lots of groundwater and their groundwater is dropping and they’re talking about building really expensive desalination. But Chennai actually gets one and a half times the amount of water it needs via the rain. It’s going to these extreme lengths to get more water when it doesn’t need to.

What are the ways in which plants and animals can benefit from Slow Water projects?

The biodiversity question is critical, and it comes back to systems theory. The thing about Slow Water projects is, if you’re doing it right, you’re restoring or recreating or mimicking to some degree a healthy ecosystem that’s doing all of the nutrient and pollution and food cycling that healthy ecosystems do. And what you need, to do all that, is critters and plants.

We’ve altered 75% of the world’s land area. That’s one of the reasons why we’re having a biodiversity crisis. There’s a lot less habitat for all of these critters. I believe it’s a moral issue that we continue to coexist with other creatures, but there is also a self-interest angle to it. The more that we can do to help restore these ecosystems that modulate the water cycle, the more we also have space for these critters. And then we also need these critters to perform the work of modulating the water cycle.

I go into that in some detail where I talk about the hyporheic zone, which is an area that’s not groundwater and not surface water. It’s an ecotone that’s in between and has a lot of unique critters. It’s a lot like our human gut microbiome. If we don’t have healthy collections of microbes, then we suffer from various illnesses. It’s very much the same with waterways. So that biodiversity is really a fundamental piece.

The main focus of the book is how Slow Water projects can be an adaptation measure to help buffer human communities from floods and droughts. But in fact, because these are whole systems, there’s also a lot of “blue carbon.” Wetlands store incredible amounts of carbon, as do peatlands and high-altitude forests. So they are also a mitigation measure.

Maybe we’re not going to measure exactly the amount of carbon that’s stored in this complex system. But maybe we don’t have to. Maybe we can say, “Look, our city’s not flooding, and our stream is running in the summer, even though we’re in the dry west.” Maybe that’s a good enough sign that this investment has been worth it.

What can people do to get engaged in this work?

As people see floods or droughts in their backyards, they’re beginning to understand that climate change is water change.

But the really empowering thing about Slow Water is that there are things that you can do to protect yourself from flood and drought as a city, as a region, as a watershed. It’s not easy, right?

You have to cooperate with people, you have to share a vision. But people are doing it. I think that’s a really hopeful message. Water is local and there are things that you can do locally to have a much better relationship with water.

Previously in The Revelator:

Let Rivers Flood: Communities Adopt New Strategies for Resilience

Dam Accounting: Taking Stock of Methane Emissions From Reservoirs

Mounting studies highlight greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs, and now a coalition of environmental groups has called for regulatory action.

This month regulators greenlighted a transmission line that would bring power generated from Canadian hydroelectric dams to New York City. New York’s plan to achieve a zero-emissions grid by 2040 depends on hydropower, and it’s not alone.

Globally hydropower is the largest source of renewable energy. In the United States it makes up 7% of electricity generation, and 37 states allow some form of hydropower in their renewable portfolio standards, which establishes requirements for the amount renewable energy that must be used for electricity generation.

As U.S. states and countries across the world work to reduce fossil fuels and boost renewables, hydropower is poised to play an even bigger role.

There’s just one problem: A growing body of research published over the past two decades has found that most reservoirs, including those used for hydropower, aren’t emissions-free.

“Hydroelectric reservoirs are a source of biogenic greenhouse gasses and in individual cases can reach the same emission rates as thermal power plants,” Swiss researchers found in a 2016 study published in the journal PLoS ONE.

Hidden Emissions

Despite the green reputation of hydropower among policymakers, some reservoirs emit significant amounts of methane, along with much smaller amounts of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide.

That’s bad news because we already have a methane problem. This short-lived but potent gas packs 85 times the global warming punch of carbon dioxide over 20 years. If we hope to stave off catastrophic warming, scientists say we need to quickly cut methane. But new data show that despite this warning it’s still increasing at record levels — even with a global pledge signed by 100 countries to slash methane emissions 30% by 2030.

Methane can rise from wetlands and other natural sources, but most emissions come from human-caused sources like oil and gas, landfills and livestock. We’ve known about the threat from those sources for years, but emissions from reservoirs have largely been either uncounted or undercounted.

In part that’s because tracking emissions from reservoirs is complicated and highly variable. Emissions can change at different times of the year or even day. They’re influenced by how the dam is managed, including fluctuations in the water level, as well as a host of environmental factors like water quality, depth, sediment, surface wind speed and temperature.

But recent scientific research provides a better framework to undertake this critical accounting. And environmental groups say it’s time for regulators to get busy putting it to work.

A Paucity of Policy

In the United States “there are no policy requirements and no regulatory requirements that reservoir emissions be assessed and reported,” says Kelly Catlett, director of hydropower reform at American Rivers.

And that’s concerning, says Daniel Estrin, general counsel and advocacy director at Waterkeeper Alliance. “We think hydropower is a totally false solution to the climate problem and would really dramatically exacerbate problems for our rivers’ biodiversity.”

Dams disrupt free-flowing rivers and cause a well-documented list of harms to fish, freshwater mussels and other animals.

Alewives returned by the millions after the Edwards and Ft. Halifax dams in Maine were removed. (Photo by John Burrows/ASF)

Gary Wockner, executive director of the river advocacy group Save the Colorado, likens the current push for more hydropower to fracking, which was once thought of as a low-emissions “bridge fuel” to ease transition between fossil fuels and renewables.

“But as the science evolved, we now know that’s not true,” he says. “In some cases, with all the leaks of methane, fracking can be worse than coal. And so here we are again in essentially a similar situation with hydropower as the science continues to evolve.”

That’s why this March his organization, along with outdoor retailer Patagonia and the nonprofit Earthjustice, started pushing regulators for more accountability. The groups, along with more than 100 other signers (including The Revelator’s parent organization, the Center for Biological Diversity), have petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to begin a rulemaking that would add dams and reservoirs under the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

The program currently requires 8,000 facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions — but none are hydropower plants or other reservoirs. The United States currently has 90,000 dams, 2,500 of which provide hydropower.

“Just like we require coal-fired power plants and natural gas power plants to report their emissions, I think we should require hydropower systems to report theirs,” says Mark Easter, a senior research associate at Colorado State University studying greenhouse gas emissions and a backer of the petition effort.

Mounting Evidence and Better Methods

It’s hard now to sidestep the issue of reservoir emissions if you’re serious about cutting greenhouse gases.

The first studies digging into the topic took place in Canada and Brazil in the 1990s. Research continued in the years following, with a 2000 study being the first to take a more global look at the issue. In 2013 another study found that 10% of reservoirs have emissions factors larger than equivalent carbon dioxide emissions from gas-powered plants.

The issue got a big bump in the public’s consciousness in 2016, when major media outlets picked up a study of global reservoir emissions published in Bioscience that found that previous research had underestimated methane emissions, which we now know to be the second biggest contributor to climate change.

The researchers urged policymakers across the world to take note and concluded that global reservoirs account for just under a gigaton of annual carbon dioxide equivalents — about 1.3% of all global emissions.

They also cautioned that their numbers still likely underestimate reservoir emissions. Most studies analyze emissions over a 100-year time frame, but methane has a much larger impact in the short term. There are also multiple pathways for methane to reach the atmosphere from reservoirs, some of which weren’t captured in their research but could be major contributors in certain places.

When areas are flooded to create a reservoir, microbes decompose the submerged organic material, a process that can lead to methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions depending on the water chemistry and other factors. A lack of oxygen triggers methane production.

Early studies tracked the release of methane as it diffused from the surface of reservoirs. But recent research has found that it can also bubble to the surface sporadically — a process that’s enhanced when reservoir levels are lowered. New acoustic tools have made it easier to capture these variable fluxes. Additional emissions can occur downstream after water passes through dam turbines, which usually draw water from the deepest, most methane-rich parts of a reservoir.

“Much more methane either bubbles out of reservoirs or is emitted just downstream from reservoirs than was previously known,” found the researchers of a 2021 study that focused on developing a new framework for calculating reservoir emissions, called the G-res tool.

When taking these factors into consideration, they found global reservoirs emit around 29% more greenhouse gas emissions per area than previously calculated.

Methane emissions are a bigger concern in tropical climates where there’s more biomass and warmer temperatures, the study found. But additional research has revealed that more temperate climates like the United States aren’t immune from the problem, either.

A 2014 study of an Ohio reservoir led by EPA scientist Jake J. Beaulieu found that mid-latitude reservoirs can have comparable methane emissions to those in the tropics. “We estimate that CH4 [methane] emissions from agricultural reservoirs could be a significant component of anthropogenic CH4 emissions in the U.S.,” the researchers wrote.

View of half the lake and shoreline with beach and trees — William H. Harsha Lake in Batavia, Ohio. Site of the 2014 study on reservoir emissions. Photo: USACE / Christopher Bass (CC BY 2.0)

Six years later Beaulieu and other researchers found that methane emissions from reservoirs in Ohio were the state’s fourth largest source of human-caused methane. That’s because nutrients continually wash into reservoirs from the upstream watershed. For reservoirs near developments and agriculture, the nutrient runoff can cause algae blooms that lead to more methane production.

“Reservoirs draining watersheds that are subject to high levels of nutrient loading, such as fertilizer application to croplands, tend to have higher methane emission rates than reservoirs draining undeveloped watersheds,” Beaulieu explained in an email to The Revelator.

That finding also means we can expect methane emissions from reservoirs to increase with climate change. Warmer waters produce more algae, and increased storms and runoff will send more nutrients into rivers and the impoundments created by dams. That creates a vicious cycle: more algae, more methane emissions and more warming.

A Global Concern

The work scientists have done to advance the methods used to calculate these greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs is helping to push real-world action. And it’s coming at a critical time.

Governments and utilities have planned thousands of new dams throughout the world. And many of these would be built in tropical and subtropical areas likely to have the largest emissions.

“What you could be worried about is the fact that there are hydropower building booms going on in South America, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa,” says Tonya DelSontro, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo and a co-author of the 2016 Bioscience study. “If you build these large water surfaces for reservoirs, then we’d be increasing emissions.”

One thing that could help is action from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A 2006 report from the IPCC on climate change included an appendix “that gave some crude method to estimate greenhouse gases from reservoirs,” says Yves Prairie, an aquatic ecologist and the UNESCO chair in global environmental change at the University of Quebec at Montreal. “But because it was in an appendix, it was never formerly adopted as a method and countries didn’t have to report their greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs.”

However, the large body of scientific research done since then — including the G-res tool developed by Prairie and colleagues — led the IPCC to adopt a new methodology in 2019 that draws on these advances. It’s expected that soon countries will be required to report their reservoir emissions in their annual greenhouse gas inventories, he says.

person in foreground pointing to forested area being cleared for construction — Trung Son hydropower project site in 2012, Vietnam. Photo: Mai Ky / World Bank (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

U.S. Action

Wockner, who started the EPA petition, hopes to see counting and reporting of emissions begin soon in the United States, too.

“Then you can start talking about what to do about it,” he says. “How do you regulate emissions or how do you stop them?”

It may be months before the EPA responds to their petition, and even then it could decide not to take action. Although Beaulieu reports the agency is already at work on the issue from other angles, including conducting a nationwide survey of greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. reservoirs.

The four-year project, scheduled to be completed next year, “will improve our understanding of how reservoir greenhouse emission rates vary,” he says.

And the EPA has also included reservoirs in its national greenhouse gas inventory for the first time in a newly-published report.

This is promising news. “Emissions must be fully accounted for in the U.S. greenhouse gas inventory and evaluated in the context of regulatory compliance,” says Easter.

Having this information on emissions available to other agencies would help them to make decisions on whether to permit new dams, or remove or relicense existing ones, and contribute to a more complete understanding of the environmental impact of dams. It could also inform the action of states like New York that plan on boosting its clean energy portfolio with hydropower.

“Having a peer-reviewed scientific process for tracking emissions would help not just dam operators, but regulatory agencies and the public, too,” says Easter. “That way they can understand where the issues are — and where they aren’t — to be able to make informed decisions about whether to maintain these systems or if alternatives need to be found.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Promise or Peril? Importing Hydropower to Fuel the Clean Energy Transition

Protect This Place: Rapa Island, Home of Rare Seabirds and Beautiful Forests

The most remote inhabited island in French Polynesia is the habitat for several rare indigenous plants and animals, but it’s severely threatened by invasive introduced species.

The Place:

Rapa is the most southeastern island of the Austral Archipelago in French Polynesia. Ten islets, ranging in size from two to 64 acres, surround the main island, with a total land area of just 15.6 square miles (about 40 square kilometers). Rapa is sometimes called Rapa Iti, or “Little Rapa,” to distinguish it from Rapa Nui (better known as Easter Island). As of 2017 Rapa had a population of 507 people, a unique community that still follows old Polynesian traditions and speaks its own Polynesian language, Rapa. There are three main villages — Ahurei, Tukou and Area — all located around the central bay. It’s the only island in the country that has a winter season, usually between May and October, when the temperature can go down to 37 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius). That temperature difference is one reason there are seabirds and plants living here that don’t live in other parts of French Polynesia.

Rapa map — Caption: Rapa Island, courtesy SOP Manu/BirdLife.

Why it matters:

Rapa is a place of extraordinary biodiversity, with at least 300 endemic species. The main inhabited island has one terrestrial endemic bird species, the endangered Rapa fruit-dove (Ptilinopus huttoni, local name Koko), which is the country’s largest fruit-dove.

White-bellied storm petrel — White-bellied storm-petrel (Koru’e) ©Hadoram Shiriai, used with permission.

Rapa Island is also a very important site for seabirds, with 11 species, mainly rare petrels, shearwaters and storm-petrels. Three species breeding on its uninhabited islets are now in danger of extinction: the Rapa’s shearwater (Puffinus myrtae or more locally as Kakikaki), white-bellied storm-petrel (Fregetta grallaria titan) and Polynesian storm-petrel (Nesofregetta fuliginosa) — the latter two locally named Koru’e. These species are very rare, difficult to observe, and of significant scientific interest. It’s suspected that the Rapa’s shearwater and white-bellied storm-petrel are endemic to this island — an exception among seabirds, who normally have large reproductive areas and breed in many different countries.

Rapa Island also has a unique human community. It was first settled by Polynesians, most likely in the 13th century. Their dialect developed into what is today the Rapa language. It’s believed that the depletion of natural resources on the island resulted in warfare, and the inhabitants lived in up to 14 fortified settlements (pa or pare, a type of fort, similar to the Māori pā) on peaks and clifftops.

Contact with Europeans brought liquor and disease, and between 1824 and 1830 over three-quarters of the local population died. Peruvian slavers raided the island as well. When a handful of their victims were returned to the island, they brought smallpox, which caused an epidemic. In 1826 there were almost 2,000 inhabitants; forty years later, there were fewer than 120.

The independent island kingdom was declared a French protectorate in 1867 and formally annexed on March 6, 1881. Subsequently the local monarchy was abolished. But the Rapa Island community still follows the old traditional ways — even if it has a governing town hall and an elected mayor.

The land belongs to the community and their descendants, so it can’t be bought by any exterior landowners. There is an elder council (Tohitu) that decides who the land goes to; if the land isn’t used for more than two years it can be taken away and redistributed to another local that needs it. There is also a Tomite Rahi (leaders from different factions of the island — religious groups, fishermen, taro planters, school teachers, etc.) that decides on rahui delimitations (protected marine areas where people are not allowed to fish, to protect food resources in the long term). These groups are not recognized in France or French Polynesia governments, but on Rapa Island their decisions are law.

Making Taro popoi — Making Taro “popoi,” beaten cooked taro with rocks and mixed with water from the river, a job mainly done by women. Often the sounds resonate in the village. They sing local songs to have a constant rhythm when beating. ©Tehani Withers, used with permission.

On the island almost every plant, bird and fish species has a unique local name. That’s part of why it’s so important to protect these species: If they were to be lost to extinction, Rapa’s local community would also lose a part of its cultural heritage, which was already close to disappearing in the 1800s.

The threat:

Due to its large number of uninhabited islets and remoteness, Rapa is an ideal site for the protection of endemic animals and plants. But they’re threatened by invasive species.

Non-native species were introduced to Polynesia by humans and have profoundly altered the ecosystems where they settled. Invasive plants, for example, can gradually occupy a space and squeeze out local species. Other species can cause significant habitat destruction: Goats consume native plants and cause significant erosion, while predatory species like rats and feral cats directly attack chicks and eggs.

Threats to Rapa’s flora and fauna have increased dramatically. Twenty years ago overgrazing and extensive degradation of the endemic forests was caused by the introduction of cattle, goats and horses. Now the invasion of strawberry guava (Psidium cattleyanum) and Caribbean pine (Pinus caribaea) has worsened the situation. Introduced plants had already invaded 64% of the island in 2005, including most of the forested areas. A local environmental NGO, Raumatariki, has tried to reverse the situation since 2012 by installing a fence around important native forest areas to prevent further grazing by domestic stock and setting up a native plant nursery. Further measures are needed to avoid this ecological disaster.

Strawberry guava — Raumatariki staff cut strawberry guava around Rapa’s endemic sandalwood tree — once thought to be extinct, rediscovered in 2020. ©Roberto Luta, used with permission.

Sandalwood — One of the last seven Rapa sandalwood trees in the world. © Tehani Withers, used with permission.

All offshore sites are affected by invasive grass species, especially Comelina nudiflora and Melinis minutiflora. These can form dense patches, restricting the growth of native endemic plants, which can consequently affect the breeding success of seabirds since they provide less protection against the weather conditions and make it more difficult for burrowing seabirds to nest.

Of the nine islets first surveyed in 2017, three are invaded by Pacific rats — a major problem for seabirds nesting in burrows or on the ground, as they eat chicks and eggs. Unstopped this will eventually cause the birds to disappear. For example, the Rapa shearwater population (a burrow-nesting species) has collapsed from 1,000 pairs in the 1990s to fewer than 200 pairs today.

The restoration of the important indigenous forest areas on Rapa main island and offshore islets are essential projects for the Polynesian Ornithology Society, or SOP Manu, and its partner BirdLife International. The disappearance of the Koko and these seabird colonies would constitute a significant loss of the Polynesian cultural heritage and undoubtedly serious damage to our environment.

My place in this place:

I work for SOP Manu as an island restoration project manager, and my projects take place in multiple islands across French Polynesia. With the help of BirdLife International, I’m in charge of organizing restoration projects on uninhabited islets that are biodiverse or have populations of rare bird species. Rapa was of course identified as one of the hotspots, especially for seabird colonies. Since it’s very remote, there have not been that many visits from scientists — for birds especially. The last ornithological work was done in the 1990s.

Tehani Withers on top of Tauturau islet. In the background: Karapoo rahi and Tapiko islets, and the Rapa mountain/cliff named Makatea. Photo ©Roberto Luta, used with permission.

The first time I went onto Rapa was during school holidays in 2017, when I joined one of the special ship rotations for children of the island to go home for two weeks every six weeks. There’s only one primary school on the island, so kids need to leave home when they’re 11 years old for schooling.

To go there, you really need to be prepared. A week before, you have to send all your gear and food onto a ship named the Tuhaa Pae, take a flight to an island the ship will stop at before going on to Rapa, and then spend 36 to 48 hours at sea.

With a team of scientists from SOP Manu and BirdLife International, we had to survey the fauna and flora on 10 different islets. It was a lot of work — during very bad weather. The town hall lent us a very old small boat. Sadly, while we were camping, we lost it! The rope broke during the night due to tumultuous waves and it floated away. We had to have a team of locals come pick us up in a bigger boat. The scariest part was jumping off the islet into the waves to catch the buoy and be pulled onto it. Of course, BirdLife helped us compensate the loss of the boat with a new one, so we could continue to have a good relationship with the town hall and the local community.

The second time I went, during school holidays in 2018, everyone remembered me: “You were with the group who lost the boat!” I met more locals than I had the time before, as my role was to start training them on biosecurity: We’d discovered on the previous trip that ship rats were absent from the island, and we wanted to keep it that way. Again, it was super fun, but bad weather limited what we could do.

I thought then that if I wanted to do more, I’d have to spend more time on this island. With the president of Raumatariki and my other colleagues from SOP Manu, we decided to form a team to do more work on the restoration project and applied for the Young Conservation Leadership Award.

I remember going for the third time in 2019, alone, to join Tiffany, Raumatariki’s president, and help her with the YCLA project for six weeks. At that time, I was in a slump because my SOP Manu projects on other sites weren’t working out. It had just been so discouraging to even be in this field. But the third trip saved me. I got to know more about Rapa and its local community, and it made me passionate about conservation again. Their involvement in our project and their views on nature are what I think of when I think of how our Polynesian society should be: protectors of our island resources for future generations and protectors of our cultural heritage.

Biosecurity — Tehani explaining differences between rat species for biosecurity during a public meeting. ©Roberto Luta, used with permission.

I’ve returned three times since then. Each time I visit, people recognize me — they’ve kind of adopted me as their own bird expert. I’m often invited to village meetings and events. I get so much help from them, both in the field and when I’m staying in the village. They like to share everything, and if we walk around we never go home without a gift like fish, fruit or vegetables.

At each public meeting we organize to share our progress, a lot of people attend and give their opinions. In 2020, during my fifth time on the island with Raumatariki, we brought school kids onto islets to see birds and onto the main island restored forest sites to remove invasive plants. I learned a lot of their culture and we helped kids know more about their birds and plants.

I’m now very attached to this community and this beautiful island, and I really hope I can continue to help them restore the sites. Each time we arrive, we get flower crowns; each time we leave we receive necklaces of local blue seeds (which means you will come back). Life on Rapa isn’t perfect, and sometimes our visions clash with public opinions, but having the mayor, his employees and the tohitu (elder council) support our projects has made my experience a joy. I feel I’ve learned a lot more about the Polynesian way of life than during my lifetime in Tahiti, which has become modern and individualistic.

They probably won’t read this, but Tongia maitaki (thanks a lot!) to everyone on Rapa Island. You’re the best.

Who’s protecting it now:

Raumatariki protects the environment and cultural aspects related to the nature of the community. They produce indigenous plants in their plant nursery, remove invasive plant species, and plan to restore important archeological sites such as fishing pools (Paeka) and forts (Pa). They’re our local partners in protecting the birds of the island, so we train volunteers and staff to identify birds and invasive species, as well as in biosecurity and related subjects. In exchange they help us communicate with the population and give us logistical support.

What this place needs:

Funding is of course essential. Volunteers would be welcome, if they’re ready to spend months in remote conditions. But paying someone local to oversee these tasks full-time would be ideal.

We also need more scientific help in researching rare birds, their habits, and ways to protect them and restore their habitat. Some plant species, too, are so rare we just don’t know how to produce them on a larger scale for replanting at restored sites.

Lessons from the fight:

I’ve learned that the local community must be involved in conservation projects. Without their support, you can’t effectively protect these sites in the long term. Even though community dialogue can slow down the projects — since there are always diverging opinions — you learn to adapt your methods. Having everyone working together is better for the future of the island’s environment and for the future generations of these remote communities.

Previously in The Revelator:

Protect This Place: The Fragile and Enchanting Costa dos Corais

Ten New Environmental Books Offering Inspiration, Insight and Ideas

April’s best new eco-books look toward solutions to the extinction crisis, climate change, water shortages, environmental justice and more.

April brings spring showers — or it used to, at least. Here in the Portland area, this year, it also brought snow, hail, wind and thunder, along with downed trees, power outages and traffic accidents. Similar abnormal weather occurred throughout the country, with several regions experiencing mid-April blizzards.

That’s climate chaos for you: a series of unpredictable and dangerous events making life more complicated and deadly.

How can we make sense of this and other crises affecting the natural world? Ten new books — including several by Revelator contributors — may offer you the answers, along with some insight, inspiration and ideas to create powerful change.

These books — all published this month — cover heady topics like climate change, environmental justice, biodiversity loss and more. Some are intended for people just learning the basics, while others speak to dedicated environmental professions. Many provide a window into the wonders of the natural world. All offer a vision not just for April, but far into the future.

Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery (Illustrated Edition)

by Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe

Our take: If we ever hope to meet the goal of protecting 30-50% of the planet, we’d better start recovering some of the land and water we’ve lost in the first place. Rewilding ain’t easy, but it’s going to be essential.

From the publisher: “Written by two leaders in the field, this book offers an abundantly illustrated guide to the science of rewilding. It shows in fascinating detail the ways in which ecologists are reassembling ecosystems that allow natural interactions rather than human interventions to steer their environmental trajectories.”

Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge

by Erica Gies

Our take: Gies has written a bevy of articles about “Slow Water” over the past few years, and we’re glad to see her tackle the topic in book form.

From the publisher: “In this quietly radical book, science journalist Erica Gies introduces us to innovators in what she calls the Slow Water movement who start by asking a revolutionary question: What does water want? Using close observation, historical research, and cutting-edge science, these experts in hydrology, restoration ecology, engineering, and urban planning are already transforming our relationship with water.”

Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, From 1979 to the Present

by Eugene Linden

Our take: We’ve followed Linden’s writing for years. Here he offers vital history as a window to the future.

From the publisher: “From a writer and expert who has been at the center of the fight for more than 30 years, a brilliant, big-picture reckoning with our shocking failure to address climate change. Fire and Flood focuses on the malign power of key business interests, arguing that those same interests could flip the story very quickly — if they can get ahead of a looming economic catastrophe.”

Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice

by Aviva Chomsky

Our take: Chomsky’s previous books have focused on immigration, labor exploitation and related issues, and she brings an awareness of racism and equity to her discussion of climate change (which, despite the book’s title, offers a fair amount of science for those readers who are new to the danger it poses).

From the publisher: “…Chomsky breaks down the concepts, terminology and debates for activists, students and anyone concerned about climate change. She argues that science is not enough to change course: We need put social, racial and economic justice front and center and overhaul the global growth economy.” YES! Magazine has an excerpt.

Maker Comics: Live Sustainably!

by Angela Boyle; illustrated by Les McClaine

Our take: This series of enthusiastic educational graphic novels takes a hybrid approach that combines character-based stories with easily followed how-to lessons. This latest volume joins earlier editions on science experiments, robots and gardening.

From the publisher: “…a step-by-step DIY guide that will help kids roll up their sleeves and get making with confidence! Inside this graphic novel you’ll find instructions for eight sustainability projects.”

Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs

by Juli Berwald

Our take: Berwald gave us a flavor of this moving book in her essay “Vanishing: The Bleaching in My Backyard” and in this interview.

From the publisher: “…an inspiring, lucid, meditative ode to the reefs and the undaunted scientists working to save them against almost impossible odds. As she also attempts to help her daughter in her struggle with mental illness, Berwald explores what it means to keep fighting a battle whose outcome is uncertain. She contemplates the inevitable grief of climate change and the beauty of small victories.”

How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall and Toxic Return of DDT

by Elena Conis

Our take: Sex sells, but is using a sexy cover photo the wrong idea for a book about a dangerous pesticide? Check out this revealing Twitter thread where Conis discusses the 74-year history of the photo (which depicts a woman in a fog of “harmless” DDT) and its modern relevance.

From the publisher: “…the sweeping narrative of generations of Americans who struggled to make sense of the notorious chemical’s risks and benefits. Historian Elena Conis follows DDT from postwar farms, factories and suburban enclaves to the floors of Congress and tony social clubs, where industry barons met with Madison Avenue brain trusts to figure out how to sell the idea that a little poison in our food and bodies was nothing to worry about.”

What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care

by Elizabeth Cripps

Our take: A philosopher and former journalist, Cripps addresses the climate crisis through the lenses of morality, ethics and justice. She makes you care about climate change’s most vulnerable victims and in the process offers advice on how we all can help.

From the publisher: “Who should pay the bill for climate action? Who must have a say? How can we hold multinational companies, organizations — even nations — to account? Cripps argues powerfully that climate justice goes beyond political polarization. Climate activism is a moral duty, not a political choice.”

The Coasts of California: A California Field Atlas

by Obi Kaufmann

Our take: This is the third book in Kaufmann’s unique series of “field atlases,” which combine art and science into a beautifully illustrated guide for any naturalist or nature lover. For a flavor of what to expect, check out Kaufmann’s essay about one of California’s most beautiful but overlooked trees, “Vanishing: In Love With the Blue Oaks.”

From the publisher: “…much more than a survey of tourist spots, Coasts is a full immersion into the astonishingly varied natural worlds that hug California’s shoreline. With hundreds of gorgeous watercolor maps and illustrations, Kaufmann explores the rhythms of the tides, the lives of sea creatures, the shifting of rocks and sand, and the special habitats found on California’s islands.”

Chasing the Ghost Bear: On the Trail of America’s Lost Super Beast

by Mike Stark

Conflict of Interest Department: Stark, a former journalist, is a fellow Center for Biological Diversity employee who helped launch The Revelator. His latest book is a riveting examination of the extinction crisis by way of a prehistoric loss. Read an excerpt here.

From the publisher: “No animal shakes the human consciousness quite like a bear, and few compare to the giant short-faced bears that stalked North America during the Pleistocene… The bears weren’t invincible, however. Despite their size, they were swept off the planet in a mysterious wave of Ice Age extinctions more than ten thousand years ago, then mostly forgotten… Part natural history, part travelogue, and part meditation on extinction and loss, Chasing the Ghost Bear returns these magnificent beasts to their rightful place in our understanding of the world just an epoch past.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Now Read This: Stop Doomscrolling and Save the Planet

Six Ways to Talk About Extinction

Including one we forget far too often.

As Earth faces the rampant biodiversity loss many scientists call the Sixth Extinction, it becomes more important than ever to talk about the crisis.

There are, I’ve come to realize in my 15 years on the extinction beat, six ways to do this.

The first, of course, involves sharing the devastating news that a species has gone extinct. Researchers have looked for a species for years and, failing to find evidence that it still exists, declare that it has been lost.

These are usually phrased as “probable extinctions,” because it’s harder to prove that an organism doesn’t exist than that it does. Also, calling something “extinct” too early can result in removing the very protections that could be saving it from that fate. That’s always an important context for these discussions.

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The second way to talk about extinction — by far the most common — is a warning: An animal or plant, or a group of them, is disappearing and could soon go extinct. Invariably, human activities are to blame for the decline of these populations.

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Again, sometimes you find variations on this, such as when we proclaim that a species has disappeared from a specific portion of its range and has become locally extinct. This warning is no less worrisome, though the messaging can sometimes create confusion when people come to believe a species is completely gone.

Tigers Extinct in Laos

That brings us to the third way to talk about the subject: Someone is trying to do something to prevent an extinction. These are stories of struggle, science and drama. They can involve heroes, villains and everything in between. They serve to lift us up in the continued fight against human-caused entropy.

A Virus Wiped Out 90% of This Turtle Species. Can It Recover?

Occasionally — and not as rarely as you might think — this leads to discussion number four: People have saved a species from extinction and it’s now recovered — or at least on its way. This serves as a vital counterpoint to the darkness that surrounds stories of loss.

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Sometimes these heroic achievements have nuances: Someone finds a species that had previously been declared extinct. This is great news…with reservations. It shows that science works and that people don’t give up. But most of these rediscovered species remain at high risk or are even critically endangered, and they’ve been found in the nick of time for people to (ideally) take action to protect them. That places this kind of conversation somewhere between types two and four. We’ll call it type five.

Harlequin Found: ‘Extinct’ Toad Rediscovered After 30 Years

Which brings us to type six: the discussions that reveal what we’re losing when species go extinct. The beauty. The wonder. The parts of our culture and collective experience. The ecological roles that protect us. The mystery of species not yet understood. The marvel of evolution. The interconnectedness of ecological systems.

Ideally, there should be no type six. These are the messages that belong in discussions one through five, but all too often are left by the wayside. Perhaps that’s why type six is at the bottom of the list: It’s the rarest conversation of all.

And potentially, that’s the reason one through five exist in the first place.

What Losing 1 Million Species Means for the Planet — and Humanity

Unearthing the Story of North America’s Lost Giant Bear

A new book digs through dark caves and historical documents to tell the story of the now-extinct giant short-faced bear, which disappeared around the time of the mammoths.

Excerpted from Chasing the Ghost Bear: On the Trail of America’s Lost Super Beast by Mike Stark by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. ©2022 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska.

Editor’s Note: Giant short-faced bears (Arctodus simus) went extinct some 11,000 years ago. These massive animals, which stood 10-feet-tall on their hind legs and weighed nearly a ton, vanished near the end of the Pleistocene. The Center for Biological Diversity’s Mike Stark brings their story back to life — and helps illuminate the cost of today’s extinction crisis.

On August 8, 1988, a man named Chris Nielson was digging with a backhoe as part of a reconstruction project for Huntington Reservoir in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. Out of the sticky mud he pulled what looked to be a log. A closer examination revealed that it was actually a bone. A very large one. It turned out to be a front leg of a fifteen-foot-tall Columbian mammoth. Part of a long, curved tusk was also found. To the crew’s credit, work halted and a concerted excavation began. That summer about 90 percent of the mammoth’s skeleton was found during a meticulous recovery process. It was in remarkable shape, thanks mostly to the encasement of mud that had hovered around freezing for thousands of years, acting as the perfect refrigerator — and preservation agent — for this ancient mammoth.

“At the excavation it was so fresh that we thought we could smell rotting meat at one place,” said David Gillette, who was Utah’s state paleontologist at the time.

Based on the wear and tear of its teeth, the big bull mammoth was likely around sixty years old — granddaddy age for an elephant. It was no charmed life on the edge of this receding alpine lake. Nearly all of his bones showed signs of severe and painful disease, mostly arthritis. The partially digested food in his intestinal tract revealed that his last meal was meager and thin, mostly needles and twigs from a fir tree, sedge leaves and seeds. Finally, around thirteen thousand calendar years ago — a point representing “the very end of mammoth existence in America” — he keeled over and died in a mud bog atop this mountain, far from his ancestral home.

Columbian mammoths were typically plains dwellers, so it was unusual to find one in the mountains at nine thousand feet above sea level. (At the time it was the highest mammoth skeleton ever found in North America.) But, when he died, the Pleistocene and the continent’s mammoth species were in their twilight as the climate was getting warmer. It’s likely the Huntington mammoth was moving upslope in search of cooler climes in the upper reaches of the Wasatch Mountains. But he wasn’t alone.

Several projectile points were also found at the dig site, leading to speculation that Paleoindians may have either hunted the mammoth or scavenged it after finding it dead.

Word got out about the mammoth in 1988 and soon locals were sneaking onto the site and digging on their own, even though it was on federal land and they didn’t have permission. A crew was called in to guard the area. That’s apparently when the remains of a giant short-faced bear were found and whisked away: a single rib and part of its skull, including several teeth. The story was that someone on the night watch duty took the bear parts and stowed them in a refrigerator. They were eventually returned, but the damage was done. Situational context is crucial in paleontological digs, and removing pieces before their location can be closely documented is like ripping pages from a book and trying to understand what they mean. Although the bear bones were recovered and placed safely in a museum the physical context, including exact proximity to the mammoth and the human tools, was lost forever.

Still, there was enough to scientifically piece together some of the story of this giant short-faced bear by Gillette, the Utah paleontologist, and David B. Madsen, both of whom worked at Utah’s Division of State History. First of all, it was big, likely in the same ballpark of the giant found in the early 1980s near ancient Lake Bonneville that was estimated to weigh around 1,400 pounds. The Huntington bear also had large teeth, a tall nasal cavity and an exceptionally squished snout. “This individual was distinctly short-faced, an extreme among the short-faced bears,” Gillette and Madsen wrote.

And then there was the matter of the projectile points and other lithic tools found nearby. Some of them were similar to points found in western Wyoming from around 9,500 years ago. Others were comparable to those found higher up in the Rocky Mountains of the same vintage, if not a bit older. Could it be that, at this ancient lake, the mammoth, the bear, and the people were existing contemporaneously, each in their own desperate struggle for survival in a changing world? Maybe.

“The presence of these Paleoindian materials suggests, but cannot prove, that humans were contemporary with the Columbian mammoth and the short-faced bear at the Huntington dam site,” Gillette and Madsen said.

Utah has long been a hotbed for Ice Age wildlife discoveries. About two miles away from the Huntington Reservoir, there’s a site where American mastodons, extinct bison, and extinct horses have been found. About sixty miles north there’s another rich Pleistocene find. Silver Creek, as it’s known, includes twenty-nine species, like mastodons, ground sloths, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, camels, horses, and bison. The date there is from about forty thousand years ago. But what happened at Huntington may have been a final dramatic chapter in the final hours of the late Pleistocene. “I’m guessing Arctodus was feeding on our poor, dear mammoth,” Gillette, the state paleontologist, said at a community meeting a couple months after the discovery. “Perhaps it delivered the final blow.”

It’s hard to know for sure, but the frozen dead mammoth, so well preserved in the cool boggy ground, might’ve been one of the last meals of the Huntington bear. Gnaw marks on one of the mammoth’s wrist bones show a groove that matches the size and teeth arrangement of the bear. State officials later revised what they think happened: “It’s possible that the bear fed on the carcass and died at the same place,” they said.

Or it’s possible that a different short-faced bear had dined on the mammoth. It’s certainly not out of the question. Years later, scientists published a paper after examining mammoth remains found near Saltville, Virginia, with “extreme examples of carnivore gnawing.” The mammoth had died, and its carcass was probably partially submerged in water or mud. And then a wolf and another meat-eating scavenger — possibly an American lion or a giant short-faced bear — had come along and gnawed on its heel bones with enough force to be identified by scientists thousands of years later.

skull in museum with hand next to it for size — The skull of a giant short-faced bear. Photo: Travis (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Arctodus simus remains, including parts of its jaw and a fearsome-looking lower canine, had been found nearby. The exact size of the bear is unknown, but there was enough evidence to say it was large and likely quite capable of stealing and defending any carcass coveted by other, smaller scavengers. “In fact its only likely rivals would’ve been larger members of its own species,” said the paper, which was authored by Blaine Schubert and Steven C. Wallace at East Tennessee State University.

Still there was another dimension to the bear at Huntington that had caught my eye. “This individual was one of the last of the Pleistocene megafauna in North America,” a state report said in 1996, “perhaps even the last generation.”

While the date may be in dispute — Schubert has since calculated that the Huntington bear lived sometime between 12,764 and 13,058 calendar years ago — the thought of a final, lonely bear, whether at Huntington or elsewhere, struck a melancholy note within me.

_______

This may have been the last stop for the giant short-faced bear. Of course it’s extremely unlikely, astronomically so, that the exact bear found at Huntington Reservoir was the last one on Earth — what are the odds that the last one would actually be found? And that we could ever make that determination? Still, somewhere the last of its kind dropped dead and when it fell, the great shroud of extinction descended over a species that had inhabited the planet for more than a million years. Strange as it was, I let myself consider the possibility that the final moments for Arctodus simus had ticked away at the top of this mountain, the very place I was standing in the chill of the first day of summer.

In recent years, a term has been coined to signify the final individual of a species: an endling. It’s an oddly charming term that’s poignant and sorrowful and final. I wondered if this Huntington bear was the endling for giant short-faced bears. Had his final meal, and the final meal for his kind, been eaten here? Had he spent years searching in vain for a mate, driven by the indefatigable pursuit of procreation at all costs? Had he wandered into the mountains in a last-ditch attempt to outlast the changing world around him only to find a sickly mammoth on the same lost and doomed path?

And then I wondered why I cared about this particular bear. Surely thousands upon thousands of A. simus had perished on the continent, so maybe this one should matter no more than those. But for whatever reason it did. The mind does funny things, and while I stood for a few minutes in the little covered pergola, I ticked through some of the other endlings I knew.

Martha was the name of the last of the passenger pigeons, a species once so populous that when flocks of hundreds of millions flew overhead, day turned to dark. They were mostly gone by the turn of the twentieth century. Martha was born in captivity, spent twenty-nine years at the Cincinnati Zoo, and died in 1914, taking all of the species’ genetic and cultural information with her.

Benjamin was the name given to the world’s last Tasmanian tiger, a sleek carnivorous marsupial with tiger stripes and a kangaroo pouch. He was captured in the wild and held at Australia’s Hobart Zoo under less-than-favorable conditions. He died in 1936, just months after a ban on hunting the species was put into place. Since then, though, there’s been considerable debate about whether Ben was actually the last of his kind.

I was always fond of Toughie, the last of the Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrogs. Originally from Panama, he spent his last years living alone at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, a sort of stately but tragic ambassador of the story of frog extinctions happening around the world. He died in 2016.

And it’s hard not to love Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise, a giant tortoise subspecies, from the Galapagos Islands. He lived to be more than one hundred years old, was never able to breed, and died in 2012, possibly of a heart attack.

It’s a mournful record but only a fraction of the extinctions that have happened during our lifetimes. Many went unnoticed, and nearly every endling went unnamed and uncelebrated. What name would we have given this Arctodus endling in the Utah mountains if we knew indeed he was the last? Huntington? Wasatch? Björn?

Without a good answer, I walked back up the hill to the car, pausing to take in the long stands of aspens and, at their feet, the snowfields stubbornly hanging on against the season’s change, the same way a child clings to a parent’s legs when trouble is afoot. I drew in a long breath of the thin mountain air and let it go. Nothing really lasts.