Debunking the Biggest Myth About Wildfires

A new book from ecologist Chad Hanson explains why misunderstanding fire is dangerous for communities, wildlife and fighting climate change.

Ecologist Chad Hanson calls his new book Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate, but it could just as well be titled Why We Should Love Dead Trees.

Hanson, director of the John Muir Project, uses the book to explain why wildfires are beneficial to forest ecosystems and why keeping fire-burned trees on the landscape creates a biodiversity-rich landscape that rivals old-growth forests.

Smokescreen, steeped in scientific details and personal stories, is written for the average reader — one who’s likely been primed by media and policymakers to regard wildfires as “devastating” and “catastrophic.”

The book examines why, from an ecological perspective, they’re neither. It also tackles the tough issue of why state and federal resources aimed at keeping communities safe from wildfires often do just the opposite.

The Revelator spoke with Hanson about how logging drives fires, what can be done to keep homes safe, and why protecting forests is crucial to fighting climate change.

In some ways it seems like your book is a PR campaign for wildfires, which get a very bad rap despite their ecological benefits. Why should we learn to value them?

Wildfires in our forests are villainized and vilified in many ways that are similar to how native predators like wolves and bears are villainized and vilified in the media, in movies, and by policymakers.

People have this tendency to think about fire in the forest in the same way they think about fire affecting their home. If their home burns, that’s devastating. And therefore, they think if a fire burns in the forest that must also be devastation. So they want solutions from policymakers. They want people to tell them that they’re going to fix the problem out there somewhere in the forest.

And I think we need to fundamentally shift that perception so that people understand that fire is a natural and beneficial ecological force out in the forest.

We actually have a deficit of fire in almost every forest ecosystem relative to natural pre-suppression levels. The real losses and harms that are happening in communities are almost entirely preventable if we focus our resources and attention near homes, but it’s going to take a 180-degree shift in direction from our current policies.

In the book I mentioned the example of a community that really focused on home fire safety and defensible space, pruning within 100 feet of homes. That made a difference in the 2017 Creek Fire in the mountains in Southern California.

There were 1,400 homes ultimately within the fire perimeter and only five burned. You can only see that kind of success when the focus is on home safety and community protection, as opposed to back-country vegetation management — removing trees, chaparral and other native vegetation — and thinking that’s somehow going to stop a weather-driven fire, which it doesn’t.

One of the things you cover extensively in the book is why logging after fires can be so ecologically detrimental. Why are these so-called “snag” forests of dead trees so important?

Fires, including mixed-intensity fires, have been burning in the forests of this planet for over 350 million years. We’ve had fires, including high-intensity fire patches, in our forests since 100 million years before the dinosaurs walked the Earth. These are deep evolutionary processes, and there’s a deep evolutionary history of dependence and relationships with ecosystems and wildlife species related to that.

And it’s not just fire that burns at low intensity and creeps along the surface. Some species like that just fine, but others like it hot and they need the areas where fire burns more intensely and kills most, or all, the trees in patches.

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

It turns out that these places where fire or drought or other natural processes kill most or all the trees, these places are not destroyed. They’re not damaged from a biodiversity standpoint. They’re ecological treasures.

These snag forests are oftentimes areas that support the single highest levels of wildlife abundance and diversity in the entire forest ecosystem in a given region, provided that those areas are not subjected to post-disturbance logging — what they call “salvage logging” — which destroys all that wonderful rich complex habitat by taking away those dead trees that so many wildlife species need.

The Forest Service and other agencies engage in post-fire logging and thinning projects that they say will keep communities safer from fire. You point to science that says otherwise. Can you explain?

When people hear the term “thinning,” they think about workers out there with pruning shears and rakes. They don’t think chainsaws and bulldozers, which is the reality of thinning in the vast majority of cases. These are really just commercial logging operations.

“Thinning” is oftentimes a stand-in for what the agencies called “fuel reduction,” which is just another stand-in for logging. The reality is most of the time a thinning project will kill and remove upwards of 60 or 70% of the trees in a given stand. And that includes many mature trees, even oftentimes old-growth trees.

The other thing to understand is that thinning fundamentally changes the microclimate of the forest, and it changes it in ways that make the forest more susceptible to a wildfire, have a faster rate of spread, and a higher fire intensity most of the time.

That’s because thinning reduces the forest canopy cover. When that happens, it creates hotter and drier conditions on the forest floor, because it’s letting through more sunlight. Things are getting more desiccated during fire season.

By removing so many trees, thinning also reduces the windbreak effect that a denser forest has against the winds that drive the flames. So when areas are thinned, the fires can spread through faster.

In the first six hours of [California’s 2018] Camp Fire — between the point of ignition and reaching the town of Paradise and claiming 85 lives and over 14,000 homes — the fire burned through several thousand acres that had been heavily logged in the preceding decade. Some of that was post-fire logging where thousands and thousands of dead trees were removed under the guise of fuel reduction. Some of it was commercial thinning on national forest lands and also on private lands.

Those were the areas that the fire moved through by far the fastest and most intensely.

Outside of those areas, once the fire got into other forests that had no logging history or very limited logging history, it burned overwhelmingly at low and moderate intensity.

If weather and climate are the biggest drivers of fire, how should that inform our response to it?

Yes, weather and climate are definitely the primary drivers of wildfire behavior. In the largest scientific analysis that has been conducted on this question, we looked at the whole western United States — three decades of data, millions and millions of acres of fires — and what we found are two key things. Number one, weather and climate variables are dominant. That’s primarily what drives wildland fires. That means what you do with chainsaws is not going to stop these fires because essentially you’re trying to fight the wind and you can’t fight the wind with a chainsaw.

The secondary finding was that forest management, specifically logging, is also a relevant factor. A lot of people think if you have a denser forest, it’s going to burn more intensely. If you have a forest that’s protected from logging, and therefore it’s going to have more trees typically, then that forest has more fuel and it will burn more intensely. We found exactly the opposite.

Even though weather and climate were the primary factors, logging is a key secondary factor, and it strongly tends to make fires burn more intensely.

How do we better protect forests and value them as a tool for fighting climate change?

In order to really usher in an era of ecological management and climate-friendly management on our national forests and other federal public lands, we need to get the Forest Service out of the logging business. That means we’re going to need to enforce existing laws and we’re also going to need to pass new legislation to accomplish that.

There’s a broad consensus, among climate scientists and forest ecologists in this country and around the world, that moving away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible is absolutely necessary, but it is also not sufficient in order to overcome the climate crisis.

We need to draw down CO₂ that’s already in the atmosphere. And the most environmentally beneficial way to do that is to protect natural habitats, especially the carbon-rich ones like forests and wetlands.

That is an essential part of climate solutions. In fact, we cannot succeed unless we do that. And the United States must play a leadership role internationally on this, because more logging [by volume of wood removed] happens in forests of the United States than in any other country in the world.

That puts us in a position of culpability, but also potential leadership to turn the corner.

Nectar Thieves: How Invasive Bumblebees Threaten Hummingbirds

Buff-tailed bumblebees are robbing hummingbirds of nutrients — just one of several threats facing the tiny birds, a new book reveals.

South America has 24 known species of bumblebee native to it, but the buff-tailed bumblebee is not one of them. In 1998 the first buff-tailed bumblebees were introduced from Europe to Chile — nobody seems particularly sure why they were brought to the country, but one must assume that agriculture of one kind or another lay behind the decision.

Buff-tailed bumblebees are bred in vast numbers in Europe to be sold as fledgling colonies for seeding around commercial crops — for example, tomatoes — to assist with pollination. Inevitably, some bees have escaped into the wild and, provided they can find a source of nectar and a reasonably conducive climate, they go native, and spread. Chile is far from unique in this regard, as at least thirty countries worldwide now have buff-tailed bumblebees at large where they ought not to be.

One might think that having something as inoffensive as a pollinating insect introduced into an ecosystem would pose no significant risks, but it appears as if this is far from the case. Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex and preeminent bumblebee scientist, has suggested that the invaders may be contributing to the decline of native bumblebee species, through competition and, perhaps, through diseases they carry to which native bumblebees have little or no resistance.

Chilean scientists from the Universidad de los Lagos in Osorno have also been studying the invaders and quickly realized that the European bumblebees, in the temperate forests of Chile, were proficient and widespread nectar thieves. The bumblebees have learned to hack the usual pollinator and plant relationship, whereby a plant provides a pollinator—whether it’s an insect or a hummingbird — with nectar in return for pollination services rendered by the inadvertent transmission of pollen from one flower to another. Instead, the bumblebees bite the walls of a flower’s nectary and suck the nectar from within, bypassing entirely the effort involved in entering the flower via the petals in the usual manner evolution had intended.

The flowers examined in the study in question were those borne by bushes of hardy fuchsia — a plant that has evolved to be pollinated by green-backed firecrowns, hence its alternative English colloquial name, hummingbird fuchsia. Considering the possible impact of this nectar theft on the plants and their hummingbird pollinators, the scientists suggest that nectar robbing may trigger reductions in plant populations due to lowered reproductive success, and this in turn may impact upon the hummingbird populations associated with those plants. The very shape of the flowers may change in time as the bumblebees exert new evolutionary pressures upon the plants, with unforeseeable implications for the hummingbirds.

The study in question was only examining the incidence of nectar robbing in fuchsias, but, of course, there is no reason to suppose that buff-tailed bumblebees will not be robbing other species of flowering plant wherever they are found in the Americas as a whole. Given that hummingbirds are found throughout the Americas, it is not unfair to suppose that other species of hummingbird far rarer than the widespread and adaptable green-backed firecrown may, in time, find themselves the unwitting victims of nectar crime performed by an invasive species of bumblebee.

Meanwhile, the fates of bees and hummingbirds alike are colliding across the Americas with the continuing widespread use of neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides. These pesticides are widely used in agriculture, persist in water and soil for months or even years, and in plants are systemic — permeating everything from the tips of the roots to a plant’s pollen and nectar. They are highly toxic to insects — and to birds too.

The American Bird Conservancy has discovered that one seed coated with imidacloprid, a popular neonic, is enough to kill a songbird. Researchers are concerned that repeated ingestion of nectar laced with neonics will have the same effect it does on bees — a disruption of their brain function and, specifically, their short-term memory and their ability to navigate.

For many hummingbirds, both of those brain functions are critical. On a day-to-day basis hummingbirds, like bees, return to favored and remembered nectar sources time and again. Birders sometimes refer to this as “working a trapline,” a reference to the activities of fur-hunters in Alaska and Canada. Moreover, some hummingbirds, like the rufous hummingbirds I had searched for in Alaska, are long-distance migrants, and will rely on their brain function to navigate distances that seem unfeasibly long for such a small creature. The loss of this ability, in what is known as migratory disorientation, could lead to significant mortality.

Species Spotlight: The Gentle and Quirky White-Bellied Pangolin

This is not your regular anteater. It’s one of the world’s only scaly mammals, representing millions of years of evolution.

The white-bellied pangolin is one of eight evolutionary distinct pangolin species split equally between Africa and Asia. They’re among the very few mammals with scales and have a tongue that, when pulled out of its cavity, is longer than their entire body, which measures about 30 inches. These gentle and somewhat quirky animals should be celebrated, but instead they’re often killed for their unique scales, believed in some cultures to harbor medicinal properties.

Species name:

White-bellied pangolin, also known as the tree or three-cusped pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis)

Description:

White-bellied pangolins look like armadillos, except that they have scales, not rings. They get their name from the white patch on their bellies, one of the few areas not covered in scales. These scales are made of keratin and overlap each other, acting as the animals’ main defense against predation. With the help of their long tongues, these toothless mammals feed almost exclusively on ants and termites and roll into a ball when threatened. Adults usually grow to about 3-4 pounds.

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Where it’s found:

Tropical lowland forests and secondary forests in 23 west, central and east African countries make good habitat. These pangolins also live in savanna-forest mosaic and dense woodlands.

IUCN Red List status:

Although no formal population estimate exists for white-bellied pangolins across their range, the species was recently reclassified from vulnerable to endangered to reflect the increasing magnitude of threats to their survival.

Major threats:

Like all pangolin species, white-bellied pangolins are threatened by overexploitation for their meat and scales, which are consumed as food and in traditional medicine, respectively. However, the growing demand from Asia for the scales of African pangolins is disproportionately affecting white-bellied pangolins, since they’re the most common African pangolin species. In addition to poaching, white-bellied pangolins are threatened by habitat loss.

Notable conservation programs or legal protections:

The Convention on the International on the Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) restricts the international commercial trade in all pangolin species, including their derivatives. National laws in many white-bellied range countries also prohibit their killing, with anti-poaching patrols conducted in their habitats to deter poachers and enforce these laws.

My favorite experience:

Seeing my first living white-bellied pangolin after more than a decade of being a pangolin enthusiast filled me with excitement and hope. My challenging 11-hour hike into the heart of Nigeria’s Cross River National Park to monitor these mammals was a success, as I found and tagged about five of them. Seeing these animals in their natural environment was even more exciting, as I had only ever seen their carcasses and scales on display in wild meat markets.

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

While scientists are working to further understand the ecology and dynamics of the illegal pangolin trade to inform science-based conservation actions, governments of countries where pangolins exist and those involved in their trafficking should establish laws protecting pangolins (where they do not already exist) and uphold already-enacted laws. Governments and the public can also support pangolin conservation through increased anti-poaching patrols and the arrest and prosecution of poachers and traffickers, as well as campaigns to increase awareness of their plight.

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Key research:

Buckingham E, Curry J, Emogor C, Tomsett L, Cooper N. 2021. Using natural history collections to investigate changes in pangolin (Pholidota: Manidae) geographic ranges through time. PeerJ 9:e10843 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10843
Simo, F, Difouo Fopa, G, Kekeunou, S, et al. Using local ecological knowledge to improve the effectiveness of detecting white‐bellied pangolins (Phataginus tricuspis) using camera traps: A case study from Deng‐Deng National Park, Cameroon. Afr J Ecol. 2020; 58: 879– 884. https://doi.org/10.1111/aje.12762

5 Things to Know as Wildfire Season Heats Up

New research sheds light on how increasing wildfires are affecting ecosystems and communities.

In early May scientists discovered a plume of smoke wafting from a smoldering sequoia that ignited during 2020’s Castle fire, which set California’s Sequoia National Forest alight last August.

The fiery remnant is the result of another too-dry winter in California and an ominous marker for the beginning of the 2021 fire season, which experts say looks “grim” for California and across much of the West.

March and April were the driest in more than 126 years for Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah, and the third and fourth driest for California and Colorado. Oregon, meanwhile, had its driest April ever. Things are predicted to continue to be both hotter and drier than normal across the West and Plains, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

That combination, driven by climate change, caused record-breaking wildfires last year. And this year could be similar.

“More frequent drought, hotter summers and warmer and drier autumns, tied to climate change, are stacking the deck for large and destructive fires during the heart of the fire season,” The Washington Post reported. “And this year, a lack of rain in spring could mean fires arrive early in some areas.”

An increase in the size and number of fires is also driving more research. Here’s what scientists have found recently about how wildfires are affecting ecology and communities:

1. California’s Troubling Trends

If it seems like wildfire danger is getting worse in California, that’s on target.

A new study published in Nature Scientific Reports found that the frequency and total area burned by wildfires in California have both increased significantly in the past 20 years. Wildfire season is now longer, and the yearly peak comes a month earlier.

The researchers also found geographic changes. “Hotspots” with severe fire risk — once limited to Los Angeles County — are now found in other parts of Southern California and across northern parts of the state. “Natural wildfires became more concentrated in Northern California,” the researchers found. But “human-caused wildfires have even emerged [in] new hot spots…along the west coast and the Sierra Nevada mountain range.”

Climate change and human land-use activities are the major drivers of these increases, but the expansion of the “wildland-urban interface” and continued development now also put more people and property in the way, according to the study.

2. Midwest Flames

The West isn’t the only part of the country battling increasing blazes. A state of emergency was declared in Wisconsin on April 5 as wildfire season there arrived two weeks early.

“Between 2016 and 2020, Wisconsin averaged 742 fires per year and lost 1,200 acres to fires,” The Guardian reported. But just four months into this year, there were already 365 fires, totaling 1,518 acres.

The state is expected to see its biggest fire season in five years.

3. Learning From Australia

Of course, everything is relative.

Last year 4 million acres burned in California wildfires. That’s dwarfed by the 46 million acres consumed in Australia’s 2019-2020 bushfires.

Wildfire is a natural part of many ecosystems in Australia and beneficial for some species. But research is beginning to show some of the short-term effects of Australia’s recent fires on plants and wildlife.

Koala in tree — A Koala in a tree near the Tambo Complex bushfire in Australia, Jan. 2020. Photo: BLMIdaho, (CC BY 2.0)

Recent research found that the critical habitat of more than 830 native vertebrate species was affected. Seventy species lost nearly one third of their range, with 21 of those species already at risk of extinction before the fires.

Another study found that more than 800 vascular plant species were “highly impacted.” The ranges for 116 species were entirely burned and another 173 lost 90% of their habitat.

“The megafires occurred within globally significant biodiversity hotspots with high richness and endemism across important plant groups,” the researchers wrote.

The good news is that many of the affected plants are resilient to fire, although the researchers say that some areas may not be able to recover. “The massive biogeographic, demographic and taxonomic breadth of impacts of the 2019–2020 fires may leave some ecosystems, particularly relictual Gondwanan rainforests, susceptible to regeneration failure and landscape-scale decline,” they wrote.

4. Landscapes Shifting

Landscape-scale changes as a result of climate change and wildfires are happening elsewhere, too. A study published in Ecosphere found that when a wildfire in southwest Colorado’s Rocky Mountains follows a severe bark beetle outbreak, Engelmann spruce trees are unable to recover.

The loss of conifers following that one-two punch is likely to lead to more quaking aspens taking root, and a possible shift in forest type — and the species that depend on those trees.

Changes are afoot in California too, particularly in chaparral. That ecosystem is made up of assemblages of native woody shrubs found along many of the state’s coastal foothills and inland mountain slopes. The natural interval for fire return to chaparral is between 30 and 150 years, but in some places that’s been shortened to just 10 years.

Not all species are able to adapt to that change. Some chaparral shrubs are being replaced by weedy annual grasses, which in turn drive more fires in an unfortunate feedback loop.

An increase in the frequency and severity of fires in chaparral also threatens an oft-overlooked part of the ecosystem: lichen, which play a key role in retaining moisture in the soil and providing food for wildlife.

A new study found that while most lichen don’t survive wildfires in chaparral, they can recolonize in the decades following. However, with fires happening more frequently, we’re likely to see “substantial lichen biodiversity losses in chaparral shrublands.”

5. Fighting Fire With Fire

Parts of California’s chaparral may be seeing too much fire, but other areas are still in fire deficits after a century of fire suppression policies. Land managers are beginning to see that bringing fire back to the landscape can be an important tool, though.

Of course, Indigenous communities already knew that and have employed cultural burning practices for millennia. Some of that Indigenous environmental knowledge is being shared by tribes like the Yurok, Hoopa and Karuk in Northern California.

But there are still many barriers to prescribed burns, including air-quality regulations and the capacity and funding to implement projects.

Want to know more? Below you’ll find a selection of stories on wildfire from The Revelator’s archive.

Here’s What Climate Change Means for Wildfires in the West

Western Wildfires Will Be a Boon for These Native Species

The Bad Seeds: Are Wildfire Recovery Efforts Hurting Biodiversity?

How Do We Solve Our Wildfire Challenges?

The Pantanal Is in Flames — We Mapped the Damage

Australia’s Bushfires: An Extinction Crisis Decades in the Making

Four Ways Alaska’s Unending Warming Impacts Everyone

California Tribe Hopes to Conquer Climate Woes — With Fire

How One of Australia’s Rarest Trees Was Saved From Wildfires

The Climate Flames Come for Us All

Four Years of ‘The Rev’

We’re just getting warmed up.

Well, that went by quickly.

Four years ago today, The Revelator launched into the electronic ether with a mission to bring new voices and ideas to environmental journalism.

Since then we’ve published more than 830 articles and commentaries, covering everything from the extinction crisis to environmental justice, the dangers of fracking and plastics, the science of dam removal and light pollution, and lesser-known topics like pop culture’s effects on conservation.

It wasn’t easy. Our publication was planned, in no small part, as a reaction to the election of the Trump administration. We knew we’d be looking at a period of intense environmental deregulation and turmoil. We just didn’t realize how intense or chaotic things would soon become.

But as we shined our lights into the darkness, we did our best to not stay focused exclusively on the pain. We spent equal time examining solutions, talking about how to achieve progress, and looking at the fun things that make conservation worth it.

That combination of revelation and celebration will continue. As we collectively emerge from the past four years, and as those of us here start year five of what we affectionately call “The Rev,” we have one big promise for you: We’re just getting warmed up.

Meanwhile, we’ve taken this anniversary as an opportunity for reflection. Here are 10 lessons we’ve learned from the past four years:

1. Surround yourself with good people. A strong community will keep you going on even the darkest of days.
2. But talk to anybody (and keep your cool when you do). Self-segregation by political ideology will tear the world apart if we let it. It’s among the greatest threats we face.
3. Broaden your inputs, support quality journalism at a time when it’s still under attack, and remain vigilant for disinformation. We’ve seen what happens when people limit their information sources or allow themselves to be manipulated.
4. Do your best, but don’t bear the entire weight on your shoulders. Individual action remains important, but we need to work toward systemic change now more than ever.
5. Prepare for the worst. We’re expecting another dangerous fire season here in the West, and that’s just one of the likely effects we’ll all feel from climate change and biodiversity loss in the months and years ahead.
6. Celebrate the best. There’s no better way to protect the natural world than to enjoy it, by yourself or with friends.
7. Share. Your positive experiences and wild encounters make a difference to others.
8. Listen. A lot of voices have traditionally been left out of the mainstream conversation. Let’s all vow to break that cycle and keep our ears open to each other’s experience and wisdom. We’re stronger together.
9. Trust the experts. The scientific process is our superpower.
10. Vote. In every election, no matter how small.

Thanks to all our readers for the past four years. We look forward to year five and beyond.

10 New Books About Wildlife and Our Relationship With Animals

From the majesty of our feathered friends to the cultural cost of extinction, these new books help us examine the natural world.

As I sat in a pharmacy chair for the required 15 minutes after my first vaccine dose, my mind turned to animals.

There weren’t any animals nearby, of course — the buzzing fluorescent lighting of the run-down drugstore wasn’t anyone’s natural habitat, including mine. And that very absence of visible sky and wildlife — a change from the past 15 months, much of which I’d spent watching the world go by through my home-office window — served to remind me how easily we can lose sight of it.

I returned home, rushed to the back window and the birdfeeders beyond, and randomly pulled a new book out of a pile of review copies. Sure enough, its subject was animals.

And it wasn’t alone. In recent months publishers have released a bevy of new books about birds, bears, koalas and other creatures. These hefty tomes do more than just celebrate our furry, feathery or chitinous friends; they also examine our relationships with them, for better or worse.

Here are publishers’ descriptions of 10 of the best new wildlife-related books of 2021 so far. The books come from a long list of celebrated authors, scientists and journalists and cover species from several continents. They’ll help give you a dose of the wild — and a window into other parts of the world — that will hold you over until it’s safe to travel again to see loved ones. Human and otherwise.

Animals’ Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild by Barbara J. King

An uplifting new book from the author of How Animals Grieve.

“As people come to understand more about animals’ inner lives — the intricacies of their thoughts and the emotions that are expressed every day by whales and cows, octopus and mice, even bees — we feel a growing compassion, a desire to better their lives. But how do we translate this compassion into helping other creatures, both those that are and are not our pets?”

The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany by Graeme Gibson

Margaret Atwood provides the foreword to this new edition of her late partner’s classic book.

“In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist and avid birdwatcher Graeme Gibson offers an extraordinary tribute to the venerable relationship between humans and birds.”

Flames of Extinction: The Race to Save Australia’s Threatened Wildlife by John Pickrell

Signs of hope amidst and after apocalyptic wildfires.

“In the early months of 2020, the world’s attention was riveted on Australia, where the nation’s iconic wildlife fought for survival in the face of unprecedented wildfires. Images of koalas drinking from firefighters’ water bottles went viral and became the global face of a catastrophe that would kill as many as three billion animals. Known as the Black Summer, the fire season was responsible for more wildlife deaths and near-extinctions than any other single event in Australian history. Flames of Extinction, written by a journalist at the heart of this news coverage, is the first book to tell the stories of Australia’s record-setting fires, focusing on the wild animals and plants that will be forever changed.” (Read an exclusive excerpt.)

How to Talk to a Tiger … And Other Animals: How Critters Communicate in the Wild by Jason Bittel; illustrated by Kelsey Buzzell

A kids’ book that’s about a lot more than growling.

“Ever wanted to talk to a tiger? Or chatter with a cheetah? Or yak with a yak? This book brings together a babble of more than 100 beasties and explores the amazing ways they talk to each other. From fish that fart to alligators that dunk to fire worms that flash, you’ll discover that wildlife have the strangest ways of sending a message…”

The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds by Jon Dunn

A worldwide travelogue examining some of the world’s most charismatic and mysterious migrators.

“Hummingbirds are a glittering, sparkling collective of over 300 wildly variable species. For centuries, they have been revered by Indigenous Americans, coveted by European collectors, and admired worldwide for their unsurpassed metallic plumage and immense character. Yet they exist on a knife-edge, fighting for survival in boreal woodlands, dripping cloud forests and subpolar islands. They are, perhaps, the ultimate embodiment of evolution’s power to carve a niche for a delicate creature in even the harshest of places.”

The Grizzly in the Driveway: The Return of Bears to a Crowded American West by Rob Chaney

Can we relearn how to live with returning megafauna?

“Montana journalist Robert Chaney chronicles the resurgence of this charismatic species against the backdrop of the country’s long history with the bear. Chaney captures the clash between groups with radically different visions: ranchers frustrated at losing livestock, environmental advocates, hunters, and conservation and historic preservation officers of tribal nations. Underneath, he probes the balance between our demands on nature and our tolerance for risk.”

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction by Michelle Nijhuis

An illuminating history of the conservation movement.

“In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement’s history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale.”

Florida Scrub-Jay: Field Notes on a Vanishing Bird by Mark Jerome Walters

A portrait of the last-ditch efforts to save the final few dozen birds of a critically endangered species.

“The only bird species that lives exclusively in Florida, the Florida scrub-jay was once common across the peninsula. But as development over the last 100 years reduced the habitat on which the bird depends from 39 counties to three, the species became endangered. With a writer’s eye and an explorer’s spirit, Mark Walters travels the state to report on the natural history and current predicament of Florida’s flagship bird.”

Empire of Ants: The Hidden Worlds and Extraordinary Lives of Earth’s Tiny Conquerors by Susanne Foitzik and Olaf Fritsche

An intimate portrait accompanied by amazing photographs.

“Inside an anthill, you’ll find high drama worthy of a royal court; and between colonies, high-stakes geopolitical intrigue is afoot. Just like us, ants grow crops, raise livestock, tend their young and infirm, and make vaccines. And, just like us, ants have a dark side: They wage war, despoil environments, and enslave rivals — but also rebel against their oppressors.”

Gone: A Search for What Remains of the World’s Extinct Creatures by Michael Blencowe

Examining the scars left behind on an emptying Earth.

“Inspired by his childhood obsession with extinct species, Blencowe takes us around the globe — from the forests of New Zealand to the ferries of Finland, from the urban sprawl of San Francisco to an inflatable crocodile on Brighton’s Widewater Lagoon. Spanning five centuries, from the last sighting of New Zealand’s upland moa to the 2012 death of the Pinta Island giant tortoise, Lonesome George, his memoir is peppered with the accounts of the hunters and naturalists of the past as well as revealing conversations with the custodians of these totemic animals today.”

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How an Indigenous Scientist Studies Global Change

Dr. Danielle Ignace has found a way to unify her Native American and Western science identities to better understand big ecosystem changes.

All it took was one college research trip to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains for Danielle Ignace to know her intended career path in medicine was the wrong fit. After spending a month in the mountains, she quickly learned she wanted to study ecology.

“I was just kind of hooked,” she told The Revelator. “I really wanted to work on these big questions about how climate change and environmental issues impact our ecosystems.”

And she has. Trained as a plant physiologist, ecologist and ecosystem scientist, she’s been teaching at Smith College in Massachusetts and is also a research associate at Harvard Forest.

But this summer she’s taking a new position in the department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. For Ignace, the big jump across the continent is more than a geographic change. She’s a member of the Northwest’s Coeur d’Alene Tribe, and she says the new position is the first she’s found that allows space to incorporate her Native American identity into her work as a scientist.

We spoke to her about what she’s learned about our changing ecosystems and why understanding Indigenous voices is so important in that process.

What can you tell us about your research?

I study the impacts of global change, which can mean a lot of different things. In the case of my lab and my work, it really focuses on the impacts of invasive pests or plants and big changes in climate, including precipitation or drought. Those global change factors can act solely or interact with each other and do great damage or have really big impacts for ecosystems.

In particular, I work on ecosystems that are in transition in some way. That could be changing from a system that has high diversity to low diversity, or maybe they’re already invaded and they lost a lot of biodiversity in the system.

Most recently I’m looking at the eastern hemlock ecosystems that are transitioning to black birch ecosystems because of invasive pests. I try to understand everything about ecosystem function, but one of my main goals is to understand what’s happening with carbon, because that tells us a great deal about whether these ecosystems will be a source or sink for CO₂. And that has really big implications for whether they contribute to global warming.

What have you found?

Eastern hemlock forests in the northeastern United States are being destroyed by the hemlock woolly adelgid and the elongate hemlock scale. They have basically created eastern hemlock graveyards with these huge areas of declined or destroyed forest stands.

When this happens we lose out on this very special tree species that’s known as a foundation tree species, meaning that it has a very important role for structuring ecosystems and plant communities. Other organisms depend on the special habitat it has created. So there’s devastating implications when we lose this particular tree species.

owls in tree — Eastern screech owls in a hemlock tree. Photo: Matt MacGillivray, (CC BY 2.0)

But also, we find typically they get replaced by black birch trees. Eastern hemlocks are evergreen conifers and black birch trees are deciduous, and so they have very different composition in their leaf material. When that foliage falls to the ground, they decompose in very different ways.

With this change, everything gets decomposed a lot quicker. There’s faster turnover. We get more nutrients in the soil, but what that means is that we lose the carbon sequestration that was in the soil of eastern hemlock forests. They have a really strong and deep soil organic layer and lots of carbon goes in there. And so when you lose eastern hemlocks, it diminishes that ability to sequester carbon in those forests.

The change could take decades to manifest, but the ramifications are huge.

In your new position at the University of British Columbia, will you continue this line of research?

We did such great work with the eastern hemlock system, so I definitely don’t want to give that up. I will try to continue that in some way from afar.

I want to still think about how carbon gets stored in ecosystems or moves through ecosystems and what the implications are for climate change, but I also want to now work with Indigenous communities and help amplify or include their voices in the land-use history and land-management dialogues.

That voice has been either erased or excluded for so long and Indigenous communities have really sustainable methods of land-use management that I think need to be highlighted and that could help with communities being more resilient to climate change.

What has your experience been like as an Indigenous scientist?

I have had a very standard path in academia and science that didn’t really include my Native American identity or culture. Getting my education and research experiences, and then moving up in academia, I didn’t know it could be a thing where we could include Indigenous communities and we could work with Indigenous communities and that somehow, my Native American identity could co-exist with my Western science identity.

Dr. Danielle Ignace studies ecosystem changes. Photo: Sandra Costello

People in my science world didn’t really want to know the Indigenous perspective. They didn’t ask for it. And I felt like there wasn’t space to include both of those in my career. I almost left academia a year ago because of this issue.

Have you seen that change? Is UBC, which has also just launched the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries, a better space for that?

Yes, what was really attractive to me about UBC was that they hired all these Indigenous scientists. I think this is a long time coming for them. We have a really great local Indigenous community there and we have Indigenous students, and they wanted to see Indigenous faculty involved in research and serving in leadership roles.

Kudos to them, they’ve done an amazing job. But it’s not typical. Many institutions say it would be good to have more Indigenous faculty, but don’t necessarily put their money where their mouth is.

For me, I do feel finally that there’s space for my Native American identity and my Western science career to co-exist in the work that I do. Now it’s non-negotiable. Coming up in academia I didn’t see anyone like me, and I want to help with that.

I think what we’re seeing is to really have these kinds of solutions to what’s happening with Indigenous communities, who are so impacted by climate change, we need everyone to be involved in that. And that especially includes Indigenous scientists.

We Need to Talk About Spider Conservation

Despite their enormous ecological values, new research reveals we don’t understand how most arachnid species are faring right now — or do much to protect them.

Spiders need our help, and we may need to overcome our biases and fears to make that happen.

“The feeling that people have towards spiders is not unique,” says Marco Isaia, an arachnologist and associate professor at the University of Turin in Italy. “Nightmares, anxieties and fears are very frequent reactions in ‘normal’ people,” he concedes.

Perhaps that’s why spiders remain under-represented across the world’s endangered-species conservation plans. Average people don’t think much about them, relatively few scientists study them, and conservation groups and governments don’t act enough to protect them.

That’s a major gap in species-protection efforts — one that has wide repercussions. “Efforts in conservation of spiders are particularly meaningful for nature conservation,” Isaia points out. Spiders, he says, have enormous ecological value as food for birds and other animals. They’re also important to people, both as predators of pest species and as inspiration for medicines and engineering.

And yet they remain neglected.

How bad is the problem? A new paper by Isaia and 18 other experts digs into the conservation status of Europe’s 4,154 known spider species and finds that only a few have any protection at the national level. Most have never even been adequately assessed or studied in detail, so we don’t know much about their extinction risk or their ecological needs.

Italy, for example, is home to more than 1,700 spider species, but fewer than 450 have had their conservation status assessed and only two have any legal protection in that country.

Greece, meanwhile, has nearly 1,300 spider species within its borders, but scientists have only assessed the conservation needs of 32 of them. None are legally protected.

Jumping spider — A jumping spider in Greece. Photo: Miltos Gikas (CC BY 2.0)

Researchers found the same results — or lack thereof — throughout Europe.

“What surprised us most while assembling the data was the extremely poor level of knowledge about the conservation status, extinction risk and factors threatening the survival of European spider species, despite Europe being one of the most studied regions of the world in terms of biodiversity,” says Filippo Milano, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. student in Isaia’s research team. “And even when the conservation status of the species was provided, information was often incomplete or out-of-date, resulting in assessments based on poor quality information and high levels of subjectivity.”

It’s not just individual European nations; the problem is continent-wide. The researchers say just one spider — the endangered Gibraltar funnel-web spider (Macrothele calpeiana) from the Southern Iberian Peninsula — is protected at the European level by the Bern Convention, an international treaty about habitat and species conservation on the continent and some African nations, and European Union Habitats Directive.

Macrothele calpeiana. Photo: Gail Hampshire (CC BY 2.0)

And of course, this is not unique to Europe; other countries and continents fail to protect arachnids, and for similar reasons.

“Spiders are understudied, underappreciated and under attack by both the climate crisis and humans affecting our environment,” says spider expert and science communicator Sebastian Alejandro Echeverri, who was not affiliated with the study. “These are one of the most diverse groups of animals that we don’t really think about on a day-to-day basis. There’s like 48,000-plus species, but my experience is that most people don’t really have a sense of how many are in their area. In the United States, for example, we have just 12 spiders on the endangered species list out of the thousands of species recorded here.”

This lack of information or protection at the national level affects international efforts. At the time the research was conducted the IUCN Red List, which includes conservation status assessments for 134,400 species around the world, covered just 301 spider species, eight of which are from Europe. That number has since increased — to all of 318 species from the order Araneae. (And perhaps tellingly, it’s worth noting that the Gibraltar funnel-web spider has not currently been assessed for the IUCN Red List.)

The great raft spider (Dolomedes plantarius), listed as vulnerable by the IUCN. Photo: Charlie Jackson (CC BY 2.0)

The Red List does not grant protections to any species, but it’s often used by governments and conservation groups to seek protections on the national or international level.

That dearth of IUCN data seems likely to change, since one of the paper’s authors is also the chair of the IUCN Spider and Scorpion Specialist Group, but they have a monumental task ahead of them.

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The Web of Borders

As we see with so many other wide-ranging species, a transnational border is often not a spider’s friend. The paper identifies several examples of species protected in one country but not its neighbor, despite being found in both places. According to the paper only 17 spider species are protected by conservation legislation in two or more European countries.

“Animals aren’t limited by our political lines on a map,” notes Echeverri. “You can protect something here, but if that animal’s habitat extends past your border and the people next door don’t know about it or don’t protect its habitat in the same way, it could still be pushed toward extinction even though you’re doing your best.”

At the same time, cross-border protection can also create problems if legislation is based on out-of-date scientific data. The Gibraltar funnel-web spider — the one species that’s listed on the Bern Convention and the EU Habitats Directive — has “protection against all forms of disturbance, capture, keeping, deliberate killing, and damage or destruction of breeding or resting sites,” according to the paper. That’s essential in its native habitat, but at the same time it’s now rapidly spreading through the commercial olive-tree trade and has been spotted in at least four countries outside its range. “As a matter of fact, it seems that the unique spider protected at the European level is considered an alien species in many countries,” says Milano.

How Do We Fix This?

Echeverri calls the study “an important call to action.” In particular, he points out how it compares different spider assessment and conservation approaches in each country. “This gives people in the IUCN and lawmakers a tool to say, ‘hey, this system seems to be working really well, let’s take what we can from it that will work great in our country.’ ”

Isaia notes that they hope this paper spins out a wide-reaching web. “We hope to stimulate environmental government agencies, stakeholders and decision-makers to include spiders in effective conservation strategies and fostering processes that may contribute to the conservation of threatened spider species,” he says. Examples, he says, would include “promoting risk assessment procedures for spider species, or including threatened spider species in planning protected areas and biodiversity action plans.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Susan Cameron searches moss mats for the spruce-fir moss spider. Photo: G. Peeples/USFWS

But moving forward will require a lot of effort — not to mention some money.

“There’s not a lot of funding for naturalists to go out and survey these animals,” says Echeverri. “It’s this ongoing crisis within science. You don’t know a lot about the species, so you don’t know who’s there. You don’t know how many are there. You don’t know how they’re doing or what habitats they’re in, and we need to make our conservation plans based on scientific data. If that data doesn’t exist, even if there is a desire to do something for these animals, we can’t plan anything because we don’t have the fundamentals.”

The researchers hope others will take up their mantle to understand and protect spiders. “Highlighting general patterns and identifying the main strengths and weaknesses in biodiversity conservation across Europe is an appropriate starting point to plan achievable solutions focusing on the local context,” says Milano. “The same model may be adopted to other geographic regions and may certainly apply to other taxonomic groups.”

And maybe, along the way, their work can help inspire people who fear spiders to look at them in a different light — or even to help look for them, like the Map the Spider project that asks citizen scientists to upload locations of the complex webs woven by elusive purse-web spiders.

Who knows, that might even inspire a new generation of arachnologists — a field of scientists who are currently in short supply.

“Focusing on spiders has been a very important choice in my career,” Isaia says. “There are those who, like me, see spiders as miracles of the natural evolution. You may study their web, their venom, their bizarre behaviors, the interactions between different species, their role as predators, their amazing taxonomical and functional diversity, their key role in the maintaining ecosystem equilibrium. You may also use them as sources of inspiration in architecture and visual arts. Aren’t these good reasons to find them attractive?”

Species Spotlight: Velvet Scoter — the Disappearing Diving Duck

A nearly extinct population of this wide-ranging species represents a unique element of biodiversity in the Caucasus.

The wide-ranging sea duck known as the velvet scoter can be found in the skies and waters of nearly a dozen European and Asian countries, but it has almost disappeared from some of them. Just a few years ago, it was thought that the geographically isolated breeding population of these birds in the Caucasus was completely extinct. But a study conducted on the Javakheti plateau in 2017 revealed that Lake Tabatskuri in Georgia still holds a small breeding population of just 25-35 pairs. The long-term survival of this tiny population remains in serious jeopardy.

Species name:

Velvet scoter or velvet duck (Melanitta fusca)

Description:

The velvet scoter is a medium-sized, stocky diving duck. The name comes from the velvety plumage of a male bird. The orange bill and light-blue eyes, with a tiny white mark under the eye, make it even more fascinating during mating season.

Where it’s found:

The breeding population of velvet scoter has disappeared in Armenia and Turkey, and nesting is now confined to just one site in the entire Caucasus: Lake Tabatskuri. This beautiful lake is in the Javakheti plateau region of southern Georgia, 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) above sea level. A small island in the northern part of the lake is now the birds’ only natural breeding place in the region.

A velvet scoter duckling on Lake Tabatskuri, Georgia, which harbors the last breeding population of the species in the Caucasus. Photo: Nika Paposhvili. Used with permission.

IUCN Red List status:

The velvet scoter is classified as vulnerable and is considered to be decreasing worldwide, with a three-generation decline estimated at 32-46%. However, the Caucasian geographically isolated population is in much more trouble and is a critically endangered species regionally.

Major threats:

Nesting sites have been lost or disturbed through habitat degradation to irrigate adjacent agriculture land, as well as hay cutting on peninsulas and islands in the lakes. Additional factors that led to diminished numbers in the Caucasus include eutrophication (caused by agricultural intensification and wastewater), disturbances by boats, overfishing and bycatch, illegal hunting, removal of eggs by locals for food, and duckling and egg predation by Armenian gulls (Larus armenicus) that compete with the scoters for nesting sites. It is therefore crucial to protect these last remaining ducks before the species is completely wiped out.

scoter vs gull — Velvet scoter vs. Armenian Gull. Photo: Nika Paposhvili. Used with permission.

They still face some of the threats that led to their decline, with predation on ducklings by Armenian gulls having the greatest impact. This problem is compounded by the fact that numbers of Armenian gulls have dramatically increased in recent years — likely due to the easily accessible food at landfills as more human settlements have been established. Despite attempts by the brood-hen to deter attackers, most of the ducklings (roughly 60-70%) currently become victims in the few days after they hatch.

Notable conservation program(s) or legal protections:

Conservation actions to ameliorate conditions have already been initiated under our Conservation Leadership Programme project. As a result of raising awareness among local people and involving them in the project, anthropogenic factors (hunting, collecting eggs on the island, disturbance by boats in the feeding area) have been significantly reduced. But competition between species on the nesting grounds and gull predation on the scoter ducklings remain major problems, and we’re now working to find appropriate ways to solve these problems. At the same time, we are working to form a long-term conservation action plan for the successful conservation of the breeding population.

My favorite experience:

It was a rainy, windy cold day when I first got to Lake Tabatskuri and set myself and my telescope up for birdwatching, looking for these rare birds. The rain was hitting me in the face, wetting the telescope and restricting my vision. Everything was against me, but I would not give up and stubbornly looked for a black duck in the raging waves, trying not to miss any part of the lake.

Finally, where I least expected it, in the one bay near to the village, I spotted a small flock of velvet scoter riding on the waves. It was a joy and at the same time a great assault on my emotions, hard to describe in words — like the feeling a father has when he first sees his first child.

I do not know how long I stood there, shell-shocked, before a local passerby found me and took me to her house to bring me back to reality.

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

Lethal or nonlethal control of the gull population would have a positive impact on the scoters’ reproductive success. However, a more detailed study is still needed before making this decision.

Key research:

Paposhvili, Nika. The status of Velvet Scoter Melanitta fusca breeding in Georgia. Wildfowl, [S.l.], p. 183-192, Nov. 2018. ISSN 2052-6458.

Public Health Crisis Looms as California Identifies 600 Communities at Risk of Water-System Failures

A new report puts into focus for the first time the scope of the state’s drinking-water problems and what it will take to fix them.

A familiar scene has returned to California: drought. Two counties are currently under emergency declarations, and the rest of the state could follow.

It was only four years ago when a winter of torrential rain finally wrestled the state out of its last major drought, which had dragged on for five years and left thousands of domestic wells coughing up dust.

That drinking-water crisis made national headlines and helped shine a light on another long-simmering water crisis in California: More than 300 communities have chronically unsafe drinking water containing contaminants that can come with serious health consequences, including cancer. The areas hardest hit are mostly small, agricultural communities in the San Joaquin and Salinas valleys, which are predominantly Latino and are often also places classified by the state as “disadvantaged.” Unsafe water in these communities adds to a list of health and economic burdens made worse by the ongoing pandemic.

California took a step toward addressing the problem back in 2012 when it passed the country’s first state law declaring the human right to water. That was followed by a 2019 bill to help meet that mandate by establishing the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund.

But just how much cash is needed to address the problem?

The answer, we now know, is about $10 billion, according to a new “needs assessment” from state agencies and the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation that provides a detailed look at the scope of the problem and cost of solutions.

“The study is unique in that it’s the first — certainly for California, but I think also for any state — that looks across every source for drinking water purposes that can be quantified,” says Gregory Pierce, the study’s principal investigator and an adjunct assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA. This includes all public water systems regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as domestic wells and “state smalls” with fewer than 15 connections.

“I think this takes us many steps forward to better understanding where we need additional funding and what areas we should be focusing on in terms of proactively addressing at-risk systems,” says Michael Clairborne, directing attorney at the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, which works on water-equity issues in the state. “It also demonstrates that there’s still a real need for additional infrastructure funding for drinking water.”

Understanding the Problem

So how bad is it?

The causes of the state’s drinking water woes are varied — and worrisome. Nitrate, mostly from farms and dairies, is the costliest water contaminant, the study found. Nitrates are especially dangerous for infants, and can cause lethargy, dizziness and even death. Other groundwater contaminants include bacteria from leaking septic systems and uranium, which can cause kidney damage. Several other contaminants have been linked to cancers, including the industrial pollutant chromium-6, the pesticide 1,2,3-trichloropropane, and human-made and naturally-occurring sources of arsenic.

Feedlot cattle eating — Nitrate pollution from agricultural operations poses a health threat in Calif. Photo: Tara Lohan

Contamination is also widespread.

The study looked at 2,779 public water systems across the state and evaluated their water quality, affordability, accessibility, and technical and financial capacity. It found that 326 public water systems qualified as “human right to water communities” — the ones where water systems are consistently failing to provide affordable, safe drinking water.

For anyone tracking this issue (or living in these communities), that part wasn’t news.

But the report also found that another 617 public water systems are at risk of failing. Virtually every county in the state had at least one system on this list, but those with the highest numbers were in rural areas with large numbers of smaller water systems, including Tulare, Fresno, Monterey and Kern counties.

“What’s really novel is that it also tries to comprehensively assess where our water quality is likely to fail next if nothing is done to prevent it,” says Pierce.

And that should be a big wake-up call.

“This is the next logical step to try to get a handle on the drinking-water crisis in the state,” says Clairborne. “We really have to proactively address these high-risk systems before they fail, provide them the support they need, and potentially consolidate high-risk systems with nearby systems to improve sustainability.”

The research also found that almost one third of domestic wells (78,000) are at high risk of failure, as are half of California’s 1,236 state small systems.

And it highlighted another critical issue, too: money.

“The report reinforced what we unfortunately already know too well — that California is facing a major water affordability crisis,” says Jonathan Nelson, policy director of the Community Water Center. “Nearly 1 in 3 water systems were identified either as having water rates that were higher than what is deemed affordable for families or high levels of water shutoffs.”

Unsafe drinking water comes with an additional economic burden: Many families are also forced to spend more money on bottled water, with some spending as much as 10% of their monthly income on water, according to the Community Water Center.

Solutions

One of the main reasons for persistently unsafe water has to do with scale: Larger water systems have more resources to fund treatment technologies, while small systems often lack the resources to meet water-quality challenges.

treatment system in shipping container — A new chromium-6 treatment plant in Willow, Calif. Photo: Florence Low / California Department of Water Resources

Getting those struggling water systems more funding to upgrade their water-treatment systems can help. But those technologies need ongoing maintenance, and often the most cost-effective measure is consolidation. Small water systems or homes on domestic wells can be connected to larger systems that can better treat contaminated water sources.

Historically the state hasn’t been that good at consolidation because many larger water providers didn’t want to take on small, failing systems. But in 2015, Senate Bill 88 granted the California State Water Resources Control Board authority to mandate consolidation for failing water systems. Now another bill, Senate Bill 403, would expand that to include systems at risk of failure.

“That would help to address the needs of those nearly 620 at-risk water systems, as well as state small systems and domestic wells,” says Clairborne. “The state has made some progress in the last few years, with several hundred consolidations since 2015, compared to fewer than 200 for the 40 years prior.”

When it comes to addressing the affordability crisis, Nelson says the state legislature can take action to establish a water rate assistance fund, which is especially important now because “California families are carrying $1 billion in pandemic-caused water debt,” he says.

The report also found that a broader, more regional look at potential solutions could cut costs. In one example outlined in the study, if 85 small water systems in Monterey County are incorporated into a nearby larger system, the cost for each new connection falls from $39,000 to $7,000.

“If we can prioritize those [regional solutions], the cost could come down considerably, and our infrastructure would be much more integrated,” says Pierce.

Finding the Money

Bringing costs down will be key, as the price tag for implementing interim and long-term solutions for water systems and domestic wells that need assistance over the next five years is upwards of $10 billion. Some efforts are already underway to address paying for that, with allocations from the state and contributions from local governments, but that still leaves an estimated $4.6 billion shortfall, according to the report.

“Unless addressed, this funding gap will perpetuate the divide between those who have safe water in California and those who don’t,” says Nelson.

More money is needed from either the federal or state government, says Pierce. And even though the price tag seems steep, he says, the costs of not fixing the problems will be higher in the long run and bring a lot more suffering to communities.

Bottle water machine — Some California residents rely on expensive bottled water because their tap water is unsafe. Photo: Tara Lohan

“Unsafe water can not only cause physical health impacts, it can also cause a lot of direct affordability impacts and mental health stressors on people,” says Pierce. “One way or the other society pays for this and it’s better to invest up front — from a human right and equity standpoint, and also from an economic one.”

One recent bright spot is the potential for more spending at the national level, with the Biden administration’s current discussions around a major infrastructure bill in Congress.

That could represent a paradigm change. “The federal government’s role in funding drinking water infrastructure has dropped dramatically since the 1970s compared to other types of infrastructure,” says Pierce.

Even if such investments do come from Washington, though, they won’t solve all of California’s water problems.

“I hope it can be a substantial amount of what we need, but I would be very surprised to see it meet the whole need,” he says. “I think that much of what would be allotted to California would likely go to larger systems for broader infrastructure investments and drought-related resilience.”

Additionally, a lot of the bill’s equity focus is on lead. “Which I don’t disagree with, but California doesn’t have nearly as big of a lead problem in drinking water as many other states,” he adds.

The fact that California has already done the work to understand its drinking-water problems, identify solutions and tally the costs can make the process of getting federal dollars easier — and that could also help inspire other states to better quantify their water needs.

“I do think you’ll see more states do this, but it was a considerable effort: The water board basically created a new unit with multiple staff to do this work,” says Pierce. “But most of the data was the water board’s own, so I think a lot of this could be done by other states without too much effort, if they can learn from what was done here and maybe even enhance that.”

Money to shore up water systems, improve affordability and ensure clean water for all residents also comes with a ripple effect of benefits.

“Investments in water projects can help create drought and climate resiliency,” says Nelson. “And water investments can be an engine of equitable economic growth, creating good jobs in communities that need them. We have a tremendous opportunity to both address this public health crisis and help our economy recover at the same time.”