The United States must grapple with a legacy of 90,000 dams, many unsafe or unwanted.
The tide has shifted on dams. Once a monument to our engineering prowess, there’s now widespread acknowledgment that dam-building comes with a long list of harms. Some of those can be reversed, as shown by the 1,200 dam removals in the past 20 years.
But the future of our existing dams, including 2,500 hydroelectric facilities, is a complicated issue in the age of climate change. Dams have altered river flows, changed aquatic habitat, decimated fish populations, and curtailed cultural and treaty resources for tribes. But does the low-carbon power dams produce have a role in our energy transition?
That’s a question some environmental groups and the hydropower industry have been discussing for the past few years, and it’s resulted in a joint effort to work together on increasing the renewable energy potential of existing dams while helping to minimize their environmental harm.
It’s just one effort to rethink the future of dams. Here’s what else to keep in mind:
The removal of Marmot Dam. (Photo by Portland General Electric, CC BY-ND 2.0)
1. Climate change will necessitate a reckoning.
We’re already seeing more extreme weather, bigger storms and more severe droughts. And the effect of this is visible in our reservoirs. The Colorado River’s two biggest reservoirs now sit half empty after a two-decade drought, prompting calls to tear one down. California grappled with the other side of the problem in 2017 when quickly rising waters nearly caused a failure at Oroville Dam — the tallest in the country — and a public safety disaster.
2. Dam removal can restore rivers.
More than 1,600 dams have been removed in the United States since 1912. With each removal scientists are learning more about how river ecosystems respond. The results are encouraging.
For example, the removal of the Edwards Dam on Maine’s Kennebec River 20 years ago and the subsequent removal of the Fort Halifax Dam farther upstream have helped fish populations rebound and improved water quality. Sturgeon, striped bass, rainbow smelt and other sea-run species gained access to their historic habitat. Alewife populations returning to spawn jumped from 78,000 in 1999 to 5.5 million in 2018.
In Washington the sea-to-headwaters restoration of the Elwha River, with the removal of two dams completed in 2014, helped restore the estuary and has already seen nearly extinct summer steelhead return and rising numbers of Chinook salmon.
3. Watersheds are interconnected.
Removing one dam can help. But understanding and addressing interconnected problems in an entire basin is even better.
A collaborative effort to look at the whole Penobscot River basin in Maine resulted in the removal of multiple dams and the retrofitting of others. The end result was more than 2,000 miles of river opened up for salmon and other fish species and an improvement in hydropower generation.
In California an effort to remove more than 80 small dams in the Cleveland National Forest is expected to benefit native aquatic species throughout the watershed, including endangered Southern California steelhead.
Public safety concerns were at the center of dam-removal discussions, like at Bloede Dam on Maryland’s Patapsco River, where nine people drowned. Dated and derelict dams that fail can also threaten lives and property, as those downstream from Michigan’s Edenville Dam found out earlier this year.
5. We have a climate crisis and a biodiversity crisis.
The unlikely alliance of environmental groups like American Rivers, which has worked to remove more than 200 dams, and hydroelectric companies shows the challenges of this moment.
Do we take down dams that provide hydroelectric power but critically endanger species? It’s an issue that’s been debated on the Snake River for years. And how do we ramp up clean energy production without further endangering wildlife and ecosystems? That’s something that states in the Northeast now find themselves contemplating.
Figuring all that out is likely to involve complicated tradeoffs, hard conversations and more unlikely alliances.
It will also necessitate more reporting to understand it all. At The Revelator we’ll continue covering the complexities of dam issues. And if you’ve missed our previous reporting or want to know more about these issues, here are links to our most important articles and commentaries.
New upgrades to the collaborative ‘Marine Ecological Research Management AID’ can turn coral reef data into conservation action — just when it’s needed most.
When reef scientists go on a field expedition, our tools are simple: SCUBA gear, clipboards, pencils, rubber bands and waterproof paper. From Belize to Kenya and the Solomon Islands to Madagascar, these are the methods used by coral reef scientists for decades. We spend long days underwater in remote locations and often pass our nights without electricity, internet or running water. In the evenings, working by solar lanterns or headlamps, we painstakingly hand-copy our data from underwater paper into Excel spreadsheets.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours underwater studying the health of coral reef ecosystems around the world — being underwater to collect the data we need to understand the health of coral reefs is something scientists have gotten good at. But logging, sorting and tracking data to turn it into actionable conservation management has always posed a big challenge.
Coral and clipboard. Photo: Emily Darling/WCS
A new platform called MERMAID has begun to change that.
MERMAID (Marine Ecological Research Management AID), which launched last year, is a first of its kind: a free, online-offline platform that allows scientists anywhere in the world to collect, analyze and share field-based coral reef surveys.
The platform was developed by myself and a team of colleagues at WCS, WWF and Sparkgeo. MERMAID is already being used by nearly 600 scientists around the world to track their reef data. And now it’s even better.
This summer our team over at MERMAID rolled out a new global dashboard, which allows anyone around the world to pull up a map of the globe’s reefs and get a quick, simple snapshot of how they’re doing. From how many fish are on the reef to the types of corals present, the dashboard provides a quick, straightforward breakdown of the most important measures of reef health and function.
This brings scientific knowledge quickly and directly into the hands of the people who need it.
And there’s never been a more critical time for that easy access.
The State of the Reefs
Coral reef conservation and people go together.
More than 500 million people around the world rely on reefs daily for everything from food and income to cultural practices, the protection of shorelines from sea-level rise and storms, and the economic benefits from fisheries and tourism.
Reef-caught fish in Mozambique. Photo: Emily Darling/WCS
With half of the world’s coral reefs already degraded, and an estimated 90% projected to be lost within the next three decades from climate change, we’re at an urgent inflection point. We need meaningful action to reduce local and global threats to conserve and recover the world’s remaining reefs.
The Need for Data
Timely, accurate and understandable information on reef health must move from scientists into the hands of communities, governments and organizations to empower people and institutions to save coral reefs. This information tells us: Is conservation working? Are reefs recovering? What reefs are the most threatened and the healthiest? How can conservation help reefs adapt to a changing climate?
As field scientists we work in partnerships with local communities that manage and protect their resources. MERMAID’s technology connects reef data with the people who rely on coral reefs every day and the people who are working to protect and manage those reefs.
The MERMAID dashboard, showing an overview of the collected data.
For example, coastal communities want to know how climate change will affect the reefs that they so intimately depend on. Local governments want to know whether their policies are benefitting the reefs. International organizations want to know the global status and trends of coral reef health to advocate for appropriate actions.
MERMAID tracks important indicators of coral reef health such as live coral cover and reef fish biomass. This information is critical to understanding whether coral reefs are healthy, recovering or dangerously degrading, which triggers scientists, communities and governments to respond rapidly to diagnose an issue like destructive fishing or pollution and mitigate those threats.
Also, when a community has implemented a conservation project to help protect its reefs, MERMAID can help stakeholders track the success of those projects over time to learn what’s working, where and why. MERMAID turns scientific data into real-world decisions that will help save coral reefs.
Already Making a Difference
Since getting this technology into the hands of field scientists and communities on the frontlines of coral reef conservation and climate change, tens of thousands of data points have been uploaded by scientists from 10 countries, with many more to come. We’re getting this information to decisionmakers by working with governments at local, national and international levels.
Reassuringly, MERMAID shows us that there are still healthy, thriving coral reefs in our oceans and we have an opportunity as a global community to step up now to protect them. Last year more than 80 of my colleagues and I worked together to survey 2,500 reefs around the world, completing the largest-ever study across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. We found that 22 countries have around 450 functional reefs located in rare ocean “cool” spots, which inspired a new protect-recover-transform framework for coral reef conservation.
Coral bleaching is just one threat to reefs. Photo: Wendy Cover/NOAA
These results have mobilized us on an international scale to tackle other top threats to coral reefs such as unsustainable fishing and land-use change and pollution. Reducing these stressors, especially in climate “cool spots,” can help reefs withstand the effects of climate change. At the same time, we’re working with local and national governments to implement effective laws and policies to tackle climate change and unsustainable trade to protect our oceans.
There’s still time to save many coral reefs, and scientific information will help us do this faster and more effectively. MERMAID’s dashboard helps democratize the world’s coral reef data, bringing a digital snapshot of global reef health to critical conversations about sustainability and conservation. This will help us create a brighter future for the world’s oceans.
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.
When the billionaire-owned media fails to cover the truth about climate change, should the public take a stand?
Considering the gravity of the situation, coverage of the climate crisis across the United Kingdom’s mainstream media is temperamental at best, misleading at worst.
While some of the UK’s major newspapers have increased coverage on the crisis in recent years, few treat it with the urgency it demands. In 2019 The Telegraph was forced to publish corrections after printing an article riddled with factually incorrect assertions by its former editor, Charles Moore.
This, regrettably, is not an exception. A 2019 study published in Nature Communications found that major media outlets in the United States and Europe provide a platform to those skeptical of climate change far more than they do mainstream scientists and climate activists. The researchers found that from 2000 through 2016 those who doubted global warming or attributed rising temperatures to “natural causes” got 50% more coverage than an equal number of top scientists.
It should come as no surprise, then, when the public chooses to fight back against this failure of the mainstream media to act on its duty to inform the public on social and environmental issues with accuracy and hold the powerful to account.
Last month Extinction Rebellion, the global environmental campaign group, made headlines when protesters blockaded three key newspaper-printing sites in England and Scotland and prevented them from distributing national publications owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, including The Sun and The Times. Their aim, they explained, was to disrupt the circulation of these newspapers as a result of their failure to report on the scale of the climate crisis and for “polluting national debate” on other social issues.
WE WANT TO LIVE – It’s all we’re asking. Coverage in many of these newspapers is polluting national debate on climate change, immigration policy, the rights and treatment of minority groups, and dozens of other issues. We can’t move forward till this barrier falls. #FreeTheTruthpic.twitter.com/gU0ciXeouA
The protests were condemned as an attack on the UK’s so-called “free press” by many, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who wrote on Twitter that “It is completely unacceptable to seek to limit the public’s access to news in this way.”
Yet this glorified notion of press freedom in the UK is flawed to say the least. Six billionaires own the UK’s leading national newspapers, including Murdoch, whose publications have become notorious for espousing climate denialism.
While a few of the UK’s leading newspapers make notable efforts to report on the scale of global warming —The Guardianjoined a major media initiative in 2019 to combat the climate crisis — this is heavily outweighed by those that fail to do so. The Times has received backlash from top scientists for its “distorted coverage” of global warming due to its undermining the credibility of climate science. TheTelegraph, owned by billionaire British twins the Barclay brothers, has a similarly questionable record when it comes to coverage of the climate crisis. TheDaily Mail, owned by Lord Rothermere, is another national newspaper that has become renowned for its climate skepticism, providing a platform to veteran climate change deniers such as Christopher Booker.
What does this say of the press’s apparent impartiality? Who is dictating which stories ought to be prioritized, and what are their interests? These are crucial questions seemingly brushed under the carpet by the very same individuals now hailing the UK’s “free press.”
And these are not theoretical queries: The UK ranks 35th in the world for press freedom, sitting below Ghana, Costa Rica and South Africa, according to the World Press Freedom Index. True press freedom is vital in advancing worldwide environmental protections, according to a 2019 report from Democratic Audit. The authors cautioned that journalists’ obstacles to investigating international environmental conditions leads to a failure to hold corporations and governments to account.
WHY AGAINST @TheSun ❓@thetimes ❓
The Daily Mail❓and
The Daily Telegraph❓👇🏿
👨👩👧👨👩👧👦we are heading to an #extinction
Steve Tooze, a former newspaper journalist, explains why he took part in Extinction Rebellion’s recent blockade of newspaper print workshttps://t.co/ai2GN6YZgspic.twitter.com/7fr6m4n4LM
In an ideal world, these murky ethics would have been brought to an end by the 2012 Leveson inquiry, which, following the News International phone-hacking scandal, revealed the level of deceit and misconduct rotting at the core of the UK’s national media. And yet, eight years later, the same billionaires are at the helm of these publications, while the same predominantly white, privately educated men remain in the most senior editorial positions.
This is critical for multiple reasons. The owners of the UK’s mainstream media do not linger quietly in the background. They set its agenda and influence public opinion drastically. During the Leveson inquiry, Harold Evans — former editor of the Sunday Times — made clear quite how extensively Murdoch interfered with the paper’s content. He told the inquiry: “Mr. Murdoch was continually sending for my staff without telling me and telling them what the paper should be.” Other editors of Murdoch-owned publications have attested to this, from David Yelland to Andrew Neil, who himself told the Leveson inquiry: “If you want to know what Rupert Murdoch really thinks read the editorials in the Sun and the New York Post because he is editor-in-chief of these papers.”
Murdoch’s interference inevitably allows for a misrepresentation of the truth as he strives to protect his own vested interests. This becomes increasingly apparent with his publications’ reportage of the climate crisis. Murdoch has known links with the fossil fuel industry. He sits on the board of oil and gas explorer Genie Energy. The persistent climate skepticism littered across his publications is therefore no coincidence.
Even one of the most seemingly progressive of the UK’s national newspapers, TheGuardian, was placed under scrutiny by investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, who noted that the newspaper is the biggest recipient of HSBC advertising revenue and is owned by The Scott Trust Ltd., a company made up of predominantly financiers. Ahmed described how TheGuardian was just one UK media organization that had investigated but subsequently spiked whistleblower Nicholas Wilson’s story on HSBC fraud in 2015, “despite its unprecedented importance and public interest value.”
The political agenda set by those at the top of the UK’s leading national newspapers poses a bigger threat to democracy than any climate activist organization ever could. It is perhaps unsurprising that the media’s billionaire-owners mostly backed the Conservatives in the most recent general election. A recent study carried out by Loughborough University revealed that national newspapers overwhelmingly targeted the Labour Party with negative coverage, while particular publications reserved positive stories almost exclusively for Johnson’s Conservative party.
The media’s role in swaying public opinion is well-documented, and it’s not only about general elections. Right-leaning publications embarked on a vicious Leave campaign in 2016, fueling anti-immigration sentiments that inevitably influenced the EU referendum result. Such influence cannot be understated.
How, then, can those criticizing Extinction Rebellion so disingenuously accuse the protesters of threatening press freedom for temporarily delaying newspaper distribution? This is a question certainly worth directing to the Prime Minister, who threatened to revoke Channel 4’s license in December 2019 when, after Johnson failed to turn up to its leaders’ debate on climate change, Channel 4 replaced him with an ice sculpture during the debate, poignantly symbolizing the urgency of the crisis.
This is only one in a series of concerns regarding press freedom in the UK under Johnson. In February one of Johnson’s aides blocked select journalists from attending a Downing Street briefing. And just a few weeks ago, the Council of Europe issued a media freedom alert in the UK as the government blacklisted a group of investigative journalists, denying them access to information.
This problem is not unique to the UK. Murdoch owns media outlets across the world, including climate-denying Fox News, and his influence in Australia well-documented. The Australian, owned by Murdoch’s News Corp, is renowned for peddling climate change denialism. This past January, at the height of the country’s bushfire crisis, the publication repeatedly skirted reporting on the correlation between drastic weather changes and the climate crisis. While newspapers around the globe dedicated their front pages to the Australian bushfires, The Australian’s front page displayed a picture of a New Year’s Day picnic.
This man owns most of the newspapers that Extinction Rebellion protesters have blocked today.
Protesting the influence of anti-scientific views on climate change like this in our media, at a time when there is a climate emergency, is completely valid and justified. pic.twitter.com/LKDdLYoqlK
Meanwhile, charges of “fake news” — first in the United States and now around the world — encourage a dangerous crackdown on freedom of expression. If journalists are punished for criticizing leaders, what hope do we have of holding the powerful to account for their actions?
In that context, the free expression of Extinction Rebellion’s protests ought to be celebrated. They demand an end to the press toeing the line to appease those they should be scrutinizing.
It’s ironic that only when an activist group protests the UK media’s failure to report accurately and impartially do leading politicians and public figures become bastions of press freedom. Extinction Rebellion poses no threat to democracy. Pandering to billionaires and corporate interests does.
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.
American environmentalism’s racist roots have shaped global thinking about conservation, and that has walled off Indigenous peoples from land they could most effectively steward.
The United States is having a long-overdue national reckoning with racism. From criminal justice to pro sports to pop culture, Americans increasingly are recognizing how racist ideas have influenced virtually every sphere of life in this country.
This includes the environmental movement. Recently the Sierra Club – one of the oldest and largest U.S. conservation organizations – acknowledged racist views held by its founder, author and conservationist John Muir. In some of his writing, Muir described Native Americans and Black people as dirty, lazy and uncivilized. In an essay collection published in 1901 to promote national parks, he assured prospective tourists that “As to Indians, most of them are dead or civilized into useless innocence.”
Acknowledging this record, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune wrote in July 2020: “As defenders of Black life pull down Confederate monuments across the country, we must…reexamine our past and our substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy.”
This is a salutary gesture. However, I know from my research on conservation policy in places like India, Tanzania and Mexico that the problem isn’t just the Sierra Club.
American environmentalism’s racist roots have influenced global conservation practices. Most notably, they are embedded in longstanding prejudices against local communities and a focus on protecting pristine wildernesses. This dominant narrative pays little thought to indigenous and other poor people who rely on these lands – even when they are its most effective stewards.
Native Americans protest President Donald Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, July 3, 2020. Micah Garen/Getty Images
Racist Legacies of Nature Conservation
Muir was not the first or last American conservationist to hold racist views. Decades before Muir set foot in California’s Sierra Nevada. John James Audubon published his “Birds of America” engravings between 1827 and 1838. Audubon was a skilled naturalist and illustrator – and a slaveholder.
Audubon’s research benefited from information and specimens collected by enslaved Black men and Indigenous people. Instead of recognizing their contributions, Audubon referred to them as “hands” traveling along with white men. The National Audubon Society has removed Audubon’s biography from its site, referring to Audubon’s involvement in the slave trade as “the challenging parts of his identity and actions.” The group also condemned “the role John James Audubon played in enslaving Black people and perpetuating white supremacist culture.”
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir at Yosemite National Park, California, 1903. Library of CongressThe predominant view is that Roosevelt’s love of hunting was good for nature because it fueled his passion for conservation. But this paradigm underpins what I see as a modern racist myth: the view that trophy hunting – wealthy hunters buying government licenses to shoot big game and keep whatever animal parts they choose – pays for wildlife conservation in Africa. In my assessment, there is little evidence to support such claims about trophy hunting, which reinforce exploitative models of conservation by removing local communities from lands set aside as hunting reserves.
Ecologist Aldo Leopold, who is viewed as the father of wildlife management and the U.S. wilderness system, was an early proponent of the argument that overpopulation is the root cause of environmental problems. This view implies that economically less-developed nations with large populations are the biggest threats to conservation.
Contemporary advocates of wildlife conservation, such as Britain’s Prince William, continue to rely on the trope that “Africa’s rapidly growing human population” threatens the continent’s wildlife. Famed primatologist Jane Goodall also blamed our current environmental challenges in part on overpopulation.
Local communities are often written out of popular narratives on nature conservation. Many documentaries, such as the 2020 film “Wild Karnataka,” narrated by David Attenborough, entirely ignore local Indigenous people, who have nurtured the natural heritages of the places where they live. Some of the most celebrated footage in wildlife documentaries made by filmmakers like Attenborough is not even shot in the wild. By relying on fictional visuals, they reproduce racialized structures that render local people invisible.
Fortress Conservation
The wilderness movement founded by Anglo-American conservationists is institutionalized in the form of national parks. Writer and historian Wallace Stegner famously called national parks “the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.”
Similar injustices continued to unfold even after independence in other parts of the world. When I analyzed a data set of 137 countries, I found that the largest areas of national parks were set aside in countries with high levels of economic inequality and poor or nonexistent democratic institutions. The poorest countries – including the Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia – had each set aside more than 30% of national territories exclusively for wildlife and biodiversity conservation.
Correcting this legacy can happen only by radically transforming its exclusionary approach. Better and scientifically robust strategies recognize that low-intensity human interventions in nature practiced by Indigenous peoples can conserve landscapes more effectively than walling them off from use.
Ecologists have shown that natural landscapes interspersed with low-intensity subsistence agriculture can be most effective for biodiversity conservation. These multiple-use landscapes provide social, economic and cultural support for Indigenous and rural communities.
Nonetheless, conservation institutions and policies continue to exclude and discriminate against Indigenous and rural communities. In the long run, it is clear to me that conservation will succeed only if it can support the goal of a dignified life for all humans and nonhuman species.
U.S. states hope to tap Canada’s network of large dams to meet low-carbon goals, but do better options exist closer to home?
Is renewable energy always sustainable — or just? Today we continue our series looking at the role of Canadian hydropower in helping the U.S. states meet their climate goals.
In 1999 a cheering crowd watched as a backhoe breached a hydroelectric dam on Maine’s Kennebec River. The effort to help restore native fish populations and the river’s health was hailed as a success and ignited a nationwide movement that spurred 1,200 dam removals in two decades.
The era of building large dams in the United States, which defined so much of the 20th century, is over. The prime spots for development were cemented decades ago, and the ensuing harm to fish and other wildlife has been well documented. Attention is now focused on removing obsolete dams and retrofitting existing hydroelectric dams to reduce ecological harm and increase energy efficiency.
Many other countries are in the same boat. Across Europe and North America “big dams stopped being built in developed nations because the best sites for dams were already developed, and environmental and social concerns made the costs unacceptable,” found a 2018 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Canada appears to be the exception to that.
Large dams are still being built across Canada, from Muskrat Falls in Labrador to the generically titled “Site C” in British Columbia, despite cost overruns, outcry from some First Nations and even environmental concerns from the United Nations.
Hydroelectric power already supplies 60% of the country’s energy. But the dam building isn’t just to feed Canada’s power needs. It’s also become a hot export commodity.
As U.S. states look to meet new clean energy targets, imported low-carbon hydropower from across the northern border has become a larger part of the conversation — and the grid. New England already gets 17% of its energy from Canadian hydropower, Midwest states around 12% and New York 5%.
That number is likely to jump.
A new transmission project to bring 250 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to the United States just came online in Minnesota. Two more are in the works for Massachusetts and New York.
Proponents say we need large-scale hydro to grease the wheels of the clean energy transition. Others caution that it comes with a larger environmental cost compared to wind and solar and could open the floodgates for more dam building.
There’s one shared bit of common ground, though: We need to act quickly and wisely to tackle the climate crisis.
“This is the decade for getting 50% of the way there on renewables, but also proving out the pathway to get to net-zero by mid-century, if not before,” says Peter Rothstein, president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council.
How hydro figures into that process is still a complicated issue.
Clean Energy Demand Surges
The Northeast is one place where the energy transition is off and running.
All six New England states have pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80% over 1990 levels by 2050, and some are aiming higher.
Neighboring New York is also keeping pace. Last year the Empire State committed to achieving an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and 70% renewable electricity by 2030.
How will those goals be achieved?
For some, imported Canadian hydropower looks poised to play a big role, and two new projects appear close to breaking ground.
Transmission lines from the Churchill Falls generating station in Labrador. Photo: Douglas Spott (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Champlain Hudson Power Express, a 330-mile-long transmission line, would deliver 1,000 megawatts of hydropower from Quebec to the New York metro area and could supply about a million homes — helping to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
The project — a joint venture of the province-run Hydro-Québec and Transmission Developers Inc., a subsidiary of the private equity firm Blackstone Group — has already received the necessary permits for construction, but no contracts for the power have been signed.
Construction, however, could still start next year, with the project scheduled to come online in 2025.
Massachusetts has an even bigger project in the works. New England Clean Energy Connect would bring 1,500 megawatts of capacity through a 145-mile-long transmission line running through Maine from Canada to Massachusetts. It too would come from Hydro-Québec, this time working in conjunction with Central Maine Power.
The project, which is projected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 3 million tons a year in New England, has received its necessary permits from the state of Maine but still awaits federal permits from the Department of Energy and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Opposition groups, including some environmental organizations, are also challenging various aspects of the project in court. And a coalition of First Nations communities that have seen dams built on their ancestral lands have voiced their opposition. (You can read more about that transmission line in Part I of this series.)
More could be on the way. Nalcor Energy — the province-run hydro company of Newfoundland and Labrador — is nearing completion on its 824-megawatt Muskrat Falls hydro project on the Churchill (or Grand) River. Costs have just surpassed $13 billion — twice what was first estimated.
Some of the energy is already slated to be sent to other parts of Canada and then — hopefully, according to Nalcor — to New England.
Environmental Considerations
What’s the net impact of these planned projects? That’s hard to say. Tallying the environmental benefit or harm from large-scale hydro is complicated.
One of the biggest metrics of assessing environmental impact is greenhouse gas emissions.
The first phase of emissions comes just from building its infrastructure. Large-scale hydropower involves the construction of generating stations, and often accompanying dams and reservoirs. And then there are hundreds of miles of transmission lines that need to be constructed to move that power.
What comes next, once a project comes online, depends on multiple factors. Research has shown that hydropower emissions vary widely based on the location, climate and area of land flooded. Hydro emissions are also highest when a reservoir is first flooded and then decrease in the following years.
All told, over the life cycle of a project, most hydropower is cleaner than fossil fuels, although not always as clean as wind and solar. A study in Nature Energy on the projected life-cycle emissions of energy sources put solar at 6 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour and wind at 4. The researchers estimated typical hydro at 97, but there’s great variation between sites.
A 2014 report prepared by the research group CIRAIG on behalf of Hydro-Québec found the average life-cycle emissions of the company’s fleet of 62 generation stations was between 6 and 17 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour.
Alain Tremblay, Hydro-Québec’s lead scientist on greenhouse gas emissions, says tracking from their most recent complex of dams on the Romaine River shows emissions between 5 and 10 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour.
There are other environmental considerations beyond greenhouse gas emissions.
The nonprofit Natural Resources Council of Maine opposes the New England Clean Energy Connect, in part out of concern about fragmented habitat and critical wildlife populations, including brook trout. The transmission line would require clearing a 53-mile stretch of forest through the North Maine Woods.
In New York the nonprofit Riverkeeper reversed its earlier support for the Champlain Hudson Power Express and has now come out against that project, which would send its electrical cable down the length of the Hudson River.
“This sets a precedent that the Hudson is a conduit for extension cords from Canada or from anywhere,” says John Lipscomb, Riverkeeper’s vice president of advocacy. “It should be off limits to that kind of thing.”
The Hudson contains legacy pollution from polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) dumped decades ago and other contaminants that could be turned up as the cable is dug in the riverbed. Over the years some of that pollution has been remediated, but not all. And plans to avoid putting cable in the areas of the worst-known contamination aren’t sufficient to protect the ecosystem, he says.
Atlantic sturgeon were brought to the brink of extension in the 20th century and are now are listed as an endangered species. Photo: NOAA
There’s also concern that imperiled fish species, like endangered shortnose sturgeon and Atlantic sturgeon, could be harmed by the electrical cable. The river was designated as critical habitat for Atlantic sturgeon, but no Endangered Species Act review has been initiated to assess if the cable could threaten fish populations.
“Both of these fishes have nervous systems similar to that of sharks, which are incredibly sensitive to electric signals,” says Roger Downs, conservation director of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter. “It’s a huge experiment to suddenly put an electrical signal down the backbone of this river.”
Lipscomb shares this concern. After all the work that’s been done in recent years to help restore the Hudson and its estuary, he says “it’s heartbreaking that we still think of this river as a resource.”
Hydropower may be renewable, he says, but from an environmental perspective it isn’t sustainable. “Unless a river’s value is zero,” he says. “If a river has any value as an ecosystem, as a host for life, then hydropower isn’t even a consideration.”
Upstream Justice Concerns
In 1990 a group of Cree and Inuit protestors paddled the Hudson River to Manhattan to ask New Yorkers to oppose a power purchase agreement between the state and Quebec and the construction of a second dam in the James Bay hydroelectric project in northern Quebec.
They were successful. Now, 30 years later, a different group of First Nations is making a similar plea.
On October 7 the First Nations of Pessamit, Wemotaci, Pikogan, Lac Simon and Kitcisakik sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy stating their opposition to the Massachusetts transmission line. The groups wrote that one-third of Hydro-Québec’s installed power is “produced in our respective ancestral territories from reservoirs, dams, power plants and various other installations, without prior consultation, without our consent and without compensation.”
Over the decades of hydropower buildout in Canada many First Nations communities — but not all — have been consulted on projects and struck agreements with power companies.
Major hydroelectric projects have altered the flow of rivers and in some cases, the food and cultural resources used by Indigenous communities.
There are also health concerns.
A 2016 study by Harvard University researchers, published in Environmental Science and Technology, found that flooding reservoirs for hydroelectric projects in Canada would increase the risk of mercury poisoning in Indigenous communities at 90% of the dam sites.
When land is flooded for a reservoir, the microbes in the soil convert naturally occurring mercury into more dangerous methylmercury, which then works its way up the food chain. That puts anyone who relies on local wildlife such as fish, birds and seals at risk. In the northern reaches of Canada, that’s largely Indigenous people.
The researchers looked at how three Inuit communities downstream of Nalcor’s Muskrat Falls project would fare. And they found that, on average, risk of exposure for community members would double after the area was flooded. That could translate to higher risks for cardiovascular disease and neurodevelopmental delays for children.
The more people rely on local food sources, the more harm they’re exposed to. And in this remote region where store-bought food is very expensive, that’s a serious concern.
Near Happy Valley-Goose Bay on the Churchill (Grand) River downstream from Muskrat Falls. Photo: Douglas Sprott (CC BY-NC 2.0)
“People have a very high prevalence of economic insecurity and that translates into insecure access to Western foods at the grocery store,” says Ryan Calder, a co-author of the study and now an assistant professor of environmental health and policy at Virginia Tech. “Traditional food systems account for a smaller and smaller fraction of overall calories, but a wildly disproportionate fraction of nutrient intake.”
Despite this, he doesn’t think their research should be taken as a commentary on whether hydroelectric power itself is good or bad. “We really just criticized [the company’s] risk assessment,” he says.
Earlier studies by Nalcor claimed the effect on the Inuit would be negligible as the mercury would quickly dilute in downstream waters.
“They had no basis for saying there was going to be no impact,” says Calder. “It was clear that they were trying to ignore their obligations — if not legal, then certainly moral — to Indigenous people.”
The researchers also found that about half of the other sites they studied would have equal or greater concentrations of methylmercury than Muskrat Falls.
Roberta Frampton Benefiel of Grand Riverkeeper Labrador, who lives near the Muskrat Falls project, says she wasn’t surprised by Nalcor’s position. “Aboriginal people don’t count to this government and so we have to make the Aboriginal people count,” she says.
She has spoken to environmental organizations in the United States to help raise awareness about some of the local effects of dam development in Canada.
“I want people in the United States to understand that when they flip their light switch, if they accept these power lines from Canada, they’re poisoning northern communities,” she says.
More Dams?
New York and Massachusetts have been eager for hydropower from Canada as long as it doesn’t mean the construction of new dams for the transmission projects.
Hydro-Québec says it has enough reserves for export to New York and Massachusetts without redirecting power from its existing United States or Canadian customers.
It’s nearly finished with the last dam in the complex of four generating stations on the Romaine River, which along with other projects, has added 5,000 megawatts of capacity over the last decade. Although it does has the lowest reserve margin of utilities in the region, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s 2019 assessment.
In previous years Hydro-Québec did preliminary work to explore the possibility of new dams on the Little Mécatina River, but company spokesperson Lynn St-Laurent says they currently have no plans for new dams and that project is no longer in their strategic plan.
Gary Sutherland, director of strategic affairs for northeast markets at Hydro-Québec, says that additional energy demand for export could be met with increased energy efficiency in Quebec and more wind projects. Quebec Premier François Legault tweeted last week that the province’s next addition of capacity, if needed, would be the 200-megawatt Apuiat wind farm.
Elsewhere in Canada, however, dam building continues.
Manitoba Hydro and four First Nations are in the process of building the Keeyask project, a 695-megawatt hydroelectric generating station on the Nelson River.
British Columbia also continues to muddle along on development at Site C, a 1,100-megawatt dam on the Peace River that has faced mounting problems and protests.
Construction of the Site C dam in British Columbia in 2017. Photo: Jason Woodhead, (CC BY 2.0)
This includes, according to a report in The Narwhal, legal challenges from “landowners and First Nations who oppose flooding 128 kilometers of the Peace River and its tributaries, putting Indigenous burial grounds, traditional hunting and fishing areas, habitat for more than 100 species vulnerable to extinction and some of Canada’s richest farmland under up to 50 meters of water.”
New research by energy analyst Robert McCullough, who runs a Portland, Oregon-based consulting firm, found that if the project continues its likely to have surplus energy that will need to be sold outside the province at a loss to ratepayers.
But a poor financial outlook doesn’t always mean the end of dam projects in Canada.
In Labrador Nalcor also has another large project planned — the 2,250-megawatt Gull Island dam, farther upstream from Muskrat Falls, which could be built if there’s a buyer for the power.
It’s a prospect Benefiel finds shocking, considering the company’s most recent project was so over budget that it prompted a provincial Commission of Inquiry, which found that Muskrat Falls put the financial health of the entire province at risk.
Is Hydro Needed?
Considering all the complexities of hydro projects and the related transmission infrastructure, is it necessary to move U.S. states off fossil fuels and toward clean energy goals?
That depends on who you talk to.
Despite investment in wind and solar, “hydro has a couple of things going for it,” says Rothstein of the Northeast Clean Energy Council. The first is that it’s able to compete on costs, and second is the “dispatchability.”
Thanks to decades of dam building, Canadian hydropower is ready to go — pending transmission capacity. It’s also seen as less variable than wind and solar, although hydropower does fluctuate by season and by year, depending on precipitation.
“I think hydro will play a role, but it’s not going to be the only resource,” says Rothstein. Offshore wind holds the biggest potential for large-scale projects in the region, he says.
New York has already awarded contracts to procure 1,700 megawatts of offshore wind and in July put out a call to solicit another 2,500 megawatts of offshore wind and 1,500 megawatts of land-based, large-scale renewables.
Massachusetts is making strides toward wind energy, too. In 2016 Gov. Charlie Baker signed an energy bill requiring the state’s utilities to procure 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind and could soon double that.
The Block Island Wind Farm off the coast of Rhode Island is the first U.S. offshore wind farm. Photo: Dennis Schroeder / NREL (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
All told around a half a dozen major projects now await a green light, pending permitting decisions by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
All down the East Coast, “there’s a whole constellation of projects close to breaking water,” says Rothstein.
In the past offshore wind has been stymied by NIMBYism, but he says both the public perception of wind has changed and so have costs. New projects being proposed are farther offshore and out of view. And more established, global wind developers are competing for projects, helping to bring down prices.
Sierra Club’s Downs thinks northeast states could meet their goals without imported hydro. Instead he’d like to see more focus on large-scale solar installations in upstate New York on brownfields or fallow farmland, and more offshore wind.
“And then we need to be doing more and more programs for smaller, community-based wind and solar,” he says.
Whatever mix of low-carbon power is secured, Downs hopes it doesn’t turn rivers into transmission corridors and does account for the full environmental and social costs of power generation.
“We have an obligation to protect cultural rights, Indigenous rights and also the vast Canadian wilderness,” says Downs. “We shouldn’t be exporting our environmental problems.”
Identifying the shocking number of birds killed when they collide into local buildings was just the first step toward saving them.
The early-morning air felt cool and refreshing on my skin. I glanced above my head at a towering maple tree and saw an enthusiastic American robin, his red chest puffed out proudly as he broadcasted his joyful song over the sprawling York University campus in Toronto.
But the cheerful spring atmosphere did nothing to ease the sense of dread creeping up into my throat. My palms were already damp, and my heart raced, as I walked briskly up the pathway toward the inevitable. I strode past the back entrance of the 14-story student residence and the transparent floor-to-ceiling glass panels of the Bethune walkway came into view.
Just short of the entrance to the walkway — a walled-in pathway connecting two buildings — I stopped and carefully scanned the ground in front of me. I almost didn’t see it, but I had done this dozens of times and had developed a sharp eye. Partially obscured by the greenery carpeting the unkempt garden, a rusty-colored bird struggled helplessly beneath the glass, unable to put any weight on its legs and too dizzy to fly. The morning’s victim was a wood thrush, a threatened species in Canada.
The thrush, like so many before it, had obviously collided with the windows, causing injuries that had, at the very least, incapacitated it.
Window collisions like this are one of the top ways that humans are directly, although unintentionally, killing and injuring huge numbers of birds. And this danger is not isolated to large metropolises like Toronto. Collisions can and do happen anywhere there’s glass, and glass is everywhere. In Canada alone, an estimated 25 million birds die from window collisions each year.
Every one of these birds has a story of risky travel and perseverance that has been cut short in an instant.
As a researcher studying the migratory ecology of songbirds like the wood thrush, I knew what this bird had gone through in its annual cycle before reaching this tragic point. And I would soon learn that a solution was within reach.
The Wood Thrush’s (Final) Journey
Kneeling beside the injured thrush, I couldn’t help but imagine what that bird had endured just to make it to York University.
Only weeks earlier it would have been skulking in the undergrowth of the steamy tropical forests of eastern Nicaragua, feasting and fattening up on insects and ripe fruit. It needed this fuel for what came next: a grueling 24-hour, nonstop flight over 600 miles of unforgiving open water, the Gulf of Mexico. I imagined the faint glow of city lights 3,000 feet below during the wood thrush’s nightly marathon flights; the only sounds in the chilly air were the faint chips of thousands of other little travelers taking advantage of the cover of darkness and a good tailwind. During the 2,500-mile race to its breeding grounds, it might have faced unexpected spring storms and escaped the deadly grasp of hawks and outdoor cats. The sheer strength and determination of this small bird, battling the exhaustion of flying over 150 miles a night, left me awestruck.
Wood thrush by Michael Schraam/USFWS (public domain)
All the risk was for one more chance to raise a family on the summer bounty of food in Ontario’s deciduous forests. Instead the bird lay quivering in a dense tangle of Virginia creeper, barely able to move, its amazing journey cut short by a panel of glass.
I reached into my backpack for a “rescue pack,” a temporary transport carrier consisting of an unwaxed paper bag with a rolled-up tissue inside, sealed with a paper clip. As I gently placed my hands around the helpless bird to transfer it to the paper bag, I noticed a thick bead of blood rapidly collecting on its beak. The clock was ticking.
Ten minutes later I was in the passenger seat en route to Toronto Wildlife Centre, the wood thrush in its paper bag on my lap. My partner, a fellow bird rescuer, was at the wheel and shot me a worried glance. We had made this same harrowing trip too many times to count.
Suddenly I felt a labored shifting of weight inside the bag, and the wood thrush emitted a startlingly loud, gurgling noise. Then the movement stopped.
We rushed through the entrance of Toronto Wildlife Centre just moments later, where the veterinary technician confirmed what we already knew.
The wood thrush was dead.
A Deadly Count, a Painful Mission
This wood thrush’s tragic fate was not unique.
Every spring and fall millions of birds migrate hundreds or even thousands of miles between their southern wintering areas and northern breeding grounds. As their migration routes slowly become clogged with urban development, the small pockets of greenspace, like the woodlots at York University, can be a welcome oasis to birds in desperate search of a place to rest and refuel. Little do these travelers know that they will have to navigate a labyrinth of invisible barriers and deadly reflections, where a single mistake can be fatal.
Since coming to York University in the fall of 2018 to study migratory songbirds, I had been horrified at the sheer number of dead and injured birds I encountered on campus. Seeing the carnage firsthand drove my partner and me to head out early every morning during spring and fall migration to document the lives lost and rescue those we could.
It felt as if we’d been left to pick up the pieces in the lethal aftermath of a destructive fire, but new blazes kept flaring up. Just as I was kneeling over a dead songbird to record my notes, a sharp thud beside me made me turn, where I saw yet another victim, its eyes glazing over as it took its last breath.
From the data we collected, we estimated that around 1,500 birds were killed or injured by buildings on campus every single year. As hard as we tried to rescue the survivors, many times we arrived too late.
What we needed was to prevent these “fires” from starting in the first place.
Our early morning patrols of the campus made it very clear that certain buildings and structures were deadlier than others. For example, the shrubs and fruiting plants in the secluded garden around the Bethune walkway drew birds in with the promise of a quiet, safe place to rest and refuel. Once inside the courtyard, the birds spotted new places to forage, or an escape route from predators, but they couldn’t see the large, transparent panes of glass between them and their refuge.
The layout of the walkway, combined with the large amount of glass and nearby vegetation, made it a death trap.
In contrast to many other conservation issues of our day, the solution to birds colliding with glass is quite simple. If we provide birds with visual cues that a barrier is present, they can avoid a collision. There are a variety of effective, aesthetically pleasing and economical methods already on the market to prevent birds from flying into windows.
But how could I, or anyone else, convince one of the largest universities in Canada, with countless competing priorities for funding, that this was an issue worth addressing? Does the life of a single bird matter enough to act? Do the lives of 1,500 matter? And with dozens of buildings on campus, where could York University even start in helping birds stay safe?
A Proposal — and Progress
Together with my research supervisor, renowned ornithologist Bridget Stutchbury, we offered York University a simple solution.
With the detailed records we had kept during our daily monitoring, we were able to identify which buildings, and specifically which facades of those buildings, caused the most bird deaths. If York University focused on treating these high-priority sites, we said, they could significantly reduce the number of casualties with only a modest investment. We reached out to other environmentally minded faculty and the voice to protect birds on campus quickly turned into a chorus.
The York University administration was sympathetic to our cause, yet no action was taken for months to treat the problem windows. I was heartbroken to be picking up more dead birds that could have been saved.
Then, out of the blue, the university called us in for another meeting. We went in prepared with more evidence to defend the cause. Instead we were met with the announcement that they would implement our plan.
On October 7, 2019, the Bethune walkway became a hive of activity as a group of contractors worked to cover the glass panels with a bird-friendly window treatment. Earlier that morning I’d found a tiny common yellowthroat that had been injured from a collision with these same glass panels. Unlike the wood thrush, this bird survived the trip to Toronto Wildlife Centre and was released days later to continue its journey. Now the closely spaced white dots alert birds to the presence of glass and prevent other birds from meeting the same cruel fate.
I found no more dead or injured birds at the Bethune walkway that fall.
A year has now passed since York University applied the first of several bird-friendly window treatments. Since then it has retrofitted five more high-priority locations on campus. The thousands of migratory songbirds passing through York University’s gardens and woodlots this October will have a higher chance of safely reaching their winter homes.
And other people can help them stay safe during the rest of their journey.
Make the Case for Change
Addressing the bird-collision problem in new construction — as Toronto and an increasing number of cities now require — is undoubtedly important, but we can’t forget the enormous toll of the millions of buildings already covering the landscape. Buildings like your home, your office, or the ones on your university or corporate campus.
Birds that collided with buildings in Washington, DC. Photo: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (public domain)
For anyone hoping to spark change in their community, collecting defensible data on bird collisions in an area is a good first step. Go out early in the day, when collisions are more frequent and before predators can snatch up injured or dead birds. Document the victims. Track where you found them so people can understand which buildings, or sides of buildings, pose the greatest risk. Work with a licensed wildlife-rehabilitation facility to give the survivors a second chance at continuing their journey. Concentrate your efforts during spring and fall, when migratory birds are passing en masse through our cities — and of course, do all of this while ensuring your personal safety.
Then put that information to use. A solid dataset, as we saw, provides fuel for effective advocacy and can help gather a coalition to support positive change. It also allows policymakers to identify the biggest bird-killers, and then to prioritize the right buildings for treatment.
My hope is that more people and institutions will follow this promising model and step up to address the deadly situations we unintentionally created decades ago, before we understood the immense effect buildings are having on bird populations. We all have a part to play in helping these amazing creatures arrive safely to their destinations.
In the meantime I’ll continue to carry around my rescue packs with me wherever I go. Because if my experience has taught me anything, it’s that you can never know when you’ll have the opportunity to save a life.
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.
Smalltail shark populations have declined by 90% in Brazil, and new research finds that overfishing has pushed the species perilously close to extinction.
Oh what a difference a few decades make.
Back in in the 1980s and 1990s, a species known as the smalltail shark (Carcharhinus porosus) was one of the most common fish caught off the coast of northern Brazil.
That’s not the case anymore. A new paper by researchers from a trio of Brazilian science institutions calculates that smalltail shark populations in the country have declined by a shocking 90%. They say the species has now become critically endangered and is in need of “urgent conservation methods…to prevent its extinction in the near future.”
The problem, as with so many other declining oceanic species, stems from rampant overfishing.
In this case smalltail sharks face similar threats from two very different types of fisheries. Small-scale, artisanal fishers use gillnets to catch species like mackerel and weakfish, while industrial-fishing operations use trawl nets to catch shrimp and massive gillnets to scoop up catfish and other bottom-dwelling species. These industrial gillnets regularly reach up to 5.5 miles in length.
Each of these methods indiscriminately catches a wide range of species, including smalltail sharks, which swim in muddy coastal waters and estuaries. The sharks only reach 3-4 feet in length, so they’re easily swept up by these fishing operations.
2004 photo of smalltail sharks from the Gulf of Mexico. SEFSC Pascagoula Laboratory; Collection of Brandi Noble, NOAA/NMFS/SEFSC.
Amplifying the fishing threat, the paper reports, a majority of smalltail sharks caught by the fisheries have always been juveniles. In the 1980s sharks younger than six years accounted for 90.6% of catches.
The elimination of so many immature sharks from the population removed any chance they’d get to breeding age and perpetuate the species.
Brazil recognized the threats to these sharks a few years ago and declared them critically endangered in their waters. But the IUCN Red List still identifies the species as “data deficient,” meaning its extinction risk hasn’t been fully assessed on a global level.
To solve that, the paper also takes a deep dive into the shark’s biology and comes up with some startling revelations. Among them, the authors upend previous research suggesting the species had a fast growth rate and reveal that it actually “has one of the longest juvenile phases when compared to several species of small coastal sharks, thus taking longer to reach sexual maturity.” This makes the smalltail shark an “intrinsically low-resilient species” that is “highly vulnerable to fishing exploitation.”
Meanwhile a second study by some of the same authors looked at the sharks from a different angle: microchemistry. The researchers examined vertebrae from 17 sharks caught in the 1980s and in the past couple of years to determine their elemental compositions. Based on the levels of barium, calcium, magnesium, manganese and strontium in the bones and at various sites around the country, the researchers hypothesize that northern Brazil holds at least three major birthing sites for the species and that the country’s waters serve as important habitat for smalltail sharks throughout their lifecycles.
The fisheries study focuses on the threats in Brazil, but the authors point out that these same fishing threats occur throughout the smalltail shark’s range. They’re calling for the animal to be considered critically endangered not just in Brazil but on a global level.
The paper points out what could happen if conservation action isn’t prioritized. Another species from the same genus, Carcharhinus obsolerus, was declared extinct in 2019. Dubbed the “lost shark” by the researchers who discovered the species from decades-old museum samples, the shark was probably also wiped out by overfishing — before it was ever scientifically recognized.
Without protection the smalltail shark could soon join its fellow among the ranks of the lost.
Collisions between whales and ships have increased, but an effort to hear, see and predict whale behavior could help reduce fatalities.
A blue whale can weigh as much as 200 tons and consume 12,000 pounds of krill in a single day. But even the largest animal on Earth doesn’t stand a chance against a fast-moving cargo ship.
Collisions between whales and shipping vessels are especially prevalent in areas where whale habitat overlaps with busy port traffic, such as the Santa Barbara Channel. This 70-mile stretch of water between mainland California and the Northern Channel Islands is a thoroughfare for thousands of cargo ships going to and from the busy ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. It’s also a hotspot for endangered and threatened whales.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has instituted voluntary slow-speed zones, but whale-ship strikes have still been on the rise for the past few years.
To reverse that trend, a group of scientists from all over the country have collaborated on a new project spearheaded by U.C. Santa Barbara’s Benioff Ocean Initiative. Whale Safe, a technology-based mapping and analysis tool, provides near real-time data on whale activity in the Santa Barbara Channel in the hope of reducing fatal whale-ship collisions.
We spoke to Morgan Visalli, the science lead at the Benioff Ocean Initiative, about how the technology works and what the public can do to help hold shipping companies accountable.
Why is something like Whale Safe needed?
Many whale species thankfully are recovering from the days of intensive whaling, when they were hunted to the brink of extinction. But now they’re facing other threats from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements.
The Santa Barbara Channel, where we’ve launched Whale Safe, is a really important feeding ground for blue, humpback and fin whales — all species that are either endangered or threatened. Those three species are the ones that we’re focusing on with this first launch of the project.
The past two years were some of the worst on record for ship strikes off the West Coast of the United States. Even worse, the number that we actually see recorded in the data is likely a small percentage of the actual number of ship strikes that occurred.
Scientists estimate that only about 5% to 17% of whale carcasses are actually observed and recorded. So if we see 13 whale carcasses that wash up on the beach, as was the case last year on the West Coast of the United States, it’s likely that that could actually be closer to 130 ship strikes that occurred.
Container ship. Photo: Pixabay.
What’s the best way to reduce or eliminate whale-ship collisions?
One way to address this issue is to separate ships and whales. In some places it’s possible to actually move shipping lanes away from areas of known whale concentrations, which can help reduce the risk of these strikes happening.
In the Santa Barbara Channel in 2013 they did move the shipping lanes one mile away from an area that is a known blue whale feeding hotspot. But unfortunately, the Santa Barbara Channel is a constrained waterway, and so there’s really not too much more that can be moved. The next best option is slowing down.
Studies have shown that when ships slow down it reduces the probability of a strike happening by potentially giving the whale a bit more time to respond. And we’ve also found that slower speeds can reduce the lethality of the strikes.
How does Whale Safe work to try and alert ship captains to whales in the area?
Credit: Nicolle R. Fuller, Sayo Studio 1. Acoustic monitoring instruments identify whale vocalizations. 2. Observers record whale sightings with a mobile app. 3. Oceanographic data is used to predict where blue whales are likely to be. 4. The data streams are compiled and validated. 5. Whale information is disseminated to industry, managers and the public.
There are three main components.
One is an acoustic listening station. Out in the Santa Barbara channel, our collaborators at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Texas A&M University at Galveston deployed an acoustic buoy that has an underwater microphone near the seafloor. There’s a small computer that processes any audio that the microphone picks up.
It is able to automatically detect the calls of blue, humpback and fin whales. Then there’s a surface buoy with a satellite transmitter that sends that information back to shore. It’s then validated by a scientist on shore before it’s added to the database.
Then the second piece is a blue whale habitat model. We use oceanographic data like sea-surface temperature and current to predict where blue whales are likely to be on any given day. That was developed by our collaborators at U.C. Santa Cruz, the University of Washington and NOAA Southwest Fishery Science Center.
It’s a dynamic model that’s running every day in an automated fashion and producing maps that show us blue whale hotspots.
The third piece is data gathered by community scientists who are out on whale-watching and tourism boats nearly every day. They use mobile apps such as WhaleAlert and Spotter Pro to record whale sightings that are also added to the database.
I know you’ve just launched this database, but what are you hearing from people in the shipping industry that may be using it or want to use it?
We did some interviews as we were building the system to get information from industry in terms of what information would be most helpful, how frequently they would like to receive data and what pathway they would like to receive data through.
Now we’re working on building those relationships, making sure everybody knows that this information is available and also getting more feedback so we can continue to improve the system and tailor the data feeds to fit the needs of different folks within the industry.
One kind of communication pathway that could be really exciting to implement is getting the whale information piped into the charting system on the ship through the automatic identification system (AIS). It’s the navigation and collision avoidance system that all of these large ships have on board.
Deploying the acoustic detection system in the Santa Barbara Channel near the shipping lanes in 2019. Photo: Benioff Ocean Initiative
There are quite a few challenges, both on the technological side and just the bureaucratic side, of actually getting the data delivered that way. It’s their main safety and navigation tool, so you don’t want it to be crowded with too much data and information. That would need to be done really thoughtfully. But that’s a communication pathway that could really help get this data more easily adopted.
Right now there are voluntary slow-speed zones, but some ships aren’t abiding by those recommendations. How likely do you think they’d be to adopt technology like Whale Safe?
A few years ago there was actually a NOAA-led working group that brought together many stakeholders to try to develop solutions. One of the recommendations that came out of that process was actually a call for new technology and more real-time data on whale activity. And that was supported by many members of the shipping industry that were part of that working group.
That helped to inform the approach that we decided to take. Some of these companies expressed that time is money, and if they’re going to slow down, they want to make sure that they’re slowing down because there are actually whales in the area.
Our hope is that this data can really help to reinforce those slow-speed zones, especially when there’s high whale activity in the channel.
Whale Safe also provides data on how well companies are abiding by the slow-speed zones. But many of these shipping companies aren’t consumer-facing, so how can this information be used by the public to pressure companies to make changes?
Big companies like Walmart, Target and Home Depot import a lot of stuff and use these shipping companies quite often. We’re starting to have conversations with some of those retailers that are more public facing to see if there’s information about whale safety that could be helpful for them as they’re doing their planning around their sustainability portfolios.
And from the public standpoint, the more general awareness there is about the problem of whale-ship collisions, the more it helps public-facing companies know that this is something that they should prioritize in their sustainability planning.
We want people to know that whales are really important for global biodiversity and also as ecosystem engineers that help stabilize the food web. Whales are also important for coastal economies through whale watching and other tourism businesses. And they can help mitigate climate change. Studies have shown that they can actually help to pull carbon out of the atmosphere.
Besides whales being incredible creatures deserving of protection in their own right, there are multiple benefits that we see from keeping these populations strong and healthy in our global ocean.
Heat, drought and water policy have created a slow-motion catastrophe at a refuge on the California-Oregon border.
Highway 161 carries me along the Oregon and California border as I head toward Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. I wish I were visiting it under better conditions. In better time this is a place where birds gather in abundance, feasting and fattening up as they continue their migration along the Pacific Flyway. Sadly, I’m here to witness a massive outbreak of disease — one that’s wiping out tens of thousands of birds.
The Lower Klamath refuge is a “must see,” especially at the start of fall migration. Designated as an “Important Bird Area” by the National Audubon Society, it’s one of a mosaic of refuges in the Klamath Basin that form an essential pinch point along the Pacific Flyway, causing waterbirds to congregate in huge numbers during migration. Birds coming south from Alaska stop to rest and refuel before continuing their journey south to estuaries along the coast, the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys of California, and beyond that as far as the tip of South America. The birds can’t complete their journey without places like the Lower Klamath along their route.
This year, though, instead of broad sheets of water, green wetland stands, clouds of mosquitos and throngs of noisy waterbirds, what greets me is a dry, barren landscape baking in the hot summer sun. Throngs of birds cram together in the few pools of hot, stagnant water that remain. Different species and guilds gather in a motley collection of unlikely neighbors; American white pelicans waddle near elegant black-necked stilts and American avocets, rather than spreading out across the open water and mudflats. These are exactly the kinds of conditions where disease can spread rapidly.
Shrinking patch of water at Lower Klamath NWR Photo: Meghan Hertel, Audubon California
It’s not surprising, then, that an avian botulism outbreak is ravaging the birds of the Lower Klamath and some of the surrounding refuges. At last estimate 40,000 birds have died in the last month due to botulism, and thousands more are at an emergency “duck hospital” operated by staff from Bird Ally X, California Waterfowl Association and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Avian botulism is a waterborne bacterium, Clostridium botulinum, that occurs naturally in many wetlands but becomes activated when the water temperature rises. Overcrowding caused by insufficient water supplies have created ideal conditions for bacteria to spread rapidly through the birds in the refuge. Birds eat infected food sources, become paralyzed and die, and in turn transmit it to other birds in a vicious cycle that spreads quickly across the wetlands.
Overcrowding, combined with a lack of water supplies to maintain these wetlands and push clean water through their habitats, exacerbates the outbreak as water sits and concentrates.
Making matters worse, some species of waterbirds are molting and will be unable to fly to better habitat for approximately a month. A 2016 study by Point Blue Conservation Science (Barbaree et al.) showed that dowitchers rely on Klamath Basin as a staging ground during molting, staying there for roughly 32 days between July and October while replacing flight feathers. The length and timing of their stay and the lack of flight feathers makes dowitchers and other waterbirds particularly vulnerable to disease outbreaks in this region.
This combination of deadly circumstances for the birds in Klamath has left biologists and refuge managers scrambling for solutions.
To minimize the spread of the infection, biologists and volunteers are capturing thousands of sick birds every day and removing dead birds before they can infect others. They will have to keep this up until temperatures drop considerably, since it will take several nights of freezing temperatures to kill the bacteria.
Refuge managers are also looking for new sources of fresh water to flood more habitat and spread the birds out, a difficult challenge in a dry year like this one. Recent news of additional water being delivered by the Bureau of Reclamation offers some hope, but it may be too little, and it is definitely too late to help those birds that have already perished.
Broken eggshell at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Meghan Hertel, Audubon California
The only true, long-term solution is to ensure that wildlife refuge has secure, reliable water supplies to maintain sufficient wetland habitat for the hundreds of thousands of birds that rely on it. This is not an easy fix, since there’s rarely enough water in the Klamath to meet the needs of tribes, farmers, ranchers, endangered salmon and birds.
Stakeholders have been working for years to reach an accord to accommodate all these important needs, but a satisfactory solution remains elusive, and wildlife refuges have not been highly prioritized. The tens of thousands of dead birds at Klamath are a sign of the stakes and the need for a balanced solution now.
As I leave the refuge, I come across two birders standing in the heat, staring at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge sign. I want to stop and warn them to not travel any farther into the parched land — that there isn’t anything to see, at least anything pleasant. But I hold back. Perhaps it’s important for all of us to see and understand the tragedy occurring in this remote corner of California and Oregon.
It reminds us of how the refuges that make up the Pacific Flyway are the last, critical links in the long but fragile chain of the Pacific Flyway. We’re linked together through these birds and habitats, across borders, culture and time, and what we do at each of these places — such as our decisions about who does and doesn’t get water — has lasting consequences for our birds, our people and future generations of both.
The opinions expressed above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.
Biodiversity loss threatens national security. We need to invest in technologies to preserve our vital food varieties.
As the impacts of climate change intensify — from water scarcity to raging fires and disease outbreaks — the ability to keep pace with demand for food will increasingly rely on crops adapted to new conditions. To achieve this crop breeders will need the full range of tools at their disposal.
So while conserving flora and fauna in their natural habitat remains an immediate priority, global food security in the long term must be futureproofed through continued investment in the preservation of plant genetic material.
Tomatoes affected by late blight in a garden near Hilo, Hawaii. Photo: Scott Nelson/Flickr (public domain)
A model for this futureproofing exists at my organization, the International Potato Center (Centro Internacional de la Papa, or CIP) in Lima, Peru. Here we host the world’s most extensive collection of potato and sweetpotato material, which conserves more than 15,000 samples of root and tuber crops. This genetic material can be drawn upon to minimize disruption to food supplies if one variety is lost to natural causes like disease or human-caused processes like climate change.
The threat is far from theoretical. Already more than a dozen varieties of native and wild potatoes are in danger of disappearing due to temperature changes or loss of habitat, while diseases are emerging in new places to endanger other popular crops, including varieties of wheat and bananas, and their wild relatives. In total two-fifths of the world’s plants are at risk of extinction, according to new research.
Resilient Genes
Wild potatoes and sweet potatoes are the cousins of the third- and sixth-most important food crops on the globe. These wild species, although inedible themselves, are rich with hardy genetic traits that can be used to breed more nutritious, disease-resistant varieties of crops that underpin diets and incomes around the world.
For example, researchers have found that wild species of potatoes contain genes that provide resistance to late blight, the most destructive potato disease, which causes an estimated $6.7 billion in yield losses worldwide every year. The loss of just one wild potato species could both set back progress toward reducing losses to late blight and hinder recovery from large-scale outbreaks in the future.
Varieties at the CIP genebank. Photo: Sara A. Fajardo/CIP (provided)
To provide defenses against such a future food apocalypse, collections of genetic material — not just of potatoes, but all crop species and their wild relatives — must be continually conserved, tested and renovated, requiring ongoing funding, research and innovation. With plant genetic material being a common good shared by and essential to all, it is in the interests of governments, development organizations and the private sector to make crop conservation a funding and policy priority.
Just as digital backups moved the world from storing information on floppy disks to the cloud, recent advances in genetic conservation techniques, such as DNA sequencing for digital catalogs and cryopreservation, offer new opportunities to preserve these staple crops for future generations facing new scenarios.
Frozen Value
The CIP genebank — one of 11 CGIAR genebanks protecting the planet’s crop diversity — began to cryopreserve crops in 1996 and now has the most advanced cryopreservation practices for potatoes.
Cryopreservation allows for the long-term storage of plant material in liquid nitrogen at temperatures of -320F (-196C). Among the advantages, for crop material, of cryopreservation over in vitro conservation are the time and resources saved — both in day-to-day maintenance of storage facilities and in the need to regenerate in vitro accessions, or plant material, every 1 to 2 years.
José Cardenas, right, works in the cryopreservation section at the International Potato Center’s genebank. Photo: Sara A. Fajardo/CIP (provided)
Scientists are currently in the process of cryopreserving all potato genetic material while developing ways to cryopreserve the more delicate sweet potato to help secure the availability of safe, nutritious crops into the future.
Maintaining diverse reserves of the widest possible variety of genetic material offers the greatest chance of protecting the public from potential food shortages. Indeed, breeders must screen thousands of potatoes over many years to identify only one or two that address the needs of farmers in terms of productivity and climate resilience.
Without a reserve of potential material to screen, important advances in new crop varieties would be stymied.
Meanwhile the cost-effectiveness of cryopreservation means more funds have been invested in other areas of research. In vitro conservation is incredibly labor intensive, requiring ongoing maintenance by specialized staff. But cryopreserved samples can remain in deep freeze for decades with little oversight necessary, freeing up more resources to dedicate to the conservation of greater crop biodiversity in natural habitats, the development of a generation of virus-free germplasm, and the repatriation and rediscovery of native varieties.
Now Is the Time
Despite their values, digital catalogs and the cryopreservation of crops and wild food plants remain under-appreciated, underfunded and underutilized by governments and international governing bodies.
Food security is national security, meaning genebanks could hold the vaccines needed for humanity’s survival of a food disaster. Put simply, bioversity loss weakens our defenses.
Native potatoes. Photo: David Duddenhoefer/CIP (CC BY-NC 2.0)
This makes conserving the rich and varied genetic material that underpins diets and human health one of our most important guarantees against devastating global shocks. Conservation efforts like ours should be treated as a matter of national and international security and investing in accordingly by the public and private sectors alike. Unless funding is secured, we at CIP may no longer be able to preserve the potato’s genetic diversity for future generations.
The value of these technologies is clearer now than ever. An outbreak of potato disease on the scale of Covid-19 could be as lethal for humanity as the pandemic itself has been.
Investing in the conservation of staple foods is a crucial investment in our collective resilience.
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.
