Climate change came for Portland, showing us that the worst is already here — and we can’t afford to ignore it any longer.
When you first step outside into 115-degree weather, it feels surprisingly good — like a full-body bear hug from a long-lost relative.
That lasts about two or three seconds.
After that, you start to really feel the heat. Your skin instantly goes dry, only to dampen again as your sweat glands jump into overdrive. Within a few more seconds, you’re sweating in places you’d forgotten about. Your clothes feel heavier with moisture, even as the first wave of it is whisked away from your body.
Then you feel it in your lungs and eyes. Breathing becomes a little bit harder, and blinking does nothing to alleviate the painful dryness.
Your muscles react soon after that. Those first few seconds of warmth fooled them into thinking they could be active and strong; then they give up on that idea in a flash, leaving you wobbly on your feet. If you’re going to do anything, your brain tells you, you’d better do it quickly.
You don’t want to do anything, though — except find relief.
This was life under the heat dome in the Pacific Northwest this past week. Late June temperatures in the Portland region typically stay in the mid-70s. Not this year. Maybe not any year ever again.
My family, it turned out, was both lucky and privileged enough to make it through the worst of the heat. We’re in one of the rare homes in the region that has central air conditioning, and we both work at home. Other than taking the dogs outside a few times a day, we could stay indoors in relative safety.
We still felt the heat, though. By the time temperatures reached their apex on June 28, the sun had been beating down on our townhouse for 10 hours. The walls and windows radiated with heat. We couldn’t drink enough water. Brain fog and lethargy settled in.
That was nothing, though, compared to many of our neighbors. Throughout the region, people suffered under the brutal blaze. Hospitalizations soared, and dozens of people died (hundreds, counting all the way into British Columbia). Cooling centers provided some relief, although the fear that they’d also serve as pandemic hot spots kept people from fully relaxing.
Infrastructure, all of it built for your typical Pacific Northwest summers, deteriorated too. Roads buckled. Electrical cables melted. Power grids crashed. Crops died. Stores closed to avoid the worst of the afternoon heat. The trees on my street turned brown along the edges and shed many of their leaves, the sudden shock too much for their systems.
We knew it was coming. Or, at least, we should have known. The warnings had been in place for years. Our governments, utilities and corporations — not to mention our families — should have prepared.
We all failed. Climate change came for us after all.
But in a sign of…I don’t know, progress?…the mainstream media mostly covered this heatwave as an event inspired by and typical of climate change, a rarity when it comes to extreme weather events. Coverage of another June heat event in Colorado, for example, mostly failed to mention climate change. This time, though, in article after article and broadcast after broadcast — not every instance, but enough — experts renewed their warnings that this is the shape of things to come. That we need to adapt. That we need to prepare. And that we need to act to ensure this doesn’t become the new normal.
But will we?
That question should haunt us. And we should demand action. Our leaders should sit up every morning and think “What can I do today to help make sure this doesn’t happen again tomorrow?”
They probably won’t, of course — at least, not at first — but we need to keep bringing the heat.
Because heat either kills or motivates us to get out of danger. Those are the only two options. Standing still in the face of climate change is a fool’s game — and a luxury we don’t have anymore.
The Western drought has exacerbated a water crisis, years in the making, that threatens the health of millions of birds — and so much more.
Extreme drought conditions gripping the West have stirred familiar struggles over water in the Klamath Basin, which straddles the Oregon-California border. Even in a good year, there’s often not enough water to keep ecosystems healthy and farms green — and this year is anything but good.
For the past two decades critics have simplistically reduced water woes in the basin to “fish vs. farms” in the battle for an increasingly scarce resource. This year, which is expected to be the lowest water year on record, it’s clear there aren’t any winners.
Credit: National Drought Mitigation Center
The Bureau of Reclamation, a Department of the Interior agency that oversees water resources in the West, has already shut the tap on irrigation water for farms in the area in order to maintain water levels in Klamath Lake needed to protect endangered suckers. It also halted releases into the Klamath River that help keep fish healthy. Following that, high temperatures and low flows fed an outbreak of the parasite Ceratonova shasta, causing a massive die-off of hundreds of thousands of juvenile salmon this past spring.
And another dire casualty hovers in the wings — birds.
Millions of birds migrate through the basin each year, relying on a complex of wildlife refuges that are quickly running dry. Last year drought conditions forced too many birds into too small a space, and 60,000 perished of avian botulism that spread quickly in close quarters.
Experts predict this year will be worse, and the problems could extend south to California’s Central Valley. Both places are critical stops on the Pacific Flyway, used by more than 320 bird species to feed and rest as they travel up and down the west coasts of North and South America.
Both the Klamath Basin and Central Valley will have limited water this year.
“We’re really concerned for what’s going to happen this fall and winter when birds are coming through the Central Valley and other drought-stricken parts of the Pacific Flyway, like the Klamath where habitat is extremely limited,” says Rachel Zwillinger, water policy advisor for Defenders of Wildlife. Water-supply reductions are creating concerns about inadequate food supplies and overcrowding on the small remaining areas of habitat.
“And then once you start to see that overcrowding, it creates serious concerns about outbreaks of disease,” she says.
Adding to the tragedy is that this is largely a crisis of our own making.
The Big Dry
At the turn of 19th century, 350,000 acres of wetlands, lakes and marshes stretched across the Klamath Basin. Two years later President Theodore Roosevelt signed the National Reclamation Act, and the agency now known as the Bureau of Reclamation began draining water, building canals, and converting soggy ground into something firm and farmable.
In all, about 80% of the historic wetlands dried up. The diverted water fed the Klamath Project, which the agency uses to supply irrigation water to farms. In one concession to nature Roosevelt created the country’s first waterfowl refuge at Lower Klamath Lake. Five more wildlife refuges in the basin were added over the years, but only two still contain critical wetland habitat today: Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife refuges.
Unfortunately those remaining wetlands were cut off from natural water flows and weren’t allotted their own dedicated supply of water. Instead the refuges rely on agricultural runoff or excess water supplied by Klamath Project farmers.
Since the Bureau of Reclamation has shut off irrigation water for those famers this year, runoff flowing to the refuges will be vastly reduced, and there’s little chance of surplus becoming available later.
A 2013 photo at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: California Waterfowl Association
Jeff Volberg, director of water law and policy for California Waterfowl, fears more disease outbreaks of avian botulism will be on the way.
“The only way to stop that outbreak is with more water to flush the system and by getting out there and collecting dead and injured birds as quickly as possible,” says Meghan Hertel, director of land and water conservation for Audubon California, who was at the refuge last year during that grisly process.
And there are other concerns. In 2020, also a drought year, ducklings born at the refuges were stranded away from the water as the wetlands dried up over the season.
“You’d have ducklings walking a couple of miles to get to water,” says Volberg. “You lose a lot of ducks that way.”
Some birds also molt while at the refuge and remain grounded until they regrow their flight feathers. Leaving to find areas with more water isn’t an option for them. That leads to more crowding and more disease.
“It’s a perfect storm of everything going wrong,” he says. “You’re taking this historically huge lake and marsh complex and turning it into a desert. It’s a very tragic circumstance.”
More of the Same
California has a history of reclamation akin to Oregon’s.
The Central Valley used to be a vast network of wetlands with rivers that overtopped their banks in winter and recharged the marshes. “But once we dammed the rivers and created levies, we cut off the historic wetlands from their water sources,” says Zwillinger.
Today the Central Valley is the agricultural heart of the state, but just 5% of the historic wetlands there remain. Unlike in Oregon, federal, state and private refuges in the valley have a guaranteed entitlement to water under the Central Valley Improvement Project Act, passed in 1992.
The remaining wetlands are now managed much the way a farm would be, except the food grown is for birds.
“It’s very strategic when we put water on the landscape and when we take it off,” says Ric Ortega, the general manager of the Grassland Water District, which solely delivers water for habitat purposes for Central Valley refuges.
“We’re trying to germinate specific grasses that are high in amino acids and protein, but that are also readily decomposable, which causes an invertebrate bloom,” he says. “So there’s actually a fair amount of planning.”
This year the planning will be extra tough.
Although the wetlands have a guaranteed water supply, they’re not guaranteed to get all of it. Five of the region’s 19 refuges still lack the physical infrastructure necessary to deliver water.
The others can also see cutbacks.
A sandhill crane flies over the Llano Seco Unit of the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge Complex in 2020. Photo: Frank Schulenburg (CC BY-SA 2.0)
In years when flows into Lake Shasta in Northern California fall below a critical threshold, the federal government can short the refuges 25% of what’s known as their “level 2” water supply, which makes up about two thirds of their total allocation. The other third, known as “level 4,” is acquired by the Bureau of Reclamation from willing sellers on the open market.
This year the refuges will be shorted their 25%, and Ortega says they’re anticipating that Reclamation won’t be able to provide much, if any, of their level 4 supply either. He estimates that they’ll have only half their contracted water supply.
If you add that to the historic deficit, the picture is grim.
“In years like this, you can think of only 2.5% of historic wetlands being available for these 10 million birds that are coming our way, whether we like it or not,” says Ortega. “The boreal and the Canadian prairies are healthy and have been for the last couple of years. So we’re expecting lots of birds, a large hatch, to come in. The stars are aligning in a bad way.”
Managing for Shortage
In anticipation of that surge, refuge managers in the Central Valley will operate much like farmers and allow some of the land to go fallow.
“What that does is it not only shrinks the wetted footprint of the wetland habitat spatially, but it also shrinks that in time,” says Ortega. Being able to put less water on the land means it will also go dry more quickly.
“It’s an especially constraining and difficult situation given the Klamath is dry, so there’s really no stopover site there,” he says.
CWA Waterfowl Programs Supervisor Caroline Brady in 2020 with ducks that died of botulism, and sick ducks in the yellow crate. Photo: California Waterfowl Association
Early migrants may start to arrive in July, but the largest numbers congregate in late November and early December. Typically wetland managers in the region would begin putting water on the landscape in mid- to-late August and have it fully inundated by the end of September or early October.
“For this year, we will probably start putting water on the landscape in a big way in October,” says Ortega. “We have to be strategic about when we flood and ensure that we’ve got adequate water to maintain that footprint through the overwintering period. Ideally we can maintain it into late March and April. But that may not be in the cards if the winter is dry.”
Even if most birds won’t arrive for months, a lack of water in the summer also means that there’s likely to be inadequate food for hungry travelers later in the year. And because there are so few wetlands remaining, birds use agricultural land as surrogate habitat, says Hertel.
That’s especially true at in the Sacramento Valley, at the north end of the Central Valley. Waterfowl get about half of their diet from the area’s rice fields in the fall and winter. After harvest, rice farmers usually flood their fields to help with decomposition of the rice stalks, which attracts insects and creates food for birds.
But this year water cutbacks mean that rice farmers will likely use all their water to grow rice, or will sell it to other eager buyers, and won’t have any to flood fields later in the year. About 100,000 acres are also likely to be fallowed — another hit for migratory birds.
“If it doesn’t rain, that’s 50% of ducks’ diet gone in fall and winter,” says Hertel.
And it’s not just birds who rely on the refuges.
“These places are incredibly diverse,” says Ortega. In the Central Valley that includes minks, river otters, beavers, Tule elk, deer, bobcats, mountain lions and 300 species of bird. The wetlands also support threatened and endangered species like the giant garter snake, tri-colored blackbirds and western pond turtles. In the Klamath Basin, the area is also home to the largest wintering population of bald eagles in the lower 48.
Finding Solutions
With a potential crisis looming, what’s to be done?
Unfortunately there are no easy solutions when it comes to water in the West. Increasingly hot and dry conditions spurred by climate change — also a crisis of our own making — puts pressure on water systems that are already strained.
For the past century we’ve watered farms and grown cities while pulling more and more water out of watersheds. The bill for that is now coming due.
“In the Klamath, the system is overextended,” says Hertel. “You have tribes with very valid concerns about fish extinction — fish that are essential and core to their community and way of life. You have farmers who have had farms up there for 100 years who are going out of business and are worried about their families and their communities. And then you have the refuge, which is supposed to be this jewel of our Pacific Flyway system, receiving very little water and having massive die-offs.”
It’s a similar situation in California with thirsty farms, expanding cities, overtaxed watersheds and endangered species in the Delta — the linchpin of the state’s water-conveyance system.
But experts say there are both short and long-term solutions that could help. The first would be to get water to the refuges as quickly as possible.
In the Klamath, Volberg says, “We feel the most appropriate thing would be for the refuge to have its own dedicated supply from outside of the basin.” California Waterfowl has been raising money from private funders to buy water rights from willing sellers upstream. They’re hoping to acquire 30,000 acre-feet of water rights that upstream irrigators would leave in the river for the refuge downstream. “That would only really provide about one third of the water that the refuge really needs, but it’s a whole lot better than no water at all,” he says.
Buying the water is just the first hurdle. They’re awaiting approval for the water rights transfer from the Oregon Department of Water Resources. If that comes through, they’ll then need Reclamation to open the headgates to allow the water out of the river. That part may be trickier.
A certain level of water must remain in the top part of the system, Upper Klamath Lake, to protect two species of endangered suckers important to the Klamath Tribes. And water is needed downstream in the Klamath River to also protect endangered salmon vital to tribes such as the Yurok, Hoopa Valley and Karuk.
Despite all that, Volberg hopes they’ll be able to pull off the water transfer this year and in the long run work with state and federal agencies to secure that 30,000 acre-feet permanently. But that will come with a price tag of $50 to $60 million, he says.
In the Central Valley, Ortega says federal and state resources are welcome, too. And the money can be used to stretch limited resources further. “We can rehabilitate groundwater wells and lift pumps and develop recirculation systems and do better monitoring,” he says.
Hertel says we’ll also need policy and infrastructure that can better help us manage limited water supplies in the future.
“This isn’t just a drought,” she says. “This is how water is operating in California under climate change. We need to be thinking about and preparing for drought every year.”
Ortega says we also need to better understand the value of wetlands — and not just for the benefits to birds and other wildlife. “These wetlands are really the kidneys of society,” he says. “They strip away harmful contaminants, provide flood control and slow down the flow of water to replenish groundwater.”
And that groundwater is the sole source of water for communities in the Central Valley, many of which are disadvantaged.
“There’s definitely an environmental justice element to all this,” he says. “We have to be mindful of water quality and all of the other benefits that wetlands provide.”
The month’s best (and worst) environmental news, along with other stories, science and context you don’t want to miss.
The news moves quickly — especially when it comes to environmental issues, which despite the threat of climate change still tend to get overlooked by major media outlets. We know how easy it is to miss critical stories and not be able to see the forest for the trees, so we’ve collected some of the best and worst news stories for the month, connected the dots to reveal a few trends, located updates to ongoing stories, and uncovered some new science and important transitions you won’t want to miss.
Welcome to Links From the Brink.
Best News of the Month: Keystone XL is kaput. TC Energy, the company behind the notorious pipeline, pulled the plug this month following more than a decade of protests. President Biden cancelled the pipeline’s permit a few hours after he took office, and that appears to have finally been TC’s signal to stop trying. It took ‘em nearly five months to admit defeat — even for a corporation, it’s hard to give up on your dreams.
Will similar, ongoing protests at the Line 3 pipeline have the same result? We live in hope — and also hope more protestors don’t get injured along the way (because things are escalating badly).
Finally, the U.S. Border Patrol is doing what it’s supposed to do: defend Canadian oil assets from Native Americans
Worst News of the Month: Carbon dioxide levels reached another new high in 2020, capping out at 419 parts per million. This might seem shocking, since global greenhouse gas emissions famously fell 6% last year as a result of the pandemic, but it reflects all CO2 released over the years — gases that don’t just go away the minute we stop burning fossil fuels.
“We still have a long way to go to halt the rise, as each year more CO2 piles up in the atmosphere,” geochemist Ralph Keeling said in a statement. “We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020.”
And imagine how much worse off we’d be if Keystone XL hadn’t been cancelled — or if Line 3 isn’t.
The Missing Link … of Death: We’ve covered the dangers of rodenticides a few times here at The Revelator, most recently linking the poisons to the deaths of endangered wildlife in the United States. Well, Americans aren’t the only ones overusing these deadly concoctions. A new study out of Tasmania finds a frightening level of rodenticide-related deaths of wedge-tailed eagles — one of the Australian island’s apex predators.
Photo: Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Here’s the twist: Wedge-tailed eagles don’t eat rodents. They eat animals that eat rodents, which means the poisons are traveling up the food chain all the way to the top. The study didn’t identify which animals served as the missing link, but smaller birds like ravens could be the carriers.
The study found high levels of a rat poison called brodifacoum in dead eagles, as well as flocoumafen, an agricultural pest-control toxin that’s part of a group of chemicals called “second-generation poisons” that kill with a single dose. But while these second-generation poisons are quite fatal to rats, death isn’t instantaneous. “Because these poisons take a while to kill the rodents, the rodents can…eat far more poison than they actually need to kill themselves,” Birdlife Australia raptor specialist Nick Mooney told the Australian Broadcasting Company. This makes the rats themselves super-toxic (and deadly) to anything that eats them. “They’re little walking time bombs,” he said.
The problem isn’t limited to the island of Tasmania. Over on mainland Australia, dozens of owls have been found dead over the past 18 months, and autopsies revealed internal bleeding from wounds that should have healed. Second-generation rodenticides are anticoagulants, so scientists suspect the poisons caused these deaths as well.
And tragically, as scientists warn at The Conversation, this could just be the start of more to come.
Food for Thought? Intensive human contact correlates with smaller brains.
OK, this isn’t a general statement (although it kind of feels that way). It’s research about how centuries of husbandry have reduced the size of the brains in various cattle breeds. Still, it speaks volumes — and raises novel ethical questions about the ways we raise our food.
Cattle grazing on public lands. Photo: Greg Shine, BLM
The Bright, It Burns: Our Google News Alerts about light pollution were operating in overdrive this month. Here are just a few of the recent headlines:
That last one about orbital debris — maybe the solution involves not putting up so many satellites to begin with. Could NEPA, an environmental law normally applied to terrestrial problems, provide a tool to do just that?
You can find our previous coverage on light pollution here.
Meow Max: Last year I wrote about the threat feral cats pose to Hawaii’s unique species. Well, things have gotten even worse in the past 12 months, as the pandemic slowed down the state’s trap and sterilization efforts. Now experts worry that hungry cat populations will have a baby boom, which could push native species even closer to extinction.
Renewables on the Rise: The United States consumed (good word, BTW) a record level of renewable energy in 2020 — 11.6 quadrillion BTUs, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s 12% of U.S. energy consumption: way too low, but still progress.
And that progress will continue: New solar installations are projected to increase 24% this year, although the industry faces supply-chain issues and a tight labor market that could limit further growth.
Solar reserve putside Tonopah, Nevada. Photo: Dan Brekke (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Meanwhile, new research from the International Renewable Energy Agency finds that the renewable energy generation installed in 2020 delivers power cheaper than coal.
But don’t count the coal industry out quite yet. So far this year the United States has actually produced 9.5% more coal than it did by this point last year, according to data released June 24 by the EIA. (Sigh…)
City of Amphibians: Los Angeles just published a list of 37 “umbrella indicator species” that reside within the city limits, along with a plan to monitor them. The list includes Baja California tree frogs, great blue herons, mountain lions, North American Jerusalem crickets and — of course — bumblebees. If these species thrive, it will serve as a sign that the city is keeping its natural spaces healthy and connected. To find out how they’re doing, the city will post species observations on citizen-science platforms like iNaturalist, which they hope will also help keep residents engaged about their local wildlife and public spaces.
This appears to be the first list or program of its kind. Hopefully it can serve as a model for other metropolitan areas.
If you’re in the Los Angeles area, the public can participate in monitoring during (and presumably after) the L.A. Bioblitz Challenge that runs through Aug. 7 — just don’t get too close to those mountain lions.
Heartbreaker: Why a dying U.S. Army veteran keeps fighting to end the toxic military burn pits that, in all likelihood, caused his terminal cancer — even as he shops for his own coffin.
A burn pit in Afghanistan. SIGAR Inspection Report, via Special IG for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Lawbreaker? Will ecocide join the ranks of genocide and war crimes at the International Criminal Court? A new draft law defines ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” It will take at least four years for this proposal to become official law, and it will have to jump several hurdles along the way, but hey, that gives certain corporations (you know who you are) plenty of time to line up their defense attorneys…
The moment you’ve been waiting for! Today the expert drafting panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation reveals the result of 6 months of legal deliberations: their proposed definition of #ECOCIDE as a fifth crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. pic.twitter.com/mMA6U58wA4
— Stop Ecocide International (@EcocideLaw) June 22, 2021
What’s Next? July is already shaping up to be quite a month, with continued drought and record heatwaves, a potential wolf slaughter in Idaho, and more protests over Line 3 — not to mention showdowns over voting rights, infrastructure and so much more that will affect environmental issues for years to come.
What are you watching or waiting for in the months ahead? Good news or bad, drop us a line anytime.
That does it for this inaugural edition of Links From the Brink. For more environmental news throughout the month, including bigger stories you won’t find anywhere else, subscribe to the Revelator newsletter or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
Miami residents already live with the ramifications of climate change. That’s why organizers there have teamed up with other regions to share ideas.
Millions of tourists still flock to Miami’s prized beaches, but each year the sea steals a little more of those fabled sands. South Florida could see more than two feet of sea-level rise in the next 40 years, according to the region’s scientists.
For a city built on porous limestone and racial inequality, this reality is already seeping in. With such immediate concerns, Miami has become a frontline community in the fight against climate change.
But climate is not the city’s only challenge.
Miami-Dade is a majority-minority county with a gaping wealth gap. It’s also part of a state with a history of environmental exploitation and a climate-change record ranging from lackluster to downright hostile.
As city leaders raise funds and develop game plans to tackle climate challenges, local groups are pushing to make sure the region’s most vulnerable populations aren’t left behind.
The work is part of a growing effort across the South to tackle both climate change and inequity — and to show the importance of local, community-driven action in states where climate change concerns have taken a backseat. To understand more about how Miami can make climate resilience equitable and how communities are banding together across the conservative Gulf Coast, The Revelator spoke to Zelalem Adefris, vice president of policy and advocacy for Catalyst Miami, a nonprofit working with low-wealth communities in Miami-Dade County.
Given the threats facing Miami, what would climate resilience for the city look like to you?
Zelalem Adefris of Catalyst Miami. Photo: Courtesy
Climate resilience is typically defined as being able to bounce back from a challenge. But I think our baseline is not necessarily where we want to be in terms of the wealth, prosperity and the ability of our communities to thrive.
For example, as sea-level rise affects the coast, people on higher elevation land, which typically are lower-income areas because they don’t have the coastal views, are now seeing housing costs rise exponentially and their communities are being targeted by developers. We call it climate gentrification.
We already have an affordable housing crisis here in South Florida. We have a lot of luxury condos and vacation homes for the very wealthy and not enough housing stock for people that actually live here.
So I hope that in the process of achieving resilience, working on climate justice, making whatever changes we need to make in order to take climate action, we’re also able to up that baseline to a higher expectation for all of our households across the county so people aren’t going back to a pretty low quality of life and are instead will be better off as we move.
What’s the public’s perception of climate change?
I would say most people already see climate change happening in their neighborhoods, but they might not always know that it is climate change. We’ll talk to people about extreme heat and how Miami has added almost two months of summer — so days over 90 degrees — since 1970. People who have been here for that long recognize that, they felt that change and how the years have gotten significantly hotter. So we don’t find too much pushback because unfortunately it’s our lived reality. Our work is more like naming that reality.
What kind of support for solutions do you see from state and local governments?
We’ve been working with the local government for a really long time. They are getting on board and coming up with climate action plans and are a great partner of ours. Sometimes we need to push, but ultimately we work really well with them.
I would say at the state level, unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of preemption. There are bills and legislation being passed to actually move a lot of local decision-making to the state level, especially around environmental issues like climate change and plastic.
And as you can imagine, the state does not really move the needle on these issues at nearly the level of our local governments.
Miami became one of the first cities to appoint a chief heat officer. That’s a pretty serious admission about how climate change is affecting the area. How is the city tackling the problem of an increase in dangerously hot days?
Jane Gilbert is the one appointed to that role. She’s actually the former chief resilience officer of the city of Miami, so we know her well. She is working with us and other partners on pushing policy and county programming to address heat. For outdoor heat, so far that effort includes stuff like more tree canopy and addressing concerns about waiting for public transit with a really inefficient bus system while people have no cover to protect them from the heat. We’re also hoping to expand outdoor heat efforts to protections for workers too, because we have an agricultural economy here.
And then there’s also indoor heat issues, so being able to afford your electricity bill, having functioning air conditioning, having a quality of housing in which you don’t have cracks in the wall that leak all your cool air — and your money — out into the heat.
How does your work fit into broader climate resilience efforts, or challenges, in southern states?
Gulf South for a Green New Deal is an initiative to try to get together folks from all the Gulf South states — Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi — to talk about strategies that are specific to our states.
I think having spaces for states in the South or other states with challenging legislative atmospheres is always good. It’s great to hear what’s coming out of states like California and New York, but it can be difficult sometimes here in Florida.
We don’t necessarily have the longstanding environmental institutions, but we do a good job of collaboration and leading with community voices first and community priorities. And we’ve had some powerful local wins throughout the years. I think anytime you see a conservative state making policy gains, there’s definitely something to learn from there.
In South Florida, since the state’s inception, there’s been an onslaught against the environment. Development has been prioritized in the entire history of the region, starting with the Everglades — you have to pave over the Everglades to even get here for the most part. So we have a legacy that needs to change.
But at the same time, for all of its existence, there’s also a legacy of people fighting for what’s right. That’s what we lean on as well.
American fisheries feed an intense global demand for shark fins. A new bill could help close several critical gaps in the rules.
Sharks should be afraid of us. After evolving as a highly specialized lineage of fish for over 400 million years and surviving five major extinction events, they now face the most serious threat they’ve ever faced. A 2021 study published in Nature found that 71% of sharks and rays have been fished out of the sea in the past 50 years. At least 25% of shark species are now at risk of extinction.
One major threat to sharks comes from overfishing, driven largely by the high demand for the Asian delicacy known as shark fin soup.
Shark fin soup. Photo: Andrew Currie (CC BY-SA 2.0)
This market for high-value shark fin, coupled with the low or nonexistent market for shark meat, has led to the practice called shark finning — cruelly and wastefully catching and killing a shark just for its fins. This often includes discarding the finless, still-living shark overboard. Most sharks need to swim to breathe, and the victims of this practice either suffocate or bleed to death on the ocean floor — a painful and ignoble death.
Shark fins, often called the “blood diamonds of the sea,” are associated with cruelty, human slavery and these creatures’ looming extinction. Impacts from habitat loss and warming seas serve as the nails in the coffin for many shark species in the fin trade.
Shark finning has been illegal in U.S. fisheries since the year 2000. It’s similarly banned in more than 30 countries and has been condemned by the United Nations. Although finning itself is forbidden in many places, the trade and sale of shark fins acquired through other means is still legal in nearly all countries, including 36 U.S. states that allow the harvesting of sharks as long as the full body is brought to port. This contributes to the decline of many shark populations.
Driven to save sharks from extinction, environmental advocates and legislators have worked state by state, from Hawaii to New York, to reduce the trade of shark fins as well as reduce overfishing. In October 2020 Florida became the 14th state to ban the sale and trade of shark fins. This was a positive step for protecting sharks from poaching and targeting sharks for their fins by limiting flow and pressure on domestic populations. Perhaps more importantly, these bipartisan state bills are largely supported (and in many cases sponsored) by Asian Americans, who send a message across the ocean that sharks are more important swimming in the sea than in a ceremonial bowl of soup.
However, the lucrative shark fin trade still allows endangered shark fins to flow across state lines and be sold and exported. Nearly all fins from sharks harvested in the United States are exported to Hong Kong, Singapore and ultimately China for consumption in luxury shark fin soup.
Shark fins for sale in Hong Kong in 2006. Photo: Gregg Tavares (CC BY 2.0)
But the United States has been paving the way for international shark protection. The state of Hawai‘i just passed a law that will prohibit shark fishing entirely in state waters — and was the first state in the Union to prohibit the sale and trade of shark fin.
Now we have a chance to take what started in the states to the next level. In the Senate, Cory Booker (D-N.J.) reintroduced the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act (S 1106), which is similar to a bill passed through committee but killed in the 116th Congress last year by Senator Marco Rubio. The Senate bill was included as an amendment to a Senate legislative package, known as the Endless Frontier Act, which successfully passed the Senate June 8 for World Oceans Day. The House companion bill HR 2811, sponsored by Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, a Democrat representing the Northern Mariana Islands, and Michael McCaul (R-Texas) is now under consideration.
Why Action in the U.S. Will Help Globally
Shark fins’ high value incentivizes commercial fisheries in the United States to supply Asia with the products. The American shark-fishing industry, which profits from fin sales, opposes the proposed law and claims trade restrictions will hurt “sustainable” shark fisheries. These fisheries sell shark meat but benefit much more from the higher value received from fins. Without the value of the fin, the low value of the meat would lead to reduced pressure on domestic shark populations and send a global message that the dish coveted by wealthy consumers is a luxury that is harmful to the ocean.
To address the U.S. contribution to the global trade and impact on shark species, several major problems must be addressed. Among them are the ways shark fisheries report and label their catches. In the United States a shark fin is only classified as a “fin” if it’s dried. This means shark fins that were removed postmortem or are either wet, kept on ice, or preserved in some other manner are not classified as fins, which leads to a vast underreporting of sharks killed.
Another issue stems from the lack of federal regulations tracing catch and fins, resulting in the inability to truly monitor and track the quantity of shark fins traded in and out of the country every year. Previous studies have shown the U.S. reports dramatically smaller levels of shark fins imported to and exported from the country than other nations report on their sides of the trade.
Similarly, the illegal trade must be addressed. Like many wildlife products that are valuable and easily transported, shark fins are also associated with smuggling and other crime. On Sept. 28, 2020, a report regarding an illegal shark fin trading ring shipping fins in and out of Florida found the company illegally exported around 12,500 pounds of shark fins between 2016 and 2017.
Smuggled shark fins recovered during Operation Thunderbird in 2019. Photo: USFWS
The Endless Frontier Act and HR 2811 would address these issues, and we urge the legislatures to pass these vital protections.
It’s Time to Act
Sharks are many things. They are an ancient lineage of highly diverse fish that fill a breadth of ecological niches in marine ecosystems and play a significant role in many cultures’ mythology and heritage. Sharks also loom large in the media, and (incorrectly) in some people’s minds as fearsome and vicious man eaters. In reality large sharks are both apex predators and keystone species, meaning that the success and health of the ecosystems in which they live are also in critical danger of collapse. These fish maintain the balance of ocean ecosystems that provide the very oxygen humans need to survive. Recent studies have even indicated that the presence of predatory sharks can protect carbon sinks in the ocean, mitigating climate change.
Shark fins drying on a sidewalk. Photo: Nicholas Wang (CC BY-SA 2.0)
And yet despite their importance on so many levels, and despite many years of calls for their protection, sharks are still being overfished at an alarming rate, and the shark fin trade threatens large species of sharks like hammerheads and oceanic whitetip with extinction in our lifetimes.
We can solve that. Although regulating fins is not a comprehensive panacea to save sharks, the U.S. can reduce threats and save endangered sharks that swim in its waters and focus on other threats ranging from habitat loss to illegal fishing. We need the federal government to take action on stricter regulations of protected species, including no-retention of oceanic whitetips, with these or any other new laws to address the gaps creating these problems.
It’s time we act in the interests of wildlife and ocean health for the survival of all species. We can start with saving sharks from extinction.
The opinions expressed above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or its employees.
The United States has failed to take leadership in the Convention on Biological Diversity. Its most biodiverse state can fill that gap.
California, like the rest of the world, must wrestle with a hard truth: Our climate has changed. As we face another water-shortage crisis, we must acknowledge a sobering reality: We’re not in a drought. This is our new normal. And we need to adapt.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that we can’t solve our drought, or the myriad other environmental crises, without protecting our ecosystems. And we can’t protect our ecosystems without acknowledging that this work is globally connected. That’s why we — as a member of California’s State Assembly, the political and organizing director of the California League of Conservation Voters, and an environmental policy advisor and community leader — believe our state must become a leading force for engagement in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Sea lions in La Jolla, California. Photo: Shutter Runner, (CC BY-NC 2.0)
This fall California will have the opportunity to make a difference at the Convention’s 15th Conference of Parties in Kunming, China, where 196 nations will meet and agree on a strategy to protect nature called the “Global Biodiversity Framework.” Even though the CBD is the world’s only treaty to protect biodiversity, the United States never ratified it. Instead, our nation is an “observer” to the treaty and has been mostly disengaged — a massive leadership gap.
But California is now an observer, too. This was finalized in December by the Newsom administration, thanks to the California Natural Resources Agency’s Secretary Wade Crowfoot and a statewide coalition of environmental organizations that advocated alongside us throughout 2020. We join other actively participating subnational governments from around the world like Quebec (Canada), Scotland (United Kingdom), Aichi Prefecture (Japan) and São Paulo State (Brazil) — all of which are committed to protecting our environment and also wield enormous political and economic influence. As an observer, California can make a powerful impact as a leading U.S. voice at the 15th conference by advocating for ambitious action and partnering with other subnational governments to increase our clout, especially if the federal government fails to do so.
But it’s important that we develop this opportunity the right way and that the California Natural Resources Agency, which is leading our participation, meaningfully engages California’s organizations and communities at every step.
California Coastal National Monument. Photo: David Ledig/BLM
We’ve seen in California that biodiversity is a unifying issue. Protecting nature is fundamental to mitigating climate change, growing affordable and healthy food, preserving clean air and water, limiting the spread of disease, and advancing the health and well-being of families and children. This is about social and environmental justice, from equitable green cities and clean energy transitions for our workforce, to job opportunities arising from restoring our ecosystems and becoming sustainable.
As residents of America’s most biodiverse state, Californians know this firsthand. Our economy, from agriculture to tourism, is heavily dependent on biodiversity. We rank first in the nation in agricultural production, and the value of our crops that depend on pollinators like insects is approximately $11.7 billion. In 2020 the benefit to California’s economy from national park tourism was approximately $4.276 billion. In our cities the value of services from our urban trees, from cooling buildings to removing air pollution (which reduces healthcare costs), is estimated at $1.4 billion. The Angeles National Forest is responsible for about 384,000 acre-feet of water per year, with a value to Los Angeles area households of $4.12 billion.
Despite this California’s biodiversity is threatened by urban sprawl, climate change, invasive species and more. We’ve lost about 1 million acres of natural area since 2000 and about 20% of our native species. Along our coast the loss of kelp forests has devastated marine species and our fishing industry.
Kelp and sardines. Photo: Robert Schwemmer, NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries
In response we’re already stepping up as a role model and a leader. Last fall Governor Newsom signed an executive order making California the first state to commit to protect 30% of our land and coastal waters by 2030, which is currently a key target of the CBD’s draft framework. California’s 30×30 commitment covers everything from coastal wetlands to urban parks and healthy soils management. And it establishes a new California Biodiversity Collaborative. In January President Biden followed suit, making a similar 30×30 pledge in in one of his first executive orders — a powerful example of how when California leads, the nation often follows.
These state and local efforts are crucial. We still have a long way to go to deliver on our promises, but we can and must get there. The impacts of biodiversity loss, from pandemics to worsening climate change, do not recognize borders. As a wealthy nation, the U.S. should not stand by while other nations and poorer communities bear the cost of damages to which we contribute.
But as an observer, California can contribute critical input to the framework’s development. We can advocate to increase its effectiveness and ensure its success by:
Engaging our diverse communities and stakeholders in the process of developing our state’s input on the goals, targets, implementation and other aspects of the framework.
Raising global ambition to protect nature by leveraging our expertise, global relationships and economic clout.
Teaming up with other subnational governments to press for accountability and action.
Showcasing forward-thinking policies and proposals and being a model stakeholder.
Being a role model to other U.S. states in hopes of increasing America’s subnational government engagement, as well as our national engagement.
Any strategy to save nature is unlikely to succeed without strong participation, awareness and buy-in from local communities, including Indigenous peoples. California should not only engage local stakeholders in our input to the CBD, but also show the world how an inclusive approach can create a path to long-lasting success.
In addition, critical regional efforts and accomplishments across the state — such as adopting a partnership-based approach to management of marine protected areas, connecting wildlife corridors and habitat in Southern California, the Los Angeles County measure that will create parks in high-need areas, or crafting ecologically resilient responses to the growing wildfire issues — can provide an example to global policymakers of the power of local leadership to meet big goals. We must also work with our local environmental justice communities to inform global discussions about equity, education and awareness. Local engagement will be key to ensuring strong implementation and accountability in meeting biodiversity goals.
California has much to share, but we still have much to learn. By participating in the convention, we will benefit from the exchange of knowledge and the creation of relationships. We will learn from other observers, such as Indigenous peoples, subnational governments and the many nations that are party to this treaty.
California newt. Photo: J. Maughn (CC BY-NC 2.0)
California has already proven its commitment to global environmental engagement. When Trump announced his intention to quit the Paris Agreement in 2017, we led states and cities nationwide in a united effort to double down on climate action. In 2019 California attended the 25th climate COP in Madrid and helped fill the leadership vacuum left by the Trump administration. We proved that California can be a critical player on the world stage working to solve the biggest challenges of our time.
Now we’re linking biodiversity to our efforts and, together with our diverse California communities, we will be a game changer for the future. We must get it right for our state and the world.
The opinions expressed above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or its employees.
This miniature monkey from Brazil faces a losing battle with disease, invasive species and an ever-shrinking habitat.
As the rainforests of Brazil disappear, so do their unique inhabitants. A tiny monkey represents the dangers faced by much of Brazil’s biodiversity but also illustrates the opportunity we have to save them.
Species name:
The buffy-headed marmoset (Callithrix flaviceps)
Description:
This miniscule marmoset is a small, neotropical primate that weighs just 1 pound (460g) on average. It’s endemic to the Atlantic forests of the southeastern region of Brazil, where it has the smallest distribution of any species in the Callithrix genus.
Courtesy Mountain Marmosets Conservation Program
Buffy-headed marmosets have a light, gray-brownish coat, with a cream-colored face, a yellowish-beige head and neck, and short, yellowish ear tufts. One endearing characteristic is the grayish shade of the fur above their eyes, which gives their faces a clownish appearance.
Where it’s found:
These marmosets live mainly in the Atlantic forest fragments in the states of Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. They range from south of the Rio Doce in Minas Gerais into the mountainous region of Espírito Santo state. The southernmost part of the species’ range extends west into eastern Minas Gerais, where it’s found in scattered localities in the Rio Manhuaçu basin as far as the Manhuaçu municipality.
The range of the species distribution overlaps with that of buffy tufted-ear marmoset (C. aurita), where a natural hybridization zone occurs.
Major threats:
The species inhabits areas that have suffered the effects of numerous anthropogenic pressures through extensive fragmentation and deforestation of forests due to expansion of urban areas, mining and agricultural activities. This has led to the replacement of native flora by pastures, coffee and eucalyptus plantations, as well as harmful activities like burning that are associated with agricultural expansion.
Photo: Peter Schoen (CC BY-SA 2.0)
In addition to these threats, the introduction of invasive primate species such as the common marmoset (C. jacchus) and black-eared marmoset (C. pencillata) precipitated a serious increase in competition and hybridization with the buffy-headed marmoset. Hybridization is particularly concerning as it leads to the loss of the genetic characteristics and could ultimately be a cause of extinction if the current scenario persists.
Another serious threat to the species comes from emerging diseases such as yellow fever, which since the last epidemic outbreak in 2016 has eliminated countless individuals of the species in the wild. We estimate that this has led to a sharp drop in C. flaviceps in some regions.
IUCN Red List status:
The buffy-headed marmoset status has only recently been updated to critically endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species due to a drastic population reduction. This decline is in large part the consequence of habitat destruction, the effects of hybridization and competition with invasive marmoset species, and the yellow fever epidemic that has reduced at least one of the more significant subpopulations by 90%.
Notable conservation programs or legal protections:
The Brazilian Ministry of Environment, through the ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation), has created National Action Plans that aim to prioritize conservation actions to support endangered species. The National Action Plan for the Conservation of the Atlantic Forest Primates and the Maned Sloth (PAN PPMA), created in 2018, covers 13 native species, including the buffy-headed marmoset and the closely related buffy-tufted marmoset, also an endangered species.
There are also initiatives for the conservation of marmosets, such as the Mountain Marmosets Conservation Program, which has been working in collaboration with several researchers and national and international institutions to put into practice the actions established by the PPMA PAN.
Through this program a series of guides, protocols and decision keys are currently being developed to conduct studies and research with C. flaviceps. and C. aurita. One of the actions originated from this international project was the creation of the Mountain Marmosets Conservation Center at the Federal University of Viçosa, which is the first center of primatology in the world focused exclusively on both mountain marmosets, and in developing conservation activities in situ and ex situ.
Our favorite experiences:
Carla: My favorite experience with this species came at a moment of great stress and concern.
I was conducting a primate community assessment at my study site, at the Private Protected Reserve of Natural Heritage — Feliciano Miguel Abdala in Caratinga, Minas Gerais, following the yellow fever outbreak that hit the southeastern region of the Atlantic forest late in 2016.
This site was once known for having one of the most important subpopulations of the species. However, the forest had become eerily quiet, and after several months of intense field work there were no signs of the groups that used to range this 4 square mile (1,000-hectare) forest fragment. I began to suspect the worse and to fear that the marmosets had been decimated and perhaps become locally extinct.
Fortunately, while I was conducting this monitoring, I finally managed to locate a couple of groups. It was a tremendous relief to me to see these animals and to know that they had not become locally extinct. Since that time I have been keeping track of these primates and I hope that our work will lead us to new findings and benefit their conservation in the wild.
Sarisha: I’m currently studying the buffy-headed marmoset at Macedônia Farm, a private natural reserve in Ipaba, a small town located in central Minas Gerais. Here I lead a population survey to contribute knowledge about the species locally and to develop conservation strategies.
There hadn’t been any previous studies focusing on the species in this region, and we only had a few reports of their historic presence. Nevertheless, we managed to discover a few healthy and large groups, bringing a positive perspective for the species in the area.
For me, my favorite experience with this species has been observing these animals in the wild, in what remains of their natural habitat. The buffy-headed marmoset is a remarkable little primate, so for me it is these moments during fieldwork where I can appreciate their beauty and witness their dexterity in the trees.
What else do we need to understand or do to protect this species?
To effectively conserve this marmoset we need urgent studies concerning the occurrence of hybridization, interaction with the invasive species and the impacts of deforestation and yellow fever.
On top of that, there are significant knowledge gaps regarding their general behavior and ecology that we would like to fill by conducting further research.
Key research:
Ferrari, S. F. (1988). The behaviour and ecology of the buffy-headed marmoset, Callithrix flaviceps (O. Thomas, 1903) (Vol. 1988). University College London.
Ferrari, S. F. (2009). Social Hierarchy and Dispersal in Free-Ranging Buffy-Headed Marmosets (Callithrix flaviceps). The Smallest Anthropoids, 155–165. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0293-1
Hilário, R. R. (2003). Padão de Atividades, Dieta e Uso do Habitat por Callithrix flaviceps na Reserva Biológica Augusto Ruschi, Santa Teresa, ES. Ecologia, May 2009, 1–115.
Malukiewicz, J. (2019). A Review of Experimental, Natural, and Anthropogenic Hybridization in Callithrix Marmosets. International Journal of Primatology, 40(1), 72–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-018-0068-0
Climate change is upending people’s lives around the world, but when droughts, floods or sea level rise force them to leave their countries, people often find closed borders and little assistance.
Part of the problem is that today’s laws, regulations and international agreements about migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees offer few, if any, special protection to those forced to leave because of climate conditions.
National laws focus primarily on violence and conflict as drivers of forced migration and rarely consider environmental stress. In fact, no nation’s immigration system currently has environmental criteria for admission. International agreements such as the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the Global Compact for Refugees mention the impacts of natural disasters and environmental degradation, but they are not legally binding.
Often, the environmental stressors associated with climate change are only one factor pushing people to migrate. For example, many migrants from Guatemala trying to enter the U.S. have struggled under severe droughts or storms, but many also fear crime and violence if they move to cities in their homeland to find work. Others are seeking opportunities that they and their children don’t have.
As experts in migrationand climaterisk, we have been studying how climate change is displacing people within their own countries and often pushing them to cross borders. Here are some of the key challenges the Biden administration faces and reasons this effort can’t wait.
How many climate migrants are there?
No one knows exactly how many climate migrants exist now or how many people will become climate migrants in the future, but current estimates are high.
In the coming years, the rapid pace of climate change combined with a global population nearing 8 billion people is likely to create unprecedented stress around the world. Recent studies show that dry spells and drought are already associated with increased migration.
Drought displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Ethiopia in 2016. The vast majority stayed within the country’s borders.UNICEF Ethiopia/2016/Tesfaye, CC BY-NC-ND
Until recently, scholars identified wars and conflict as principal sources of displacement.
Starting in the 1980s, some scholars began using the term “environmental refugee” for those forced to leave their homes because of disruptions related to human or naturally produced environmental events, such as desertification, deforestation, land degradation and rising sea levels.
The U.N.’s 1951 Refugee Convention establishes the obligations and responsibilities its member nations have to refugees. It defines refugees as people who are forced to flee their homelands because of fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
In contrast, international law does not clearly define migrants or climate migrants. Thus, all migrants are subject to the immigration laws of their destination countries. Since these immigration laws also lack environmental criteria for accepting migrants, climate migrants often have nowhere to go.
Changing views of climate migration
While climate migrants are not legally considered refugees, many are highly vulnerable.
Lacking resources, climate migrants are likely to be poorer than most other international migrants. This may put them at a disadvantage as more countries’ policies scrutinize the economic prospects of immigrants before permitting them entry.
Yet climate migrants do not fit cleanly into categories of those who migrate voluntarily and those who are displaced by factors beyond their control.
Take the case of Ioane Teitiota, a man from the island nation of Kiribati who sought refugee status in New Zealand in 2013. He was ultimately deported on the grounds that his life wasn’t in immediate danger in his homeland. But while Kiribati isn’t underwater yet, it is under stress as habitable land becomes more scarce and water supplies become contaminated by saltwater.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission rejected Teitiota’s appeal in 2020, but it also warned that governments could be in violation of U.N. agreements if they send people back to situations where climate change has created life-threatening risks.
Rethinking the role of disasters
Climate change and other environmental stresses have increasingly become drivers of displacement, but in ways that do not fit neatly within the bright dichotomy that law and policy use to distinguish between refugees and other people on the move.
We believe it’s time for countries worldwide to rethink the role of disasters and climate change in migration, recognize the rights of those displaced by environmental causes and reform international and national laws and policies, which are out of date with what’s known today about climate change and displacement. Nations may be reluctant to offer what may seem like a new portal for migrants, but evidence suggests those numbers will only rise, and countries need to be prepared.
The American West contains 620,000 miles of fencing, threatening the migration of pronghorn, mule deer and other species.
With the arrival of spring each year, pronghorn that winter in the Upper Green River Valley of Wyoming begin a journey of more than 100 miles to their summer habitat near Grand Teton National Park.
It’s one of the longest migrations of large mammals remaining in North America. But their trek — and a similar one made by mule deer — is made more difficult by human developments along the way, particularly fences.
“The total length of fencing around the world may now exceed that of roads by an order of magnitude, and continues to grow due to a global trend towards land partition and privatization,” wrote researchers of new U.C. Berkeley-led study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
Wyoming is no exception. There the researchers found nearly 3,800 miles of fences in their study area alone — twice the length of the U.S.-Mexico border. Their research tracked GPS-collared pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) during two years of their migrations to better understand how fences affect the animals’ movements and which kinds of fences may be most difficult.
Fences aren’t always bad for wildlife — some can keep animals off roads, for instance — but they can also pose threats.
For animals like pronghorn and mule deer, fences can halt or change migration routes. Animals that attempt to go over or under also risk becoming entangled and perishing. Juveniles are particularly at risk. A 2005 Utah State University study of ungulate migration across Colorado and Utah found the youngsters died in fences 8 times more often than adults. Many others died of starvation or predation when they weren’t able to cross fences and were separated from their mothers.
A radio-collared pronghorn perishes after being tangled in unmodified barb-wire fencing while trying to cross. Photo: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Borderlands Research Institute (CC BY 2.0)
Most of the fences the animals encounter run along the edges of livestock pastures, private property lines or roads, and are composed of four or five strands of barbed wire. Some have woven wire at the bottom, the most common type of fence for corralling sheep but also the most lethal to wildlife.
“A better understanding of wildlife responses to fencing is … critical to conservation,” the researchers of the U.C. Berkeley study wrote.
But here’s what we do know: The study found that both pronghorn and mule deer “were extensively affected by fences.”
Each year an average mule deer encountered fences 119 times and pronghorn 248 times. In about 40% of those encounters, the fence changed the animal’s behavior. And that behavior, they found, was more complex than simply crossing or not crossing the fence.
Often the animals “bounced,” or rapidly moved away from the fence when they couldn’t quickly cross. “Such avoidance of fences can drive animals away from high‐quality resources and reduce habitat use effectiveness,” they wrote.
Other times the animals paced back and forth along the fence line, a behavior that could strain energy resources. And occasionally they became trapped in areas with a high concentration of fences, like livestock pastures.
This can create other problems.
“Constraining animal movements for prolonged periods within limited areas may trigger human–wildlife conflicts,” the researchers found. Pronghorn, for example, have been seen in new developments in Colorado Springs, where they’ve been hit by cars and shown up at the airport.
Mule deer and pronghorn also behave differently when encountering fences. Mule deer are more likely to jump a fence, and pronghorn to crawl under.
“The reluctance to jump means that pronghorn movements can be completely blocked by woven‐wire sheep or barbed‐wire fences with low bottom wires — the two most common types of fences across their home range in North America,” the researchers found.
Considering that the American West may have upwards of 620,000 miles of roadside and pasture fences, “fence modifications for conservation might be more urgent than currently recognized,” they wrote.
Efforts are underway to encourage or require more “wildlife-friendly” fences that “are very visible and allow wild animals to easily jump over or slip under the wires or rails,” according to recommendations from Colorado’s Parks and Wildlife agency.
Further guidance from Sustainable Development Code, an organization that works on sustainability issues with local governments, recommends using smooth, instead of barbed wires; limiting the height of fences 42 inches; allowing 16 inches of clearance at the bottom; and including wide spacing between wires.
Raising net-wire fencing to a height that pronghorn can crawl under. Photo: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Borderlands Research Institute (CC BY 2.0)
“There are other forms of wildlife-friendly fencing, including ‘lay-down’ or temporary fences that permit wildlife crossing during critical migratory seasons,” the group reports.
Making fence lines more visible is also helpful to other animals, including birds. Low-flying birds, like grouse, also die in fences across the West’s rangelands.
That’s why wildlife managers are beginning to push for removing or modifying fences, but the effort can be costly. To address this concern, the researchers developed a software package, available to wildlife managers and other researchers, that highlights fences posing the biggest threats to animal movement. They hope it will help make the best use of limited conservation funds and help protect critical migration pathways.
“We demonstrate that when summed and mapped, these behaviors can aid in identifying problematic fence segments,” they wrote. And that could help save a lot of pronghorn, mule deer and other animals.
Years of work in the Pacific Northwest is paying off. It started with preserving the ecosystem so native species would have something to return to.
There aren’t too many animals that will eat a porcupine for lunch, but fishers are at the top of the list.
Fishers (Pekania pennanti) are members of the mustelid family and a relative of otters, minks and martens. Quick on the ground and agile tree climbers, these forest dwellers couldn’t out-maneuver trappers in the 1800s, who relentlessly pursued the housecat-sized carnivores for their high-value pelts.
This overexploitation, combined with a loss of habitat from logging and other development, drastically reduced fisher populations across their ranges in the northern U.S. and Canada.
Some populations have rebounded, but on the West Coast, critically low numbers persist today. Despite that, most fishers lack protection; so far only one population in the Southern Sierra Nevada is federally listed as endangered.
A legal battle by a coalition of environmental groups (including The Revelator’s parent organization, the Center for Biological Diversity) seeking federal protections for Pacific fishers has dragged on for more than two decades.
In the meantime, the state of Washington has taken fisher recovery into its own hands. And as new trail cam footage of four kits in the Northern Cascades showed this spring, there’s cause for optimism.
I was able to extract some audio of one of Luna’s kits! Volume ⬆️. That’s the sound of a baby fisher at night in the North Cascades🥺
The emerging population of fishers in Washington has been years in the making.
A wildlife survey in the 1990s confirmed that fishers had likely been extirpated from the state decades ago.
But some people refused to give up on the species. In 1998 fishers were added to Washington’s list of endangered species, and a few years later a feasibility study affirmed that local forests still held adequate resources for fishers. After that, the nonprofit Conservation Northwest, the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Park Service, and other federal, tribal and nonprofit partners developed a plan to reintroduce the animals.
“We had the habitat, but we didn’t have the fishers. And there weren’t any nearby that could move into Washington and occupy these historical habitats,” says Jeff Lewis, a biologist with the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. “We identified three areas in the Olympics and Cascades that we really wanted to get fishers restored to, which were the bulk of their historical range in state.”
Between 2008-2010 biologists relocated 90 fishers from British Columbia into the Olympic mountains. Then the effort moved to the South Cascades with 81 fishers, mostly from British Columbia and a handful from Alberta. Finally, another 89 — this time all from Alberta — were released into the North Cascades beginning in 2018.
Researchers tracked the animals for the first several years with radio transmitters, then set up camera traps on the ground once potential dens were identified to see if the fishers were reproducing.
“What the data tells us for the Olympic population, for which we have the most information so far, is that the fishers are widely distributed, which is good,” says Lewis. “They’re reproducing, which is good. And they’re consistently occupying what appear to be good areas and they’re even using areas we didn’t expect.”
While the results are encouraging, it’s not a total slam dunk yet.
“The founding population involved fewer individuals than what would have been desired to have the level of diversity to ensure long-term sustainability,” says Dave Werntz, science and conservation director at Conservation Northwest. “So we plan to put another handful of fishers into the Olympics this winter.”
The researchers are still gathering long-term data on the two other Cascade populations. “We’re hopeful, and there are good initial signs,” says Lewis.
One of the reasons for that optimism is the fact that so much suitable habitat for fishers remains. But that’s only the case because conservationists stepped up in the 1990s to protect the northern spotted owl and the old-growth trees that fishers need, which resulted in the creation of the Forest Service’s Northwest Forest Plan.
“The plan set up a system of old-growth forest reserves and reserves along riparian areas for spotted owls that essentially caused the end of logging of the fishers’ preferred habitat,” explains Werntz. “That’s usually areas that have suitable den sites, which are generally big trees — either dead or live — with cavities. Those are typically found in their highest abundance in old-growth forests.”
Ecological Niche
Washington’s fisher rewilding effort has involved a partnership of different government and non-government agencies, years of work, and lots of public and private resources.
Lewis says the effort is worth it, for a number of reasons.
First, fishers are native members of the ecosystems and have unique qualities that can only be partially replaced by other carnivores.
“One of the most noteworthy things is that fishers are the most efficient carnivore of porcupines,” he says. “Where fishers have been eradicated through over-trapping or the loss of habitat, porcupine populations can explode and foresters get upset because they keep eating all the trees.”
Fishers also do all the other things that carnivores do: They poop; they spread seeds and pollen spores; they themselves are scavenged when they die, allowing their nutrients to come back into the soil. They also eat a number of prey species and can contribute toward ecosystem stability through all of those roles, he says.
A fisher in Olympic National Park. Photo: NPS / Kevin Bacher.
“But to me,” Lewis adds, “there’s a bigger reason to do this work. Ecosystems are complicated and interconnected and we have a really limited understanding of how all the pieces work together,” he says. “So until we fully understand ecosystems, the best approach is what Aldo Leopold suggested: Let’s just make sure we keep all the parts when we’re tinkering with them. Let’s make sure we haven’t eliminated a role or a piece that’s important to the stability of an ecosystem. That to me is how I think of it relative to the fisher’s role.”
And there’s one more reason to restore fishers, too, he says. People overharvested fishers because of the value of their pelts, and now it’s possible to right that wrong.
“We have an opportunity,” he says. “We can bring this critter back because we have the habitat. When you look at fur-bearer conservation success stories, the bulk of those are ones where the species recovered after over-exploitation. Because you can fix that, you can stop trapping. You can move animals and restore populations in areas where they were extirpated.”
That’s harder to do for animals that have lost significant portions of their historical habitat, though.
“It’s awfully hard to restore habitat across the historical range of a species like the swift fox,” Lewis says. “That’s just a harder thing to do. You can’t restore grasslands to where they occurred in the 1700s and 1800s. But we can help fishers.”
Public Perception
Fisher restoration also presents an opportunity for public engagement in conservation — especially because many people haven’t even heard of fishers or seen one before.
“We try very hard when we’re doing the releases to make sure that kids are involved and it’s an educational opportunity and that they can experience the thrill of being involved in a recovery effort,” says Werntz. “That’s going to lead to an appreciation and a continued sense of wonder at nature that will carry with them throughout their lives.”
A child peers into a box holding a fisher before its release in Olympic National Park in Dec. 2016. Photo: NPS / Kevin Bacher.
He says he’s encouraged by what he’s seen so far with the re-establishment of fishers in Washington.
One of the things that’s made the effort so successful, he says, is the partnership between nonprofits, government agencies and tribes. “Different partners can do things at different times,” he adds. It allowed them to raise money for a variety of sources, carry out work across the border in Canada, and get through some challenging political obstacles, including a government shutdown.
“That kind of diversity in coordination with partners really allowed us to be a resilient recovery team,” says Werntz. “And I think that cooperative coalitions may be an important model for future recovery work.”
And some of that work is already underway. Returning fisher populations to the state, it turns out, is just one of multiple efforts to restore native animals in the region. Conservation Northwest is also involved in other recovery efforts for grizzlies, gray wolves, Canada lynx and wolverines.
And like the spotted owl protection efforts benefitting fishers, there’s hope that native species reintroductions and restoration can have ecosystem-wide value.
“The notion is if you provide for those wide-ranging species, you’re going to be providing habitat and conditions for a whole suite of other organisms,” Werntz says. “And then you’re really enhancing biological conservation across the landscape. And that’s the underlying goal.”
This was life under the heat dome in the Pacific Northwest this past week. Late June temperatures in the Portland region typically stay in the mid-70s. Not this year. Maybe not any year ever again.
These marmosets live mainly in the Atlantic forest fragments in the states of Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. They range from south of the Rio Doce in Minas Gerais into the mountainous region of Espírito Santo state. The southernmost part of the species’ range extends west into eastern Minas Gerais, where it’s found in scattered localities in the Rio Manhuaçu basin as far as the Manhuaçu municipality.
