States Take Action to Curb Oil Industry’s Most Glaring Problem

“Routine flaring” from oil wells produces emissions that harm the climate and human health. Two states have proposed new rules to reduce it, just as the true scope of the problem emerges.

A night time satellite image of the United States shows a few concentrations of glowing lights, but not in the places you’d expect. The brightest spots aren’t the big cities but are instead clustered over North Dakota, west Texas and eastern New Mexico.

That’s because this infrared photo, produced by the nonprofit SkyTruth, captures not the lights of urban centers but heat from oilfields burning, or flaring, natural gas in 40-foot-tall stacks.

It’s also capturing a big problem.

satellite map — Satellite-detected natural gas flaring on August 12, 2020. Map by Skytruth

The United States is fourth in the world in the volume of gas flared, following only Russia, Iraq and Iran.

There are a number of reasons why drillers flare gas.

“The most benign reason for flaring is safety,” says Gunnar Schade, an associate professor in atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M. Flaring releases pressure so that highly combustible materials don’t explode as wells are being drilled and prepared for production. Sometimes gas is also vented, without combustion, directly into that atmosphere.

“But that’s actually the exception in the oil and gas field,” he says. “The bulk is routine flaring.”

And “routine flaring” isn’t done for safety; it’s done solely to save industry money. But it comes at a cost to public health and the environment instead.

It’s most commonly used in oilfields like North Dakota’s Bakken shale, the Eagle Ford shale in Texas and the Permian basin, which straddles Texas and New Mexico.

Companies in these fields are most interested in oil, but what comes to the surface is a mixture of hydrocarbons, including raw gas, which is largely methane. Some companies have opted to just burn off these gases in flares instead of spending money on capturing and transporting it to market or waiting until the infrastructure to accomplish that has been constructed.

“To drill an oil well with the intention of never acquiring pipeline capacity to get the gas that’s produced along with oil to market is just wrong,” says Thomas Singer, a senior policy advisor at Western Environmental Law Center. His research found that some companies in New Mexico have flared the same well for three or four years. One company, Ameredev, flared 78% of its gas.

Now, more than a decade after the routine flaring became a glaring problem, states are taking some steps to reduce the practice. And the news coincides with research that finds the practice is more widespread, and dangerous, than previously understood.

Passing the Buck

The most obvious problem with flaring is that it’s simply wasteful. The value of flared gas in Texas’ portion of the Permian in 2018 was estimated at $750 million, according to research by the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis. The state could supply its residents with all of their gas needs with what is burned off as “waste” each year, the Institute found.

But in the process of burning off the gas, flares also release smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas we need less of, not more.

“Although a single flare may be a relatively small source, the large number of flares and high variability of NOx production per flare can cause large-scale atmospheric impacts visible from space,” Schade wrote in an essay about his research in The Conversation.

Flares, especially when they’re aren’t burning properly, can also release a host of other harmful emissions, including volatile organic compounds such as cancer-causing benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and black carbon.

And when flares are partially or totally unlit, they also vent methane — a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. In North Dakota researchers found that incomplete combustion of flares were responsible for nearly 20% of the methane emissions in the Bakken shale.

Partially lit or unlit flares aren’t an anomaly.

Helicopter surveys measuring methane emissions in the Permian basin found that about 11% were malfunctioning, with 4% being totally unlit and venting methane. The research was conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund and others.

This doesn’t make it into official numbers. When the EPA calculates the sources of air pollution, it uses previous studies to support an assumption that “properly operated flares achieve at least 98% destruction efficiency,” with 2% or less of the raw gas getting into the atmosphere uncombusted or partially burned. But this new research showed that emissions were likely 3.5 times higher than what would be calculated using the EPA’s methodology.

“What we found, based on our surveys, is that the efficiency — and this is conservative estimate — is probably closer to 93% based on the number of malfunctioning flares,” says Colin Leyden, the director of regulatory and legislative affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund.

These flares — whether fully burning, partially lit or unlit — “are just a massive source of climate pollution,” says Singer.

Flares don’t make great neighbors, either. Those who live nearby are subject to the roaring noise of the fire, light pollution and other harm from the emissions.

A 2019 study published in Environmental Science and Technology looking at flaring in the Eagle Ford shale in Texas found that between 2012 to 2016 a whopping 43,887 flares emitted an estimated 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas. And those flares were highly concentrated.

“Of the 49 counties in the region, 5 accounted for 71% of the total flaring,” the researchers wrote. “Our results suggest flaring may be a significant environmental exposure in parts of this region.”

Flares in the Eagle Ford emitted more than 15,000 tons of volatile organic compounds and other contaminants in 2012 — more than the pollution from six of the region’s oil refineries, an investigation by the San Antonio Express-News found.

The health implications may also be generational. Pregnant women living within three miles of frequent flaring had about 50% greater chance of giving birth prematurely, a study published last month in Environmental Health Perspectives found. Preterm birth ratchets up the chances of a baby developing chronic health problems or even dying.

“The fact that much of the region is low income and approximately 50% of residents living within 5km of an oil or gas well are people of color, raises environmental justice concerns about the potential health impacts of the oil and gas boom in south Texas,” the researchers concluded.

Flares, trucks and storage tanks — Gas flares at a well in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming. Photo: Tara Lohan

Understanding the Problem

The problem is a big one and much worse than officially reported, new research suggests.

Work by Schade and colleagues reviewing satellite images of Texas oilfields found that from 2012 to 2015 volumes of gas flared were double the amount that companies reported to the state. Other research has found discrepancies in North Dakota and New Mexico, too.

So it’s not surprising that a 2020 study in Science Advances found record high levels of methane emissions in the Permian that were double those found in previous studies at 11 other major oil and gas fields. The wasted emissions were enough to supply gas power to 2 million homes.

“The high methane leakage rate is likely contributed by extensive venting and flaring, resulting from insufficient infrastructure to process and transport natural gas,” researchers found.

In many of these booming oilfields drilling outpaces infrastructure — and regulators don’t seem to mind much. Or at least they didn’t. But growing backlash against routine flaring is forcing some states to take a harder look.

New Rules and Potential Solutions

During the Obama administration the Bureau of Land Management took a stab at trying to reduce methane emissions from oilfield operations on federal and tribal lands, including those from routine flaring.

The Methane Waste and Prevention Rule was enacted in 2016, but the Trump administration moved to roll back parts of the rule in 2018. A federal judge struck down that rollback in July. But it likely won’t be the end of legal challenges.

For oilfields not on federal or tribal lands, though, regulatory authority falls to the states.

“New Mexico has gone to great lengths to pass the Energy Transition Act and move its electric power sector from coal to renewables,” says Singer. Now the state has turned its focus toward reducing climate pollution from oil and gas operations.

Last month the state released two new draft rules for curbing emissions from oil and gas operations, including methane from flaring that would require companies to capture 98% of their gas by 2026 — one of the most aggressive proposed regulations in the country to date. The rules will need public comment and agency revision, but Singer is hopeful that the process could be completed this year or early 2021.

The proposed rule, he says, is a good improvement, but it could be stronger.

“We want the agency to just flat out, say, ‘if you don’t have a contract for a pipeline to get your gas processed, you just can’t drill,’” he says.

Of course, a rule is only as good as its enforcement.

“There needs to be a lot more transparency and accountability provisions so that the public knows how well the state’s doing and can let the state hear about it if they’re not enforcing the rule strongly,” says Singer. “We’re also pushing hard for third-party verification or auditing of company reporting.”

Texas has seen movement on the issue, too, but not nearly as extensive as New Mexico’s effort. This month the Texas Railroad Commission, the agency that regulates oil and gas operations, issued a proposed change to a form used by industry to request permission to flare or vent gas. Under the proposed changes, companies would need to more thoroughly explain why they need to flare and provide better data to assess their compliance.

This could cut down on the amount of routine flaring. But Leyden wants to see more. He says the Environmental Defense Fund is calling on Texas to end routine flaring in the Permian basin by 2025. Some companies are on board, and so are investors, he says.

“What’s really needed is leadership on the regulatory front to bring the rest of the industry along,” he adds.

But could reducing flaring end up just meaning more pipeline construction? That, too, would come with a steep environmental cost. Instead, Leyden says, companies can plan to build better facilities with centralized collection storage.

“If natural gas has any role in the future — whatever your opinion on that may or may not be — it’s going to have to get to a zero or near-zero emission profile in its upstream production,” he says. “And right now what we’re seeing in the Permian basin in methane emissions, as well as from flaring, is they have a long, long way to go for that.”

Singer says advocating for no drilling without adequate infrastructure isn’t a prompt to build more pipelines.

“Saying you can’t drill if you don’t know how your gas is getting to market isn’t saying to build a lot of pipelines,” he says. His organization hopes to see a transition to clean energy — and having more investment in networks of pipelines and processing facilities doesn’t align with that either.

Gas flaring and pipeline building, he says, are “both fights that need to be waged.”

Endgame Looms for New England’s Great River

After a half-century of failures, the recovery of the Connecticut River ecosystem hangs in the balance. Will authorities finally act to save it?

Rivers should not die in the dark.

On Aug. 31 FirstLight Power Resources is expected to file its final license applications with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to continue operating three hydro facilities profiting off massive water diversions from the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. The conditions written into FERC licenses can last up to 50 years.

These applications signal the beginning of the final chapter in determining the future of the four-state river at the heart of the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, founded to protect a 7.2-million-acre watershed. Their rendering will decide the future of migratory fish, river flows and a host of embattled ecosystem conditions on New England’s longest river, some running counter to laws in place since 1872.

Holyoke Dam in 2018. Photo: By Simtropolitan via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

When decisions affecting a river for decades are being made, the public has a right to know of the stakes, the players and the key decisionmakers. In this case the public knows little of issues potentially affecting 2.4 million people in a sprawling watershed. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife have been at the table in this FERC license-determining process since 2012. But three years back, all parties signed nondisclosure agreements with FirstLight — ostensibly to facilitate settlement discussions on flows, habitat, dismal fish passage and endless mortality cycles at these Massachusetts hydro sites. Those NDAs have kept these issues largely out of the media, even as initial settlement talks broke off a year and a half ago.

Since 2012 I’ve been a FERC-recognized intervener in the relicensing process. I chose not to sign the company’s confidentiality agreement in order to preserve the right to address and highlight the critical, long-term decisions being made about the Connecticut River in a process that remains largely out of public view.

FirstLight is part of the giant Canadian investment outfit PSP Investments, which arrived in Massachusetts four years back to buy up these facilities from GDF Suez. In 2018 it quickly reregistered the facilities as limited liability tax shelters in Delaware. Regardless of their state of incorporation, the licenses they now vie for will each be subject to current federal and state environmental laws, under terms mandated by the fish agencies and FERC.

Of more than 500 U.S. refuges, Conte is one of just three with “fish” in its name. Today hopes for the long-term protections of its fish and the river comprising its central artery rest heavily in the hands of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. They have “conditioning authority” in these relicensings — mandates to protect the life in this river system. FERC, the ultimate relicensing umpire here, is also mandated to ensure compliance with environmental laws. For the fish agencies this is their one chance to redeem some far-reaching mistakes made by their predecessors.

Forty-five years ago these agencies — operating on limited information and pursuing dreams of reprising a salmon not seen on this river since 1809 — signed agreements with different owners of these facilities. That hobbled, for generations, a four-state migratory fisheries restoration for American shad and river herring and a recovery for federally endangered shortnose sturgeon. They sanctioned the daily use of the massive river-reversing pumped storage facility still chewing through generations of migratory and resident fish today. Concurrently they left two miles of the river emptied downstream, its flow diverted into a turbine-lined power canal that all migrants must negotiate in order to access the next 50 miles of open spawning habitat. Just 5 shad in 100 have ever succeeded. Perhaps worse, the river’s only documented natural spawning habitat for the endangered shortnose sturgeon was left without life-sustaining flow.

A Tale of Two Salmon, a River Without Fish

The last wild salmon run on the Connecticut River was recorded in 1809.

Science later revealed the salmons’ end was likely a combination of warming temperatures following the unusually cold period known as the Little Ice Age coupled with modern dam building.

For 165 years there were no salmon. Then, in 1974, a single fish arrived at Holyoke Dam. Far from being a native of the Connecticut River, this was a new hybrid — a returning fish produced at one of several federal hatcheries completed five years prior. This salmon’s genes, like the genes of all the fish that would return in subsequent years, were cobbled together using salmon from several still-surviving runs in northern New England.

This past June 30 marked a different milestone on the river. It ended the first season in 46 years when not a single hatchery-derived Atlantic salmon returned past Massachusetts’ Holyoke Dam.

The unnatural history event passed with little fanfare. Its silent-spring absence marks the end of a half-century-old program that consumed hundreds of millions of dollars and ate up far too much room in a badly broken ecosystem. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abandoned its hatchery program at the end of the 2012 migration season, but across its 43 years — which saw the annual release of millions of fry and smolts to tributaries in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire — so few adults returned that no one was ever allowed to catch one.

Salmon hatchery — Salmon at hatchery in 2012, just before the program’s discontinuation. Photo: Catherine J. Hibbard/USFWS

This second salmon ending highlights the fish agencies’ last shot at returning ancient ocean connections to the river’s still-viable, age-old runs of American shad, blueback herring and federally endangered shortnose sturgeon in three states.

All these species have been guaranteed safe passage on U.S. rivers, going back to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Holyoke Company v. Lyman in 1872. That finding centered on the dam in Holyoke, Massachusetts and held that private dam owners operating on U.S. rivers must provide for the free movement, upstream and down, of migratory fish past their facilities.

Its implementation on New England’s river is now 148 years overdue.

A River in Reverse

What’s ultimately at issue here is flow.

Having taken a back seat for generations, wild runs of shad, herring and sturgeon remain in desperate need of passage and consistent, exponentially increased river flow in FirstLight’s hydro-complex dominated reach.

It’s literally the weight of water that matters most to FirstLight. It’s money in the bank. And where flow diversion is concerned, it’s been a pretty much a free ride for companies here for the past 50 years.

The 20 miles of river backed up into Vermont and New Hampshire behind Turners Falls Dam are massively suctioned for hours at up to 15,000 cubic feet per second to fill the 4-billion-gallon reservoir above the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Station.

Northfield’s suction is so violent it literally reverses the Connecticut’s current for up to a mile downstream at times, erasing the essence of a living river system. The station kills everything it sucks in, from tiny fish eggs to full-size eels. In pumping mode it suctions the equivalent of 3,600 seven-bedroom mansions, each filled with the aquatic life of a river, vaporized every hour, for hours on end. Agency studies on America shad show tens of millions of eggs and larvae extinguished at Northfield annually, plus the deaths of over 2 million juvenile shad sucked in on migrations back to the sea. Five migrant species are subjected to Northfield. In all 24 species live here, most unstudied.

Northfield’s operations are nothing like classic hydro, operating to produce virgin electricity via a dam in or adjacent to a river. It’s actually an electric appliance, built to take advantage of excess, unused megawatts produced nightly at the nearby Vermont Yankee nuclear station. Northfield burns electricity to pump water from the river a mile uphill to into its reservoir tank, which was created by blasting off the top of a mountain. The company’s original owners would buy up Vermont Yankee’s cheap electricity to power its giant, reversible turbines. Later, during peak energy times, that now-lifeless river water would get sent back through the turbines to generate hours-long pulses of energy at peak market prices.

It’s a buy-low, sell-high operation, still running at the expense of a river system six years after Vermont Yankee shut down.

Northfield is a net-loss energy machine — a giant underground appliance consuming massive amounts of grid electricity, half of it now generated by the climate-scorching natural gas that dominates New England’s power grid today. The station consumes 25% to 33% more juice than the secondhand megawatts it sends back by dumping deadened river water back through its turbines. It and a smaller pumped storage station in Connecticut are responsible for gobbling up 1.4% percent of the region’s energy in order to reproduce the few hours of secondhand juice they regenerate. According to grid operator ISO-New England, they are the only facilities whose operations flush out as negative input in the regional power mix.

Northfield has never generated a single watt of its own electricity. And though it may be fine as blunt instrument for use during the occasional power grid slump or rare emergency blackout, its endless, river-crippling, pump-and-purge cycle of regenerated megawatts is unnecessary for the daily operation of the New England grid. While its owners brag of being able to power a million homes for a few hours, they never mention having already burned through the energy of 1.25 million homes to do so. After its daily flush, Northfield is virtually dead in the water and must begin pulling from the grid and sucking life from the river all over.

Past mistakes not only allowed for this massive upstream disruption, they sanctioned diversion of nearly all flow, as well as all migrating fish, into a downstream power canal that on average just 5% of shad have ever successfully negotiated. That left another two miles of New England’s river dysfunctional, with the company providing just a dribble flow of 400 cubic feet per second in the riverbed in spring, when fish are moving upriver. That riverbed remains emptied of all flow more than half the other days of the year.

The most critical time for sustaining flows and the river’s migrants is April through June, when New England’s energy consumption is at its low annual ebb. But federal and state studies and in-river findings show that spring flows will need to be increased by a factor of 20, supplying 8,000 cfs rather than the current brook-like drizzle of 400 cfs. That’s what it will take to guide shad and blueback herring upstream in the river past Turners Falls Dam. That will also provide this river’s only endangered migrant the consistent flows required to successfully allow the shortnose sturgeon to spawn and ensure its larvae can develop in the cobbles at an ancient river pool in that impoverished reach.

Back in 1967, when four New England states and these agencies signed the “Statement of Intent for the Cooperative Fishery Restoration Program for the Connecticut River Basin,” they projected some 38,000 salmon would return annually to this four-state ecosystem.

For salmon, a pinnacle of sorts was reached in 1981, when 592 were tallied passing Holyoke. But for a hybrid fish whose wild prototype disappeared 160 years prior, it was downhill from there. Most years fewer than 100 salmon returned to the river.

That 1967 agreement also set annual run targets of one million American shad heading upstream, with 850,000 shad passing Turners Falls and 750,000 entering Vermont and New Hampshire habitats above Vernon Dam. The highest shad return saw 720,000 passing Holyoke in 1992.

Sadly, they’ve never made it much farther. The run stops in Massachusetts.

Just 36 miles upstream of Holyoke, all semblance of a successful restoration ends when the annual shad run reaches Turners Falls Dam. Of the 537,000 shad that passed Holyoke in 2017, just 48,000 — a mere 9% — squeezed back into the river beyond Turners Falls.

The annual inversion at the next upstream dam in Vermont illustrates the perils on this broken river. In 2017 29,000 or 59% of the shad that survived the miseries of Turners Falls were subsequently counted passing Vernon Dam, 20 miles upriver. That inverted interstate ratio has been the case since 1975, with few shad managing to break out beyond the brutal ecosystem conditions in Massachusetts.

Why the Restoration Failed

The current restoration, congressionally authorized in 1967 and still operating today under the moniker of the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Commission, made their biggest blunder in 1975 when they signed off on new license requirements for upstream fish passage. They ultimately chose a design based on hydro project fish ladders on Washington State’s giant Columbia River, known for huge Pacific salmon runs. What got built was a three-ladder fish passage that forced all migrants out of their ancient river highway and into the byzantine maze of the company’s power canal, while leaving two miles of riverbed all but emptied of flow.

Scaled down and put in place at Turners Falls, it worked fine for the program’s few successfully returning hybrid salmon but failed immediately for 95% of the hundreds of thousands of migrating shad. No big run has ever passed that site, leaving three states without their promised bounties. Vermont and New Hampshire remain this river’s shad deserts today.

The Prescription

It’s now 2020. At this late date, corporate re-registrations can’t hide what’s legally required and a half-century overdue on New England’s river. The last opportunity to undo those festering mistakes for the Connecticut now rest in the hands of the National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife. They are the people’s gatekeepers, mandated to guard the public trust — agencies with the authority to change to the generations-old crippling conditions here in Massachusetts.

Across 45 years of tracking fish runs passing upstream at successive dams on the Connecticut, shad counts have averaged 315,369 at Holyoke, 17,579 at Turners Falls, and just 9,299 at the Vernon Dam in Vermont. But recently long-term federal and state studies on passage and juvenile survival for American shad have led to new minimum benchmarks for fish passage at each dam to ensure the long-term survival of the river’s runs.

Using those findings, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the four states have formally adopted new Connecticut River fish passage goals. They include annual minimums of 687,000 shad passing Holyoke, 297,000 passing Turners Falls, and 227,000 at Vernon Dam annually. Those federal and state targets are now part of the public record in the current FERC relicensings. Their implementation would also ensure the endangered shortnose sturgeon gets the flows needed to begin its recovery here.

The time has come for facilities operating and profiting off the life of New England’s river to come into compliance with the laws of the land, including the Supreme Court’s 1872 finding in Holyoke Company v. Lyman, the Anadromous Fish Conservation Act of 1965, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and a host of others. For the fisheries agencies charged with protecting a river’s bounty, standing up for their implementation is the sole prescription for success in a four-state restoration undertaken when back Lyndon Johnson was president.

By law, by right and by the public trust, the Connecticut River’s time has come.

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.

Are Forever Chemicals Harming Ocean Life?

Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about how dangerous PFAS chemicals travel ocean currents and harm wildlife — and what that could mean for humans.

In seabird after seabird, Anna Robuck found something concerning: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, lurking around vital organs.

“Brain, liver, kidney, lung, blood, heart,” Robuck says, rattling off a few hiding spots before pausing to recall the rest. Robuck, a Ph.D. candidate in chemical oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, quickly settles on a simpler response: She found the chemicals everywhere she looked.

PFAS — a group of synthetic chemicals — are often called “forever chemicals” due to their quasi-unbreakable molecular bonds and knack for accumulating in living organisms. That foreverness is less of a design flaw than a design feature: The stubborn, versatile molecules help weatherproof clothing; smother flames in firefighting foam; and withstand heat and grime on nonstick pans.

Through consumption and disposal, the chemicals seep into ecosystems and bodies, where they have been linked to cancers, pregnancy complications, and reproductive and immune dysfunction. Recent attention has focused on the prevalence of PFAS in drinking water.

“Over the past 10-15 years we’ve really developed this super negative picture of what PFAS do to humans,” Robuck says. “But we’ve barely scratched the surface of that in wildlife.”

One particular area of concern is the marine ecosystem. Long seen as a bottomless sink for pollutants, the ocean is a final stop for PFAS trickling into the ecosystem. Once in the ocean, PFAS can persist for decades or longer — and travel long distances. As a result, a growing body of scientific research suggests that marine wildlife are accumulating dangerous amounts of “forever chemicals.”

“If we continue to emit PFAS, then the capacity of the ocean to dilute them is going to be exceeded,” says Jamie DeWitt, an environmental toxicologist at Eastern Carolina University. “For all we know, oceans could be reservoirs that re-pollute the land.”

Journeying Across the Globe

Coastal environments seem especially vulnerable to PFAS seeping from the chemical plants and military bases responsible for heavy contamination. Charlotte Wagner, a researcher at Harvard University studying the global transport of pollutants, says it’s still unclear what fraction of PFAS pollutants remain contained at their source, and what fraction has already leached into other environments.

But the fact that they do spread — and far — is clear. They generally wind up in oceans, according to Wagner. And not just the ones nearby. Studies in the early 2000s showed that PFAS survived decades-long journeys from manufacturers to remote ocean basins without breaking down.

“The ocean is not this static pool or bathtub,” she says. Large-scale ocean circulation moves pollutants huge distances across the globe. Some varieties of PFAS may degrade slightly over the course of years, until they convert into one of the more stable “terminal PFAS” subgroups, including PFAAs.

“To the best of our knowledge PFAAs don’t degrade at all under natural environmental conditions,” says Robuck. Rather than diluting PFAS to infinitely low concentrations, oceans carry them to remote areas, like the Arctic and Antarctic.

Other pollutants that reach the ocean, like DDT and PCBs, will stick to algae and sediment that eventually fall to the ocean floor. “That is a really important removal process,” Wagner says. “For PFAS, that process is minor.” Plants, algae and sediment only remove a small fraction of PFAS from the water column. That leaves more to accumulate in animals, reaching concentrations thousands of times higher than surrounding waters.

And those chemicals could travel right back to humans. Eating a lot of seafood, especially fish high on the food chain like tuna, would be concerning, she says.

But it’s not just fish — and humans eating them — that are at risk. A study last year reported PFAS in seawater and plankton dozens of miles off the Mid-Atlantic coast. Other research has revealed PFAS compounds — even some that have been previously phased out of production — in manatees, loggerhead turtles, alligators, seabirds, polar bears, dolphins and whales.

whale skimming the water's surface — The broad, flat back of right whale. Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Measuring Harm to Ocean Life

In North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, striped bass carrying high levels of PFAS showed distinct signs of impaired immune and liver function. But in the vastness of ocean water, can PFAS levels be high enough to cause harm?

“In recent years there have been increases in immune-based diseases in turtles and dolphins,” says DeWitt. One of the most well-studied health effects of PFAS is immune dysfunction. Most experiments are limited to humans, rodents and chickens, but researchers are piecing together the role of PFAS in marine immune issues.

One study concluded that PFOS, a phased-out PFAS that still circulates today, triggers “chronic immune activation” in bottlenose dolphins. A similar link between PFOS and susceptibility to disease appeared in sea otters. Other research links multiple PFAS to hormonal changes in polar bear brains. But these aquatic wildlife health studies are few and far between.

“PFAS in wildlife is kind of the wild west,” says Robuck. “Wildlife are inherently difficult to study in a lot of ways.”

Zeroing on the health effects for individual species is tricky because scientists lack baseline data about stress responses and pollutant levels. They have no choice but to presume consequences in wildlife based on hormonal, immune and reproductive effects in lab animals. For Robuck, that means judging how a pelican will respond to its measured PFAS levels according to health data collected from a chicken. “That’s a really crappy comparison,” she says.

In one sense, the method is conservative: Lab animals are well cared for, so their health effects may be a best-case scenario compared to the stressful baseline of wild animals’ experience. But it also means we don’t have an accurate sense of what dangerous thresholds are for most aquatic life — despite a parade of red flags.

Endless Stream of Pollutants

Part of the problem is the sheer number of different compounds. Of the thousands of known PFAS, studies have only deduced health thresholds for a handful. Scientists screening their effects simply can’t keep up with the pace.

The chemical compounds that fall under the PFAS umbrella are also not all the same. Some are long, bulky molecules; others are smaller and more agile. Some forms tend to naturally convert into others; others don’t degrade whatsoever. Each molecule has the potential to be more toxic or bioaccumulative than the next. But for a lot of PFAS, Wagner says, scientists don’t even have standardized methods of detecting them.

To make matters worse, even as some of the most dangerous chemicals are being phased out, companies are making alternatives. But they may not be any safer than what they’re replacing. And scientists have found these alternatives are also accumulating in the bodies of fish and polar bears.

“It seems that we haven’t learned anything from the past,” says Belén González-Gaya, an analytical chemist at the University of Basque Country in Spain. “We keep on substituting compounds [for] others without any knowledge of biological effects.”

Sydney Evans, a research scientist for the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, suggests that researchers shouldn’t have to prove the health risks for thousands of similar compounds in order to warrant regulatory action. “The burden needs to be on these companies and manufacturers to prove their compounds are safe,” she says.

And while there is much we don’t know about the majority of PFAS, experts argue that we do know enough to assume they all share fundamental features: persistence, bioaccumulation and health risks. For this reason a group of scientists recently published a call for governments and companies to treat all PFAS, old and new, as a single hazardous group.

“It’s really the only way that we can be ahead of the curve,” says Wagner, who cowrote the article. “Rather than always realizing that a compound is toxic once it’s already everywhere and we measure it on a remote ice-site somewhere in Greenland.”

To shut off the flow of PFAS into the ocean, scientists say that manufacturers should phase out the chemicals and focus on proving safer alternatives.

With so many open questions, Robuck hopes to see research that more closely predicts threats to marine life — and by extension people, too.

“As humans, we rely on every natural resource under the sun,” she says. “When we undercut a healthy environment, we undercut our own health.”

As Deep-Seabed Mining Ramps Up, Scientists Race to Study the Environmental Effects

Timing is running short to develop an international framework to help prevent environmental harm to deep-sea life and to share resources equitably among nations, experts say.

Mining the ocean floor for submerged minerals is a little-known, experimental industry. But soon it will take place on the deep seabed, which belongs to everyone, according to international law.

Seabed mining for valuable materials like copper, zinc and lithium already takes place within countries’ marine territories. As soon as 2025, larger projects could start in international waters — areas more than 200 nautical miles from shore, beyond national jurisdictions.

We study ocean policy, marine resource management, international ocean governance and environmental regimes, and are researching political processes that govern deep seabed mining. Our main interests are the environmental impacts of seabed mining, ways of sharing marine resources equitably and the use of tools like marine protected areas to protect rare, vulnerable and fragile species and ecosystems.

Today countries are working together on rules for seabed mining. In our opinion, there is still time to develop a framework that will enable nations to share resources and prevent permanent damage to the deep sea. But that will happen only if countries are willing to cooperate and make sacrifices for the greater good.

An Old Treaty With a New Purpose

Countries regulate seabed mining within their marine territories. Farther out, in areas beyond national jurisdiction, they cooperate through the Law of the Sea Convention, which has been ratified by 167 countries and the European Union, but not the U.S.

The treaty created the International Seabed Authority, headquartered in Jamaica, to manage seabed mining in international waters. This organization’s workload is about to balloon.

Under the treaty, activities conducted in areas beyond national jurisdiction must be for “the benefit of mankind as a whole.” These benefits could include economic profit, scientific research findings, specialized technology and recovery of historical objects. The convention calls on governments to share them fairly, with special attention to developing countries’ interests and needs.

The United States was involved in negotiating the convention and signed it but has not ratified it, due to concerns that it puts too many limits on exploitation of deep sea resources. As a result, the U.S. is not bound by the treaty, although it follows most of its rules independently. Recent administrations, including those of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, sought to ratify the treaty, but failed to muster a two-thirds majority in the Senate to support it.

Map of world oceans showing where major metal deposits lie. — Locations of three main types of marine mineral deposits: polymetallic nodules (blue); polymetallic or seafloor massive sulfides (orange); and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts (yellow). Miller et al., 2018 (CC BY 4.0)

Powering Digital Devices

Scientists and industry leaders have known that there are valuable minerals on the seafloor for over a century, but it hasn’t been technologically or economically feasible to go after them until the past decade. Widespread growth of battery-driven technologies such as smartphones, computers, wind turbines and solar panels is changing this calculation as the world runs low on land-based deposits of copper, nickel, aluminum, manganese, zinc, lithium and cobalt.

These minerals are found in potato-shaped “nodules” on the seafloor, as well as in and around hydrothermal vents, seamounts and midocean ridges. Energy companies and their governments are also interested in extracting methane hydrates — frozen deposits of natural gas on the seafloor.

Scientists still have a lot to learn about these habitats and the species that live there. Research expeditions are continually discovering new species in deep-sea habitats.

Korea and China Seek the Most Contracts

Mining the deep ocean requires permission from the International Seabed Authority. Exploration contracts provide the right to explore a specific part of the seabed for 15 years. As of mid-2020, 30 mining groups have signed exploration contracts, including governments, public-private partnerships, international consortiums and private multinational companies.

Two entities hold the most exploration contracts (three each): the government of Korea and the China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association, a state-owned company. Since the U.S. is not a member of the Law of the Sea treaty, it cannot apply for contracts. But U.S. companies are investing in others’ projects. For example, the American defense company Lockheed Martin owns UK Seabed Resources, which holds two exploration contracts.

Once an exploration contract expires, as several have since 2015, mining companies must broker an exploitation contract with the International Seabed Authority to allow for commercial-scale extraction. The agency is working on rules for mining, which will shape individual contracts.

Unknown Ecological Impacts

Deep-sea mining technology is still in development but will probably include vacuuming nodules from the seafloor. Scraping and vacuuming the seafloor can destroy habitats and release plumes of sediment that blanket or choke filter-feeding species on the seafloor and fish swimming in the water column.

Mining also introduces noise, vibration and light pollution in a zone that normally is silent, still and dark. And depending on the type of mining taking place, it could lead to chemical leaks and spills.

Many deep-sea species are unique and found nowhere else. We agree with the scientific community and environmental advocates that it is critically important to analyze the potential effects of seabed mining thoroughly. Studies also should inform decision-makers about how to manage the process.

This is a key moment for the International Seabed Authority. It is currently writing the rules for environmental protection but doesn’t have enough information about the deep ocean and the impacts of mining. Today the agency relies on seabed mining companies to report on and monitor themselves, and on academic researchers to provide baseline ecosystem data.

We believe that national governments acting through the International Seabed Authority should require more scientific research and monitoring, and better support the agency’s efforts to analyze and act on that information. Such action would make it possible to slow the process down and make better decisions about when, where and how to mine the deep seabed.

Balancing Risks and Benefits

The race for deep-sea minerals is imminent. There are compelling arguments for mining the seabed, such as supporting the transition to renewable energy, which some companies assert will be a net gain for the environment. But balancing benefits and impacts will require proactive and thorough study before the industry takes off.

We also believe that the U.S. should ratify the Law of the Sea treaty so that it can help to lead on this issue. The oceans provide humans with food and oxygen and regulate Earth’s climate. Choices being made now could affect them far into the future in ways that aren’t yet understood.

Dr. Rachel Tiller, Senior Research Scientist with SINTEF Ocean, Norway, contributed to this article.

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.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mangroves Could Help Save Us From Climate Change. Climate Change Is Killing Mangroves.

Coastal mangrove forests help protect communities and habitats from storm surges, but sea-level rise could wipe them out.

During a trip to Cuba’s Gardens of the Queen a few years ago, I found myself around small mangrove islands in an area called Boca Grande. Floating on clear, calm water, my travel group and I kicked over tall seagrass beds and rays camouflaged in the sandy flats. Fish of all kinds and sizes hung out among the tree roots, including huge cubera snappers. An hour stretched into two, this enormous saltwater aquarium proving as fascinating as the nearby, healthy coral reefs.

Mangrove forests like this may be one of the world’s most underappreciated landscapes. They provide important habitat for a wide variety of terrestrial, estuarine and marine species — from fish to birds and manatees — and supply nutrients and sediments for seagrass-bed and coral-reef habitats.

Mangrove Galapagos — A pelican enjoys a perch in a mangrove stand in the Galapagos. Photo: Hans Johnson (CC BY 2.0)

These ecosystems also protect the shore. Laura Geselbracht, a marine scientist and coastal restoration expert with The Nature Conservancy Florida, reports that mangroves prevented an additional $1.5 billion in direct damages in that state from 2017’s Hurricane Irma. An analysis by The Nature Conservancy, University of California Santa Cruz and Risk Management Solutions found that just 100 yards of mangrove trees can reduce wave height by 66%.

And mangrove forests also help mitigate climate change, pulling massive amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and storing them in their soils — up to four times as much carbon as other tropical forests. A 2018 study calculated that the world’s mangrove forests suck up more than 6 billion tons of carbon a year.

That’s the good news. The bad news: Mangroves face numerous threats — 35% were lost between 1980 and 2000, and since the turn of the 21st century almost 1 in 50 of the remaining mangrove forests has been cut down.

Today, one of the direst threats to their continued existence comes from rising sea levels caused by climate change.

A paper published in Science in June looked at data on thousands of years of sea-level rise and mangrove accretion. (Accretion is the opposite of coastal erosion: Instead of wearing away, soil builds up around the roots and lifts trees vertically, keeping them above water.) While a mangrove’s lower trunk and roots live underwater, its upper trunk and leaves live above the waterline. And when the water gets too high, and the accretion process fails to support mangroves, the trees effectively drown.

Mangroves underwater, near Queensland, Australia. Photo: Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble (CC BY 2.0)

The authors determined that accretion will not keep up beyond sea-level rise of 0.27 inches per year. Rutgers University climate data scientist Erica Ashe, one of the authors, says the current global rate is 0.134 inches, with some areas experiencing much higher rates. In Louisiana, for example, the effect of rising water is compounded by land sinking due to water removal and sediment compaction.

Based on projected rates, mangrove trees could lose their race against rising water within the next 30 years.

“The rate of sea-level rise keeps going up,” says Geselbracht, who was not affiliated with the study. “Every time a study looks at it, the rate is faster than we expected.”

Mangroves could, in theory, adjust to rising seas by migrating landward, but that’s not possible in much of the world because of human development. The trees cannot grow on roads or buildings.

“We need to modify infrastructure, change permitting rules, and come up with other innovative solutions to accommodate that movement,” Geselbracht says.

Recent research supports this. A study on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, published this past April, showed that the mangrove areas most affected by human activity there were also the ones least able to adapt to sea-level rise. In other words, just leaving mangroves alone could help.

But the world isn’t leaving mangroves alone: We continue to actively destroy their forests at an increasing rate, clearing them for development and aquaculture, timber and fuel.

Colombia, which has approximately 1,467 square miles of mangrove forests on its coasts, is experiencing the highest annual rate of loss in South America — roughly 154 square miles in the past three decades. Primary blame goes to human activities, including logging and development, primarily for tourism.

Mangroves Colombia — Mangroves in Colombia by F Delventhal (CC BY 2.0)

One of the most striking developing threats is in the Sundarbans region of Bangladesh and India, where the biggest mangrove forest on Earth — covering an area of more than 3,860 square miles — houses at least 505 species of wildlife, including 355 species of birds, 49 mammals and 291 fish. It provides critical habitat for Bengal tigers.

Sharif A. Mukul, a research fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, warned in a recent letter to Science that construction of a 3.8-mile-long bridge, the largest development project in Bangladesh, could destroy the Sundarbans.

“People anticipate much more tourism and industry activity with the bridge,” he says. “The second to largest seaport [in Bangladesh] is close to Sundarbans. After completion of the bridge, the port likely will be used more frequently, with more factories and that sort of thing.”

Magroves Sunderbans — A birding safari in the Sunderbans. Photo: Ankur Panchbudhe (CC BY 2.0)

The Sundarbans are particularly important for protection from cyclones, Mukul adds, which have increased in number and intensity in the past few years. Fifteen percent of tropical cyclones form in this region. The country’s annual monsoon season has also worsened, including catastrophic floods this summer.

In addition, Bangladesh already has seen significant loss of mangrove forests to shrimp farming.

The bridge will bring economic benefits to the region and Mukul does not argue against its construction, but rather for doing it in a way that protects local ecosystems and their services. “The government is definitely focusing only on development and not the environment,” he says. “They should do the project in a more environmentally friendly way.”

The country has company in that regard. The UNESCO Mangrove Biosphere Reserve near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam contains one of the world’s largest rehabilitated mangrove forests. That country recently approved a $9.3 billion tourist development to be built largely on filled-in coastal land within the reserve’s buffer zone. This project also includes a massive bridge.

Big Cypress National Preserve (uncredited) (Public domain)

And in the United States, Geselbracht says, Florida continues to lose swaths of mangroves to physical removal.

“People on the coast don’t want mangroves blocking their view,” she says. The state now has laws regulating removal of mangroves, which has slowed their loss. But certain types of removals remain legal, Geselbracht says, including some for storm-retention ponds. “It astounds me that no one does a cost-benefit analysis to show that removing them increases rather than decreases pollution and damages.”

In a particularly vicious twist, taking out mangroves not only eliminates their potential for storing carbon, it releases significant amounts — increasing the threats of climate change and sea-level rise and putting even more mangroves, and the communities and habitats around them, at risk. Between 2000 and 2015 mangrove destruction released up to 122 million tons of carbon — more than two and a half times the amount emitted by California wildfires between 2001 and 2010. Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar accounted for more than two-thirds of the released amount.

More than 60% of #Myanmar‘s #mangroves have been deforested in the past 20 years, @NUSingapore study finds https://t.co/kyYWv9ruxv #deforestation pic.twitter.com/YnPe51Nyeu

— Environmental Investigation Agency (@EIA_News) March 4, 2020

“We know a lot of reasons why we should curb carbon emissions,” says Ashe, author of the new study on sea-level rise. “This is another one. We have an opportunity, if we take this and all the other effects of rising temperatures seriously. It’s not too late, but it is urgent.”

Wait too long and we’ll lose more than prime snorkeling spots.

The 10 Hottest Climate Change Books of Summer

From global warming’s threats to its potential solutions, these new books examine how we got here and where we’re going.

This has already been one of the hottest summers on record, and things are only going to get worse. Unless we do something about it.

So … let’s do.

We can’t really go to the beach in these final few weeks of summer — too many potential disease vectors walking around in Speedos — so let’s all stay home and read up on climate change.

We’ve collected this summer’s 10 best new books about global warming and related topics — all published over the past three months — covering how we got here and how we’re going to get out of this hot mess. You’ll find books about science, activism, history and people, and even some art along the way.

And maybe you’ll also find some inspiration.

The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming by Eric Holthaus

Billed as “the first hopeful book about climate change.” Holthaus, a meteorologist turned climate journalist, explores several major scenarios under which we could get to carbon-zero over the next three decades and save the planet. Along the way he also encourages another radical idea: that we relearn how to embrace the Earth and our relationship with it — and maybe our relationship with ourselves along the way.

Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It by Jamie Margolin

An essential book by one of the country’s most engaging young climate activists. Margolin cofounded the action group Zero Hour and helped energize 2018’s record-breaking Youth Climate March. Now she shares her experience and expertise — along with that of other activists — and offers advice on everything from organizing peaceful protests to protecting your mental health in a time of crisis. Greta Thunberg provides the foreword.

When the World Feels Like a Scary Place: Essential Conversations for Anxious Parents and Worried Kids by Abigail Gewirtz

A wide-ranging book by a child psychologist that teaches parents to help stressed kids of all ages deal with the world’s ever-growing multitude of crises, ranging from climate change to active-shooter drills — and yes, COVID-19. Oh yeah, and along the way the book aims to help parents deal with their own anxieties about these issues.

Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe by Mario Alejandro Ariza

Environmental and economic collapse go hand in hand for Miami, Florida — and this book provides a poignant first-person investigation into a metropolis that could one day soon be underwater. (Read our full review here.)

Health of People, Health of Planet and Our Responsibility: Climate Change, Air Pollution and Health

A wide-ranging, open-access (as in free) academic book addressing how climate change damages peoples’ health, covering everything from the cardiovascular effects of air pollution to the ethics of climate justice. There are even chapters about how the climate crisis will affect our mental health and religious faiths. Edited by Wael K. Al-Delaimy, Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, with dozens of contributors from around the world, the book is available for download in its entirety or on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Who Killed Berta Cáceres? by Nina Lakhani

This isn’t exactly a climate book, but it’s a must-read and close enough in topic to belong on this month’s list. Subtitled “Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet,” this powerful investigation digs into the brutal murder of an activist who led the fight against a hydroelectric dam being built on her peoples’ sacred river in Honduras. In an age when hydropower is being embraced in some corners as a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels, we need to remember that dams are often built on blood and stolen land.

Paying the Land by Joe Sacco

The author, an acclaimed journalist/cartoonist best known for his graphic novels about war zones, travels to a different kind of conflict: the fossil-fuel and mining industries’ destructive influence on a First Nations community in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Heartbreaking and powerful, this book drives home that the climate crisis was affecting people long before temperatures started to rise.

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah

Climate change is already forcing people, animals and plants to shift where they live — an often-dangerous prospect fraught with potential consequences and conflict. But is migration also a solution to the climate crisis? Shah looks deeply into human and natural history — not to mention our history of xenophobia — to show how we can effectively embrace compassionate laws, wildlife corridors and permeable international borders to benefit a changing world.

Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World edited by John Freeman

In this hybrid book of nonfiction, fiction, essays and poems, an all-star lineup of international writers addresses how climate change will exacerbate the gap between rich and poor around the world and put millions of people at greater risk. Margaret Atwood, Anuradha Roy, Lauren Groff and Chinelo Okparanta are among the notable contributors.

The Hidden Life of Ice: Dispatches from a Disappearing World by Marco Tedesco

A noted climate scientist takes us on a journey to Greenland to discuss its melting beauty and the secrets that researchers are uncovering beneath the ice. Part science book, part history lesson, part travelogue, this book puts the reader on the front line to illuminate the climate crisis and what we’re losing in the process. Co-written by journalist Alberto Flores d’Arcais; Elizabeth Kolbert (The Sixth Extinction) provides the foreword.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

A near-future novel about a world almost destroyed by climate change and overconsumption, narrated by a woman whose dark secrets and haunted past echo the melting ice and extinctions that surround her and a ship’s crew as they follow the final migration of the world’s last surviving birds. Mysterious and melancholy, but as much about the quest for the future as what the characters have lost.

Walls or Wetlands? How Southeast Cities Are Grappling With Rising Seas

Climate change is already leaving Southeast cities swamped. Experts from the Southern Environmental Law Center explain how communities are planning for a wetter future.

Sea levels are rising around the world — but not evenly.

One area already getting swamped is the Southeast United States, where sinking land, rising seas, and a slowing Gulf Stream are causing waves to lap at city streets even on sunny days.

Climate change is also bringing another wet threat: supercharged storms carrying more moisture, leaving low-lying coastal areas awash.

As city leaders figure out how to meet these challenges, they have to weigh decisions about whether to build sea walls or improve wetland habitat. Or a combination of so-called “gray” and “green” infrastructure.

“I think that for a lot of the country, sea-level rise can sort of seem like an abstract concept,” says Claudine Ebeid McElwain, host of the “Broken Ground” podcast, which covers environmental stories in the South. “But for the people that we’ve met, it’s affecting their everyday lives.”

Lately she’s been talking to residents, city officials and others working on coastal resilience solutions in frontline communities like Norfolk, Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina.

“Broken Ground” is produced by the Southern Environmental Law Center, which also works to address these issues through legal action.

“Sea-level rise is really causing an existential crisis for these cities,” says Chris DeScherer, Southern Environmental Law Center’s Charleston director. “It’s really going to be a monumental challenge for communities all up and down the Southeast coast.”

We spoke with McElwain and DeScherer about how Charleston and other cities are navigating these issues and how they can make sure solutions don’t leave out vulnerable communities and coastal ecosystems.

Sea-level rise often seems like a distant problem. What have you learned from talking to people who are already affected?

Claudine Ebeid McElwain: When you start talking to people in these communities, this abstract issue really becomes very concrete.

We have a recent episode about Norfolk featuring one woman who is dealing with rising waters repeatedly coming into her home. We met another homeowner who’s already had four neighbors on his street bought out by the city with FEMA money [so their houses could be torn down and returned to wetland]. In that episode we talk about this idea of “managed retreat” and what that means in the context of rising seas.

We’re taking a hard look at how people are going to practically address this issue and what it means for their lives. When you’re talking about folks, especially when you’re talking about people in low income and vulnerable situations, it begs the question of how we can do right by the decisions we make.

Charleston faces a big decision right now about to address these problems. What’s happening there?

Chris DeScherer: The Army Corps of Engineers is proposing to build a seawall around Charleston to address storm surge.

It’s a nearly $2 billion proposal and we have some significant concerns about it. For starters, they’re not planning an environmental impact statement to study the proposal, which I think is a mistake because it’s one of the most significant and expensive construction projects perhaps in the history of Charleston. It deserves the most rigorous form of review to make sure that it’s a wise investment. (Editor’s note: The Corps completed a draft Environmental Assessment, a less comprehensive review, and claims the full Environmental Impact Statement is not needed because the project “would not cause significant adverse effects on the quality of the human environment.”)

Another problem, as engineers around town have already pointed out, is that there’s a greater than 40% chance the wall would be overtopped by a storm surge in the next 50 years.

Once that happens, you’re exacerbating the whole problem because you’re basically trapping all that water inside the peninsula.

Another issue is that the Corps is single-mindedly focused on storm surge when there are multiple sources of flooding that threaten cities like Charleston. Storms are already more powerful due to climate change and are dumping more water. And [a wall] obviously does nothing about that. It’s also not meant to address tidal flooding, which is an increasing problem, too.

Are you concerned about harm to the coastal ecosystem from a seawall as well?

DeScherer: Yes. There’ll be a lot of impacts to the fringe of wetlands around the city. Our coastal marshlands are among the most productive ecosystems we have. So losing wetlands is obviously a problem.

Christopher DeScherer — Chris DeScherer of the Southern Environmental Law Center. Photo: Stephanie Gross

There are also environmental concerns associated with what happens when you build a structure like this. Could the wall, by changing water patterns and circulation patterns in the harbor, actually increase erosion and harm in places adjacent to the city? That’s something that the Corps acknowledged that it really hasn’t studied yet.

There are also two historically African American communities — Rosemont and Bridgeview Village— [that] the wall stops short of protecting.

I think there are some significant questions of equity here, too. Is it fair to spend $2 billion trying to protect peninsula Charleston? What about the other parts of Charleston that are struggling with erosion, sea-level rise and flooding?

Are there alternatives to this type of infrastructure?

McElwain: Some of the most innovative stuff I think is going to be how cities think about restoring wetlands and using the wetlands to their advantage.

Norfolk and Charleston are actively working to find places that they can return to a green space. In both places, areas that are currently and constantly getting flooded were formerly creeks and wetlands that we chose to fill. So we’re looking at having to readjust to the land.

DeScherer: In its study, the Corps purports to consider a wider range of alternatives than just a wall, but very early on in its process it rejected those greener solutions. It didn’t carry them forward for a rigorous enough review.

What we want to do now is take those types of solutions that the Corps rejected and really develop them and show why they are a better way forward to the city. We’re hiring, along with the Coastal Conservation League and our other partners in town, experts who have worked around the country to design greener forms of protection for communities. These might have multiple benefits — including being cheaper and more effective at addressing the broader range of flooding threats.

Are you seeing that cities are beginning to say no to development in vulnerable areas?

DeScherer: Here in the Lowcountry we can’t afford to make this already huge problem worse by putting new development into vulnerable areas, such as wetlands and floodplains.

Flood water at house windows — Flooding in North Charleston, South Carolina caused by Hurricane Joaquin. Photo: Ryan Johnson, (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Wetlands are those places on our landscape that are natural reservoirs for storing floodwaters. The last place that we should be putting new development these days is into the places on our landscape that actually protect communities from flooding. Unfortunately, though, we continue to see that here in coastal South Carolina.

For example, there’s a proposal in an area of the city of Charleston called West Ashley, where a development would fill more than 200 acres of wetlands in a watershed that’s a poster child for flooding problems. In fact, the city has worked for years to voluntarily buy out repetitive flood properties in this area.

There’s also a proposal in an area of town called the Cainhoy peninsula that’s adjacent to the Francis Marion National Forest. It’s surrounded by marshlands. It’s very low lying with extensive floodplains. And there’s a massive proposal to construct 9,000 new residential housing units and commercial development on 9,000 acres. It’s very vulnerable to storms, storm surge and flooding. This isn’t the kind of development that’s going to make us more resilient.

I think it’s built into our mentality that more growth, more development is better for the economy. The reality, I think, is that we can still grow. We just have to be smarter about it. We have to avoid wetlands, we have to avoid floodplains. And we have to develop in denser ways.

Are there changes that industry needs to make as well?

DeScherer: There’s a lot of attention on flooding, but way less about what is in the flood water. In the southern states that we work in along the Atlantic and in Alabama on the Gulf Coast, there’s a lot of industry that’s grown up alongside ports.

These industrial sites handle toxic pollutants, but many of their stormwater plans were developed years ago. And the nature of storms is changing and has already changed. A normal storm now can bring more rain.

So we’re working to help ensure that these industrial sites are appropriately upgrading their best management practices and stormwater plans in order to control the discharge of toxic pollutants into our waterways and communities.

And septic systems and municipal-wastewater treatment systems in increasingly flooded areas also will not work as well. For example, in Charleston a couple of years ago, the Post and Courier went around the city after rain events and sampled the waters for bacteria pollution. It was pretty eye-popping for a lot of people to see the bacteria numbers that are actually in the floodwater.

Climate change is just going to present all sorts of challenges for our communities on the coast.

We’ve focused a lot on cities, but this problem is far-reaching. What more do we need?

DeScherer: We need a federal government that is not undermining our critical environmental statutes, like the National Environmental Policy Act, like the Clean Water Act, like the Endangered Species Act.

It’s critical that we defend our federal environmental statutes, but it’s also important on a local level and on a state level. We really need all three levels of government implementing law in a fair and evenhanded way in order to ensure that decisions are made that are protective of communities and the environment.

Shark Quest: Are the World’s Most Endangered Rays Living in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea?

Solving this biodiversity mystery could reveal one of the most important sites to conserve these “rhinos of the sea.”

“We saw two swimming past our canoe the other day as we came to shore!”

“Yes, we saw one over towards the mangroves not so long ago…”

“There was one in our net near the big river…”

Scientists love having a mystery to solve and gathering clues to find out if something is real or not. Since January 2019 my organization, the Wildlife Conservation Society, has been collecting evidence to confirm whether highly endangered sawfish and their relatives — the wedgefish, guitarfish and giant guitarfish (collectively and affectionately known as “rhino rays”) — live in the coastal waters of New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea.

Sawfish and their rhino ray relatives — all cousins of sharks — are some of the most threatened species on Earth due to their slow growth, vulnerability to capture in fisheries, and high value in international trade. Recent studies indicate that Papua New Guinea is (together with northern Australia and the southeastern United States) one of the last few strongholds for sawfish populations, making the country a global priority for shark and ray conservation.

Currently sawfish and rhino rays have been well documented along the southern shores and adjacent river systems of Papua New Guinea, and also in the Sepik River, which drains into the Bismarck Sea on the northern coast of the mainland. Sawfish have also been documented in several other provinces in the country, yet no official records exist in New Ireland Province.

Until now.

A Unique Site

The southwestern Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea is known for its renowned biodiversity, much of which lives nowhere else in the world. But that amazing animal and plant life is often both understudied and under threat.

This holds true in New Ireland.

The many islands of New Ireland Province, located in the Bismarck Archipelago, support coral reefs, mangroves, estuaries and tidal lagoons — typical habitats for rhino rays and sawfish. Some 77% of New Ireland’s human population also lives in the coastal zone, where they’re highly reliant on fish and other marine resources for food, livelihoods and traditional practices. Local communities also own most of this coastal zone through customary tenure systems, which may have been in place for centuries.

Human pressure, including population growth, could threaten potential sawfish and rhino ray populations unless sufficient management is in place — but local cooperation will be key to such action.

Surprising Surveys

Over the past year and a half, WCS has conducted interviews in New Ireland’s coastal areas. Part of the interviews involved showing images of each sawfish, wedgefish and guitarfish species, allowing respondents to identify what they saw. To date residents from 49 communities reported that they had seen sawfish and rhino rays in their local waters. There were 144 separate sightings reported by 111 respondents, which comprised 23 sawfish, 85 wedgefish and 36 guitarfish and giant guitarfish. Roughly half the respondents stated they had seen sawfish or rhino rays either often or sometimes.

Sightings map — Papua New Guinea occupies the western half of New Guinea and is the largest of the South Pacific Island nations. The uplifted reefs, limestone terrain and adjacent islands that form New Ireland Province comprise the north-easterly region of Papua New Guinea. From January 2019 to March 2020, fisher key informant surveys were conducted in coastal communities in western New Ireland Province to determine whether sawfish and rhino rays were observed within the customary waters of each community. A total of 144 sightings were made, including 85 wedgefish (blue), 36 guitarfish and giant guitarfish (green) and 23 sawfish (red) sightings. Source: WCS.

When asked if the animals were targeted by local fishers, more than half the respondents said no: The animals were mostly caught accidentally. Only 9% of the sighted sawfish and rhino rays were reported to have been purposefully caught.

Respondents also provided information on where, and in what condition, they had seen the animals: 77% were seen alive, 10% at the market and 2% entangled in nets.

The results suggest that while sawfish and rhino rays are in the region, they are not a key fishery commodity, which is promising news for developing conservation approaches.

Sawtooth rostrum — Large-tooth sawfish (Pristis pristis) rostrum, beside a ruler, which was harvested by local community fishers from the Tigak Islands that lie to the west of mainland New Ireland. This rostrum measured nearly 30 inches in length. Photo: Elizah Nagombi/WCS.

Further Evidence Needed

While physical and objective data has been lacking — I’m still waiting to see one of these animals in the water, myself — we have confirmed evidence of two large-tooth sawfish (Pristis pristis) in the region (two sawfish beaks, also known as rostra, have been found in community villages since this study began), and we’ve received reports of additional sightings.

WCS also conducted baited remote underwater video surveys (BRUVS) in 14 locations in the region in 2019-20, following a 2017 BURVS deployment by FinPrint in western New Ireland Province.

Collectively the BRUVS documented 13 species of sharks and rays, including wedgefish (which have also been photographed by local dive operators), but no sawfish.

But with that success, we’re expanding our search. Over the next 12 months, a further 100 BRUVS will be deployed in areas with a sandy seafloor, where wedgefish and giant guitarfish often rest. Because sawfish typically live in estuaries — where water is often murky — BRUVS will not work due to the poor visibility of the water. In these areas gillnets that have been carefully positioned in river outlets by trained local community members will be monitored for sawfish that may be present. If any sawfish are present in the nets, they will be documented and carefully released.

Opportunities for Conservation

Despite the vulnerability of sawfish and rhino rays — with five of the ten documented species in Papua New Guinea classified as critically endangered — there are currently no protection laws in place. However, since 2017, WCS has worked with over 100 communities in New Ireland Province to establish the country’s largest network of marine protected areas.

The MPAs have been developed through a community-first approach, with extensive local outreach, engagement and education. In that way WCS has been actively informing local residents about the biology, threats and management opportunities for sawfish and rhino rays. We anticipate that new laws to protect and manage these endangered animals will be incorporated into the management rules for the new MPAs.

outreach poster — Example of education and outreach materials produced by the WCS team. This poster presents management methods that can be used by community residents to help manage sawfish and rhino ray populations in their customary waters.

While the mystery as to whether sawfish and rhino ray populations are alive and well in PNG has largely been solved, they are still rare and in need of additional conservation efforts. We hope that this work will help bring awareness and conservation action to these highly threatened species — and make sure they don’t become mythical creatures of the past.

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.

Wildlife Rehabilitators Are Overwhelmed During the Pandemic. In Part, That’s a Good Thing.

An increase in calls and wildlife rescues means people are paying more attention to nature. That’s an opportunity to learn about animal behavior — and save lives.

Molly Craig’s day begins with feeding hungry baby birds at 6 a.m. The birds need to be fed every 15 minutes until 7 at night. If she’s not feeding them, other staff at the Fox Valley Wildlife Center in Elburn, Illinois take turns helping the hungry orphans.

When the center’s resident birds, opossums, squirrels and other wildlife aren’t being fed, cleaned or cared for, Craig, Fox Valley’s director of animal care, finds herself trying to answer the seemingly ceaseless stream of calls from concerned citizens who’ve come across a hapless animal and don’t know what to do about it.

“Phones have been ringing off the hook,” she says.

Fox Valley and other wildlife rehabilitation centers across the country have seen a large increase in calls from the public since coronavirus-lockdown orders took effect in March. Wildlife Rescue League in Virginia, a help line that gives advice or directs callers to local rehabbers, reports their calls have increased by 62% compared to last year, with staff now fielding more than 50 a day.

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Can you say “cute”?! Thank you Sandy Royal for these adorable tulip nests! Our baby birds are very happy to have them, including this here baby Robin. You can also hear him asking for food… again! #donations #creative #sewing #knitting #nests #artsandcrafts #artstohelp #babies #babyseason #babybirds #robin #wildlife #wildliferescueleague #wrl #wildliferescueleagueva #tulip #tulipnests #babybird #wildliferehabilitation #wildliferehabber #constantfeedings #volunteers #allvolunteerorganization #northernvirginia #virginia #virginiawildlife #creativity #gratitude #thankful #grateful

A post shared by WildlifeRescueLeagueVA (@wildliferescueleagueva) on Jul 24, 2020 at 4:40pm PDT

In any other year, this increase in volume wouldn’t surprise rescue centers. Spring is the normally their busiest season. It’s when birds make their spring migrations, snakes and bears come out of hibernation, and many animals time their mating behaviors to produce young as the days get warmer. This means people can encounter fledgling birds hopping on the ground, fawns lying still alongside a trail, or baby cottontail rabbits curled up in the grass. To humans they appear to be orphaned, when in fact the parents are usually keeping a watchful eye nearby or gathering food. Injuries also increase this time of year as lawnmowers nick rabbit nests, young squirrels fall out of trees, and birds encounter domestic cats or fly into windows.

“People have a tendency to panic,” says Beth Axelrod, president of the board of directors at the Wildlife Rescue League. “They feel empathy for an animal that they think is in need, which is good, but that puts them into panic mode, and they feel like they want to get this animal help right away.”

But this year things have shifted into overdrive. The pandemic has changed our normal routines — more people are spending time outside and becoming aware of the wildlife in their backyards or local parks.

It’s not that there are more orphaned or injured animals, it’s that people are paying more attention.

“People are home, they’re bored, they’re looking out the window, they’re going on walks, they’re actually paying more attention, or they have the time to look an animal up and find out where it’s supposed to go, “ says Melissa Anahory, programs and operation assistant at Woodlands Wildlife Refuge in Pittstown, New Jersey.

Woodlands Wildlife Refuge has taken in 250 more animals than this time last year. At Fox Valley, they’re up 1,000 animals. Several rehabbers I reached out to for this article were unavailable for interviews because they were so overwhelmed with constant animal intake and care.

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One of our latest releases. #opossum #wildliferehabilitation

A post shared by Woodlands Wildlife Refuge (@wildrehab) on Jul 3, 2020 at 12:24am PDT

Wildlife rehabilitators in big cities aren’t experiencing the same surge in calls as their more suburban or rural counterparts. Downtown Washington, D.C. is seeing fewer calls than its surrounding counties. In Manhattan, Jerry Basford, a volunteer and board member at the Wild Bird Fund, says he isn’t surprised. “Fewer cars on the road means fewer pigeons getting hit.”

What did surprise Basford, though, was the increase in donations. Both online and onsite donations have doubled.

“We thought our donations were really going to dry up,” he says. “You know, people out of work, et cetera. And it’s been just the opposite. It almost seems like people really want to do something.”

People who bring animals to wildlife rehabilitators tend to become donors, explains Anahory. This year that means the more animals that come in, the more donations they receive to help rehabilitation centers stay open during the pandemic.

Beyond donating money, volunteerism is on the rise — or at least, the desire to volunteer. The Woodlands Wildlife Refuge, Wildlife Rescue League and the Owl Moon Raptor Center in Boyds, Maryland, have all seen an uptick in requests to volunteer. Jaci Rutiser, a longtime volunteer at Owl Moon, says there have been so many requests to help since the start of the pandemic that they’ve had to start a waitlist.

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Our baby dormice have done a lot of growing up in 1 week. They came in after a cat killed their mother, luckily these two were unharmed but require a lot of care to get them ready for release. Our lovely volunteer Angela has taken these two home to care for them until they are old enough to go back to the wild. #dormouse #hazeldormouse #wild #wildlife #wildliferehabber #wildlifevet #wildlifecare #baby #cute #handrear

A post shared by @ wildlife_aid_vets on Aug 11, 2020 at 10:05am PDT

Unfortunately, for wildlife rehabilitation centers, the threat of COVID-19 has meant cutting volunteers and limiting the amount of staff that can be present at the same time. Many wildlife rehabilitators who are licensed to practice in their homes have shut down their operations because the risk of exposure to illness is too great. The animals that would normally go to them are now going to the centers that have remained open.

This places additional stress on workers and volunteers. Axelrod says a typical summer was already demanding, with up to 30 calls a day. “So having over 50 calls a day is even more challenging.”

Craig points out that a lot of the calls Fox Valley receives are from people who don’t understand normal wildlife behavior — and that means more opportunity for education.

“Most of our calls are from people finding animals in their yard or out on nature walks,” she says. “And since so many more people are doing those things right now, we’re getting a lot more of those kinds of calls. A lot of them we’re able to give advice over the phone, and the advice is typically, that’s a natural behavior. Leave it be.”

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Sunday morning cuteness! Check out the video! Fledgling Ruby Throated Hummingbird 💕 #ibr #iowabirdrehab #iowa #birds #iowabirds #wildliferehab #wildliferehabilitation #wildliferehabber #nature #birdrehab #birdrehabilitation #hummingbird #rubythroatedhummingbird

A post shared by Jenni B (@iowabirdrehab) on Jul 26, 2020 at 9:39am PDT

The pandemic may be unprecedented in our experience, but experts says this desire to do more follows patterns we’ve seen during other tumultuous times. Alison Cawood, marine ecologist and citizen science coordinator at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, notes that big changes such as elections or natural disasters often inspire spikes in people wanting to do something bigger than themselves, whether it’s reporting a species on a citizen science app or calling a wildlife rehabilitator about an injured animal.

“When things are more stressful, I think a lot of people want to do something to help,” she says. “You can’t fix whatever the big thing is, but here are these things that you can do. You can help the environment.”

What happens next? As many states ease lockdown restrictions, and as summer turns to fall, wildlife rehabilitators expect they’ll soon experience a well-earned reprieve from tending to baby animals and answering continuous phone calls. But this period — and rehabbers’ efforts — could leave a lasting impact. Thanks to them, many people will be returning to work or classrooms better informed about the wildlife that exists around them.

And those concerned citizens and rehabilitators may emerge from this first perilous chapter of the pandemic knowing that, because of their attention, thousands of animals have been given a second chance at life.

Previously in The Revelator:

Rehabilitating Injured Wildlife Taught Me to Look at Both Life and Death

The Informal Blue Economy: East Africa’s Silent Shark Killer

Subsistence, artisanal and small-scale fisheries represent a previously unrecognized threat to many protected shark and ray species.

Gunter Pauli famously developed his Blue Economy concept, a global business model for marine resource use, based on the principles of using local resources in a responsible manner and injecting money back into the local economy. This has been widely applied to fisheries around the world. Yet because much of the world’s fish is caught by foreign vessels and consumed thousands of miles from capture sites, Pauli’s locally focused concept is not that simple in our globalized economy and world fisheries (and COVID-19 reminds us that globalization is not always positive).

Such fishery products are neither local nor low-cost. They carry the burden of big input costs (often requiring financial subsidies) and take away potential food and income from local communities. Furthermore, (over)fishing linked to these international operations has already caused major declines in fish populations globally. Nevertheless, fishing remains central to the Blue Economy plans of many nations.

As this concept continues to grow, and as the world celebrates television’s Shark Week, we have an important question: How will global Blue Economy plans treat sharks and rays?

Healthy ecosystems (upon which fishers rely) depend on sharks and rays fulfilling their ecological roles as apex and meso-predators. Furthermore, because they grow slowly and produce few offspring, few shark and ray species are resilient to fishing pressure. Despite this many species are caught as bycatch or targeted for meat, fins or other lucrative products. As a result a quarter of all shark and ray species globally face the threat of extinction. This makes sharks and rays very poorly suited to Blue Economies built around fishing.

We see this clearly in East Africa, where the Western Indian Ocean contributes significantly to world fisheries, including 13% of reported global shark catches from 2003-2018, according to data compiled by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Many of these species are threatened and listed on one or more global conservation conventions, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) or the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). Few are legally protected in this region.

Hammerhead — Scalloped hammerhead shark (IUCN critically endangered) constitute significant proportions of artisanal catches in East Africa. Photo: Christelle Razafindrakoto © WCS

But there are other fishing sectors, which often slide under the radar. Subsistence, artisanal and small-scale fisheries operate across much of the globe and, despite their relatively informal operations, provide critical sources of income and protein for millions of people in coastal areas, particularly in developing nations. But what impact are they having on fish stocks, and how does this compare to industrial fisheries?

In most cases we simply don’t know, because many such fisheries are poorly regulated and their catches are poorly monitored.

Fishermen in Tanzania. Photo: Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0)

However, where such fisheries are being monitored, emerging data reveal that some contribute significantly to national catches. In Mozambique, for example, catch reconstructions indicate that artisanal and subsistence fishers may be catching as much as three times the industrial sector, suggesting that total catches are being grossly underestimated.

These fisheries therefore play a major role in the overall fisheries of many countries and contribute enormously to peoples’ income and food security.

In the process these fisheries also contribute to an economy we might describe as “informal” because they’re barely monitored or regulated. At the same time, these operations form part of a highly organized and efficient network that has informally “unlocked” local marine resources.

We might call this the Informal Blue Economy, the Blue Economy’s not-so-little cousin — and it has a staggeringly large impact on sharks and rays.

Thanks to an increase in monitoring of these Informal Blue Economy fisheries in recent years, we now know that in East Africa subsistence, artisanal and small-scale fisheries catch many threatened shark species. Longlines and gillnets set in shallow areas catch a diversity of ray species, including endangered mobula rays and guitarfishes, and critically endangered wedgefishes.

There appears to be a targeted fishery for critically endangered hammerhead sharks in northeast Madagascar. Targeted fisheries likewise appear to exist in Tanzania and Kenya for pelagic sharks, including vulnerable silky sharks, endangered mako and thresher sharks, and critically endangered oceanic whitetip sharks — all of which are CITES-listed and heavily affected by industrial fisheries.

Of the 27 CITES-listed shark and ray species that occur in the region, at least 20 are caught and killed in these fisheries. In some places juveniles and pregnant females form significant components of the catches, compounding the challenge of these species’ slow reproductive rates.

The emerging data reveal that an Informal Blue Economy operates along the East African coastline, where it very efficiently catches and kills sharks, rays and other species. Until recently, this has gone largely unrecorded. To go back to Pauli, while these informal fisheries are using local resources and injecting money back into the local economy, this is not being done in a responsible manner.

Thanks to this new understanding, this problem has started to attract attention on national and international levels. Our colleagues at WCS have been working with government and local partners to achieve a better Blue Economy and ensure that sharks and rays are appropriately and sustainably managed. We look with optimism to seeing progress on shark and ray conservation as a result in the coming years.

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.