It wasn’t easy. Our publication was planned, in no small part, as a reaction to the election of the Trump administration. We knew we’d be looking at a period of intense environmental deregulation and turmoil. We just didn’t realize how intense or chaotic things would soon become.
But as we shined our lights into the darkness, we did our best to not stay focused exclusively on the pain. We spent equal time examining solutions, talking about how to achieve progress, and looking at the fun things that make conservation worth it.
That combination of revelation and celebration will continue. As we collectively emerge from the past four years, and as those of us here start year five of what we affectionately call “The Rev,” we have one big promise for you: We’re just getting warmed up.
Meanwhile, we’ve taken this anniversary as an opportunity for reflection. Here are 10 lessons we’ve learned from the past four years:
Surround yourself with good people. A strong community will keep you going on even the darkest of days.
But talk to anybody (and keep your cool when you do). Self-segregation by political ideology will tear the world apart if we let it. It’s among the greatest threats we face.
Broaden your inputs, support quality journalism at a time when it’s still under attack, and remain vigilant for disinformation. We’ve seen what happens when people limit their information sources or allow themselves to be manipulated.
Do your best, but don’t bear the entire weight on your shoulders. Individual action remains important, but we need to work toward systemic change now more than ever.
Prepare for the worst. We’re expecting another dangerous fire season here in the West, and that’s just one of the likely effects we’ll all feel from climate change and biodiversity loss in the months and years ahead.
Celebrate the best. There’s no better way to protect the natural world than to enjoy it, by yourself or with friends.
Share. Your positive experiences and wild encounters make a difference to others.
Listen. A lot of voices have traditionally been left out of the mainstream conversation. Let’s all vow to break that cycle and keep our ears open to each other’s experience and wisdom. We’re stronger together.
Trust the experts. The scientific process is our superpower.
Vote. In every election, no matter how small.
Thanks to all our readers for the past four years. We look forward to year five and beyond.
From the majesty of our feathered friends to the cultural cost of extinction, these new books help us examine the natural world.
As I sat in a pharmacy chair for the required 15 minutes after my first vaccine dose, my mind turned to animals.
There weren’t any animals nearby, of course — the buzzing fluorescent lighting of the run-down drugstore wasn’t anyone’s natural habitat, including mine. And that very absence of visible sky and wildlife — a change from the past 15 months, much of which I’d spent watching the world go by through my home-office window — served to remind me how easily we can lose sight of it.
I returned home, rushed to the back window and the birdfeeders beyond, and randomly pulled a new book out of a pile of review copies. Sure enough, its subject was animals.
And it wasn’t alone. In recent months publishers have released a bevy of new books about birds, bears, koalas and other creatures. These hefty tomes do more than just celebrate our furry, feathery or chitinous friends; they also examine our relationships with them, for better or worse.
Here are publishers’ descriptions of 10 of the best new wildlife-related books of 2021 so far. The books come from a long list of celebrated authors, scientists and journalists and cover species from several continents. They’ll help give you a dose of the wild — and a window into other parts of the world — that will hold you over until it’s safe to travel again to see loved ones. Human and otherwise.
An uplifting new book from the author of How Animals Grieve.
“As people come to understand more about animals’ inner lives — the intricacies of their thoughts and the emotions that are expressed every day by whales and cows, octopus and mice, even bees — we feel a growing compassion, a desire to better their lives. But how do we translate this compassion into helping other creatures, both those that are and are not our pets?”
Margaret Atwood provides the foreword to this new edition of her late partner’s classic book.
“In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist and avid birdwatcher Graeme Gibson offers an extraordinary tribute to the venerable relationship between humans and birds.”
Signs of hope amidst and after apocalyptic wildfires.
“In the early months of 2020, the world’s attention was riveted on Australia, where the nation’s iconic wildlife fought for survival in the face of unprecedented wildfires. Images of koalas drinking from firefighters’ water bottles went viral and became the global face of a catastrophe that would kill as many as three billion animals. Known as the Black Summer, the fire season was responsible for more wildlife deaths and near-extinctions than any other single event in Australian history. Flames of Extinction, written by a journalist at the heart of this news coverage, is the first book to tell the stories of Australia’s record-setting fires, focusing on the wild animals and plants that will be forever changed.” (Read an exclusive excerpt.)
A kids’ book that’s about a lot more than growling.
“Ever wanted to talk to a tiger? Or chatter with a cheetah? Or yak with a yak? This book brings together a babble of more than 100 beasties and explores the amazing ways they talk to each other. From fish that fart to alligators that dunk to fire worms that flash, you’ll discover that wildlife have the strangest ways of sending a message…”
A worldwide travelogue examining some of the world’s most charismatic and mysterious migrators.
“Hummingbirds are a glittering, sparkling collective of over 300 wildly variable species. For centuries, they have been revered by Indigenous Americans, coveted by European collectors, and admired worldwide for their unsurpassed metallic plumage and immense character. Yet they exist on a knife-edge, fighting for survival in boreal woodlands, dripping cloud forests and subpolar islands. They are, perhaps, the ultimate embodiment of evolution’s power to carve a niche for a delicate creature in even the harshest of places.”
Can we relearn how to live with returning megafauna?
“Montana journalist Robert Chaney chronicles the resurgence of this charismatic species against the backdrop of the country’s long history with the bear. Chaney captures the clash between groups with radically different visions: ranchers frustrated at losing livestock, environmental advocates, hunters, and conservation and historic preservation officers of tribal nations. Underneath, he probes the balance between our demands on nature and our tolerance for risk.”
An illuminating history of the conservation movement.
“In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement’s history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale.”
A portrait of the last-ditch efforts to save the final few dozen birds of a critically endangered species.
“The only bird species that lives exclusively in Florida, the Florida scrub-jay was once common across the peninsula. But as development over the last 100 years reduced the habitat on which the bird depends from 39 counties to three, the species became endangered. With a writer’s eye and an explorer’s spirit, Mark Walters travels the state to report on the natural history and current predicament of Florida’s flagship bird.”
An intimate portrait accompanied by amazing photographs.
“Inside an anthill, you’ll find high drama worthy of a royal court; and between colonies, high-stakes geopolitical intrigue is afoot. Just like us, ants grow crops, raise livestock, tend their young and infirm, and make vaccines. And, just like us, ants have a dark side: They wage war, despoil environments, and enslave rivals — but also rebel against their oppressors.”
Examining the scars left behind on an emptying Earth.
“Inspired by his childhood obsession with extinct species, Blencowe takes us around the globe — from the forests of New Zealand to the ferries of Finland, from the urban sprawl of San Francisco to an inflatable crocodile on Brighton’s Widewater Lagoon. Spanning five centuries, from the last sighting of New Zealand’s upland moa to the 2012 death of the Pinta Island giant tortoise, Lonesome George, his memoir is peppered with the accounts of the hunters and naturalists of the past as well as revealing conversations with the custodians of these totemic animals today.”
Dr. Danielle Ignace has found a way to unify her Native American and Western science identities to better understand big ecosystem changes.
All it took was one college research trip to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains for Danielle Ignace to know her intended career path in medicine was the wrong fit. After spending a month in the mountains, she quickly learned she wanted to study ecology.
“I was just kind of hooked,” she told The Revelator. “I really wanted to work on these big questions about how climate change and environmental issues impact our ecosystems.”
And she has. Trained as a plant physiologist, ecologist and ecosystem scientist, she’s been teaching at Smith College in Massachusetts and is also a research associate at Harvard Forest.
But this summer she’s taking a new position in the department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. For Ignace, the big jump across the continent is more than a geographic change. She’s a member of the Northwest’s Coeur d’Alene Tribe, and she says the new position is the first she’s found that allows space to incorporate her Native American identity into her work as a scientist.
We spoke to her about what she’s learned about our changing ecosystems and why understanding Indigenous voices is so important in that process.
What can you tell us about your research?
I study the impacts of global change, which can mean a lot of different things. In the case of my lab and my work, it really focuses on the impacts of invasive pests or plants and big changes in climate, including precipitation or drought. Those global change factors can act solely or interact with each other and do great damage or have really big impacts for ecosystems.
In particular, I work on ecosystems that are in transition in some way. That could be changing from a system that has high diversity to low diversity, or maybe they’re already invaded and they lost a lot of biodiversity in the system.
Most recently I’m looking at the eastern hemlock ecosystems that are transitioning to black birch ecosystems because of invasive pests. I try to understand everything about ecosystem function, but one of my main goals is to understand what’s happening with carbon, because that tells us a great deal about whether these ecosystems will be a source or sink for CO2. And that has really big implications for whether they contribute to global warming.
What have you found?
Eastern hemlock forests in the northeastern United States are being destroyed by the hemlock woolly adelgid and the elongate hemlock scale. They have basically created eastern hemlock graveyards with these huge areas of declined or destroyed forest stands.
When this happens we lose out on this very special tree species that’s known as a foundation tree species, meaning that it has a very important role for structuring ecosystems and plant communities. Other organisms depend on the special habitat it has created. So there’s devastating implications when we lose this particular tree species.
Eastern screech owls in a hemlock tree. Photo: Matt MacGillivray, (CC BY 2.0)
But also, we find typically they get replaced by black birch trees. Eastern hemlocks are evergreen conifers and black birch trees are deciduous, and so they have very different composition in their leaf material. When that foliage falls to the ground, they decompose in very different ways.
With this change, everything gets decomposed a lot quicker. There’s faster turnover. We get more nutrients in the soil, but what that means is that we lose the carbon sequestration that was in the soil of eastern hemlock forests. They have a really strong and deep soil organic layer and lots of carbon goes in there. And so when you lose eastern hemlocks, it diminishes that ability to sequester carbon in those forests.
The change could take decades to manifest, but the ramifications are huge.
In your new position at the University of British Columbia, will you continue this line of research?
We did such great work with the eastern hemlock system, so I definitely don’t want to give that up. I will try to continue that in some way from afar.
I want to still think about how carbon gets stored in ecosystems or moves through ecosystems and what the implications are for climate change, but I also want to now work with Indigenous communities and help amplify or include their voices in the land-use history and land-management dialogues.
That voice has been either erased or excluded for so long and Indigenous communities have really sustainable methods of land-use management that I think need to be highlighted and that could help with communities being more resilient to climate change.
What has your experience been like as an Indigenous scientist?
I have had a very standard path in academia and science that didn’t really include my Native American identity or culture. Getting my education and research experiences, and then moving up in academia, I didn’t know it could be a thing where we could include Indigenous communities and we could work with Indigenous communities and that somehow, my Native American identity could co-exist with my Western science identity.
Dr. Danielle Ignace studies ecosystem changes. Photo: Sandra Costello
People in my science world didn’t really want to know the Indigenous perspective. They didn’t ask for it. And I felt like there wasn’t space to include both of those in my career. I almost left academia a year ago because of this issue.
Have you seen that change? Is UBC, which has also just launched the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries, a better space for that?
Yes, what was really attractive to me about UBC was that they hired all these Indigenous scientists. I think this is a long time coming for them. We have a really great local Indigenous community there and we have Indigenous students, and they wanted to see Indigenous faculty involved in research and serving in leadership roles.
Kudos to them, they’ve done an amazing job. But it’s not typical. Many institutions say it would be good to have more Indigenous faculty, but don’t necessarily put their money where their mouth is.
For me, I do feel finally that there’s space for my Native American identity and my Western science career to co-exist in the work that I do. Now it’s non-negotiable. Coming up in academia I didn’t see anyone like me, and I want to help with that.
I think what we’re seeing is to really have these kinds of solutions to what’s happening with Indigenous communities, who are so impacted by climate change, we need everyone to be involved in that. And that especially includes Indigenous scientists.
Despite their enormous ecological values, new research reveals we don’t understand how most arachnid species are faring right now — or do much to protect them.
Spiders need our help, and we may need to overcome our biases and fears to make that happen.
“The feeling that people have towards spiders is not unique,” says Marco Isaia, an arachnologist and associate professor at the University of Turin in Italy. “Nightmares, anxieties and fears are very frequent reactions in ‘normal’ people,” he concedes.
Perhaps that’s why spiders remain under-represented across the world’s endangered-species conservation plans. Average people don’t think much about them, relatively few scientists study them, and conservation groups and governments don’t act enough to protect them.
That’s a major gap in species-protection efforts — one that has wide repercussions. “Efforts in conservation of spiders are particularly meaningful for nature conservation,” Isaia points out. Spiders, he says, have enormous ecological value as food for birds and other animals. They’re also important to people, both as predators of pest species and as inspiration for medicines and engineering.
And yet they remain neglected.
How bad is the problem? A new paper by Isaia and 18 other experts digs into the conservation status of Europe’s 4,154 known spider species and finds that only a few have any protection at the national level. Most have never even been adequately assessed or studied in detail, so we don’t know much about their extinction risk or their ecological needs.
Italy, for example, is home to more than 1,700 spider species, but fewer than 450 have had their conservation status assessed and only two have any legal protection in that country.
Greece, meanwhile, has nearly 1,300 spider species within its borders, but scientists have only assessed the conservation needs of 32 of them. None are legally protected.
A jumping spider in Greece. Photo: Miltos Gikas (CC BY 2.0)
Researchers found the same results — or lack thereof — throughout Europe.
“What surprised us most while assembling the data was the extremely poor level of knowledge about the conservation status, extinction risk and factors threatening the survival of European spider species, despite Europe being one of the most studied regions of the world in terms of biodiversity,” says Filippo Milano, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. student in Isaia’s research team. “And even when the conservation status of the species was provided, information was often incomplete or out-of-date, resulting in assessments based on poor quality information and high levels of subjectivity.”
It’s not just individual European nations; the problem is continent-wide. The researchers say just one spider — the endangered Gibraltar funnel-web spider (Macrothele calpeiana) from the Southern Iberian Peninsula — is protected at the European level by the Bern Convention, an international treaty about habitat and species conservation on the continent and some African nations, and European Union Habitats Directive.
Macrothele calpeiana. Photo: Gail Hampshire (CC BY 2.0)
And of course, this is not unique to Europe; other countries and continents fail to protect arachnids, and for similar reasons.
“Spiders are understudied, underappreciated and under attack by both the climate crisis and humans affecting our environment,” says spider expert and science communicator Sebastian Alejandro Echeverri, who was not affiliated with the study. “These are one of the most diverse groups of animals that we don’t really think about on a day-to-day basis. There’s like 48,000-plus species, but my experience is that most people don’t really have a sense of how many are in their area. In the United States, for example, we have just 12 spiders on the endangered species list out of the thousands of species recorded here.”
This lack of information or protection at the national level affects international efforts. At the time the research was conducted the IUCN Red List, which includes conservation status assessments for 134,400 species around the world, covered just 301 spider species, eight of which are from Europe. That number has since increased — to all of 318 species from the order Araneae. (And perhaps tellingly, it’s worth noting that the Gibraltar funnel-web spider has not currently been assessed for the IUCN Red List.)
The great raft spider (Dolomedes plantarius), listed as vulnerable by the IUCN. Photo: Charlie Jackson (CC BY 2.0)
The Red List does not grant protections to any species, but it’s often used by governments and conservation groups to seek protections on the national or international level.
That dearth of IUCN data seems likely to change, since one of the paper’s authors is also the chair of the IUCN Spider and Scorpion Specialist Group, but they have a monumental task ahead of them.
As we see with so many other wide-ranging species, a transnational border is often not a spider’s friend. The paper identifies several examples of species protected in one country but not its neighbor, despite being found in both places. According to the paper only 17 spider species are protected by conservation legislation in two or more European countries.
“Animals aren’t limited by our political lines on a map,” notes Echeverri. “You can protect something here, but if that animal’s habitat extends past your border and the people next door don’t know about it or don’t protect its habitat in the same way, it could still be pushed toward extinction even though you’re doing your best.”
At the same time, cross-border protection can also create problems if legislation is based on out-of-date scientific data. The Gibraltar funnel-web spider — the one species that’s listed on the Bern Convention and the EU Habitats Directive — has “protection against all forms of disturbance, capture, keeping, deliberate killing, and damage or destruction of breeding or resting sites,” according to the paper. That’s essential in its native habitat, but at the same time it’s now rapidly spreading through the commercial olive-tree trade and has been spotted in at least four countries outside its range. “As a matter of fact, it seems that the unique spider protected at the European level is considered an alien species in many countries,” says Milano.
How Do We Fix This?
Echeverri calls the study “an important call to action.” In particular, he points out how it compares different spider assessment and conservation approaches in each country. “This gives people in the IUCN and lawmakers a tool to say, ‘hey, this system seems to be working really well, let’s take what we can from it that will work great in our country.’ ”
Isaia notes that they hope this paper spins out a wide-reaching web. “We hope to stimulate environmental government agencies, stakeholders and decision-makers to include spiders in effective conservation strategies and fostering processes that may contribute to the conservation of threatened spider species,” he says. Examples, he says, would include “promoting risk assessment procedures for spider species, or including threatened spider species in planning protected areas and biodiversity action plans.”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Susan Cameron searches moss mats for the spruce-fir moss spider. Photo: G. Peeples/USFWS
But moving forward will require a lot of effort — not to mention some money.
“There’s not a lot of funding for naturalists to go out and survey these animals,” says Echeverri. “It’s this ongoing crisis within science. You don’t know a lot about the species, so you don’t know who’s there. You don’t know how many are there. You don’t know how they’re doing or what habitats they’re in, and we need to make our conservation plans based on scientific data. If that data doesn’t exist, even if there is a desire to do something for these animals, we can’t plan anything because we don’t have the fundamentals.”
The researchers hope others will take up their mantle to understand and protect spiders. “Highlighting general patterns and identifying the main strengths and weaknesses in biodiversity conservation across Europe is an appropriate starting point to plan achievable solutions focusing on the local context,” says Milano. “The same model may be adopted to other geographic regions and may certainly apply to other taxonomic groups.”
And maybe, along the way, their work can help inspire people who fear spiders to look at them in a different light — or even to help look for them, like the Map the Spider project that asks citizen scientists to upload locations of the complex webs woven by elusive purse-web spiders.
Who knows, that might even inspire a new generation of arachnologists — a field of scientists who are currently in short supply.
“Focusing on spiders has been a very important choice in my career,” Isaia says. “There are those who, like me, see spiders as miracles of the natural evolution. You may study their web, their venom, their bizarre behaviors, the interactions between different species, their role as predators, their amazing taxonomical and functional diversity, their key role in the maintaining ecosystem equilibrium. You may also use them as sources of inspiration in architecture and visual arts. Aren’t these good reasons to find them attractive?”
A nearly extinct population of this wide-ranging species represents a unique element of biodiversity in the Caucasus.
The wide-ranging sea duck known as the velvet scoter can be found in the skies and waters of nearly a dozen European and Asian countries, but it has almost disappeared from some of them. Just a few years ago, it was thought that the geographically isolated breeding population of these birds in the Caucasus was completely extinct. But a study conducted on the Javakheti plateau in 2017 revealed that Lake Tabatskuri in Georgia still holds a small breeding population of just 25-35 pairs. The long-term survival of this tiny population remains in serious jeopardy.
Species name:
Velvet scoter or velvet duck (Melanitta fusca)
Description:
The velvet scoter is a medium-sized, stocky diving duck. The name comes from the velvety plumage of a male bird. The orange bill and light-blue eyes, with a tiny white mark under the eye, make it even more fascinating during mating season.
Where it’s found:
The breeding population of velvet scoter has disappeared in Armenia and Turkey, and nesting is now confined to just one site in the entire Caucasus: Lake Tabatskuri. This beautiful lake is in the Javakheti plateau region of southern Georgia, 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) above sea level. A small island in the northern part of the lake is now the birds’ only natural breeding place in the region.
A velvet scoter duckling on Lake Tabatskuri, Georgia, which harbors the last breeding population of the species in the Caucasus. Photo: Nika Paposhvili. Used with permission.
IUCN Red List status:
The velvet scoter is classified as vulnerable and is considered to be decreasing worldwide, with a three-generation decline estimated at 32-46%. However, the Caucasian geographically isolated population is in much more trouble and is a critically endangered species regionally.
Major threats:
Nesting sites have been lost or disturbed through habitat degradation to irrigate adjacent agriculture land, as well as hay cutting on peninsulas and islands in the lakes. Additional factors that led to diminished numbers in the Caucasus include eutrophication (caused by agricultural intensification and wastewater), disturbances by boats, overfishing and bycatch, illegal hunting, removal of eggs by locals for food, and duckling and egg predation by Armenian gulls (Larus armenicus) that compete with the scoters for nesting sites. It is therefore crucial to protect these last remaining ducks before the species is completely wiped out.
Velvet scoter vs. Armenian Gull. Photo: Nika Paposhvili. Used with permission.
They still face some of the threats that led to their decline, with predation on ducklings by Armenian gulls having the greatest impact. This problem is compounded by the fact that numbers of Armenian gulls have dramatically increased in recent years — likely due to the easily accessible food at landfills as more human settlements have been established. Despite attempts by the brood-hen to deter attackers, most of the ducklings (roughly 60-70%) currently become victims in the few days after they hatch.
Notable conservation program(s) or legal protections:
Conservation actions to ameliorate conditions have already been initiated under our Conservation Leadership Programme project. As a result of raising awareness among local people and involving them in the project, anthropogenic factors (hunting, collecting eggs on the island, disturbance by boats in the feeding area) have been significantly reduced. But competition between species on the nesting grounds and gull predation on the scoter ducklings remain major problems, and we’re now working to find appropriate ways to solve these problems. At the same time, we are working to form a long-term conservation action plan for the successful conservation of the breeding population.
My favorite experience:
It was a rainy, windy cold day when I first got to Lake Tabatskuri and set myself and my telescope up for birdwatching, looking for these rare birds. The rain was hitting me in the face, wetting the telescope and restricting my vision. Everything was against me, but I would not give up and stubbornly looked for a black duck in the raging waves, trying not to miss any part of the lake.
Finally, where I least expected it, in the one bay near to the village, I spotted a small flock of velvet scoter riding on the waves. It was a joy and at the same time a great assault on my emotions, hard to describe in words — like the feeling a father has when he first sees his first child.
I do not know how long I stood there, shell-shocked, before a local passerby found me and took me to her house to bring me back to reality.
What else do we need to understand or do to protect this species?
Lethal or nonlethal control of the gull population would have a positive impact on the scoters’ reproductive success. However, a more detailed study is still needed before making this decision.
Key research:
Paposhvili, Nika. The status of Velvet Scoter Melanitta fusca breeding in Georgia. Wildfowl, [S.l.], p. 183-192, Nov. 2018. ISSN 2052-6458.
A new report puts into focus for the first time the scope of the state’s drinking-water problems and what it will take to fix them.
A familiar scene has returned to California: drought. Two counties are currently under emergency declarations, and the rest of the state could follow.
It was only four years ago when a winter of torrential rain finally wrestled the state out of its last major drought, which had dragged on for five years and left thousands of domestic wells coughing up dust.
That drinking-water crisis made national headlines and helped shine a light on another long-simmering water crisis in California: More than 300 communities have chronically unsafe drinking water containing contaminants that can come with serious health consequences, including cancer. The areas hardest hit are mostly small, agricultural communities in the San Joaquin and Salinas valleys, which are predominantly Latino and are often also places classified by the state as “disadvantaged.” Unsafe water in these communities adds to a list of health and economic burdens made worse by the ongoing pandemic.
California took a step toward addressing the problem back in 2012 when it passed the country’s first state law declaring the human right to water. That was followed by a 2019 bill to help meet that mandate by establishing the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund.
But just how much cash is needed to address the problem?
The answer, we now know, is about $10 billion, according to a new “needs assessment” from state agencies and the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation that provides a detailed look at the scope of the problem and cost of solutions.
“The study is unique in that it’s the first — certainly for California, but I think also for any state — that looks across every source for drinking water purposes that can be quantified,” says Gregory Pierce, the study’s principal investigator and an adjunct assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA. This includes all public water systems regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as domestic wells and “state smalls” with fewer than 15 connections.
“I think this takes us many steps forward to better understanding where we need additional funding and what areas we should be focusing on in terms of proactively addressing at-risk systems,” says Michael Clairborne, directing attorney at the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, which works on water-equity issues in the state. “It also demonstrates that there’s still a real need for additional infrastructure funding for drinking water.”
Understanding the Problem
So how bad is it?
The causes of the state’s drinking water woes are varied — and worrisome. Nitrate, mostly from farms and dairies, is the costliest water contaminant, the study found. Nitrates are especially dangerous for infants, and can cause lethargy, dizziness and even death. Other groundwater contaminants include bacteria from leaking septic systems and uranium, which can cause kidney damage. Several other contaminants have been linked to cancers, including the industrial pollutant chromium-6, the pesticide 1,2,3-trichloropropane, and human-made and naturally-occurring sources of arsenic.
Nitrate pollution from agricultural operations poses a health threat in Calif. Photo: Tara Lohan
Contamination is also widespread.
The study looked at 2,779 public water systems across the state and evaluated their water quality, affordability, accessibility, and technical and financial capacity. It found that 326 public water systems qualified as “human right to water communities” — the ones where water systems are consistently failing to provide affordable, safe drinking water.
For anyone tracking this issue (or living in these communities), that part wasn’t news.
But the report also found that another 617 public water systems are at risk of failing. Virtually every county in the state had at least one system on this list, but those with the highest numbers were in rural areas with large numbers of smaller water systems, including Tulare, Fresno, Monterey and Kern counties.
“What’s really novel is that it also tries to comprehensively assess where our water quality is likely to fail next if nothing is done to prevent it,” says Pierce.
And that should be a big wake-up call.
“This is the next logical step to try to get a handle on the drinking-water crisis in the state,” says Clairborne. “We really have to proactively address these high-risk systems before they fail, provide them the support they need, and potentially consolidate high-risk systems with nearby systems to improve sustainability.”
The research also found that almost one third of domestic wells (78,000) are at high risk of failure, as are half of California’s 1,236 state small systems.
And it highlighted another critical issue, too: money.
“The report reinforced what we unfortunately already know too well — that California is facing a major water affordability crisis,” says Jonathan Nelson, policy director of the Community Water Center. “Nearly 1 in 3 water systems were identified either as having water rates that were higher than what is deemed affordable for families or high levels of water shutoffs.”
Unsafe drinking water comes with an additional economic burden: Many families are also forced to spend more money on bottled water, with some spending as much as 10% of their monthly income on water, according to the Community Water Center.
Solutions
One of the main reasons for persistently unsafe water has to do with scale: Larger water systems have more resources to fund treatment technologies, while small systems often lack the resources to meet water-quality challenges.
A new chromium-6 treatment plant in Willow, Calif. Photo: Florence Low / California Department of Water Resources
Getting those struggling water systems more funding to upgrade their water-treatment systems can help. But those technologies need ongoing maintenance, and often the most cost-effective measure is consolidation. Small water systems or homes on domestic wells can be connected to larger systems that can better treat contaminated water sources.
Historically the state hasn’t been that good at consolidation because many larger water providers didn’t want to take on small, failing systems. But in 2015, Senate Bill 88 granted the California State Water Resources Control Board authority to mandate consolidation for failing water systems. Now another bill, Senate Bill 403, would expand that to include systems at risk of failure.
“That would help to address the needs of those nearly 620 at-risk water systems, as well as state small systems and domestic wells,” says Clairborne. “The state has made some progress in the last few years, with several hundred consolidations since 2015, compared to fewer than 200 for the 40 years prior.”
When it comes to addressing the affordability crisis, Nelson says the state legislature can take action to establish a water rate assistance fund, which is especially important now because “California families are carrying $1 billion in pandemic-caused water debt,” he says.
The report also found that a broader, more regional look at potential solutions could cut costs. In one example outlined in the study, if 85 small water systems in Monterey County are incorporated into a nearby larger system, the cost for each new connection falls from $39,000 to $7,000.
“If we can prioritize those [regional solutions], the cost could come down considerably, and our infrastructure would be much more integrated,” says Pierce.
Finding the Money
Bringing costs down will be key, as the price tag for implementing interim and long-term solutions for water systems and domestic wells that need assistance over the next five years is upwards of $10 billion. Some efforts are already underway to address paying for that, with allocations from the state and contributions from local governments, but that still leaves an estimated $4.6 billion shortfall, according to the report.
“Unless addressed, this funding gap will perpetuate the divide between those who have safe water in California and those who don’t,” says Nelson.
More money is needed from either the federal or state government, says Pierce. And even though the price tag seems steep, he says, the costs of not fixing the problems will be higher in the long run and bring a lot more suffering to communities.
Some California residents rely on expensive bottled water because their tap water is unsafe. Photo: Tara Lohan
“Unsafe water can not only cause physical health impacts, it can also cause a lot of direct affordability impacts and mental health stressors on people,” says Pierce. “One way or the other society pays for this and it’s better to invest up front — from a human right and equity standpoint, and also from an economic one.”
One recent bright spot is the potential for more spending at the national level, with the Biden administration’s current discussions around a major infrastructure bill in Congress.
That could represent a paradigm change. “The federal government’s role in funding drinking water infrastructure has dropped dramatically since the 1970s compared to other types of infrastructure,” says Pierce.
Even if such investments do come from Washington, though, they won’t solve all of California’s water problems.
“I hope it can be a substantial amount of what we need, but I would be very surprised to see it meet the whole need,” he says. “I think that much of what would be allotted to California would likely go to larger systems for broader infrastructure investments and drought-related resilience.”
Additionally, a lot of the bill’s equity focus is on lead. “Which I don’t disagree with, but California doesn’t have nearly as big of a lead problem in drinking water as many other states,” he adds.
The fact that California has already done the work to understand its drinking-water problems, identify solutions and tally the costs can make the process of getting federal dollars easier — and that could also help inspire other states to better quantify their water needs.
“I do think you’ll see more states do this, but it was a considerable effort: The water board basically created a new unit with multiple staff to do this work,” says Pierce. “But most of the data was the water board’s own, so I think a lot of this could be done by other states without too much effort, if they can learn from what was done here and maybe even enhance that.”
Money to shore up water systems, improve affordability and ensure clean water for all residents also comes with a ripple effect of benefits.
“Investments in water projects can help create drought and climate resiliency,” says Nelson. “And water investments can be an engine of equitable economic growth, creating good jobs in communities that need them. We have a tremendous opportunity to both address this public health crisis and help our economy recover at the same time.”
The pressures of climate change and human land use could lead to the disappearance of unique biodiversity and vital ecological services.
On a recent, pre-pandemic journey to the High Andes of Colombia, I found myself surrounded by one of the region’s emblematic species, the flowering shrubs known locally as frailejones or “big monks.” These giant plants, relatives of sunflowers from the Espeletia genus, mesmerized me, their yellow buds and silvery hairs glistening in the intense, ephemeral sunlight.
Looking out over the vast, rolling landscape, I wondered how such a stunning, incomparable ecosystem can be taken for granted.
I’d accompanied National University of Colombia agricultural scientist Jairo Cuervo, that day, to Sumapaz — about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Bogotá — to better understand the impacts of an expanding agricultural frontier on rich páramo soils.
Sumapaz is the world’s largest páramo — a type of high-altitude moorland ecosystem found in the South and Central American neotropics that functions as a sort of sponge, efficiently absorbing and storing rainwater and moisture into its vegetation and rich soils. The water is then released slowly and steadily, which is particularly important in dry seasons. Sumapaz and the nearby Chingaza páramo, for example, provide most of the water for the entire Bogotá savanna.
Páramos, experts say, may also serve as a sort of buffer against climate-change-induced recession of tropical mountain glaciers and extended droughts — if we can protect them.
Cuervo pointed to a potato farm and some grazing cows in the distance, where they’d taken over from the native vegetation. “Despite the páramo providing us with water to live, they are largely forgotten, neglected and at terrible risk,” he says.
Agriculture is just one of many interconnected pressures threatening these unique ecosystems and the people and wildlife who depend on them.
High Risk in the High Andes
In an exquisitely diverse country, no ecosystem is as unique and directly integrated into the health and well-being of Colombian society as the High Andean páramo.
Some of Colombia and Ecuador’s major rivers also rise in the páramos, and large cities such as Bogotá, Medellin and Cali in Colombia and Quito in Ecuador are almost completely dependent on them for their water supplies. Tens of millions of people in the region rely on the páramo ecosystem for drinking water and a range of agricultural and industrial activities — including an estimated 70% to 80% of the Colombian populace.
Coconucos Páramo. Cauca, Colombia. Photo by D.H. Rasolt.
These “water towers,” as they’re commonly known, are also one of the world’s most rapidly evolving ecosystems.
“Páramos are a hotspot within a global hotspot, as they’re located mostly within the threatened tropical Andes,” says Santiago Madriñan, a botanist from the Universidad de los Andes and an expert on páramos.
In an influential 2013 study, Madriñan and his team made the claim that páramos are the planet’s coolest and fastest evolving biodiversity hotspots, a conclusion established through genetic analysis of páramo plant species and comparison to other rapidly evolving biodiversity hotspots, such as the Mediterranean Basin, the Hawaiian Archipelago and the California Floristic Region. Some analogous processes being uncovered in parts of the Tibetan Plateau may give the páramos competition to this “hotspot of all hotspots” claim, but even so the páramos are undoubtedly special.
“The páramo, like the famed Galápagos Islands, are like a laboratory for studying the process of evolution,” Madriñan says. “We can learn how these species adapted to changing climatic conditions over a relatively short period of geological time. The páramo only came into existence within the last 2 to 3 million years, at which time uplift of the Northern Andes mountains rose above the tree line.”
For extended periods, especially during past glacial periods, páramo ecosystems remained more connected and evolved more uniformly at lower altitudes within mountain valleys due to a lower tree line. Since then, they’ve shrunk dramatically, while their evolutionary potential has practically exploded.
“The ensuing warmer epochs such as our present Holocene disconnected and isolated páramo complexes, creating ‘sky islands’ with very high species diversification and endemism,” explains Madriñan. “Most of the more than 3,000 plant species so-far discovered are highly specialized to the extreme conditions of the páramo.” These conditions include powerful ultraviolet radiation, drastic day-night temperature swings and abrupt changes in weather.
And páramos are not only rich in plant life. They contain hundreds of endemic and threatened bird, reptile, amphibian, insect and mammal species, including the majestic Andean condor (Vultur gryphus) and spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus).
Rising Temperatures Threaten Páramos
While páramos serve as a buffer against climate change and water scarcity, they’re threatened by rapidly rising temperatures themselves — as are the plants and animals that live there.
The high altitude, isolation and specialization of many species limits their so-called “adaptive capacity” and ability to migrate upwards.
“There is no time or space to adapt to present trends of rising temperatures for many of the páramo plant species, including the Espeletias,” says Madriñon, who co-authored a recent study that showed Espeletias’ vulnerability to climate change. “They will be pushed out of existence.”
Rising temperatures in the páramo are also bringing some unwelcome guests.
“With climate change, insects often migrate upwards much faster than other species,” says Thomas Walschburger, a conservation biologist and science coordinator for TNC-Colombia. “There are some species arriving in the páramo ecosystem, such as beetles, caterpillars and other potential pests, that can have an unwanted impact, including on the frailejones. It’s unknown if the frailejones will have the time and ability to adapt to their presence.”
Climate change may also bring increased risk of fires within the páramos. Research has shown that fires in the páramo are mostly of human origin, sparked to clear vegetation and create open grassland. The higher temperatures and potentially drier conditions under climate change will make these fires both easier to start and harder to control. In February 2020 a massive fire burned at least 11 square miles (30 square km) in Sumapaz. The flames were bad enough to mobilize Colombia’s Disaster Risk Management Agency and cause air-pollution alerts in nearby Bogotá.
This isn’t just a local or regional problem. The waterlogged páramo soils are rich in organic matter and extremely dense in carbon, on the range of 0.2 – 1.4 tons per hectare, depending on depth. Scientists say the loss of the páramos’ carbon storage capacity will likely lead to a net-release of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change.
Encroaching Mining and Agriculture
Other threats continue to chip away at páramo ecosystems.
Legal loopholes are at the center of ongoing conflicts regarding hundreds of mining concessions granted within and around the páramos in Colombia. The ecosystems are supposed to be protected by law from such extractive activities, but that has done little to deter the ambitions of shortsighted corporations looking to exploit their mineral wealth.
Nowhere has this battle been more contentious than Minesa’s massive gold-mining concession within and around the Santurbán páramo, in Colombia’s Santander department.
Lagunas Negras, Santurbán páramo circa 12,000 feet (3,800 meters). Santander, Colombia. Photo by D.H. Rasolt
In a 2018 letter for Science, Madriñan and 13 other highly regarded researchers from around the world emphasized that the protection of biodiverse páramos and Andean forests has been largely neglected in Colombia. They wrote:
“We urge environmental authorities to take the necessary action to stop the Santurbán [Minesa] goldmining project and instead promote the active preservation and restoration of the páramos and Andean forests, particularly in this biologically important area of the country.”
Today the decades-long struggle over Santurbán continues, thanks to strong local and national resistance fortified by researchers who enforce the socioecological importance of páramos.
Meanwhile the rapidly expanding high-Andean agricultural frontier, particularly for cow pastures and potato farming, poses perhaps the most tangible and immediate threat to páramos. Cow grazing requires large swaths of grassland and ruins páramo soil quality, while potato farmers drain bogs and often intensively deploy agrochemicals.
Cows grazing in the subpáramo, 10,000 feet (3,100 meters), in Cauca, Colombia. Photo by D.H. Rasolt
“With cattle, their weight compacts this naturally sponge-like soil, so if cattle grazing becomes even more extensive in the páramos, it could lead to the loss of the páramos’ vital function of efficient water absorption and slow release,” explained Jairo Cuervo while we were in the Sumapaz páramo. “There would also be increased runoff, soil erosion and flood risk, accompanied by decreased water quality that is exacerbated by agrochemical use for expanding potato cultivations in the páramos and subpáramos.”
The Challenge of Delimiting and Protecting the Páramo
The success of conservation efforts and attempts to limit the expansion of mining and agriculture into páramos will depend greatly on one critical element: maps.
But delimiting individual páramos and the entire global area of páramo, which exist at altitudes between the tree line and the snow line, is no easy task.
A widely cited statistic for the global páramo area estimates them at 13,500 square miles (35,000 square km), and within this estimate, more than half of the páramo area (7,300 square miles, or 19,000 square km) is within Colombia’s delimited páramo complexes. But that may leave a lot of these ecosystems unrecognized and unprotected.
“The most current accepted area of páramo in Colombia is around 3 million hectares [11,500 square miles],” said Brigitte Baptiste, a Colombian biologist and the former director of the Humboldt Institute, the entity responsible for delimiting Colombia’s páramos.
The remaining páramo is found in parts of Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Costa Rica.
What holds back efforts to draw more conclusive lines around the páramos? “I think the top challenges for the delimitation are not technical but social,” says Baptiste. “There are different ways of dealing with physical and biological issues by local people as well as by institutions and at other scales. Therefore it’s quite difficult to get an agreement about where to draw the line, and to get a science policy process in place which allows us to negotiate this definition.”
Regardless of the challenges, it is critical that the páramos’ limits be properly defined if they’re to be conserved. “The effects of páramo delimitation are clear: no mining, no agriculture, within the accepted legal area of páramo,” says Baptiste.
The Need for Socio-Ecological Balance
There are clearly conflicting interests among farming communities living within or around the páramo, mining companies looking to exploit the region, researchers enthralled by the unique ecosystem, and the multitude downstream who depend on páramos for water.
It wasn’t always this out of balance between humans and the páramo.
Indigenous peoples such as the Muisca lived in harmony with and worshipped the páramo for thousands of years, before their lands were stolen and cultures destroyed. Today some resilient Indigenous peoples remain and continue to protect the vital sacred páramo.
“The páramo is the originator of life and connects us to our ancestors. It should never be mined, burned, grazed or cultivated, as many shortsighted people do today,” Nasa leader Maria Pito told me in November 2019 from within the Pisxnu Páramo in Cauca, Colombia.
Pisxnu Páramo. Cauca, Colombia. Photo by D.H. Rasolt.
Science is just starting to catch up with holistic traditional knowledge by providing data-driven socio-ecological reasons for protecting these ecosystems. For example, integrated modeling of the páramos’ complex and still largely unknown hydrological processes by the Stockholm Environmental Institute in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru has uncovered some important trends. It’s a difficult task, as researcher Cristo Pérez explained to me: “To properly model the páramos’ hydrology, one must account for the dynamic interplay between large amounts of groundwater, surface water, precipitation and the many rivers born in the páramos.”
But that complex hydrology is already suffering, and the problems are expected to get worse. In a 2016 SEI study of Peru’s Quiroz-Chipillico watershed, the authors concluded: “As expected, the model showed that rising temperatures and reduced precipitation would affect water availability. But land use change — specifically, the conversion of páramo to new uses and degradation of the páramo — had an even greater effect.” These projections further enforce that water availability will decrease not just for local communities and biodiversity, but for millions of people and ecosystems downstream.
The Time for Coordinated Action
The experts I spoke with all agreed that the interconnected pressures of climate change and human land use pose an existential threat to the páramos. Climate change will both directly affect specialized páramo species and will make the clearing of their vegetation by fire more common and efficient. As fires clear more land, cow pastures and potato cultivations will reach progressively higher altitudes within the páramos unless there are stronger efforts to limit their expansion. This, in turn, will further degrade soils and affect species’ ability to adapt and migrate.
Then there’s the question of water. Some research suggests that upward-migrating Andean forests may help to fill part of the dynamic hydrological function left by the disappearing páramos, but not if those lands are simply cleared for human activities.
“Maybe some of the water regulation can be made by High Andean forest, but we don’t know for sure as there would be changes to the structure and composition of water-retaining páramo soils,” says Walschburger. “Regardless, the impacts on biodiversity will be terrible if the páramo disappears.”
My own time in the páramos working with Indigenous peoples and a diverse spectrum of researchers has often given me the opportunity to venture alone to absorb the tranquility, complexity and breathtaking biodiversity of this neglected high-altitude paradise. These experiences have instilled in me that the páramos are an irreplaceable ecosystem in need of the highest levels of local, regional and global protection.
Whether they’re a vital source of water for tens of millions of people, megadiverse “sky islands” that can serve as a laboratory for the study of endemic species and evolutionary biology, buffers against climate change, or a sacred and awe-inspiring source of biocultural heritage, their loss would be an irreparable tragedy for both the region and the planet.
As ecologists who study forestrestoration, we know that trees store carbon, provide habitat for animals and plants, prevent erosion and create shade in cities. But as we have explained elsewhere in detail, planting trees is not a silver bullet for solving complex environmental and social problems. And for trees to produce benefits, they need to be planted correctly – which often is not the case.
Planting trees can have both positive and negative effects, depending on how projects are planned and managed and where they are done. Vanessa Sontag, modified from Holl and Brancalion 2020., CC BY-ND
Planting fast-growing, nonnative trees in arid areas may also reduce water supplies. And some top-down tree-planting programs implemented by international organizations or national governments displace farmers and lead them to clear forests elsewhere.
Clearcut forest. Photo: Sam Beebe (CC BY 2.0)
Large-scale tree-planting initiatives have failed in locations from Sri Lanka to Turkey to Canada. In some places, the tree species were not well suited to local soil and climate conditions. Elsewhere, the trees were not watered or fertilized. In some cases local people removed trees that were planted on their land without permission. And when trees die or are cut down, any carbon they have taken up returns to the atmosphere, negating benefits from planting them.
To achieve benefits from tree-planting, the trees need to grow for a decade or more. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that reforested areas are often recleared within a decade or two. We recommend that tree-growing efforts set targets for the area of forest restored after 10, 20 or 50 years, rather than focusing on numbers of seedlings planted.
And it may not even be necessary to actively plant trees. For example, much of the eastern U.S. was logged in the 18th and 19th centuries. But for the past century, where nature has been left to take its course, large areas of forests have regrown without people planting trees.
Helping Tree-Growing Campaigns Succeed
Tree-growing is expected to receive unprecedented financial, political and societal support in the coming years as part of the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and ambitious initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge and World Economic Forum 1t.org campaign to conserve, restore and grow 1 trillion trees. It would be an enormous waste to squander this unique opportunity.
Protecting existing forests often requires providing alternative income for people who maintain trees on their land rather than logging them or growing crops. It also is important to strengthen enforcement of protected areas, and to promote supply chains for timber and agricultural products that do not involve forest-clearing.
Include nearby communities in tree-growing projects. International organizations and national governments fund many tree-growing projects, but their goals may be quite different from those of local residents who are actually growing the trees on their land. Study after study has shown that involving local farmers and communities in the process, from planning through monitoring, is key to tree-growing success.
Start with careful planning. Which species are most likely to grow well given local site conditions? Which species will best achieve the project’s goals? And who will take care of the trees after they are planted?
It is important to plant in areas where trees have grown historically, and to consider whether future climatic conditions are likely to support trees. Planting in areas that are less productive for agriculture reduces the risk that the land will be recleared or existing forests will be cut down to compensate for lost productive areas.
Plan for the long term. Most tree seedlings need care to survive and grow. This may include multi-year commitments to water, fertilize, weed and protect them from grazing or fire and monitor whether the venture achieves its goals.
We encourage people who support tree-growing efforts to ask where the money is going – to the organization’s managers, or to landowners who are actually growing the trees? Who is monitoring the effort and how long will they track it?
Growing trees can help solve some of the most pressing challenges of our time. But it is important to understand that planting seedlings is just the first step.
We’ve made a lot of strides in whale conservation, but climate change, plastic pollution and other dangers have emerged.
Humans and whales have a complex relationship.
We’ve hunted whales for food for centuries, celebrated them in our art and culture, admired their familial relationships and songs, and even worshipped them as gods.
But at the same time, we’ve overhunted multiple whale species to the brink of extinction, overfished their prey, poisoned their bodies and habitats, and scarred or killed them with our oceanic vessels.
While we’ve made great strides on many of those fronts, there’s still a lot to do and many reasons to worry. Here are some of them, followed by an archive of related stories from The Revelator:
1. We’re Still Discovering What’s Out There — and What’s Not
You’d think a large species like a whale would be easy to find.
Think again.
Several new cetacean species have been discovered in the past few years, most recently the rarely seen Rice’s whale in the Gulf of Mexico. Previously thought to be a subspecies of the Bryde’s whale, the newly recognized species was identified just in time. Scientists estimate that fewer than 100 Rice’s whales remain — perhaps as few as 60 — and say the species is critically endangered.
Similarly, it’s often hard to realize what we’re losing in the vast expanses of the ocean. In part that’s because whales are hard to count — especially dead ones. While many whale carcasses wash up on beaches, most sink to the bottom of the ocean or are consumed by scavengers. That presents a challenge to understanding how many whales are being killed or, if we do find a body, how they died. This has important conservation implications. For example, recent research suggests we’re undercounting the deaths of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales by 64% — and that’s one of the world’s most heavily monitored whale species, which all too often die after being struck by shipping vessels.
North Atlantic right whales. Photo: Sea to Shore Alliance/NOAA, under NOAA permit #15488
Speaking of which…
2. Ships vs. Whales
Globalization means more and more gigantic shipping vessels traversing the globe every day, where they can cross into whale feeding grounds or through migratory routes.
And when a ship strikes a whale, it’s not the ship that loses.
Photo: Kees Torn (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Most recently, necropsies revealed that at least two gray whales found dead near San Francisco Bay had been injured by ships, while an injured humpback whale was observed near Vancouver. Similar stories play out regularly around the globe.
And it’s not just big ships. Fishing vessels of all sizes pose threats, either directly or through lost fishing gear. This April a research drone captured footage of a baby gray whale entangled in fishing line, dragging a buoy behind it.
3. Climate Change Comes Calling
Warming oceans pose multiple threats to whales, some of which relate once again to the shipping industry. In recent years the industry has rushed to newly ice-free waters in the Arctic, bringing with them noise, pollution and other harmful changes.
Additional threats from climate change continue to emerge, and exactly what’s happening isn’t always clear. One recent study found that a population of bowhead whales failed to make its annual autumn migration away from solid ice in the Bering Sea, but the reason remains undiscovered. One theory is that warming waters could have resulted in an increase in their food supply. Another theory suggests changing temperatures could have allowed more killer whales to block the bowheads’ migration.
Similarly, climate change has resulted in decreased herring abundance in Quebec’s Gulf of St. Lawrence, and this loss of food has resulted in fewer humpback whale pregnancies coming to term.
Meanwhile, there’s a big reason to protect whales from climate change: their very existence helps protect us from climate change. Their feces help feed phytoplankton, which photosynthesize and absorb carbon dioxide before dying, sinking to the bottom of the ocean and sequestering that world-changing greenhouse gas. Whale bodies, similarly, also store an enormous amount of carbon that can be sequestered when they die.
4. Plastic: A Painful Threat
When whales accidentally consume plastic waste that they find floating in the ocean, the results can be deadly — either immediately or over time.
All too often, investigations into the cause of whale deaths find plastic to blame. One of the most recent examples occurred in Bangladesh, where two dead whales washed up near a resort town in April. “Primarily we think the two have died from consuming plastic and polluted objects,” Jahirul Islam, executive director of Marine Life Alliance, told AFP.
And remember that new whale species that was just discovered? One of the reasons we know the species exists is because a carcass washed up near the Florida Everglades in 2019. Scientists found that it was killed by a tiny, 2.5-inch piece of jagged plastic that lodged in its stomach and caused internal bleeding and necrosis.
Smaller plastic particles may also have health implications for whales in even the most remote locations. A study published in 2020 found that seven beluga whales harvested by Inuvialuit hunters all had plastic fibers and fragments in their digestive systems. All the particles were what’s considered microplastic, smaller than 5 millimeters in size. These may not be immediately fatal, but nearly half of the particles contained chemicals that could cause potential health problems, much like they could in humans. The risks whales may face from microplastics remains a field of active scientific investigation, with hundreds of papers published in just the past year.
A team of specially trained NOAA rescuers successfully free a humpback whale from a life-threatening tangle of fishing gear off the Kona Coast of Hawaii. Photo Credit: R. Finn/NOAA MMHSRP permit #932-1905
Larger plastic waste, such as lost or discarded fishing lines and nets, poses an even bigger threat. “Imagine walking around with weights tied to your ankles,” researcher Greg Merrill recently wrote in New Security Beat. “Whales struggle to get untangled from large nets and they end up dragging this weight along with them, expending extra energy they need to migrate and raise their young. An increasingly common tragedy is when whales become so overburdened by the weight of the plastic debris they cannot surface to breathe and drown.”
5. Public Perception Still Lags
People generally love whales and support their conservation, but how much do they really know about whales and the threats the face?
Not much, it turns out.
A recent scientific survey found that the majority of people cared about legislation to protect whales, but at the same time they didn’t know much about various whale or cetacean species. The researchers found that people thought common species such as bottlenose dolphins needed the most protection, didn’t know about some of the most endangered species such as the vaquita, and believed more countries actively engaged in whaling than really do today.
Perhaps most strikingly, the survey presented people with the names of several fictional whale species (like the “pygmy short-finned whale”), which respondents said they believed needed protection more than real at-risk species.
This might not seem like a huge problem at first, but the future of whale conservation may rely once again upon grassroots efforts from caring citizens. As the researchers concluded, “A lack of awareness of the conservation status of whales and dolphins and continued whaling activities suggests that greater outreach to the public about the conservation status of whale and dolphin species is needed.”
Let’s build that public awareness: Here’s a selection of additional articles about the threats that whales and other cetaceans face — and what’s being done to protect them.
A new book reveals the harrowing attempts made to save imperiled plants and wildlife from Australia’s massive wildfires last year, including a daring scheme to protect ancient Wollemi pines.
As Christmas approached in 2019, David Crust, a director of park operations with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, watched with trepidation as multiple fires crept their way across the vastness of Wollemi National Park, northwest of Sydney, Australia.
In fact, fires were then ablaze right across the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, which Crust is responsible for. His entire team of 160 people battled to contain them and protect the townships they threatened.
As the disaster intensified, the fire closed in on the secret location of a tiny population of critically endangered trees; prehistoric plants so precious that just a handful of people are privy to their exact whereabouts.
The Wollemi pine, a conifer that grows to 40 meters [131 feet] and has unusually arranged, dark green foliage and bubbly bark, once flourished across the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, providing shade and sustenance for the dinosaurs.
But over the eons, the range of this “living fossil” has contracted until just 100 or so mature trees remain, spread over four small groves in Wollemi National Park. The majority are wedged into one sheltered gully, deep in the wilderness. Here, the oldest and largest of the pines, dubbed King Billy, is thought to be around 1,000 years old.
***
Prior to September 1994, this kind of araucaria pine (related to Norfolk pines, hoop pines and monkey puzzle trees) was only known from fossils. That was until NPWS field officer David Noble was on a canyoning trip exploring parts of the wilderness perhaps never infiltrated by humans. After abseiling into one uncharted canyon he stumbled across something puzzling.
“At the time, it was just another weekend canyon trip into the Wollemi wilderness. We were looking for new canyons, abseiling down waterfalls to places where no one had been,” Noble recounted in 2017. “We had completed the descent and sat down for lunch when I noticed a tree that I hadn’t seen before. Without thinking too much, I collected a small leaf sample and put it in my backpack.”
Wollemi pine fossil. Photo: Royal Botanical Garden Sydney, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
He couldn’t match the leaves to anything he knew, so later that week took the sample to Wyn Jones, a NPWS naturalist. Jones returned to the site with Noble, and quickly realized its significance. It was one of the greatest botanical discoveries of the century.
When Jones and Jan Allen, a botanist at the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, were involved in describing the species in 1995, they named it Wollemia nobilis in honor of Noble.
The discovery of the Wollemi pine as a living plant “was an incredibly significant botanical find,” says Crust. With a heritage spanning 200 million years, some said it was akin to having found a family of dinosaurs still surviving in one of the dark crevices of our planet.
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This is why Crust was so concerned as fires engulfed much of Wollemi National Park in December. While fire has threatened the pines before, the lack of moisture here at the peak of the drought was like nothing on record.
“Right at the start of the season, we were concerned … there was the significant potential for large and intense fires,” he says. “We were watching the fires across the park very, very closely … and their behavior was erratic because of the incredibly dry conditions.”
Having had the “privilege” of helping manage the species since 1996, soon after its discovery, Crust wasn’t going to allow it to be lost without a fight.
In early to mid-December, about two weeks out from when the fire finally roared up to the lip of the canyon, it became clear Crust and his team needed to throw into action a previously-thought-out-but- never-implemented plan to save the trees, should the worst ever occur.
This extraordinary operation involved dropping fire retardant from air tankers and helicoptering in specialist firefighters each day, who were winched down into the canyon. From there, they pumped water into an irrigation system to increase the level of moisture in the environment. This daring plan was like nothing ever attempted before in the name of conservation.
But would it be enough to save trees? The Wollemi pine had survived the demise of the dinosaurs, the break-up of the supercontinents and a constantly shifting climate, but now its fate was in the hands of one small crew of dedicated NPWS remote area firefighters.
Wollemi pines found in Australia are critically endangered. Photo: Royal Botanical Garden Sydney, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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On the night the blaze finally swept the grove, the atmosphere was tense in the fire operation control room, where Crust and his team watched its progress on the remote cameras. But so much smoke engulfed the grove that it was impossible to see if they had succeeded in saving the trees.
As dawn broke the next day, NPWS team member Steve Cathcart headed to the site in a helicopter. He was meant to remain in the air, directing the bombardment of water, but Cathcart could see fires burning below. A gum tree had fallen from the cliff above and was ablaze in the center of the grove.
Breaking the rules, he winched down solo into the grove, where he kicked burning coals away from the base of the Wollemi pines and jerry-rigged melted irrigation pipes so he could pump water up to douse the blaze.
“Given the importance of each and every one of those trees, I knew what I had to do,” Cathcart recounted to The Australian newspaper. “I just happened to be there at that time … I knew that we probably wouldn’t get another opportunity to organize a team [to go down] and that the smoke would probably close in. It had to be me.”
As he was flying out, another helicopter flew in to water-bucket the blaze. The trees had been saved.
Fire had scorched trunks and killed many smaller, juvenile trees, but the canopy of the mature pines escaped unscathed. If it had burnt, the results would have been catastrophic, Crust tells me.
Seen from above, the gorge containing the Wollemi pines was a welcome streak of green amid endless ridges of charred sclerophyll forest. When news of the pines’ survival and the effort to save them hit the press a few weeks later, jubilation broke out at another rare good news story amid all the horror of the past few months.
“We were relieved,” says Crust. “But, we’re still not sure exactly what the impacts will be. The trees have never been impacted by fire in this way since their discovery.”
Most of the mature trees already had some evidence of fire scarring on their bark when they were discovered, suggesting they have some tolerance to bushfires, but it may be many years before the longer-term effects of the 2019 fires on mortality can be determined.
For now, the pines are safe — the entire landscape around them has burned, so there won’t be any significant threat from fires for four or five years. But the challenge will come after that and Crust and his team must plan for managing the threat of fire here into the future.
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