How to Save Saltwater Wetlands From Rising Seas

The Biden administration has an opportunity — and a responsibility — to help save the coastal ecosystems that protect us.

America’s coastal saltwater wetlands are on a course toward functional extinction in the coming decades. Their demise will come at the hands of steadily accelerating sea-level rise and relentless coastal development. As these wetlands disappear, they will take with them habitat, storm buffering and carbon sequestration benefits of tremendous value.

Fortunately, there is still time to change course. A determined and coordinated effort by local, state and federal governments — led by the Biden administration — could dramatically increase the number of saltwater wetlands that survive and go a long way to maintaining their ecological and societal benefits into the future.

Saltwater Wetlands: To Know Them Is to Love Them

The most recent estimate of the extent of saltwater wetlands along the American coast, published in 2009, found some 6.4 million acres with about half occurring along the Gulf of Mexico. This is a mere remnant of their historic extent and a decline of some 95,000 acres from the previous assessment in 2004, largely in the Gulf of Mexico. Ominously, the rate of loss increased by 35% from the prior five-year reporting period.

The remaining saltwater wetlands still provide an impressive array of ecological services and benefits to society. Often termed “the most productive ecosystems on Earth” they are nursery grounds for fisheries and provide habitat for birds, mammals and other wildlife.

Wetlands also protect communities from storm surges and flooding. Along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts the protective value of wetlands is estimated to be about $1.8 million per square kilometer annually. On top of all that, saltwater wetlands help fight global warming by storing carbon at a rate that is about two to four times greater than that observed in mature tropical forests.

The Saltwater Wetland Extinction Scenario

Rising sea level and steady coastal urbanization pose an existential threat to saltwater wetlands.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that sea level along much of the American coast is likely to rise by 2 to 4 feet, and may rise by as much as 8 feet, by 2100. And seas will continue to rise in the centuries to come, with an “intermediate” estimate of more than 9 feet by 2200.

scientists install device in wetland — NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey installs a device to provide data to model the fate of a Chesapeake Bay marsh in the face of rising water levels. Photo: National Ocean Service Image Gallery

The rising seas will eventually drown all the saltwater wetlands that now exist, converting them to open water. Some wetlands will survive in place for a time if seas rise slowly enough. But the rate of sea-level rise is accelerating rapidly and other factors, such as land subsidence, will shift the balance in favor of rising seas in the years ahead.

For most saltwater wetlands, survival will require landward migration. This is possible where geography does not present obstacles, such as steep slopes, and where human development has not already staked a claim. There is no national assessment of the feasibility of saltwater wetland migration, but several studies of smaller geographic areas present a bleak picture.

On the Pacific coast, some 83% of wetlands are projected to become open water by 2110 and “migration of most wetlands was constrained by coastal development or steep topography,” according to a 2018 study in Science Advances. Along the Gulf of Mexico, estimated conversion of wetlands to open water varies for each state, with rates from 24 to 37% by 2060.

The outlook for saltwater wetland survival darkens further when one considers new coastal development occupying dry land that might otherwise become a new wetland. Population in the 100-year coastal floodplain is expected to almost double by 2060, significantly expanding the coastal development footprint.

And the rising sea levels that drive wetlands inland will also prompt people to defend the land they are on, often with seawalls, bulkheads or levees. Some 14% of the coast is already armored by this infrastructure and, if the current rate of armoring continues, that percentage is expected to double by 2100.

Finally, wetlands that are able to migrate will need years to provide the same degree of ecosystem services they did originally. A study of over 600 restored wetlands worldwide found that biological structure and biogeochemical functioning “remained on average 26% and 23% lower, respectively, than in reference sites” even a century after restoration, which means that even the wetlands to do survive won’t provide the same benefits.

Envisioning a Strategy for Saving Saltwater Wetlands

What can be done to help saltwater wetlands survive the one-two punch of a changing climate and coastal development?

A critical step is to admit we have a problem and agree that we need a national response strategy. A national strategy should define a goal for saltwater wetlands protection (e.g., a net increase in acreage nationally and by state) and charge a federal agency (e.g., NOAA) with leading the effort.

The heart of a new strategy needs to be carefully planned for landward migration of saltwater wetlands and deployment of new authority and resources toward that end. This key objective is widely supported in the academic literature and the work to address it must engage local, state and federal agencies.

Since it’s been more than a decade since the last published assessment of the United States’ coastal wetlands, existing saltwater wetlands need to be mapped anew. Then their varying rates of natural change should be assessed and the feasibility of landward migration evaluated. Evaluation of migration should include obstacles, such as natural features, and both existing and likely future development. Coastal places that are not wetlands today but are well suited to become wetlands as sea level rises, should be identified. All this information should be used to develop place-specific plans to protect and preserve the land that wetlands will need to migrate inland on a priority basis.

While that work is going on, we’ll also need to focus on dampening the rate of population growth right along the coast. This will be essential to leave space for successful landward migration of saltwater wetlands. State and local government have diverse tools, including land-use plans and regulations, to apply to this challenge, but the federal government needs to help. For example, FEMA should stop issuing federal flood insurance for new development in coastal floodplains.

Another critical tool is expanded authority to restrict new coastal armoring projects that would prevent landward migration of saltwater wetlands. Eight states have implemented total or partial bans on coastal armoring, but efficacy and enforcement vary. All states should adopt and enforce such bans. These projects also require permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and existing requirements should be revised to give stronger preference for “living shorelines” that replace traditional structures with designs using biological and natural materials.

Workers developing living shoreline — Creating a “living shoreline” in the Delaware estuary. Photo: Danielle Kreeger (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In some places, regulation will not be enough and acquisition of real estate will be necessary. Some states have land-acquisition programs that consider sea-level rise. For example, Maryland identifies “coastal lands with the highest potential to aid in adaptation if sea level rises a meter per century” and uses the assessment in making conservation investments. People in the San Francisco Bay area voted for Measure AA to provide local funds for wetlands protection in the face of sea-level rise. These programs and some others are a foothold but more states need to follow this example.

Federal agencies need to support these state initiatives by expanding modest existing federal programs that protect coastal wetlands to include purchasing land for prospective wetlands and removing buildings and other structures where needed.

Saving saltwater wetlands will require that Congress, federal agencies, states and local governments collaborate to agree on the strategy and then approve the new tools and funding needed to carry it forward. This will require years of effort, but the start of a new Congress and a new administration is an auspicious time to begin this important work.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Origin Stories: Conservation in Nepal and Namibia

Looking at the dramatic effects two people had in these countries decades ago reminds us that individuals and communities can make a difference for conservation.

On most levels, Nepal and Namibia appear to have very little in common. Nepal is a landlocked Himalayan nation with an abundant supply of forests and water, while Namibia is a desert country about six times larger, with a long coastline on the Atlantic Ocean. People in Nepal rely primarily on subsistence agriculture and forests for their livelihoods, while people in Namibia mostly rely on grazing lands and livestock. Nepal was never colonized and remained closed to most outsiders until 1951. Namibia was colonized in 1884 by Germany, then South Africa, only gaining independence in 1990. Nepal, according to the United Nations, has one of the densest human populations in the world at 203 people/sq km, while Namibia has just 3.1 people/sq km, making it the second least dense country in the world, after Mongolia.

But if you look a bit closer, you’ll find the two countries do have something in common. While both were in desperate need of conservation efforts just a few decades ago, with experts making dire projections about the decimation of local wildlife and natural resources, now they’re conservation success stories because both countries effectively incorporated community-based approaches into their national biodiversity strategies. Today nearly 40% of Nepal’s forests are managed by communities, and 20% of Namibia is protected in community wildlife conservancies.

As I found in my time in both countries, one person working with local communities set the process in motion.

Dire Circumstances Lead to Change

The origin story of community forestry in Nepal began when forester Tej Bahadur Singh Mahat was transferred to Sindhupulchowk District in 1973 to be the district forest officer.

Upon his arrival, he came across a file left by his predecessor detailing ongoing issues, included a letter from a village in the district. It said they weren’t willing to cooperate with the forest officer any longer, because a previous officer had allowed forest they relied on for fuelwood and fodder to be cut for timber and sold in Kathmandu.

Mahat went to visit them and made a plan with Nil Prasad Bhandari, the village chairperson: If the community took on the responsibility of managing the forest, he would not allow any outsiders to use it.

It worked — and influenced others. Soon after, the Australian Forestry Project, which had come to the area to start a new venture, saw the success of the work the community and Mahat were doing and built its program based on the model they’d adopted.

Community forest — Entry to community forest near Chitwan National Park. Photo: Teri Allendorf

In Namibia the idea for community involvement came in 1983, when Garth Owen-Smith, the founder of the Namibia Wildlife Trust (now called the Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation), visited with local leaders in Kaokoland, in the northwest. He knew the leaders well, having worked there for many years. He realized that poaching was getting worse and that the government and NGOs didn’t have the resources to patrol such vast areas.

Owen-Smith asked Joseph Kagombe, a local leader, for help. Together they came up with a plan that began with choosing respected men in the community to be community game guards, who would monitor both wildlife and human activities and conduct conservation extension work in their communities.

These were just the beginnings, but the seeds they planted decades ago have grown and expanded.

Today Nepal is home to more than 22,000 community forestry groups, consisting of members from over half of the households in Nepal. The area under community control has tripled in the past two decades, with local communities managing about one-third of the country’s forests. Forest degradation and loss have declined significantly and in some places reversed. Between 1992 and 2016, forest cover increased from 26% to 45%.

In Namibia 86 communal conservancies involving more than 200,000 people protect over 20% of the land. The community wildlife conservancies protect the largest free-roaming black rhino population outside protected areas and an elephant population that has tripled between 1995 and 2016, from 7,500 to 22,800.

Elephant — Old male elephant that comes right up to one the lodge areas, Namibia. Photo: Teri Allendorf

In both countries the success of community conservation has supported the creation of, and experimentation with, multiple types of community-based conservation interventions. In Nepal these include, in addition to community forestry, buffer zones around national parks, conservation areas, leasehold forestry, protected forests and community conserved areas. In Namibia these include national park community conservation associations, community forests, community rangeland management areas and community fish reserves.

Lessons From World’s End

I consider myself extremely lucky to have worked in Nepal since the 1990s. My experiences with conservation and communities there give me more hope for the future than most of my colleagues have in various places around the world.

But I didn’t know how it had all begun until recently. While I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting T.B.S. Mahat, I recently learned he’s publishing his memoirs. Owen-Smith passed away in April 2020, but I did have a chance encounter with him a few years ago at his camp in northwestern Namibia, Wereldsend (World’s End), during a trip teaching biodiversity policy to a group of international students. We spent a memorable evening sitting around the campfire while he described the history of the wildlife conservancies. At one point, he listed the leaders, in addition to Joshua Kagombe, who’d helped create community-based conservation in Namibia, saying it was important that we remember their names.

Garth Owen Smith — Garth Owen-Smith at Werelsend. Photo: Teri Allendorf

During his story I got to thinking: What can we learn from these two countries’ experiences?

The origins of community conservation in Nepal and Namibia put our own individual efforts into a larger context and remind us that our actions on the ground, to save a habitat or species, can have a great impact. These are powerful models, but they can take a long time to come to fruition — during a biodiversity crisis that makes us feel we don’t have the luxury of waiting.

In today’s world we often feel powerless when it comes to effecting change on a large scale. We often assume successful projects have arisen from top-down policies, without realizing that policies come after someone has proven the model can work by taking the first step from the bottom up. Individuals make a difference — it just takes time for actions to cascade into greater change.

Origin stories like these show us that conservationists and communities, working together in specific places and times, can create some of the most robust conservation models in the world. And that’s a lesson we can all hold in common across diverse countries, habitats, species, and ecosystems.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Decolonizing Species Names

New research points out the frequent inequity of species’ scientific names, a longstanding problem that creates barriers to conservation.

What’s in a species name?

In some cases, the answers include paternalism, colonialism, sexism and racism.

Take the Townsend’s warbler (Setophaga townsendi), for example. This small, bright yellow North American bird was first scientifically described at Fort Vancouver in Washington state, just a few miles from where I live. We get a ton of them in our backyard every year.

But the Townsend’s warbler, beautiful though it may be, is a bird whose name has a dark history. It was named by American naturalist John Kirk Townsend, who described dozens of species in the early 19th century — right around the same time he was stealing human remains from Native American grave sites and shipping the skulls back East to help support a friend’s racist theory that Indigenous peoples were actually separate species.

As you might expect, in these more enlightened times, several experts have proposed renaming the Townsend’s warbler, along with dozens of other North American birds that bear the names of other ethically dubious researchers or historical figures.

And North American birds are not alone.

Around the world, taxonomists and conservationists say we need to address similar species-naming issues, although most aren’t as glaring as the Townsend case.

An example comes from biodiversity-rich New Caledonia, an archipelago in the southwest Pacific Ocean about 750 miles east of Australia.

Like many islands, New Caledonia’s remoteness allowed unique species to develop and thrive. Hundreds of unique plants and animals call the islands home, including the world’s largest gecko, the 14-inch Leach’s giant gecko (Rhacodactylus leachianus), known by many as “the Leachie” and named after English zoologist William Elford Leach, who never set foot on the islands.

“The Leachie” is just one example. A new paper published in the journal Biological Conservation, “The inequity of species names: The flora of New Caledonia as a case study,” examines the names of more than 650 plants native to New Caledonia that have been named after particular people — usually botanists or collectors. It found that just 7% of the species were named after people born on the islands. Further, only 6% of these plants were named after women (and some of those women were the wives or daughters of the botanists).

This isn’t just a function of decisions made centuries ago, either. Most of the species were named by researchers in the past 50 years.

“We should be more inclusive in our taxonomic practice and think about the consequences for the conservation of the species that are newly named,” says Yohan Pillon, the author of the study and a biologist with Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Montpellier, France.

Of course, naming a plant species in New Caledonia is, at best, challenging due to their stunning variety.

“The flora of New Caledonia is extremely diverse and complex,” Pillon says. “There are over 100 species in the genus Phyllanthus, over 90 species in the genus Psychotria. Few people on Earth can tell them apart.”

Even beyond that challenge, purposefully identifying taxonomic names based on more culturally relevant identifiers poses a few problems. New Caledonia, now a territory of France, was originally inhabited by the Kanak community, who currently represent about 41% of the total population. They’ve been joined over the centuries by people from Polynesia, Europe and southeast Asia. French is the dominant language, and while the dozens of Indigenous Kanak languages are still spoken and taught, they’re not as strong as they once were.

“There are 30 Indigenous languages, some spoken by very few people or poorly studied,” Pillon says, “which makes ethnobiological surveys complex compared to places like Hawai‘i. You need both acute botanical and linguistic knowledge for that. Vernacular names are therefore a very difficult information to collect in New Caledonia and often not very reliable. In New Caledonia, few endemic plants have a known common name.”

But despite any challenges that might come in determining a species’ taxonomic moniker, picking the right name can have conservation benefits. Pillon points out a case from earlier this year in which local people expressed support for naming a new plant species after its sole remaining habitat.

A similar situation occurred last month in South America’s Guiana Highlands, where an orchid newly described by scientists had its name chosen by the Pemón Arekuna Indigenous community. Silesian researcher Mateusz Wrazidlo says “my own cultural heritage and the fact that in my family we use our local, Upper Silesian language in our daily lives has had a profound influence on why I’m paying so much attention to the Indigenous heritage in my scientific work. Science is a great cultural medium, and by registering new species names derived from local languages, we not only contribute to biological sciences, but also promote and preserve pieces of local history and customs.”

Pillon echoes that. “Conservation science needs to be more inclusive,” he wrote in his paper, “and the naming of new species offers an excellent opportunity to acknowledge more broadly the diversity of individuals who have contributed to our understanding of the natural world. Areas of high biodiversity often overlap with areas of high linguistic diversity, but the links among biodiversity and cultural and linguistic diversity are often underappreciated. To promote the preservation of biodiversity, species should be named with an eye toward how these names will be perceived by the local communities involved.”

And it’s not just plants and animals that should be named more thoughtfully or renamed to reverse an inequity. Place names also matter. Last year in the United States, Rep. Deb Haaland — currently on track to be the Biden administration’s secretary of the Interior — introduced a bill to reexamine geographic places or features currently known by offensive or racist names, which often belittle Native peoples or erase longstanding Indigenous place names.

That’s no small challenge — there are more than 1,400 of these questionably named locations in the United States alone — but names have power. Renaming something or thoughtfully identifying it in the first place offers one more tool for helping to protect the world’s threatened species and habitats — while they still exist for us to name.

(This article has been updated to include a statement from researcher Mateusz Wrazidlo.)

Previously in The Revelator:

Endangered Languages, Endangered Ecologies

The Western United States Is a Hotspot for Snow Droughts

A new study compares snowpack across the world and offers a tool to help scientists pinpoint where this critical resource is waning — and what that means for ecosystems and economies.

Most of us know a bad drought when we see one: Lakes and rivers recede from their normal water lines, crops wither in fields, and lawns turn brown. Usually we think of these droughts as being triggered by a lack of rain, but scientists also track drought in other ways.

“The common ways to measure droughts are through precipitation, soil moisture and runoff,” says Laurie S. Huning, an environmental engineer at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent work adds another dimension to that by looking at water stored in snowpack.

Huning is the co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with U.C. Irvine colleague Amir AghaKouchak, which developed a new framework for characterizing “snow droughts.” These can occur when there’s an abnormally low snowpack, which may be triggered by low precipitation, warm temperatures or both.

Their research is timely. This winter, southwestern states have received just a quarter to half of the average snow-water equivalent —the amount of water held in the snowpack — the key metric for determining a snow drought.

And that can have sweeping impacts. The water content of a snowpack can change the amount and timing of when runoff occurs, and that has implications for wildlife, ecosystems, water resources, flood control, hydropower and drought mitigation.

Snow droughts can also have far-reaching effects on agriculture — and economies. California’s Central Valley, the heart of its agriculture industry, relies on snow melt from the Sierra Nevada. The state saw $2.7 billion in losses in the sector following low precipitation and warm temperatures during 2014-2015.

Frank Gehrke stands in a field with no snow holding the measuring pole. — Frank Gehrke of the Calif. Dept. of Water Resources during the April 1, 2015 snow survey in the Sierra Nevada, which found zero snow for the first time since surveys began in 1942. Photo: Florence Low / California Department of Water Resources,

Snow droughts can also make conditions dire in regions that are already stressed by conflict and resource shortages. A snow drought in Afghanistan in 2017-2018 triggered crop failures and livestock loses that left 10 million people food insecure.

The concept of a “snow drought” has been around for several years, and it’s been studied in certain key locations, but until now scientists and water managers lacked a worldwide method to assess them.

The study aims to solve that. Huning and AghaKouchak have developed a standardized snow-water equivalent index in an effort better characterize and compare the duration and intensity of snow droughts around the world.

The results already reveal some areas of concern. Looking at data from 1980 to 2018, the researchers found a few hotspots where snow-droughts became longer and more intense during the 21st century.

The most notable area was the western United States, which saw a 28% increase in the length of periods of snow drought. Eastern Russia and Europe also saw increases, though less severe.

And on the flip side, some areas saw a decrease in snow drought duration, including the Hindu Kush, Central Asia, greater Himalayas, extratropical Andes and Patagonia.

“It’s important to remember that not only does the snowpack vary but the impact that it has differs across the world,” says Huning.

Huning hopes the framework developed for the study can help water managers better understand the amount and timing of snowmelt, and to integrate that with drought monitoring systems to recreate better resiliency and management of resources.

“We know that the snowpack is highly variable,” she says. “Further development of this framework can improve our near real-time monitoring of drought.”

The study didn’t delve into the specifics of why snow droughts may be becoming more severe in certain places, but other studies have found that climate change is playing, and will play, a role in reducing snowpack in some areas — including western U.S. states.

A study by UCLA climate scientists published on Aug. 10 found that in California warmer temperatures will cause more rainfall and less snow during the winter in coming decades. This will likely increase flood risks and reduce the snowpack that usually melts slowly over the spring months.

Earlier research found that a decrease in Arctic sea ice leads to changes in atmospheric circulation that creates a high-pressure system, known as an atmospheric ridge, off the Pacific coast. These ridges deflect storms, pushing them northward and leaving the region high and dry. A particularly stubborn system that developed in 2013, nicknamed the “ridiculously resilient ridge,” had a big hand in California’s five-year drought, which extended until 2017.

Better understanding of how to measure and track snow droughts can give water managers another tool to help plan for similar droughts and to better manage this changing resource.

“Snow is a natural resource and, given the warming temperatures that some parts of the world will see, the amount of snow is changing,” says Huning. “We need to recognize that there are so many different ways the environment and humans will be affected.”

Biden Moves to Dial Down America’s Soaring Methane Emissions

Experts say the new administration can jumpstart climate protections by taking on rising methane emissions, but it won’t be easy or quick.

On his first day in office, President Biden signed a sweeping executive order that stops the Keystone XL pipeline and pauses oil lease sales in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But behind these headlines, the order also requires a thorough review of the Trump administration’s rollbacks on methane pollution. The action signals that the new president may agree with experts who say one of our biggest environmental challenges could also be one of our best opportunities to tackle climate change.

Methane — an invisible and odorless gas — makes up just a tiny trace of the Earth’s atmosphere and survives in the air for only about 10 years before degrading. Yet NASA scientists say this humble molecule has driven one-quarter of human-caused global warming to date.

“Methane is the second-most important heat-trapping pollutant after carbon dioxide, but it packs a bigger wallop in the near term,” says David Doniger, senior strategic director of Climate and Clean Energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and a former member of White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The same qualities that make methane emissions so dangerous are also why experts say cutting them would be a promising opportunity for the Biden administration to attempt swift action on climate change.

It’s sorely needed: In January the International Energy Agency said the United States is now the world’s second greatest methane emitter after Russia. To get rid of that distinction and make headway against the climate crisis, experts say, the Biden administration will need a whole-of-government approach to the issue.

Shifting Policies

Scientists have long known of methane’s dangers — and that the energy sector is a top contributor to the global rise in emissions — but it took until late in the Obama administration for the federal government to enact its first broad methane regulations.

Unfortunately, many of them were short-lived.

In 2016 the Obama Environmental Protection Agency used its Clean Air Act authority to take two actions on methane. The first established emissions standards for new oil and gas developments, which the Trump administration overturned last year. The second slowly inched toward regulation of existing methane sources — a much bigger share of methane pollution — by requiring industry to submit data on its emissions. The Trump administration canceled that order within two months of taking office.

In a third action, Obama’s Bureau of Land Management also addressed existing sources by replacing outdated rules on venting, flaring and leaking from oil and gas facilities on federal lands. But in October 2020 the Trump administration unraveled this Methane and Waste Prevention Rule in court, after years of failing to undo it in Congress or through new federal rulemaking.

Biden’s executive order indicates that reversing these rollbacks may be a top priority for the new administration.

The order directs the EPA to consider tackling new and existing methane sources at the same time, in a more comprehensive approach than was attempted under Obama. It sets a September 2021 deadline for the agency to determine a path forward. Regarding the BLM’s waste prevention rule, the order opens a possible legal avenue for it to be restored in court.

The moves align with recommendations by the Climate 21 Project, a group of more than 150 high-level science and policy experts who composed agency-specific memos designed to help the new administration “hit the ground running” on climate action. Its memos to the EPA and the Interior Department recommend finding the swiftest ways to reissue or strengthen Obama’s 2016 regulations.

Robert Howarth, a scientist and professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University who is not associated with Climate 21, said in an email that strengthening the Obama rules will require closing loopholes for methane venting and coming up with stronger policies for enforcement and independent monitoring.

Howarth, who has studied greenhouse gas emissions from the natural gas industry, emphasizes the importance of regulating existing oil and gas developments. He says methane, which makes up the bulk of natural gas, enters the atmosphere throughout the industry’s sprawling network of existing pipelines, compression stations, storage facilities, and even abandoned wells.

“We need to regulate all of these emissions, and not focus just on the new gas wells,” he says.

Biden’s order pushes his administration in that direction by calling for broad regulation across the oil and gas supply chain.

Howarth also stresses the need to improve the EPA’s methane monitoring program. Research published in 2018 in the journal Science shows agency estimates may be low by as much as 60%. David Lyon, a scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund who co-authored the research, which was based on 2015 data, says those estimates have likely grown even less accurate, as Trump’s EPA loosened monitoring since the study was published.

Flame from oil/gas flare — Flaring at oil and gas wells release methane into the air. Photo: WildEarth Guardians, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Howarth explains that under the traditional “bottom-up” monitoring, emissions are estimated using data that rely on industry cooperation, which enables oil and gas producers to choose the timing and other features of monitoring that could allow for under-reporting of emissions.

“A better approach is to use ‘top-down’ methods where methane emissions can be analyzed at the regional scale from airplane flyovers and from satellite data,” says Howarth. Such methods have become more common in recent years and almost always show higher emissions than current methods, he says. Lyon agrees, pointing out that aerial monitoring can cover hundreds of wells in a single day and be conducted with greater independence and accuracy.

But the Biden administration will need to do more than just reissue and strengthen Obama-era rules, which will require years of work. In the interim, Climate 21 recommends tackling methane in other corners, too.

For the BLM that could include plugging the nation’s millions of abandoned wells, which have increased as the pandemic and falling oil prices hurt small producers. The agency could also slow or stop new drilling permits on federal lands. Biden’s team has already taken steps in that direction by first announcing a 60-day moratorium on new oil and gas permits on public lands and waters, then expanding the pause until the Interior Secretary can complete a “comprehensive review and reconsideration” of the federal oil and gas leasing program.

Meanwhile the Department of Energy can strengthen its analysis of natural gas export proposals. And outside the oil and gas sector, EPA can incentivize cutting emissions at landfills while the Department of Agriculture can help farmers reduce methane from livestock, another leading U.S. methane source.

Overcoming Roadblocks

But the path forward faces obstacles put in place by the Trump administration. They include deep budget and staffing cuts that have hollowed out key departments at the EPA and other agencies that perform federal research, rulemaking and enforcement.

The Trump team also enacted its own federal rules that may hamper future oil and gas regulation. They include limiting considerations on public health and the scientific sources the government can use in rulemaking.

Additionally, experts have expressed concern that Trump’s three Supreme Court picks and placement of hundreds of conservative federal judges have likely tilted courts in favor of industry. The challenge for the Biden administration is to draft rules with this new legal landscape in mind while simultaneously rebuilding the science-based agencies.

Doniger offers a somewhat optimistic view on some of this, explaining that while agency staffs have been reduced, many employees remained “hunkered down” through the Trump years and are eager to return to legitimate regulatory work. He also hopes the new administration can immediately begin rebuilding science agency staffs with existing funding and strengthen the workforce in the years ahead with more funding from Congress.

Doniger also points out that that the Trump administration had a dismal success rate in defending its actions in court, which many experts say reflects rushed attempts and a poor grasp of process.

“Imagine where we’d be if they knew what they were doing,” says Doniger, echoing criticism that the steady attempts at deregulation lacked due diligence.

He acknowledges the Supreme Court may treat regulation with more skepticism than in the past. But he says if the new administration follows the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws as they are written, their rules have a good chance of surviving court challenges. After all, “the laws were written to do these things,” he says, adding that the new administration brings expertise and competency in putting the laws to work on methane and other pollutants.

A Seasoned Team

Signs of expertise are visible as Biden assembles his cabinet. His nomination of former EPA chief Gina McCarthy, for instance, as the first-ever national climate advisor brings aboard someone with decades of experience at both federal and state levels.

Gina McCarthy at podium — Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in 2014. Photo: Nick Berghane / MassCEC, (CC BY-NC 2.0)

McCarthy, who helped Obama craft far-reaching policies on greenhouse gas emissions, including the methane rules rolled back under Trump, is tasked with coordinating the governmentwide climate approach. And Biden has already stacked her team with climate policy experts and nominated experienced department heads for her to work with. They include Rep. Deb Haaland to lead Interior and Michael Regan to head the EPA. Biden’s executive order on methane directs these and other cabinet members to report to McCarthy as they develop strategies for new rules.

Biden will also enjoy a slim but valuable majority in Congress, which means legislative calendars, committee chairmanships and budgets will likely support his regulatory agenda even in the absence of tough new climate legislation.

The new president may find a measure of support from within the oil and gas industry, too. Trump’s methane rollbacks were opposed by BP and other large companies that were concerned they might taint a positive public image of natural gas. And although small operators vigorously pushed for the Trump rollbacks even just a few months ago, they expressed a sudden change of heart as Biden issued his new orders. In the administration’s first two days, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute both came out in support of directly regulating methane through the Clean Air Act, as originally done under the Obama administration.

Doniger says the new administration has one more advantage when it comes to regulating methane and other gases. With more severe wildfires, droughts and hurricanes, public awareness of the severity of the climate crisis is greater than it was during the Obama administration.

“Climate change,” he says, “is changing the politics of climate change.”

New Clues to Help Monarch Conservation Efforts

Planting milkweed can help monarch butterflies, but new research shows that there’s still a lot we can learn about how to do that effectively.

Fall used to be the time when millions of monarch butterflies in North America would journey upwards of 2,000 miles to warmer winter habitat.

But these days the iconic butterfly’s numbers are dwindling. The western migratory population is down 97% since the 1980s — a survey this mouth found fewer than 2,000 — and the eastern population has slipped 80% in just the past 15 years.

Because of these grim numbers the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruled in December that monarchs deserved protection under the Endangered Species Act, but it would still be several years before the butterflies were listed as threatened or endangered.

It’s time the species may not have.

Halting the precipitous decline of North American monarch populations hinges, in large part, on milkweed. It’s the sole plant the caterpillars eat and where monarchs lay their eggs. It’s also quickly disappearing with increasing urbanization and pesticide use.

Since monarchs can’t survive without milkweed, conservation efforts have focused on planting more milkweed. But it’s not as simple as it sounds.

“We’ve learned a good bit in the past two or three years about how to create these types of habitats, but there’s not a whole lot of evidence guiding the way we create the plantings,” says Adam Dale, an assistant professor in entomology at the University of Florida. “For example, the diversity of plants in a garden, the specific plants that are used and their arrangement — all of those things matter for how the butterflies are able to locate the hosts and move from one to the next.”

In a new study published in the journal Insects, Dale and his colleagues tried to identify whether more diversity of wildflowers in milkweed gardens would be a boon for the beleaguered butterflies or whether plots should contain only milkweed plants.

caterpillar on leaf — A monarch butterfly caterpillar feeds on common milkweed on Poplar Island in Maryland. Photo: Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program, (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Biological diversity in ecosystems is usually a good thing, but a large body of research has shown that more diverse habitat may not be good for species like monarchs that are so specialized in what they eat.

“There’s a potential for actually reducing monarch success by increasing the diversity of plants,” in these conservation gardens, says Dale.

One reason is that a more varied garden can make it harder for the insects to find their host plants if they’re obscured visually or chemically. A recent study from researchers at the University of Kentucky found that monarchs did better when milkweed was planted on the perimeter of gardens.

Another reason has to do with the “enemies hypothesis,” where greater plant diversity means more natural enemies for specialist herbivores like monarchs. Increase the plant diversity and increase the chance of larvae being eaten.

That’s why, Dale says, they were surprised by some of their findings.

In the study, areas where they planted a mix of native swamp milkweed and other wildflowers saw an increase in monarch eggs compared to areas planted with just milkweed. And even though there was an increase in the number of predatory insects, as suspected, it didn’t have an effect on the number of monarch larvae that survived.

“So what we were concerned about didn’t come through,” he says.

While the study was done in Florida, Dale says in general the findings should be applicable to monarch populations in other places.

“Our main goal is to try to create conservation habitat in urban areas where we’re replacing natural habitat with human habitat,” he says. “So ultimately we’re trying to figure out ways to integrate these types of gardens into our yards and green spaces, and just try to make them as good as they can be.”

With monarchs teetering on the edge of extinction, Dale hopes applying what they’ve learned from research like this can help make conservation efforts more successful.

“I hope that people who are interested in conserving monarchs and other insects will see this because I think it provides a little more evidence that helps inform how people create these types of gardens,” Dale says. “Whether that’s a homeowner, a green-space land manager in an urban area, a golf course superintendent looking to create conservation habitat or anyone who’s creating these spaces, I think they could use this to improve the condition of the habitat they’re creating.”

A ‘Disasterologist’ Talks Climate Change

Emergency management expert Samantha Montano explains why the climate crisis should be a key part of emergency planning.

2020 was so bad that even disasters outdid themselves. Last year the United States alone experienced at least 16 weather and climate disasters with losses topping $1 billion each. That’s more than twice the long-term average.

What’s worse: Expensive disasters are on the rise. 2020 was the sixth year in a row that the United States saw 10 or more billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. And as climate change supercharges storms, wildfires and droughts, this trend will continue to climb.

To stave off the worst outcomes, scientists say we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which will require steadfast effort from elected officials, policymakers and businesses.

But since there are no quick fixes for the climate changes already underway, there’s one group of experts we’ll also need to call on: emergency managers. Unfortunately, although they’re tasked with making sure communities are prepared to respond to disasters, they’re often left out of conversations about climate change.

Samantha Montano, an assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, and a “disasterlogist,” has been working to change that. She’s also been calling for emergency management professionals, including government agencies like FEMA, to put the climate crisis and environmental justice at the forefront of their work.

We spoke to Montano about why we need emergency managers involved in climate conversations, whether disasters are on the rise, and how we prepare for a future with climate-supercharged storms.

We often think of emergency management as responding to “natural disasters,” but as you wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post, that term is a bit fraught.

Samantha Montano. Photo: Courtesy

Disaster experts don’t really use the term “natural disaster” because it’s a bit of a misnomer. When we’re talking about disasters, we’re talking about the actual human toll that they take. Is it the fact that a river, which naturally overflows its banks, has caused the disaster? Or is it that we have built homes right next to the river; that we have not maintained the levees that are meant to protect those homes from flooding; that the people who live in that neighborhood and don’t have a lot of money aren’t able to evacuate; that there aren’t government programs there to help people recover quickly?

All of those things are not natural, right? Those are the human decisions that have ended up making a situation into a disaster. So while a river overflowing its banks may be natural, the fact that it has led to a disaster isn’t. So that term “natural disaster” helps to obscure the role of human responsibility in disasters. If everything that happens are just these natural events that we have no control over, then some people may think we can’t do anything about it.

This thinking isn’t new in disaster research, but it has gotten a bit more attention in recent years as folks try to understand how climate change fits into all of this. The new term that we hear people using is “climate disaster,” which runs into a similar problem.

Climate change may be a factor that is contributing to a disaster that happened, but it’s certainly, again, not the only factor. But if we understand the root causes better, then we can make different decisions and prevent disasters from happening.

There’s ample evidence that climate change is supercharging a lot of weather events. Are emergency managers included in conversations about how to fight climate change?

Within the broader climate change conversation, most of the focus is on carbon emissions and that’s very important. And more recently we’ve seen an uptick in conversations about climate adaptation, which is also important as we begin to experience the consequences of climate change.

But we hear much less about the pretty significant overlap between climate adaptation and what we in emergency management call “hazard mitigation.” It feels sometimes from an emergency management perspective like we’re reinventing the wheel a little bit.

Flooding and wildfires aren’t new. We in the emergency management community have been dealing with these hazards for a very long time and we have a lot of knowledge about them. We want to make sure that, especially because of the urgency of the climate crisis, we are pulling from this base of knowledge and experience that we have.

How much emergency management is integrated into conversations about climate change varies greatly across the country. Maine, for example, just released their plan for a statewide climate council and emergency managers were all on that committee and helped to produce the plan.

This is a great example of trying to bridge emergency management and adaptation work. But there are other places in the country where you have a part-time emergency manager working in a rural community and they don’t have the resources or they’re not a part of those climate conversations. There’s definitely more work that needs to be done to help bring emergency management and climate adaptation work together.

Climate change can help fuel short-term hazards, like a hurricane, or lead to slow-moving threats such as sea-level rise. How do you differentiate between these from a management perspective?

We think about hurricanes, wildfires — these more acute events — as ones that emergency management is very obviously on the front line of managing. But issues like sea-level rise, and even longer-term chronic issues like droughts, are areas emergency management is still involved in because it still has an impact on our overall risk.

Something like an earthquake, which seems pretty far removed from climate change itself, is actually impacted by climate change. Because when we think about the vulnerabilities in our communities that climate change exacerbates, that has an effect on how people are, or aren’t, able to respond to an earthquake or the resources that can go toward preparing for an earthquake or mitigating damages.

So even these events that seem more chronic, or don’t seem like they have this direct link to climate change, are actually pretty significantly affected from an emergency management perspective.

debris on shoreline — Damage from Hurricane Michael in Florida, 2018. Photo: Tabitha Kaylee Hawk, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

It seems there’s a new disaster almost every day. Are there really more now? And is climate change to blame?

It’s pretty difficult to find any part of the country that has been untouched by disaster in the past few years. I also think that the way we consume media now also makes them feel more present.

We watch these disasters unfold live on television in front of us. We get alerts sent to our pockets when a disaster happens. So it’s everywhere.

Climate change, though, I think is a huge part of that. I heard people joke around about not being able to wait until 2020 ends. And I get that. It was a really bad year. But these disasters aren’t just going to go away. We’re not making the changes we need to be to lessen those disasters or prevent those disasters from happening. We’re in this for the long haul until we start making some different choices.

The coronavirus pandemic is a different kind of disaster than a weather-related event. What were the biggest lessons you’ll take away from our response to it?

The way that we normally approach emergency management in these acute disasters is with help converging from neighboring communities, the state and the federal government. This March, however, was the first time that every single emergency agency in the country at all levels of government was activated simultaneously. So we didn’t have the mutual aid, expertise and funding that we can usually send to places in a crisis because everyone was in the middle of their own crisis.

That has never happened before in the United States. It was a unique situation to see the strain on our systems and to start doing research and analyzing the effect that it has had on the response.

I draw the parallel there to climate change. Not that there is going to be a flood happening in every single state at one time, but as we see our risk increase, we’ll see these disasters increase. In 2017 we saw hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria all happening nearly at once.

When that happens, what is our ability to meet all of those needs? How does the capacity of the emergency management system handle that? I think COVID has given us a little bit of a window into the future.

As a researcher I’m really hopeful that by studying how emergency management agencies specifically have responded to COVID we’ll be able to take that data and take those findings and use it to inform policy changes for emergency management as we go into the climate crisis.

You have a book coming out this summer about climate change and emergency management. Who do you hope it reaches?

The book I’m writing is a combination of my experience going to different disasters and pulls from the disaster research to help the public understand what emergency management is and all that is involved in disasters. But it’s also a pretty stark warning about the problem that we are barreling headfirst into in terms of how the emergency management system is unprepared to address the consequences of the climate crisis.

It’s a book that will hopefully inspire people to some kind of action, whether locally or nationally, to make sure that disaster survivors across the country, who are the ones on the front lines of the climate crisis, are getting the help that they need. And that we’re doing everything we can to prevent those disasters from happening. I’m hoping that it’s really an empowering book that gives people the language and the education that they need to play a more active role in their community.

As We Heal and Move Forward, Watch Out for Aftershocks

The Trump presidency may finally be over, but the damage it did will persist and echo — even as President Biden takes rapid action to repair some of his predecessor’s environmental damage.

The Trump era finally drew to an exhausting close this week. So why does it still feel like the other shoe has yet to drop?

I’m not alone in this. Everyone I talked to this week, even after the Biden-Harris inauguration ceremony, mentioned they’ve been in a state of hypervigilance, waiting for one more outburst or incitement, additional violence or other tragedy.

We can chalk this feeling up to the collective trauma of the past four years and the past few weeks. Our twice-impeached 45th president wasn’t very good at his job — in fact, he was downright awful at it — but he was the master of chaos, rage and unpredictability. He excelled at stirring people up into volatile furors, much like those he exhibited himself. Every day of his term — and well before it, in the election and his pre-political public life — seemed to bring new explosions and repercussions, culminating in the deadly insurgency of Jan. 6.

Wanted — Photo: Mike Maguire (CC BY 2.0)

Sure, the former president is keeping pretty quiet now. Twitter may, in the moments after the Capitol attack, have removed the tool he used most readily to express his anger, but can we truly expect a bloviating blowhard with a penchant for scorched-Earth revenge to keep quiet for long? Or the right-wing media to stop enabling him and his followers?

Even if he keeps his big mouth shut, we’ll still hear him echoing through our lives and media in one way or another.

For one thing, the true scope of the damage the Trump administration did to the environment may take years to understand. It hollowed out the government of many key scientists, career service employees, prosecutors, inspectors, auditors and others who worked to understand climate change, uncover and prosecute pollution, respond to cases of environmental injustice, and protect endangered species.

And as those jobs vanished, corporations ran amok. Oil and gas industries had free rein to pollute, kill birds, develop record numbers of new wells, and emit greenhouse gases and other forms of pollution. Sometimes this was newly legal, thanks to Trump’s deregulatory agenda. Other times it slipped under the radar because no one was manning the monitoring apparatus of the federal government.

President Biden will no doubt restore and refill many of these positions, and work will continue — albeit after a tragic four-year gap — but the outgoing administration also left many loyalists embedded in positions with civil-servant protections, meaning they could be hard to root out. How much damage will they continue to do while they’re on the job?

We’ll have to ask the same question of certain elected officials in the House and Senate — like the 197 congressional representatives who voted in the disgraced president’s favor during Jan. 13th’s impeachment and sought to delegitimize the 2020 election.

And then there are the people outside the government: the right-wing disinformation machines; the anti-government militias, domestic terrorists and other extremists who have promised further attacks; the white supremacists who thrived under Trump; the climate change deniers who gained new platforms; the people brainwashed by QAnon and other conspiracies; and many others.

And all of this will feed into MAGA movement that remains especially strong with state and local elected officials, who took control of many legislatures in the 2020 election.

Quite frankly, I look forward to the day when I no longer need to write about Donald J. Trump, his minions, his enablers, his damage or his brood. Tragically, I doubt that day will come anytime soon.

But the inauguration changed that a bit, replacing some of my anxiety with the opportunity for deep, relaxing breaths. Grownups are back in charge, and with this much-needed change comes the opportunities for rapid progress on the environment, on justice, on the pandemic, and on so many other fronts.

It’s already started. On his first day, newly inaugurated President Biden signed orders to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, cancel the Keystone XL pipeline, stop border-wall construction, and review dozens of Trump-era efforts that hurt the climate, people’s health, and our lands and wildlife.

And the plans (or promises) for the administration’s first 100 days include even more, such as organizing a world climate summit to address shipping and aviation emissions and pressuring China to end its coal subsidies.

Those efforts will continue. They may not be smooth, the pandemic may delay or change a lot of it, and anything could be interrupted by further Trump explosions — literal or metaphoric.

But we’ll weather the aftershocks. And with luck and hard work we’ll repair the damage, rebuild, and move forward.

For more than 81 million people voted for the Biden-Harris administration, often putting their lives at risk during a pandemic to make it to the ballot box. That’s a lot of feet, and those collective shoes — perhaps enhanced by President Biden’s call for unity — will have more staying power than anything Trump and his successors have left to drop on us.

Previously in The Revelator:

The Rebuilding Years Begin Now

Reform the Bureau of Land Management: Biden Must Succeed Where Obama Failed

An agency insider looks at a history of failure and sees long-delayed opportunities for change and progress.

The Bureau of Land Management is the federal agency that controls the largest acreage of federal public lands, especially in the West and Alaska. How these lands are managed going forward will play a pivotal role in whether we succeed or fail to effectively address the urgent climate and extinction crises.

Unfortunately the current dominant management culture at the agency is fundamentally incapable of doing what’s necessary. That culture is regressive, biased and secretive. It’s almost a joke in some circles: BLM is often said to stand for “Bureau of Livestock and Mining” because those are the activities it tends to favor over the health of the land. Which is unlikely to change unless the agency is forced to.

How do I know? I was immersed in the culture for about 15 years. I worked for the Bureau as a district-office-level planning and environmental coordinator from 2002 to 2017. My district comprised nearly 3 million acres and included two BLM national monuments and eight statutory wilderness areas. Much of my job was overseeing compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act and other relevant federal laws, regulations and policies. I saw the reality of how managers’ biases could influence how these were interpreted and implemented.

The agency’s management culture is deeply imbedded and greatly resistant to change. For example, where I worked, an associate district manager, field manager, and the soil, water and air specialist all believed climate change was a hoax. When I, in my role as environmental coordinator, distributed scientific information on climate change to relevant staff, managers admonished me to stop because the subject was too contentious.

It was similar on issues related to the extinction crisis. I repeatedly raised concerns that the latest science on landscape ecology and conservation biology was being ignored in NEPA documents. My concerns were likewise ignored, even though these omissions created vulnerabilities in the adequacy of the NEPA analyses, including on cumulative impacts.

Hope Thwarted, Now Renewed?

After working at the agency for six stressful years under the George W. Bush administration, I was excited by the prospect of seeing its version of “change we can believe in” when President Obama took office. It seemed like a chance to fix the agency — but tragically, under the Obama administration that change never arrived. I saw many missed opportunities for positive actions over those eight years, including necessary livestock grazing reforms.

When President Trump took office, I knew the agency’s culture would go from bad to much worse — so I took early retirement.

With President-elect Joe Biden taking office soon, there’s another rare opportunity to implement meaningful reforms. This opportunity must be promptly and aggressively seized. The Obama era mistakes must not be repeated. Too much is at stake, and too much precious time has already been lost.

The 2017 super bloom at Carrizo Plain National Monument, an area now at risk from fracking and oil drilling. Photo: Bob Wick/BLM

President-elect Biden has commendably endorsed the “30 by 30” goal of protecting 30% of our nation’s lands and waters by 2030. If successful this could greatly contribute to advancing solutions to the climate and extinction crises. BLM lands can, and should, be a big part of achieving this goal.

The Challenge: Will Multiple Use Continue to Dominate Over Conservation?

The BLM is destined to fail if the status quo management culture persists.

Most of its managers are hard-wired to a multiple-use mission rather than conservation, meaning they believe land should be open to exploitation for mining, logging or ranching. Congress has reinforced this by failing to reform the 1872 Mining Law, raise grazing fees to fair market rates, allow voluntary grazing permit buyouts or otherwise modernize relevant statutes.

We see this in the BLM national monuments established under the Antiquities Act. The “objects” identified in presidential proclamations are to be the “dominant reservation,” and their protection must supersede any potentially harmful human uses. Yet many of the agency’s NEPA analyses treat these monument objects just like similar resources outside the monuments, on so-called public domain lands.

Valley of the Gods in Bears Ears National Monument, by John Fowler (CC BY 2.0)

Despite overwhelming public opposition and solid science against it, the BLM keeps approving harmful commercial livestock grazing in national monuments such as Grand Canyon Parashant, Sonoran Desert and Agua Fria. And Cliven Bundy’s quarter-century of flagrant trespass grazing makes Gold Butte National Monument a joke (with deeper meaning given by Bundy’s recent support of pro-Trump insurrectionists).

Nor are “national conservation areas,” established by federal statute, spared from serious damage from overgrazing in places like the San Pedro Riparian and Beaver Dam Wash. This livestock grazing hammers riparian habitats, increases soil erosion, outcompetes native wildlife for forage, and accelerates the colonization and spread of invasive cheatgrass and buffelgrass. These invasive grasses cause potentially devastating changes in fire ecology. And the BLM is pushing to allow a destructive “Northern Corridor” highway through its Red Cliffs NCA, even through feasible alternatives are available.

Build Back Better

How can the Biden administration reform the agency?

For starters, it needs to remove Trump appointees — and not bring back the Obama appointees who were also part of the problem.

Next, it should provide independent oversight to ensure managers follow the law and best science in making decisions. If they don’t, it should remove them.

Finally, it must change managers’ annual performance evaluations to make positive, on-the-ground resource improvements their objectives. Managers who prioritize multiple use over conservation, and fail to reverse declining resource trends under their control, should be replaced.

I’m counting on the Biden administration to belatedly deliver a real change worth believing in.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Offshore Wind Power Is Ready to Boom. Here’s What That Means for Wildlife

Climate change threatens many marine species, but some climate solutions pose risks, too. Researchers say offshore wind needs continued study and better regulations.

A key part of the United States’ clean energy transition has started to take shape, but you may need to squint to see it. About 2,000 wind turbines could be built far offshore, in federal waters off the Atlantic Coast, in the next 10 years. And more are expected.

East Coast states from Maine to North Carolina are working to procure nearly 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 — a huge leap from the five turbines currently generating 30 megawatts in Rhode Island waters. If a regulatory backlog of projects awaiting approval from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is finally unstuck — as experts hope will happen this year — the buildout of offshore wind will arrive during a crucial decade for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Spinning turbine blades on the watery horizon may be a welcome sight in the fight against climate change, but they still come with potential threats to marine wildlife. Many environmental groups believe the challenges aren’t insurmountable if scientific study can help inform regulatory action and if we can learn — and adapt our practices — as we go.

“We believe that offshore wind can absolutely be developed in an environmentally responsible manner,” says Francine Kershaw, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But that has to be incorporated throughout the whole process — from site assessment through development, construction and operations.”

Threats to Birds

One of the gravest threats facing birds is climate change, according to Audubon, which found that rising temperatures threaten nearly two-thirds of North America’s bird species. That’s why the impending development of offshore wind is a good thing, says Shilo Felton, a field manager in the organization’s Clean Energy Initiative, but it also comes with dangers to birds that need to be better studied and mitigated.

The most obvious risk comes from birds colliding with spinning turbine blades. But offshore wind developments can also displace birds from foraging or roost sites, as well as migratory pathways.

Along the Atlantic Coast four imperiled species are of top concern to conservationists: the endangered piping plover, red knot, roseate tern and black-capped petrel, which is being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

“Those four species are of utmost importance to make sure that we understand the impacts,” says Felton. “But beyond that there are many species that are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act that could potentially see more impacts from offshore wind.”

Northern gannets, for example, are at risk not just for collision but habitat displacement.

A northern gannet flying along Cape May, N.J. Photo: Ann Marie Morrison, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“There’s some evidence that they just won’t use areas where turbines are, but that also excludes them from key foraging areas,” says Felton. Researchers are still studying what this may mean for the birds. But a study published in December 2020 conducted at Bass Rock, Scotland — home to the world’s largest northern gannet colony — found that wind developments could reduce their growth rate, though not enough to cause a population decline.

Other birds, such as great cormorants and European shags, are attracted to wind developments and use the infrastructure to rest while opening up new foraging areas farther from shore.

“There’s plenty of potential for a bird to use a wind farm and still to avoid the turbines themselves,” says Felton.

Birds like pelicans, however, are less versatile in their movements and are at particular risk of collision because of their flight pattern, she says.

But how disruptive or dangerous offshore turbines will be along the East Coast isn’t yet known.

Federal and state agencies, along with nongovernmental organizations, says Felton, have done good research to try to better understand those potential impacts. “But these are all theoretical, because we don’t have a lot of offshore wind yet in the United States.”

Threats to Ocean Life

Birds aren’t the only wildlife of concern. More development in ocean waters could affect a litany of marine species, some of which are already facing other pressures from overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction and climate change.

Scientists have found that marine mammals like whales and dolphins could be disturbed by the jarring sounds of construction, especially if pile driving is used to hammer the steel turbine platform into the seafloor.

The noises, though short-lived, could impede communication between animals, divert them from migration routes or cause them to seek less suitable areas for feeding or breeding. Research from Europe found that harbor porpoises, seals and dolphins may avoid development areas during construction. In most, but not all cases, the animals were believed to have returned to the area following construction.

The biggest concern for conservation groups in the United States is the critically endangered North American right whale. There are fewer than 400 remaining, and the species’ habitat overlaps with a number of planned wind development areas along the East Coast.

“Offshore wind is in no way the cause of the challenges the whales face, but it’s going to be another pressure point,” says John Rogers, senior energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Researchers aren’t sure how right whales will respond to the noise from pile driving.

“But we are concerned, based on what we know about how whales react to other noise sources, that they may avoid [wind development] areas,” says Kershaw.

And if that displacement causes them to miss out on important food resources, it could be dangerous for a species already on the brink.

There are a few other potential threats, too.

Ships associated with the development — more plentiful during construction — also pose a danger. In the past few years cargo ships, fishing boats and other vessels have caused half of all deaths of North Atlantic right whales.

whale breaching — A juvenile right whale breaches against the backdrop of a ship near the St. Johns River entrance. Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, NOAA Research Permit #775-1600-10

And after construction, the noise from the spinning turbines will be present in the water at low decibels. “We don’t quite know how the great whales will react to those sounds,” says Jeremy Firestone, the director of the Center for Research in Wind at the University of Delaware.

Other marine mammals may also perceive the noise, but at low decibels it’s unlikely to be an impediment, research has found.

And it’s possible that wind development could help some ocean life. Turbine foundations can attract fish and invertebrates for whom hard substrates create habitat complexity — known as the “reef effect,” according to researchers from the University of Rhode Island’s Discovery of Sound in the Sea program. Exclusion of commercial fishing nearby may also help shelter fish and protect marine mammals from entanglements in fishing gear.

Ensuring Safe Development

Despite the potential dangers, researchers have gathered a few best practices to help diminish and possibly eliminate some risks.

When it comes to ship strikes, the easiest thing is to slow boats down, mandating a speed of 10 knots in wind development areas, and using visual and acoustic monitoring for whales.

Adjusting operations to reduce boat trips between the shore and the wind development will also help. A new series of service operating vessels can allow maintenance staff to spent multiple days onsite, says Kershaw, cutting down on boat traffic.

For construction noise concerns, developers can avoid pile driving during times of the year when whales are present. And, depending on the marine environment, developers could use “quiet foundations” that don’t require pile driving. These include gravity-based or suction caisson platforms.

Floating turbines are also used in deep water, where they’re effectively anchored in place — although that poses its own potential danger. “We have concerns that marine debris could potentially become entangled around the mooring cables of the floating arrays and pose a secondarily entanglement risk to some species,” says Felton, who thinks more research should be conducted before those become operational in U.S. waters — a process that’s already underway in Maine, where a demonstration project is being built.

If loud noises are unavoidable during construction, noise-reducing technologies such as bubble curtains can help dampen the sound. And scheduling adjacent projects to conduct similar work at the same time could limit the duration of disturbances.

ship working at sea — The foundation installation of the off shore wind farm Sandbank using a bubble curtain. Photo: Vattenfall/Ulrich Wirrwa, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Once turbines become operational, reducing the amount of light on wind platforms or using flashing lights could help deter some seabirds, NRDC researchers reported. And scientists are exploring using ultrasonic noises and ultraviolet lighting to keep bats away. “Feathering,” or shutting down the turbine blades during key migration times, could also help prevent fatalities.

“We need to make sure that offshore wind is the best steward it can be of the marine ecosystem, because we want and expect it to be a significant part of the clean energy picture in some parts of the country,” says Rogers. “We also have to recognize that we’re going to learn by doing, and that some of these things we’re going to figure out best once we have more turbines in the water.”

That’s why environmental groups say it’s important to establish baseline information on species before projects begin, and then require developers to conduct monitoring during construction and for years after projects are operational.

Employing an “adaptive management framework” will ensure that developers can adjust their management practices as they go when new information becomes available, and that those best practices are incorporated into the requirements for future projects.

Putting Research Into Action

Advancing these conversations at the federal level during the Trump administration, though, has been slow going.

“We didn’t really have any productive discussions with the administration in the last four years,” says Kershaw.

And when it comes to birds, Felton says the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s recently completed “draft cumulative environmental impact statement” covering offshore wind developments had a lot of good environmental research, but little focus on birds.

“Part of that comes from the current administration’s interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,” she says.

President Trump has been hostile to both wind energy and birds, and finished gutting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in his administration’s the final days, removing penalties for companies whose operations kill migratory birds.

There’s hope that the Biden administration will take a different approach. But where the federal government has been lacking lately, Kershaw says, they’ve seen states step up.

New York, for example, has established an Environmental Technical Working Group composed of stakeholders to advise on environmentally responsible development of offshore wind.

The group is led by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, but it isn’t limited to the Empire State. It’s regional in focus and includes representatives from wind developers with leases between Massachusetts and North Carolina; state agencies from Massachusetts to Virginia; federal agencies; and science-based environmental NGOs.

New York’s latest solicitation for clean energy projects includes up to 2,500 megawatts of offshore wind and requires developers to contribute at least $10,000 per megawatt for regional monitoring of fisheries and other wildlife.

Environmental groups have also worked directly with developers, including an agreement with Vineyard Wind — an 800-megawatt project off the Massachusetts coast that could be the first utility-scale wind development in federal waters — to help protect North Atlantic right whales.

The agreement includes no pile driving from Jan. 1 to April 30, ceasing activities at other times when whales are visually or acoustically identified in the area, speed restrictions on vessels, and the use of noise reduction technology, such as a bubble curtain during pile driving.

“The developers signed the agreement with us, and then they incorporated, most, if not all of those measures into the federal permitting documents,” says Kershaw. “The developers really did a lot of bottom up work to make sure that they were being very protective of right whales.”

Environmental groups are in talks with other developers on agreements too, but Felton wants to see best practices being mandated at the federal level.

“It’s the sort of a role that should be being played by the federal government, and without that it makes the permitting and regulation process less stable and less transparent,” she says.” And that in turn slows down the build out of projects, which is also bad for birds because it doesn’t help us address and mitigate for climate change.”

Kershaw agrees there’s a lot more work to be done, especially at the federal level, but thinks we’re moving in the right direction.

“I think the work that’s been done so far in the United States has really laid the groundwork for advancing this in the right way and in a way that’s protective of species and the environment,” she says. “At the same time, it’s important that offshore wind does advance quickly. We really need it to help us combat the worst effects of climate change.”