Trump Administration Eliminates Protections for Vast Ocean Monument — Experts React

Here’s why the action is so harmful, how it’s possibly illegal, and why it won’t help struggling fishing communities.

While most eyes were elsewhere last week, President Trump signed a proclamation to remove fishing restrictions within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The 4,900-square-mile marine protected area off the coast of New England is home to numerous endangered species and fragile deep-sea corals that can live for thousands of years.

The announcement took place late Friday afternoon in a week beset by protests over systemic racism in the middle of a pandemic.

Experts say removing protections puts a wide range of ocean species in harm’s way. It would also distance the nation from the goals of several scientific calls to fully protect 30% of the ocean by the year 2030.

Established by President Obama in 2016, the monument represents only about 1.5% of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone in the Atlantic Ocean, but it encompasses the majority of strongly protected marine protected areas in continental U.S. waters. Removing its fishing restrictions would eliminate 84% of ocean protections within the continental United States, according to the Center for American Progress.

fish — Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

Trump’s public announcement at an event in Bangor, Maine, failed to recognize the scope or value of the monument.

“What reason did [Obama] have for closing 5,000 miles,” Trump said. “That’s a lot of miles. Five thousand square miles is a lot.” The statement ignored the fact that President George W. Bush protected an even larger ocean area in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.

“He didn’t have a reason, in my opinion,” Trump continued. “For me, I can’t even believe they can do a thing like that. That’s a terrible thing. That’s a terrible thing.”

But there is a reason: Fishing restrictions were put in place in the monument to protect the many fascinating and threatened species that call these waters home.

Octocoral bush and a beautiful yellow sponge. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

We don’t really know exactly how badly this change will hurt those species, though, because this decision is unprecedented — no one in U.S. history has ever done so much to un-protect protected areas.

It’s also on uncertain legal ground, as many experts say the move — similar to Trump’s removal of protections at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments — may even be illegal.

Of course the removal of protections — which some experts call one of the most anti-conservation efforts in human history — happened as part of a discussion that included the president boastfully and incorrectly claiming that “I’m a big environmentalist.”

We spoke with several top ocean conservation experts to find out why Trump’s latest move to weaken environmental protections matters, why marine protected areas and the national monument — especially this one — are so important, and what comes next.

What Is a Marine Protected Area?

Marine protected areas like Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument are a key mechanism for protecting ocean biodiversity and the planet.

A marine protected area, or MPA, can be thought of like an underwater national park. Definitions vary, but the term usually represents “no-take” MPAs, or marine reserves — places in which no fishing or oil and gas development are permitted.

Antimora and crab — Face off! Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

The goal of establishing these MPAs is to have some parts of the ocean free from human-caused destruction and overexploitation. This allows them to serve as both sanctuaries for endangered animals and as places where overharvested fish populations can recover. When MPAs are properly designed and effectively administered, they result in more biomass and more biodiversity within their boundaries.

This doesn’t mean people are forbidden from entering an MPA, but it does place certain limits on how the areas can be used or commercialized.

“Multiple uses of the ocean benefit communities, but these uses need to be balanced, and part of the balance means that some places need to be sed aside to enable the ocean to stay healthy,” says Kelly Kryc, director of conservation policy and leadership at the New England Aquarium. “Only a healthy ocean provides all the benefits humans need.”

Those benefits extend beyond marine species’ populations. There’s also some evidence that protecting ocean habitats can contribute to planetary climate resilience.

Marine protected areas are growing around the world, but not fast enough, according to most conservation experts.

Goals set under the international Convention on Biological Diversity required the nations of the world — excluding the United States, which is the only United Nations member that hasn’t signed onto the Convention — to fully protect 10% of coastal and marine areas by this year. According to a recent report, that benchmark which has not been met. In fact, we’ve only protected about 2% so far worldwide.

Another goal, established under the aegis of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, calls for the world’s nations to increase the amount of MPAs to protect 30% of the ocean by the year 2030.

Un-protecting this monument, experts say, is a major step in the wrong direction.

And a surprising step, since MPAs have proven to be very widely supported.

A Bipartisan History in the United States

Although elements of the fishing industry and the oil and gas industry oppose MPAs on principle, the general concept of protecting some parts of the ocean remains overwhelmingly popular in the United States.

A 2019 survey by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation found that 92% of Americans believe government regulation is necessary to protect the ocean, and 95% support the establishment of more marine protected areas — stunningly high support in a divided country where 55% support is often considered a landslide.

king crab — King crab. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

And this isn’t a left-right issue. President George W. Bush, at one point, held the record for creating the largest marine protected area in the United States — the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, which Bush later renamed Papahānaumokuākea and Obama expanded.

Obama then continued that conservation effort with his creation of Northeast Canyons, the first marine monument in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean.

What Is Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument, and What Does It Protect?

Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument covers (as its name suggests) four underwater mountains and three deep-sea canyons, as well as a wide range of unique species. President Obama declared it a site worthy of conservation under the Antiquities Act in September 2016.

Octopus in a safe space. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

But it wasn’t a new idea. Discussions about creating an Atlantic marine monument had been ongoing for decades. The Bush White House considered acting on it, according to Peter Auster, a senior research scientist at the Mystic Aquarium who was involved in evaluating candidate sites for protection.

“Many presidents have used the Antiquities Act to expand the diversity of public lands that are conserved, protecting important examples of our nation’s natural heritage,” Auster says.

The area that eventually became Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument won the honor because of its relatively untouched nature and incredible biodiversity. It’s home to so many fish that one of Auster’s colleagues described it as “obscenely abundant.”

One of the most endangered species found there at certain times of year is North Atlantic right whales, primarily threatened by fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes.

Experts say the region includes habitat for fragile deep-sea corals and sponges, which take centuries to grow and are incredibly vulnerable to several types of fishing gear.

“Allowing commercial-scale fishing here will greatly affect the ecosystem,” Auster says. “We need to protect the whole ecosystem from any threats. This isn’t just about protecting corals in the deep canyons, but about protecting the whole wide web of ecological interactions.”

Brisingid Sea Star — Brisingid sea star. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

Everything that happens in Northeast Canyons is part of a vast, interconnected system, any element of which could easily be disrupted. There are food web linkages between the surface and the deep ocean, Auster says. “Beaked whales dive 2,000 meters and transfer energy between the deep sea and the surface. This will all be disrupted by commercial fisheries.”

Disputing Claims and Criticisms

There’s no doubt that the U.S. fishing industry is hurting now, as the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in making fishing more dangerous for crews working in close quarters, similar to what’s happening in meat-packing plants on land. Meanwhile the pandemic has also sharply reduced demand for seafood.

However, the establishment of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument does not appear to have influenced the fishing industry in any way.

“The problem facing U.S. fisheries isn’t lack of supply,” says Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress. “The problem is there’s no one to buy it because most seafood is bought in restaurants. The administration’s own economic analysis found that there were no impacts to the monument and no benefits to the rollback of protections.”

And the amount of protected areas that could now be fished don’t represent all that much opportunity for fishing fleets. Auster notes that Northeast Canyons only represents 1.5% of the U.S. Atlantic Ocean’s exclusive economic zone. The remaining 98.5% was always open to fishing.

In fact, part of the reason this area was chosen is that hardly anyone was fishing there to begin with. And some of that fishing remained legal after the monument’s establishment. Recreational fishing is still permitted, and crab and lobster fishing were allowed until 2023.

Hake and Red Crab — Hake and red crab. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

“At the time the monument was designated, there were just six permits to fish in those waters,” says Kryc, who notes that the actual boundaries of the monument were designed with input from industry to minimize disruption to local fisheries.

On the other hand, Trump’s process and decision to revoke protections did not include other stakeholders.

“Despite concerns from the fishing community that this monument would have a negative impact on industry, years of data have shown that this just hasn’t happened,” Kryc points out. “Landings for the fishery have actually increased since the monument was designated.”

Supporters of the monument dispute some observers’ claims that President Obama’s creation of it, while legal under the Antiquities Act, bypassed some of the processes typically associated with U.S. ocean management, such as a lack of involvement of fisheries management councils.

“Fisheries management councils are not in charge of everything about the ocean,” Goldstein says. “There are many uses of the ocean, and fishing interests shouldn’t control all of it. We have to figure out how to do more than one thing with the ocean. Supporting sustainable seafood practices is not an argument against protecting some areas of the ocean. Additionally, there are certain areas of the ocean that are just not compatible with fisheries, and deep-sea coral habitat is one of them.”

What Should Be Done Instead?

Goldstein suggests several things the Trump administration could do instead of removing protections for the monument that would help New England fishing communities more than allowing fishing within Northeast Canyons.

“The administration could give more economic relief to fishermen,” she says, echoing points she made in a recent op-ed. “The CARES act included hundreds of millions of dollars for fishermen, but that was for the entire country, so it didn’t go far enough.”

Goldstein also notes that the administration’s ongoing trade war with China hurt the Maine lobster fishery, resulting in tariffs on American-caught lobster and an increase in Chinese consumption of Canadian lobster.

The fisheries could also help feed people hurt by the pandemic. “The government has the power through the USDA to directly buy seafood and freeze it or distribute it to people in need,” she says. “They’re already doing this a little, but could do more.”

And finally, the biggest problem by far for Gulf of Maine fisheries is climate change — which, of course, the administration is either not addressing or actively exacerbating.

What Comes Next?

It’s not clear if this decision by President Trump is legal, and environmental groups have already pledged to take the administration to court, meaning the final fate of National Canyons remains in limbo.

In the meantime, experts say, we can still move forward to support both the monument and ocean biodiversity in general.

First, people can voice support for the monument and MPAs. “The best thing people can do is communicate to elected officials that you want the monument to exist, and you want more of them,” says Kryc. “We need support from Congress.”

red brittle star and pinkish anemone in Paramuricea coral bush — Red brittle star and pinkish anemone in Paramuricea coral bush. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

They also suggest moving to protect more ocean hotspots on the state level. “You can help a lot by protecting state waters, which the federal government doesn’t have control over,” Goldstein says, noting that there are bills being debated in South Carolina and California about creating state-level MPAs now.

And we can’t forget the people who are suffering: We need solutions that can benefit both communities and the environment.

“The fact that President Trump is spending time on this at all during a pandemic and civil unrest and 40 million people unemployed while the very fishermen he’s trying to help are asking for specific assistance he’s not providing is just…ugh,” Goldstein says.

New EU Biodiversity Strategy Can Reduce Risk of Future Pandemics — If It Fully Addresses Wildlife Trade

The strategy represents hope for people and wildlife, and can be a model for governments, but it still lacks critical funding to carry out its goals.

As the planet faces the multiple impacts of COVID-19 on human health, well-being and economies, it’s time for governments across the globe to show leadership and take the necessary steps to help prevent future major pandemics.

The emergence of COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases, which spread from wildlife to humans, shows that our relationship with the environment must now be rethought. We have no other choice but to protect nature and put an end to biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and climate change. There’s no secret about it. Our health depends on the health of the planet — a fact supported by innumerable scientific studies.

With this in mind, many of us in the conservation community are now waiting for the European Union to deliver on its promised Green Deal.

When discussing the EU COVID-19 recovery recently, European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans made a welcome statement and declared that the Green Deal is not a luxury but something that’s essential for Europe’s future. Done right, this plan for a sustainable economy can send a strong message to its citizens and to the world: We’re all in this together, and we will protect nature and people.

As part of the Green Deal, the EU has started developing or reviewing major initiatives, including the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The new version of the Strategy, published May 20, sets the EU’s biodiversity conservation objectives for the next 10 years. It also guides the EU’s engagement within international agreements to which it is a party, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Nature restoration is a central element of our recovery plan from the coronavirus pandemic.

The #EUBiodiversity strategy will bring nature back in our lives by providing investment opportunities for restoring our economy. → https://t.co/kPQksLBt2S #EUGreenDeal pic.twitter.com/wopszI92zE

— European Commission 🇪🇺 #UnitedAgainstCoronavirus (@EU_Commission) May 30, 2020

The implementation of this strategy could represent new hope. If the actions it outlines are fully implemented and financed, it will be a critical tool to ensure the reduction of direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss at a global scale, including the EU’s global ecological footprint, and to address the drivers of ecosystem degradation and deforestation.

This is important, because the EU — like any major government or region — has a critical role to play, not only within its own borders but around the globe.

While it is, of course, essential that the EU protect native biodiversity within its 27 member states, the majority of global biodiversity lies in the tropics, where thousands of species are deeply affected by EU policies. So it’s vital that the EU addresses the biodiversity beyond its borders through a global dimension.

Trade, Biodiversity and Diseases

The strategy, as published, does a great job acknowledging that efforts to address wildlife trade and consumption will help prevent and build up resilience to possible future diseases and pandemics.

But it doesn’t go far enough. The EU must also assist the global community in ending the commercial trade and sale in markets of wildlife for human consumption — particularly birds and mammals — as a key outcome to prevent future zoonotic outbreaks.

Although much of the wildlife sold in these markets is legal, the illegal trade in wild animals continues to harm both wildlife and local communities. It can also produce the conditions for disastrous and deadly pandemics. The EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking — first published in 2016 and due to expire this year — will therefore be a critical instrument for reducing that threat. The Biodiversity Strategy calls for the revision of the wildlife trafficking plan in 2021.

Southern white rhino, a frequently trafficked species, in Uganda. Photo: Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0)

This commitment is welcome and will provide an opportunity for the EU and its Member States to step up their efforts to combat wildlife trafficking and finally treat it as serious crime. Hopefully it will include a commitment to deploying a similar level of resources and penalties as currently devoted to crimes like drug trafficking. Without such deterrents in place, the EU — like any government or region — won’t be able to put an end to wildlife trafficking.

The EU is also now determining its long-term budget — the Multiannual Financial Framework — and will soon set spending targets for the next seven years. The MFF and the next EU development-aid budget (the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument) are critical in outlining the EU’s top priorities.

Those priorities must include high, ambitious spending targets for climate, environment and biodiversity. Without proper financing mechanisms, the EU won’t be able to implement any strategies or actions to preserve our environment and health. While the Biodiversity Strategy states that the EU’s ready to increase its support to developing countries for biodiversity after this year, no detailed financial pledge has yet been made. The EU has missed an opportunity to make a much-needed commitment in this regard, but it’s not too late to establish one.

The EU has all the cards in its hands to make the right decisions — not only to significantly reduce the risk of future major pandemics but to build a new paradigm in which we can live in harmony with nature. It published a well-thought-out strategy that provides the foundation for ambitious actions to tackle the biodiversity crisis; now it needs to put its money where its mouth is.

The EU and its member states have established bold and immediate measures to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on human health, wellbeing and security. Now it must do the same to tackle the biodiversity crisis — whose impacts on our society are likely to be far worse than those of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EU has a unique opportunity to show leadership, to be a game-changer, and to be on the right side of history a model that other governments and regions across the globe can emulate. Let’s hope it doesn’t let us down.

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.

Trump’s Slash and Burn

The administration has brazenly axed another long list of environmental protections — when it should have been healing a nation wounded by the pandemic and racist violence.

Under cover of tear gas, the Trump administration last week intensified its ongoing demolition of the country’s bedrock environmental protections — a series of calculated moves made while the nation remained gripped by the twin viruses of COVID-19 and institutional racism.

It started on Thursday, June 4, when President Trump used the pandemic as an “emergency” excuse to issue an executive order allowing federal agencies to set aside key protections in the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in order to speed up the construction of oil and gas pipelines, highways and other projects.

Trump’s long-threatened NEPA rollback, which will limit citizens’ ability to voice objections to destructive projects, poses a direct threat to minority communities already facing greater levels of illness and death under the COVID-19 pandemic following decades of environmental racism.

“Here we are in the midst of an epidemic that affects your respiratory system and communities that are concerned about respiratory health are losing a voice to stop projects that exacerbate serious health issues,” David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at New York University’s School of Law, told The Hill.

The executive order came three days after Trump used police and teargas to clear away peaceful crowds protesting racially biased police violence to make room for his now-notorious photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

And it came the same day the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that world atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had reached a new record high of 417.1 parts per million, putting the planet further on the path toward runaway climate change. “Progress in emissions reductions is not visible in the CO2 record,” NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans said in the announcement. “We continue to commit our planet — for centuries or longer — to more global heating, sea level rise and extreme weather events every year.”

The text of the press release continued: “If humans were to suddenly stop emitting CO2, it would take thousands of years for our CO2 emissions so far to be absorbed into the deep ocean and atmospheric CO2 to return to pre-industrial levels.”

Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory reached a seasonal peak of 417.1 parts per million (ppm) in May 2020, 2.4 ppm higher than the 2019 peak of 414.7 ppm. https://t.co/BRF9VmLGIO #ClimateChange pic.twitter.com/wVhlQUGvdl

— NOAA Research (@NOAAResearch) June 6, 2020

Which made it all the more perplexing when the EPA, following Trump’s order for additional “emergency” deregulation, announced it would ease the rules that require factories and power plants to report — or even monitor — their pollution emissions, although it did state that these industries should continue to obey existing pollution limits.

In another giveaway to industry, the new policy has been made retroactive to March 13, 2020.

As if those two changes weren’t enough, the slash and burn of environmental protections continued Friday, June 5, when Trump opened Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. The 4,913-square-mile reserve, located 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, was established by President Obama in 2016 under the Antiquities Act and is home to “fragile and largely pristine deep marine ecosystems and rich biodiversity,” according to NOAA.

The move came exactly one week after Trump declared June to be “National Ocean Month” in a bizarre proclamation that focused more on offshore oil and gas development and seafood production than conservation.

The changes were, of course, immediate criticized.

“This rollback essentially sells off the future of the ocean and the future of the ecosystem for almost no present economic benefit,” Miriam Goldstein, ocean policy director at the Center for American Progress, told The Guardian. She added that it’s “puzzling that the president is doing it now, in the middle of the pandemic and with police riots going on around the country.”

Mystic Aquarium was instrumental in providing the scientific rationale for the designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, an area critical to combating the climate crisis that we are facing. To roll back protections is a mistake. pic.twitter.com/E9pdH1m6jd

— Mystic Aquarium (@mysticaquarium) June 5, 2020

Much like Trump’s similar moves to shrink or eliminate other national monuments established by Obama under the Antiquities Act, the change to Northeast Canyons and Seamounts is probably illegal. As we’ve written before, presidents have the legal authority to establish monuments but not to rescind or downsize them. Lawsuits over Trump’s previous monument reductions continue to work their way through the courts, and new suits over this rollback are already expected to follow.

Still more rollbacks are on the way.

Also on Friday June 5, the Trump administration moved forward with plans to reduce the protections offered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, another giveaway to the oil and gas industries — a particularly tone-deaf move during the middle of Black Birders Week, a nationwide event celebrating diversity in nature that coincided with the protests over racial police violence.

The changes to the 1918 international treaty law, which has helped hundreds of species over the past century, would decriminalize “incidental” (non-intentional) bird deaths caused by industrial projects such as oil pits, mines, telecommunications towers, wind turbines and other threats.

The changes aren’t final and are subject to a public-comments period, although citizens have already submitted approximately 200,000 public comments in favor of keeping the law as-is. But as National Audubon Society CEO David Yarnold pointed out, comment periods under the Trump administration “have become a cruel joke. The administration continues to ignore scientists, experts and … bird-lovers in favor of a few bad corporate actors who can’t be bothered with common sense environmental protections.”

Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) also criticized the changes, saying they would “lead to the deaths of thousands and thousands of birds protected under the MBTA. The administration’s radical action needlessly ties the hands of the [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service], while at the same time undermining our international treaty obligations.”

What does all of this really mean in the long run? Legal experts have already pointed out that Trump’s executive order doesn’t have many teeth. “The Order is legally shaky and unlikely to accomplish much,” Dan Farber of UC Berkeley School of Law wrote this week.

Even corporate interests expressed some doubt, especially since the executive order will undoubtedly face court challenges. One engineer tweeted, as quoted by the Washington Post, that “there is *NO WAY* I would turn a shovelful of dirt based on this Order.”

But industry groups actively celebrated the changes and expressed hope they would extend beyond the “emergency” period.

“We value the importance of these reforms now and underscore the need for finalizing rules across regulatory agencies that will implement permanent reforms,” American Exploration and Production Council chief executive Anne Bradbury told the Post.

It’s the last two words of Bradbury’s quote — “permanent reforms” — that say the most. We can expect industry to continue to ask for — and the Trump administration to grant — expanded, permanent deregulatory favors beyond this “emergency” period, changes that will continue to worsen our environment for people, wildlife and entire ecosystems.

And as with so much the Trump administration has done over the past three and a half years, these slash-and-burn changes will come as quietly as they can manage, with regressive actions continuing to take place under cover of darkness or tear gas.

Of course none of them will address the many other real crises this nation faces — and as we’ve seen this past week, all of them will likely only serve to make things worse.

‘Megadrought’ and ‘Aridification’ — Understanding the New Language of a Warming World

New research reveals a creeping, permanent dryness expanding across the United States. It’s much more than “drought,” and researchers hope more accurate descriptions will spur critical action.

After nearly two decades of declining water flows into the Colorado River Basin, scientists have decided the word drought doesn’t cut it anymore. We need different terms, they say, to help people fully grasp what has happened and the long-term implications of climate change — not just in the Southwest, but across the country.

The term that’s caught the most attention lately is “megadrought.”

It’s not a new word, but it’s one that’s come sharply into focus in recent months, following a study published this April in the journal Science that found the North American Southwest has experienced an abnormally severe drought over the past two decades — its second driest stretch in 1,200 years.

Archaeological evidence has linked previous decades-long megadroughts to several historical societal collapses, including the Mayan civilization and Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty in China.

Let that sink in a minute if you need to.

The researchers, led by A. Park Williams of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, say this prolonged megadrought — which reached from Oregon and Idaho down to northern Mexico — would likely have been just a bad drought if not for climate change. The increase in temperatures from our burning of fossil fuels supercharged naturally varying conditions, creating one of the worst megadroughts in human history.

“The new study provided a nice basis to what many of us have felt now for a number of years,” says Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, who was not involved in the research. “The basin has really entered a fundamentally different period than what we experienced during the 20th century.”

low water rings — Lake Mead in 2017. Photo: Karen, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

That may not come as a surprise to those who have noticed that the Colorado River’s biggest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are now sitting half-empty.

But linking modern reality to the megadroughts of history is something new — and researchers say this and other changes to our language matter for the future.

Hot Drought

The current megadrought in the Southwest is defined not so much by declining precipitation — although that did have an effect too — but by increasing temperatures from climate change. That’s going to continue to climb as long as we keep burning greenhouse gases.

Udall and Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, have spent more than a decade studying the effect of this warming on the Colorado River, a crucial water source in the West. The river irrigates 5 million acres of farmland, provides water to 40 million people in seven states — including in the West’s biggest cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Denver — and helps keep the lights on in the “city of lights,” among other towns.

This exploitation has come at an ecological cost, though. Thanks to diversions for our various human uses, the river now runs dry before it reaches the sea. More water rights have been allotted than nature can provide, which is undoubtedly a management issue (although a complex one to solve), but in the last two decades this is being more acutely felt.

In part that’s because less water is running off into the basin.

Udall and Overpeck found in a 2017 study published in Water Resources Research that Colorado River flows between 2000 and 2014 were 19% below normal. Reduced rainfall was partially responsible. But on average, they found, about one-third of the runoff decline resulted from warming temperatures from human-caused climate change.

Snow-capped mountains — Snowmelt is an important part of the freshwater system in the Colorado River Basin. Photo: NASA/ Thaddeus Cesari

Higher temperatures from this “hot drought,” as it’s also called, means more evaporation from water bodies and soil, more evapotranspiration from plants and more sublimation from snow. For the West, where water resources are stretched thin already, this can have far-reaching economic and ecological consequences.

Which brings us to another proposed change in the way we describe things.

In a 2018 paper the Colorado River Research Group, which includes Udall and Overpeck, called for new language to describe the scientific reality on the ground. The term “drought,” they wrote, wasn’t accurate.

“Aridification,” they argued, was a more fitting description.

The semantics here are important.

Aridification, they explained, “describes a period of transition to an increasingly water scarce environment — an evolving new baseline around which future extreme events (droughts and floods) will occur.”

Or more simply: Drought is temporary. Aridification is permanent.

This reinforces the fact that climate change isn’t a distant phenomenon, but one that’s already underway and causing life-altering changes. Depending on where you live, it’s causing more severe floods, destructive hurricanes, prolonged droughts or lengthened fire seasons.

And it’s here to stay, given our current course. The “new normal” of climate change could, like megadroughts, be felt for decades.

“We’ve been wanting to make the case that this is not a normal drought,” says Udall. “A drought implies that some kind of return to normalcy will occur in the near future, and that’s not what we’ve seen and not what the science tells us is likely to happen.”

Aridification Creep

This isn’t a problem contained to just the Colorado River basin or the Southwest, either.

Warmer summer temperatures are likely to reduce flows in other key western rivers, including the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest, and rivers across California’s Sierra Nevada, other research has shown. And warming temperatures are driving similar changes further east, too.

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined flows in the Missouri River, the country’s longest river, which cuts through the Midwest. The researchers, led by USGS scientist Justin Martin, found that during the first decade of the 2000s the Upper Missouri River Basin had drought conditions “unmatched over the last 1,200 years.”

The culprit? Warming temperatures from climate change that reduced runoff from snowfall in Rocky Mountain headwater streams that feed the Missouri.

Same story, different river.

But while that paper did occasionally use the term “megadrought,” it mostly characterized what’s happening in the Missouri as a “severe drought.”

Framing the problem in that manner, some say, may not be enough to convey the seriousness of the situation or to inspire action from water managers and the public.

To change the narrative, we have to change the framing, Udall and Overpeck argue in a new commentary published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in response to the Missouri River study. Thinking of what’s happening on the Missouri, and other rivers across the West, as a drought, they wrote, ignores the real and long-term effect that warming temperatures will have on our rivers.

“This translates into an increasingly arid Southwest and West, with progressively lower river flows, drier landscapes, higher forest mortality, and more severe and widespread wildfires,” they wrote, “not year on year, but instead a clear longer-term trend toward greater aridification, a trend that only climate action can stop.”

And that gets to about the only good news in any of the recent research. We know what’s causing the problem. We just need to do something about it.

A first step is making sure changes in water-management policy reflect scientific reality, and that’s where using language for planning that matches the task at hand becomes crucial.

drought planning ceremony — Colorado River drought contingency plans signing ceremony in May 2019. Photo: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Water managers traditionally use the past as a guide by examining the hydrologic record to calculate important baselines for the average high and low flows, the size of possible floods and the length of probable droughts.

But that’s all changing now “because the future is no longer going to look like the past,” says Eric Kuhn, the former general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and coauthor of the book Science Be Damned: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River. Now, he says, “water managers are trying to move forward in what we call ‘deep uncertainty’” — a process that requires planning for any number of plausible futures, including a very dry one.

We will get a chance to see what this looks like at the basin-scale as a seven-year process to renegotiate how the Colorado River is shared among its many uses is now underway.

Whether those at the table take to heart the scientific findings about the prognosis for “aridification” and “megadrought” will have big ramifications on the future ecological, economic and political health of the Colorado River basin.

Outside the basin the larger work continues as well.

“The sooner emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere are eliminated,” Udall and Overpeck concluded, “the sooner the aridification of North America will stop getting worse.”

Don’t Look Away

The ongoing crisis of racially motivated police violence — and the government’s violent response to demonstrations against those actions — reminds us that change requires justice.

It’s hard to comprehend how broken our country feels right now. The recent killings of African Americans at the hands of police — and in Atlanta, armed vigilantes — are horrific. So, too, are the nationwide acts of violence perpetrated against the people protesting these deaths.

It’s harder, still, to wrap our minds around how President Trump continues to incite hatred, violence and oppression in his speeches, tweets and strong-arm deeds — cheered on and echoed by many of his colleagues and supporters. Their white supremacy extends well beyond the White House to the very underpinnings of our society — including the systems that should be protecting all of us.

And of course, the racist violence and suppression of dissent come at a time when we’re also fighting a global pandemic — one that has sharply revealed the long-entrenched racial inequities in American society, as communities of color suffer more than white communities from the disease.

That’s why all communities, including environmentalists, must not look away during this difficult time.

One of the fundamental values behind environmental protection has always been justice — justice for those who breathe air and drink water, justice for those who have lived on the land for thousands of years, justice for wildlife beleaguered by poaching and habitat loss, justice for ecosystems being torn apart, justice for future generations who will need a livable climate.

Now environmental protection must also be understood as a fight for human justice — justice for people who’ve been harassed, murdered, marginalized and abused for far too long.

The systemic violence against African Americans, Native Americans and other peoples of color in this country is unacceptable. And although it isn’t exactly an environmental issue, it’s one more symptom of the same far-reaching oppression and subjugation that drive most of our environmental ills, ranging from climate change to pollution to the toxic chemicals and zoonotic diseases that enter our bodies. The same system of exploitation and abuse that has meant, for decades, that people of color have faced greater burdens from toxic air and water, climate change and the cascading health and economic problems that result.

Issues of conservation have always intersected with justice: justice across time and justice across space. That makes the environmental community a necessary, vital ally in the struggle against racial violence.

Because of the interconnected nature of these linked struggles, if we work to resolve one thing, the rest of these problems we face might start to follow.

If we demilitarize the police, if we stop beating people down, if we stop committing the types of violence that cascade from one generation to the next — well, that’s a step ahead on the long road before us. One that will give us all a bit more strength for the next fight to ensure that future generations will have a better, healthier planet on which to live.

If y’all could fix racism so I can focus on saving the planet, that would be great. Thanks. xo https://t.co/oZw1PNpQ1I

— Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (@ayanaeliza) June 3, 2020

Here’s our additional perspective as journalists: Our society can only resolve these issues if we listen to the people who’ve been affected most. We need to attune ourselves to listen, learn, reflect and commit to change. This will help identify the scars that need to heal and the systems that need to be replaced, along with the new systems that should take their place.

At The Revelator we’ve always asked people not to look away from the disasters unfolding around us. That’s true whether we’re talking about climate change, the extinction crisis or racial injustice.

Because while these ongoing crises of racism, police violence and oppression aren’t directly environmental issues, they’re issues of people and culture and society and justice. And all of those are worth fighting for.

Australian Plant Species Face ‘Imminent Extinction’ From Invasive Pathogen

The once-common native guava species has nearly vanished — killed off by an invasive fungus that arrived just 10 years ago. Other plant species may soon follow.

For Australia’s native guava, death came in the form of a fungus.

Just 10 years ago, a virulent strain of the fungus Austropuccinia psidii arrived in New South Wales. First observed in Hawaii in 2005, the fungus causes a devastating plant disease called myrtle rust, which has quickly and mysteriously spread around the world — most likely through industrial shipping and other elements of our global economy. Each species that encounters the fungus displays different levels of resistance, but many plants experience deformed leaves, defoliation, stunted growth and even death. The fungus reproduces prodigiously, spewing out trillions of microscopic spores that can easily be carried to new areas by the wind.

Once the fungus hit Australia it quickly spread from coast to coast, infecting hundreds of species from the Myrtaceae family, which includes native guava, eucalyptus, tea trees and bottle brushes.

Native guava (Rhodomyrtus psidioides) was hit the hardest. Just a decade after myrtle rust first turned up in Australia, the once-common plant is now almost completely incapable of producing seeds, fruits or new growths throughout its range. According to a new study, 23% of native guava populations have disappeared. Another 61% have been reduced to “root suckers,” little growths that the fungus attacks and kills as soon as they emerge from the ground. Out of 66 regularly monitored guava sites in Queensland and New South Wales, 65 sites have lost every plant.

dead native guava — Native guava trees killed by myrtle rust near Byron Bay, NSW. Photo: Kris Kupsch, courtesy Threatened Species Recovery Hub

“The guava itself is just screwed,” says Rod Fensham, an ecologist with the University of Queensland and the Queensland Herbarium who’s the study’s lead author. “It’s so susceptible to the disease, it just kills every living tip. They’re unable to set viable seed, so they’re functionally extinct.”

And it’s not alone. The study predicts that myrtle rust will cause the “imminent extinction” of many other Myrtaceae species. “I reckon there’s at least 15 species that are soon going to be functionally extinct,” Fensham says. “They’re not seeding.”

He sees the effects of the fungus every day while he’s self-isolating at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I could take you down to my back garden where I’ve planted some of these Myrtaceae in the last month or two,” he tells me while video chatting from his back porch in Brisbane. “They’re showing signs of the rust already. I’m probably just going to watch them die.”

All this from a relatively invisible threat.

“It’s just these little dust particles floating in the air,” Fensham says. “It’s not a giant bulldozer or fires roaring through the landscape. It’s these particles that innocently arrived as a result of some unknown artifact of globalization.”

The loss of the guava and other Myrtaceae species, Fensham warns, could drive other ecological threats.

An Ecological Loss

As a widespread, fruiting tree, native guava traditionally supports a wide range of other species, including more than 100 pollinating insects. So myrtle rust’s invasion could result in “the local extinction of both the floral resource and disruption of associated plant–insect relationships” throughout the plant’s range, according to the paper.

Native guava myrtle rust — Native guava shoots infected with myrtle rust. Photo: Rod Fensham, courtesy Threatened Species Recovery Hub

And it’s not just insects. “Unlike eucalyptus that have got a hard, woody nut, these Myrtaceae have got a fleshy fruit which must be an important resource for frugivores,” Fensham says. “I know people who have had native guavas around their houses, and they say bats just loved them. They were gorging themselves on these guavas. That was only ten years ago and now the thing’s gone.”

Meanwhile the loss of native guava and other Myrtaceae could cause another problem: fire.

Lighting the Wick

Some Myrtaceae species affected by myrtle rust typically grow at the edge of Australia’s rainforests. There they can serve as a kind of barrier, slowing or preventing any fires along the edge from entering the heart of the rainforest. “Their trick is to retard the fire at the edge of the forest, and they do it in a spectacular fashion,” Fensham says. This isn’t the case for species such as eucalyptus, which encourage fire in the bush, but certain rainforest species have a dense, tightly packed canopy that appears to minimize ground layer growth of more flammable plants and block the wind that drives fires.

But as Myrtaceae plants disappear, what replaces them serves the opposite function. The same rainforest edges are also home to another invasive species, a beautiful flowing plant from the American tropics called lantana (Lantana camara). One of the world’s most invasive species, lantana is considered by the Australian government to be a “weed of national significance,” as its quick growth rate — it seeds six times a year — allows it to take over native brushland habitats, converting them to dense, impassable thickets.

It’s also toxic to livestock, and its woody structure serves as ready fuel for forest fires.

Fensham says as Myrtaceae disappears, lantana has the potential to become “sort of a wick into the rainforest.” If the fungus kills off the native plants and the invasive plants replace them, the lantana could carry fire into the normally protected rainforests and the wide range of unique species that live within them.

“It’s a really important source of biodiversity that’s going to be wiped out,” he says. Australia’s recent slate of brushfires has mostly left the county’s rainforests unscathed, but that could change as the loss of Myrtaceae allows lantana to continue its spread.

Resistance and Reservoirs

At the moment the greatest hope for native guava is the potential that some individuals may show resistance to myrtle rust.

That hasn’t happened yet. “It just doesn’t seem…we can’t find them, for the guava,” Fensham says. There are plants holding on, but barely. The most notable example is at Byron Bay, a popular tourist destination, where just 10 trees remain. “We’re monitoring them, but we expect they’ll just succumb,” he says. “And even if they don’t succumb, they can’t fruit and seed, so they’ll just die of old age and there won’t be another generation.”

Other Myrtaceae species might have more resistance than the guava, although that’s still an area of active research. “It’s a bit early to say. But in some populations of some species, some individuals seem less affected than others.” If researchers do find resistant individuals or populations, there’s a possibility for keeping the various species going.

“The biggest hope for survival,” Fensham says, “is just that we can find some signs of resistance in the wild populations, and then reintroduce those resistant strains back into places where they used to be, but…” His voice trails off.

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Look at these lovelies! Look 😍 Fruit from the critically endangered Rhodomyrtus psidioides (native guava), from plants cared for by my awesome colleagues. Now I just have to work out how to store their seed in liquid nitrogen, because they don’t survive our normal seed-banking procedures. #rhodomyrtus #myrtaceae #myrtlerust #nativeguava #nativeplants #australiannatives #australiannativeplants #rainforestconservation #rainforest #conservation #rainforestfruit #research #phdlife

A post shared by Lyndle (@what.i.spot) on Mar 23, 2020 at 3:24am PDT

Meanwhile, the best chance for native guava’s continued existence lies in captivity. Two special “rescue gardens” outside the plant’s native range have been set up to keep the species from totally disappearing. “They’re just beyond the reach of the myrtle rust,” Fensham says. They’re drier than the guava’s normal habitats, so “we might have to water them in droughts, for example, and they become more like a garden than a translocated, self-sustaining population. So that’s wait and see.”

But so far they’ve helped to save the species from extinction, and the 80 plants growing there are doing well.

“What I can tell you is that in these gardens, the guavas look fantastic. So just beyond the reach of the disease in these dryer environments, in a town just an hour and a half to the west of here, the guavas are doing fine, they’re leaping out of the ground. I guess that’s a good news story, and we’ll be adding to these gardens other species that we’re worried about.”

A Rapid Change

What Fensham finds most unprecedented about myrtle rust is the speed of its spread and impact.

“You know, I can’t find any documentation of anything else this fast,” he says. “You’ve got the American chestnut blight and the Dutch elm disease, but this seems extraordinarily rapid and severe.”

It’s unprecedented even in Australia, which has one of the highest concentrations of endangered species in the world but relatively few plant extinctions to date.

“Europeans have done some pretty nasty things to this continent,” he says. “It’s remarkable with what we’ve thrown at this continent how few things have gone extinct. And here’s myrtle rust — 10, 20 years, we could lose 15 species. Who knows, we could lose more.”

This gnarly old tree deep in Limpinwood NR is NSW’s newest #threatenedspecies – critically #endangered Lenwebbia sp Main Range. With very few in the wild, Myrtle Rust is rapidly killing them off. Today I got cuttings for #PlantBank so there’s hope! #SavingOurSpecies #conservation pic.twitter.com/045xF5UDzt

— Gavin Phillips (@SeedyGav) November 23, 2018

Which brings us back to COVID-19.

“We’ve tried to change the climate of the planet,” Fensham says. “We’ve poisoned our oceans with all these things. And maybe the most critical threat to humanity is just this tiny little organism.”

Hunting for Game Wardens: A Shortage of Conservation Officers Threatens Wildlife

States are facing significant shortages of conservation officers, who help protect natural resources and wildlife. COVID-19 could make it worse.

In Georgia there are just 213 game wardens to enforce state fish and wildlife laws, investigate violations, assist with conservation efforts and collect data on wildlife and ecological changes across 16,000 miles of rivers and 37 million acres of public and private lands. Statewide 46 counties have no designated game warden at all. The shortage could lead to wildlife crimes going undetected.

“The more officers we have in the field, the more contact those officers have with the public, the more violations we’ll find,” says Major Mike England, a game warden with the Law Enforcement Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. “The locals in the counties without game wardens are very vocal about it; it’s like living in a town with no police department.”

Georgia is not an anomaly. Nationwide states struggle to recruit, hire and train game wardens. These law-enforcement officers — also known as conservation officers, forest rangers, gamekeepers or wildlife troopers — are on the frontlines of conservation, but significant staffing shortages, especially in rural communities, put wildlife and the environment at risk.

It’s not just an issue in the United States. A 2018 United Nations report noted a worldwide increase in environmental crimes and cited a “lack of capacity in the enforcement chain” as one of the major gaps in ability to respond.

And the current COVID-19 pandemic could exacerbate the problem.

The Environment Pays the Price

Environmental crimes like poaching, overfishing and illegal dumping threaten healthy ecosystems, and without adequate patrols can lead to declining wildlife populations, disease spread, increases in invasive species, erosion and contaminated waterways.

“People who want to cheat resources know which [ranger] stations are vacant and know that the odds of seeing a warden in the field are rare because regular patrols aren’t happening,” explains Larry Bonde, chairman of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, a group of elected delegates who advise the state department of natural resources. “It’s not just fish and game violations; if no one is visiting sensitive sites…there are a lot of things that get overlooked that could be spotted by [a game warden] patrolling the area.”

In California, for example, game wardens with the Department of Fish and Wildlife are often the first to spot illegal cannabis cultivation sites — called trespass grows — where growers raze paths through national forests to access secluded sites, divert significant amounts of water to irrigate cannabis plants, and apply massive amounts of pesticides to keep wildlife from gnawing on the crops. Too few game wardens in the field could lead to massive environmental degradation before trespass grows are spotted.

garbage in forest — A small portion of the garbage and debris left at a “trespass” marijuana grow site on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California. Photo: US Forest Service

Even when issues are spotted, Rick Langley, wildlife program manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department and president of the North American Wildlife Enforcement Officers Association, believes that having too few game wardens in the field could have a negative impact on investigations and enforcement.

“[Game wardens] work really hard to fill in the gaps to protect natural resources,” he says. “In areas with less officer presence or where officers are spread thin to cover vacant districts, it has the potential to leave investigations incomplete or not responded to or followed up on as thoroughly as they would have been if you had one officer assigned to the area.”

Bonde agrees, adding, “If the station is vacant and there’s a complaint, it won’t be ignored, but it certainly isn’t going to get the amount of attention it would if it had been a full-time posted station.”

But filling vacant stations isn’t always easy.

Several factors, including shrinking conservation budgets, declining numbers of qualified applicants, long hours, low wages and rural locations have all contributed to the dearth of game wardens working in the field.

Those who want to pursue careers in the field often fail to make it past initial screenings. In 2019 the Georgia Department of Natural Resources hired just 10 game wardens from a pool of 350 applicants. England notes that most of the applicants failed their physical fitness exam or polygraph test, removing them from consideration. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources graduated a class of 12 game wardens from a pool of more than 400 applicants.

“There has been a longstanding concern about the number of vacancies,” notes Bonde. “[With too few officers in the field] it’s not even possible for proper enforcement to occur.”

COVID Challenges

These existing challenges are poised to get worse. The COVID-19 global health pandemic has triggered major budget cuts, further threatening funding for environmental conservation and could result in additional cuts to conservation districts that are already cash-strapped and understaffed.
“For agencies that receive funding [through state taxes and revenues], the repercussions from reduced tourism and businesses closing could have a very serious effect,” says Langley. “We’re hearing rumors about budget cuts and, in many areas, budget is one of the main reasons these positions go unfilled.”

In 2019 the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had 21 open positions across its 155 patrol areas; the number decreased (from 27 vacancies in 2019) but the state is facing a projected $2.42 billion budget deficit as a result of the pandemic, which could threaten funding for the department.

In Montana the wardens working for Fish, Wildlife & Parks wrote 2,194 citations in 2018 compared to 4,027 a decade earlier. Game wardens suspect that there are not fewer wildlife crimes, just fewer officers to catch perpetrators. That number could drop again. The state, anticipating “significant revenue shortfalls” due to the pandemic, led legislators to request reducing state spending; the department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks could feel the sting.

To complicate matters, stay-at-home orders have led people to spend more time outdoors, hiking in national forests and boating and fishing on lakes. States like Vermont, North Dakota, Minnesota and New York have reported significant increases in the number of fishing licenses being issued, which means more anglers to monitor and too few game wardens to ensure no one is violating catch limits.

abalone in pickup truck — California Department of Fish and Wildlife Lieutenant Specialist Jess Mitchell with an overlimit of abalone taken off the California shore. Photo: CDFW

Targeting Solutions

The seriousness of the issue has led some states to implement strategies to increase the number of game wardens in the field and provide additional support to keep them in their roles.

In fiscal year 2018-2019, the Minnesota legislature allocated an additional $2.8 million to help the Department of Natural Resources recruit, hire and train additional game wardens to help fill 28 vacant positions. The Arizona Fish and Game Department, which has 16 vacancies across its 80 conservation districts, ramped up recruitment efforts too, adding three classes to the law enforcement academy in 2020 (up from just one in previous years). It also hired an advisor to educate students graduating from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona about conservation careers.

Most departments also have ranger “tip lines” where the public can report violations. In addition to the hotlines, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources also installed 400 cameras across the state to help catch wildlife violations.

“Instead of a game warden sitting out at night for eight hours to watch for hunters spotlighting deer [an illegal practice that involves using a flashlight or headlights to locate wildlife while hunting after hours], we use cameras,” England explains. “If we have problems with people dumping trash, sneaking in certain areas and fishing after hours or illegal hunting, we can hide one of these cameras and it sends the game warden a picture or a video of what’s going on.”

While Bonde supports the use of high-tech tools and hotlines to report potential conservation violations to help protect wildlife and the environment, he believes addition funding to get more game wardens in the field is essential, adding, “Without proper enforcement, there will always be people who cheat our natural resources.”

A Lost Leech and a Call to Protect the Bloodsuckers

The New England medicinal leech could be a poster child for invertebrate and parasite conservation, according to researchers. We just need to find it first.

Could a five-inch-long, bloodsucking leech inspire efforts to protect other leech species?

Yes, according to researchers — but only if it’s not already extinct.

That’s a possibility, as the New England medicinal leech (Macrobdella sestertia) — a name that dates to the practice of using leeches to “treat” fevers and other health conditions — hasn’t been observed in the wild since 2008.

But it’s gone long unseen several times before. The species, a relative of the much more common American medicinal leech (M. decora), was first described back in 1886, after which no reports of its existence emerged again until 1977. It had been presumed extinct before that rediscovery.

Since then it’s remained a bit of an enigma. Just a handful of reports of its existence have emerged from the leech’s wetland habitats in Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire.

We don’t know exactly why it’s been so hard to find — it may always have been rare — but the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife describes it as “likely sensitive to shoreline changes and declines in water quality” and identifies sewage seeps and habitat loss as potential threats.

And maybe we weren’t looking in the right places. Recent research revealed that several New England medicinal leeches were observed in 2002 and 2008 in South Carolina — far outside their previously recognized range. The discovery wasn’t published until 2018.

Another recent finding provides even more hope. Last year scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of National History announced that they’d identified a new Macrobdella species, the first such discovery in 40 years.

For #NationalRelaxationDay we share this hypnotic video…of a LEECH. Its name is Macrobdella mimicus. And it was just described today in the Journal of Parasitology, by our curator of parasitic worms, Anna Phillips @Annalida500, and a team of scientists. pic.twitter.com/3iCQO9h2Uk

— Smithsonian’s NMNH (@NMNH) August 15, 2019

They found it just 50 miles from the museum, as well as in museum collections around the country, where it had been misidentified as other species.

“A discovery like this makes clear just how much diversity is out there remaining to be discovered and documented, even right under scientists’ noses,” said lead researcher Anna Phillips, the museum’s curator of parasitic worms, at the time.

That theme echoes in the new paper about the New England medicinal leech by Phillips and Georgetown University biologist Colin Carson. They’re calling for additional surveys to find any remaining populations of the lost species, as well as assessing it to be listed under the Endangered Species Act and the IUCN Red List. They also recommend protecting critical freshwater habitats and creating Red List entries for it and at least a dozen other rare or vulnerable leeches.

If protected or rediscovered, Phillips and Carson suggest that the New England medicinal leech could serve as “the first flagship species for parasite conservation.” As they write in their paper:

“…parasitic leeches are a comparatively easy ‘sell’ for parasite conservation: they are diverse, useful in medicine and as a model organism in developmental biology, striking and often colorful in appearance, have an infamous reputation, and are unlikely to pose a major threat to endangered hosts.”

Of course, the question remains: Does the New England medicinal leech still exist or is it extinct? Phillips and Carson devote the core of their paper to that problem. They used a series of six “extinction date estimator” mathematical models to calculate the probability of the species continued existence based on how often and when it was last observed. Their conclusion: There’s just not enough evidence to support the hypothesis that it’s no longer with us.

That’s potentially good news for now, but it doesn’t mean this species is exactly safe. Two of the six models suggest it might already be extinct, while a third calculates the year it could go extinct as…2020. The other three models give it a little bit more time — anywhere from 2027 to 2046.

As Phillips and Carson note in their paper, only a handful of leech species have ever received conservation protections. Could the New England medicinal leech help turn that trend around? It’s certainly time to try — while there’s still time to try.

Previously in The Revelator:

Why We Should Care About Parasites — and Their Extinction

‘Not Another Decade to Waste’ — How to Speed up the Clean Energy Transition

Energy policy expert Leah Stokes explains who’s pushing climate delay and denial — it’s not just fossil fuel companies — and what we need to do now.

The first official tallies are in: Coronavirus-related shutdowns helped slash daily global emissions of carbon dioxide by 14% in April. But the drop won’t last, and experts estimate that annual emissions of the greenhouse gas are likely to fall only about 7% this year.

After that, unless we make substantial changes to global economies, it will be back to business as usual — and a path that leads directly to runaway climate change. If we want to reverse course, say the world’s leading scientists, we have about a decade to right the ship.

That’s because we’ve squandered a lot of time. “The 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s were lost decades for preventing global climate disaster,” political scientist Leah Stokes writes in her new book Short Circuiting Policy, which looks at the history of clean energy policy in the United States.

But we don’t all bear equal responsibility for the tragic delay.

“Some actors in society have more power than others to shape how our economy is fueled,” writes Stokes, an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “We are not all equally to blame.”

Short Circuiting Policy focuses on the role of one particularly bad actor: electric utilities. Their history of obstructing a clean-energy transition in the United States has been largely overlooked, with most of the finger-pointing aimed at fossil fuel companies (and for good reason).

We spoke with Stokes about this history of delay and denial from the utility industry, how to accelerate the speed and scale of clean-energy growth, and whether we can get past the polarizing rhetoric and politics around clean energy.

What lessons can we learn from your research to guide us right now, in what seems like a really critical time in the fight to halt climate change?

What a lot of people don’t understand is that to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we actually have to reduce emissions by around 7-8% every single year from now until 2030, which is what the emissions drop is likely to be this year because of the COVID-19 crisis.

So think about what it took to reduce emissions by that much and think about how we have to do that every single year.

It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be some big sacrifice, but it does mean that we need government policy, particularly at the federal level, because state policy can only go so far. We’ve been living off state policy for more than three decades now and we need our federal government to act.

Where are we now, in terms of our progress on renewable energy and how far we need to go?

A lot of people think renewable energy is growing “so fast” and it’s “so amazing.” But first of all, during the coronavirus pandemic, the renewable energy industry is actually doing very poorly. It’s losing a lot of jobs. And secondly, we were not moving fast enough even before the coronavirus crisis, because renewable energy in the best year grew by only 1.3%.

Right now we’re at around 36-37% clean energy. That includes nuclear, hydropower and new renewables like wind, solar and geothermal. But hydropower and nuclear aren’t growing. Nuclear supplies about 20% of the grid and hydro about 5% depending on the year. And then the rest is renewable. So we’re at about 10% renewables, and in the best year, we’re only adding 1% to that.

Generally, we need to be moving about eight times faster than we’ve been moving in our best years. (To visualize this idea, I came up with the narwhal curve.)

How do we overcome these fundamental issues of speed and scale?

We need actual government policy that supports it. We have never had a clean electricity standard or renewable portfolio standard at the federal level. That’s the main law that I write all about at the state level. Where those policies are in place, a lot of progress has been made — places like California and even, to a limited extent, Texas.

We need our federal government to be focusing on this crisis. Even the really small, piecemeal clean-energy policies we have at the federal level are going away. In December Congress didn’t extend the investment tax credit and the production tax credit, just like they didn’t extend or improve the electric vehicle tax credit.

And now during the COVID-19 crisis, a lot of the money going toward the energy sector in the CARES Act is going toward propping up dying fossil fuel companies and not toward supporting the renewable energy industry.

So we are moving in the wrong direction.

Clean energy hasn’t always been such a partisan issue. Why did it become so polarizing?

What I argue in my book, with evidence, is that electric utilities and fossil fuel companies have been intentionally driving polarization. And they’ve done this in part by running challengers in primary elections against Republicans who don’t agree with them.

Basically, fossil fuel companies and electric utilities are telling Republicans that you can’t hold office and support climate action. That has really shifted the incentives within the party in a very short time period.

It’s not like the Democrats have moved so far left on climate. The Democrats have stayed in pretty much the same place and the Republicans have moved to the right. And I argue that that’s because of electric utilities and fossil fuel companies trying to delay action.

And their reason for doing that is simply about their bottom line and keeping their share of the market?

Exactly. You have to remember that delay and denial on climate change is a profitable enterprise for fossil fuel companies and electric utilities. The longer we wait to act on the crisis, the more money they can make because they can extract more fossil fuels from their reserves and they can pay more of their debt at their coal plants and natural gas plants. So delay and denial is a money-making business for fossil fuel companies and electric utilities.

There’s been a lot of research, reporting and even legal action in recent years about the role of fossil fuel companies in discrediting climate science. From reading your book, it seems that electric utilities are just as guilty. Is that right?

Yes, far less attention has been paid to electric utilities, which play a really critical role. They preside over legacy investments into coal and natural gas, and some of them continue to propose building new natural gas.

They were just as involved in promoting climate denial in the 1980s and 90s as fossil fuel companies, as I document in my book. And some of them, like Southern Company, have continued to promote climate denial to basically the present day.

But that’s not the only dark part of their history.

Electric utilities promoted energy systems that are pretty wasteful. They built these centralized fossil fuel power plants rather than having co-generation plants that were onsite at industrial locations where manufacturing is happening, and where you need both steam heat — which is a waste product from electricity — and the electricity itself. That actually created a lot of waste in the system and we burned a lot more fossil fuels than if we had a decentralized system.

The other thing they’ve done in the more modern period is really resisted the energy transition. They’ve resisted renewable portfolio standards and net metering laws that allow for more clean energy to come onto the grid. They’ve tried to roll them back. They’ve been successful in some cases, and they’ve blocked new laws from passing when targets were met.

You wrote that, “Partisan polarization on climate is not inevitable — support could shift back to the bipartisanship we saw before 2008.” What would it take to actually make that happen?

Well, on the one hand, you need to get the Democratic Party to care more about climate change and to really understand the stakes. And if you want to do that, I think the work of the Justice Democrats is important. They have primary-challenged incumbent Democrats who don’t care enough about climate change. That is how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elected. She was a primary challenger and she has really championed climate action in the Green New Deal.

The other thing is that the public supports climate action. Democrats do in huge numbers. Independents do. And to some extent Republicans do, particularly young Republicans.

So communicating the extent of public concern on these issues is really important because, as I’ve shown in other research, politicians don’t know how much public concern there is on climate change. They dramatically underestimate support for climate action.

I think the media has a really important role to play because it’s very rare that a climate event, like a disaster that is caused by climate change, is actually linked to climate change in media reporting.

But people might live through a wildfire or a hurricane or a heat wave, but nobody’s going to tell them through the media that this is climate change. So we really need our reporters to be doing a better job linking people’s lived experiences to climate change.

With economic stimulus efforts ramping up because of the COVD-19 pandemic, are we in danger of missing a chance to help boost a clean energy economy?

I think so many people understand that stimulus spending is an opportunity to rebuild our economy in a way that creates good-paying jobs in the clean-energy sector that protects Americans’ health.

We know that breathing dirty air makes people more likely to die from COVID-19. So this is a big opportunity to create an economy that’s more just for all Americans.

But unfortunately, we really are not pivoting toward creating a clean economy, which is what we need to be doing. This is an opportunity to really focus on the climate crisis because we have delayed for more than 30 years. There is not another decade to waste.

Bear-ly on the Radar: Indonesia’s Illegal Trade in Sun Bears Could Worsen in the Pandemic

The world’s smallest bears face oversized pressure from poaching, traditional medicine and the illegal pet trade. The COVID-19 pandemic could make things even worse.

Last month, as the world dealt with the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, China’s National Health Commission proposed an unexpected and potentially devastating treatment for the virus: the injection of “traditional medicine” containing bear bile.

China’s inhumane treatment of captive sun bears — which are kept in tiny, cramped cages and continuously “milked” for their gall-bladder bile for use in traditional Asian medicine — has long earned condemnation from conservationists and animal-rights activists.

But the proposal of using bear bile as a treatment for COVID-19, which is unlikely to have any real medicinal value for coronavirus patients, has implications beyond those affecting the captive-bear population. By creating additional demand for bile and other bear products, it could make things worse for wild bears in Indonesia, a hotspot of poaching and wildlife trafficking.

Indonesia’s Amazing, Threatened Bears

The sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) is a wide-ranging Asiatic species and the world’s smallest bear. Two unique sun bear subspecies live in Indonesia: H.m. malayanus, on the island of Sumatra, and H.m. euryspilus, endemic to the island of Borneo. The entire species faces declining populations and localized extirpations and is considered “vulnerable to extinction” by the IUCN Red List, although these two Indonesia subspecies may be at much higher risk.

sun bear hole — A hole carved in a tree by a sun bear. Photo © Andy J. Boyce (CC BY-NC 4.0) via iNaturalist

Sun bears are amazing forest dwellers that, as omnivores, have immense ecological value. They drive forest nutrient cycling, seed dispersal and forest regrowth. They’re a form of pest control, since they feed on termites and other insects, and serve as engineers of the forests. Their hunt for ants and bees creates tree cavities that provide homes for various other forest inhabitants, including endangered hornbills.

But their ecological significance is trumped by the contraband worth of their parts, which are highly valued by humans as trophies and charms and for use in traditional medicine.

Historically indigenous communities in Indonesia have always hunted bears for ceremonial clothing, food, jewellery, medicine, protective charms and hunting trophies. This had little impact on wild populations due to the traditional hunting methods used. But hunting methods have evolved and now include the use of firearms, snares and electrocution, all of which make it much easier to kill large animals. Meanwhile ongoing clearing and logging of forests have made wildlife ever-more accessible to poachers, with significant impacts on populations of sun bears and other species.

While detailed population estimates for sun bears don’t exist, Indonesia has been described as an important stronghold for the species, which are found in higher densities here than in any other range state. But the bears face a multitude of threats in Indonesia, not the least of which is illegal wildlife trade.

An Ongoing Threat Moves Online

Our studies, including an analysis of Indonesian seizure data related to bears from 2011 to 2018 and a three-month survey of the online availability of bear-related products on Facebook, reveal an ongoing threat from the illegal wildlife trade in Indonesia. Along with a local demand for sun bear parts such as claws, teeth, skins, skulls or stuffed whole specimens, there’s also the sale of claws and teeth on social media, both in their natural forms and carved into intricate designs or crafted into pendants.

Sun bear Borneo — A sun bear in a tree in Malaysian Borneo, its strong claws visible. Photo: Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay (CC)

We also found evidence of the trade in live cubs as pets. For example, a live bear cub was recently seized, along with live orangutans and clouded leopards, in the Indonesian state capital of Jakarta. The animals were en route to Kuwait and were rescued during an investigation into international wildlife trafficking, including shipments to Middle Eastern countries. The Middle East is under increasing scrutiny for its flourishing exotic-pet industry.

And of course, even before the pandemic, there was evidence of more targeted hunting of bears for their gallbladder and bile, used in traditional medicine, and their paws for exotic meat. In January 2018 Indonesian authorities arrested a wildlife trader and confiscated 64 bear paws and 22 frozen Sunda pangolins (Manis javanica) stored in a refrigerator, along with one live pangolin. The items were reportedly purchased from an indigenous tribe in Jambi, West Sumatra, and destined to be sold to Chinese restaurants in big cities in Java.

Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam have also been implicated as destination countries in the shipment of bear parts from Indonesia’s East Kalimantan. The largest sun bear seizure in our study period took place in 2017, involving two bear skulls, 266 bones, 24 gall bladders, 1087 claws and 67 canines — all destined for Vietnam. According to the arrested suspect, this was not the first time such a shipment had been sent there.

Lack of Law Enforcement

Wildlife traders in Indonesia clearly have little fear of law-enforcement action. Sun bears have been protected in the country since 1973, yet the illegal trade in live bears, their parts and derivatives all persist.

International regulations are also ignored. Sun bears are listed in Appendix I of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which prohibits international trade, but evidence continues to point to Indonesia as a source of trafficked bears to other parts of the world.

As with almost all wildlife crime, this trade — when it’s encountered by law-enforcement officials — rarely results in heavy punishments for the perpetrators. Our analysis of bear seizure data showed that only 32% of incidents resulted in successful prosecution and just one of those cases came close to the maximum penalty afforded by the law. In that case — the January 2018 seizure involving 64 bear paws —the trader received a jail sentence of 4 years and 6 months as well as a IDR100mil fine (approximately $6,900).

Arrests and prosecutions are so low, in part, because traders exploit legislative loopholes in Indonesia’s wildlife laws. While the sale of sun bears, their parts and derivatives remains illegal, the authorities can only take enforcement action against anyone they know to be in possession of protected species, or when suspects are physically involved in an illegal transaction.

Traders are aware of these flaws and manipulate them to their advantage by moving many of their transactions online to Facebook and other social media platforms, which are more difficult for law enforcement to monitor and regulate. Traders can easily set up multiple anonymous social-media accounts and secret trade groups. Face-to-face meetings between seller and buyer are no longer required, as payment can be transferred online and goods can be shipped directly to the buyer. The convenience of these transactions makes it more difficult to for authorities to connect buyers and sellers, which could later be used as evidence in court.

This is not exclusive to sun bears, and all of it ties into the broader network of wildlife trade and smuggling syndicates. In at least 48% of seizure cases involving sun bears, other high-profile animals were seized at the same time, including tigers, orangutans, pangolins, clouded leopards, hornbills and other birds.

Through all of this, we see alarming evidence that bears appear to be of low conservation or legal concern in Indonesia. Instead of facing severe consequences, Indonesians found in possession of a live sun bear — to sell or keep as pets — are merely given an opportunity to surrender the animal.

Necessary Actions to Protect Sun Bears

The threat of illegal trade — combined with loss and degradation of suitable habitat and food resources, as well as conflict with humans — puts sun bears at considerable risk. Now, with COVID-19 potentially complicating things even further by increasing the incentive to poach wild bears, it’s time to implement targeted conservation efforts for the species to ensure viable populations remain in the wild. The IUCN Sun Bear Conservation Action Plan, 2019-2028 already includes useful and practical initiatives to support government agencies in range states. Its recommendations should be immediately put into action throughout the sun bear’s range.

The #SunBearActionPlan is the first range-wide strategy for any terrestrial bear species, integrating conservation of #InSitu sun bear populations throughout their range and #ExSitu bears in good zoos and sanctuaries throughout the world. Download free: https://t.co/jZM2KOOYvi pic.twitter.com/gmtYIbLgDg

— BrianCrudge (@BrianCrudge) June 5, 2019

Beyond that action plan, it’s also essential that Indonesia prioritize enforcing its existing legislation to protect bears from poaching and illegal trade. And it’s crucial that the country close its legislative loopholes, which would support and empower enforcement authorities in the investigation and prosecution of illegal wildlife traders operating online. Greater effort also needs to be made to raise awareness of the nation’s wildlife laws protecting species — as well as of the conservation needs of the sun bear. Such outreach should target the public, enforcement agencies, the judiciary, traditional medicine practitioners, hunters and poachers, consumers and villagers living in or near sun bear habitat.

If Indonesia is to remain one of the strongholds for sun bears in the age of COVID-19 and beyond, these protection measures urgently need to be established — before more populations of these incredible, important animals disappear.

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.