Our desire for the companionship of exotic pets from around the world has fueled the spread of disease.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought widespread attention to the consequences of the wildlife trade. Just like in earlierpandemics, fingers have now been pointed at familiar places: wildlife sold for food in wet markets, and pangolins and other species poached for food and traditional medicine.
But there’s another common source of novel diseases: The exotic pet trade.
This lucrative $10 billion-$20 billion a year industry frequently involves taking wildlife from their native habitats and shipping them to opposite corners of the globe —sometimes legally, often illegally.
Both the legal and illegal pet trades carry risks of pandemics and smaller disease outbreaks not just to people but to other wildlife as well as livestock and pets.
Watch our video of some dangerous diseases stemming from the global pet trade:
A historic international treaty to protect marine biodiversity is currently being negotiated, but will it be strong enough to create reserves and boost conservation efforts?
Most of us have never been to the world’s immense last wilderness and never will. It’s beyond the horizon and often past the limits of our imaginations. It contains towering underwater mountain ranges, ancient corals, mysterious, unknown forms of life and the largest seagrass meadow in the world.
Yet it begins just 200 nautical miles off our shores. Technically referred to as “areas beyond national jurisdiction,” these remote expanses are known to most people simply as “the high seas.”
Their vast, dark waters encompass roughly two-thirds of the ocean and half the planet and are the last great global commons. Yet just 1% are protected, leaving these vital but relatively lawless expanses open to overfishing, pollution, piracy and other threats.
That could change soon.
In 2018, after more than a decade of groundwork at the United Nations, negotiations officially began for a new treaty focused on conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in the waters beyond national jurisdiction.
The proposed treaty is being developed under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was signed in 1982 and defined nations’ rights and responsibilities for use of the world’s oceans. The Convention itself is a landmark agreement that established many key environmental protections and policies, but over the years it’s become obvious that some gaps in its governance policy have left the ocean’s ecosystems open to ongoing and emerging threats.
The new treaty is intended to help fill those gaps, although, as with any international agreement, that presents challenges. Representatives of world governments gathered in 2018 and 2019 for three rounds of negotiations, but many parts of the key issues remained unresolved. Among them are plans to establish a framework for evaluating and implementing area-based management tools, which include marine protected areas, since no such systems exist now for the high seas.
Other items requiring agreement include establishing uniform requirements for conducting environmental impact assessments; how benefits from marine genetic resources may be shared among nations; and capacity building for management and conservation.
Many experts hoped the fourth negotiation session, originally scheduled to begin March 23 at the U.N. headquarters in New York, would lead to the finalization of the treaty’s text, but the meetings were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That pause gives us an opportunity to understand what’s at stake a bit better.
“This is the first time that there’s been a treaty process devoted to marine biodiversity in the high seas and the first ocean treaty really to be negotiated in over 30 years,” says Peggy Kalas, director of the High Seas Alliance, a coalition of more than 40 environmental nonprofits and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. “It’s a big deal, and it’s been a long time coming.”
But this historic opportunity is also one that could be squandered if the treaty fails to enact protections strong enough to actually safeguard ocean life.
“It has the potential to be a gamechanger for the oceans,” says Douglas McCauley, a professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology at U.C. Santa Barbara and director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative. “But it’s still to be determined whether it will be just the treaty version of lip service.”
The Need for Protection
We’re all connected to the high seas, even if we never actually see them, says Morgan Visalli, a project scientist at Benioff Ocean Initiative at U.C. Santa Barbara. “It’s incredibly important for helping to regulate the climate, for providing oxygen, food and jobs.”
Even on land we depend on a healthy ocean. Phytoplankton in the ocean generate half our oxygen, and the ocean plays a key role in mitigating climate change — absorbing 25% of our CO2 emissions and 90% of heat related to those emissions. It’s also home to a rich diversity of species, some of which we’re still discovering.
But marine ecosystems face grave threats from an onslaught of abuses: chemical, plastic and noise pollution; deep seabed mining and other kinds of resource extraction; increased shipping; overfishing and illegal fishing; and climate change, which is altering both the temperature and chemistry of the waters.
Cargo ship at sea. Photo: Bernard Spragg, public domain.
Numerous strategies are needed to tackle these problems, including the bedrock component of reducing greenhouse gases.
But a key tool that scientists have identified to help restore biodiversity is establishing reserves, often referred to as ocean parks or marine protected areas.
We know pretty well how to do this in national waters — there are more than 15,000 of them already in places like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and the Florida Keys. But few such protected areas exist in the high seas because there is no international framework to guide the process. One such effort to establish a marine protected area in Antarctica’s Ross Sea took years of research and diplomacy to implement.
It’s simply not feasible to scale the process — especially in the time we’d need to do it. That’s why creating such a framework for marine protected areas in waters outside of national waters is a key part of the new high-seas treaty negotiations.
And that fits into a larger global vision.
The participant nations in another international treaty, the Convention on Biological Diversity, are set to convene this fall. The agenda includes a goal of enacting an international framework to protect 30% of the oceans by 2030.
It’s a goal that scientists call a bare minimum. And it’s one that may be impossible to meet without the high-seas treaty.
“The science is clear, if we’re going to sustain a healthy, functioning ocean ecosystem, we need to be protecting at least 30% of the world’s oceans,” says Liz Karan, who leads efforts to protect the high seas for Pew Charitable Trusts, a member of the High Seas Alliance.
In anticipation of the treaty’s passage, scientists like Visalli and McCauley have already started modeling how new priority areas could be identified.
The high seas are our last global commons & essential to life on earth. As the UN weighs a groundbreaking #HighSeas treaty, we crunched 22 billion data points to identify hotspots of biodiversity deserving of protection on the high seas #OneOceanOnePlanethttps://t.co/yuwgkkZMuOpic.twitter.com/UdjupHfBPJ
— Benioff Ocean Initiative (@UCSBenioffOcean) April 7, 2020
The other parts of the treaty, including environmental impact assessments and genetic resources, remain vital areas of discussion, but conservation groups have stressed the importance of protected ocean reserves for protecting the planet.
“If we want the ocean to continue its role in climate adaptation and being able to absorb the excess heat that it does, we need to create areas of resilience for the ocean,” says Kalas. “And the best way to do that is marine protected areas.”
The Challenges
Of course the devil is in the details.
While thousands of marine protected areas already exist, they come with varying levels of protections — much like we see with public lands. Some can be very restrictive, like national parks, or continue to allow extractive activities, such as in national forests.
Current marine protected areas range from no-take reserves that ban all extraction to areas allowing multiple uses — the latter are more common. Not surprisingly, though, scientific studies have shown that the no-take reserves do a much better job at protecting and restoring biodiversity.
Whether the treaty will be a landmark conservation effort or enshrine the status quo has yet to be determined, says Karan. “Both potential pathways are currently reflected in the draft treaty text” at this time.
From a scientific standpoint, McCauley says, marine protected areas should actually protect the wild character of the area and that means no activities — like mining or bottom trawling — that would disturb habitat. And the protections need to extend down from the ocean’s surface, through the water column, to the seafloor.
A kelp forest in a marine protected area off the coast of California. Photo: Camille Pagniello, (CC BY 2.0)
To do that means figuring out how the new treaty would fit with a tangle of more than 20 existing governance organizations that regulate seabed mining, fisheries management and shipping regulations.
“One of our hopes is that this treaty would knit those pieces together and provide a little bit more coherence and compatibility with those issues, particularly with regards to conservation and sustainable use,” says Karan.
There would also need to be a process for scientifically evaluating areas proposed for protections, and how the established reserves would be managed, and the restrictions enforced.
“The whole process, the whole vision and opportunity to think about doing something smarter and better — for the ocean, for biodiversity, for us — ends if we don’t get strong language in the treaty and get that treaty to pass,” says McCauley. “There’s historical potential for the oceans, but we need to make sure people on the outside are watching the people on the inside [at the United Nations] in New York.”
Road Ahead
Even though official treaty negotiations are on hold awaiting a decision on rescheduling the talks, work continues among governments as they review and refine their positions on numerous proposals submitted by states and NGOs.
The United States has been a participant in the talks, but the treaty process has largely flown under the radar among the general public so far. Given President Trump’s position on environmental protections and distain for multilateralism (like the Paris climate agreement), that’s been pretty intentional on the part of environmental NGOs.
But as efforts may be nearing the finish line, this is starting to shift. Karan says there’s more interest from legislators about high seas governance and more need to have an engaged public who can advocate for strong conservation protections.
Things are complicated, though, by the fact that the United States never ratified the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, widely considered a “Constitution” for the ocean.
There is hope from some of the participants that the United States could ratify the high seas treaty if it comes to fruition, say Karan. But no one is holding their breath for that. Kalas says the goal is that the treaty, once completed, would be widely supported, although it remains to be seen how many countries will sign on. “If only 40 countries ratify it, that wouldn’t make it as strong of an agreement as if all the United Nation’s 193 nations ratified the agreement,” she says.
But there’s a fine line between having an agreement that’s universally supported and one that establishes concrete conservation actions and protections.
“Our concern is that in trying to get everyone in the tent as it were, we’re going to wind up with a status-quo agreement,” says Karan. “As much as we want a treaty, we want one that will make concrete change on the water.”
And it’s worth remembering, we’re talking about a lot of water. When the next session convenes, she says, “states will decide the ocean’s fate.”
The Trump administration continues to strip away environmental protections in the face of the pandemic. History shows that the people can fight back — and win.
Never one to miss an opportunity, the Trump administration has repeatedly used the COVID-19 crisis as cover to enact unwise and dangerous environmental policies against the public interest and to forestall citizen input.
In recent days the Environmental Protection Agency has moved forward with weakening rules for automobile emissions and relaxing pollution standards. The Bureau of Land Management continues leasing for oil and gas drilling even as prices drop. And while much of the country remains under stay-at-home orders and faces the most disruptive public health crisis in a century, deadlines for public statements on forest plans have not been extended and formats for hearings about dams have frustrated citizens who wish to speak up for public resources.
Republicans are using today’s pandemic-related exigencies to undermine environmental protection and the public interest. We’ve seen it before. Hiding behind emergencies is from an old playbook.
Americans have heard excuses about national emergencies in the past and resisted them; we should again.
The cover of a 1967 newsletter shows a Kennecott open-pit copper mine in Bingham, Utah, and the proposed site of their mine in Glacier Peak.
For a success story that resonates today, we need only look back to the era of the Vietnam War. In late 1966 Kennecott Copper Corporation announced its intent to develop a massive open-pit mine at Miners Ridge, within the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area of the North Cascades in Washington state. The mine would be near the iconic Image Lake, where backpackers enjoy perhaps the greatest views in the entire Cascade Range.
The context of the Vietnam War allowed Kennecott to argue it was merely fulfilling its duty to provide essential materials for the war effort, under which the General Services Administration had established a plan to stockpile critical materials for national security. Seeking to get new mines into operation, the agency promoted incentives that included loans and technical assistance.
Amid all of this, Kennecott pitched its proposed pit as patriotic.
Conservationists quickly grew alarmed. The Wilderness Act, which protected 9.1 million acres of federal land and established the Glacier Peak Wilderness, had just been signed into law in 1964. A compromise in the law allowed Kennecott and other companies to mine claims, but conservationists opposed the giant corporation and demonstrated the obvious: that open-pit mining and wilderness were incompatible.
Everyone knew the mountains held copper — the place name was Miners Ridge, after all. During World War II, at a time when minerals were similarly in demand, the War Production Board approved a road to the mine site, but it never was built.
Kennecott Copper Corporation’s plan to develop an open-pit mine at Miners Ridge is the subject of the new book An Open Pit Visible from the Moon by Adam M. Sowards
This failure showed that maybe the copper in Miners Ridge really wasn’t that important after all. In 1967, as Kennecott pressed ahead, Polly Dyer, arguably the most important conservationist in Pacific Northwest history, reasoned in a public hearing that “If the Nation was able to pass through that desperate war effort without needing to utilize the copper in Miners Ridge, I am extremely skeptical about Kennecott’s assertion that it is necessary for today’s war operation.”
Dyer was right. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, who had authority over the U.S. Forest Service, which administered the wilderness, soon admitted that the war effort and the public’s standard of living would “not suffer” one bit if the mine was “left undeveloped.”
For all its talk of selfless service to the nation, Kennecott operated primarily to bolster its bottom line — and to establish the precedent of mining within wilderness boundaries. The company’s president was exasperated by having to try the case in the press against an angry public. In his view, the company’s interest was the nation’s interest.
All of this is tiringly familiar in 2020, when the president’s personal interests, antipathy to the press and the public, and desire to establish untoward precedents animate virtually every utterance and policy.
What are the lessons we can take away from this?
Kennecott never built its mine, and the site remains secure as wilderness today, but that was not accidental. It took the efforts of citizens and organizations like the North Cascades Conservation Council and The Mountaineers publicizing the threat, writing representatives, and showing up at hearings. Through it all, Northwesterners demanded that the public’s interest be protected against the corporate bottom line.
In summer 1967 Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas traveled from his summer home in Goose Prairie, Washington, to attend a protest near the mine site. An aroused public, he said to 150 to 200 protestors on the trail, might “appeal to the community’s sense of justice” and declare there are values beyond “a few paltry dollars.”
The public interest, then and now, transcends the bottom line. It sustains democracy; it doesn’t suspend it.
We must not let our representatives use COVID-19 as an excuse to undermine environmental governance. We must continue to stand up for the protections that already exist, which protect not just our wilderness but human health.
History suggests that we can win these fights with determined resistance. Even amid the disruptions visiting our lives with lost lives and jobs, we need to keep one eye on the future and remember that our voices can make a difference.
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.
A summer of extremes leaves sobering questions about the state of Earth’s largest store of ice, capable of inundating coastlines worldwide as it melts.
“What happens in Antarctica affects us all,” says Ella Gilbert, a climate scientist with the British Antarctic Survey.
But does everyone know what’s happening in Antarctica, let alone understand how events there could threaten communities around the world?
Some people may have gotten a hint during a brief few days in February, when international headlines reported record heat baking the Antarctic Peninsula at the height of the southern hemisphere’s summer. It was a rare moment in which our southernmost continent made worldwide news.
But the broader story — one that’s since been eclipsed by coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic — gained much less attention. February’s heat, it turns out, was just one in a string of climate-related developments on the continent that could affect the whole planet.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC.
As the COVID-19 pandemic shows, early dissemination of science-based information saves lives during a crisis. Scientists have long warned that the same is true of the unfolding climate emergency: If people receive — and believe — evidence that burning fossil fuels threatens the climate, we can come together to flatten the arc of rising temperatures and protect vulnerable populations, including low-lying coastal communities.
That’s particularly relevant when it comes to warming in Antarctica, where 90% of the planet’s glacial ice holds the key to stable sea levels across the globe. Scientists have expressed concerns about melting of the continent’s ice for some time now: It’s already raising sea levels and could dramatically flood global coastlines in the years ahead, potentially at a rapid rate.
But despite years of warnings, the question remains: Does the general public know enough about climate and the Antarctic to come together and reduce the threat?
Antarctica’s Climate: A Complex, Intertwined System
The first hint of Antarctica’s warm summer came in September 2019, when the sea ice surrounding the continent finished the austral winter well below the historic average, continuing a five-year trend.
Below-average sea ice in the Antarctic is not necessarily a direct factor of climate change — some scientists attribute the decline over the past five years to natural variability, although questions remain about the additional influence of anthropogenic forces. But we do know that ice-free ocean waters absorb more heat during the long days of summer, and that the waters in the Antarctic Ocean have already been made warmer by greenhouse gas emissions.
And as ice retreats each year, it can further intensify the effects of climate change because it’s no longer there to shield the water from the warming rays of the sun.
“Sea ice is very reflective,” explains Claire Parkinson, a NASA senior scientist who has studied polar climate systems for more than four decades. “As it retreats the sun’s radiation absorbs into the ocean, which helps warm the atmosphere.”
Antarctic sea ice shining in the sun in 2017. Photo: Nathan Kurtz/NASA
Because of this, some scientists say low sea ice, whether from natural or human causes, may have magnified the startling Antarctic warmth that came later in the year.
A second factor affecting the complex systems in the region also became evident in September, when sudden stratospheric warming occurred 20 miles above Antarctica. Scientists also attributed this rare occurrence for the southern hemisphere to natural variation. However, as with low sea ice, it added heat to an already warmed Antarctic Ocean, and scientists believe this later helped fuel Australia’s devastating wildfire season by disturbing on-the-ground weather systems.
As Parkinson explains, even “natural” warming events are now amplified by the impacts of human activities on the climate, including deforestation and carbon pollution. “Climate systems are very intertwined,” she says.
Unprecedented Melting
Things got worse in November. As the austral summer approached, news of West Antarctica’s dramatic melting of snow and ice trickled northward to the rest of the world. By December melt rates were estimated at a whopping 230% above average.
It was the beginning of a summer of widespread melting.
The Belgian scientists who first reported the development used climate models to estimate melt rates, but satellite images revealed direct effects of melting two months later. Analysis by scientists at NASA and the University of Colorado showed widespread pooling of meltwater on the surface of the George VI Ice Sheet in West Antarctica. Such pooling is a marker of rapid melting that is ordinarily more common in the comparatively warmer climates of Alaska and Greenland.
Jewel-toned ponds of meltwater on the George VI ice shelf. NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Alison Banwell, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies Antarctic ice shelves, says the lakes were larger in size and number than anything seen over the past 20 years. “They were also present almost continuously from December to March,” she says. “It’s the longest duration we’ve seen in recent history.”
Banwell, whose work ranges from analyzing satellite data to wading into Antarctic melt pools to install monitoring instruments, says early indications suggest the George VI region may have experienced the warmest air temperatures in two decades of observation, though she cautions that analysis is not yet complete.
According to Banwell the warmth appears consistent with human-caused climate change.
The next troubling sign came in January, when researchers found evidence of warming when they drilled a nearly 2,000-foot hole to the bottom of the Thwaites Glacier, one of West Antarctica’s largest ice masses. Instruments lowered into the hole showed warm ocean water swirling underneath the ice, signaling melting at a critical part of the glacier. David Holland, a physical climate scientist from New York University associated with the research, wrote that it “suggests that [the Thwaites] may be undergoing an unstoppable retreat that has huge implications for global sea level rise.”
Researchers digging out the drill site after a three-day storm with winds reaching 50 knots. Photo: David Holland, NYU
The Thwaites, which is the size of Great Britain, has long been considered one of the world’s most important glaciers in terms of global sea-level rise because it acts as a dam against the massive West Antarctica ice sheet. If melting destabilizes the Thwaites, as Holland says may be happening, ice from the massive ice sheet would pour into the ocean.
News from the Thwaites Glacier was soon followed by the February “heatwave.” The record-breaking temperatures, which scientists called “incredible and abnormal,” occurred on February 6 and 9, when the air at two West Antarctica locations reached nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit — far above the more typical high of 50 degrees and all-time records for the entire continent. The overheated air helped melt an estimated 20% of the region’s seasonal snow accumulation in just six days.
Antarctica heatwave. NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC.
Gilbert, the climate scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, attributed the heat to a “perfect storm” of meteorological conditions, where high pressure over South America pushed warm air over the Antarctic Peninsula, creating optimal conditions for dry, warm “foehn winds” to roll down local mountains and produce rapid temperature increases.
But Gilbert, who wrote about the heat in Britain’s Independent newspaper, says this occurred against a backdrop of ongoing Antarctic climate change.
“In the simplest sense,” she tells us by email, “if you’re starting from a warmer baseline, then any additional warming on top of that — due to foehn winds, or any other phenomenon — will push temperatures higher.”
Additionally, evidence in recent years suggests global climate change is increasing both foehn winds and the influence that warm air over South America has on West Antarctica.
Just as the soaring temperatures attracted international attention, satellite imagery on February 9 showed a 300-square-kilometer iceberg break away from the Pine Island Glacier.
The Pine Island Glacier recently spawned an iceberg over 300 sq km that very quickly shattered into pieces. Photo: Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The glacier, like the nearby Thwaites, prevents the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from flowing into the ocean. It has been deteriorating for decades, but with increasing speed. The giant berg sheared off along cracks scientists first observed close to a year ago, which they attribute to warming oceans.
“Warmer [ocean] waters are pushed more strongly toward Antarctica,” says Eric Rignot, professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, who communicated by email. Rignot has studied Antarctic glaciers for 30 years and ties the warmer waters to changing wind patterns associated in part with a warming atmosphere.
From West to East
As if the news out of West Antarctica isn’t concerning enough, evidence also points to accelerated melting in East Antarctica, home to the planet’s largest bodies of glacial ice. Although temperatures there are still too cold to drive significant surface melting, scientists say warming ocean waters are eroding glaciers much like the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers of West Antarctica.
In late March, as autumn fell on the southern hemisphere, new research added to concerns over East Antarctic ice. Analysis of satellite data found the region’s Denman Glacier has retreated three miles in the past two decades. Researchers warned that the Denman’s unique geography puts it at risk of widespread collapse, increasing concerns that Antarctic melting could spark rapid, global sea-level rise.
On its own the Denman has the potential to raise sea levels by five feet.
“We view the Wilkes Land sector with Denman and other glaciers as the biggest risk for the future,” says Rignot, who participated in the research. He calls the current situation “the premise of a collapse” in that part of East Antarctica. But he says collapse there is not imminent.
“We do not know yet exactly how much time we have,” he says of East Antarctica.
But the advanced state of melting in West Antarctica presents a clearer picture. He says if swift action is not taken on climate change in the next decade, “absolutely nothing will stop these glaciers” from further retreat that jeopardizes the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
Antarctica is the world’s remotest continent, with a small and mostly seasonal human population limited to scientists and occasional tourists visiting by cruise boat. Especially amid a global pandemic, events there may seem disconnected from our lives.
But as Gilbert of the British Antarctic Survey explains, changes on the continent have far-reaching consequences for global sea-level rise, changing ocean currents, and even on the pace of climate change itself.
Scientists found that #Greenland’s ice sheet lost an average of 200 gigatons of ice per year and #Antarctica’s ice sheet lost an average of 118 gigatons of ice per year. One gigaton of ice can fill 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.https://t.co/5nXiHX0JG9
The news from the southern continent adds to a steady stream of warnings about the unfolding climate crisis. But while the current pandemic has sidelined climate concerns for many, it may also offer an opportunity to address the crisis. The $2 trillion stimulus package signed into law in late March demonstrates the availability of massive funding for emergency response. And lawmakers are already discussing a similar-sized bill to come this summer, with early signs that infrastructure may be a focus.
Some climate and renewable energy experts see it as an opportunity to speed U.S. transition to cleaner energy and build resilience into coastal communities vulnerable to sea-level rise.
Whether that occurs will depend on a later debate, and perhaps also on how well the climate news coming out of remote Antarctica and other locations stays in the forefront of the public consciousness.
Diseases can cause animal populations to decline or even go extinct. And they’re often worsened by environmental threats caused by people.
COVID-19 has had the greatest global effect of any disease outbreak in living memory, but in many ways it’s not unique.
Pandemics have emerged and spread through human populations across our history, and the same has happened to wildlife. Disease outbreaks in animals and plants have caused extinctions and currently threaten the survival of vast numbers of species around the world.
And just as the effects of COVID-19 can be exacerbated by air pollution, wildlife epidemics and pandemics — officially known as epizootics and panzootics — are also influenced by environmental factors, most often related to human activity.
President Trump’s notorious border wall is just one transboundary threat to the world’s wildlife.
Conservation experts have long warned that President Donald Trump’s pet border-wall project between the United States and Mexico will disrupt countless species and even drive many into extinction.
But Trump’s border wall is not alone. Similar structures and development on the lands between nations threaten biodiversity around the globe, according to a new paper published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
The research — by a trio of scientists from China and Singapore — calls these “transboundary frontiers” an “emerging priority of conservation.” It recommends renewed coordination between neighboring countries to protect the plants and wildlife whose habitats and migrations straddle or cross any manmade lines on a map.
As the paper points out, transboundary areas are often home to an amazing array of wildlife that depend on the ability to cross from one country into the next at some point during the year in order to find food, water, shelter or mates. “For example,” the authors write, “over 62% of mammal species in the Americas host populations which span international borders, and at least 76% of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) are transboundary populations.”
But these border areas have also become home to a growing number of structures and threats such as fences, wall, roads, military operations, landmines and railways that bisect habitats or kill animals. These frontiers also often end up being legal frontiers, with different levels of environmental protections on either side of a border that can complicate governance and conservation efforts. That, the authors write, is one reason why so many boundary areas are also hotspots for international wildlife trafficking.
The security lights on the border between India and Pakistan can be seen from space in this 2015 picture taken from the International Space Station. Photo: ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center.
Ironically, some borders also serve as biodiversity reservoirs that protect species in one nation after they’ve disappeared in another. Gray wolves (Canis lupus), for example, persisted in Finland after being wiped out in Sweden and Norway, and they’re now repopulating those countries more than 60 years after their extirpation.
And certain borders prevent some poaching and trafficking. The researchers point the case of the Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus), which is heavily poached by hunters in China but “effectively protected in Mongolia” by border fences that prevent human crossing.
But in most cases, these structures and systems have proven detrimental to wildlife, either by killing them or fragmenting their habitat and populations. “Reduction in food, water and mating resources can drive a rapid population decline after the construction of border barriers,” the authors write, citing multiple studies — including several that already show species population declines as a result of border-wall construction between the U.S. and Mexico.
And the slate of massive development projects currently underway will only make things worse. Most notably China’s Belt and Road Initiative will carve out new infrastructure in 72 countries and through an almost incalculable number of species’ habitats.
The solution, the writers argue, is cross-boundary cooperation and conservation agreements, which not only protect biodiversity but cost less to operate than each country behaving independently. They cite several existing examples, including cooperative efforts to improve habitat connectivity among India, Nepal and the Kingdom of Bhutan that have helped restore Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris) populations, as well as famous migration between the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve that allows millions of animals to cross between the two countries every year. They also point to prior research finding that establishing a coordinated plan between 20 Mediterranean countries would cost 45% less than each country continuing to manage their own operations in an uncoordinated manner.
The researchers say several questions remain, including identifying the most important border areas for biodiversity and the figuring out the best ways to combine science and policy to benefit the widest ranges of species.
In this ever-shrinking world, and in a time when climate change threatens to disrupt borders and migratory patterns of both humans and wildlife, a push to save the wild spaces between countries seems more important than ever. As the authors write in the paper, “these border areas often represent an opportunity for the conservation of wide-ranging and migratory animals, but only if the intactness of these areas can be preserved.”
Bats have come under fire as scientists work to understand the origins of the novel coronavirus, but we have more reasons to be thankful for bats than afraid of them.
As we work to limit the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are also studying its origins. How did the SARS-Co-V-2 virus, which causes the disease, jump from wildlife to humans? Many believe it originated in horseshoe bats (from the genus Rhinolophus), which are known hosts of other coronaviruses.
“Whether or not this particular strain came from a wild bat is still under active scientific investigation,” says Winifred Frick, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Santa Cruz and the chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, an organization dedicated to preventing bat extinctions worldwide.
Scientists are also trying to pinpoint which animals, including perhaps pangolins, may have been the intermediary pathway for the spillover. But one thing is certain: Bats play critical, and beneficial, roles in the environment and the economy.
And right now they’re getting a pretty bad rap.
We spoke to Frick about why bats and other wildlife shouldn’t be scapegoated in this pandemic, the threats bats face from humans, and the best actions to take for bat conservation.
Bat Conservation International’s chief scientist Winifred Frick. Photo: courtesy of Winifred Frick
Given what we know so far about the origins of the virus, should people be scared of wild bats?
In zoonotic disease, what happens is that you have viruses that are circulating naturally in wildlife populations. And then an event happens in which that virus spills over into the human population. If that pathogen starts to spread human-to-human, then we have a zoonotic disease outbreak.
It’s important to remember that COVID-19 is at this point a human disease and it’s being transmitted human-to-human. So nobody living here in North America needs to be worried about getting COVID-19 from a bat.
I think that we really want to allay concerns that people need to fear bats. There’s definitely been some fear that has arisen because people hear that bats are somewhat associated [with the pandemic] and then that leads to misunderstanding.
Our general guidance is that people shouldn’t be handling bats or wild animals of any kind.
There was a recommendation from the federal government that scientists may need to limit their fieldwork with bats in North America now to prevent a possible transmission of the virus from humans back to species of bats here. Is that a concern?
There is some concern about “reverse zoonosis” or spill back, which is the idea that humans could transmit SARS-Co-V-2 back to wildlife populations.
Researchers are working really hard to understand the vulnerability of other mammals to this novel strain of coronavirus. There was news about a tiger at the Bronx Zoo testing positive and some evidence that different mammals may be susceptible. We really want to make sure that we’re protecting bats, which are mammals like us, from any risk from an asymptomatic human.
Just as we don’t want people to spread this virus human-to-human, we don’t want people to spread this virus human-to-wildlife. This isn’t necessarily a specific concern about bats but really any mammal. We don’t know yet if mammals could start to transmit animal-to-animal within their own populations. But right now we really want to limit exposure and limit any risk since we are still in an active research phase.
Have you seen much bat backlash?
There’s some evidence that there’s been some efforts to kill bats in different parts of the world. And we’re very concerned about that. Bats are an important part of our ecosystem. They’re incredibly biodiverse. They account for about 20% of all mammals globally. A lot of people don’t realize that there’s over 1,400 different species of bat around the world.
And they have an enormous variety of ecological roles — what we call “ecosystem services.” Here in North America, bats are primarily insect-eating and it’s been documented that they provide in the billions [of dollars of benefit] for the agricultural industry in terms of their role in reducing crop predation.
Bats have huge ecological and economical value. A 2013 study estimated that in the US alone, bat insect pest control services were valued at $3.7–$53 billion per year!! Thanks #bats! Link to study: https://t.co/kGdryZo6uN
In tropical areas bats are important dispersers of seeds and pollinators of different plants, some of which have real commercial value. For example, durian, which is the most stinky fruit and a treasure in many Asian cultures, is pollinated by bats. The agave, which is the plant that produces tequila, is pollinated by bats. So, they play very vital roles in nature and also have real economic value to human society.
Bats used to have a bad rap, but more and more, people seem to really realize just how fascinating and incredible they are. But because of some of those longstanding fears — and this new outbreak — we have to remind people that bats are really important parts of our ecosystem and part of our biodiversity heritage.
What kind of threats do bats face from us?
Globally bats face a variety of different threats, including anthropogenic land-use change, and habitat destruction and degradation. Because many species of bats form large colonies underground, those can be targets for disturbance and indiscriminate killing.
That’s the one that we’re really worried about right now. If people start to fear bats, we could see an uptick in directed killings. We’re very concerned about that and very focused on trying to provide accurate information and also roost protection.
And of course white-nose syndrome is a major threat to our hibernating bats here in North America. It’s a fungal pathogen that was likely introduced here through human trade or travel. The fungus is widespread in Europe and into temperate Asia. When it was introduced here, it spread very rapidly and has killed millions of bats.
And, unfortunately, you can’t tell bats to social distance.
What can we be doing right now to help bats?
The number-one thing that people can do is to say positive things about bats and make sure we aren’t scapegoating wildlife. There’s a lot of evidence that zoonotic diseases are a reflection of our misuse of the planet. When people are destroying habitats and unsustainably harvesting species, those are the conditions that lead to these kinds of spillover events. And now more than ever, I think there is that recognition that human health and planetary health are intertwined and that wildlife conservation is a part of global health solutions.
Because bats do carry coronaviruses in the wild, and they have been talked about in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s really important that people speak up for bats. This is not the bats’ fault. This is our fault.
The SEC has proposed rules that could reduce shareholder proposals for environmental, social and sustainable governance issues, while providing cover for corporations like Exxon Mobil.
In recent years activist investors have pushed for, and won, sweeping changes to corporate policies, turning the shareholder proposal into a powerful form of dissent from within. The most frequently targeted corporations include Chevron and ExxonMobil, whose shareholders have pushed for action on climate change and other issues for decades.
But now, at a time when this type of shareholder activism has been rising for decades, the Trump administration has proposed new rules that would make it significantly harder for investors to challenge corporations at annual shareholder meetings.
Of the 400-plus shareholder proposals on the table this year, 21% involve climate change or other environmental issues. Another 18% seek changes in corporate political activity, while 11% concern human rights, according to analysis published in Proxy Preview 2020, an annual report tracking environmental, social and corporate governance proposals brought by shareholders.
Heidi Welsh, executive director of the Sustainable Investments Institute, a nonprofit that provides research to institutional investors, says activist shareholders appreciate the chance “to raise very touchy issues, get publicity through it, and talk directly to the board and other investors.”
Corporate boards, on the other hand, don’t tend to share the same appreciation. Companies aren’t as comfortable having explosive concerns aired in “the public eye…where they cannot necessarily control what is said about them,” says Welsh, whose organization produces the Proxy Preview with the nonprofit shareholder activist organization As You Sow and Proxy Impact, a shareholder advocacy and proxy voting service.
Despite corporate discomfort with the process, it often works in activists’ favor. Companies are known to adopt proposals that receive significant shareholder support, even if they fail to pass, or negotiate with proponents to address raised issues, in exchange for withdrawing the proposal from shareholder consideration. Successful shareholder proposals have ushered in Wall Street sea changes on a myriad of issues, including corporate sustainability reporting, and forced companies to detail their plans for reducing carbon emissions and develop plans and benchmarks to better manage water and other resources. The successes have occurred roughly at the same time as emerging technologies, such as satellite imagining exposing real-time deforestation and carbon accounting tools for tracing companies’ footprints though supply chains, that have made it harder for corporations to hide their true impact from the public and from shareholders.
The changes proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, due to be finalized this spring, are viewed as an attack on shareholder rights by many nonprofit organizations, interfaith groups, and other activist groups and institutional investors.
Petitions on political spending, as well as climate change and other environmental issues, are among those expected to decline the most under the new rules.
The SEC proposal acknowledges that the rules aim to shrink the number of shareholder proposals that pass the Commission’s review each year by an estimated 7%. The agency claims the changes are necessary modernizations to the shareholder petition process that will save corporations money by making it harder for frivolous proposals from so-called “gadfly” investors — small shareholders who some in the business community say force “nuisance” proposals onto corporate ballots.
But an analysis of proposals brought by individual investors suggests that other shareholders tend to support the issues raised by these gadflies. The investment research firm MSCI Inc. examined more than 2,300 shareholder proposals at U.S. companies from 2015 to 2019 and found that nearly a third of them were submitted by individual investors — not large institutions — and one-third won a majority of votes.
Silencing Dissent
Critics of the proposed rules say they will silence the voices of small investors while providing cover for a small number of large corporations. The authors of Proxy Preview and the report’s cosponsors — more than a dozen “green” and “sustainable” investor organizations, asset managers and private foundations — have denounced the moves as an unprecedented rights rollback.
They also note that these changes have been sought for years by a few big companies and trade associations like the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.
“The SEC’s role is to be the investor’s advocate, protecting investor interests. The message from these comments is clear that the SEC should put aside these two proposals that reflect a disturbing anti-investor bias,” Tim Smith of Boston Trust Walden said in a statement put out with other commentary from members of the Shareholder Rights Group, which oppose the new rules.
The proposed changes “represent the biggest attack on shareholder rights by the SEC since it was created in 1934,” wrote Ken Bertsch, executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors, in Proxy Preview.
Protestors ask Starbucks to improve workers’ rights outside its 2019 shareholders meeting. Photo: Backbone Campaign (CC BY 2.0)
Sanford Lewis, an attorney and director of the Shareholder Rights Group, calls the new rules “an opportunistic effort to roll back investor rights” that takes advantage of the Trump administration’s pro-business stance at a time when shareholder support for environmental and social proposals continues to grow.
Welsh, in a phone interview, echoed those sentiments, calling the rules “a power play” by forces that have wanted to “clamp down on the shareholder proposal process for a long time.”
What Would Change
Specifically, the proposed changes to Rule 14a-8 of the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act would reduce the number of investors who can bring a proposal.
Today, in order to get a proposal on a ballot, investors must own a minimum of $2,000 worth of stock. Under the new rules, ownership thresholds would range up to $25,000, adding new financial obstacles so-called “retail investors,” small investor who represent about 30% of stock ownership.
The change would also affect nonprofit groups that have, in recent decades, turned proxy season into protest season and annual shareholders’ meetings into platforms for directly confronting corporate executives. Groups can draw publicity to their causes through protests inside and outside of the annual meetings where the votes occur. For instance, dozens of activist organizations converged on Chevron’s annual meeting last May to confront CEO Michael Wirth over the company’s environmental and human-rights record.
“This is the one time that the Chevron CEO, board, and senior management are forced to listen to us. There were more climate & human rights speakers than at any shareholder meeting I’ve been to. We dominated the event & we made sure our voices were heard.” https://t.co/5KUc7Lti2Ppic.twitter.com/cQPRk8g3To
The SEC has also proposed complicated new requirements governing the percentage of votes a proposal must receive one year to qualify for resubmission if it doesn’t pass. If proposals don’t meet the higher new resubmission tests, investors would be barred from bringing the issue again for three years. This would knock out even proposals that receive significant support, which concerns investor groups because support for issues commonly rises and falls from one year to the next, as investors become more familiar with them. Most corporations already require a supermajority for passage of shareholder proposals, so successful proposals often take years to build support among stockholders.
Advocates say the new rule is particularly troubling in the case of climate change proposals, considering that, according to climate scientists, the world has less than a decade left to bring down climate-changing emissions and head off the worst impacts of climate change.
Lewis says a proposal to Chevron this year are among those that would be blocked from resubmission under the new rules.
He adds that he’s also concerned about the Trump administration’s new interpretations of climate change resolutions at several companies. For decades, activist investors have been asking corporations to detail plans to address climate change, making it what observers call “a proxy season classic.” But Trump’s SEC has allowed companies to block several proposals by reinterpreting them as efforts to micromanage “ordinary business,” a commonly used SEC exclusion provision.
The final new stumbling block comes from what’s been called a “companion” rule change, where the SEC is preparing a clampdown on proxy advisory firms that large institutional investors rely on for research and recommendations on the issues raised each season.
The Public Ignored
The SEC formally proposed the new rules last November after a 3-2 vote along party lines. That prompted substantial outrage in the activist investor community — along with a deluge of more than 14,000 angry comments from individual investors, faith-based groups, asset and pension fund managers, unions, and local government officials.
Despite that uproar, the SEC is expected to issue the new rules pretty much as proposed.
While the COVID-19 outbreak may slow the process, most observers expect the SEC to issue the final rules this spring to beat a deadline established by the Congressional Review Act, which would make the rules harder to repeal even if President Trump loses reelection in the fall. Investor groups are already preparing for legal challenges in a saga that may ultimately be determined by who wins the presidential election.
The SEC has acknowledged that the new rules will reduce the number of proposals that go to a vote each year. But several independent analyses forecast even bigger reductions in submitted proposals, particularly on issues related to climate change and “corporate political influence spending” on elections and lobbying.
Welsh’s institute told the SEC in a letter that the government’s analysis “substantially understates” how many proposals would fail the new resubmission tests, among other things.
“Three times as many proposals that went to votes over the course of the last decade on these issues would have been ineligible had the proposed rule been in place,” Welsh wrote.
Welsh says the rule changes would remove a valuable resource for boards of directors: the input of people outside the company.
“You can argue from a straight-up business perspective that it doesn’t make sense to eliminate a feedback loop that provides information for meaningful consideration,” Welsh says, noting that in the investment world more information “is generally seen as a good thing, not a bad thing.”
New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer and others who represent large institutional holders have made similar comments. Stringer said in a statement that the proposals “will only serve to insulate management and directors from accountability to shareholders.”
While all of this is going on, many corporations — already apparently emboldened by the pro-business Trump administration — show early indications that they will use the COVID-19 lockdowns to further diminish shareholder activism during this spring’s proxy season. In mid-April AT&T notified shareholder proponents that they would not be allowed to present their three proposals at the online shareholders’ meeting on April 24. Instead, the company instructed proponents to submit written statements that corporate management would read aloud. “Companies are trying to take advantage of COVID-19 and silence voices,” investor activist John Chevedden told Reuters.
A Boon to Big Business
MSCI’s analysis found the rules changes would primarily benefit about a dozen companies, each of which received four or more shareholder proposals a year — among them, oil companies Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.
Indeed, Welsh says, a close reading of the complicated resubmission formula indicates that the biggest impact will be on proposals on political activity such as corporate election spending and lobbying at very large companies like Exxon.
“It’s a very complicated resubmission rule that affects about nine proposals. I do think that’s telling,” she says. “This rule is written to restrict political influence spending proposals.”
Nevertheless, advocates say shareholder activism has become a force for good in society — and this year could be a pivotal one for people and the planet, said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow. As he said in his remarks at the March launch of this year’s Proxy Preview, today’s growing demands for meaningful corporate climate action make shareholder activism in 2020 a year of “great risk but also one of great hope.”
“This year,” he said, “can be an inflection point, when the battle for the future of our planet truly intensifies and a new trajectory is revealed.”
Wildlife trade, deforestation, industrial farming and other factors threaten both animals and human health.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that human health is inextricably part of the ecosystem we exist in.
While the pandemic, which likely arose from the global wildlife trade, has brought entire industries to a screeching halt, the health consequences of other types of environmental damage are still ignored in favor of business-as-usual activities.
According to recent studies, zoonotic diseases — those pathogens that can jump from animals to humans — are responsible for an estimated 75% of emerging infectious diseases worldwide. In the United States, approximately 72% of zoonotic diseases threatening human health since the year 2000 originated from the legal or illegal wildlife trade. The COVID-19 pandemic may be exceptional for its reach and social disruption, but its link to the destructive trade in wild animals is just one of many examples of how human-made changes to the environment are spreading diseases.
Watch our video below to see some of the ways human health and environmental health are interconnected:
The popular docuseries fails to address issues critical to tiger conservation, but we can all learn from what it leaves out.
Last month Netflix unleashed its captivating but sensationalized docuseries, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. The public, hungry for something new to binge-watch while they sheltered in place in the developing pandemic, quickly ate it up and made it a pop-culture sensation in a wave of social-media posts, memes and virtual water-cooler discussions.
But amidst all this amusement, shock, titillation and general confusion, the tragic story of the tigers at the heart of Tiger King has been eclipsed by the outsized egos of their human captors.
Looking beyond the “Hatfields and the McCoys” approach of the series to examine the issues the program fails to dig into, we find several key lessons about the threats tigers and other charismatic species face in a world that values them more as entertainment than as wild animals and living creatures.
1. The Tiger Trade Is Alive and Well in the United States.
Tiger King — centered on Oklahoma’s Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park (more commonly known as the G.W. Zoo) and its operator, the self-anointed “Joe Exotic” — offers a revealing view into the forces and actors driving what could be called a tiger crisis in the United States.
Through murky underground markets, captive tigers have become commodities — sold, kept and exploited with little in the way of regulation of their care and breeding. This unregulated commerce, centered on one of the most endangered species in the world, has resulted in more tigers living in captivity here than remain in the wild in Asia. Actual numbers on private ownership of tigers are notoriously difficult to obtain, but the World Wildlife Fund estimates 5,000 of the big cats live in captivity in the United States.
This figure is particularly stunning when you consider that just an estimated 3,900 tigers remain in the wild.
And as Tiger King demonstrates, the lives of these captive wild cats are marked by cruelty, abuse, exploitation and — frequently — early death.
The sad reality is that most of these captive-bred cats grow up to become too big and too dangerous, not to mention to expensive, for amateurs to keep safely. All too often they end up in one of several already over-capacity legitimate rescue sanctuaries where their incredible dietary and care needs become enormous burdens.
And that’s if they live long enough to reach that point.
2. Roadside Zoos Do Not Contribute to Conservation
Over the course of the events depicted in Tiger King, Joe Exotic and another featured tiger exhibitionist, Doc Antle, make several claims that their breeding of rare tigers helps the species because they’re, well, making more tigers. Breeders and private owners have made similar claims for years.
Sadly, that’s far from the truth. In reality big-cat breeding programs stewarded by private owners are not beneficial to species conservation.
Tigers raised in private hands or at facilities like G.W. Zoo hold no potential value for efforts to bolster remaining wild tiger populations. Captive cats of unknown provenance cannot be included in carefully managed projects of conservation breeding, genetic banking, or any sort of program to be released into the wild.
Captive tigers. Photo taken undercover in 2017 while working with the Carden Circus. Photo: The HSUS
In the United States, conservation breeding and genetic-banking programs are managed by the American Zoological Association, which maintains rigorous standards, records, genetic histories and life histories on individual animals and their progeny to ensure the health of species. There are five subspecies of tiger in the wild, and the accredited global program for their captive breeding works diligently to maintain the genetic diversity and rigor within each subpopulation.
Private breeding facilities like G.W. Zoo have no concern for genetic conservation and frequently crossbreed subspecies for the largest litters or (to them) most desirable characteristics. Two of the most common outcomes of these non-scientific, opportunistic programs are breeding for recessive characteristics like with white tigers or worse yet, the creation of hybridized cats like the “liger” (lion/tiger) as crowd-pleasing curiosities. The AZA condemns not only the breeding of such inter-species hybrids, but also the breeding of white tigers, which are not a subspecies but the result of severe inbreeding that leads to shortened lives, often plagued with health defects. All white tigers are born and bred for profit.
Of course, the very fact that these cats are “forbidden” and rare makes them that much more desirable to collectors.
Even the big cats raised in conditions specifically and scientifically developed for release into the wild have rarely been successful. The very few instances of tigers being successfully released required hundreds of thousands of dollars per animal in specifically built facilities, and the cases of greatest success have not involved captive-bred animals but cats who were born in the wild (and therefore possess the necessary survival instincts).
3. Selfies Have Become the New Trophy Hunts
Through the lenses of both the documentary crew and Joe Exotic’s self-produced content, Tiger King reveals how his zoo and other for-profit establishments attract visitors willing to pay extraordinary sums of money for the opportunity to interact with tigers. This has become, in many ways, a readily accessible hunting safari for the average Joe — and one with extraordinary appeal to those immersed in social media.
The G.W. Zoo and other similar unaccredited venues have become spaces for patrons to experience a sense of power over nature. Here they can claim authority to touch the untouchable through cub petting; engage in transgressive behaviors like swimming with young tigers; take the now-(in)famous “tiger selfies”; and watch self-styled “celebrity” zookeepers interact with full-grown cats in a spectacular expression of outsized and misplaced ego.
As the popularity of the docuseries itself reveals, the visceral thrill of tiger proximity has moved beyond embodied experience into social media. The trophies that visitors claim through these visits — coveted selfies with tigers and other wild animals —are an in-demand commodity within the thriving attention economy. As this plays out in social media, it spurs users to pursue ever more fantastic and engagement-worthy photos.
Tiger selfies may look harmless, but they represent an imbalanced, unnatural relationship between humans and large carnivores. They can turn up anywhere online, but they’re perhaps most infamously deployed in online dating platforms, which abound with profile photos of (typically) men and (drugged) tigers. In this context they represent an attempt to appear virile and desirable — a way for men to claim their conquest over nature. These images have themselves inspired a tongue-in-cheek meme culture mocking men who associate proximity to an incapacitated tiger to their own performative masculinity — and these very connections to Joe Exotic’s own personal use of tigers in the construction of his public image hasn’t escaped the attention of audiences.
The pervasive positioning of wildlife as objects of entertainment trickles down onto our screens, big and small, where it warps our perceptions of the place of wildlife in the modern world. The ever-urbanizing population in the United States and other parts of the world has resulted in a global extinction of experience. No longer do we experience nature in nature; instead, our exposure to wildlife and wild things takes place through the plastic and glass of our computer and television screens. Experience has been replaced by pixels.
This has become especially true for our relationship with large carnivores. Media channels promote a wildlife-as-performer notion that wild animals exist chiefly to put on shows for people. It’s evident not just in Tiger King but in the daily news, where we frequently see tourists in national parks approach bears, bison, moose and other dangerous wildlife — again, for selfies.
This imperils people, wildlife and even the parks’ ability to stay open. For instance, Waterton Canyon in Denver, Colorado was forced to close for a time due to its inability to stop potentially dangerous behaviors of visitors seeking bear selfies.
Even if tourists aren’t quite waiting for a show like the one the now-jailed Joe Exotic used to put on, they’re still holding on to an expectation of non-threatening interactions. Thousands of hashtagged #tigerselfie posts to social media, accompanied by similar #bearselfie, #bisonselfie shots, indicate posters’ expectations of wild animals to stay still and to cooperate — whether in “controlled” environments or in the wild.
4. This Is Not Just a U.S. Problem
While Tiger King focuses on the United States, troubled interactions with wildlife are a global phenomenon, boosted in part by the voracious demands of a competitive global tourism market (at least, pre-pandemic). From the Amazon to South Africa to Thailand, wildlife petting and photo ops put animals, humans and entire ecosystems in harm’s way.
Chained tiger and cub photographed at the notorious Tiger Temple in Thailand, which has been linked to wildlife trafficking. Photo: Kieran Lamb (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The welfare of individual animals, obviously, is a pressing concern. Equally concerning are systemic harms to the conservation of the species like tigers. These feline-profiteering operations fuel illegal international wildlife trade for the pet market, and the removal of animals from the wild affects population dynamics and the functioning of entire ecosystems. The United Nations cited this as one of most significant threats to conservation worldwide. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted on 2018’s World Wildlife Day (a day dedicated to the big cats), “We are the cause of their decline, so we can also be their salvation.”
He added that the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which address global challenges including climate change and poverty, “include specific targets to end the poaching and illegal trafficking of protected species of wild fauna and flora.”
This trade isn’t limited to tigers, although they remain a favorite in the trade. Cheetahs and lions are widely circulated in this global market, as well as other big cats (jaguars, leopards) and a plethora of small cat species (Asian leopard cat, ocelots). Countless amphibians, reptiles, birds, primates and other mammals are also ensnared in the global circulations of animal bodies.
5. Good Documentaries Inspire Change. Tiger King Does Not.
While the human protagonists/antagonists cast in Tiger King’s Greek tragedy are woven together with the connective threads of tiger-keeping, their ardent disagreements and ongoing social-media-boosted battles reflect personal projects of ego more than concern for others, including the big cats.
While the end result is, arguably, entertaining, it undermines any potential the film might have had to be a force for ethics around endangered tigers and other trafficked species.
Unlike 2013’s Blackfish — another wildly popular wildlife documentary, but one that placed the experience of animals in captivity in the foreground and ultimately inspired a groundswell of protest that nearly bankrupted for-profit aquarium/theme park SeaWorld — the tiger’s tale in Tiger King is subsumed within a sordid story of power and abuse. It’s hard to imagine audiences taking away from this series a conviction that there’s a deep-seated need for systemic change in how we treat wildlife — although some activists and even Congressmen have tried to use the program to drum up support for the long-stalled Big Cat Public Safety Act, which if ever passed would ban private tiger ownership and roadside zoos.
Beneath the frivolity of meme culture that surrounds it, Tiger King is a deeply disturbing look into the private ownership of captive-bred tigers and other big cats and a grim reflection of the larger issues that entice eager patrons to spend their dollars and share vanity photos of themselves with captive cats. It’s a shame we need to look so far beyond its surface offerings to expose those undercurrents.
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.
