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.
Commemorating the 50th Earth Day amid the COVID-19 pandemic offers a chance to look to a sustainable future and embrace the unifying concept of One Health.
We live in a hyper-connected world, a coexistence of human cultures and customs across continents. We’re one vast ecological community with sympatry, competition and association — and, at times, rising tensions and increasingly shared environmental stresses.
That’s why COVID-19 has had such wide-ranging ripple effects. The culture of eating wildlife from markets in East Asia can now, through our cultural and global connections, dampen the practice of cheek-kissing when greeting in Italy or imperil multigenerational living in Indigenous communities in the Americas.
What comes next is on everyone’s minds, and that includes the question of how we reduce the risk of a pandemic on this scale happening again.
The parallels between our global health emergency response and our collective climate emergency response are hard to ignore. As science journalist Sonia Shah put it, when new viral infections emerge, we wait for modern medicine to save us with a vaccine rather than take preventative steps to change our behavior or public health systems. It’s not unlike the waiting game we play with other environmental threats, anticipating technological fixes such as planet-cooling and geo-engineering when we already have existing nature-based solutions we could be working to safeguard, such as wetlands and mangroves that play pivotal roles in carbon storage.
Wetlands flanked by mangroves in South Africa’s iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a world heritage site and part of a transfrontier conservation area. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak (used with permission)
Similarly, we’re now realizing too late that the ways we exploit other animals can make a pathogen so dangerous it can shut down the whole human enterprise.
That needs to change. Markets where wild and domestic animals mix, dead and alive and in various stages of welfare and health, do not have a place in our global society. While the rights to hunt and fish need to be upheld — especially culturally important species and those integral to food security — there’s a concurrent need to acknowledge some of the risks of combining old ways with new methods and contexts.
Of course, even if governments ban the trade in wild animals known to be reservoir hosts, brazen contempt for the rule of law will also almost certainly persist across all parts of the world. As wildlife scientist Margaret Kinnaird points out, there will always be “diehard consumers” who continue to eat bats, civets, pangolins and other species, legal or not. Wildlife consumers aren’t alone: Think of polluters lobbying for decreased regulation amidst the pandemic or certain churchgoers in the United States gathering on Palm and Easter Sundays during the lockdown. Are we capable of showing less contempt for rules that protect human and planetary health?
Tree pangolin and monitor lizard being sold at an urban market in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak (used with permission)
I believe the answer is yes: A critical mass of us can.
Many of us are already turning the urgency of the novel coronavirus pandemic into impetus for redefining our relationships with each other and the natural world. Some of us are already envisioning a more socially conscious environmental stewardship that uplifts marginalized people in long-lasting ways while prioritizing ecological integrity. This crisis has given us an opportunity to reexamine what we eat, how we consume, what intact habitats we change and fragment, the role of animals for protein, the inequities inherent in our current systems, the mode of transport we opt to use, our teleworking potential, the footprint of our future holiday or excursion, and for whose benefit — individual or community — we do what we do.
Crucially, through this crisis, may we become less estranged from empathy and more able to pull together as a diverse, multicultural community to tread more respectfully and gently, and take only what we need? Could we follow a universal rule of law and set of regulations under the auspice of the unified and holistic concept of “One Health,” which sees us as not just hyper-connected to each other or to other human beings and their cultural practices but intertwined with all other living beings and their habits on the planet? Can we achieve enlightened awareness of how our individual choices about how we use the natural world affect the lives and well-being of others, near and far-flung, human and non-human?
Bees bearding outside their hive during hot weather at an organic bee farm in coastal Chile. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak (used with permission)
Some nations may already be on this path. Writer-activist Rebecca Solnit lists some of the ongoing social transformations previously thought impossible but now taking place: Spain implementing a universal basic income, Ireland nationalizing its hospitals, Canada and Germany coming up with income and coverage of expenses for those who have lost jobs or are running small businesses, Portugal treating asylum seekers and immigrants as full citizens.
I’ve witnessed this shift. Having recently moved to the Yukon, in northern Canada, for a job with a conservation NGO, I received my health card early, after the territorial government waived the traditional three-month waiting period due to the pandemic. Many other foreign workers across Canada benefitted from this waiver — a symbol of national support for its newest residents.
In week two of quarantine a friend of mine passed. Alejandro Nadal was an economist who drew links between the wildlife trade and economic development policies. Among his accomplishments, he advocated for fairer agricultural policies supportive of small-scale producers and genetic diversity of crops such as corn. His last published sentence, amid the growing threat of the new coronavirus, read: “Under capitalism, this will continue to be the history and the sign of the exploitation of the earth.”
A week after his death, the world was scrambling, markets were collapsing, and we were fast realizing the integral community roles played by workers in the food and other frontline sectors. I ordered Alejandro’s book on macroeconomics and sustainability and found that it ends on a topical note: the suggestion that social activists and environmentalists reclaim the right to define the general trajectory of the policies that shape our economies.
The time is ripe for a Green Renaissance. In fact, the time is urgent. We’re in a fight for our lives, a fight that depends on us rallying — now not later — around One Health.
On top of COVID-19, other outbreaks currently happening include a horse-killing virus in Thailand tied to the country’s import of zebras from Africa, and highly contagious swine fever in Poland near its border with Germany. Perhaps these compounded crises provide the opportunity for a global, intergovernmental One Health Treaty that could allow the world governments to universally curtail all potentially unsafe forms of human consumption of animals in live markets, medicine, the pet industry and other realms. While we already have existing international treaties that regulate trade in wildlife, a stand-alone One Health Treaty would call for explicit attention to the intersections of human, animal and environmental health.
As we continue to confront this novel coronavirus pandemic and look back over the lessons of 50 years of Earth Day, we not only can, but must, restructure to become more inclusive, sustainable and resilient. Investing in holistic environmental stewardship and more responsible treatment of animals are surefire ways of getting us there.
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.
New books by Carl Safina and other experts offer lessons for making this a better planet — for both humans and wildlife — even while we’re stuck at home.
When things get tough, many of us often turn to books for new information, inspiration or simple entertainment. Well, we’ve got you covered on all three counts, with 14 great new environmental books coming out this month. The list includes books for eco-interested kids, dedicated activists and everyone in between.
The publishing industry isn’t immune to the economic threats posed by the current pandemic. Most local bookstores and libraries have closed their doors to customers and patrons, and many authors have needed to cancel their planned promotional tours. Publishers themselves are feeling the pinch, and at least three additional books that would have appeared on our list this month have been pushed back to later in the spring or summer.
But we’re all adapting. Many publishers and bookstores will happily ship new books to you (or, in the case of local shops, offer curbside pickup). E-books may also be great options (they’re often available through publishers or your local library website). The links below go to publishers’ sites for each new book, which should provide you with a variety of options.
No matter how the books end up coming your way, may they offer the ideas and inspiration you need to keep you going and continuing to find ways to protect the planet.
With many of us currently restricted to our homes or neighborhoods, now’s the perfect time to become a backyard naturalist (as we wrote recently). This magnificent book offers stories about the varied plants and wildlife that lives around us — even in the hearts of big cities — and ideas about how to make our urban ecosystems even wilder.
An utterly delightful kids’ book that tries (and succeeds) to soften the reputation of the critters “that make us squirm and wriggle in our seats,” but which, beneath their sharp teeth and odd habits, fulfill important roles in the world. You’ll never look at a spider or vulture the same way again.
Two new books from the famed ecologist and bestselling author. The first, for adult audiences, examines “how animal cultures raise families, create beauty and achieve peace.” The second, for younger readers, adapts one of Safina’s earlier adult books and discusses the inner lives of wolves and dogs. Both are must-reads.
This book tackles some tough questions about meat, examining issues related to production and consumption through a wide and varied set of lenses. Throughout, the book and its contributors invite readers to examine what they eat, where it comes from and how it’s produced. You won’t find easy answers inside, but it’ll give you something to chew on.
“Climate grief” is both real and draining. These two complementary titles offer readers some great psychological tools necessary to keep going in these trying times — and beyond. Field Guide is aimed more at young adults (“the climate generation”), but both books provide key tips for turning your negative emotions into powerful action.
Public transportation was already in crisis before the pandemic, thanks in no small part to the Koch brothers’ assault on local transit systems. Things could get even worse now, with ridership in trains and busses on the decline while we maintain safe distance from each other, a trend that could undermine critical low-carbon transportation initiatives. This book, which addresses issues ranging from transit to electric cars to ridesharing, aims to provide a model for a greener future.
These two heavily illustrated science books provide great insight into both intriguing groups of species. Taken together or individually, they may offer hours of fun educational opportunities in this era of home-schooling.
The pandemic reinforces the tragic reality that our systems are terribly broken. Many experts and activists feel that this crisis — which comes on top of the already existing climate and wildlife crises — also provides an opportunity for change. This book offers an ever-so-timely economic model, along with working examples, for a safer and more just future. (Expect several more books on similar topics in the months ahead.)
We probably shouldn’t personally be visiting national parks during the pandemic, but here’s the next best thing. This thoroughly delightful travelogue (from a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent) brings national parks to you and delivers a deeply personal and revelatory take on what makes America’s natural spaces so important.
Steinmetz is renowned for his aerial photography projects, which often capture the stark reality of climate change, agriculture and sea-level rise. Revkin is a prominent environmental journalist and educator. Together they’ve delivered a beautiful, haunting coffee-table book that provides a powerful portrait of the ways we’re changing the planet.
Your required dose of cuteness combined with important conservation messages, all wrapped up in a fun and heavily illustrated book for teen readers. Dame Judy Dench provides the foreword, which may be the most unexpected fact in this whole column.
That’s it for this month. Stay safe and stay tuned for another batch of books on May’s list in a few short weeks. Until then you can find dozens of additional eco-books in the “Revelator Reads” archive.
We know a lot more now about the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico and the risks of deep-water drilling, but that doesn’t mean we’re any safer.
It’s been 10 years since flames engulfed the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and triggering the largest accidental oil spill in U.S. history. The resulting 168 million gallons of oil that spewed into the water for 87 days killed thousands of birds, turtles, dolphins, fish and other animals.
The messy slick washed up on 1,300 miles of beaches, coated wetlands with toxic chemicals, imperiled human health, crippled the region’s tourism sector and shut down fisheries — costing nearly $1 billion in losses to the seafood industry.
In the years since, scientists have studied the far-reaching and longstanding ecological damages. And it’s clear that problems persist.
A decade later, what have we learned? Are we any closer to preventing a similar — or worse — catastrophe? Here are some of the takeaways.
1. The spill was bigger than they told us.
Right from the start, industry downplayed the size and scope of the spill. The Unified Command formed to deal with the disaster consisted of officials from federal agencies, as well as representatives of BP — the oil company responsible for the mess.
Independent analysis using daily satellite images from NASA done by the conservation technology nonprofit SkyTruth, along with Ian R. MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, found that the amount of oil gushing from the failed Macondo well was likely 20 times greater than what officials were claiming at the time. Scientists hoping to measure the flow directly at the seafloor were blocked.
The obfuscation came with a big cost. “What followed was a series of under-engineered attempts to stop the flow of oil, wasting weeks of precious time as millions of gallons gushed into the Gulf,” recalls John Amos, president of SkyTruth.
2. Most other spills are bigger than reported, too.
Research in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon disaster also led to other findings about drilling in the region. Not surprisingly, the size of most spills is underreported.
“This culture of misinformation doesn’t emerge just during catastrophes,” says Amos.
It turns out that slicks reported to the National Response Center were 13 times larger than provided estimates, according to research conducted by Florida State University and SkyTruth. And while companies can get in trouble for not reporting a spill, they don’t get penalized if they incorrectly estimate the size of a spill, the analysis found.
And these spills are ongoing, with more than 18,000 reported in the Gulf since the mammoth 2010 disaster. While many of them are small, their cumulative impact is not.
3. Deepwater Horizon isn’t the worst-case scenario.
A massive spill from a well that can’t be plugged for months is truly troubling, but there’s a worse scenario: a spill that can’t be stopped at all. And that slowly unfurling disaster has already been underway — it just wasn’t widely known until researchers began investigating the Deepwater Horizon spill.
A hurricane in 2004 triggered an underwater mudslide in Gulf waters that sank an oil-drilling platform owned by Taylor Energy. The mess of pipes, still connected to wells but covered by a heap of sediment, resulted in a leak that continues to this day.
A study by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Florida State University in 2019 determined that the wells may be spewing 380 to 4,500 gallons of oil a day — about 100 to 1,000 times more than the company has claimed.
After several attempts by Taylor Energy to cap the wells and contain the plumes didn’t do the trick, in 2019 the U.S. Coast Guard stepped in to have a containment system installed to catch the oil before it disperses into the waters.
4. Natural forces remain a threat.
A deep-sea mudslide like the one that damaged the Taylor Energy platform could pose a threat to dozens of production platforms in the Gulf. Florida State’s MacDonald, who has been studying the leaking Taylor Energy site, believes such an event could happen again.
Triggered by earthquakes or hurricanes, underwater avalanches of sediment slip down the continental shelf moved by “turbidity currents.” And we’re not well prepared for understanding how and when it could reoccur.
“Conducting studies to identify unstable slopes will improve our understanding of the seabed,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Conversation. “Better technology can make offshore infrastructure more durable, and informed regulation can make the offshore industry more vigilant.”
5. There’s no such thing as a “cleanup.”
A controlled burn of oil from the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill sends towers of fire hundreds of feet into the air over the Gulf of Mexico on June 9, 2010. Photo: Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class John Masson, (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Efforts that began in the aftermath of disaster should be termed “spill response,” and not “cleanup,” says Lois Epstein, an engineer and Arctic program director for The Wilderness Society.
Studies of previous spills have shown that oiled birds “cleaned” after spills usually fail to mate and suffer high mortality rates.
The use of booms, skimming, burning and the dumping of dispersants hasn’t proven effective in containing large spills — and seems to happen more to give the illusion that something’s being done, explains an article in Hakai Magazine.
During the Deepwater Horizon spill, only around 3% of the oil spilled was recovered from skimming, says Epstein. About 5% was burned off. And while dispersants decreased the volume of surface oil by about 20%, they increased the area over which the oil spread by nearly 50%.
Some advances have actually been made in improving the technology, but there’s “little incentive and no legal requirement for companies to upgrade their existing spill response equipment,” says Epstein.
6. The Problems Run Deep
Some of the most concerning findings from post-spill research came from the depths of the sea.
Research in 2017 found that, “the seafloor was unrecognizable from the healthy habitats in the deep Gulf of Mexico, marred by wreckage, physical upheaval and sediments covered in black, oily marine snow,” wrote Craig McClain, the executive director for the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, one of the scientists involved.
It’s likely that millions of gallons of oil ended up on the seafloor because of a process known as “marine oil snow” where chemicals from burning oil, along with dispersants and other sediment in the water, adhere and sink.
For life at the bottom, that dirty blizzard was incredibly harmful.
The researchers noted that animals normally found in that deep-sea environment, such as sea cucumbers, giant isopods, glass sponges and whip corals, weren’t there. And many colonies of deep-sea corals hadn’t recovered.
“What we observed was a homogenous wasteland, in great contrast to the rich heterogeneity of life seen in a healthy deep sea,” McClain explained. “In an ecosystem that measures longevity in centuries and millennia, the impact of 4 million barrels of oil continues to constitute a crisis of epic proportions.”
7. The effects on wildlife were both significant and, in some cases, sustained.
Heavily-oiled brown pelicans captured at Grand Isle, LA on June 3, 2010 wait to be cleaned of Gulf spill crude. Photo: IBRRC, (CC BY 2.0)
The spill caused problems at the surface too, including the longest known marine mammal die-off in the Gulf of Mexico, and experts say it could take many species decades to recover.
For example, a report from Oceana found that in the five years following the spill, 75% of bottle-nosed dolphin pregnancies failed. Endangered Bryde’s whales lost 22% of their already small population; 32% of laughing gulls in the Gulf died, and as many as 20% of adult female Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, already critically endangered, were killed in the spill.
Threatened populations of gulf sturgeon exposed to the oil experienced immune system problems and damaged DNA. Scientists found skin lesions on tilefish, Southern Hake, red snapper and other fish in the area near the blowout for two years after the spill.
Coastal wetlands, critical habitat for numerous species as well as an important buffer against storms, were also damaged.
It’s believed that chemicals from the spill and dispersants have made their way from plankton up through the entire marine food chain.
8. The regulatory failure continues.
“There was nothing that happened with Deepwater Horizon that couldn’t have been foreseen,” says Mark Davis, a senior research fellow at Tulane University Law School and director of the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy.
And that makes the policy and regulatory failures that enabled the disaster that much more painful.
In a 2012 study on the lessons learned from the disaster, Davis pointed to a long history in the Gulf of oil and gas development superseding risk assessment and planning. That was compounded by a cozy relationship between industry and its regulators in the Minerals Management Service.
“The federal government has a stake in the financial success of oil and gas development,” says Davis, and that doesn’t provide much incentive for strict regulation.
In the fallout from the disaster, the Minerals Management Service was disbanded and was replaced with the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. But how much has really changed?
A story in E&E News found that problems still abound in the new agency and it’s “fractious, demoralized and riddled with staff distrust toward its leadership.
Davis said dissolving the Minerals Management Service was needed, but he’s not sure it’s achieved the needed improvements to regain public truth. The new agency “is still too focused on not being a burden to exploration and production to really be a guardian of public/worker safety and environmental health,” he says. And “until we get our policies and legal architecture in line with the risks we’re running, we’re going to be very vulnerable.”
9. Trump is making it worse.
Given the track record of the Trump administration on environmental policy, it should come as no surprise that the limited provisions made to improve safety and environmental health after the spill are being undone.
Last year the Interior Department changed its well-control rules to appease requests from industry. The rule change “reduces the frequency of tests to key equipment such as blowout preventers, which sit at the wellhead at the ocean floor and are the last-ditch defense against massive gushers,” explained Politico. “It also allows drillers to use third-party companies instead of government inspectors to check equipment and gives them more time between inspections, among other things.”
10. The Gulf of Mexico isn’t the only place at risk.
The ecological and human health imperatives for preventing another Deepwater Horizon — or worse — are important for Gulf communities and beyond.
In the past few years, the Trump administration has signaled that it wants to vastly expand offshore drilling, including lifting drilling bans in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. It’s a proposition that would lead to more spills and more greenhouse gas emissions at a time when it’s critical we reduce both.
His plan has been met with stiff opposition so far. But as the 10th anniversary of the Gulf disaster reminds us, we’re still on course to repeat one of our worst mistakes.
“The takeaway here is that people learn, but institutions react,” wrote Tulane’s Davis. “The Deepwater Horizon blowout may have taught many important lessons, but as yet, most of them are still unlearned by those most responsible.”
Phytoplankton produce half of the oxygen in our atmosphere, but understanding how they respond to climate change is complicated and critically important.
Ask someone on the street about the importance of the Amazon, and there’s a reasonable chance the response will include an understanding that forests play an essential role in storing and cycling global carbon. Follow that question with another on the importance of ocean phytoplankton, and there are good odds on it being met with a shrug.
Yet the significance of ocean phytoplankton is nearly impossible to overstate.
Drifting in the top layer of the world’s oceans, phytoplankton are a diverse group of microscopic, photosynthetic organisms. Most are single-celled algae, some are bacteria, and others are classified as protists – neither plant nor animal. Phytoplankton are estimated to produce nearly half the daily oxygen in our atmosphere, and as the basis of the ocean food web, sustain all major marine life forms. When they die, a percentage sink to the ocean floor, sequestering as much carbon as all terrestrial plants.
“If phytoplankton populations were to suffer significant decline, there would be serious consequences for marine food webs, including fisheries, and changes to the balance of nutrient cycling,” says Dr. Katherina Petrou, senior lecturer in phytoplankton ecophysiology at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia, via email.
How phytoplankton will respond to the effects of climate change is a pressing and stubborn research question. Study is made complicated by an array of interdependent variables that include warming surface sea temperatures, ocean acidification, and changes in sea ice and cloud cover.
A decade ago, Canadian researchers made headlines with an alarming study estimating ocean phytoplankton populations had dropped 40% since 1950, and were continuing to decline at a rate of around 1% per year, with ocean warming from climate change suspected. The findings were hotly debated, and in the years since, a more nuanced yet still alarming picture of how phytoplankton will fare under climate change has begun to emerge.
In a 2015 study by two of the same Canadian researchers, projections of phytoplankton concentrations are described as “highly divergent.” Taken in aggregate, the paper maintains published research shows phytoplankton numbers increasing in near-shore waters over shorter, more recent time spans, and declining in open oceans over longer periods. “Most published evidence suggests changes in temperature and nutrient supply rates as leading causes of these phytoplankton trends,” the study reads.
“Global modeling studies using historical data have revealed declines in phytoplankton over the last few decades, but with variability between oceans and regions, and even some patches where phytoplankton have increased,” says Petrou. “Based on these data, studies using computer models to project future conditions conclude that in many parts of the ocean, phytoplankton will decline as seas warm and water mixing patterns change.”
Warming Water
Given access to sunlight and nutrients, phytoplankton can bloom in numbers of millions of cells per litre of seawater. But as the oceans warm, the water column is forming into more distinct layers, and staying that way for longer periods. The result is a layer of warmer water sitting atop cooler, nutrient-rich water beneath. When this stratification begins it can promote blooms by keeping phytoplankton cells in the upper layer, near sunlight, says Oscar Schofield, a professor at the department of marine and coastal sciences at Rutgers University. However as the bloom progresses, phytoplankton exhaust the nutrients available to them. Stratification can then prevent the resupply of nutrients into the upper layer, says Schofield, causing phytoplankton concentrations to fall, resulting in a net decline.
Climate change is shifting not only the intensity of phytoplankton blooms, but their composition. Harmful algal blooms (also known as red tides) are expected to increase as the oceans warm. Biotoxins released from the blooms can cause large-scale die-offs of fish and shellfish, with knock-on effects to coastal economies.
An aerial view of green algae blooms swirling around the Baltic Sea. Photo: European Space Agency, (CC BY-SA 2.0)
“In some cases we see species growing faster, but in many instances warmer temperatures are altering ecosystems,” Petrou says. “Some species are recorded as moving towards the Polar regions, where water temperatures are lower. However, for current Polar species this poses a bit more of a problem, as they have nowhere cooler to move to.”
Schofield studies phytoplankton off the Antarctic Peninsula, the western arm of the Antarctic that reaches up toward South America. “It’s the fastest warming place on the planet in terms of winter air temperature,” he says, “so we see a lot less sea ice being made every year.” There, Schofield says, satellite observation suggests large phytoplankton declines.
But on the Antarctic Peninsula, Schofield theorizes it’s not too little mixing in the water column causing declines, but too much.
Lacking the protection of sea ice, the ocean undergoes deep mixing from strong winter winds. This disperses the free-floating phytoplankton deeper into the water column, limiting their access to sunlight. “It takes longer for that deep mixing to settle down and promote phytoplankton growth,” Schofield says. The warmer, moister climate also promotes cloud formation instead of cold, clear conditions, again limiting sunlight available to the phytoplankton.
Acidification Winners and Losers
In simple terms, ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease of seawater pH caused by the absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide. When seawater reacts with CO2 it creates carbonic acid, which breaks down to release hydrogen and bicarbonate ions. The surplus hydrogen ions increase the acidity of the oceans.
Ocean acidification will reshape marine food webs, most notably by making it more difficult for organisms such as shellfish, starfish, snails, and corals to build their shells or exoskeletons from calcium carbonate. For phytoplankton as a whole, however, the response to ocean acidification is more nebulous.
An exception to this uncertainty is a group of phytoplankton called coccolithophores, which are vulnerable to acidification because they too build calcified exoskeletons. “They cover their cell walls with tiny chalk platelets,” says Petrou. “Increasing acidity has been shown to dissolve these plates, in the same way that a tooth will dissolve in a glass of cola.”
Another type of phytoplankton, diatoms, are single-celled algae that produce around half the organic matter in the ocean, and one-fifth of the oxygen you are breathing right now. Instead of calcium carbonate, diatoms build cell walls out of silica.
Research by Lennart Bach, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, tends to indicate diatoms will benefit from increased ocean acidity. “CO2 is required for photosynthesis,” Bach says. “So in itself it is not the issue.”
But it’s not so simple. “There’s winners and losers within the phytoplankton community with respect to basically every environmental factor that will change,” Bach says. “Temperature, CO2, stratification, light, environment, there are a lot of factors. And when you only look at one like acidification, then they are on the winning side, but of course, you have to consider all factors because they will occur all at the same time in the future ocean. So it’s really hard to say.”
Declines or increases of phytoplankton types, relative to other phytoplankton, could also spell trouble. In a 2019 meta-analysis of studies on diatoms’ response to acidification, Bach and a colleague write: “[Diatoms’] prevalence relative to other phytoplankton taxa could profoundly alter marine food web structures and thereby affect ecosystem services such as fisheries or the sequestration of CO2 in the deep ocean.”
As well, a recent experiment by Petrou and other scientists discovered that in the Southern Ocean, future ocean acidification may hamper diatoms’ ability to build silica cell walls. At simulated rates of acidification possible before century’s end, the diatoms were smaller and lighter. With their ballast reduced, the cells would be less able to sink to the ocean floor and sequester carbon.
A study published in Nature in 2018, by an international team of researchers, also suggests that increased acidification could interfere with a poorly understood mechanism that allows diatoms to acquire iron — an essential nutrient for the algae.
“The decline in diatom ability to take up iron will reduce growth, while the loss in ability to form dense silica shells will alter diatom sinking rates and increase their susceptibility to grazers,” Petrou says. “Combined, the two processes suggest diatoms are in for a hard time under future ocean conditions.”
“We’re changing the climate, and that’s going to change a lot of the basic conditions we see in the ocean,” says Schofield. “And the thing about the ocean is, generally, it’s bottom up controls, meaning that if you change the food at the base of the web, it ripples directly up…. If and when that happens globally, it will change our planet. But we’re still at a point where we can’t give a quick, easy answer.”
This story first appeared in theWatershed Sentineland was published under a Creative Commons license.
The publishing industry isn’t immune to the economic threats posed by the current pandemic. Most local bookstores and libraries have closed their doors to customers and patrons, and many authors have needed to cancel their planned promotional tours. Publishers themselves are feeling the pinch, and at least three additional books that would have appeared on our list this month have been pushed back to later in the spring or summer.
Nature Obscura: A City’s Hidden Natural World
The Not BAD Animals
Becoming Wild
Green Meat? Sustaining Eaters, Animals and the Planet
A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety
Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber and Elon Musk
How Birds Work
Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire
Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park
The Human Planet: Earth at the Dawn of the Anthropocene
Sea Otters: A Survival Story
