Defund or Defend? In the Fight Over Fossil Fuel Investments, Who’s Winning?

Despite divestment victories, big banks and asset managers continue driving climate change through their lending practices.

“CalSTRS is using our teachers’ money to invest in the destruction of our own future,” says teen climate activist Dulce Arias.

She’s talking about the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which has billions of dollars invested in fossil fuel operations. Last year Arias and fellow activists in the Bay Area climate justice organization Youth Vs. Apocalypse launched a campaign to divest fossil fuel investments from the program. They have marched in the streets waving signs, sometimes dousing themselves in mock oil to call attention to the stakes. They’ve confronted decision-makers and politicians and more recently taken the fight online during COVID-19 quarantines.

The 19-year-old is part of a global movement fighting climate-divestment battles to essentially “defund” industries driving climate change by hitting companies where it hurts — on the stock markets and in access to loans and other financing. A report published last December by 350.org and DivestInvest called these global divestment efforts “the fastest growing social movement in history,” which has helped steer a growing sum of money away from fossil fuel investments — from $52 billion in 2014 to more than $11 trillion last year.

These passionate people-powered divestment campaigns even helped set the stage for Big Oil’s 2020 reversal of fortunes, according to financial analysts.

Despite all this, fossil fuel companies continue to wield enormous power and political influence — remaining a formidable, if weakening, opponent.

Climate scientists, meanwhile, warn that we must act now to head off the worst impacts of climate change.

“We are out of time,” says climate scientist and author Peter Kalmus. “The planet is screaming loudly…and it’s going to scream louder and louder the more we emit. More people are going to suffer and die and more ecosystems are going to be lost. The more fossil fuels we produce, the worse our lives today and the planet we leave for future generations will become.”

Business as Usual

Despite dire scientific warnings, fossil fuel financing continues full steam ahead.

A slew of expert reports say that most commercial banks remain resistant to adopting more stringent underwriting standards, which would enable further divestment. Even high-profile viral video campaigns like Jane Fonda cutting up bank cards have failed to shame big banks into making a change, and much of the banking and financial sector continues to resist “greening” their businesses.

“Move Chase’s money out of coal, oil, and gas now. If you don’t, we’ll leave your bank.” — @JaneFonda @Chase, we’re building an army to take on fossil fuel finance and #StopTheMoneyPipeline.

Take action here: https://t.co/dXjqCGvSJM https://t.co/MnDcMGmqfQ

— Fire Drill Fridays (@FireDrillFriday) January 22, 2020

Commercial banks have talked about greening their portfolios for decades, but critics say most have done little more than discuss risk “metrics” for analyzing portfolios, while limiting concrete changes to easier “sustainability” efforts like renovating their branches and corporate offices.

“There is no way through the climate crisis without addressing the financing behind the climate crisis,” says Jeff Conant, senior international forest program director with Friends of the Earth, part of Stop The Money Pipeline, a coalition of environmental and human rights organizations putting pressure on the financial sector. “It’s very hard to be optimistic.”

Indeed the numbers don’t look promising. A report published in March found that 35 global banks had provided $2.7 trillion in financing to fossil fuel companies since the United Nations’ Paris climate agreement was adopted in 2016.

Global deforestation, the second most significant climate change driver after fossil fuels, remains another area where lending practices are going in the wrong direction, Conant says. Another $154 billion in lending and capital have flowed to the top 300 companies known to be involved in global deforestation since the Paris accord was signed, he says.

“It’s clear that the finance sector is doing exactly the opposite of what it needs to do in terms of drawing down financing for these destructive industries,” says Conant.

As a result Stop The Money Pipeline has ratcheted up the pressure on banks, insurance companies, university endowments, pension funds like CalSTRS and companies like BlackRock, the world’s largest assets manager.

In response to climate activism, BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink stunned the world of finance in January when he pledged to consider climate change impacts in the company’s investment decisions. “[W]e will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them,” Fink wrote in his annual letter to corporate executives.

Environmentalists, however, say BlackRock has yet to act on those intentions.

BlackRock has made “great strides in the last few years thanks to pressure from activists and the public, but in terms of coming up with an approach that actually makes a difference with the [climate] crisis, there’s a really long way to go,” says Conant. “For people in the finance industry, it was something that was unthinkable just a few years ago. So in that sense, it’s tremendous. But we have yet to see any of those words be put into action.”

Mounting Victories

There are reasons to believe that we’re nearing a tipping point, though.

In a webinar earlier this month, energy strategist Kingsmill Bond of Carbon Tracker, a London-based think tank focused on the impact of climate change on financial markets, urged listeners to be skeptical of “rather naïve” oil company forecasts that demand for their products will go back to business as usual.

“That’s just not going to happen,” he said, explaining that the COVID crisis has complicated matters for the whole fossil fuel sector at the same time the industry is going through structural changes. As a result, the pandemic will bring forward the date of peak demand for fossil fuels and hasten the transition to fossil-free energy powering our homes, offices and cars.

Financial analysts have no doubt that the divestment campaigns are contributing to Big Oil’s historic decline this year, as a COVID-induced recession led to an oil glut that sent crude prices plummeting below zero for the first time ever this spring.

Perhaps the most cautionary tale comes from Exxon Mobil Corporation, which saw itself delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in August, a few weeks after the company reported a second straight quarterly loss and its stock price cratered. It was a spectacular tumble for a company that was ranked as the country’s most valuable as recently as 2011. The depth of the industry’s troubles developed surprisingly fast this year, exposing, analysts say, the extent to which the clean energy transition is increasingly inevitable.

“It’s very clear to us that COVID-19 will speed up the energy transition, in spite of the best attempts by the fossil fuel lobbyists to roll back the regulatory pressures,” said Bond.

Activists holding sign — Youth and environmental groups marched on January 30, 2020 in Sacramento, California to urge fossil fuel divestment from CalSTRS. Photo: Peg Hunter, (CC BY-NC 2.0)

What activists have achieved to date is no small feat. In California divestment advocates have already notched some significant victories. Last year, for instance, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order calling on CalSTRS and other state pension plans to shift their portfolios to drive investment in climate resilience and carbon-neutral technologies.

Whether CalSTRS actually divests is still to be seen, but the momentum in California and globally appears to be building behind the activists. Of course, daunting obstacles remain — even more so in these COVID times when in-person activism is limited.

“On social media, when we put out something regarding the climate or anything related to climate justice, most of the time it’s only our own followers who see this content,” says Arias.

Nevertheless, she says she’s undeterred. She finds inspiration in the work of her fellow youth climate activists, as well as other movements for racial and social justice and immigrant rights.

This intersection of social and environmental movements, she says, will be key to tackling the climate crisis, along with other social and economic problems that COVID-19 has only exposed and exacerbated.

“Once we all unite, band together and show up for one another,” she says, “that is when we will have real change.”

Displaced by Fire or Smoke? Here’s How to Protect Your Right to Vote

West Coast citizens who’ve lost their homes or fled to other locations still have opportunities to participate in the election. But they have to act quickly.

Voting in this year’s election was already going to be hard enough due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Now citizens on the West Coast have massive disruptions from climate-fueled fires and smoke added to the mix.

We reached out to the Secretary of State offices for California, Oregon and Washington for guidance on how people who have lost their homes or been displaced by the fires can make sure their votes count this season. Here’s how they responded. The Revelator will add other states to this list as necessary, especially as hurricane season develops.

California:

“California already provides multiple options for voters to cast their ballots — which is extra important during an emergency such as a wildfire,” says Sam Mahood, press secretary for California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who provided some tips for voters:

If you are unsure about how to vote after being displaced, or are worried you won’t get your vote-by-mail ballot, contact your county elections office ASAP. They handle the printing, mailing and processing of ballots and can help find a solution. In California ballots will begin to be mailed out to voters by Oct. 5. It should be noted that the U.S. Postal Service can’t forward your vote-by-mail ballot, so you will need to work to update your registration to have the correct mailing address.
If you’re displaced, you can update the mailing address of your voter registration online at registertovote.ca.gov
If you’ve already received your vote-by-mail (VBM) ballot you have multiple options for returning it:
- All VBM ballots come with prepaid postage return envelopes. Just fill out your ballot, seal it, sign the return envelope, and drop it in the mail.
- Completed VBM ballots can also be dropped off at any polling location, drop box or county elections office in the state. Elections officials will route your ballot to the appropriate county elections office to be counted.
We have also expanded access to Remote Access Vote-by-Mail (RAVBM) to all voters for this election. RAVBM allows voters to receive to receive their ballot electronically, mark their selections, print it out, and send it to their county elections official.
In-person voting locations will be available in every county. Voters can re-register to vote all the way through Election Day at voting locations and cast a ballot.

Oregon:

“The families and communities affected by the devastating wildfires across Oregon are in my thoughts and prayers,” Secretary of State Bev Clarno said in a press statement on Sept. 15. “For any Oregonians displaced from their home and concerned about voting in the General Election this November, rest assured we have a plan and are working closely with local election officials to ensure you can receive your ballot, vote, and make your voices heard.”

The state has posted an online FAQ for displaced voters, which is reprinted below:

How can I receive my ballot if I have been displaced by wildfires?

Ballots will start being mailed Oct. 14. If you know an address where you will be able to receive mail then, you can add a temporary mailing address at oregonvotes.gov/myvote.
If you want, you may also use this paper form to provide us with a temporary address.
You can pick up all of your mail (including ballots once they are mailed) at the post office that serves your permanent residence address.
Contact your county election office after Oct. 1 for additional options they may have for pickup. Find your county election office here.

If I submit a change of address through USPS, will my ballot be forwarded to the new address?

No. Ballots are unable to be forwarded. It is one of the security features of our system. You must inform election officials of your temporary address using one of the methods above in order to have your ballot sent there.

Do I need to register to vote from my temporary address?

No. You do not need to re-register to vote if you are living somewhere temporarily because you have been displaced by wildfires. You just need to let us know where to mail your ballot by one of the methods above.

Will I be able to vote on the local measures where my permanent address is located, even if I am temporarily living outside that area?

Yes. The ballot you receive will contain the contests for your residential address, not your temporary mailing address.

What if my mailbox was destroyed?

If mail cannot be delivered to your home or mailbox, it will be held at your local post office and you can pick it up there.

Washington:

Ballots for the 2020 November General Election in Washington state will be mailed by county election offices no later than Oct. 16.
At the time of registration, voters must provide their residential (physical) address. Voters can also provide a mailing address where they can receive mailed ballot materials. The mailing address may differ from their residential address.
A voter may make changes to their registration record up to eight days prior to Election Day by visiting VoteWA.gov or contacting their county elections office. Changes may include updating residential and mailing addresses, last name (have you been married or divorced since the last time you voted?), providing additional contact information and more.
At VoteWA.gov, voters can also access an online voter’s guide, update their registration information, track their ballot, and download and print a replacement ballot.

Now through Oct. 26, voters facing possible displacement due to wildfires and who have plans to receive mail at a location different than their currently listed mailing address in their voter registration record can update their mailing address by logging into VoteWA.gov. Voters are encouraged to make updates to their voter registration as soon as possible to ensure their ballot is delivered to the correct location on the first try. Ballots will be mailed no later than Oct. 16. Beginning Oct. 16 through Election Day, a voter may also log in to VoteWA.gov to download and print a replacement ballot, and return it according to the instructions specified. By-mail, drop box, and in-person return options are available. Ballots returned by mail must be postmarked on or before Election Day in order to be counted.

After Oct. 26 a voter may visit any county elections office or voting center during business hours and through 8 p.m. Election Day to register to vote and receive a ballot or receive a replacement ballot if they’re already registered.

How Many Plant Species Have Gone Extinct in North America?

A new paper identifies 65 plant extinctions in the continental United States and Canada — but that’s probably just a fraction of what we’ve lost.

The Caddo false foxglove. The pale bugseed. The largeleaf leather-root.

These are just a few of the plant species and varieties that have gone extinct in the continental United States and Canada since the beginning of European colonization.

A new paper documents 65 such plant extinctions — five small trees, eight shrubs, 37 perennial herbs and 15 annual herbs — the losses of most of which have never been reported before. Most of these species had limited ranges or were known from single sites, and likely went extinct following the destruction of their habitats. A few were lost due to dams, invasive species or overgrazing.

This new record of what we’ve lost contains 51 species and 14 varieties. These variants, or “infraspecific taxa,” as the paper calls them, may not have been full species, but they still contained unique and potentially important genetic traits.

The list includes a three-foot-tall daisy called Marshallia grandiflora, which some of the same authors declared extinct earlier this year.

It also includes seven plants that are now considered “extinct in the wild,” meaning they only exist in botanical gardens. Four of those “extinct in the wild” plants were, until this paper, thought to still be living in the wild. The evidence now suggests that three trees from the hawthorn family — Crataegus delawarensis, C. fecunda and C. lanuginose — and a bittersweet shrub variety called Euonymus atropurpureus var. cheatumii have narrowly avoided extinction due to their cultivation in botanical gardens.

“I was astonished,” says biologist Wesley Knapp of the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, the lead author of the new paper. “The fact that botanical gardens had the last known living material of a species, yet they were unaware of this, was shocking and it’s spurring future work. Unfortunately for some species, there is little hope aside from a future in gardens or seedbanks. This is certainly better than extinction.”

Losing 65 species and varieties is bad enough, but, as the paper also warns, the continent has probably experienced a much higher level of extinction than could ever be catalogued or assessed. That’s because Europeans settlers typically moved into new areas, particularly the American West, before scientists could document the species that lived there. If those species had small ranges, the authors write, they could have easily disappeared due to agriculture and other development before they were identified or named by scientists.

Of the extinctions that researchers could catalog, 19 came from California, nine from Texas and five from New England. Only one extinct plant on the list came from Canada — suggesting more of a knowledge gap or a research opportunity than necessarily a better conservation record. “It is highly unlikely that New England would have seen five extinctions but adjacent parts of Canada zero. I suspect this is all an artifact of our knowledge — or lack of,” says Knapp.

As bad as this news is, the authors caution that most of these losses should be considered “presumed extinctions.” Even though many species have not been seen for decades, they could reemerge if people look long and hard enough.

“Surprises happen,” says Knapp. He points to this year’s rediscovery of a grass subspecies called Sphenopholis interrupta californica — which was found in California after previously being known from two sites in Mexico — and the famous case of the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis), which was known only from fossil records before it was found alive in Australia in 1995.

“Even plants not seen for millions of years, or plants completely new to a geographic area where they have not been seen before, can be found,” he says. “I hope every plant on this list is ultimately rediscovered. Drawing attention to them is the best way to possibly help spur their rediscovery.”

And the paper may serve as incentive to find and save other plant species, especially ones that have been sparsely documented in the scientific literature, or species without known living specimens available for genetic testing.

To assist in these types of efforts, the authors developed what they call the “Index of Taxonomic Uncertainty,” a new methodology that ranks species based on how often they’ve been studied. The rarer the study, the lower the level of certainty about whether the plants truly represent species, subspecies or variants, or if even if they still exist. The paper’s supplements contain rankings on more than 400 such plants, about 150 of which have rarely been seen or never catalogued after their initial scientific description.

Knapp says this system, or others like it, may help to reassess rarely seen species or inspire efforts to fill scientific gaps about little-known plants. “Our knowledge is ever-changing,” he says.

That’s reflected in the paper itself, which in earlier drafts projected 53 species extinctions, not the published 51. One of the species was moved to the variety list during peer review, Knapp says.

As to the other? Well, Knapp says recent reports suggest an assumed-lost species of hollyhock could represent another possible rediscovery — proof that hope remains and that we should never give up looking for species we may have lost.

The full list of extinct plant species appears below:

Taxonomic name	Common name (if known)
Agalinis caddoensis	Caddo false foxglove
Arctostaphylos franciscana	Franciscan manzanita
Astilbe crenatiloba	Roan Mountain false goat’s beard
Astragalus endopterus	Sandbar milkvetch
Astragalus kentrophyta var. douglasii	Barneby Douglas’ thistle milkvetch
Astragalus robbinsii var. robbinsii	Robbins’ milkvetch
Atriplex tularensis	Bakersfield smallscale, Tulare saltbush or Tulare orach
Blephilia hirsuta var. glabrata	Hairy wood-mint
Boechera fructicosa
Brickellia chenopodina	Chenopod brickellbush
Brickellia hinckleyi Standley var. terlinguensis
Calochortus indecorus	Sexton Mountain mariposa lily
Calochortus monanthus	Single-flowered mariposa lily or Shasta River mariposa lily
Calystegia sepium binghamiae	Bingham’s false bindweed
Castilleja leschkeana	Point Reyes paintbrush
Castilleja uliginosa	Pitkin Marsh Indian paintbrush
Cirsium praeteriens	Palo Alto thistle
Corispermum pallidum	Mosyakin pale bugseed
Crataegus austromontana	Valley Head hawthorn
Crataegus delawarensis
Crataegus fecunda	St. Clair or fecund hawthorn
Crataegus lanuginose	Woolly hawthorn
Cryptantha aperta	Grand Junction cryptantha
Cryptantha hooveri	Hoover’s cryptantha
Cryptantha insolita	Las Vegas cryptantha
Dalea sabinalis	Sabinal prairie clover
Digitaria filiformis var. laeviglumis	Slender crabgrass
Diplacus traskiae	Mimulus traskiae
Eleocharis brachycarpa	Shortfruit spikerush
Elodea schweinitzii	Schwe initz’s waterweed
Erigeron mariposanus	Foothill fleabane, Mariposa daisy or Mariposa erigeron
Eriochloa michauxii var. simpsonii	Simpson’s cupgrass
Euonymus atropurpureus var. cheatumii (extinct in the wild)	Eastern wahoo
Franklinia alatamaha	Franklin tree
Govenia floridana	Gowen’s orchid
Hedeoma pilosa	Old blue false pennyroyal
Helianthus nuttallii parishii	Los Angeles sunflower or Parish’s sunflower
Helianthus praetermissus	Lost sunflower
Isocoma humilis	Zion goldenbush or Zion jimmyweed
Juncus pervetus	Blunt-flower rush
Lechea lakelae	Lakela’s pinweed
Lycium verrucosum	San Nicholas desert thorn or San Nicolas island desert thorn
Marshallia grandiflora	Barbara’s buttons
Micranthemum micranthemoides	Pearl weed
Monardella leucocephala
Monardella pringlei	Pringle’s monardella
Narthecium montanum	Appalachian yellow asphodel
Orbexilum macrophyllum	Largeleaf leather-root
Orbexilum stipulatum	Largestipule leather-root or Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea
Paronychia maccartii	McCart’s nailwort
Plagiobothrys lamprocarpus	Shiny-fruited allocarya
Plagiobothrys lithocaryus	Mayacamas popcorn flower
Plagiobothrys mollis var. vestitus	Petaluma popcorn flower
Polygonatum biflorum var. melleum	Smooth Solomon’s seal
Potentilla multijuga	Ballona or lost cinquefoil
Potentilla uliginosa	Cunningham marsh cinquefoil
Proboscidea spicata	New Mexico unicorn-plant
Prunus maritima var. gravesii
Quercus tardifolia	Chisos Mountains oak or lateleaf oak
Ribes divaricatum var. parishii	Straggly gooseberry
Rumex tomentellus	Mogollon dock
Sesuvium trianthemoides	Texas sea-purslane
Sphaeralcea procera	Porter’s globe mallow
Tephrosia angustissima var. angustissima	Coral hoary pea
Thismia americana	Thismia or banded Trinity

The Climate Flames Come for Us All

This month’s western megafires have burned millions of acres and upended countless lives. It’s a sign of things to come if we don’t start to listen and act.

Fire is the great equalizer.

Young or old, rich or poor, rural or urban, we’re all in the path of the flames these days. As I write this, tens of thousands of people in three western states remain under evacuation orders, more than a million acres of Oregon forest have burned, and entire towns have been wiped off the map. Meanwhile the residents of half the country find themselves cloaked in clouds of megafire emissions big enough to be seen from space.

Smoke from severe wildfires raging on the West Coast has blown thousands of miles east, reaching parts of the Midwest, Canada and upstate New York. https://t.co/jbvToWqhZ1

— CNN (@CNN) September 14, 2020

My small town just north of Portland, Oregon, hasn’t seen much fire, but the smoke has hung over us for more than 10 days. At first it seemed like nothing more than a few stray wisps and the smell of burning wood. By last Friday things were so bad we stopped going outside for longer than a few minutes. Over the weekend our air contained so much particulate matter and carbon monoxide that the Air Quality Index shot well into — and beyond — the hazardous zone.

View this post on Instagram

Orange skies.

A post shared by John Platt (@johnrplatt) on Sep 11, 2020 at 9:21am PDT

A healthy AQI is in the 0-50 range. On Saturday ours reached nearly 600.

The official Air Quality Index stops at 500, meaning we’ve now gone well beyond what experts ever predicted when they created the index in the first place.

These levels of fire pollution pose potentially deadly health risks. It’s more than just difficulty breathing, headaches, nausea, watering eyes and irritated skin. The worst kinds of particulate matter — those smaller than 2.5 microns — can lodge in your lungs or even pass through them into the bloodstream, where they can cause heart attacks or other health problems.

It’s no wonder that one of the many websites tracking AQI used a cartoon skull-and-crossbones icon to indicate this weekend’s risk levels.

smoke — Smoke mixes with fog on Sunday, Sept. 13. Photo: John R. Platt/The Revelator

All things told, though, my own family’s been lucky — much luckier than those to the south. Our town never even came close to an evacuation order. Our home is safe, we’re relatively well-stocked, we have two brand-new filters in our air purifiers, and we work at home. We don’t need to expose ourselves unnecessarily. Aside from taking our elderly dog into the backyard a few times a day, we haven’t had to go outside since Thursday.

But what if we’d been closer to the flames, like so many of our friends and colleagues? Quite frankly, we might have been in serious trouble. For one thing, we’re down to our last N95 mask — not good enough for two people. Although we’re well stocked on pandemic-style cloth masks, they won’t protect us from particulate matter. Bigger picture, we don’t have a go-bag ready or nearly enough medical supplies, let alone a family evacuation plan for emergencies like this one.

That will need to change.

There’s a lot of talk about “the new normal” when it comes to climate change. Being prepared to hunker down at home or flee for your life has now become a big part of it.

None of this destruction should come as a surprise. The warnings about climate change, overdevelopment and decades of wildfire suppression have been repeated and intensified over the years.

We need to start listening to those warnings — and doing something about them. The conditions we’ve created will affect us all sooner or later.

Fire and smoke, like the other effects of climate change, don’t discriminate. They flow where they flow, following the natural patterns that have defined them for millennia. Everyone and everything in their paths get affected equally.

But the sins that helped feed those fires — those are not equal.

Fossil-fuel corporations, science-denying politicians, and greedy developers are among the worst offenders — those who brought the climate crisis to our forests, landscapes, towns and lungs.

We know this to be true. And yet, how many of them pay the price for their misdeeds? It’s the people who can’t flee or hide from the problems the powerful have caused who pay the highest prices: choking air, lost homes and memories, trauma. Sickness, collapsed wages, pain, suffering and death.

Burned fire truck — A burned-out fire truck. Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation (CC BY 2.0)

But the corporations that caused this crisis made record profits for decades. They ruined entire landscapes, then moved on to the next areas to plunder. Along the way their executives took home big bonuses and moved their mansions to areas less likely to burn or suffer other unnatural catastrophes.

Even the politicians who claim to understand the climate crisis don’t always commit to actions that match their words. California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters this weekend that the fires are fueled by climate change, yet his administration continues to approve new fossil-fuel extraction permits. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown called the fires ravaging her state a “once-in-a-generation event,” implying that they’re an anomaly, yet these mass catastrophes now seem to happen almost every year.

We don’t have time for government and corporations to waffle. The homes and towns and lives lost to flame tell us that the climate crisis is here, affecting us now. The smoke choking entire states tells us that things need to change, and quickly. This month’s destruction and the potentially record-breaking hurricane season building in the Atlantic that will follow tell us the threats we’ll face have become wide and varied, and already affect millions of people in this country alone.

Once our eyes stop watering from the smoke, will the powerful finally open their ears to listen?

As I write this on Monday morning, our air quality has shown marginal improvements. The AQI in my town slowly dropped — first to 520, then 500. That remains hazardous to human health, but at least it’s no longer literally off the chart.

Still, even indoors, I struggle a bit to breathe. My eyes continue to water, blurring out the sight of my monitor as I type. My skin itches as it never has on my worst allergy days. I’m tired from lack of sleep, yet wired from lack of exercise. And my hearts feels as heavy as it ever has.

The COVID-19 Crisis: Our Pandemic Coverage

Articles, essays and videos discussing critical issues about zoonotic diseases — and what’s going on behind the scenes while we’re coping with this crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a harsh light on critical issues related to wildlife, the environment and our human systems. Here you’ll find The Revelator’s coverage of the crisis — both about the virus itself and what’s going on behind the scenes. Plus we’ve got some tools to keep you connected to the planet during these difficult times.

Zoonotic Diseases:

Where Pandemics Come From — and How to Stop Them

Coronaviruses and the Human Meat Market

How COVID-19 Took Hold and Why We Must End the Wildlife Trade

5 Ways Environmental Damage Drives Human Diseases Like COVID-19

Pandemics Aren’t Just for People: Five Disease Threats to Wildlife

The Global Pet Trade: An Overlooked Culprit Behind Pandemics

Antibiotics: Big Ag’s Can of Worms

Politics and Society:

Spending Time in Nature During the Pandemic? You’re Not Alone — and That’s a Problem.

In This Time of Crisis, We Need to Keep Our Eyes Open

Elephant Hunts for Sale During a Pandemic

Food Waste in the Time of COVID-19: The Real Reason to Cry Over Spilt Milk

Pandemic Shines a Light on Critical Water Issues — Will Congress Fund Solutions?

No Sacrifices of the Public Interest in Times of Emergency

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

Hunting for Game Wardens: A Shortage of Conservation Officers Threatens Wildlife. COVID-19 Could Make It Worse

Pandemic Spawns Dangerous Relaxation of Environmental Regulations

Keeping an Eye on Nature:

Now’s a Great Time to Become a Backyard Naturalist — Here’s How

Beat the COVID-19 Blues With These Wildlife and Nature Livecams

14 Inspiring New Environmental Books to Read During the Pandemic

Speak Up for Bats — Even in the Pandemic

18 New Environmental Books to Help You Through COVID-19 Isolation

Wildlife Rehabilitators Are Overwhelmed During the Pandemic. In Part, That’s a Good Thing.

Moving Forward:

A Green Renaissance: Moving the Needle for a Gentler Society

COVID-19 Reveals a Crisis of Public Spaces

Working From Home During the Pandemic Has Environmental Benefits — But We Can Do Even Better

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

Should Environmentalists Embrace Universal Basic Income?

Want to Design a Livable Future? Try ‘Multisolving’

Could the COVID Crisis Provide an Opportunity for Thailand’s Captive Elephants?

Pandemic Spawns Dangerous Relaxation of Environmental Regulations

The EPA allowed polluters to stop monitoring or even preventing their emissions, and many states followed suit. Here’s what happened — and how to fix it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a wave of worrisome and needless regulatory relaxations that have increased pollution across the United States. Recent reporting by the Associated Press and other outlets has documented more than 3,000 pandemic-based requests from polluters to state agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for waivers of environmental requirements. Numerous state governments, with the tacit encouragement of the EPA, went along with many of those requests. All too often, those waivers — requested, ostensibly, to protect American workers from exposure to the coronavirus — were granted with little or no review, notwithstanding the risks the resulting emissions posed to public health and the environment.

EPA invited this wave of waivers back in March, announcing it would relax its enforcement upon request, under cover of COVID-19. The policy allowed polluters that asserted COVID-19 prevented them from monitoring and reporting their own pollution to refrain from doing so without penalty.

Many of the largest regulated polluters, such as refineries and chemical plants, were designated as essential businesses that were to keep operating during the pandemic. But EPA’s waiver policy allowed these companies to send home “nonessential” environmental and safety inspectors whose job it is to protect the public. Only to an agency that devalues pollution impacts and protecting the public does such a policy make sense.

This policy also left EPA and state officials in the dark about where and why polluter self-monitoring had been halted. Many in the oil and gas industry raced to suspend Leak Detection and Reporting, a critical protection against fugitive toxic gas leaks. Without self-measurements, even refinery owners and operators may have been unaware of any hazardous contaminants their plants were emitting.

Strikingly, more than 50 of the facilities that obtained rule exemptions had troubling pre-pandemic records of environmental violations. Waiver petitions from such recidivists should have received the most careful and exacting scrutiny. But in the frenzy to grant passes to polluters under cover of the pandemic, even that sensible safeguard went unobserved.

Following the EPA’s lead, numerous states adopted and implemented unduly lax pandemic waiver policies. Texas granted more than 200 waiver requests, but the Lone Star state was not alone:

Regulators suspended in-person self-inspections at a nuclear test site in Nevada.
North Dakota officials granted a request to suspend groundwater sampling at a natural-gas processing plant where 837,000 gallons of liquid natural gas had spilled from a leak over the preceding five years.
Arkansas granted a long-term blanket waiver of safety testing for abandoned oil and gas wells.
Wyoming granted (mostly very large) oil and gas companies a pass on air-pollution emission rules.
Michigan approved requests from several cities to delay testing for lead in drinking water and for replacing the sort of lead pipes that created the horrific public health disaster in Flint.

These regulatory failures have occurred against the backdrop of a steady decline in both federal and state environmental enforcement. The numbers of government scientists and attorneys whose work focuses on enforcing environmental laws has dropped significantly in recent years. There have also been substantial decreases in the numbers of in-person government inspections of pollution sources, the volume of enforcement actions pursued, the number of environmental criminal investigations, and the amount of money that polluters have been compelled to spend on pollution control as a direct result of enforcement activities. EPA has all but abandoned its longstanding oversight of state enforcement work. And the federal agency has cravenly deferred to state enforcement (or nonenforcement) priorities, even though quite a few states lack the resources and/or political will to effectively enforce environmental standards.

Howls of protest and a federal lawsuit prompted EPA to terminate its COVID policy as of Aug. 31. But too much damage has already been done.

How do we move forward, even as the pandemic continues? Several measures are urgently needed to reinvigorate environmental enforcement in the United States. Certainly any overtly fraudulent suspension applications must be identified and be the basis for strict enforcement measures. Though we may never know the full scope of the damage, any available data collected by the regulated entities or the public during the enforcement suspension should be scrutinized to ensure that harms aren’t continuing. More federal and state money must be allocated to environmental enforcement work — and the size of EPA grants to state agencies must be meaningfully increased. The EPA and the states must devote time and energy to recruiting new enforcement professionals and support staffs. And — importantly — environmental agencies must upgrade the training they provide for newly hired staffers so mistakes by inexperienced rookies will be minimized.

Protecting government and private-sector employees from disease is unquestionably a legitimate and worthwhile goal. However, employee protection should not be used as an excuse to suspend government enforcement of critical environmental safeguards. The health of all Americans requires nothing less.

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

What’s the Value of a Mountain Lion?

The new book Cougar Conundrum looks at the “ecosystem services” argument for convincing predator-wary people to appreciate big cats.

The following is excerpted from The Cougar Conundrum: Sharing the World with a Successful Predator.

One popular approach to increasing tolerance for large predators like mountain lions is to speak to people’s wallet–mind connection rather than their hearts. Ecosystem services are benefits provided by wildlife and other nature that specifically benefit people. Ideally, these services can be quantified to emphasize their importance. Brazilian free-tailed bats, for example, provide millions of dollars in pest control to the agricultural sector each year, both by reducing the need for more pesticides and by reducing pest damage across the United States and Mexico. Globally, animals provide more than $200 billion in pollination services to maintain and grow the most important food crops that feed the human population.

The general idea behind reporting ecosystem services is that everyday people unconcerned about wildlife perk up when they hear about their economic value; subsequently, they increase their tolerance for wildlife and begin to appreciate the animals around them.

The ecosystem services strategy has only rarely been used for mountain lions. The best example is that presented by wildlife ecologist Sophie Gilbert and her team at the University of Idaho. They not only estimated the economic value of services provided by mountain lions by reducing deer–vehicle collisions in dollars, they also measured it in human lives.

To accomplish this, they completed two different analyses. First, they calculated the economic contributions of the nascent population of mountain lions in the Black Hills of South Dakota, by comparing the number of deer–vehicle strikes before and after mountain lions re-established a breeding population. Once in place, resident mountain lions reduced deer collisions by 9%, which translates to an annual savings of approximately $1.1 million for the people of South Dakota. That’s an impressive savings.

Second, Gilbert’s team conducted a predictive calculation of what mountain lions could save people should they re-establish in the East. They predicted that mountain lions would reduce deer numbers by 22%, after which the deer density would stabilize again at a reduced (and healthier) number.

Over thirty years, the effects of re-established mountain lions on deer populations would result in 21,400 fewer injuries to people and 155 fewer human fatalities, and it would avert $2.13 billion spent in damages and reparation. Contemplating these figures makes one’s head spin.

In another ecosystem services study, researchers followed nine mountain lions in Colorado and discovered that they were disproportionately killing deer infected with chronic wasting disease (CWD). This is a debilitating and contagious neurological disease in which animals suffer slow deterioration of the brain, resulting in abnormal behavior, lethargy, reduced awareness of one’s environment, starvation, and death. Game managers are particularly worried about CWD as it spreads from deer to elk and moose. The only way to stop, or at least slow, the spread of CWD is to hire sharpshooters to prune sick deer from the herd. If it’s true that mountain lions target CWD-infected deer (and we’d need to replicate the study with larger sample sizes to be sure), mountain lions could save state agencies the costs of hiring sharpshooters, and, more importantly, save untold thousands of deer, elk, and moose from terrible deaths. This is something even deer and elk hunters can appreciate.

The counterargument to citing ecosystem services as a conservation strategy to convince people that large predators are good is that it may backfire for species for which we lack information. The ecosystem services argument lays the burden upon biologists to get their act together and document all the positive roles animals play in natural systems so that they can then collaborate with economists to estimate each species’ net value. For mountain lions, most research is dictated by state agencies with no interest in permitting or funding this sort of study, and so it’s unlikely we’ll have a repertoire of ecosystem services research upon which to draw.

Keeping with the theme of speaking to people’s wallets, some researchers and conservation organizations bypass the ecological research and go straight to providing a financial incentive to people who conserve mountain lions and other predators. For example, the Northern Jaguar Project in Sonora, Mexico, with support from the American NGO Defenders of Wildlife, pays ranchers for photographs of carnivores captured on their properties: $300 for a jaguar, $150 for an ocelot, and $100 for a mountain lion.

This is real money in that part of Mexico, and it provides incentive to ranchers to keep animals alive. Carnivores can also continue to pay out over time as they are photographed again and again. In addition, such a system provides an incentive for ranchers to see wild game flourish on their land, which might in turn attract more wild cats, generating additional income.

The problem becomes in ensuring that the pot of money never runs dry — what happens when the ranchers aren’t paid to maintain carnivores on their lands? It’s referred to as the “white elephant” phenomenon in some circles when an NGO with the best of intentions invests in a community for a few years. Then the money dries up, after which people return to the way they were living prior to the “intervention.”

In contrast, though, some ranchers come to value the photos of rare species more than the cash incentive — they are trophies of a sort, and many ranchers feel pride in knowing they support healthy ecosystems.

Nevertheless, the heart of the counterargument to ecosystem services and other wallet-based approaches is that they may discourage people from recognizing the intrinsic value of wildlife above and beyond what they can do for us. Isn’t it a better approach to improving tolerance just to get people to fall in love with mountain lions, rather than to invest the money and time needed to estimate their economic value to human communities and healthy ecosystems?

An Antidote to Despair: New Book Shares Stories of Ecological Restoration

In The Reindeer Chronicles, Judith D. Schwartz shows how badly damaged landscapes are being restored across the world — and why more of that work is deeply needed.

“That which has been damaged can be healed.”

It’s a quote from ecological design pioneer John Todd that opens The Reindeer Chronicles, a new book from author Judith D. Schwartz.

It’s a fitting quote for a time when we’re facing multiple crises and good news is in short supply — and an apt beginning for a book that takes readers across the world to learn about the ways nature’s being harnessed to help restore some of the most damaged parts of our planet.

With stops in Spain, Saudi Arabia, Hawaii, New Mexico and Norway (that’s where the reindeer come in), Schwartz writes about landscape-scale environmental-restoration projects and the restoration of community that often goes along with them.

It’s work that she calls the “inverse of apathy and an antidote to despair.” And it’s work in which we can all participate.

“We’ve been trained to believe that finding solutions is a job for the experts,” she writes. “But many unsung eco-restorers are doing the work, often drawing inspiration from clever creatures like ants, butterflies and dung beetles.”

Writing about the power of nature to heal isn’t new to Schwartz, who’s also written books on the importance of water and soil restoration. But her latest endeavor takes more of a big-picture approach — and offers a dose of inspiration.

We spoke to her about what she learned from looking at large-scale restoration projects and how to put best practices to work in any place.

Why did you decide to write a book about landscape-scale restoration?

Often environmental inquiries get focused on one component, whether it’s carbon or water, and I just felt that there was much to be said about the whole picture. Many of the problems that we look at from a narrower lens can be dealt with through the synergies that happen when we restore an entire ecosystem.

When we talk about climate, one thing that has been missing is the role of functioning ecosystems in climate regulation. And that to me is a huge gap, because a healthy landscape regulates climate via the water cycle and via land-plant-animal-soil dynamics.

Author Judith Schwartz. Photo: Tony Eprile

I was also really compelled by the work of [filmmaker] John Liu, who I write about in the book. I felt that the restoration he filmed in of the Loess Plateau in China [that helped lift millions out of poverty] was this huge, amazingly successful, large-scale effort that is an inspiration. As he says, once we know that it’s possible to restore large-scale, degraded ecosystems or landscapes, that opens up huge possibilities.

If we can restore ecosystems, then we’ve got solutions that not only will help us address climate change but also deal with food security, water security, human health, and war and conflict.

When you think about regeneration or restoration of land, what does that look like and how is success measured?

I think of it in terms of function. Is this land functioning? How are the carbon, water, energy and nutrient cycles? Are they functioning or have they been distorted?

Land degradation, biodiversity loss and loss of climate regulation can be restored by restoring these cycles. And they work together. In restoring the carbon cycle you’re also restoring the water cycle, because by returning carbon to biomass and to the soil organic matter and deeper soil strata, you’re also enhancing the land’s capacity to hold water and therefore restoring the water cycle.

To know if it’s working, a lot of people talk about biodiversity. For example, Neal Spackman, whose work in land restoration in the Middle East I write about in the book, says he knew the land was returning when he began seeing ants again. Soil cover — less bare soil — is also a metric that people use, as is the land’s capacity to hold water.

One of the things I was struck by in the book was how many of the stories about land restoration were also stories about human relationships. What kind of overlap of community and ecological restoration did you find?

I think that we have gotten disconnected from how much our landscapes are part of us and how much we respond to the land that we’re in. I remember John Liu saying, “the state of our landscapes is a reflection of the state of our consciousness.” And so I think the act of healing land is in itself healing to humans.

What we do, and have done, to the Earth is reflected in what we’ve done to other people. We see this with colonialism, in terms of erasing Indigenous cultures and a large part of those cultures was the relationship to the land.

And I saw that in very profound ways through the work in this book that in allowing those voices to come to the fore, there’s healing for all. And part of that healing is not trying to impose a vision of how landscapes should be and really listening to the wisdom of people who have a profound and long-lasting relationship with a particular landscape.

The projects that you write about are all over the world, under varying conditions. Are there any common best practices that can guide people wherever they live?

Yes, and again John Liu really boiled it down by explaining that when a landscape is moving in the direction of restoration, it follows three trends: increasing biodiversity, increasing biomass and increasing soil organic matter.

Those concepts can be applied anywhere.

Let’s say someone has a lawn and they have one type of grass that looks like a carpet. Even if you just add clover in there, just adding more diversity, which either will happen on its own or if you have a seed mixture, that’s one positive thing. And the implications of that are that those plants are then bringing different nutrients into the soil. They’re feeding different microbes.

For increased biomass, let’s take the lawn again, you can leave some patches of plants that can become a meadow. Let things grow higher. Add more plants. That’s more biomass.

For soil organic matter, use composting. You can also work to build your soil by making sure you’re not using fertilizers and allowing grasses to grow higher, which means that their roots are going deeper.

There are lots of different ways that you can measure that. I really like a term that my colleague Peter Donovan of the Soil Carbon Coalition talks about, which is the notion of “biological work.”

Another way to think about whether the landscape is on the path towards higher function or restoration is how much biological work is happening. Think of a ray of sun. If that ray strikes the earth, is it hitting asphalt? Is it hitting a monoculture grass where the soil is compacted? Or is it hitting a lot of different leaf surfaces? The more surfaces and the more opportunities that ray of sunshine has to be used in the process of photosynthesis, then the higher the level of function of that land.

Without biological work making use of this energy, if our ray of sunlight hits, say, an asphalt driveway, that becomes heat. That this scenario is being played out across large areas of degraded landscapes and soil sealed over by roads, buildings and parking lots is an important narrative thread within the story of climate change.

What do you hope this book accomplishes?

I guess the first thing is to open up our range of what we think of as possible. We’re told what the problems are, and it’s almost like everything is a fait accompli. But once you know that certain things are possible, or as John Liu says, once you know that we can rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems, that throws everything open.

And it’s not just that restoring landscapes is possible — it’s also happening. This goes from small-scale efforts to extensive initiatives. For example, the AlVelAl/Commonland project is across nearly 2.5 million acres in southern Spain.

There’s also joy in working toward embracing the possibilities and working toward the solutions.

I always tell my friends that the happiest and most fulfilled people I know are those who are working to restore landscapes. Healing the landscape is healing to oneself. And the wonderful thing is that the landscape rewards you really quickly. Our earth systems want to heal.

And once we understand that healing ecosystems is a possibility and will contribute to addressing many of the challenges that we have — well, there’s work to be done. So let’s invite people into that work. It’s not only providing jobs, but it’s also providing meaning, because what can be more valuable and more life-affirming than healing our environments?

YouTube Videos Inspire Unsafe Mountain Gorilla Tourism, Study Finds

Videos of people getting too close to, and touching, the rare apes motivates other people to want to do the same — and that could spread diseases like COVID-19 to a critically endangered species.

When the coronavirus pandemic eventually lifts, a lot of things in our daily lives will finally go back to normal.

Some things, however, may need to change on a more permanent basis.

Take ecotourism, for example. Before the coronavirus hit, thousands of people a year travelled to Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the opportunity to see critically endangered mountain gorillas in the wild. This was not just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most tourists. The visits also generated incredibly popular social-media posts, with some YouTube videos drawing millions of eyeballs.

mountain gorilla — Mountain gorilla in Uganda. Photo: Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0)

But here’s the thing: Tourism is both a boon to conservation efforts to save these species from extinction and a potential threat. Mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) are one of our closest nonhuman relatives; they share about 98% of our DNA, which means we can also share the same diseases. With only about 1,000 mountain gorillas on Earth, all of which live in two restricted habitats, a novel pathogen could rage through and devastate their populations. Mountain gorillas frequently suffer from viral respiratory diseases, and wildlife vets often need to dart symptomatic apes with antibiotics to help them overcome secondary bacterial infections. Even with those efforts, infectious diseases account still for about 20% of the species’ deaths each year, according to the veterinary organization Gorilla Doctors.

Could these rare animals also catch a more deadly disease such as COVID-19? It’s not all that unlikely a scenario, given prior behavior by tourists. A recent scientific study published in PLOS One analyzed nearly 300 mountain gorilla videos posted by tourists to YouTube. More than 200 of those videos depicted humans and gorillas in the same shots, while 40% showed the two species within arm’s reach or even making physical contact.

In addition to this lack of respect for physical distancing, only 3.5% of the videos showed humans obviously wearing masks.

These videos were all shot and posted well before the pandemic, of course — long before masks became the health standard of the day — but tourism authorities have long known about the risk of conveying human pathogens to gorillas. All operations — which closed this past March to protect the animals — already had standards in place that require tourists maintain at least a seven-meter (23-foot) distance between humans and apes, and some require masks.

This research shows that not only did people tend to ignore these standards before the pandemic, the videos that displayed the riskier behavior — including physically touching the gorillas — were by far more popular than the ones that depicted safer activity. And as a result, the number of videos posted has increased every year.

The paper calls this a “negative spiral,” where the videos depicting unsafe behavior become popular enough to motivate other people to copy the same behaviors.

Lead researcher Ryoma Otsuka, a graduate student at Kyoto University, says he was inspired to examine this phenomenon after seeing these types of videos and his own experience working in mountain gorilla habitat.

“During my fieldwork in Uganda, I heard that some tourists said that they wanted to touch gorillas or get touched by gorillas, as they have seen such too-close human-gorilla interactions in some YouTube videos,” he recounts. He even witnessed several of these interactions while he was in the field.

Given that personal history, Otsuka says he expected to find some videos of unsafe behavior, but the quantity he and coauthor Gen Yamakoshi uncovered — and their popularity — astonished him.

“It was surprising that there are some videos illustrating very close interactions and they were getting a lot of views and likes,” Otsuka says. The most popular videos — some of which have racked up millions of views — showed humans and gorillas on screen at the same time, and often involved some manner of contact.

gorillas YouTube — Screen shots of YouTube search results. The study found that videos received more viewers if the preview images showed both humans and gorillas in the same shot.

Otsuka is quick to point out that we shouldn’t necessarily blame individual tourists for this. Mountain gorilla tourism isn’t like a safari, where visitors watch animals from the safety and seclusion of vehicles. Instead people make long treks by foot up the mountain through unfamiliar jungle, and gorillas can be waiting around just about any turn.

On top of that, gorillas are sometimes the ones who approach humans, not the other way around.

“Many gorillas have been visited by tourists every day since they were born,” he says. “Sometimes, some gorillas do come close to you or just pass near you. So field staff, such as ranger guides and trackers, and tourists must be very, very cautious about the distance,” especially since the apes are habituated to human presence.

A Time for Adaptation

Otsuka says this research reveals the need for mountain gorilla tourism operations to adapt for these uncertain times and beyond, when asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers may still be traveling around the world and carrying the virus with them.

“I don’t know if — or when — mountain gorilla tourism will start up again,” he says. “If it does, I think much stricter tourism regulations will be needed. After the pandemic, I think most people including managers, field staff and even future tourists will need to be much more concerned about the risk of disease transmissions.”

He adds that the current pause in operations “might be a good time to rethink the tourism regulations.”

Those regulations are currently inconsistent across the three mountain gorilla range countries.

“Wearing masks has been proposed for many years in mountain gorilla tourism,” Otsuika says. “It’s mandatory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but not in Uganda and Rwanda. I hope wearing a mask will be mandatory for anyone who visits if mountain gorilla tourism starts up again.”

This, he suggests, might require work to see how current regulations and standards break down in practice. For example, are there any factors that made it hard to maintain the seven-meter rule, and why did masks show up in so few videos if they’re required in some places? He’d like to see workshops with rangers, tourism companies, lodges and tourists themselves to see what kind of consensus can be achieved. “It will also help us get a more complete picture of human-gorilla interactions,” he says.

Of course, the pandemic may have taught at least some of us the need to continue to wear masks in risky situations, but how that will play out in the years ahead, and how that will factor into tourism operations, remains to be seen.

The Rwanda Development Board, which is responsible for gorilla tourism in that country, did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

But at least one other organization is already adapting to a post-COVID world.

“We’ve evolved our procedures since this pandemic began,” says Donna Gorman, communications specialist for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, which conducts research and conservation efforts for the species. “We were already quite cautious around the mountain gorillas, but we reduced the number of people in the forest — research was halted, but protection needed to continue. Masks and gloves, handwashing, larger distance from gorillas… After each individual gorilla in a family is accounted for, the team moves 100 meters away. Also, our tracker teams now stay in the forest for two-week rotations, reducing the chance they’ll come into contact with the disease or spread it to the gorillas.”

Social Media Responsibility? Or Just Human Behavior?

On top of changing individual behaviors, should social-media companies also adapt and discourage people from watching videos that display unsafe human-animal interactions and could inspire other viewers to do the same?

There’s precedent, as a push from advocacy organizations has already inspired one such action in certain cases.

“Instagram heard us and launched a new ‘wildlife warning’ page, where every time users search for hashtags like #koalaselfie, #elephantride and #slothselfie a message pops up, informing them about the animal suffering behind the photos,” says Nicole Barrantes, a campaign assistant with World Animal Protection, US, which has also published a Wildlife Selfie Code encouraging people to pledge to not take wildlife selfies if getting the shot means getting too close to a wild animal.

Instagram tiger selfie filter — Screen shot: Instagram’s #tigerselfie filter.

“Moving forward, we believe people will be less inclined to support or seek out wildlife selfies now that they’re aware of the consequences for the animals,” she says.

Google, which owns YouTube, did not respond to an interview request to discuss this new mountain gorilla research or how they currently handle videos depicting unsafe behavior with wildlife.

But they and other social-media platforms may want to take notice. While researching this article, I found similarly unsafe mountain gorilla photos and videos on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Otsuka concentrated on YouTube because it’s so heavily used, but he says he hopes to conduct similar research on other platforms. He also suggests that other researchers might want to investigate this topic for other vulnerable species, such as orangutans.

And then there’s the human element: What inspires this unsafe behavior in the first place? “I am interested in how and why some people want to get closer to wildlife,” Otsuka says. “If some humans — not all, of course, but there must be some — have desires to get close to wildlife for better photos, videos, selfies and so on, where did such desires come from? How were such desires or expectations created in the different social, cultural or economic backgrounds? What do we make of the differences between those who have such desires and those who don’t?”

All of this speaks not just to our new post-pandemic reality, but the ongoing desire for people to experience wildlife, often in unsafe ways — like the woman who recently got kicked by a bison after getting too close for a selfie, or the craze for posing with baby tigers or lions, many of which were raised in inhumane conditions.

While many of these interactions may be driven by altruism or admiration, these cases illustrate how peoples’ actions can cause unintended consequences for themselves, animals or both.

“People love animals, and sometimes they love them too much,” says Barrantes. “Remember the rule of thumb: If you can hug, hold or take a photo with a wild animal, chances are it’s cruel.”

Looking Back at the Past Four Years

With about two months until the 2020 election, our time to reflect on the environment grows short.

As the 2020 election fast approaches, we’d like to take a moment to look back at the past four years and be transparent about our plans for the coming months.

Regular readers probably know that The Revelator is published by the Center for Biological Diversity, a 501(c)3 nonprofit devoted to environmental issues. We’re editorially independent from the Center — we choose what stories we tell and how we tell them — but as employees of the nonprofit we’re also bound by the same rules that govern its operations.

That’s why you’ll read less about the Trump administration in these virtual pages in the months ahead. Nonprofits like ours must follow rules set by the Internal Revenue Service that prohibit what’s known as electioneering — advocating for or against, directly or by implication, any specific political candidate or party. That includes the presidential race, as well as federal and state races all the way down the ballot.

For environmental journalists, this obviously puts a few limitations on the types of stories we can tell until after Nov. 3, but there’s still a lot that we can — and will — talk and write about.

For one thing, government agencies and their employees aren’t running for elected office, and they still need watchdogs. For another, people around the country will soon get the chance to vote on environmental ballot initiatives and similar legislation, and there’s a need to educate readers about these issues. And of course, there’s still plenty of new science coming out about endangered species, climate change, pollution and related topics that need coverage — perhaps more than ever as the election takes over the rest of the media landscape.

Meanwhile the work we’ve done covering the Trump administration since 2017 remains something that our readers can look back on to help educate themselves about critical issues.

And on that note, here are a few of our top related stories. We haven’t covered everything the Trump administration has done since taking office — who could? — but you’ll find an interesting cross section of articles that address both politics and broader environmental topics. And those are issues that will remain at the forefront until — and long beyond — the 2020 election.