How One Utah Community Fought the Fracking Industry — and Won

Kanab, a small Utah town that’s home to the famous Best Friends Animal Society, took an unconventional path to face down a frac sand mine that threatened the region’s aquifer.

A sign at the north end of Kanab, Utah, proclaims the town of 4,300 to be “The Greatest Earth on Show.”

It’s a rare case of truth in advertising.

Kanab sits just seven miles north of the Arizona state line, at the crossroads of some of the Southwest’s most beautiful places. In every direction a geologic wonderland awaits. To the north is Zion National Park with its breathtaking valley of 2,000-foot-tall rust and white sandstone cliffs. The sweeping expanse of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument stretches to the east of town, and just to the south you’ll find the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.

You don’t even need to leave Kanab, which is ringed by the famously red-hued Vermillion Cliffs, to get socked by jaw-dropping beauty.

It’s this landscape that drew Susan Hand to Kanab 25 years ago when she opened Willow Canyon Outdoor to sell gear, maps, books and coffee to local and visiting adventurers. And it’s this landscape and the community’s gateway-to-the-wonderland experience, the economic bedrock of this tourism-dependent town, that she worried would be destroyed by a new industrial project proposed for development 10 miles north of town last year.

Kanab, UT is a popular tourist destination. Photo by Tara Lohan.

There, a company called Southern Red Sands LLC had announced plans to build a facility to mine and process massive amounts of sand for use by oil and gas companies conducting hydraulic fracturing. The sand is a lesser-known but substantial aspect of the fracking process. Round grains of silica sand serve as a “proppant” to keep underground fissures in the shale open as oil and gas are pumped out. Fracking a single well can require thousands of tons of sand.

“I really wanted to keep an open mind, but the more I learned about the project, the more concerned I got,” Hand told The Revelator when I visited Kanab in September.

She had reason to be worried. The first decade of the fracking boom relied heavily on so-called “frac sand” sourced mostly from Midwest states like Minnesota and Wisconsin, where mining reduced verdant green hills to piles of dust.

Sand piles — Frac sand in Wisconsin. Photo by Tara Lohan.

But mining in the Midwest has its limits. Sand is expensive to ship across the country, so as fracking has taken off in Utah, Texas and New Mexico, companies have looked to find more local sources to trim costs.

That’s when the proposed mine in Kanab entered the story.

Southern Red Sands, a two-person start-up backed by Utah real-estate developer Kem Gardner, hoped to establish the region’s next frac sand mine in a scenic area of state-owned lands outside Kanab called Red Knoll.

City and county officials quickly gave their blessing — and a combined 1,200 acre-feet of water rights a year — after only cursory consideration.

But residents became concerned about impacts to scenic beauty, water resources and local businesses. They teamed up to fight back, forming a community group called Keep Kanab Unspoiled.

It was beginning to feel like a familiar story.

The struggle between extractive industries and environmental protection is not a new one in Utah. A fight is still raging nearby over the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante, both of which President Trump slashed in order to increase drilling and mining opportunities.

Despite public pushback and some legal challenges, though, the frac sand mine seemed to be cruising toward approval as recently as October. It still needed an environmental impact assessment from the Bureau of Land Management, and the two water transfers needed approval from the state engineer. The project definitely wasn’t a done deal, but in industry-friendly Utah, it had a good shot.

So it may have come as a surprise to a number of residents when Southern Red Sands announced at the beginning of January that it was abandoning the proposed project.

What happened? And are there any lessons that other communities fighting extraction threats can learn?

“Speak out, pull together like-minded neighbors, organize and don’t give up,” Hand told me after hearing the news. “But also, try to be nice.”

Surprisingly, it’s that last bit that may have made a big difference — along with a good hard look at the economics of the endeavor.

The Threats

Von Del Chamberlain is a white-haired, soft-spoken Kanab resident. Born in 1934, he spent his youth exploring the red rock and his career studying the stars. The astronomer and former director of Salt Lake City’s Hansen (now Clark) Planetarium retired to his hometown 15 years ago and hoped to start a public observatory.

He realized that Kanab’s prized dark-night skies would be threatened by a 24-7 mining operation. But that wasn’t even his biggest concern with the project.

“The beauty here is the thing that will sustain this area economically for as far in the future as we can possibly see,” he said.

Opponents like Chamberlain usually cited two big concerns: environmental impacts, particularly the threat to water resources, and the local economy. But in Kanab it’s hard to separate the two.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of an economy you want to develop here,” said Hand. “Even if you have an industrial economy or an extractive economy — if you don’t have water, you’re out.”

The water supply, which draws on underground aquifers, currently supports the town’s tourist-driven economy, ranching, and the county’s biggest employer — Best Friends Animal Society, known worldwide through the Dogtown TV series on the National Geographic Channel. The nonprofit owns a 3,700-acre sanctuary, the country’s largest no-kill animal shelter, and would have been the mine’s closest neighbor.

Best Friends, which employs 400 locals and draws 35,000 out-of-town visitors a year to its sanctuary, came to see the proposed mine as an existential threat. Their property relies on wells, seeps and springs that come from the same aquifer the project’s two wells would tap.

seeping groundwater — Groundwater seeps to the surface at the Best Friends animal sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. Photo by Tara Lohan.

Last July Kanab’s city council approved a 50-year contract for 600 acre-feet a year of water rights for the project and Kane County Water Conservancy District, which oversees water servicing for the unincorporated areas of the county, agreed to provide an additional 600 acre-feet of water. That combined amount equals about 740 gallons per minute, although Southern Red Sands contended it would use only about a third of that.

Many local residents were shocked by the water-rights transfer. A 2016 water needs assessment found that Kane County Water Conservancy District’s reliable supply would be in deficit by 2035. And the district’s executive director, former state representative Mike Noel, has been a vocal advocate for a pricy proposed pipeline to send Lake Powell water to southern Utah communities, including near Kanab, under the premise that the region is already running short on water.

“We knew that it would damage our seeps and our springs, and we weren’t sure yet the full impact besides some drawdown to our groundwater, but we were really concerned,” Bart Battista, an environmental engineer responsible for facilities management at Best Friends’ Kanab sanctuary, told me. “It boggles my mind that the city wasn’t as concerned.”

But documents unearthed by local radio station KUER showed that officials at nearby Zion National Park already were concerned that the project could reduce flows into the East Fork of the Virgin River, which flows through the park, by reducing the amount of water from underground seeps and springs that feed the river.

Wanting to learn more about how the project could affect the region’s water, Best Friends commissioned a study from hydrogeologist Kenneth Kolm of Hydrologic Systems Analysis, a firm that’s completed water studies for other Utah towns.

Kolm found that the mine posed the potential for decline in productivity to wells owned by both Best Friends and the city’s water supply. The project could also decrease flows into nearby Kanab Creek and dry up perennial streams and springs, including one that feeds an area of habitat that’s home to the Kanab ambersnail — currently federally protected as endangered.

The amount of water being withdrawn wasn’t the only issue. The proposed project site and its sandy soil are also vitally important to local hydrology.

“The sand is the first ticket to collecting water,” said Hand. It captures rain and holds it in place long enough for it to sink into the water table and not run off. But the sand is exactly what would be removed from the site, further threatening the region’s water supply.

“I realized for the first time how small and vulnerable our watershed actually is,” she added.

Southern Red Sands hoped to start digging on 640 acres of land around Red Knoll, an aptly named rise of coral-colored rock and sand. The area is managed as part of Utah’s School and International Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), where state-owned property can be leased (often for resource extraction), with revenue being funneled to education.

The operation would have started by bulldozing all the trees, shrubs, grasses and forbs, then scraped up to 30 feet of the earth from the exposed surface. The sand would then be processed — washed with water and chemicals, then dried and sorted — in a facility with up to six 120-foot-tall silos. After that it would be loaded into trucks and hauled out.

A small fraction of the remaining sediment — mostly the fine silts and clays — would be put back on the land. But that change in geology could mean a big change for the aquifer. How big would depend on the scope of the project, though.

In addition to the SITLA land, Southern Red Sands had acquired placer claims — mineral exploration rights — for 12,000 surrounding acres managed by the BLM. And although the company said it planned to mine only 700,000 tons a year from the SITLA property, the facility would have had the capacity and water rights to accommodate much more.

“If they’re building a plant with a capacity of 3 million tons a year, that’s presumably because they expect to be able to produce that,” Dean Baker, a Kanab resident and opponent of the project told me in December. “They may never do that, but you don’t build extra capacity without the idea that you might use it.”

The Resistance

Water issues are paramount in arid Utah, but the mine was likely to come with some other potential problems.

If Southern Red Sands did build out to end of their claims, they’d be within 10 miles of Zion National Park and workers at Best Friends would be looking over their fence line at the operation — not to mention potentially breathing its dust.

Mining, processing and trucking frac sand can release tiny particles of crystalline silica into the air. Inhaling those particles regularly can cause lung disease, including cancer and silicosis, a chronic disease that, like “black lung” for coal miners, can be deadly.

dust — Dust in the air at a frac sand processing facility in Wisconsin. Photo by Tara Lohan.

The facility would likely run with lights and noise 24-7, which could be detrimental to wildlife. And adding more diesel-spewing, slow-stopping big rigs hauling 50,000 pounds of sand down the town’s one main road concerned residents, too.

With so much at risk, opponents employed a number of tactics to try to fight the mine.

Keep Kanab Unspoiled held community meetings. They invited Kolm, the geologist who did the independent study, to report his findings, and started an online petition to discourage the company from moving forward.

Best Friends — an established national nonprofit with considerably more financial resources — took the lead role in mounting legal challenges. The organization filed an appeal of a conditional use permit approved by the county and formally objected to the water transfers, which needed to be approved by the state engineer.

But during the fall, Best Friends decided to shift tactics. Lawsuits could just lead to years of legal battles, something beyond the organization’s longstanding mission.

“We might alienate our donors and members,” Battista explained. “The appeal of Best Friends crosses party boundaries — animal welfare is something everybody can support.” Apparently environmental action is not.

They decided the best approach was to sit down and talk with the company and its backers.

Battista couldn’t disclose details of the negotiations — which went on for months — but on Jan. 9 Best Friends and Southern Red Sands released a joint statement saying that the company “had decided not to pursue its business ventures in Kane County.”

The members of Keep Kanab Unspoiled were elated by the news.

“It’s so heartening how so many people from our community came together to amplify a voice that is seldom acknowledged by our elected representatives and institutions,” Hand tells me. “I’m relieved that an area I love won’t be sacrificed on the altar of fossil fuel consumption. I’m grateful that this threat to our travel and tourism economy is diminished.”

It would be comforting to think that the driving force behind the decision boiled down to preserving the scenic beauty or the region’s groundwater resources, but it’s more likely it had to do with money.

“Economics played some role,” Battista said. “The market for frac sand has changed and [Best Friends] had financial viability assessments of the project to show that the mine wouldn’t be a good idea. Economically it just didn’t make sense to any of us. I think that our studies corroborated that.”

This was a main talking point of Keep Kanab Unspoiled, bolstered by research done by Baker, who also happens to be an economist and cofounder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The frac sand industry — and the larger fracking industry — is volatile. The number of rigs drilling for oil tends to fall when prices get low. Rigs plunged with falling prices from 2014 to 2016 and last year saw record declines in rig numbers. In addition, fracking costs more than traditional drilling — and the industry has also been overspending to keep the fracking boom from going bust.

A research organization in Norway found that the amount of money being spent to drill for oil by 40 U.S. shale oil companies outpaced the money being made by selling that oil. That deficit cost companies almost $5 billion in just the first quarter of 2019, DeSmog reported in August.

It’s a scenario that’s happened before.

With oil prices now around $60 a barrel, the industry is hanging on. If prices dip much lower, it could be trouble. A decade into the fracking frenzy, investors are worried that the best spots have been drilled and many debts won’t be paid.

There’s even more uncertainty when it comes to producing and selling the sand. Companies used to rely almost exclusively on Midwest sand, but now more areas are getting in on the game.

The consequences of failures in the fracking business model are real.

Falling oil prices and a shifting market for frac sand recently took down Emerge Energy Services — owner of eight frac sand facilities in Wisconsin — which filed for bankruptcy last summer and left behind unsafe levels of arsenic and heavy metal contamination for the community to clean up.

That’s a scenario that Baker worried could happen in Kanab. Southern Red Sands said their intended market was in Utah’s Uintah Basin 350 miles north, but a new frac sand mine just opened in the basin. “It’s almost inconceivable they’d be able to compete with them because the biggest cost with frac sand is the shipping,” said Baker. “There are some operations in the San Juan basin [in New Mexico and Colorado] but it’s not clear to me that they could beat those out either.”

Even though economics played a role in halting the project, he believes community efforts were important, too.

“The fact they faced serious legal obstacles at every step in their path had to be a factor,” he said. “It is a nice, and unfortunately rare, victory for the environment.”

Best Friends worked to ensure the hard-earned victory wasn’t short-lived, either. It also purchased Southern Red Sands’ 12,000 acres of mineral rights.

“We want to make sure that no one else comes in here in two years if the market’s better and tries to put in another sand mine, we just don’t think that it’s the right thing for this area,” says Battista. “We want to make sure that in perpetuity, there’s not a threat to the sanctuary.”

As for Hand, she’s now looking at the bigger picture. She saw the fight over frac sand in Kanab as a microcosm of the global fight over fossil fuels and climate change.

“While we can embrace a sense of triumph, it’s likely to be brief,” she says. “When it comes to protecting wild places and using our resources carefully, our work will never be done. The next development project is already bubbling. I do feel more hopeful for each success, but climate change marches on.”

The Koreguaje Tribe: Threatened Guardians of the Northwest Amazon

A vulnerable culture living in a severely degraded section of the Colombian Amazon is in desperate need of international respect and support.

To visit South America’s indigenous Koreguaje tribe — and see the destruction that has been wrought upon it — you need to start in the southwestern Colombian city of Florencia.

Arriving by air in Florencia, which is the capital of Caquetá Department, gives you a panoramic view of the region’s near-total conversion from Amazon rainforest to cattle pasture. Only a few pockets of forest remain, surrounded by urban sprawl and agriculture.

The profound effects of this mass deforestation become even more evident when traveling by land and river deeper into Caquetá.

Along the Orteguaza River, from Puerto Arango down to the Caquetá River — a journey of about 55 miles — grasslands and cows dominate what was once forest. The degradation of the land, waterways and riverbanks is evident everywhere you look, and the lack of consciousness of this damage can feel demoralizing.

Caquetá itself is a microcosm of Colombia’s most pressing social and environmental problems. Land is power in Colombia, and the thirst for land in Caquetá has been the main driver behind conflict and deforestation for decades.

The seeds of mass land conversion and conflict in the department (Colombia’s equivalent of a state) were planted with abandoned development projects that encouraged migration to the Amazon frontier in the 1960s. Since then the landscape has been entirely transformed by pastures and coca plantations. Coca, the base ingredient for cocaine, is a sacred medicinal plant to many South American tribes, including the Koreguaje, who call it “hipie.”

degraded — Deforested land, cleared for cattle pasture along the Orteguaza River. Caquetá, Colombia. Photo by D.H Rasolt.

And matters are only going to get worse. Recent concessions granting additional development rights to oil companies now threaten to degrade the land, water and local communities even further. Meanwhile illegal gold mining has become pervasive throughout the Amazon, with some of the worst destruction concentrated in the Colombian Amazon along the Caquetá River Basin.

Much of this destruction starts on a small scale before ballooning out of control.

“Laws for land titling and wealthy landowners encourage poor smallholder farmers to clear land to eventually consolidate into large ranches,” Amazon deforestation expert Dr. Dolors Armenteras told me recently. As a result around 1% of landowners in Colombia hold 81% of “productive” land.

The process often begins with land grabs and fires, which portend mass-scale land conversion along new and expanding frontiers of deforestation. Insecure land tenure and negligent state enforcement even allow this process to occur within protected national parks and indigenous territories.

“The result is the transformation of nominally public forests into private, forest-free landholdings,” Armenteras and co-authors wrote last year in Nature.

Deforestation rates have skyrocketed in Caquetá since the 2016 Colombian peace accords, even in designated indigenous reserves and protected national parks. As a result Caquetá is now the Colombian Amazon’s most active deforestation frontier.

And also one of its last lines of defense.

The Koreguaje Tribe and the Orteguaza River

The area along the Orteguaza is the current home of the Koreguaje tribe, a proud and deeply threatened ethnic group whose ancestral territories stretched all the way to Florencia.

The Koreguaje see themselves not just as protectors of the forest, but part of it. They refer to themselves and their still-widely spoken language as “Korébajü,” which is interpreted through their worldview as “people of the earth.”

It’s a testament to their resilience that they’ve been able to preserve their language this long, as indigenous languages are severely to critically endangered in many parts of Colombia and South America.

Despite this long history and success in preserving their culture, today fewer than 2,000 Koreguaje endure in their territories following a painful history of forced enslavement, Christianization, land grabbing and displacement dating back to the 18th century.

Smaller populations of Koreguaje live in the slums of Florencia and Bogotá, where they fled after the cocaine trade brought deforestation, aerial glyphosate spraying, assassinations and forced displacement to their homelands in the early 1990s — all occurring within the context of Colombia’s prolonged civil war. This violent “epoch of the coca” lasted until the mid-2000s. Many of the members of this diaspora have unsuccessfully petitioned to reclaim land that was lost.

I’ve worked with the Koreguaje for nearly four years, on projects ranging from water quality to food security, alternative energy and income sources, and the transmission and preservation of traditional knowledge. Their situation urgently needs more attention — not just for their sakes, but to protect an ecologically vital section of the Colombian Amazon.

What remains of Koreguaje territory now represents some of the only standing forest along the degraded Orteguaza River, though their ability to keep living off the land and river has been seriously compromised.

The Koreguaje have traditionally survived on fishing, a rotational form of subsistence slash-and-burn agriculture common to Amazonian tribes known as “chagras,” and occasional hunting. Seasonally flooded palm-tree forests known as “cananguchales” along the Orteguaza and the less voluminous Peneya River are at the center of traditional Koreguaje health and culture.

But these bodies of water and the many fish that spawn within them are disappearing. Fish throughout the region are also contaminated with mercury from illegal gold mining, and the reduction of ancestral territories following conflict and deforestation has greatly diminished the food available from chagras and hunting.

It’s not only the Koreguaje who are at risk from the destruction of their surrounding ecosystems, including the Andean-Amazonian Piedmont. According to geographer Juan Gonzalez, who worked for years along the Orteguaza studying sediment flow and soil erosion, the river “serves as a confluence of different water types that are critical to the integrity of communities and ecosystems tens to thousands of kilometers downstream.”

Neglected Guardians

Through all of this, the Koreguaje and neighboring Muina-Murui (“Huitoto”) communities that live along the Caquetá River have remained “guardians of the forest” in this highly threatened, important part of the Northwest Amazon.

I spoke with Koreguaje leader Oliver Gasca last year while in his reserve.

“We know our territory,” he told me emphatically. “We know how to live here, what animals to eat, how to raise a family, and we respect our land and the Mother Earth. Look all around this region. It is pasture and dying land. Now look at us. We are the only ones with trees, and we keep losing more land and people.”

Despite their moderate success in protecting local forests, the Koreguaje’s rights and holistic worldviews continue to be neglected.

As Gasca recounted: “White people come and tell us what we need to do: We need to stop hunting because the animals are disappearing. We need to stop fishing because the fish are contaminated with mercury from gold mining. We need to stop working our chagras, we need to stop having many children because there is not enough food and territory for them and we need to stop using our traditional plants when we are sick…

“This all used to be our home and we were strong and the forest was strong. And people come here and tell us what we need to do after they caused all of these problems with their Western worldviews? They need to listen. We will go extinct — and so will the forest without us.”

While Gasca’s feelings — which echo those of many indigenous leaders — are entirely justifiable, that categorical “us against them” perspective has the potential to change. There are people listening, and there are tools, initiatives and global movements gaining momentum that recognize the importance of indigenous rights and distinct worldviews.

Importantly, Colombia also has a legal structure that supports strong environmental and indigenous rights to life, health, education, autonomy and territory, although in practice these rights are consistently ignored or violated. In fact, it’s a running joke among those trying to improve the situation that Colombia is “a lawless country with the best laws in the world.”

But the legal framework for protecting and preserving the Koreguaje culture and territory remains in place, and international pressure and support are likely needed to ensure its effectiveness and accountability.

Global Movements and Agreements

The “Guardians of the Forest” paradigm recognizes indigenous communities as stewards of the immense biodiversity and “ecosystem services” of tropical forests, and it’s easy to see why.

Globally, indigenous communities manage at least 300 billion metric tons of carbon within their forested territories, above- and belowground. Indigenous territories also contain approximately 80% of the world’s biodiversity. Evidence from around the world has shown that indigenous communities with secure rights and tenure to their collectively held lands have extremely low rates of deforestation and land degradation. Policies for further securing indigenous land rights and amplifying their territories are also becoming recognized as some of the most cost-effective means of curbing deforestation and mitigating global climate change, and were recently recognized as such in a 2019 special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Forested Koreguaje territory is visible in the background beyond an active deforestation frontier in Caquetá, Colombia. Photo by D.H. Rasolt.

And a “Rights of Nature” movement, firmly grounded in holistic indigenous worldviews like that of the Koreguaje, has been gaining steam around the world, especially in Colombia. But the actual impact of any shift away from anthropocentrism remains to be seen.

Broad legal frameworks, such as the Colombian constitution and international environmental, human and indigenous rights accords and declarations, are an important component in protecting vulnerable indigenous people like the Koreguaje, especially if governments are held accountable. Unfortunately these agreements often neglect distinct indigenous worldviews and the unique circumstances communities deal with on a daily basis.

The recent “Leticia Pact,” developed in response to international uproar over rising deforestation rates, is an example of a broad-brush regional agreement, among seven Amazonian countries, aimed at coordinated forest management. But most Koreguaje leaders I spoke with this past year were unaware of the details of the pact, and when they learned more, they were skeptical about its implementation and upset that indigenous communities had not been properly consulted or included. They also felt the pact failed to respect their autonomy.

These are common contentions of indigenous people, whose rights and worldviews are consistently marginalized while the “Western world” goes about its unsustainable business.

Community-based Research and Projects

A more open collaboration between researchers and indigenous leaders could be powerful.

Scientists, in particular, have much to gain by understanding the more “sustainable models” that underlie the traditional practices and knowledge of indigenous people. Conversely, introducing scientific tools that support communities’ autonomously determined needs could help protect their traditions, knowledge and capacity to monitor, adapt and defend against threats. I, and other researchers, have gained a great deal of knowledge and perspective by working with the Koreguaje, while helping them to implement techniques and projects to increase resilience and preserve traditions.

To Koreguaje leaders, though, any project is relatively superficial when it doesn’t fortify the connection between the increasingly disconnected tribal youth and the culture’s dying traditions.

As the displaced Koreguaje leader Juven Piranga told me, “Without the roots, the tree won’t grow.”

Piranga expressed fears that the impending deaths of the few remaining wise elders could also spell the death of the Koreguaje culture.

Supporting efforts to document and transmit the unique circumstances, knowledge, language and traditions of the Koreguaje and other critically threatened cultures should be of high priority to researchers and citizens alike.

Possible Economic Alternatives

Indigenous tribes throughout Colombia are being bombarded with propaganda about the economic benefits of opening up their territories to visiting outsiders, and the Koreguaje are no exception.

Colombia’s tourism industry is booming, but unfortunately the message forced upon indigenous leaders is shortsighted and deceptive. Mass tourism, “ecotourism,” and the more niche sectors of “ethnotourism” and “ayahuasca tourism” (ayahuasca, or “yage,” is a sacred traditional hallucinogenic drink for the Koreguaje) all pose high degrees of cultural risk for the Koreguaje and other traditional Amazonian tribes.

More integrated and circular economic solutions that respect and reinforce traditions, autonomy, pride and ecosystems are needed if alternative income sources are to be part of the answer for the Koreguaje. These approaches must still be implemented with caution by those looking to trade with Koreguaje communities, to avoid a dependence on external markets that might lead to the abandonment of other traditional practices.

The preservation and commercialization of directly sourced traditional “crafts” from indigenous communities, especially those made from natural fibers and pigments, holds promise. Profits can be reinvested into community-based-programs that fortify traditions and conserve and regenerate ecosystems where the natural fibers and pigments flourish. Koreguaje women make crafts of deep cultural significance from the fiber of the cumare palm tree, with natural pigments from countless different endemic plants.

Other integrated alternative income options for the Koreguaje — assuming their remaining ecosystems are preserved — could include high-value non-timber forest products that incorporate an intercultural collaboration between modern agroecological models and traditional farming practices. Their neighbors, the Muina-Murui, are already incorporating these models.

From the consumer side, supporting integrated and circular socioeconomic systems has the potential of making positive impacts within vulnerable communities like the Koreguaje.

Solutions Through Systems Thinking

The imminent risk to, and potential disappearance of, the Koreguaje and their surrounding ecosystems must no longer be viewed as an isolated circumstance. It’s caused by systemic problems and has cumulative consequences. As an international community, we must think more in systems, as the Koreguaje do, if we are to fully appreciate the importance of their culture and territory.

The devastating loss of the Koreguaje would mean the loss of countless generations of accumulated knowledge, traditions and practices developed sustainably within their ancestral lands. This loss will be felt throughout the region. The degradation of the Orteguaza River will continue to have basin-scale impacts on the increasingly threatened downstream ecosystems of the Amazon. Mass-scale deforestation in Caquetá threatens irreversible biodiversity loss, while contributing to the Amazon’s march toward the tipping point of becoming a carbon source. The Koreguaje have demonstrated their ability to protect the forests of their territories, and neither they nor the interconnected living planet can afford to lose any more.

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.

Australia’s Bushfires: An Extinction Crisis Decades in the Making

Hundreds of blazes could push threatened species closer to extinction. But the roots of Australia’s wildlife crisis are indicative of a much larger problem.

The hundreds of fires racing across Australia have captured the world’s attention and left an indelible scar on the continent, with at least 27 human lives lost, 15 million acres consumed and nearly 2,000 homes destroyed. And then, of course, there are the animals, shown dead or scarred in unforgettable photos. The exact number of wild creatures killed in the blazes won’t be known for a while, but one estimate, from University of Sydney ecologist Chris Dickman, puts it at a staggering 1 billion animals.

With record droughts and high temperatures fueling the bushfires, experts warn that Australia’s present horror could be a harbinger of climate-amplified disasters to come for the rest of the world.

And while this could inspire a wake-up call for climate action, it should also ring alarm bells about the extinction crisis — and shine a light on the historical factors that have made the conflagration and resulting biodiversity loss so devastating.

Biodiversity up in Flames

Globally the planet is experiencing an unparalleled biodiversity crisis, with as many as a million species facing extinction. The problem is perhaps most acutely felt in Australia, where more than 1,800 plant and animal species are federally listed as threatened. The island nation is one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, with upwards of 80% of its plant and animal species found nowhere else.

The wildfires could wipe out some species directly or, in the aftermath, through loss of food, habitat and shelter.

It’s an extreme situation for a country that normally experiences some level of recurring natural fire.

“Many Australian plants and animals are fire-adapted, but this fire event occurred at a scale and intensity that is unprecedented,” says wildlife ecologist Sarah Legge, a professor at the Australian National University and principal research fellow with the University of Queensland.

“When fires are smaller in area and of lower intensity, relatively smaller proportions of populations are affected and species are able to recover between fire events,” she says. “Now, in this event, such large areas have been simultaneously affected so severely that populations will struggle to recover.”

Climate change is making Australia’s fire seasons longer and more severe. And fire frequency is also increasing in many areas of the country, making it harder for even fire-adapted species to bounce back from each successive event.

“We’re already seeing ecosystem collapse in some areas,” Legge says. “For example, the alpine ash forests of the high country are being transformed from biodiverse wet eucalyptus to an attenuated, scrubbier and more flammable forest.”

The scale and intensity of fires are bad news for a lot of wildlife, and experts estimate that around 200 threatened species have already been affected.

Some could be brought to the brink of extinction. The Kangaroo Island dunnart, a mouse-sized endangered marsupial, may have already lost as much as 95% of its habitat.

Kangaroo Island: before and after the #AustraliaFires. pic.twitter.com/6vDo5sjtlj

— Minh Ngo (@minhtngo) January 8, 2020

A similar fate could await the long-footed potoroo, a small marsupial found in east Gippsland, Victoria, and the spring midge orchid near Batemans Bay on the coast of New South Wales, says Legge. Species with the smallest distributions are at the greatest risk, even those few with protective measures in place.

“For some species, many years of conservation effort have been obliterated in the space of a few weeks,” she says. “We face a future where these events will recur at increasing frequency.”

Extinction History

Although the current news is grim, Australia’s wildlife crisis actually predates the most recent fires and can be traced back to the beginning of European colonization.

At least 90 species have gone extinct in Australia over the past two centuries, and the country now has the inglorious honor of holding the record for the most mammalian extinctions in the world, including the first mammal declared extinct from climate change — the Bramble Cay melomys.

In fact, in the past 200 years the country has lost more biodiversity than any other developed nation, according to a November 2019 study published in Conservation Letters, which Legge co-authored. The biggest drivers of these losses include invasive species and rampant habitat destruction.

And all these historical problems are compounded by a lack of modern political will.

Recent research by The Guardian found that under 40% of Australia’s federally listed threatened species have accompanying recovery plans. The paper also found that no new critical habitat for threatened species has been listed since 2005.

The inaction has come with a cost. Australia has lost a third of its native vegetation since European colonization, according to a study published last year in Conservation Science and Practice. Researchers also found that the majority of the species listed as threatened are seriously affected by habitat loss, which comes from clearing land for agriculture, mining and other development.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

In 1999 Australia passed the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) to help protect the country’s biodiversity and ecological communities. But since then the Act has done little to stop habitat destruction. The study estimated that 19 million acres (7.7 million hectares) of potential forest and woodland habitat for threatened species were destroyed between 2000 and 2017, much of it to create livestock pasture.

Shockingly 93% of that lost land was never referred to the federal government to be evaluated for the development’s potential impact on nearby species — a requirement under the guidelines of the EPBC Act.

This was more than a policy failure.

“It’s hard for any reasonable person to see how 7 million hectares of unassessed, unapproved destruction of threatened species habitat can be other than unlawful,” Martin Taylor, one of the report’s co-authors and a conservation science manager at the World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia, said when the report was released in September. “The government is failing to enforce a law designed to halt Australia’s extinction crisis.”

The Mount Cooper striped skink lost 25% of its potential habitat to development during this period, making it one of the biggest losers in the enforcement failure. The Keighery’s macarthuria, a small flowing shrub, lost 23% and the southern black‐throated finch 10%.

Even more well-known species suffered. The beloved koala — perhaps the poster child for the current fires — lost around 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares), 2% of its potential habitat.

koala drinking station — Photo: University of Sydney

The study’s authors concluded that “Australia’s flagship environmental legislation is almost completely ineffective at limiting the ongoing loss of potential habitat for listed terrestrial species and communities… As habitat loss is the primary cause of species extinction, we urge mechanisms that protect habitat be embedded within the federal legislation.”

The federal government does not appear to have responded to the study about the EPBC Act, but the month after the study was published it appointed a review of the law with the goal of reducing what it called “green tape” and making things even easier for businesses and farmers. The move was praised by the National Farmers’ Federation in an Oct. 29 press release that called the Act “convoluted.”

Political Will and Public Pressure

Weak enforcement of legislation isn’t the only problem. Protective efforts also suffer from a lack of funding.

The Conservation Letters study revealed that Australia is spending just 15% of what’s needed to avoid extinctions and recover its threatened species. And it spends far less than many other countries, such as the United States, which has a high success rate for saving species listed as endangered — though it should be noted that the Trump administration has taken steps to weaken the Endangered Species Act, which has been responsible for those accomplishments.

Australia would likely need an estimated $1.27 billion (U.S.) a year to recover its listed threatened species. If that seems like a big price tag, the study’s authors point out that the government gave out $735 million in tax credits to coal companies alone in 2018. Australian citizens, meanwhile, spend twice the needed amount every year caring for their pet cats (which are another major driver of native species loss).

“Funding for conservation — and conservation actions — tends to be short-term and ephemeral, and thus doesn’t support long-lasting change or improvements,” says Legge. “Responsibility for the environment is shared between states/territories and the commonwealth, which can lead to buck-passing.”

The environment clearly hasn’t been a priority for the Coalition government that won power in 2013. Since then it has slashed the federal budget for environmental programs by 40%.

At the helm now is Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has been criticized for his cozy relationship with the coal industry and for not doing enough to tackle the climate crisis — something he’s been increasingly called out on amid the current wildfires.

Today organizers held #ClimateAction rallies all around Australia. 30,000 people showed up in Sydney calling for climate justice and the resignation of the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.#Australia #AustraliaFires pic.twitter.com/FkYBDUNBJL

— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) January 10, 2020

His inaction on climate change has earned him comparisons to President Trump, who continues to roll back environmental regulations in the United States. As California firefighters arrived last week in Australia to help fight blazes fueled by the hottest and driest year on record, Trump moved to weaken his country’s landmark National Environmental Policy Act and exclude climate change from analyses of the potential impact of infrastructure projects.

Will Australia take a different course and galvanize the public and politicians around action to strengthen environmental regulations to fight climate change and protect wildlife?

Legge says she already sees the events pulling communities together and inspiring an urge to “do something.” She hopes it results in researchers and governments working together in a more coordinated way to tackle the crisis.

“Still, there will have to be a seismic shift in our approach, given the potential for fires to wipe out previous efforts so quickly and thoroughly,” she says. “I think most conservationists are feeling shell-shocked right now — how do we respond to this event, and to this future?”

These are questions the whole world will need to answer.

Take Your Climate Activism to the Next Level With January’s New Environmental Books

Books out this month also address protecting pollinators, Florida panthers and other endangered species.

The New Year got off to a rocky start, with deadly fires throughout Australia and international political tensions rising to a frightening level.

What’s the best way to get past the dread and return to action? One option is to turn your attention toward new and proven ideas for saving what matters most.

Below you’ll find the eight most interesting, inspiring and energizing new books coming out in January 2020. Half of them cover the climate crisis in one way or another, while the rest take on issues related to animals and wildlife. Some are for professional conservationists, while others are for anyone interested in the issues that define our modern world. All are worth your time.

The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success by Mark Jaccard

Ever feel paralyzed by the scope and threat of climate change? You’re not alone, but this new book aims to turn that around and get people moving. Part of it discusses the best individual actions we can all take, while the rest focuses on identifying the most important societal and political actions to prioritize. Along the way the book busts some myths perpetuated by the climate-denier industry and even debunks a few misconceptions held by well-meaning environmentalists. Jaccard can be a bit too provocative at times, but he backs his conclusions up with the latest science and delivers a book worth reading and discussing — not to mention acting upon. (Guide is out in paperback this month, with a free open-access PDF available in February.)

Climate Change From the Streets by Michael Méndez

Méndez argues that the climate crisis is also a crisis for public health, especially in lower-income communities of color, and that both problems can only be solved by addressing issues of environmental justice. His book, subtitled “How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement,” taps into Méndez’s own research into California communities and grassroots activism to show how the problems that plague us can also bring us together — but only if we invite everyone to the table.

Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work by Robert H. Frank

This broadly themed book addresses the complexities of our social environments — for example, how group behavior gives rise to bullying — but a lot of what it discusses applies to worldwide environmental issues, too. The result is a combination of psychology and economics that illustrates how the human “herd instinct” can be put to good use to solve the climate crisis and other problems.

It’s Earth Day, Cookie Monster! by Mary Lindeen

Every day is Earth Day, just as every day is another opportunity to eat a cookie — or help teach kids to take care of the planet. This is the sixth book in the deliciously fun “Go Green with Sesame Street” series, which just goes to show you that “C is for Conservation.”

Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther by Craig Pittman

Pittman has done more than probably any other newspaper journalist to document the twists and turns of efforts to conserve and protect the Florida panther — not to mention the failures we’ve had along the way. Now he revisits the history of these critically endangered big cats and the people who helped them in this remarkable work of longform reporting.

And Here We Are: Stories From the Sixth Extinction by Bil Zelman

A stunningly beautiful photo book — shot like a moody black-and-white movie — showcasing endangered species and the fragile, human-influenced environments in which they precariously hang on. Biologist E.O. Wilson (Half-Earth) provides the foreword.

The Nib: Animals

Here’s something different: a thick, square-bound magazine from the folks behind The Nib, the web’s best political cartooning site (which often covers environmental topics). This collection includes short stories, art and gags by more than three dozen writers and cartoonists, covering topics like extinction, wildlife trafficking, livestock, and our relationships with our pets. The result is a heady mix of politics, journalism, philosophy and eye-opening humor.

The Pollinator Victory Garden by Kim Eierman

Victory gardens helped feed communities and troops during the first and second world wars. This book aims to translate that success to a similar effort: establishing year-round pollinator-friendly gardens in our backyards to help boost populations of bees, birds, bats, butterflies and other species — and in the process help “win the war against pollinator decline.” It’s not just for backyards, though; Eierman also discusses lawn alternatives (get rid of that grass!) and how to apply the same ideas to other areas throughout our developed communities. The book includes a resource list to help readers apply its recommendations to the needs of plants and wildlife in various parts of the country.

Well, that’s it for this month. Stay tuned for a fresh batch of books on February’s list in a few short weeks. Until then you can find dozens of additional eco-books in the “Revelator Reads” archive.

All the World’s a Camera Trap

How do we make the most of the thousands of wildlife images generated by camera traps every day? A new service aims to provide insight and help conservation efforts.

I remember setting our first camera traps in August 1998 for what would become an 8-year tiger-monitoring program in the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in southern Sumatra. Ullas Karanth, a Wildlife Conservation Society tiger biologist in India, had recently pioneered the use of camera traps to study the big cats, and we were hoping to introduce these methods to Indonesia.

The plan worked, and we were able to produce some of the first rigorous density estimates of tigers for a Sumatran protected area. Other studies followed, and today conservationists use camera trapping to monitor tigers in almost all of the major protected areas on Sumatra.

In addition to tigers, the traps captured images of Sumatran rhinos, elephants, clouded leopards and Malaysian tapirs, as well as 45 other mammal and bird species.

With so much information on the non-target species, or bycatch, of our tiger study, I began to wonder how other programs were using camera traps and how they used the bycatch data. I soon realized that more than 70% of camera trap studies before 2008 were single-species studies, mostly targeting spotted and striped cats, and that very few researchers were using the data related to the other species accidentally caught on camera.

A dhole captured on camera. Photo: K. Ullas Karanth/WCS

Around the same time, Conservation International was initiating the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) initiative, under the leadership of Sandy Andelman. A key protocol of that program was camera trapping for terrestrial mammals and birds. Sandy asked me to evaluate the program and make recommendations for its long-term sustainability.

I recommended it narrow its focus and open up to partners. Sandy transformed TEAM into the TEAM Network, inviting WCS and Smithsonian to join the efforts. Soon standardized sampling methods were instituted at all TEAM sites around the world, along with open sharing of the data.

Meanwhile researchers were finding new uses for their own bycatch in camera trap data. Conservationists increasingly focused on wildlife communities, not just single species. Traps proved a great tool to document species richness, community structure, and the dynamics of local extinction and colonization. Bycatch data that had sat hidden away in filing cabinets and on hard drives — in many cases unexamined — suddenly became more fascinating.

A muntjac stares into a camera trap. Photo: WCS India

As interest in the biodiversity aspect of camera trap data increased, the technology improved exponentially. Inside a decade we went from using an instamatic film camera attached to a motion sensor and housed in a leaky box to a sleek, waterproof, digital camera capable of running for months and taking tens of thousands of photos at half the price.

These parallel developments created a problem in urgent need of a solution. Biologists were drowning in data as the scale of camera trap studies that had previously produced hundreds or thousands of photographs now generated hundreds of thousands of images that needed to be identified and catalogued, often with extra data about the camera’s location.

Two parallel efforts to address that problem grew up under the guidance of the TEAM Network and a collaboration between the Smithsonian and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences called eMammal — and soon a new consortium arose, which we’ve called Wildlife Insights.

An online service, Wildlife Insights allows anyone, especially researchers or citizen scientists, to upload camera-trap photos, which will then be analyzed by the program’s artificial intelligence engines to identify wildlife in the images. So far the AI can identify 614 vertebrate species, a number we expect to grow as experts upload more images and provide their insight into what the photos contain. Images and data will be securely archived and summary information will be available to anyone visiting the platform. Meanwhile, anyone signing in to help identify images will receive even more access to the service’s tools, while their contributions further improve the AI’s abilities and accuracy.

Three sloth bears caught on camera. Photo: WCS India

Our goals are twofold. First, we hope this will encourage data sharing and collaboration among researchers and conservationists. Second, we want the public to participate though citizen science projects and their interest in camera trap photos.

To this end, the Wildlife Insights family includes Google, providing expertise in cloud technology and machine learning for image recognition; Conservation International; Yale University’s Map of Life; North Carolina Museum of Natural Science; the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute; the Wildlife Conservation Society; World Wide Fund for Nature; and Zoological Society of London.

Wildlife Insights represents the world’s largest effort to organize camera trapping into a “big data” framework — applying cutting-edge tools to streamline data entry, management and analysis and engaging the public to care more deeply about wildlife and act for its conservation.

And it’s already working. Since Wildlife Insights launched in December, almost 4.5 million images have been uploaded, representing 21 countries and 23 organizations.

That’s just the start. Through data sharing on the Wildlife Insights platform, we expect to improve monitoring of exploited wildlife populations, help evaluate progress toward the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Sustainable Development Goals, and assist communities in managing indigenous territories.

But most fundamentally, we hope to provide a space for thousands, perhaps millions, of people to learn about and participate in science projects on biodiversity across the globe and in our own backyards.

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.

Road to Nowhere: Highways Pose Existential Threat to Wolverines

Roads can be a danger for wildlife, but new research shows they’re particularly bad news for a species already facing declines.

This is not a good time to be a wolverine.

The infamously scrappy, snow-adapted mustelid — a relation of badgers, martens and otters — is barely hanging on in the contiguous United States, where its population has dipped to mere hundreds. Decades of habitat loss and trapping reduced the wolverine’s numbers, and now diminishing snowpack from climate change is adding insult to injury.

And we can add one more surprising threat to the list: roads.

Yes, even though wolverines (Gulo gulo) thrive in remote, snowy wildernesses, roads can still pose a problem — but perhaps not in the way you might think.

Researchers studying wolverine populations in Canada found that roads serve to diminish the animals’ genetic diversity, because females refuse to cross them, although young males still readily disperse and find new territories.

This has important consequences for U.S. wolverines, which may depend on Canadian travelers for their genetic health and future population growth.

Anthony (Tony) Clevenger, a scientist at Montana State University’s Western Transportation Institute and an expert in the field of road ecology, was one of three researchers involved in the study.

We talked to him about the challenges facing wolverines and what’s being done to boost their recovery.

What attracted you to the field of road ecology?

Pure chance. I was out of work, living in Europe where I did my Ph.D. on a small population of brown bears in northern Spain, and I heard Banff National Park was hiring a conservation biologist to study underpasses and overpasses for wildlife. I got the job [in 1996] and became fascinated with studying how roads affect nature around us. It opened up a new world for me.

Tony Clevenger is a scientist at Montana State University’s Western Transportation Institute. (Photo by T. Clevenger)

Your recent study focused on wolverines and the Trans-Canada Highway. What prompted this? What were you hoping to learn?

The final twinning [from two to four lanes] of the Trans-Canada Highway ends at the Continental Divide. This stretch of the highway enters subalpine areas home to wolverine and lynx — species that we knew very little about.

We knew in the lower 48 some 2-lane highways limited wolverine movement. Little was known about wolverines in the Canadian Rockies and much less about how a major 4-lane highway may affect movements and gene flow. So this was a unique opportunity given the number of interstate highways and expanding roads in the southern part of wolverine range.

What did you find out about how roads affect wolverines, and is it different from how roads affect other animals?

After three years of noninvasive genetic sampling within our 3,088 square-mile study area [around Banff, Kootenay and Yoho national parks], we found that the Trans-Canada Highway is not a barrier to male wolverine movement but is a strong barrier to female wolverine movement. Females are more sensitive to disturbance, particularly human activity.

This is important since females need to cross the highway, survive and breed for there to be functional connectivity.

This is the same response that others have found for grizzly bear movements and genetic structure across highways, and also jaguars in Central America. Getting breeding females to cross and connect subpopulations is key, and we hope that crossing structures can help that function.

What are the implications for wolverine populations in North America, and specifically in the United States, where numbers are low?

The prospects are not good in the lower 48 where the population is [currently] estimated at 300 — but we all believe that is far too high. Habitats are highly fragmented, unlike wolverine range in southern Canada (Alberta and British Columbia). The population in Canada is in the thousands.

Trapping still occurs in southern Canada and we published a paper recently that demonstrates that the trapping of wolverines in southeast British Columbia and southwest Alberta is not sustainable. Governments there are starting to change trapping regulations.

These populations are the lifeline for wolverine populations in the United States. We lose that and we lose everything.

What is being done or can be done to help? Are there particular kinds of crossing structures that would be most beneficial for wolverines?

wildlife crossing — An overpass for wildlife on the Trans-Canada highway in Banff National Park. (Photo by Janusz Sliwinski, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Crossing structures have been built in the Canadian Rockies along the Trans-Canada Highway, which will help the mountain park wolverines. The critical piece of the puzzle is located in multi-use lands between the mountain national parks and the United States border (near Glacier and Waterton Lakes national parks).

This area is still trapped for wolverines, and forest cutting and motorized recreation are extensive and in some places there is oil and gas exploration — activities that limit wolverine movement, reproductive success and survival. The provincial government of British Columbia is changing trapping regulations and we hope Alberta will follow suit — it’s a good thing and necessary.

Overpasses and underpasses are also being planned for the British Columbia section of Highway 3, a critical linkage zone in the Yellowstone-to-Yukon ecoregion. The public is more informed of the plight of wolverines in this critical area, as are trappers.

Working together we can help provide a more viable future for one of our icons of wilderness and intact ecosystems.

The Faces of Extinction: The Species We Lost in 2019

Three bird species, two frogs, a shark, a famous snail and one of the world’s largest freshwater fish were among those declared extinct this year.

We lost a lot of species in 2019.

The year started with the extinction of a tiny Hawaiian snail and ended with the loss of one of the world’s largest freshwater fishes.

Along the way we also said goodbye to three bird species, a shark, two frogs, several plants, and a whole lot more.

About two dozen species were declared extinct (or nearly so) in 2019, although the total number of species lost this year probably numbers in the thousands. Scientists typically wait years or even decades before declaring a species well and truly extinct, and even then only after conducting extensive searches.

Of course, you can only count what you know exists. Most extinctions, sadly, occur among species that have never been officially observed or named. These plants and animals often live in extremely narrow habitats, making them particularly vulnerable to habitat destruction, pollution, extreme weather events, invasive species or other threats. That doesn’t mean they’ll never be identified — several recently reported extinctions represent species that were discovered among museum samples long after the plants or animals were gone — but you can’t save what you don’t know needs saving in the first place.

Although it may take some time to truly understand this year’s effect on the world’s biodiversity, here are the species that scientists and the conservation community declared lost during 2019, culled from the IUCN Red List, scientific publications, a handful of media articles and my own reporting. Only one of these extinctions was observed in real time, when an endling (the last of its kind) died in public view. Most haven’t been seen in decades and were finally added to the list of extinct species. A few represent local extinctions where a species has disappeared from a major part of its range, an important thing to watch since habitat loss and fragmentation are often the first steps toward a species vanishing. Finally, some of these extinctions are tentative, with scientists still looking for the species — an indication that hope remains.

Achatinella apexfulva — The last individual of this Hawaiian tree snail, known as “Lonesome George,” died in captivity on New Year’s Day. Disease and invasive predators drove it to extinction. This tiny creature’s disappearance probably generated the most media attention of any lost species in 2019.

Alagoas foliage-gleaner (Philydor novaesi) — Known from just two sites in Brazil, this bird was last seen in 2011 and was declared extinct in 2019 following the destruction of its habitats by logging, charcoal production and conversion to agriculture.

Boulenger’s speckled skink (Oligosoma infrapunctatum) — A “complete enigma,” unseen for more than 130 years. Scientists hope the announcement of its possible extinction will jumpstart efforts to relocate it and conserve its endangered relatives.

Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) — Last seen in 2009 when rising oceans lapped at its tiny islet habitat, the melomys was officially declared extinct in 2019, making it the first mammal extinction caused by climate change and sea-level rise.

Catarina pupfish (Megupsilon aporus) — This Mexican freshwater fish was known from one spring, which was destroyed by groundwater extraction. The fish was last seen in the wild in 1994, and the last captive population died out in 2012.

Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) — One of the world’s largest freshwater fish, native to the Yangtze River, the paddlefish probably died out between 2005 and 2010 due to overfishing and habitat fragmentation. The IUCN still lists it as “critically endangered,” but a paper published Dec. 23, 2019, declared it extinct after several surveys failed to locate the species.

Corquin robber frog (Craugastor anciano) — Last seen in 1990. Native to two sites in Honduras, it was probably killed off by habitat loss and the chytrid fungus.

Cryptic treehunter (Cichlocolaptes mazarbarnetti) — A Brazilian bird species last seen alive in 2007 — seven years before scientists officially described it. Its forest habitat has been extensively logged and converted to agriculture.

Cunning silverside (Atherinella callida) — This Mexican freshwater fish hasn’t been seen since 1957. The IUCN declared it extinct in 2019.

Etlingera heyneana — A plant species collected just one time in 1921 near Jakarta, on Java, the world’s most populous island. The IUCN listed it as extinct in 2019, noting that “practically all natural land in Jakarta has been developed.”

Fissidens microstictus — This Portuguese plant species lived in what is now a highly urbanized area and was last seen in 1982. (Scientists declared it extinct back in 1992, but the IUCN didn’t list it as such until this year.)

tiger laos — 2007 photo of a tiger rescued from poachers in Laos. Photo: Reed Kennedy (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Indochinese tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) in Laos — A local extinction (known as an extirpation) and a major loss for this big cat.

Lake Oku puddle frog (Phrynobatrachus njiomock) — Known from one location in Cameroon and unseen since 2010, the IUCN this year declared the recently discovered species “critically endangered (possibly extinct).”

“Lost shark” (Carcharhinus obsolerus) — Described from museum samples in 2019, the species hasn’t been seen since the 1930s. It was probably wiped out by overfishing.

The related and endangered Zanzibar red colobus (Piliocolobus kirkii). Photo by Marc Veraart (CC BY 2.0)

Miss Waldron’s red colobus (Piliocolobus waldronae) — Unseen for more than four decades, researchers haven’t given up that the rare monkey might still exist but they’ve still declared it “possibly extinct.”

Nobregaea latinervis — A moss species last seen in Portugal in 1946 and declared extinct in 2019 (based on a 2014 survey).

Poo-uli (Melamprosops phaeosoma) — Invasive species and diseases wiped out this Hawaiian bird, which was last seen in 2004 and declared extinct in 2019.

Pycnandra micrantha — A plant species from New Caledonia collected just once in 1901. Its only home on tiny Art Island has been extensively mined and subject to brushfires.

Sierra de Omoa streamside frog (Craugastor omoaensis) — Another frog from Honduras. Unseen since 1974, it was probably a victim of habitat loss and the chytrid fungus.

Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) in Malaysia — Another extirpation, although the species still exists (on tenuous footing) in Indonesia.

Vachellia bolei — A rare legume tree possibly driven extinct by sand mining and other habitat destruction.

grassland earless dragon — A related species of grassland dragon, photographed in 1991 by John Wombey/CSIRO (CC BY 3.0)

Victorian grasslands earless dragon (Tympanocryptis pinguicolla) — Last seen in 1969. Again, conservationists haven’t given up hope of finding it, but if it’s really gone it would represent Australia’s first known reptile extinction.

Villa Lopez pupfish (Cyprinodon ceciliae) — This Mexican fish’s only habitat, a 2-acre spring system, dried up in 1991 and it hasn’t been seen since. The IUCN declared it extinct in 2019.

Yangtze giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) — The last known female of this species died in China in April during an artificial insemination procedure, making the species effectively extinct.

In addition to these extinctions, the IUCN last year declared several species “extinct in the wild,” meaning they now only exist in captivity. They include the Spix’s Macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii), Ameca shiner (Notropis amecae), banded allotoca (Allotoca goslinei), marbled swordtail (Xiphophorus meyeri), Charo Palma pupfish (Cyprinodon veronicae), kunimasu (Oncorhynchus kawamurae) and Monterrey platyfish (Xiphophorus couchianus).

What will the future hold for these and other lost species? Some could be rediscovered (the Miss Waldron’s red colobus seems the most likely candidate), but the rest should serve as a stark reminder of what we’re losing all around us every day — and a clarion call to save what’s left.

Main image photo credits: Alagoas Foliage-gleaner © Ciro Albano, courtesy IUCN. Poo-uli © Paul E. Baker, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Public Domain). A relative of the Victorian grasslands earless dragon, photographed in 1991 by John Wombey/CSIRO (CC BY 3.0). Bramble Cay melomys via State of Queensland, Environmental Protection Agency (uncredited).

Welcome to 2020: 8 Important Environmental Stories to Follow This Year

From the extinction crisis to plastic pollution and the 2020 election, these are some of the stories we expect to dominate headlines in the year ahead.

Let’s be honest, 2019 was a rough year for the planet. Despite some environmental victories along the way, we saw the extinction crisis deepen, efforts to curtail climate change blocked at almost every turn, and the oceans continue to warm. We also heard new revelations about ways that plastics and chemicals harm our bodies, saw the political realm become even more polarized, and experienced yet another round of record-breaking temperatures.

So what should we expect for 2020? Here are eight of the big environmental topics we think will capture headlines in the year ahead.

1. The Poster Child of the Extinction Crisis

We expect to see a wide range of endangered species in the news this coming year, but few will face threats so urgently as the vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus).

As we’ve written here before, the vaquita is in perilous territory, with a population of as few as 10 now remaining. The good news is that scientists recently observed adult vaquitas with two newborn calves, so they’re still finding each other and breeding. The bad news is that Mexico has failed in its promises to keep fishermen and illegal gillnets off the water, so the pressures on this species continue to rise.

We anticipate that 2020 will show whether human beings will let this species go extinct in full view of the world or step up to save it.

2. The Supreme Court

The lasting impact of the Trump administration may soon be felt in the courts, especially in the Supreme Court, where Brett Kavanaugh has made clear his devotion to the “less is more” principles of government espoused by the Federalist Society.

If the Society and Kavanaugh get their way, the federal government could lose much of its ability to allow agencies like the EPA to regulate…well, anything. As Ian Millhiser wrote recently in Vox:

“It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of this issue. Countless federal laws, from the Clean Air Act to the Affordable Care Act, lay out a broad federal policy and delegate to an agency the power to implement the details of that policy. Under Kavanaugh’s approach, many of these laws are unconstitutional, as are numerous existing regulations governing polluters, health providers, and employers.”

The conservative wing of the Supreme Court currently holds the majority, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon (thanks, Mitch McConnell), so we expect this issue to rear its ugly head sooner rather than later, and well beyond the next presidential election.

3. Climate Change: Peak or Panic?

Will we experience a true climate tipping point this year? If so, which way will it tip?

On the one hand, people are clamoring more and more loudly for climate action, with activists like Greta Thunberg leading the charge.

On the other hand, the most recent UN climate change conference (COP25) was…a bit of a disappointing failure, thanks in no small part to the fact that the fossil fuel industry sponsored much of the event.

Still, we’re going to see a lot of new data and science come out this year, and we may find out if the efforts we’ve already started making have paid off yet. One noteworthy example: The coal industry is in the process of dying a slow death, so even though total worldwide emissions are up, coal emissions are headed down.

What does that mean? According to the experts, this could be the year greenhouse gas emissions peak or flatline — or they could start climbing even more. It’s up to us.

Good thread.

Here’s my take:

Emissions are still climbing, but now climbing at a very slow rate — and it could either peak and go down, or continue to rise.

That decision is up to us. Last call. https://t.co/LjWJnBWywF

— Dr. Jonathan Foley (@GlobalEcoGuy) December 4, 2019

4. Drinking Water

After the federal government dropped the ball in 2019, we expect to see another push this year for meaningful action to limit the harm caused by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — the suite of toxic “forever chemicals” that stubbornly don’t break down in the environment or our bodies.

PFAS are found in thousands of consumer and industrial products, including nonstick pans, waterproof clothing, stain-resistant furniture, food wrappers, personal care goods and firefighting foam. They’ve been linked to cancer, liver damage, and reproductive and immune-system problems. Millions of Americans are believed to be drinking water contaminated with PFAS, including the residents of 175 military installations, and the dangerous chemicals have been found in soil and food, too.

After federal agencies did nothing substantial on the issue, it looked like there might be congressional action. But language that would have required the EPA to set a drinking-water standard for PFAS and for the federal government to aid in cleaning polluted areas was dropped from the National Defense Authorization Act in December. Democrats have vowed to take up the issue again this year, and advocates want to see a federal standard strict enough to protect public health. We expect vigorous discussions and more than a few worries along the way.

5. Ocean Action

In 2019 we got serving after serving of bad news about how climate change is warming waters, driving oxygen loss, and increasing sea level rise in the ocean — threatening biodiversity, fisheries and coastal communities.

This year we could see some steps toward solutions.

earth overshoot — Ocean Biology Processing Group at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, public domain

Drawing on language from the much-discussed Green New Deal for equitable environmental action, ocean advocates in 2019 called for a Blue New Deal — a comprehensive plan for protecting our oceans and coastal communities. Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren picked up the gauntlet before the year closed out, releasing her own Blue New Deal that would expand marine protected areas, end offshore drilling, build more offshore renewable energy, reform flood insurance, boost fisheries and invest in regenerative ocean farming.

Expect to hear more about action on ocean protection this year, not just in the United States but internationally. After years of talks, the United Nations is set to finalize a global ocean treaty in 2020, although there’s a fear it will fall far short of what’s needed to thwart the biodiversity crisis.

6. Public Lands

Many of the country’s most remote and wild public lands face big threats this year, continuing the trend we’ve seen since the last presidential election. Two will remain particularly noteworthy.

One, the Forest Service is expected to finalize a Trump administration proposal to lift the Roadless Area Conservation Rule for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The rewrite, due this summer, could open millions of acres of old-growth forest and salmon spawning habitat to timber, mining and other development.

Two, the decades-long battle over drilling continues in the wildlife-rich and culturally important Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A rider in a 2017 tax bill passed by the Republican-led Congress greenlighted two oil and gas lease sales in the refuge’s coastal plain. The Trump administration is likely to hold those in 2020. It’s unclear yet how interested oil companies will be, but a move to begin drilling in the refuge is staunchly opposed by Indigenous communities, environmental groups and the majority of U.S. voters.

7. Plastic Pollution

With pending legislation that aims to cut plastic waste 75% by 2030, California will take another run this year at passing a first-of-its-kind (in the United States) effort to hold companies that make plastic products accountable for their waste. The bill stalled last year, but proponents will renew efforts in 2020.

Plastic bag — Photo: John Platt (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

They face stiff opposition from plastic and fossil fuel companies that are busy turning cheap fracked gas into more plastics. Petrochemical companies are planning a massive buildout of infrastructure in the Gulf coast and the Ohio River Valley to facilitate the production of more plastics, both at home and abroad.

We expect to see continued efforts to inform consumers about their buying choices, but in the next year the fight against plastic pollution will be much less about straw bans and more about fighting the root causes and stopping it at the source.

8. The 2020 Election

The upcoming presidential election will dominate the conversation in the coming months, but let’s make sure to pay attention to every other race out there on the federal, state and local level. All these elections will add up — and collectively they could determine the future of just about every environmental issue listed above.

In other words: Stay tuned.

The Revelator’s Top 12 Articles of 2019

From the extinction crisis to environmental justice, these articles showcase what we have to lose and how people are working to make a brighter future.

Looking back on the environmental news of 2019, it’s hard not to feel the weight of the year that was.

But at the same time, we saw a lot of great progress and emerging solutions. These are the types of stories that keep us going.

Here at The Revelator, we try to tell stories that help inspire change — and will continue to do so long after they’re first published. Sure, a lot of the articles we publish feel bleak, but you need to examine the darkness before you can dispel it.

Here, in completely random order, are a dozen Revelator articles from the past year that we feel reflect that attitude. You’ll find interesting characters, difficult conundrums, some terrible losses, and also a few roadmaps to the future.

Dr. Robert Bullard: Lessons From 40 Years of Documenting Environmental Racism — The “father of environmental justice” looks back and offers lessons for today and the future.

We’re Just Starting to Learn How Fracking Harms Wildlife — We need to know more, quickly.

Hawaii’s Snail Extinction Crisis: ‘We’re Just Trying to Stop the Bleeding’ — A sad story from the “extinction capital of the world.”

What Laws Work Best to Cut Plastic Pollution? — Sometimes the tools we need to protect us are already in place.

Rise of the Extinction Deniers — Climate deniers don’t have a monopoly on disinformation.

Are We Ready for Shark Conservation to Succeed? — The same question needs to be asked for just about every conservation project.

Drones, Algae and Fish Ears: What We’re Learning Before the World’s Largest Dam-removal Project — and What We Could Miss — Many dams need to come down, and science will help guide how they do and what happens next.

Naomi Klein: Gearing up for the Political Fight of Our Lives — The pioneering activist and writer shares her perspective on the Green New Deal and other topics.

Why Don’t We Hear About More Species Going Extinct? — Important context for the ongoing extinction crisis.

Cigarette Butts: The Most Littered Item in the World — A fun/scary video examining something many of us might overlook.

Steal of a Deal: How Ranchers Take Advantage of Public Lands — Another entertaining video that helps illuminate a serious topic.

What Losing 1 Million Species Means for the Planet — and Humanity — It hurts.

What were your favorites? Did anything you enjoyed reading on The Revelator this year not make the list? Let us know in the comments.

And stay tuned for more great articles — good news and bad — in the New Year to come, starting with a look at the most important environmental stories we’ll be following in 2020.

The Revelator’s 12 Most Thought-provoking Essays and Op-eds of 2019

Expert contributors took us to the Arctic, the borderlands and everywhere in between.

Unique insight and deep understanding of the day’s most critical issues come from those with an ear to the ground — some quite literally.

This year expert contributors to The Revelator — scientists, advocates, teachers and other specialists — shared their knowledge of everything from mayflies to macaques and the border wall to the war of words. We learned about emerging science, international collaboration, places and species gravely at risk, and what we can do to make this world a better place for insects, whales and our fellow humans.

Of the dozens of op-eds, essays and editorials we published this year, we narrowed down our favorites. We hope they inspire action, conversation or reflection.

Trump’s Border Wall: Epitaph for an Endangered, Night-blooming Cactus? — A Trump-induced threat to endangered species.

‘We Know the End Is Coming’: The Plight and Rise of Climate Refugees — Time to protect those who are fleeing environmental crises.

The Trump Administration Pushes to Delist Wolves — and History Repeats Itself — An important history lesson.

Is Science Failing the World’s Primates? — Most primate species and habitats remain understudied, but we can change that.

The Words of Water: Why Environmentalists Are Losing the Water Wars — The language we use has real world consequences.

South Africa’s Fallen Pride: How Law and Government Fail to Protect Lions — What to do about the booming captive-lion industry.

How Social Media Supports Animal Cruelty and the Illegal Pet Trade — Here’s how to tell what’s safe to share.

Dehorning the Rhino — Desperate times and desperate measures.

The Unseen Threat: Noise in the Arctic Marine Environment — Arctic nations could lead on this crucial issue.

How Climate Change Will Affect Real Lives — Now and in the Future — A walk through the world of 2050.

A Surprising Effect of Light Pollution: It Disrupts Aquatic Insects — Time to consider the mayflies, caddisflies and stoneflies.

Millions of Tokay Geckos Are Taken From the Wild Each Year. International Protection Could Help Save Them — A call for change that actually resulted in the development of international trade rules.

The new year will undoubtedly bring new discoveries and challenges. What should we be talking about? How can we broaden the conversation? And would you like to be a part of it? We’re always looking for new voices. Find out how to contribute here.