Successful conservation means more sharks, which is great for the health of the ocean but could also be problematic in a few important ways. Here’s how experts say we should prepare.
For decades scientists and environmentalists have been sounding the alarm about shark population declines and calling for new and stronger laws to help sharks and related elasmobranch species recover from overfishing.
While globally many shark populations are still imperiled, efforts are starting to pay off as science-based management is leading to some shark population recoveries. Great white sharks on both coasts of the United States are starting to recover, as are leopard and soupfin sharks off the West Coast and seven species of sharks off the Southeast, for example.
In what has in some places become a “dog that caught the car moment,” many are wondering what we should do now that we’re starting to succeed. Or, as the title of a new paper published in the journal Environmental Conservation on this topic boldly asks, “Are we ready for elasmobranch conservation success?”
Shark conservationists have long touted the ecological benefits of healthy shark populations — predators help keep the food web in balance by eating sick and weak members of prey species — but the success of shark conservation means, quite simply, that there are more sharks around. That’s great for the health of the ocean, but it can lead to new conflicts if we don’t properly plan and prepare. The authors of the Environmental Conservation paper highlight three ways that increased shark populations can lead to new conflicts and suggest ways we can prepare.
Grey reef sharks swim in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. (Photo by Kydd Pollock, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Conflict With Fishers
Higher populations of marine predators mean that fishers trying to catch the same prey are having more competition.
“Sharks are consuming fish that are of importance or high value to communities,” says Michelle Heupel, director of the University of Tasmania’s Integrated Marine Observing System and a coauthor of the study. Shark consumption of fish can lower their abundance, leaving less for fishermen to catch. Or sometimes sharks directly “steal” catch from fishermen by consuming fish caught in fishing gear.
Another new study in the journal Ecology and Evolution has shown that shark population recoveries result in declines in the population of mid-level predatory fish such as those commonly fished by humans like snappers and groupers. Researchers found that “The eradication of illegal fishing allowed numbers of sharks and other large predatory fishes to rebound, which in turn resulted in lower numbers of smaller predatory fishes due to an increase in predation pressure,” says Conrad Speed, a postdoctoral researcher at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the lead author of that study. “In other words, the recovery of sharks and large fish suppressed the abundance of smaller predatory species.”
Speed noted that this change in ecosystem structure represents a success in terms of ecological restoration, but it is undeniably a major change in the type and number of fish.
More Shark Bites
While the risk of a shark bite remains extremely low, simple math indicates that having more sharks in more places means that the risk will likely go up — especially as recovering shark populations move into areas where there haven’t been large sharks in decades.
“In general, people are happy to see wildlife conserved when it doesn’t inconvenience them in any way, and feelings are more mixed when we have to share space with wildlife and assume the risks that can entail,” says Catherine MacDonald, a lecturer in marine conservation at the University of Miami and the director of research and education organization Field School, with whom I’ve collaborated on several past research projects involving human perception of sharks.
For example, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, great white shark populations are beginning to recover, but Cynthia Wigren, CEO of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, says that even though it’s a conservation success story, they aren’t popping the champagne cork just yet.
In an act of good will toward the species, beachgoers there helped rescue a stranded great white in 2015 and the chance to see sharks is even attracting some tourists to the area, but after a swimmer died in 2018 from a shark bite on the Cape, public feelings are mixed.
“People no longer feel like they can enter the water without thinking about sharks and the need for heightened awareness about safety,” Wigren says. “For some in the community, having to change their behavior when recreating in the ocean is a hard pill to swallow. We believe that conflict related to negative human-white shark interactions is the greatest threat to the continued conservation of the species.”
And then there are also economic considerations, too. While there’s a financial value to be gained from sharks aiding diving and wildlife tourism, preventing negative interactions between sharks and humans also takes resources. Money is often spent on “spotting planes, beach closures, boat patrols, and netting or fishing to reduce the size of local shark populations,” says MacDonald.
Protected Species at Risk
While the risk of humans being bit by sharks remains low, other species may not be as lucky.
A great white shark attacking a sea lion. (Photo by Greg Schechter, CC BY 2.0)
More sharks means more sharks eating other animals, and sometimes those other animals are also threatened species we’re trying to manage and recover. “For example, increased shark predation on seals based on increased numbers of sharks can cause concern for the status of seal populations, ultimately leading to conflicts over protection of both sharks and seals,” Heupel says.
Sea otters in California are also threatened by rebounding populations of white sharks, although the otters are usually an accidental victim, as the sharks prefer meatier prey.
Sometimes sharks and their relatives are also the victims of this same problem. In Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence, recent research finds that a unique population of winter skates, which may represent a yet-unidentified new species, is now at risk of localized extinction because the nearby population of grey seals has recovered.
Beyond Conservation
For good reason, most conservation programs focus on stopping the decline and promoting the recovery of imperiled species, and don’t necessarily have the time or resources to think about what happens next.
“The implications of recovery happen after the initial goals are achieved, so in some ways they’re beyond the scope of the conservation program,” Heupel says. “However, if we don’t consider the factors around recovery from end to end, we may overlook competing or complicating factors that arise after conservation goals are achieved and which have the capacity to undermine conservation efforts.”
Fortunately increased public education to help people know what’s happening in their environment, and understand how to safely use the ocean as things change can go a long way toward making conservation truly successful.
“Proactively communicating with the public and stakeholders about the objectives of conservation efforts and hearing their perspective is key to formulating decisions that can suit as many needs and priorities as possible to avoid scenarios that undermine conservation efforts,” says Heupel.
Wigren agrees. “Our role is to increase knowledge and understanding of white sharks through research and to share that information with the public and beach managers,” she says. “Our hope is that informed decisions will be made based on data and facts rather than fear, and that the conservation of the species will remain a priority.”
It’s important to consider that the success of some conservation programs may lead to complications in the future, but that doesn’t mean that conservation isn’t good.
“We’re not claiming that recovering shark populations is a bad thing, despite some [potential] negative impacts,” says John Carlson, a research biologist with NOAA Fisheries and a coauthor on the Environmental Conservation paper. “But we do want the public to recognize that alternative management policies may be needed in the future.”
With more sharks around, we’re going to need to change how we fish, how we spend time at the coast for recreation and how we manage other species — all of which will require public education efforts.
And this gets to the heart of why conservation efforts are so important in the first place. The real question, MacDonald says, comes down to “whether we’re willing to accept some inconvenience and risk in order to live on a wild planet where other species can thrive.”
People displaced by drought, sea-level rise, wildfires and other environmental threats are not currently considered “refugees,” like people fleeing violence or oppression. That needs to change.
“God knows what will happen. We know the end is coming.”
These were the words of Saber Saladas, a Bangladeshi fisherman and farmer, after his village, home and livelihood were destroyed by floods last year.
Saladas is just one of 8 million people in Bangladesh who have become climate refugees in their home country — forcibly displaced by flooding, river erosion and saltwater intrusion.
“Once, [my] village was green with paddy fields,” he told the Environmental Justice Foundation from an inland shelter after he and his family had fled their home. “But now the water is salty and the trees have died. We can only farm shrimp… We just want to breathe, to live a long life.”
As it stands there’s no clear-cut legal definition for people like Saber Saladas. Although they’re unable to stay in their homes due to both immediate danger and/or an inability to survive there (as is the case when food sources and livelihoods are ruined by inhospitable conditions), they’re not covered by the global “traditional refugee” model.
This model was established by the 1951 Refugee Convention, which states that people may claim their right to asylum if they have a “genuine and well-founded” fear of being persecuted to the point that their life and safety are threatened. This persecution can be for any reason, but common grounds tend to be based on religion, sexuality, political belief or gender identity.
The issue with this longstanding definition of a “refugee” is that the environment does not personally persecute people or communities. There are certain demographic groups, such as working-class and poorer communities, that are more prone to being environmentally displaced, but nature itself is arbitrary. Because of this, legally defining displaced people becomes difficult.
Some arguments suggest that even the term “climate refugees” is problematic. Dina Ionesco, the U.N.’s head of Migration, Environment and Climate Change, suggested earlier this year that displaced people should be categorized as “climate migrants” instead.
But the term “migrant” implies some element of choice, which forcibly displaced people don’t have. Those who are forced to flee their homes by environmental problems find themselves in a very similar position to those who are forced to flee their homes by persecution. Many of them face danger or destitution. People who migrate voluntarily are not usually in this position, as they leave their home countries to pursue careers, start businesses or join a partner or family member.
Even Ionesco recognized that. She argued that reopening the 1951 Refugee Convention to include victims of displacement could “weaken the refugee status” in its current form, risking those who already qualify for protection under it.
But the difficulty of defining displaced people has weakened and delayed their very necessary protection. While steps have been taken by bodies like the United Nations and G7, which have held discussions and commissioned research in efforts to address the issue of environmental displacement, an objective immigration category has yet to be set up for those who are affected.
According to a report commissioned last year by the European Parliament, 26.4 million people have been displaced by floods, windstorms, droughts and earthquakes every year since 2008. Notably, this period has seen the fastest acceleration in recorded global temperatures, marking a clear link between climate change and environmental displacement.
And the situation is only going to get worse. According to NASA the planet’s global temperature has risen by approximately 0.9 degrees Celsius over the past century, which is primarily attributed to an increase in CO2 emissions and other human activity. This has led to the melting of ice caps in the Arctic ocean and rising sea levels, in turn causing increased flooding, erosion and salt-water intrusion. Droughts, wildfires and storms have also become more common, with countries and communities across every continent feeling the effects.
These kinds of conditions threaten people’s homes and lives both directly and indirectly. Aside from the explicit danger and threat to life posed by powerful windstorms, earthquakes or floods, adverse conditions come with other risks. Droughts kill crops, salt-water intrusion wipes out species of freshwater fish, and wildfires obliterate rainforest. All these factors help contribute to the millions of people being displaced across the world.
Climate change and the impact it has on sea-levels, weather systems and natural disasters are a serious cause for concern. If the Earth continues to heat up, irreversible damage will be done to its ecosystems, and destructive and inhospitable conditions will increase. While this happens more communities will become displaced. More people will be unable keep their jobs, feed their families and stay in their homes. And more will be forced to flee from their home countries.
It is of course important that we do not allow the ongoing displacement debate to distract too much from the goal at hand — to make considerable, united efforts to tackle and overturn climate change and its effects on the planet’s ecosystems. In the words of Saladas, “we know the end is coming,” and we cannot ignore this any longer.
But even as we do that, it remains essential that displaced people be granted lawful status within global immigration and asylum policy. This could be achieved by expanding existing laws and practices, such as in human-rights and humanitarian-protection laws, or by creating a new global migration or asylum category to ensure the protection of displaced people. Whatever approach is chosen, policymakers must act quickly to close the protection gap for displaced individuals, families and communities. Until then they remain in a legal gray area, unable to be defined and, as a result, unable to be protected.
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.
From Bogota to Baltimore climate strikers turned out for the first of a week of events to push for action on climate change.
In August 2018 Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg stood alone outside the Swedish parliament with a sign that said “Skolstrejk för klimatet.” On Friday 4 million people across the world joined her and walked out of their schools, jobs and homes and into the streets for a global Climate Strike.
New York, which hosted Thunberg, saw an estimated 250,000 show up. “If you belong to that small group of people who feel threatened by us, we have some very bad news for you, because this is only the beginning,” Thunberg told the crowd.
Greta Thunberg in front of the Swedish parliament in August 2018. (Photo by Anders Hellberg, CC BY-SA 4.0)
More than 100,000 people turned out in Melbourne in Australia’s largest climate demonstration yet. And similar numbers were reported in London and Berlin.
Actions continued around the globe. As the New York Times reported:
Banners in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, ranged from serious to humorous. One read, “Climate Emergency Now.” Another said, “This planet is getting hotter than my imaginary boyfriend.” In Mumbai, children in oversize raincoats marched in the rain. Thousands turned out in Warsaw, the capital of coal-reliant Poland.
An estimated 5,800 events took place in more than 160 countries. More are planned throughout the week.
In San Francisco thousands streamed down Market Street through the city’s shopping and financial district with signs that ranged from “Panic” to “Peaceful Rebellion.” The event was organized by young people but everyone from toddlers to grandparents showed up in support.
Here are some images from the day:
On the streets of Philadelphia. (Photo by @EarthNatureNews)Young protesters at San Francisco’s climate strike. (Photo by Tara Lohan)An even younger protester joins the action. (Photo by Tara Lohan)Older generations lent their support. (Photo by Tara Lohan)Teenagers shared how they felt about the future. (Photo by Tara Lohan)Many showed solidarity with the youth climate movement. (Photo by Tara Lohan)
Around the world this week, people will stop what they’re doing and stand up to call for great action against climate change.
It began with 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg and quickly became a global movement.
Starting today, and continuing for most of the coming week, students and workers from around the world will go on strike to call for immediate action to protect the planet and its residents from the threats of climate change.
Its origins were as a student movement, but the Climate Strike is now more far-reaching, with 2,500 local events in 117 countries. Many companies, including Patagonia, will even close their doors and encourage their employees to participate.
The official strike is today, Sept. 20, but events will continue all week, most notably in front of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City on Monday.
If you don’t already have plans, you can find a map of events on the Climate Strike website. Many protests have their own Facebook event listings, so check there too for events in your area.
If you go we’d love to see your photos or social media postings and hear your thoughts from whatever Climate Strike event you attended. Drop us a line at tips@therevelator.org.
And don’t worry if you can’t go on strike this week. Not everyone can take time off from work or school, even for such an important cause. You can also help online today, and you can continue to take action every day by calling your elected officials, sharing your stories and knowledge with friends and family, and working to hold companies accountable for creating the climate-change crisis in the first place.
In warming Alaska, Pacific walruses and Inuit craftsmen find themselves facing new and intersecting threats.
“You don’t want to get it from headhunters,” Leon Kinneeveauk tells me as we maneuver around his crowded art studio in downtown Anchorage. Tools, bones, and unfinished carvings extend over every work surface, covered in a thin layer of white dust.
Kinneeveauk, an Inupiaq artist who specializes in carving walrus ivory, grew up in the remote Point Hope, a northwestern Alaskan village accessible only by plane or boat. His Anchorage gallery, Arctic Treasures, is a trove of work of master craftsmen from around the state. At the back of the shop, which he took over from its previous owner last year, is a growing studio space where he and artists work on native handicrafts, from whale baleen baskets to delicate bird figurines and walrus ivory carvings like the ones he makes himself.
Leon Kinneeveauk carves an ivory walrus tusk into an ornate piece of art. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak.
Kinneeveauk is careful about where he sources his walrus ivory. He has to be. In northwest Alaska large colonies of Pacific walrus now regularly haul themselves out onto land — a phenomenon tied to the loss of sea ice due to climate change that has led to new threats for the massive marine mammals. When these walrus are vulnerable on land, people have killed them and salvaged only the tusks.
“Headhunting,” as this is known, is a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, under which Indigenous people can hunt walrus but must make use of the whole animal. In recent years four hunters from Kinneeveauk’s community were charged with shooting and headhunting eight walruses hauled out on a beach at Cape Lisburne. The men’s actions during two separate hunts caused herds to stampede, resulting in the death or injury of at least two dozen additional walrus, about half of which were calves.
Catastrophic stampedes such as these would not occur on ice floes, where animals can escape into the water if disturbed.
The men were sentenced in a case of restorative justice, under which they must perform services to benefit their community, such as hunting for the subsistence needs of elders and delivering presentations in coastal villages on hunting ethics and the legal duty to take animals in full.
Kinneeveauk takes his own “full use” responsibility to another level in his art: He uses even the fine ivory dust, created while he carves with power tools, to fill in cracks in his carvings. The piece he’s working on as we visit his studio is a lithe fisherwoman. The sound of his electric drill fills the space with a hum as he shows me his work. While he carves, he wears protective goggles and a mask. As I watch, I can sense the walrus bone dust in the air.
Leon Kinneeveauk carves an ivory walrus tusk. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak.
Alaska Native artists like Kinneeveauk, who use Pacific walrus ivory, have been plying their trade for centuries, but now they’re up against two intensifying threats: climate change and crime.
Walrus hunting, including at terrestrial haul-outs, is managed by the Eskimo Walrus Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Even when walrus ivory is responsibly sourced in accordance with hunting ethics and regulations, sales of carvings are now being forestalled and overshadowed not just by recent illegal activity in Alaska but also poaching on the other side of the world.
Arctic Treasures itself was recently at the center of some of these types of crimes. In March of this year the gallery’s previous owner, Lee John Screnock, who is not Inuit, was indicted for selling walrus ivory carvings that he had carved himself and falsely marketed as “Native-carved.” Screnock further violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act by selling polar bear and walrus bones, including skulls and oosik (walrus penis bone). The case puts Kinneeveauk, who acquired the store in June 2018, under additional pressure to improve the shop’s reputation.
Carved walrus oosik in FWS warehouse. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak
Another ongoing case involves a man who outsourced walrus ivory carving all the way to Indonesia, re-imported the finished pieces back to Alaska, and sold them to tourists alighting from cruise ships in Skagway, a popular destination that was once a Gold Rush boomtown. There are other cases of art being crafted overseas, for example jewelry manufactured in factories in the Philippines, then imported and sold in the United States under the label “Native-made.”
Ironically the poaching threat to walruses may be increasing in part because other target species’ populations are under poaching pressure.
“As elephant populations continue to be decimated, walrus, narwhal or other ivory-carrying species could become the next targets for unscrupulous and large-scale commercial operations,” says Steven Skrocki, deputy criminal chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska, which had legal authority in the Point Hope case and now in both the Arctic Treasures and Skagway cases, among others.
Seized elephant and walrus ivory carvings on display at the Beaver Creek border station in the Yukon, 20 miles from Alaska border. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak
This means that Kinneeveauk is also contending with wider controversies, including blanket ivory bans being enacted by some U.S. states as an outcome of elephant poaching in Africa. The bans have been proposed and decreed because of the difficulty in distinguishing ivories from elephants and similar tusk-bearing species such as walruses and even extinct mammoths.
Amid the huge, dramatic changes facing the Arctic, the reverberations of the race to save another ivory-bearing species on the other side of the world, and the crime that too often accompanies the commercialization of wildlife products, can the traditions of Inuit carvers who use Pacific walrus ivory be preserved?
Walruses are the only living member of an entire family of marine mammals distinguished by their upper canines. Their similarly semi-aquatic relatives — sea lions and fur seals — do not have “ivory,” which in walruses is really two canines long enough to be called tusks or “morse.” The tusks can grow as long as 40 inches. Because walruses use them to lift themselves out of the water onto sea ice, the animals’ scientific name Odobenus rosmarus translates into “tooth-walker.”
Walrus surface for air in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. Photo: NOAA/OER/Hidden Ocean 2016:The Chukchi Borderlands
Pacific walrus, one of two walrus subspecies, inhabit the waters around the United States and Russia and “wander” into Canada and Japan. Unlike Atlantic walrus, which are largely sedentary in their habits, Pacific walrus are highly migratory. Pacific walrus are on the watchlists of wildlife agents and government officials in Alaska because of the high street value of their ivory tusks and the growing number of terrestrial haul-outs, where they are vulnerable to disturbance.
Large terrestrial haul-out of Pacific walruses at Cape Vankarem, Chukotka, Russia. (Photo by Vladelin Kavry)
While walrus harvest is currently considered legally sustainable, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service walrus biologist Joel Garlich-Miller says he’s still concerned about what the future holds given how rapidly sea ice is shrinking and shipping traffic is increasing. The number of walrus now — estimated at some 250,000 — is the same number taken over just a 16-year period by European whalers for oil, tusks and hides in the second half of the 19th century. It took 100 years for walrus to recover to pre-European commercial harvest levels.
Among the biggest current concerns today, says Garlich-Miller, is disturbance at coastal haul-out sites.
“There are tens of thousands of walrus hauling out at locations in Russia and the U.S.,” he says. “On land they’re very susceptible to human disturbance in the form of planes, boats and hunting.”
What makes these large haul-outs risky is that walrus have one direction to go: toward the water. If adult walruses panic and try to rush to safety, calves can get crushed and injured.
“A single stampede can cause tens or even hundreds of animals to die,” Garlich-Miller says. In some years trampling mortalities can exceed the entire legal harvest of Alaska.
This is happening more frequently, and it doesn’t just endanger the walruses. In the Russian town of Vankarem, dogs and polar bears are drawn to walrus carcasses following stampedes, raising the likelihood of negative interactions between people, their domestic animals and wild carnivores.
In an attempt to minimize these risks, Native leaders in Alaska and Chukotka are working to discourage the practice of hunting walrus at haul-outs. Another alternative they’re promoting involves hunting only with silent bows or spears instead of loud rifles to reduce the likelihood of causing the larger colony to panic.
“The future of walrus has not been written yet,” he says optimistically. “There are things we as a society can do to mitigate, including allowing animals to adapt to new habitat areas, protecting animals at haul-outs and keeping subsistence harvest levels sustainable.”
He adds, “There will always be some opportunists, but most hunters have a strong ethic.”
Could blanket ivory bans and other legislative attempts to solve these problems actually harm Native carvers?
That’s the contention of some Alaska lawmakers, who this past March introduced a federal bill seeking to block other states from banning the sale of walrus ivory, whale bone and other marine mammals carved by Alaska Native artists.
The bill, entitled the “Empowering Rural Economies through Alaska Native Sustainable Arts and Handicrafts Act,” aimed to preempt state ivory bans from including marine mammals, as well as extinct mammoth and mastodon, which are also carved by Alaska Natives. It hews closely in content to a previously proposed bill called the “Allowing Alaska Ivory Act,” a name legislators dropped in an attempt to make the bill more palatable in our ivory-averse times.
“Allowing the sale of ivory has a negative connotation,” says Kate Wolgemuth, rural advisor to Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who sponsored the Act (it has not moved beyond the submission stage). “States have been enacting blanket ivory bans because they’re worried about African elephant ivory poaching. As a result, they don’t distinguish between different types of ivory.”
Blanket ivory bans, according to Wolgemuth, may cause residents to worry about buying, owning and bringing home legally acquired ivory from Alaska. “These laws go against the MMPA, which explicitly protects Alaska Native artists’ right to carve and sell marine mammal ivory,” she says. “These bans were passed without Alaska’s input.”
“Walrus ivory carving is about culture, not commerce,” she adds.
The sale of any ivory has been prohibited by California, Hawaii, New York, and New Jersey among other states. Wolgemuth says she now avoids traveling with walrus ivory herself, as each state’s ban differs slightly.
Meanwhile bones from extinct mammoths have also been proposed for trade bans. The issue is currently being studied by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, an international treaty that regulates the sale of threatened wildlife — the first extinct species being considered for a trade ban.
Some conservationists and researchers fear that African elephant ivory can be mislabeled and smuggled as mammoth, allowing illegal products to be disguised in the legal marketplace. But Wolgemuth says Sullivan’s office believes that having a substitute for elephant ivory in the form of mammoth can help rather than hurt African elephants. Mammoth, she says, should be free for everyone to use.
The importance of mammoth and mastodon carving in Alaska varies from community to community, says Vera Metcalf, director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission. “For Shishmaref, mammoth is important, but on St. Lawrence Island [where Metcalf is from], we have neither mammoth nor mastodon but could trade our walrus for it.”
At the Anchorage Museum I find the work of several Native carvers, including Kinneeveauk, for sale in the gift shop.
Carving by Leon Kinneeveauk in Anchorage Museum gift shop. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak
Another artist whose work is sold there is Jerome Saclamana, an Iñupiaq carver from Nome. He makes clear that walrus tusk carving has given him a living. “I’m not getting rich from it but I’m able to practice what my ancestors did, only in a more modern way,” he says, referring to power tools.
Like Kinneeveauk, Saclamana also now lives in Anchorage as “there’s more of a market for my carvings here than in Nome.” Still, he says the price he can currently charge is 25 percent less than just a few years ago. He theorizes consumer confusion over what ivory is legal to buy has caused the market and prices to shrink.
Joining the conversation, Aaron Tolen, an education intern at the Anchorage Museum, tells me he’s “probably related to Saclamana. My mother is from Nome.”
Tolen brings up a new issue, asking Saclamana if he’s noticed any differences in walrus tusk length and density now compared with the past. Tolen’s studying the issue. He thinks cracks in walrus ivory are caused by reduced tusk density, possibly because climate change is causing shifts in walrus diet.
“Walrus are shallow-water bottom-feeders,” he explains. “Now, with ice receding, walrus must dive deeper down to get shellfish and they’re not getting as much food. Less nutrition means less dense tusks that are more fragile and crack more easily.”
But Saclamana attributes the change to young hunters not being careful enough when hunting and therefore breaking tusks, either during the hunts or when separating the teeth from the walrus skull. “Nowadays new hunters are not taught as well and I see more harvested tusks that are chipped,” he says. “I see more mishandled tusks now than before.”
When I visit Kinneeveauk’s shop and studio again, he says walrus ivory has always had some marks and cracks in it from walruses using their tusks for foraging. The tusks, he says, tell a story of a walrus’s life. “Some walrus even hunt seals.” He shows me a tusk stained with what he says is seals’ blood. “This one was a seal hunter.”
While he feels cracks in ivory are not the fault of a new generation of walrus hunters, he does show me one tusk with a bullet hole where the impact shattered the ivory like a rock cracking a windshield. “This was the hunter’s first hunt,” he says. “I still bought the tusk from him. I can fashion it into earrings.”
When I ask Garlich-Miller about cracks in ivory, he offers yet a fourth explanation. “Female ivory grows more slowly and is denser as a result,” he says. Although adult male tusks are larger, the ivory often has linear cracks. “That’s why there was historically a premium on the market for female tusks.”
What I take away from this is that even as the threats of climate change rise, we don’t have all the insights yet about how wild animals are responding. Traditional ecological knowledge keepers might agree as much as some scientists: sometimes not at all.
For the time being, Pacific walrus are not protected under the Endangered Species Act, although the Fish and Wildlife Service did find that protection was warranted in 2011. While the population appears to be large and healthy at the present time, shrinking sea ice habitat is expected to cause the population to decline over time, Garlich-Miller says.
Even without that potential protection, Garlich-Miller continues working with the Eskimo Walrus Commission to minimize disturbances at terrestrial haul-outs. For example, they work with the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard to steer air and boat traffic away from haul-outs to reduce the potential for stampedes.
Seized walrus ivory held by Environment Canada officers. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak
Then there’s the threat from individuals, although it remains unquantified. “I don’t want to minimize the risk of poaching, as it can always spring up,” he says. “I also don’t know what’s happening in Russia.” He says some of his former colleagues who were monitoring the situation there are no longer in their positions, so information on what’s happening in Russia has grown scarce.
But poaching does seem to be occurring. Last year more than 400 walrus ivory tusks, presumably from populations in Russia, were seized in China in a shipment that also contained mammoth, narwhal and elephant ivory, antelope horn, and bear gallbladders and teeth.
Moving forward, Garlich-Miller notes that collaboration, monitoring and a commitment to following the law will help sustain both walrus and traditions. That’s where he focuses most of his efforts. “Today, I’m more of an outreach and people person,” he says. A walrus ambassador, I suggest.
If the Pacific walrus ever gains Endangered Species Act protection, exceptions will remain in place for Native subsistence hunters and artisans, just as they currently exist under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, says Andrea Medeiros, public affairs specialist with the Fish and Wildlife Service office in Alaska.
Even today most carvers already make sure to source their ivory responsibly and make a case against wanton waste. Saclamana, the carver from Nome, lists for me the many ways walrus bodies can be employed, including for food. “The stomach is used for drums, and I even use the whiskers in my carvings.” An Anchorage Museum exhibit expands on that, displaying information on how walrus intestines can be cooked or frozen to make everything from waterproof parkas to boat shells and spray skirts for kayaks.
Diversifying to other materials may also play a part in protecting both walruses and carvers. Saclamana says that as he gets older he finds himself tiring of hearing the sound of power tools while he carves. He’s applied for a grant to learn how to carve wood instead.
Kinneveuk, meanwhile, is starting a nonprofit, The Native Artist Alliance, which he says will ensure that his studio remains both safe and sober. “The space gets people off the streets,” says Kinneeveauk, who’s self-rehabilitated with the help of art. It will not, he adds, be exclusive to Alaska Native persons. “We already have two non-native artists, and as long as they don’t touch the ivory, they’re welcome here.”
Many of the experts I spoke with told me it’s important that Alaska Native artists and craftspeople not find themselves pitted against conservationists, and that there’s mutual respect for the common cause of protecting walrus and Inuit traditional food and culture into the future.
But that future for people, culture and walruses remains at risk as the climate continues to heat, a message visible in a short film called “The Walrus” that plays on a continuous loop at the Anchorage Museum.
Two women watch The Walrus in the Anchorage Museum. Photo: Katarzyna Nowak
In the film a hybrid walrus-man appears despondent — something’s lacking from his life. Land-enslaved, he repeats a dull routine while striving for self-recognition in his bathroom mirror. At last, the walrus-man steps onto a beach, looks nostalgically out at sea, and plunges in. Although he’s finally in the water, he’ll find there isn’t much ice left to tooth-walk on.
Author’s note: Since reporting for this story was conducted in Alaska, budget cuts made by the state governor resulted in the temporary closure of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, including its Silver Hand Program, which offered authentication for Native handicrafts. The Silver Hand seal was intended to show that materials were legally sourced and carved. It is unclear if this authentication program will persist.
Some people object to placing limitations on trade in threatened species, but new rules will benefit both the gecko and the countries in which it lives.
One of the most heavily trafficked animal species on the planet, the tokay gecko (Gekko gecko), got an important boost last month when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) agreed to regulate any future trade of this species.
CITES, a treaty signed by 183 member nations, aims to ensure that international trade in wild animals and plants doesn’t threaten their survival. In this case tokay geckos were included in what’s known as CITES Appendix II, which places controls on trade. The proposal to list the species came from India and the Philippines, two of the 15 countries where tokay geckos live in the wild. They were joined on the proposal by the European Union and the United States, acting mainly as importers of tokay geckos.
As we previously discussed, the Appendix II proposal stemmed from concerns that large-scale and almost completely unregulated trade in tokay geckos from South and Southeast Asia to East Asia would lead to a significant decline in wild populations. Already some countries have reported declines and localized extinctions, something this new regulation will hopefully help to stem or even reverse.
Appendix II: What Does This Mean?
Despite what’s claimed and even feared by some individuals and organizations, listing a species in Appendix II of CITES does not equate with a trade ban. Instead, species on Appendix II may be traded under a permitting system that allows for regulation and opportunities to track and analyze trends. This provides an early warning system if wild populations begin to decline further.
Appendix II is valuable because illegal trade in non-listed species is difficult, if not nearly impossible, to track. For one thing, the trade in plant and animal specimens is usually accepted at face value by consumer states, as there’s no easy mechanism to formally recognize whether a commodity was legally or illegally sourced without contacting the authorities or exporters in range states for each and every shipment. On top of that, some countries do not have legislation that allows for them to block any trade in illegally sourced species that aren’t already listed under CITES. With the CITES Appendix II permitting system such a mechanism is in place; if there’s no permit from the exporting country, the shipment should be deemed “not legal” and should not be allowed to continue. Simple.
And yet, there are still those who oppose listing species in Appendix II.
Obviously, some dealers and officials oppose a CITES-listing due to the increase in paperwork and administration. But the real concern is money. For financially motivated individuals not concerned with sustainable trade or the conservation of species, any limits are a frustration.
We’re already hearing some of these complaints from tokay gecko dealers and officials in range countries.
But there are obvious benefits, not just to wildlife but to officials and law enforcement.
Most notably, listing species in Appendix II helps source countries to enforce their own domestic legislation or ensure that traders abide by nationally set quotas.
For example, in India, tokay geckos are legally protected, and no export is allowed, but without a CITES listing it’s nearly impossible to enforce this national legislation once the animals have illegally left the country. Appendix II strengthens India’s internal laws.
Indonesia, another range country, does allow export of tokay geckos, but it has set a limit on the number of individuals that can be harvested and exported. Approved exporters are obliged to indicate on each export permit how much of their allotted quota remains. If quotas are exceeded, importing countries are beholden to inform Indonesia and assist in preventing the trade in the illegally-exported extra animals. In this case, Appendix II listing reinforces Indonesia’s existing quotas and will help to ensure that wild populations are not overexploited.
For those that want trade in tokay geckos to be sustainable — and thereby avoid the potential need for all-out trade bans — listing the species in Appendix II is key.
What Next?
The new CITES listing goes into force this December, after which all export of tokay geckos must be accompanied by a permit. Countries will report their annual quotas for the number of wild-caught specimens and all countries exporting, re-exporting and importing tokay geckos are obligated to provide annual reports to the CITES Secretariat.
As with all other CITES-listed species, these records are maintained in the CITES Trade Database, which is open for all to see and use. This important resource allows governments, conservationists and anyone else who’s interested to monitor trends and identify potential abuses. It also provides an early-warning system for population declines. The permitting system will allow countries to seize any tokay geckos in international trade that are not accompanied by a CITES Appendix II permit, in the process supporting source countries’ efforts to protect wild populations and regulate sustainable trade.
We applaud the CITES parties’ decision to include the tokay gecko in Appendix II, showing once again that the treaty deals with more than just well-known megafauna such as elephants, rhinos and tigers. In the coming years we’ll keep a close eye on the import and export of this species, and we eagerly await the first annual report to be submitted to CITES for hard data to help us with our analyses. In the long run, and possibly even sooner, we hope to see the current decline of wild tokay geckos begin to reverse itself and look forward to seeing the species’ presence in illegal trade also start to decline.
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.
It all boils down to diluted language that minimizes the perception of how we’re devastating our rivers and other bodies of water.
In the 1870s the colonizing American government rounded up “Indians” and put them in boarding schools and forced them to learn English. The American government knew one thing: If you take away a person’s language, you take away their culture and their soul. It’s the first and most important step of colonization and a necessary type of violent oppression. If you want to subdue people and landscapes and cultures, you must first describe and define them in the words of the oppressor and colonizer and teach them to use those words.
Environmentalists are losing the “water wars” because they have had their language stolen — they are taught to use the language of their oppressor, and they often repeat that story, and thereby oppression, constantly in their communications.
My first exposure to this problem was more than a decade ago when I was in a meeting with the head of a government organization that wanted (and actually still wants) to build a dam on the Cache la Poudre River in northern Colorado. I was complaining that the river was already being drained by dams and diversions, and he replied to me and said that what was actually happening was that “senior water-rights holders had ‘swept’ the river.”
My jaw dropped.
They weren’t “farmers” or “cities,” which are actual people who are harming the river — they were “senior water-rights holders.”
Turtle river watershed. Photo: Lance Cheung/USDA
They weren’t “draining the river.” They had “swept” it, as if the complete draining and destruction of the river made it cleaner.
And finally, it wasn’t even a “river.” It was just “water.”
Over the years I collected these words, metaphors and euphemisms because they’re repeated by the water agencies and establishment — I call them “water buffaloes” — and often by the environmental groups that work hand-in-hand with them. Here are just ten examples of a whole institutionalized and legalized system of linguistic and cultural oppression describing river destruction:
When farms and cities drain and destroy a river, the water buffaloes instead call it a “consumptive use.”
When environmentalists try to keep water in a river, it’s said to be a “non-consumptive use” rather than protecting a natural flowing river.
When one water-rights holder illegally takes another’s water, it’s said to be an “injury,” whereby the person is legally and financially injured, but not the river itself, which can be drained and destroyed.
When you drain water out of a river, your “water right” is said to be in “priority,” but the river itself usually has no right or priority at all.
When water is drained out of a river or trapped behind a dam, it’s called “storage” and likened to a “bank account.”
When water is purposely left in a river and flows in the actual riverbed, it’s said to be “delivered to the water-rights holders downstream,” or the riverbed is described as the “conveyance mechanism.”
When more water runs down the river than is minimally required by law, it’s called an “excess” or a “waste.”
The water buffaloes sometimes don’t call it a river, or even “water” — they call it “supplies.”
The water buffaloes also measure water in “acre-feet,” a phrase that describes draining water out of a river and placing it on land.
And finally, a big one: Believe it or not, when a “water right” is drained out of a river and trapped behind a dam, it is said to be legally “perfected.”
If you are a professional environmentalist and trained in water law or hydrology, you’re taught this language in college and law school. At work, you repeat it day after day in meetings, phone calls and emails. The water buffaloes like this because you use their language, and they invite you to their meetings and give you a seat at the table. At best, the language sanitizes the destruction of living rivers and entire nonhuman life forms. At worst, the language solidifies the systemic, institutionalized oppression of living rivers and the people who protect them, thereby stealing your culture and your values.
When Aldo Leopold paddled through the 2-million-acre wetland of the Colorado River Delta in 1922, he said the river was “everywhere and nowhere” and described it as a “milk and honey wilderness” full of “hundreds of lagoons” containing “deer, quail, raccoon, bobcat, jaguar and vast flocks of waterfowl.” Now the Colorado River Delta is almost 100 percent drained, and the small effort to restore it is often described with bland scientific terminology. The tiny amount of water that the United States and Mexico are allowing to be pumped into the “restoration zones” is measured in “acre-feet.”
Language is a tool of political manipulation — when you use and repeat your opponent’s language, you solidify their status and your own oppression.
Consider this mumbo-jumbo that you hear when talking to water agencies: “When a water right is in priority, you perfect it by sweeping the river so that excess supplies are held in storage for consumptive use.”
What really happened? They dammed, drained and destroyed a river, which is a living, breathing life force — the veins of the planet — providing survival to a vast array of nonhuman creatures that have entire cultures and languages of their own.
If they steal your language, they steal your soul. Don’t let them.
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.
The author and activist talks about climate hope, grief and her new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal .
This week millions of people from more than 150 countries are expected to take part in a global climate strike — an effort spurred by students who have been striking weekly to demand action on climate change.
In the United States, activists hope meaningful policy will follow protest. Naomi Klein’s book On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Dealmakes the case for one specific way forward — the proposed Green New Deal. It’s a plan to slash global emissions along with addressing other issues of economic, racial and gender justice.
“Young people around the world are cracking open the heart of the climate crisis, speaking of a deep longing for a future they thought they had but that is disappearing with each day that adults fail to act,” she writes in the book.
For years Klein — author of bestsellers such as The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything — has been sounding an alarm about the growing climate crisis, but also peeling the curtain back on the machinations of the powerful interests that are profiting from the fallout.
Her latest, a collection of essays and speeches spanning 10 years along with timely new material, provides a compelling look at how we got to where we are and where to go next. We spoke to Klein about why the Green New Deal is gaining momentum, why justice is at the core of climate action, and what’s at stake in the 2020 election.
Your book is a progression of your essays over the span of a decade. What did you notice in looking back over those years?
I found reasons for hope and there was also a lot of grief. We’ve lost a lot over a decade. This is really such a fast-moving crisis, even though it gets marketed as a slow-moving crisis.
Author Naomi Klein. (Photo by Kourosh Keshiri)
I don’t think we’re losing Arctic ice or Antarctic ice in a manner that is at all slow. I write in the book about my time at the Great Barrier Reef in the aftermath of the huge [coral reef] die-off there — it was incredibly rapid. [Today] the Amazon is in flames, as are so many tropical forests. These are the major features of our planet and they are rapidly changing.
It’s also enraging. At the presidential Democratic primary debates Joe Biden actually said that the reason [the Obama administration] didn’t take action when they were in office was because they didn’t know how bad things were. But they did know.
At the same time, I also feel a tremendous sense of excitement and hope. Here we are talking about an economy-wide transformation thanks to absolutely incredible grassroots organizing by groups like Sunrise and bold leadership from folks like [Representative] Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the Squad and [Senator] Ed Markey.
You write a lot in the book about intersectionality — why things like universal health care and economic justice issues need to be part of action on climate change — which is also a core part of the Green New Deal. Why is that important?
I think there are common-sense reasons and there are strategic reasons.
I was in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and it was obvious that the huge loss of life — studies put the number at around 3,000 or 5,000 — was not as a result of those ferocious winds and waves. People did die from those, but not by the thousands. They died in the thousands because the healthcare system had been systematically neglected, partially privatized, was so brittle and neglected that it was knocked out by the storm along with the electricity system that had also been so systematically neglected and prepared for privatization. And so that was what killed people.
To me the idea that health care is somehow an add-on to what a climate policy should be seems to come from folks who haven’t spent much time in real-world places that have been devastated by climate change-charged disasters.
But then there’s also the strategic reason, which is that we need to build a vision that people will fight for, that people will see benefits from in the here and now. One of the big problems with these kind of market-based responses such as a carbon tax, cap and trade or some rollout of renewables is that for a lot of working people struggling with economic insecurity, these policies have come to be equated with their electricity bill going up at the same time they’re watching the big polluters get completely off the hook.
And that’s why in France the slogan of the Yellow Vests [grassroots movement] was, “You care about the end of the world, we care about the end of the month.” I think the beauty of the intersectional vision of the Green New Deal that includes well-paying unionized jobs and the need for treating health care as a human right and child care as a human right, is that it doesn’t make people choose between the end of the month and the end of the world.
There have been a lot of ideas over the years about how we should tackle the climate crisis. Why is the Green New Deal getting so much support now?
A lot of different reasons. Some of it has to do with brilliant organizing and courageous leadership from the people already mentioned. And just the energy and the moral clarity of this young generation of climate activists who are really clear that they are fighting for survival. They’re fighting for their futures, and we’re just plain out of time, and they’re not interested in hearing speeches about how seriously politicians take climate change if they don’t actually have a plan that’s in line with the science to cut global emissions in half in the next 11 years.
I think that’s really changed the political landscape.
I think the other thing that’s made people so open to an approach like the Green New Deal — which brings together economic, racial and gender justice with the need to lower emissions very, very quickly — is a widespread sense that the system we have is failing people on multiple fronts.
If we’re going to transform our economy as the IPCC has told us we have to do, then why wouldn’t we transform it in a way that attempts to address and redress all of these other crises at the same time?
Because we can’t ask people to choose between existential crises. If your family is facing eviction, if you’re afraid your kids are going to get shot by police, these are existential crises for you and it doesn’t help to have environmentalists going, “Yeah, yeah, but we have an existential crisis that’s for the whole world.” It doesn’t matter for you. It’s all existential, right? So we need a plan that says you don’t have to choose.
This would obviously be a big economic and societal shift, and yet we have a president who can’t even stand to see light bulbs getting more efficient. It feels like we have a really long way to go in a very short amount of time. How do you reconcile that?
It feels that way because it’s true. I’m in no way sanguine about our chances. I think that our chances of pulling this off are slim. But there is a pathway. When I wrote This Changes Everything in 2014 there were no major politicians who had any chance of governing who understood the scale of change required.
And now we have candidates that are just trying to outdo each other for who is going to spend more trillions of dollars transforming the economy in the face of the climate crisis.
What’s the pathway that you see as we head into 2020?
The pathway for the United States is that you elect somebody to lead the Democratic Party and run against Donald Trump who puts a Green New Deal at the center of their platform. They win against Donald Trump with a clear democratic mandate to bring it in on day one. You try to get the Senate and hold onto the House of Representatives. Then roll momentum from the election into countering the backlash that will obviously come from the vested interests who will try to keep this from happening.
Like I said, I don’t think the chances of success are good, but to me, the stakes are so unimaginably high that if there’s any chance, then the only conversation that matters now is, how are we going to improve our chances? How are we going to build a more powerful coalition?
Right now I think it’s all about getting a candidate coming out of the primaries who understands the urgency, has a compelling, bold Green New Deal platform, and has a proven track record of taking on powerful vested interests. Because you can say you believe in this, but if you don’t have a track record of standing up to corporate power and in fact have the opposite, then you’re not a credible messenger. And there’s no reason to trust you, because this is going to be the political fight of our lives.
Will the Trump administration’s recent changes to the implementation of the Endangered Species Act complicate the delicate strategy of grizzly restoration in this remote Washington wilderness?
Jack Oelfke, chief of natural and cultural resources for North Cascades National Park, sits outside behind the park’s main visitor center and mulls the challenges of establishing a healthy grizzly bear population in northwest Washington.
Oelfke has been working on wilderness issues for decades, and grizzly reintroduction has been his primary focus the past five years. Issues as culturally complicated as grizzles, he says, aren’t solved by time and focus alone.
“Reintroduction might be easier with some species — none of them are easy — but with the grizzlies the potential threats are there,” Oelfke says. “But if we want to honor the ethic of the Endangered Species Act, we need to reintroduce the grizzly.”
Grizzlies were first protected by the Act in 1975 after being nearly wiped out from most of their range in the 19th century. At the time the largest — and still the best-known — grizzly population in the contiguous United States lived in Yellowstone National Park. But small populations also persisted in four other areas along the Canadian border, including the North Cascades, which in 1991 was declared a suitable space to further grow and restore the species’ population. The remote, 9,800-square-mile ecosystem, a combination of glacier-cut peaks and thick virgin forests, is located under three hours’ drive from Seattle but remains relatively undisturbed.
Mount Shuksan and Picture Lake at North Cascades National Park and Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Photo: Jeff Hollett (public domain)
Reestablishing the species here hasn’t moved forward much in the past three decades. Biologists estimate that fewer than ten grizzlies roam the region, just a fraction of the 200 bears that would constitute a biologically restored, genetically healthy population.
But efforts to boost those numbers continue — albeit in a halting manner. After years of development, a plan to bring more grizzlies to the North Cascades was opened for public comment period in 2017. Under the plan reintroduction could take one of four forms: no action; ecosystem evaluation restoration (two years of capturing, transporting and releasing bears into the North Cascades complex); incremental restoration (moving more bears to the area more slowly); or expedited restoration (restoring the population every summer and fall until the goal of 200 bears is reached). The comment period closed ahead of schedule but it was recently re-opened again, with submissions due in October 2019.
Then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announces support of Grizzly Bear Restoration efforts in the North Cascades Ecosystem, March 23, 2018 (public domain)
First, the Trump administration has redefined how the Act will respond to conditions that species may face in the “foreseeable future,” making it harder to protect them from threats related to climate change. Second, it has added a requirement for considering the economic impact of reintroducing endangered or threatened species.
Despite the potential political pitfalls, Oelfke says he’s bullish about the future for grizzlies in the Cascades because of their remarkable adaptability and diverse diet.
“If you look at the historic range of grizzly bears, it goes far south well into Mexico and well into the Great Plains,” he says. He adds that the bears’ adaptability means grizzlies in the Cascades should do fairly well under current climate change scenarios, unlike some other species in the region that depend upon specific habitat conditions — snow-dependent wolverines, for example, which need around ten feet of snow to build their dens. Climate change models vary, as does the perception of how climate change will threaten grizzlies in the region, but what remains fixed is the ecosystem requirements for grizzlies — for all species, really — to have a large and diverse genetic pool.
As far as interpreting the economic impacts of grizzlies, Oelfke says it’s more about familiar battles of the past than about the future of climate change.
“Those who have expressed concern about this reintroduction are the cattle and sheep industry, because they fear loss of livestock,” he says. “Around the ecosystems where grizzlies exist, such as Yellowstone, there is some livestock depredation. But I would argue it’s quite small.”
The sprawling orchard industry on the southeastern boundary of the ecosystem has also expressed worries about Ursus arctos horribilis roaming near their apples, peaches and cherries, but Oelfke notes that many of these sites already use electric fencing to successfully thwart the black bears that also live in the region.
Although the federal government seems intent on putting a price tag on grizzlies, the economic value of a native species might actually run somewhere between priceless and infinite due to the ecosystem services the bears would provide. For example, grizzly droppings disperse seeds as the animals roam throughout the forest, a process that also helps fertilize the ground with rich nutrients from salmon.
North Cascades National Park. Photo: Jeff Gunn (CC BY 2.0)
Oelfke, who worked in the backcountry of Glacier National Park for ten years, says he used to see the influence of grizzlies “all the time. They’d churn up the ground, like rototilling gardens of subalpine meadow, which has very positive effects on the ecosystem.”
The efforts in North Cascades draw on years of experience restoring grizzlies in other parts of the country such as the Cabinet-Yaak area of Montana, where Jessie Grossman says she’s seen firsthand how the Endangered Species Act has helped to protect the species.
Grizzlies were almost extinct within the Cabinet-Yaak recovery zone 30 years ago. “They were in single digits,” says Grossman, project coordinator for the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative, an organization that seeks to establish habitat connectivity between the United States and Canada. “They could have been extinct in this part of the world without the Endangered Species Act. The way it was written has done a lot of good.” Like the North Cascades, Cabinet-Yaak is still an active grizzly recovery area, with only about 50 bears.
The Trump administration’s changes to the Endangered Species Act could put that fragile recovery and others like it at risk.
“The Act is really important to conservation successes,” she says. “It allowed not only reintroduction but recovery of a lot of species. Any erosion of that Act is an erosion of a potential to protect or recover an important species.”
Grossman says she knows not everyone shares her personal affinity for grizzlies, but she sees them as a charismatic species that’s emblematic of an overall healthy ecosystem.
“Working on grizzlies is a way to have a tangible goal towards an intact, resilient ecosystem,” she says. “Connected landscapes are more resilient to climate change, and the species that are more genetically diverse within that connected landscape are more resilient.”
Back at the North Cascades Visitor Center, I see park ranger Marissa Bluestein wrapping up a demonstration discussing how climate change has already affected the wolverine population in the park. Even if grizzlies are more adaptable than other species to climate change, the overall ecosystem is not. She crystalized the crisis in one question:
The most widely used class of insecticides is dangerous for much more than its intended target, new research finds.
Scientists are warning about a second Silent Spring after a new study found that U.S. agriculture is 48 times more toxic to insects than it was 20 years ago.
A peer-reviewed study published in the journal PLOS One found that 92 percent of that toxic load can be attributed to neonicotinoids — the most widely used class of insecticides.
Neonics, as they are commonly called, are 1,000 times more toxic to bees than DDT, the infamous pesticide exposed by Rachel Carson’s work in the 1960s, says Dr. Kendra Klein, a report co-author and senior scientist at Friends of the Earth.
A big reason that neonics are so dangerous is that they persist in the environment — sometimes lasting up to 1,000 days. They remain in the soil and can be taken up by other plants. They’re also water soluble, so they wash into rivers, streams and wetlands. Their toxicity can build up in the environment and cascade from soil to plants, insects to birds.
Neonics first hit the agriculture market in the 1990s and are mostly applied as a coating on seeds. They’re used on 140 different crops but most prevalently on corn and soybeans.
“Farmers have a great deal of trouble finding uncoated seeds because these [pesticide] companies also dominate the seed market,” says Klein.
This is not the first study to raise concern about neonics. Based on earlier warnings, the European Union banned their use in outdoor agriculture last year. Similar efforts have been initiated in the United States but haven’t gained much traction so far. One bill, the Saving America’s Pollinators Act, which would suspend the use of neonics and establish a review process for other pesticides that could harm pollinators, has yet to make it out of committee in the House of Representatives, where it was introduced.
“Pesticide companies have a great deal of power in Washington, D.C.,” says Klein.
Other recent research on the plight of insects has been grim. A study published in April in Biological Conservation warned that 40 percent of the world’s insect species are facing extinction in the next few decades.
That’s bad news not just for insects but for the rest of us, too.
“Insects are the basis of the food webs that sustain all life on Earth,” says Klein. “Without insects we would have ecosystem collapse.”
