New books this month also examine environmental racism, wildlife coexistence and the history lessons of acid rain.
Summer is officially upon us, which means it’s time to pick the season’s best beach reads. And there’s no rule that says beach reads have to be frothy and lightweight. Why not choose compelling and informative instead? We’ve picked the best new environmentally themed books coming out this July, with titles covering everything from insects and salmon to climate change and plastic pollution. There are even a few eco-poetry collections for those of you who’d like a little art with your inspiration.
Our full list — an amazing 13 titles — appears below. Links are to publishers’ websites, but you can also buy many of these titles at your favorite bookstore. We hope you find one near a beach.
Wildlife & Conservation:
Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson — An ecologist provides an entertaining look at “the little creatures that make the world go round,” something that’s severely needed in this era of worryingly dangerous insect declines.
Stronghold: One Man’s Quest to Save the World’s Wild Salmon by Tucker Malarkey — The true and inspirational story of Guido Rahr, who fought everyone from fossil fuel developers to Russian oligarchs to help save Pacific salmon from extinction.
Humans and Lions: Conflict, Conservation and Coexistence by Keith Somerville — Cecil the lion wasn’t an isolated occurrence. Humans and lions have been living together (and clashing) for millennia, and the existence of these two species will forever be intertwined — unless lions get crowded off the planet. Somerville looks at history and the state of Africa today to explore how they can be saved from extinction.
In Oceans Deep: Courage, Innovation and Adventure Beneath the Waves by Bill Streever — A vivid portrait of the pioneering explorers and scientists who broadened our understanding of the oceans’ depths. Along the way, the book also shows how humans threaten these remote and important parts of the world.
Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution by Rachel Emma Rothschild — You know, it almost feels quaint to be talking about acid rain these days, but sometimes you need to pay attention to history in order to better understand the present. Rothschild looks at the history of acid rain to explore what happened, how countries fought about it, how scientists led the charge against it, and how all of that offers lessons for the modern world of climate change. Essential reading, and not quaint at all.
How to Give Up Plastic: A Guide to Changing the World, One Plastic Bottle at a Time by Will McCallum — Do you know how to capture the microfiber plastic particles your clothes shed in the washing machine and stop them from ending up in the ocean? If not, this book offers info on how to do just that — and plenty of other tips for leading a plastic-free life.
Every Breath You Take: A User’s Guide to the Atmosphere by Mark Broomfield — Why read a romance or thriller that will leave you breathless when you could learn more about what you’re actually breathing? And how to improve air quality?
Purrmaids: Quest for Clean Water by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen — An ecological fable about cleaning up the ocean, for the kids in the audience. (But seriously, someone explain that mermaid cat to me.)
One Less River by Terry Blackhawk — A poetry collection about the Detroit River and its surroundings, written by an award-winning educator and activist.
The USDA’s Wildlife Services program slaughters millions of wild animals every year — including endangered species. It doesn’t have to.
The U.S. government has the blood of many millions of wild creatures on its hands.
Every year a little-known program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, known as Wildlife Services, kills an astonishing number of animals. Last year it slaughtered 1.5 million native wild creatures and 1.1 million invasive animals — everything from armadillos to hawks to wolves. This follows 2.3 million animals killed in 2017, 2.7 million in 2016, and tens of millions more in the years prior.
Why is the federal government in the animal-killing business? These deaths illustrate a longstanding choice to provide a protective stance for agriculture and aquaculture at the expense of wild creatures.
In the process Wildlife Services agents kill animals from hundreds of ecologically important native species, using a variety of cruel methods, including poisoning, shooting with firearms and bolt guns, snapping necks, lethally trapping with neck snares and leg-hold traps, and euthanizing with drugs.
Firearms are one of Wildlife Services’ favorite execution tools. In 2018 the program shot about 291,500 wild animals using a mix of shotguns, rifles and handguns. And the program is open, and perhaps even proud, about its prodigious use of weaponry. “Each year, Wildlife Services employees fire tens of thousands of rounds while conducting wildlife damage management activities,” the program stated in an internal firearms Safety Review document in 2008. “Other than the military, this is more than any other state or federal organization, including law enforcement agencies.”
A few years ago I met a Wildlife Services officer in the Midwest who bragged about the size of the feral hogs he’d recently shot. “They were big!” he exclaimed, showing me smartphone photos depicting him along with a series of large, dead pigs. Feral hogs really do damage crops, and can injure livestock and native wildlife. But there’s a difference between killing an invasive species to prevent it from damaging an ecosystem and turning that animal’s death into a glorified first-person shooter.
The U.S. government considers any animal that preys on livestock or destroys crops a nuisance that needs “controlling.” This includes native species, particularly predators, like bears, cougars, coyotes and foxes, as well as crop- and fish-eating birds — despite the fact science shows that killing predators contributes to an increase in livestock deaths.
The USDA created what would become the present-day Wildlife Services in 1885. It began as a wildlife research unit but would eventually develop into a task force to kill or disperse wild creatures in order to aid agriculture, and it’s kept up on doing just that ever since. Last year Wildlife Services slaughtered 515,935 red-winged blackbirds because they like to snack on farmers’ grain crops; 10,203 cormorants because they hover around fish farms; as well as 68,292 coyotes, 361 black bears and 384 cougars because they sometimes attack livestock.
Understanding the plight of America’s native species — particularly wolves — allows us to better grasp the U.S. government’s priorities. Last year Wildlife Services killed 357 gray wolves for killing (or being suspected of killing) ranchers’ livestock, and to boost elk numbers for hunting. Today gray wolves occupy less than 20 percent of their historic range across two-thirds of the lower 48 U.S. states. Meanwhile pastureland, especially occupied by cattle, and cropland used to grow their food take up more than 41 percent of all land in the lower 48. The federal government is now deciding whether or not gray wolves need continued endangered species status in the lower 48, despite contradictory efforts of both recovering and exterminating wolves since they were put on the endangered species list in 1978.
That’s bad enough, but to truly understand the effect of these wildlife-killing policies, it’s important to look at another predator, one they nearly drove into extinction: the gray wolf’s southern cousin, the critically endangered Mexican gray wolf.
In June 2016 I hiked with a guide across two significant parts of Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico: Black Canyon, where a severely overgrazed landscape was recovering two decades after prohibiting cattle from entering; and Rainy Mesa, where wolves from the Prieto Pack have been targeted for removal after a string of cattle kills.
My companion, whose identify I cannot reveal, had tipped me off about how the government was failing to replenish the population of the Mexican gray wolf, which once roamed the Southwest by the thousands but was killed off in the wild during the Twentieth Century by disgruntled ranchers and well-armed government officials, who engaged in an eradication campaign at the request of the livestock industry. By the 1940s, the subspecies had been wiped out in the United States, and only a few remained across the border in Mexico. In 1976 the wolves were added to the endangered species list and soon after the last seven remaining animals were brought into captivity in a last-ditch attempt to save them.
The government started reintroducing healthy captive-bred individuals to the wild in 1998, but my guide claimed the effort had been slowed due to western states’ political disagreements over releasing more wolves near livestock grazing on some of the most remote and least developed lands in the lower 48. It was hampered further, he said, by continued illegal wolf killings — which rarely end up with any convictions — and also at the hands of officials, who have historically resorted to killing predators when livestock owners complain about them.
A critically endangered Mexican gray wolf. Photo: Larry Lamsa (CC BY 2.0)
The effects of that government-sponsored predator killing were evident wherever we walked in Gila. Over the course of our two day-long hikes crossing wide-open forest, we didn’t find a single one of the 114-or-so Mexican gray wolves living on U.S. soil at that time. Nor were there signs of the other predator species that live in the area, including bears, bobcats, cougars and coyotes. Instead, we came across dozens and dozens of free-grazing ear-tagged domestic cows and steers, owned by ranchers who had been granted rights to let their animals feed in the Gila.
Cattle grazing. Photo: Gila National Forest
Gila is not alone, but it’s typical. The U.S. government, driven by profits from grazing permits and beef exports, prioritizes cattle ranchers over preserving endangered wolves across this part of the American West. The result is a landscape transformed by overgrazing of cattle and a severe depletion of a whole mix of important predators. Instead of pure wilderness, I noticed a serious loss of large trees and high grasses, parched soils packed down by hooves, trampled, dewatered streams, and a seriously diminished level of biodiversity. At times, it felt like we were on a farm, not a national forest.
The story of the Mexican gray wolf is even more complex than its more northerly cousin. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began releasing captive-bred Mexican gray wolves in Arizona and New Mexico in 1998 after years of planning on how best to reintroduce the species to parts of its original range. USDA Wildlife Services also participated in the recovery effort by trapping, relocating and radio-collaring individual wolves.
But it seems that Wildlife Services’ involvement is grounded in serving livestock interests — not the recovery of a wolf species the government’s earlier actions helped push to extinction. Since the reintroduction program began in 1998, Wildlife Services officials have been given orders by Fish and Wildlife to shoot 13 of these endangered wolves, while FWS shot another wolf directly, and a Wildlife Services official killed another without authorization after mistaking the wolf for a coyote. The most recent of which was gunned down in 2017, after the government found cattle that appeared to have been attacked by four-legged predators —although some investigations have shown Mexican gray wolves don’t always attack, and in fact often appear to scavenge on cattle that die from other causes.
This March federal trappers captured two wolves thought to be behind attacks on a dozen cattle grazing in Gila National Forest — the wolves’ natural habitat — during the winter months. They currently wait in captivity, as their fate, and that of a third wolf suspected of killing cattle, is decided by Fish and Wildlife and Wildlife Services officials. Killing the wolves is not off the table.
How can the Mexican gray wolf ever recover if the U.S. government agencies tasked with ensuring its survival continue to gun it down to protect the interests of livestock operators?
This government-driven loss of biodiversity, and its consequent destruction of the environment, occurs far beyond the Gila. In fact it happens all across the country, every day.
It shouldn’t be this way.
Healthy ecosystems depend on a rich mixture of native species, including predators. The U.S. government’s priorities evidently do not lie in long-term preservation of the planet and the species it supports — like humans.
Instead the government does all it can to safeguard the profitability of an economic industry that produces profits for itself and big companies, at the expense of all other life. The nation raises the world’s most cattle, and records show the country exported 1.35 million metric tons of processed beef at a profit of $8.3 billion last year. This despite the urgent advice of scientists for people to stop consuming so much animal protein in order to keep our home, planet Earth, livable for humans for as long as possible.
“The agricultural human’s pull historically has been toward the monoculture of annuals,” Wes Jackson, cofounder of agriculture research organization Land Institute, writes in his book New Roots for Agriculture. “Nature’s pull is toward a polyculture of perennials.”
Efforts to reforest agricultural land and small-scale polyculture farming to help agriculture better mirror the natural state of the planet are cropping up across parts of Europe. More natural agriculture operations are not only kinder to wildlife but are driven by a scientific understanding that smaller-scale, more natural agriculture are more sustainable and slow humanity’s drive of wild species toward extinction.
That’s not evident very often in this country. At one point on Rainy Mesa, my companion pulled me behind a scrubby bush and sharply whispered, “Get down!” as we approached the outskirts of a private ranch abutting the public forest. The loud rumble of a single-engine plane suddenly exploded overhead. I snuck a glance toward the sky and saw a yellow plane, a Wildlife Services plane, patrolling the ranch’s border, probably for coyotes — which they shoot from the sky by the thousands each year in New Mexico. As I lay belly-down on the dusty, dry earth waiting for the plane to fly off, a friendly cow approached and flicked her floppy black ears at me.
I found nary a trace of a wolf, nor a bear, nor a bobcat, nor a cougar, nor a coyote. What were plentiful were cattle, roaming a section of highly degraded landscape that had lost the wildness and vitality for which the Gila is known. Before long, when these cows and steers would reach maturity, they’d be brought to slaughter, calves put in their place. And that process would repeat itself over and over again.
Wildlife Services also runs the National Wildlife Research Center, which it touts as an effort to use the best available science to help humans and nonhumans coexist, and to boost biodiversity. However the program does not follow the advice of independent scientists who have made it clear that nonlethal means of predator deterrence are much more effective in preventing livestock deaths than are lethal means of predator control. Instead of sticking with the best scientific advice, like it says it does, Wildlife Services continues to practice cruel, centuries-past wildlife eradication techniques, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It’s long past time for USDA’s most notorious program to update its practices to step into line with modern science.
Who’s the nuisance to whom? In killing off ecologically important nonhuman animals, Wildlife Services contributes significantly to an extreme loss of biodiversity, wildlife cruelty, and ultimately, Big Ag’s takeover of wild places across the nation. The program’s practices, goals and existence are extremely problematic, especially in a world where we face rapidly diminishing biodiversity. Ethically and ecologically, the U.S. government — and all of us — must rethink our relationship to wild beings and wild places, or we risk accelerating the loss of our nonhuman kin.
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.
Many of the gray whales found dead this year have suffered from malnutrition. Researchers are rushing to find the cause.
Most years the annual gray whale migration along North America’s West Coast is a sure sign of spring. But this year something has gone wrong. Since January at least 167 dead whales have washed ashore from Mexico to Alaska. Scientists expect more in the weeks ahead.
One of the dead whales came to rest at the mouth of a river near my home. This was in May, in south-central Alaska. On a sunny evening my wife and I and our four-year-old daughter went out to see it.
Photo: Tim Lydon
A dead whale has a powerful stink to it, so we approached from the massive animal’s upwind side. It lay on its side in the sun, eyes closed and flukes resting flat on the silty beach. With ravens squawking from nearby cottonwoods and a bald eagle looking on from a riverside snag, we showed our daughter its blowhole, flippers, and the feathery baleen visible along the edges of its open mouth.
With the whale visible from a busy nearby road, a mix of residents and tourists came and went during our hour-long visit. Most stayed just long enough to snap a few photos. But others lingered to peer at the animal’s features or the square incisions biologists had made during their necropsy.
Scenes like this have unfolded up and down the West Coast in recent months. From Baja, Mexico, to Puget Sound to the remote shores of British Columbia, curious humans have strolled out to the continent’s edge to marvel at dead whales. Many brought their children. Some left behind flowers. And nearly everyone asked the same question my young daughter asked: “Why did the whale die?”
Why, indeed? We weren’t the only ones asking. Just a week earlier, the sudden spike led federal scientists to declare an “unusual mortality event,” triggering a special investigation.
Steven Swartz/NOAA
Teasing out a common cause amidst all of these widely dispersed deaths can be daunting. Gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) have one of the longest migrations of any mammal, spanning 5,000 miles between Mexico’s Baja Peninsula and northern Alaska. This year’s dead whales have been found along nearly the whole length of their migratory route. At least 37 washed ashore in California, including twelve in San Francisco Bay. Thirty have been found in Washington. During the week of June 17 three whales discovered in Alaska brought that state’s total to ten.
Scientists say the whales on shore represent only a small portion of those that have died.
“It’s a rough calculation, but only about 10 percent of the mortalities are documented,” says John Calambokidis, a research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Washington. The remaining 90 percent, he says, either “sink, float out to sea, or otherwise go undocumented.” That means the death toll so far this year could actually be more than 1,000 individuals.
And we’re probably not done yet. Scientists expect more whales will wash ashore in the coming weeks as they continue north toward the Arctic, where they normally spend summers feasting in the rich waters of the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
Seeking Answers
Dave Weller, a research wildlife biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in La Jolla, California, says the investigation begins with examining as many of the dead whales as possible before they begin decomposing.
“If we can access a dead whale in time, we can look for evidence of disease, viruses, malnutrition, or human causes such as collisions with ships,” he says.
Scientists along the West Coast have been busy performing necropsies on the dead whales, as described in a recent video from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. They measure the body, identify the sex, and take samples of the organs, blubber and feces. Each sample is a puzzle piece, helping assemble a picture of what’s occurring along the migration route.
Weller says many of the whales show signs of malnourishment. Examinations of a female gray whale found north of Seattle in early May revealed that she had starved to death. Another dead whale in Washington had eel grass in its stomach, evidence of “desperation eating,” according to one observer.
Gray whale and calf. Steven Swartz/NOAA
So far no results have been released for the gray whale I visited near my home in Alaska.
It’s not just the dead. Observers have also reported many “extremely malnourished” gray whales swimming off the West Coast this year, according to Calambokidis. Some have detoured into inland waters such as Los Angeles Harbor or San Francisco Bay, where several have been struck and killed by vessels.
Malnourishment makes scientists look north for answers. Gray whales do almost all of their feeding in Alaska, primarily by scooping tiny shrimp-like crustaceans called amphipods from muddy sediments on the ocean floor. They then rely on the fat reserves gained in Alaskan waters to survive their southward migration and the winter mating and breeding season in Mexico.
In one theory, malnourished whales may indicate the animals have reached the natural population level for their Arctic food supply. Population surveys show a steady increase in recent decades, with estimates now at 27,000 animals. It’s a successful recovery from the early 20th century, when commercial whaling reduced numbers to less than 2,000. Some researchers speculate that this year’s mortalities simply reflect the population has outpaced its Arctic food supply, leaving some whales without the reserves needed to return to Alaska.
Another theory is that dramatic warming in the Arctic in recent years has affected the gray whales’ food source. Since 2014 sustained heating in the Bering Sea has triggered an unprecedented loss of sea ice, which may have decreased the productivity of amphipods.
It’s also possible the two theories could be working in concert with each other. When a population reaches its carrying capacity, Calambokidis explains, it can become more vulnerable to environmental fluctuations such as the sudden loss of Bering Sea ice.
If rapidly changing Arctic conditions do play a role, this year’s gray whale deaths will join a growing list of wildlife mortality events connected to warming in the north. They include a massive collapse of West Coast sea star populations, a dramatic decrease in Alaskan cod harvests, and the starvation of thousands of puffins and murres in Alaska, all related to an extreme marine heat wave that began in 2013 in the northern Gulf of Alaska and lasted more than two years. Federal scientists also suspect warming contributed to unusually high mortality among fin and humpback whales in northern waters between 2015 and 2016.
Adding to questions about food web conditions in the Arctic, scores of dead ice seals have washed ashore in recent weeks in northern and western Alaska. Federal scientists have not identified a cause, but a NOAA spokesperson said reports indicate possible malnourishment or abnormal molting among some of the seals.
Bearded seal. Photo: NOAA News
It’s worth noting that this year’s gray whale deaths are unusual but not unprecedented. In 2000, 131 dead gray whales washed ashore on the U.S. coast during spring migration. Scientists did not conclusively determine the cause, but at least some of the whales were malnourished. Warming from a strong El Niño weather pattern was identified as a possible factor.
While scientists seek answers to the current mass mortality, the gray whale I visited with my family a few weeks ago remains stranded at the mouth of the river. Like the ones found on shores in other states, scientists may let it decompose naturally, a process that could take all summer for this 41-foot-long male.
Before his death this whale likely spent his final months swimming north toward the promise of his Bering Sea feeding grounds. What conditions he would have found there, and how they may affect other arriving whales, for now remains a mystery.
Author John Temple takes a deep dive into the world of range wars and ‘patriot’ militia groups in the West, including the infamous Bundy clan.
When armed militants with a grudge against the federal government seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon back in the winter of 2016, I remember avoiding the news coverage. Part of me wanted to know what was happening, but each report I read — as the occupation stretched from days to weeks and the destruction grew — made me so angry it was hard to keep reading.
I wanted to see what I’d missed. And I wanted to understand the extremist ideologies that continue to dominate many discussions in the American West.
Temple, an author and journalism professor at West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media, provides a page-turning account of both the 2014 standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, that launched scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy and his family into the national spotlight and the 2016 occupation of Malheur, led by Bundy’s sons Ammon and Ryan.
“It’s obviously an exciting story with cowboys and guns and takeovers and standoffs,” Temple tells me about the book. “But it sheds light on public lands issues, environmental issues, on questions about how the government should handle these situations and the urban-rural divide in this country.”
The book also delves into the history of the Sagebrush Rebellion, a western U.S. movement against federal ownership of public lands that ignited in the late 1970s and has continued to smolder in the decades since.
The Bundys, who still subscribe to this line of thinking, refused to recognize the Bureau of Land Management’s authority over the public land where they graze their cattle (or the federal government in general). That ultimately led — after 20 years of federal agencies looking the other way — to an armed standoff in which the FBI attempted to seize the rancher’s cattle after years of unpaid grazing fees and mounting fines.
Spoiler alert: It didn’t end well for the government.
Temple then chronicles the play’s second act, during which the Bundy sons engineered the takeover of the federally run Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for more than a month. The pretense was defending local Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were sentenced to jail for federal land arson, but who actually eschewed the Bundys’ help. The occupation turned out to be more of a publicity stunt than anything — one that ended in spectacular failure (although the Bundys insist it was a success). In the process they also trashed the refuge headquarters and racked up a $9 million tab for taxpayers.
While Up in Arms gives a detailed view of the ideology that motivates the Bundys, the story is much bigger than them. It’s also an exploration of the motivations of some of the most hardline anti-federal militants in the country — not just the Bundys, but the ragbag collection of so-called Patriot movement followers that flocked to their ranch, even when most of them lacked understanding of public-lands issues and the cause they were backing.
In fact, Temple says, he first came to the story of the Bundys researching an unrelated project about militias. As a result there’s not much in the book about the underlying environmental issues at the heart of the Bundy actions, including the impact of renegade ranching on public lands.
But Temple writes about the personal histories of many of the supporters who turned up for the initial showdown in Bunkerville and others who joined the occupation at Malheur. He reveals the power dynamics among different Patriot militia groups as they jockeyed for media attention and acolytes.
While the Bundys honed their talking points in scores of interviews about their anti-government rhetoric and their calling from God to act on it, Temple says that most of the other Bundy supporters didn’t have much political inspiration or well-formed ideologies.
“I think some of these folks were motivated on a very personal level where they have trouble with authority and that kind of thing,” he says. “Every individual seemed to have a different set of grievances or issues that were driving them, but it coalesced around a few things: Distrust of the federal government and the feeling that the federal government was overreaching in its authority, and the Second Amendment.”
What could go wrong?
As Temple writes, a lot went wrong on both sides of the confrontation between the government and the militias. This was on full view when the Bundys and their compatriots eventually faced their day in court.
If you’ve ever wondered, as I did, how the leaders of an armed insurrection that occupied federal property, degraded public lands, and terrorized government workers escaped punishment, it’s explained here in great detail. Temple writes about not just the court proceedings that followed the standoffs but the main players on the federal government’s team, including FBI leadership involved in Bunkerville. A series of bumbles and missteps ultimately led to the prosecution’s ultimate failure.
There’s no happy ending, unless you believe divine providence is shining down on the Bundy clan. But Temple’s book paints a useful picture of the simmering, ongoing range war in the West and the havoc an unlikely alliance of right-wing groups can wreak when they converge.
That’s the most sobering part of the book: It’s likely a preview of things to come.
A range of new tactics aim to curb cigarette butt pollution, including groundbreaking legislation that could hold tobacco companies accountable for their products’ waste.
By now it’s no secret that plastic waste in our oceans is a global epidemic. When some of it washes ashore — plastic bottles, plastic bags, food wrappers — we get a stark reminder. And lately one part of this problem has been most glaring to volunteers who comb beaches picking up trash: cigarette butts.
Last year the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy reported that cigarette butts, which contain plastic and toxic chemicals, were the most-littered item at their global beach cleanups.
Trillions of butts are tossed each year. So what’s being done about it?
Cigarette butts collected at a beach clean up. (Photo by Surfrider Foundation)
Environmental advocacy groups have spurred increased public education about the environmental impacts and pushed for the installation of more bins to safely dispose of butts. Some cities have put restrictions on where people can smoke or instituted additional fees on cigarettes to fund clean-up costs. Butt pollution continues.
Now legislators are trying a different approach — producer responsibility. New legislation in several states, including a bill in California to ban products with single-use filters, could force cigarette manufacturers to take responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products.
Information and Infrastructure
It’s not news to California volunteers at Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit helping to protect oceans and beaches, that cigarette butts are the most-littered item in the world. They knew two decades ago, when the organization’s San Diego chapter started a Hold Onto Your Butt campaign to educate the public about cigarette butt pollution after finding scores on local beaches.
The campaign, which has since spread to other localities on the East and West coasts, has created PSAs, posters and videos to educate people about the environmental impacts of cigarette-butt litter. The biggest problem is the filters, most of which are made of cellulose acetate, a kind of plastic. That means the filters don’t readily biodegrade, although they do break down — and send thousands of tiny plastic fibers into the environment, waterways and wildlife. Along with the fibers come chemicals like arsenic, benzene and lead.
“They can trap toxins and pass that onto the aquatic environment,” says Bill Hickman, the Southern California regional manager for Surfrider. Studies have shown that these chemicals can be toxic to fish.
Along with public education, Surfrider’s campaign has also helped cities install hundreds of new receptacles in high-volume areas like outside bars or near beach walkways, to make safely disposing of butts easier.
Surfrider volunteers have helped install hundreds of bins to keep cigarette butts off city streets. (Photo by Surfrider Foundation)
Surfrider’s San Francisco chapter, for example, has installed 100 cans in select neighborhoods in the city. “In the areas where we’re installing the cans and educating people to use them, we see reductions in cigarette litter of more than 60 percent,” says Shelly Ericksen, a Surfrider volunteer who’s leading the effort in San Francisco. Since indoor smoking bans have pushed smokers outdoors, they need better infrastructure to collect the waste and keep butts off the street, she says.
The campaign sends much of the collected waste to TerraCycle, a company that is able to recycle the butts, turning the plastic into industrial-grade products like plastic pallets. Vancouver, where people litter a million cigarette butts a day, was the first city to pioneer this partnership with TerraCycle, installing 110 cigarette butt recycling bins in its downtown area in 2013.
Mike Roylos, a former café owner from Portland, Maine, has also partnered with the company. In 2013 he launched Sidewalk Buttler to manufacture aluminum containers to collect butts for recycling and track waste collection. His bins are now in 49 states, and he says they’ve kept 1.2 million butts off the streets.
“Cigarette butt litter is the last socially acceptable form of litter and we’re trying to change that mentality,” he says. “It’s all about clean water — cigarette butts that get tossed on the ground will sooner or later make their way to water, whether the chemicals are released when it rains or it ends up down the sewer and washed out into rivers and lakes.”
Collection efforts like these help keep more butts off the streets, but they’re still a long way from stemming the tide.
Some cities in California have tried a different tactic: instituting smoking bans at beaches and parks. Assembly Bill 1718, introduced in the California Assembly and now in the state’s Senate, would make that a statewide law.
Beverly Hills took things a step farther in June, passing the most restrictive tobacco law in the country, outlawing the sale of cigarettes, chewing tobacco and e-cigarettes in gas stations and convenience stores.
But it may not be enough to make a difference if it can’t be enforced.
Hickman lives in Ventura, one of the cities that’s already enacted a ban at beaches and parks, and he says the rule is rarely enforced and discarded butts still abound.
Despite local bans and clean-up efforts, Hickman says, “We’re still finding huge amounts of cigarette butts.”
That’s why Surfrider is backing another piece of California legislation — one that tackles producer responsibility. California’s S.B. 424 would ban any tobacco products with single-use filters and require that manufacturers of products like vaporizers and e-cigarettes ensure that they can be recycled or properly disposed of through take-back programs. Hickman says the bill would be “monumental in the fight against cigarette butt pollution.”
It would be the most sweeping statewide restriction on tobacco in the United States and effectively ban cigarettes as they are currently made and packaged now, since virtually all have filters — which don’t provide the benefits most smokers think they do.
Smoke Screen
The tobacco industry has pushed filters as a health improvement in cigarettes, but studies are finding the opposite.
“Evidence suggests that ventilated filters may have contributed to higher risks of lung cancer by enabling smokers to inhale more vigorously, thereby drawing carcinogens contained in cigarette smoke more deeply into lung tissue,” according to a report from the office of the Surgeon General issued in 2014.
Today virtually all factory-made cigarettes sold contain filters. The industry started using them — and advertising their supposed benefits — in the 1950s after published studies began to reveal the health threats from tobacco. “The advertised benefits of filters were illusory, however, given that smokers of filtered brands often inhaled as much or more tar, nicotine, and noxious gases as smokers of unfiltered cigarettes,” a 2015 study found. “Filters were not really even filters in any meaningful sense, since there was no such thing as ‘clean smoke.’ The industry had recognized this as early as the 1930s, but smokers were led to believe they were safer.”
A 2017 study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reviewing recent medical literature on the topic concluded that “filter ventilation has contributed to the rise in lung adenocarcinomas among smokers,” one of the most dangerous forms of lung cancer, and therefore, “the FDA should consider regulating its use, up to and including a ban.”
A Tide Change
Legislation like S.B. 424 has been attempted before in California starting in 2014, but never gained enough traction to even clear the first committee.
Heidi Sanborn, senior advisor with the California Product Stewardship Council, thinks this year’s legislation has a better shot. The bill, which her organization is supporting, has already passed the policy and appropriations committees in the Senate before clearing the floor vote. It’s now in the Assembly where it will go before the health and governmental organization committees.
The deep pockets of the tobacco industry are a formidable foe, though, and are what stymied earlier efforts, she says.
But she believes growing public concern about pollution could boost the legislation’s chances.
“Whales are barfing up plastic bags and dying all over the beaches and everyone is realizing we have a huge plastic problem and cigarettes are a big part of it,” she says. “Most people hate all the cigarette waste — even the smokers — and I think the public needs to provide good cover for the legislators to take a hard vote and know that tobacco is going to pull out every stop and hire every lobbyist they can to stop the bill.”
There’s also another sea change that could help the bill’s chances — the growing list of studies documenting negative health outcomes from filters in cigarettes.
That’s why another change in the tides is occurring, with efforts making the push to hold someone other than smokers themselves accountable.
“While we’re working hard on campaigns to install more receptacles and institute a lot of messaging targeted at smokers that will help to bring about behavior changes, we also realized that it’s really the fault of the cigarette manufacturers for putting a plastic filter onto the cigarette that is being littered everywhere,” says Ericksen. “At the end of the day, even though our efforts are great to raise awareness and are helping to curb the problem in some of our coastal areas, it’s really going to come down to policy, legislation and extended producer responsibility.”
Producer Responsibility
As nonprofit organizations concerned with plastic pollution band together across the globe, a concerted strategy is emerging. No amount of consumer behavioral changes or improved recycling programs can deal with the sheer volume of low-value plastics, like single-use products such as straws and bags, without the producers changing their products to create less waste.
The European Union recently passed a “circular economy” law that includes extended producer responsibility language, which shifts the responsibility for the environmental costs of a product back on the producer and encourages manufacturers think about the full lifecycle of a product.
This concept of producer responsibility, or product stewardship, is also at the heart of S.B. 424.
“There’s not much we can do when they’ve designed a product that contains plastic and is meant to be burned,” says Sanborn. “It’s a horrible design. It needs to change and the people who should pay to change it are the people who make them. Not the rest of us.”
Local governments and the environment have already been paying the externalized costs, she says. “We’re done — it’s time for them to pick it up and start paying the bill.”
San Francisco has calculated that more than half the litter cleaned up from its streets is from tobacco products, including butts and packaging. The city now charges a 60 cent fee on packs of cigarettes to cover clean-up costs and was the first in the city, back in 2009, to assess a cigarette litter abatement fee.
Other localities have tried different approaches, but with little success yet.
Maine considered legislation in 2001 for a deposit and refund program, where cigarettes packs had a $1 fee and a five-cent refund was given for butts returned to redemption centers. The legislation didn’t pass. New York tried to pass something similar in 2010 and 2013.
Pennsylvania may take up the issue this summer. State Representative Chris Rabb is hoping to introduce a cigarette filter upcycling bill, which would add 20 cents to a pack of cigarettes to fund collection centers and find safe ways to reuse the waste.
TerraCycle turns cigarette butts into industrial plastic items. (Image by TerraCycle)
Legislators in Maine are also closely watching what happens with S.B. 424 in California this summer. A similar piece of legislation to create extender producer responsibility regulations for tobacco products, L.D. 544, was introduced this year in Maine but it’s being held over until next year’s session starts in January while proponents hope to work with industry groups on crafting a solution.
One of the groups championing the effort is the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “We don’t think that communities, taxpayers and future generations should have to deal with a problem they didn’t create,” says Sarah Lakeman, the project director for the organization’s Sustainable Maine program. “There needs to be more education and outreach, and options to recover the waste created from smoking — and it should be the responsibility of the tobacco industry to provide that.”
Sanborn says she hasn’t seen any other places in the world successfully address the cigarette butt pollution issue. “Unless you’ve changed the package and gotten rid of the plastic filter, I don’t see how you could,” she says. “It’s hard to do though, because they lobby up — it’s going to be a fight.”
Well, more specifically their footprints. New research finds that elephants create foot-shaped habitats for breeding frogs as they travel through the forest in Myanmar.
Some of the tiniest creatures in Myanmar benefit from living near the largest species in the area.
Newly published research reveals that frogs are laying their eggs in the rain-filled footprints of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), which then provide a safe home for growing tadpoles. The footprints eventually fade away, but they last for a year or more on the forest floor and can serve as important habitats during dry seasons and even as “stepping stones” between frog populations.
Talk about having an environmental footprint.
Rain-filled elephant footprints supporting tadpoles and egg masses. Photo: Steven Platt/WCS Myanmar
No adult frogs were observed taking advantage of these foot-shaped puddles, although those eggs obviously came from somewhere.
This represents an important step in understanding the role of Asian elephants as “ecosystem engineers.” African elephants have long been recognized for the way they affect the natural systems around them — a similar study published in 2016 found tadpoles and dozens of insect species living in elephant footprints in Uganda — but Asian elephants have not benefitted from the same level of scientific study.
“There is surprisingly little known about Asian elephants as ecosystem engineers, at least in comparison to African elephants,” says lead research Steven Platt, a herpetologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Myanmar program. “That said, I think our study and several others indicate that Asian elephants play an important role as ecosystem engineers. Not only do elephants modify vegetation — knocking down trees, removing bamboo, dispersing seeds, etc. — but they also affect the ecosystem in ways that might not be readily obvious, such as creating temporary ponds and dung piles used as food and cover by invertebrates and small vertebrates.”
Rain-filled elephant footprints supporting egg masses. Photo: Steven Platt/WCS Myanmar
Platt (no relation) says this underscores the vast interplay between species and illustrates why it’s important to protect entire ecosystems and their full range of biodiversity.
And of course, the study further illustrates the need to protect elephants and the species that live around them, much like the previous study in Uganda. “I surely hope this aspect of interconnectedness has been or will be used as an argument for conservation of elephants,” says the lead author of 2016 study, Wolfram Remmers with the University of Koblenz‐Landau.
Perhaps more importantly, Platt says the study in Myanmar also reveals the need to look for similar relationships in other nations where endangered Asian elephants still roam. No one knows exactly how many Asian elephants remain in the world, but all indications suggest their populations continue to shrink throughout their range. The paper concludes with a call for action: “studies are still urgently needed on the role of E. maximus as ecosystem drivers, especially in light of the rapid decline of these large fauna.”
That decline, obviously, is caused by a creature with a much bigger footprint: humans.
Examining elephant tracks: Photo: Steven Platt/WCS Myanmar
Images of chimpanzees and other species appear cute, but they may actually depict animals in dangerous situations. Here’s how to tell what’s safe to share — and how that helps conservation.
Whether you find it fascinating or disquieting, people recognize the inherent similarities between us and our closest primate relatives, especially the great apes. As a primatologist I regularly field questions ranging from how strong gorillas and chimpanzees are (very) to whether monkeys throw poop (not yet observed in the wild) to how smart they are (let’s just say I can’t compete with their puzzle-solving abilities).
Interspersed with the fun and interesting facts I share about primates, I also try to help people become more discerning consumers of animal photos, videos and other content, especially on social media. A little bit of context can help people avoid unintentionally supporting wildlife trafficking or other harmful practices through a like or a share.
We’ve all seen images and videos of primates that go viral — a chimpanzee bottle-feeding a baby tiger, a monkey having makeup applied, slow lorises eating rice balls and holding tiny umbrellas. Most recently, widely circulated videos have shown juvenile chimpanzees dressed in clothes and hugging former caretakers or scrolling through Instagram on a smartphone. Whether due to their similarities to us or to the fact that most of our animal experience is with domesticated species, many viewers erroneously believe these pictures and videos are not only cute and innocuous but that they depict animals in positive, healthy situations.
Unfortunately, this is often not the case.
One of the best ways to gauge animal welfare in zoos and sanctuaries (and more broadly on social media) is to use the Five Freedoms, which were first presented in 1979 by the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council. Essentially, positive welfare means animals experience:
Freedom from hunger or thirst — access to water and species-appropriate food;
Freedom from discomfort — appropriate environments with shelter and resting areas;
Freedom from pain, injury, or disease — diagnosis, treatment and prevention when possible;
Freedom to express normal behaviors — enough space and appropriate social housing to facilitate these behaviors (within reason, as not every natural behavior can be accommodated);
Freedom from fear and distress — avoid mental suffering.
With these Five Freedoms in mind, you can pick out some of the welfare concerns that wildlife experts see in these viral images and videos. Wearing clothing is not a normal behavior and is an immediate red flag. Primates that are strongly bonded to humans often are not in appropriate environments, meaning those locations and situations aren’t designed to help them express normal behaviors with members of their own species. (Occasionally humans in zoos and sanctuaries must care for neglected or orphaned infants, but these animals are socialized and housed with members of their own species as soon as possible.)
Other issues may be harder to recognize, which is why the expertise of those with specialist knowledge is so valuable. For example, videos of slow lorises frequently violate the Five Freedoms — rice balls are not appropriate food sources for this species and those shown reaching for tiny umbrellas are exhibiting a fear display, information about their biology and behavior the public would not typically have.
While these problems are not unique to primatology, our abundant similarities lead people to believe they can accurately judge how their evolutionary cousins are feeling. But those big open mouth “smiles” aren’t expressions of happiness, they’re “fear grimaces” (formally termed ‘silent bared teeth displays’), which primates display to signal subordination to a larger, stronger individual, usually in contexts where aggression has occurred or is likely. These expressions are especially prevalent in the entertainment and greeting card industries; I encourage you to think about the treatment received behind-the-scenes to get displays of submission and fear in front of a camera.
The rhesus monkeys in these photos are not smiling; they’re displaying “fear grimaces” (formally termed ‘silent bared teeth displays’), which are expressions of subordination typically shown in situations where an individual is threatened or has received aggression. The first photo shows a fear grimace up close, while the second shows a whole family displaying fear grimaces toward the approaching alpha male. Photo: Amanda Dettmer, used with permission.
Many believe that engaging with social media posts such as these through liking, sharing or even commenting has no impact on animal conservation. But these videos and images actually do threaten species, many of which are already in peril. Likes and shares are noted by those in the exotic pet trade, and comments like “I want one” encourage viewing wildlife as suitable pets and fuels the continued removal of endangered species from their homes.
Research by primate conservationists has documented the devastating effects social media can have on primate populations (you can read some of the scientific papers for free here, here, here and here). For example a 2015 study by Katherine Leighty and colleagues demonstrated that viewing pictures of primates in a stereotypical office setting both increased people’s desire to have these animals as pets and decreased their likelihood of believing the animals to be endangered. By comparison, primates depicted in forests or away from humans were perceived as happier. This and studies like it demonstrate that the pictures and videos we see on social media do affect public perception.
It’s important to understand just how drastically the pet trade can threaten the survival of vulnerable and endangered species. For example, infant chimpanzees are targeted for the pet trade because adults are dangerously strong and can be very aggressive. Because adults will fight to protect them, whole troops are regularly killed to capture one or two infant chimpanzees. These infants rarely survive long enough to be sold, either due to the traumatic experience, the poor conditions following capture, or a combination of both.
There are many other awful realities of the primate pet trade, such as slow lorises, which are the only venomous primates, having their teeth cut out with nail clippers so they cannot bite (check out more on the plight of slow lorises at the Little Fireface Project).
You don’t have to be an animal welfare expert to fight back against the pet trade. Below are simple, easy steps individuals or organizations can take to support the conservation of endangered species.
Don’t like, share or comment positively on questionable media. Look for those red flags indicating the Five Freedoms of animal welfare are being violated. If you aren’t sure, you can consult this guide or reach out to a primatologist or wildlife biologist — there’s a whole big community of us on social media and we’re happy to help (you can find me on Twitter at @ashley_edes).
If you are following accounts that regularly share questionable media, unfollow them.
Challenge others who share questionable media. You can share this essay or some of the many other excellent ones that have been written on this topic (see pieces by the Jane Goodall Institute, DiscoverWildlife and Mongabay).
Do not purchase greeting cards or items depicting animals in poor welfare situations (e.g., wearing clothes, smoking, riding bicycles) and educate others if you receive such items.
Follow reputable zoos and sanctuaries for wildlife content. Zoos and sanctuaries share amazing pictures and videos on social media every day. Engaging with these posts spreads media that have a positive impact on captive animal welfare and the conservation of their wild counterparts. One of the easiest ways to identify reputable organizations is to look for accreditation from AZA, ZAA, BIAZA, EAZA, WAZA, GFAS and/or NAPSA. These organizations donate millions to conservation efforts every year, and institutions accredited by them have higher standards of animal care.
When we truly care about wildlife, we want them to thrive. As difficult as it may be, we need to make sure our desire to be near to and connect with wildlife doesn’t jeopardize their ability to live and thrive in the wild. Rethinking and changing our engagement with wildlife content on social media — not just as individuals but as a culture — can have real, positive impacts on the animals we are trying to save.
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 number of confirmed plant extinctions and uncertainty around other species is a concern.
A recent survey on the world’s plants found a shocking number have gone extinct — 571 since 1750. And this is likely to be a stark underestimate. Not all plants have been discovered, so it’s likely other plants have gone extinct before researchers know they’re at risk, or even know they exist.
In Australia, the situation is just as dire. The Threatened Species Recovery Hub recently conducted two evaluations that aren’t yet published of extinct plants in Australia. They found 38 have been lost over the last 170 years, such as the Daintree River banana (Musa fitzalanii) and the fringed spider-orchid (Caladenia thysanochila).
But uncertainty about the number of plant extinctions, in addition to the 38 confirmed, is an ongoing concern.
Both studies pointed out the actual number of extinctions is likely to be far more than those recognized in formal lists produced by the Commonwealth and state and territory agencies.
For example, there is still a high rate of discovery of new plant species in Australia. More than 1,600 plants were discovered between 2009 and 2015, and an estimated 10 percent are still yet to be discovered.
The extinction of Australian plants is considered most likely to have occurred in areas where there has been major loss and degradation of native bushland. This includes significant areas in southern Australia that have been cleared for agriculture and intensive urbanization around major cities.
Many of these extinct plants would have had very restricted geographic ranges. And botanical collections were limited across many parts of Australia before broad scale land clearing and habitat change.
Why Extinction Goes Undocumented
There is already one well recognized Australian plant extinction, a shrub in Phillip Island (Streblorrhiza speciosa), which was never formally recognized on any Australian threatened species list.
Researchers also note there are Australian plants that are not listed as extinct, but have not been collected for 50 years or more.
While undocumented extinction is an increasing concern, the recent re-assessment of current lists of extinct plants has provided a more positive outcome.
The re-assessment found a number of plants previously considered to be extinct are not actually extinct. This includes plants that have been re-discovered since 1980, and where there has been confusion over plant names. Diel’s wattle (Acacia prismifolia), for instance, was recently rediscovered in Western Australia.
A significant challenge for accurately assessing plant extinction relates to the difficulties in surveying and detecting them in the Australian landscapes.
The red-fruited ebony is a very rare tree growing in northeastern New South Wales. (Photo by Pete the Poet, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Many have histories associated with fire or some other disturbance. For example, a number of plants spend a significant part of their time as long-lived seeds — sometimes for decades — in the soil with nothing visible above ground, and with plants only appearing for a few years after a fire.
But by far, the greatest reason for the lack of information is the shortage of field surveys of the rare plants, and the availability of botanists and qualified biologists to survey suitable habitat and accurately identify the plants.
What We’ve Learned
The continuing decline of Australia’s threatened plants suggests more extinctions are likely. But there have been important achievements and lessons learnt in dealing with the main causes of loss of native vegetation.
Our understanding of plant extinction processes — such as habitat loss, habitat degradation, invasive weeds, urbanization, disease and climate change — is improving. But there is still a significant way to go.
One challenge in dealing with the causes of Australian plant extinction is how to manage introduced diseases.
Two plant diseases in particular are of major concern: Phytophthora dieback, a soil-borne water mould pathogen, and Myrtle rust, which is spread naturally by wind and water.
Both diseases are increasingly recognized as threats, not only because of the impact they are already having on diverse native plant communities and many rare species, but also because of the difficulties in effective control.
Two Australian rainforest tree species Rhodomyrtus psidioides and Rhodamnia rubescens were recently listed as threatened under the NSW legislation because of myrtle rust.
While extinction associated with disease is often rapid, some individual plants may survive for decades in highly degraded landscapes, such as long-lived woody shrubs and trees. These plants will ultimately go extinct, and this is often difficult to communicate to the public.
While individual species will continue to persist for many years in highly disturbed and fragmented landscapes, there is little or no reproduction. And with their populations restricted to extremely small patches of bush, they’re vulnerable to ongoing degradation.
In many such cases there is an “extinction debt,” where it may take decades for extinction to occur, depending on the longevity of the plants involved.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. A recent study found of the 418 threatened Australian plants showing ongoing decline, 83 percent were assessed as having medium to high potential for bouncing back.
And with long-term investment and research there are good prospects of saving the majority of these plants.
Residents of southern Arizona are protecting jaguar habitat and creating jobs in the hopes that a restoration economy can beat an extraction economy.
Biologist Ron Pulliam is used to being at the center of America’s most pressing wildlife and public lands issues. He led the U.S. Biological Survey (now part of the U.S. Geological Survey) and served as science advisor for Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt under President Bill Clinton. But despite his high-powered positions, he says, “I never felt like I was making a difference.”
Retired now, Pulliam is still trying to make a difference — this time in the Sky Islands of southern Arizona rather than the halls of Washington, D.C. As controversy mounts over President Trump’s border wall, Pulliam finds himself knee deep in saving one of the Southwest’s most iconic species: the endangered jaguar.
But he’s not doing it through traditional conservation measures. Instead he’s launched a for-profit company that’s working to prove that saving jaguars and other wildlife has economic benefits for the community.
On the Move
Many Americans think of jaguars (Panthera onca) as the big cats of Latin America, slinking through Amazonian jungles or climbing Guatemala’s Mayan ruins. Yet jaguar populations are scattered throughout Mexico — some not far from the U.S. border — and the species once ranged from California through Texas. They essentially disappeared from the United States in the 20th century as ranching, cities and suburbs took over the scrub oak and mesquite landscape of the Southwest.
Less habitat meant less wild prey, so jaguars had more incentive to attack livestock, giving ranchers more incentive to shoot jaguars on sight.
But a renaissance of sorts has emerged over the past two decades: Since 1996 at least seven male jaguars have been spotted in southern Arizona and New Mexico, almost certainly moving north from populations in Mexico. The species that the late carnivore expert Alan Rabinowitz once called “the indomitable beast” is now trying to recover its lost American ground.
But politics could thwart that advance. A solid wall along the entire border with Mexico would stop jaguars from moving north, halting their already tenuous return. Dr. Howard Quigley, jaguar program director for the global wild cat conservation group Panthera and one of the lead authors of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Jaguar Recovery Plan, says Mexican populations are critical to the recovery of jaguars in the U.S. “If there will ever be a population in the States, it will require animals moving up from the south,” he says.
Yet even if the border remains open, other modern-day obstacles such as roads, houses, cities and ranches threaten the big cats’ survival. Jaguars need good cover, lots of prey and vast wild landscapes. They typically shy away from people, meaning that the crowded 21st century offers few routes north leading them to safe habitat. And by nature female jaguars are less likely to venture the trek. Most jaguars disappear a few years after arriving in the States without establishing a population.
Scientists identified land between disconnected parts of the Arizona’s Coronado National Forest as important for jaguars moving north from Mexico. (Photo by U.S. Forest Service)
A Restoration Economy
Pulliam hopes to change that by preserving the most important route for recolonizing jaguars in Arizona.
He didn’t set out to protect jaguars specifically when he retired to the region in 2009. Rather he wanted to explore new approaches to conservation that would protect large landscapes while simultaneously supporting local economies.
“From the beginning I took the attitude that we can restore an area, but in the long run this is all for naught unless local people buy into it,” he says. He held a series of workshops with local conservationists, government agencies and others, and developed criteria for choosing worthwhile projects that fit his vision of a “restoration economy,” a model that would benefit both local people and ecologies.
Jaguars, it turned out, would be the ideal conservation investment.
Based on his criteria, the location for a restoration economy conservation project first has to be valuable from a scientific standpoint. A 2008 study by scientists at Northern Arizona University identified a corridor of private land between two disconnected sections of the Coronado National Forest near the town of Patagonia, Ariz. as the most important habitat link for jaguars moving north from Mexico into Arizona.
Next the site must face an imminent threat. The jaguar corridor did: A developer had proposed a housing development on the private land bisecting the national forest. The planned 189 housing lots on more than 1,300 acres of land fell within a two-mile gap linking prime habitat in the Patagonia Mountains to that in the Santa Rita Mountains — the exact corridor jaguars would use to move upstate.
Finally, the solution has to be economically feasible. One obvious way to make money is through tourism. Patagonia is already a birding mecca, and hiking, biking and equestrian trails run throughout the property that would have become the housing development. Pulliam is working to link these trails to the nearby 800-mile-long Arizona Trail that connects the Mexican border with Utah, making the town a hiking destination as well.
Another long-distance trail — the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail, running from Hermosillo, Mexico through Nogales, Ariz. all the way to San Francisco, Calif. — lies about 20 miles away. Connecting the corridor trail network with these longer trails could increase its tourism appeal.
But the restoration economy goes far beyond that. Instead of asking a nonprofit land trust to purchase the property, Pulliam created a for-profit company called Wildlife Corridors LLC to accomplish that task. The corporation, in turn, offers investors the possibility of a profit — a high risk, low return venture, but enough for do-gooders with a few dollars to sign up.
Overcoming Challenges
However, realizing both a profit and a conservation goal has been a challenge.
The housing developers filed for bankruptcy after reportedly sinking millions into roads and connecting some lots to power and water. And so the Wildlife Corridors crew negotiated with the developers’ bank for more than a year to acquire the land for the bargain price of little more than $1 million in 2014. That included more than 1,200 acres with 173 lots (the developers already had sold 16 lots) of which 149 lay within the essential jaguar corridor.
“Six or eight [investors] pooled funds,” Pulliam says, including himself. “We raised $400,000 in equity and then bought the property with a big mortgage.”
Then they hatched a plan to generate funds to pay off the mortgage and support their conservation efforts through three income streams.
The first stream involved philanthropy. Wildlife Corridors LLC partnered with the nonprofit Biophilia Foundation, which could accept tax-deductible donations to purchase the development rights on the lots from the company and then retire the rights.
The second stream comes from selling 24 lots on the southern edge of the property, where roads and power infrastructure had already been built.
The third comes from federal grants to restore habitat on the property. So far, this has included removing invasive species, halting erosion and planting thousands of agave plants to protect the endangered lesser long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris curasoae yerbabuena).
An endangered lesser long-nosed bat visits a hummingbird feeder. (Photo by Nancy Bailey, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
“The only reason we have succeeded is because we have all three revenue streams,” Pulliam says. Still, they had to weather a rough first few years, including battling a developer lawsuit that halted their income and incurred more legal expenses.
So far Wildlife Corridors LLC has retired 840 acres of development rights, sold 11 lots and reduced its debt to less than $300,000, according to Pulliam. Investors haven’t yet received any dividends, but several have swapped their investments for lots, which could appreciate in value. Pulliam remains optimistic that real profits eventually will emerge.
Wildlife Corridors is just one part of a larger effort to stimulate a restoration economy. The company works closely with nonprofit and limited-profit organizations that Pulliam and collaborators created to bring in additional revenue by restoring habitat. For example Borderlands Restoration L3C is a limited-profit corporation that sells native and pollinator plants to federal agencies for regional restoration projects. Collectively this Borderlands Restoration Network boasts a $3 million budget and employs about 20 local people — jobs that Pulliam claims are better than those offered by the mining industry because they are sustainable and will last long into the future.
“We’re tiny now,” he says, “but we’re growing.”
Pulliam believes this combination of diverse revenue streams, local jobs and engagement is critical for success in any restoration economy venture. In Patagonia people are using the land and “putting their own blood, sweat and tears into it,” he says. The mistakes of past conservation efforts, in his view, occurred when national conservation groups bought land and sealed it off, triggering local resentment.
“We won’t consider ourselves successful until we can offer as much to the local economy as mining and local extraction,” says Pulliam.
He’s got a ways to go on that front. Although the recently approved Rosemont Copper Mine 25 miles north doesn’t directly affect this restoration project, it will, if constructed, offer jobs while likely impeding jaguar movement. And of course, President Trump’s proposed border wall remains a threat.
The full economic potential will take time to emerge and so will the conservation value of the project. Camera traps on the protected property have recorded numerous mammal species, but no jaguars, although at least one jaguar has been seen in the region this year in Arizona. Two others have crossed the border in the past few years.
Challenges remain to boosting that number. But for now, with a key U.S. corridor preserved, jaguars have more of a fighting chance.
Massive traditional fish traps called fish fences catch hundreds of types of fish — many before they’re old enough to reproduce.
A 15-year study of traditional fishing techniques has revealed a surprising threat to coastal ecosystems in the tropics: fish fences.
What’s a fish fence, you ask? They’re massive structures of mangrove wood and nets used to funnel and trap hundreds of species. The technique has been used for centuries, but the new research reveals that they’re actually quite damaging.
“These fences — which are common across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans — are so large they can be seen from space using Google Earth,” said Richard Unsworth from Swansea University, co-author of the study. “Because they are unselective, they catch more than 500 species, many as babies or which are of conservation concern. It’s not surprising that these fisheries are having a disastrous impact on tropical marine ecosystems such as seagrass meadows, mangroves and coral reefs.”
In the process they’re also harming human livelihoods and food supplies in areas dependent upon coastal fisheries.
The authors of the study recommend that local governments now restrict the use of fish fences as part of the goal toward ensuring sustainable fisheries. “But we have to move quickly,” the authors warn in an essay in The Conversation. “Every year that fish fences continue to be used so intensively brings us one step closer to the point of no return.”
To find out more about fish fences and the threats they pose, check out our video below.
We’ve picked the best new environmentally themed books coming out this July, with titles covering everything from insects and salmon to climate change and plastic pollution. There are even a few eco-poetry collections for those of you who’d like a little art with your inspiration.
Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson — An ecologist provides an entertaining look at “the little creatures that make the world go round,” something that’s severely needed in this era of worryingly dangerous insect declines.
A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington — This book will open your eyes, make you angry, and then point you toward solutions for ending the plague of pollution-related health problems in marginalized communities of color.
My Ancestors Are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction by Ron Riekki — This collection of nonfiction, fiction and poetry explores the American landscape and disappearing wildlife from a nomadic Saami-American perspective.
Temple
