More Salt in Our Water Is Creating Scary New ‘Chemical Cocktails’

Scientists have found that many inland waterways are getting saltier, and that’s helping to mobilize heavy metals and other chemicals from the soil, creating potentially dangerous combinations.

Gene Likens has been studying forest and aquatic ecosystems for more than half a century. In that time he’s seen a change in the chemistry of our surface waters — including an increase in the alkalinity and salinity of waterways — something he and his colleagues have dubbed “freshwater salinization syndrome.”

Likens coauthored a report published last month that found that not only is salinity increasing in many surface waters, but when you add salt to the environment it can mobilize heavy metals, nutrient pollution and other contaminants that are combining to create new “chemical cocktails” in rivers, streams and reservoirs.

These cocktails can be a danger to our drinking water, wildlife and riverine ecology. And they’ve already contributed to a public health crisis in at least one U.S. city.

“I didn’t expect the massive scale of change across the lower 48 that we found — or the magnitude of change,” says Likens, who is president emeritus of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and a distinguished research professor at the University of Connecticut.

Impacts

Lead poisoning was the top headline from the recent water crisis in Flint, Michigan, but salt played a key role in the tragedy.

When the city switched sources of water to the Flint River, the water had a much higher salinity because of runoff from road salts, which, without proper treatment, increased the corrosivity of the water. “That change in the chemistry of the water flowing through the pipes liberated lead from the pipes or lead-soldered connections,” explains Likens. Lead was the villain, but salt was its enabler.

Flint water tower — Salt was part of the catalyst for Flint, Michigan’s water crisis. (Photo by George Thomas, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Flint isn’t the only metropolitan area at risk from salinity-induced water concerns. The researchers also studied public water supplies in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area and found “some of those areas are increasing in salt content rather seriously,” says Likens. “It’s not just some little stream in your backyard along the interstate highway. It can be very widespread.”

Sujay Kaushal found this out firsthand. Kaushal, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study, turned on his tap at his Maryland home in 2015 to find a blackish-colored water coming out. He realized that increased salinity in the water was causing manganese, a neurotoxin, to leach from the pipes in neighborhood homes.

The problem isn’t isolated to a few cities either.

An earlier study by Kaushal, Likens and colleagues, published in January 2018, analyzed data dating back a century in different localities and found freshwater salinization syndrome had become widespread. The researchers found that 37 percent of the watersheds in the lower 48 had a significant increase in salinity, and 90 percent for alkalinity. Their most recent study, from December 2018, took the research even farther, looking at rivers across North America and Europe, but also a few sites around the world, including in Iran, Russia and China.

“What was surprising was that in all of these different world regions there’s well-known waterways that show this freshwater salinization syndrome occurring,” says Kaushal. “Even our Great Lakes show these patterns of increasing salts and the Great Lakes contain about 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.”

Salt on its own has been shown to be problematic. Too much of it in the water can be a health risk for someone with hypertension, says Likens. And salts washing off roadways have been shown to damage or kill vegetation. It can also seep into drinking water wells. High enough levels of salinity can be toxic to some aquatic life, too, says Likens.

Other new research has honed in on this threat from salt. “Increased salinity in freshwater systems is expected to cause extensive changes in biota and potentially in ecological function, and some losses of freshwater resources,” freshwater scientist John R. Olson from California State University Monterey Bay wrote in a recent study. His work found that by the end of the century, half the country’s streams could have an increase in salinity of 50 percent.

But that’s not the only concern.

Salts, Kaushal and his colleagues found, can liberate heavy metals and other elements in soils and concrete surfaces, which can be more dangerous when mixed together than any one of them singly. Salts can also mobilize nitrates, stimulating harmful algal blooms that threaten the health of fish and other marine organisms.

Kaushal and his colleagues analyzed streams near the University of Maryland after a snowstorm and found spikes in the concentration of metals like copper, zinc, manganese and cadmium.

And after a storm salt concentrations can stay elevated for months, increasing the amount of time that the salts can draw these chemical cocktails out of the soil and into waterways.

Sources of the Problem

Where Likens lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the roads in winter are often busy with visiting skiers traveling up from nearby Boston, Hartford or New York. To keep the traffic safely moving in wintry conditions the roads are often doused with salt — a lot of it. He’s found that at times local municipalities have used up to a ton of salt per road mile per day.

Generous servings of road salt are common across the Northeast and upper Midwest and are one of the biggest contributors to salinization of waterways in those parts of the country, but the researchers found other kinds of salts, not just the commonly used sodium chloride, also contribute to the increase of salinity in waterways — things like fertilizer runoff, water softeners, fracking brine and sewage discharges.

Sewer pipe — Untreated water goes directly into a stream. (Photo by MN Pollution Control Agency, CC BY-NC 2.0)

“There’re just a variety of things that we humans add to the surface that eventually find their way to streams and lakes and reservoirs and increase their salinity,” says Likens.

The weathering of concrete infrastructure like our bridges and roads from acidic rain (which has been reduced but not eliminated) also contributes to increases in salinity and alkalinity.

So too does building impervious surfaces, such as roads and parking lots.

The researchers found that in the Baltimore area an increase of one percent in the amount of impervious surfaces caused a 10 percent increase in salinity. Chemicals and salts that would have been absorbed by soils instead ran off those hard surfaces and into waterways.

All indicators are that the salinity problem is getting worse over time. “The graphs consistently are increasing,” says Likens. “Not every stream shows the effect, but the vast majority do.”

Solutions

The new research raises more questions than it answers, including what the impacts of these chemical cocktails may be and how we can manage them to ensure safe drinking water and a healthy environment.

The study recommends that we manage the problem by “considering chemical mixtures and potential interactive effects as a syndrome of multiple stressors instead of single contaminants.”

That’s easier said than done.

“We have regulations and management strategies which are focused on a single contaminant and it’s almost like our brain is just able to handle one thing at a time,” says Kaushal. “In reality these mixtures have interactive effects, sometimes synergistic effects, which contribute to toxicity where the overall effect of the mixture or the interaction is greater than the sum of the parts.”

But recognizing the dangers of these elements in combination is one thing. Testing for them is quite another.

Thankfully there are also other tactics that could help, including better buffers around rivers, streams and wetlands to reduce runoff. Smarter use of road salts would also be an improvement. Already some municipalities are using brines applied before winter storms to help reduce the volume of salt needed later.

“I think another approach would be to reduce impervious surfaces because we’re constantly developing new lands and putting down more roads which eventually break down and contribute to these salts,” says Kaushal. “So, I think being more judicious about creating new roads, parking lots, pavement and other development, as well as putting in regulations in place for the salts themselves.”

With a long lens on the health of our waterways, Likens sees cause for concern as scientists learn more about the impacts of salinization — and as the Trump administration attempts to roll back protections for clean water.

“At the end of November President Trump announced that our water was at ‘record clean,’” says Likens. But scientific research proves otherwise. “This idea that we can do whatever we want to the environment, to the water we all depend on, and everything’s going to be okay — that’s just not correct.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Warning: A ‘Shrinking Window’ of Usable Groundwater

‘A Bright Future’ Offers a Not-So-Bright Idea for Solving the Climate Crisis

The book takes an...unusual approach, but it still contains a few worthwhile concepts.

How did countries like Sweden and France make progress moving away from fossil fuels, and can other places follow in their footsteps?

According to a new book, A Bright Future by Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist, the answer is an energy technique the Swedes call “kärnkraft,” which the book’s cover copy proclaims is “hundreds of times safer and cleaner than coal.”

What is kärnkraft, you ask? Well, the description of the book doesn’t say.

Neither does the table of contents.

You also won’t find the answer in the foreword, by the popular science writer and psychologist Steven Pinker, although he does call A Bright Future “the most important book about climate change since An Inconvenient Truth.”

How about the book itself? The first two chapters take a similarly vague approach. In fact it takes until page 27, at the bottom of a graph depicting kärnkraft capacity in the United States, to get the definition of this mystery word.

Kärnkraft, it turns out, is the Swedish word for nuclear power.

By all rights, I should just end my review here, because this is a fairly disingenuous approach. If you’re going to make a case for something like nuclear power to save the planet, you really need to say so in Sentence Number One, not 10 percent of the way through the book. Otherwise you’re not making an honest argument — you’re just playing a bait-and-switch game with your readers in hopes of giving them a sudden eureka moment.

But here’s the thing: Goldstein and Qvist have the courage of their convictions. They do spend the rest of the book building a case for nuclear power, and although I think their proposal ultimately fails they do make a handful of admirable points along the way.

Notably, they argue, quite effectively, that the world needs to get off the carbon train as quickly as possible if we hope to stave off climate disaster. “We need rapid decarbonization,” they write, especially in a world where individual and systemic energy demands are rising every single day and the world population continues to grow.

Less effectively, they argue that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar won’t accomplish that goal, at least not by themselves, because renewables, they claim, are “variable and uncertain” (a fairly standard argument that underplays the rapid advances in battery technology). Instead they call for “nuables” — nuclear power plus renewables, “both scaling up as fast as possible.”

They make a better point about coal in the context of trying to assuage fears about the safety of nuclear energy and reactors: It’s incredibly dangerous, both as an energy source and as an industry. “Coal kills at least a million people every year worldwide” from particulate emissions, workplace accidents and coal ash spills, they write — totaling “tens of millions of people” over the past 50 years. This they compare to “something like a few thousand [deaths] from nuclear power” over the same time period. Coal, by these numbers alone, should have been shut down a long time ago.

Of course, the above statement and pages of additional facts don’t exactly make nuclear feel that safe — something the authors themselves would probably agree with, since they (somewhat dismissively) call the public’s concern about nuclear power “a gut-level fear of radiation” linked to nuclear weapons and pop culture fictions like Godzilla and the Incredible Hulk.

Still, a good chunk of the book is spent dismissing fears of radiation and nuclear waste. The science is sound, but I don’t see their arguments changing many minds. And yet, as they note, the very real threat of climate change is even scarier than the possibility of nuclear accidents.

After devoting the first half of the book to making the case for nuclear energy, Goldstein and Qvist lay out their strategy for the way forward.

First, they say, we need to keep all current nuclear plants in operation, even if they are old and past their original projected lifespan (because, they say, solar can’t replace them yet and natural gas is terrible for the climate).

Second, they suggest we should create a carbon tax to pay for decarbonization (a well-argued chapter).

Third, they argue that we need to massively scale up production of new next-generation plants in the U.S. and around the world, much as China is already doing.

On that third point the authors engage in some magical thinking. They start off citing a 2015 report by James Hansen and three other climate scientists that argued the world should build 115 new nuclear reactors each year — enough to eliminate fossil fuels worldwide by 2050. Golstein and Qvist then take this even further, making the case that tiny Sweden built one reactor a year in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so the entire world today could produce an astonishing 750 new reactors a year.

There are a few major flaws in this theory.

First, the nuclear power industry can barely handle the few construction projects on its plate. Projects are prone to long delays and massive cost overruns. For example, an advanced reactor in Finland is expected to go online later this year — 10 years late and billions of dollars over budget. A plant expansion in South Carolina was shut down after construction costs pushed Westinghouse Electric into bankruptcy.

Second, who’s going to work at all of these new facilities? Here in the United States, the nuclear workforce is rapidly aging out — 39 percent of it was eligible to retire between 2015 and 2018. The industry has spent the past several years trying to fill this gap, and has made strides since I first covered this issue in 2012, but the number of people entering the profession is still way below its high in the 1970s. In fact, in 2015 fewer than 1,200 U.S. college graduates received nuclear engineering degrees, including only about 160 Ph.Ds.

Granted, not every nuclear power job needs the most advanced degrees, and the field also employs engineers from other specialties, but the fact remains: The talent pipeline for nuclear power is still too small, and the brain drain out of the industry too big, to take on much additional capacity. Achieving the authors’ lofty goal of 750 new plants a year would require a massive overhaul of the entire world workforce, and a strategy for accomplishing this is conveniently left out of the book.

All evidence suggests that if something works to combat climate change, no matter how big or how small, it needs to be on the table. Many climate scientists argue that keeping existing nuclear plants online, and maybe even adding to them, needs to be one of those choices. That may not prove to be true as renewables continue to get more affordable and efficient. But no matter what, the authors’ vision of ramping up nuclear production so much that it eclipses the need for all fossil fuels is a pipe dream. It won’t do anything to solve the nightmare of climate change.

Saving the World’s Largest Tropical Wetland

The Pantanal in South America is critical for fighting climate change and protecting endangered species. The race is on to protect it.

Most people have heard of the Amazon, South America’s famed rainforest and hub of biological diversity. Less well known, though no less critical, is the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland.

Like the Amazon, the Pantanal is ecologically important and imperiled. Located primarily in Brazil, it also stretches into neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay. Covering an area larger than England at more than 70,000 square miles, the massive wetland provides irreplaceable ecosystem services that include the regulation of floodwaters, nutrient renewal, river flow for navigability, groundwater recharge and carbon sequestration. The wetland also supports the economies of the four South American states it covers.

But as I learned working on a recent research project with the environmental nonprofit WWF, a combination of climate change, new development, expanding agriculture, urban growth and pollution are poised to transform this vast wetland — bringing drastic consequences for the environment, wildlife and millions of people who depend on the Pantanal’s natural hydrology.

Pantanal Mineiro formed by the Pandeiros River in Brazil. (Photo by Eduardo Aigner/WWF-Brasil CC BY 2.0)

Ecosystem at Risk

The biggest risk is to the Pantanal’s seasonal flood pulse, which maintains the very health of the wetland system. During the wet season from October to March, rainfall in the headwaters of the Pantanal drains down some 1,200 rivers to fill the vast floodplain, which acts as a sponge for all the incoming freshwater. The once-terrestrial landscape becomes a maze of waterways dotted with lush islands that teem with life.

Then the dry season comes, from April to September, and the floodplain acts as a saturated sponge, slowly squeezing out the water it had soaked up in the months before and supplying moisture long after the rains have gone. The result is a dynamic ecosystem that provides ideal habitat for more than 4,700 plant and animal species and sustains the livelihoods of 270 communities. The Pantanal, in fact, hosts the highest concentration of jaguars in the world and is considered one of South America’s hotspots for mammal diversity.

The Pantanal remains relatively pristine right now, but projections paint a grim picture for this region’s future unless immediate measures are taken. Presently about 12 percent of the wetland, virtually all of which is in private hands, has been deforested. That’s better than the neighboring Amazon, but by 2050 scientists predict the Pantanal’s vegetation could be devastated by the expansion of agriculture and cattle ranching.

Cattle in Pantanal — Cattle converge on a watering hole on a ranch in the Pantanal. (Photo by Kate Gardiner, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Climate change adds another threat. Regional temperatures could increase up to seven degrees Celsius by the end of the century, say scientists. The potential consequences of a warmer climate are disastrous: more extreme droughts and floods, the reconfiguration of species distribution, impaired plant function and the Pantanal shrinking in size.

And then there are the dams. The region already has 40 of them, and a whopping 101 additional dams are planned for its headwaters in the Upper Paraguay River Basin. The private sector is financing the construction of most of the dams for the purpose of energy generation, and little is understood about the cumulative impacts of so many hydropower projects on the watershed.

This combination of development, natural habitat conversion and climate change could not only disrupt the ecosystem’s natural rhythm but also result in costly and deadly floods for the millions of people living in the downstream countries of the basin, namely Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. Forming part of the headwaters of the Rio de la Plata Basin — the second largest watershed in South America and fifth largest in the world — the Pantanal functions as a natural reservoir for the flood waters draining the upper basin.

A Search for Solutions

How do we counteract the cascade of threats and ensure the Pantanal remains a viable ecosystem?

Along with The Nature Conservancy, WWF published a report in 2012 identifying the risks confronting the Pantanal as a first step toward evaluating the region’s vulnerability to climate change.

And there’s been some important action in the years following. Since 2015 the governments of Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay have been working on a transboundary effort called the Trinational Initiative for the Integrated and Sustainable Development of the Pantanal, which entails sustainably developing and conserving this globally unique wetland. The initiative seeks to reduce pollution, strengthen water governance and expand scientific knowledge on the Pantanal, while protecting the rights of traditional peoples. In doing so the three countries would help protect the regional biodiversity, ecosystem functions and the natural flow of the Paraguay River’s tributaries — all of which are vital for ensuring the future resilience of this landscape in the face of climate change.

In a milestone in the progress of the initiative, ministers from all three countries at the 8th World Water Forum in Brazil on March 22, 2018 signed a trinational declaration for the conservation and sustainable development of the Pantanal.

Though the signing is a significant step for conservation, more funding is needed to help enable state governments, local leaders and stakeholders to translate the initiative’s policy stipulations into concrete actions. And more support from the international community is required to further strengthen political will and the policy implementation process.

The Pantanal’s future may also be further jeopardized by recent politics. The October 2018 election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who threatened to pull the country out of the Paris climate agreement and roll back national environmental protections, has raised alarm bells in the international environmental community. His political ideology and that of his supporters reflect the line of thinking that natural ecosystems, like the Amazon and the Pantanal, are impediments to development.

Yet Brazil’s own Agricultural Research Corporation has estimated the annual value of the Pantanal’s ecosystem services at $112 billion.

The loss of the Pantanal could eradicate habitat for myriad species, including jaguars, hyacinth macaw and capybaras, while also changing hydrodynamic patterns in the Rio de la Plata Basin, upsetting the local economies of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, as well as the other countries downstream of the basin.

We know the threats and the consequences of inaction, not only from scientific studies on the Pantanal but from the stories of other major ecosystems threatened or destroyed by lack of protection. The Pantanal is an international litmus test for our environmental values and priorities.

Do we want to witness the destruction of a major ecosystem and home to a diverse community of people? Or do we want the conservation and sustainable development of the Pantanal to become a model for similar future projects around the world?

To most people, the Pantanal is an unknown. That needs to change, and the world needs to step up to conserve it — now.

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.

Could Trump’s Government Shutdown Cause Outbreaks of Wildlife Disease?

Experts warn that the shutdown has furloughed or hobbled personnel responsible for diagnosing and detecting wildlife diseases.

The current U.S. government shutdown could worsen ongoing wildlife disease outbreaks or even delay responses to new epidemics, according to federal insiders and outside experts who work with federal wildlife employees.

The shutdown — initiated by the Trump administration on Dec. 22 over a financing dispute for the president’s promised southern border wall — has already gone on to be the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history. It has halted virtually all work by federal employees in several agencies, including those tasked with caring for the nation’s wildlife.

When the government is functioning normally, wildlife biologists on national parks and wildlife refuges investigate unusual wildlife deaths and send samples to federal labs that specialize in testing deceased animals for several types of disease. During this shutdown, however, monitoring and testing capabilities have been limited. Following federal shutdown contingency plans, the four major agencies tasked with testing for, responding to and monitoring wildlife disease outbreaks have significantly cut their staff, response and research activities. These agencies include the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service.

In particular, experts warn the absence of monitoring could have long-term consequences if an outbreak occurs or a new disease arrives in the country.

“If it’s a novel introduced pathogen, the lack of timely testing could result in more deaths and potential spread of disease,” according to a federal employee who spoke to The Revelator on the condition of anonymity, because they are not permitted to discuss their work during the shutdown.

A Major Outbreak in California

Rhode Island State Veterinarian Scott Marshall, who works with the USDA to address outbreaks of disease in domestic animals — including those transmitted by wildlife — says government shutdowns are probably not likely to specifically cause wildlife disease outbreaks. Instead, he says, shutdowns are probably more likely to affect the government’s ability to respond to such outbreaks if they occur during a period when fewer personnel and resources are available.

That has the potential to happen during the current shutdown, as the U.S. is currently in the midst of a major avian disease outbreak spread by wild birds and infecting large numbers of domestic fowl.

The outbreak began last May, when the National Veterinary Services Laboratory confirmed a case of fatal Newcastle disease in a small flock of backyard chickens in Los Angeles County. The virus can cause neurological, respiratory and digestive systems failure, and sudden death, with a mortality rate of 100 percent in unvaccinated fowl.

The disease spread quickly, first to hundreds of backyard flocks and now to laying hens on three large commercial poultry operations in Southern California. The California state veterinarian, Annette Jones, has mandated euthanasia of all poultry in Los Angeles, Mira Loma/Jurupa Valley, Muscoy and Perris counties. About half a million birds have been, or are expected to be, euthanized as a result of the outbreak. It’s a large number that continues to grow, despite government and state intervention.

“For the first time since 2003, we have confirmation of virulent Newcastle disease in a commercial poultry operation,” Francine Bradley, poultry specialist at UC Davis Department of Animal Science Extension wrote online in December following the first diagnosis on an industrial farm. “Already, some of our international trading partners are refusing to import and poultry or poultry products from California.”

“This is serious,” she wrote.

Despite the still-worsening problem, the shutdown has forced the Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to deploy significantly fewer employees than it has in previously outbreaks. The Revelator has verified with USDA-APHIS that the agency had just 33 employees in California on January 10 working to respond to this still-developing outbreak of deadly Newcastle disease. The agency had another eight working virtually, alongside 105 California Department of Food and Agriculture employees.

This mobilization pales in comparison to a previous outbreak that cost the country billions of dollars.

A Viral History

To see how the current Newcastle case is affected by the current shutdown, it’s important to look back at a previous outbreak that occurred while the government was fully funded.

In December 2014 the worst-ever U.S. epidemic of highly lethal avian influenza hit the nation after wild birds from Asia spread the disease to their counterparts in the Americas, which then spread the disease to farmed poultry. The deadly outbreak lasted six months and led to the combined deaths and euthanasia of more than 50 million chickens, turkeys and other domestic fowl. The outbreak cost the U.S. economy more than $3.3 billion in lost revenues and sent the price of eggs skyrocketing.

According to USDA documents, more than 3,400 personnel — including 250 USDA-APHIS employees — were on the ground at the height of the 2014 outbreak. That’s 100 times more than are deployed during the current outbreak and government shutdown.

Federal employees’ jobs at the time included running disease tests on deceased wild birds, as well as testing, euthanizing and disposing of diseased domestic fowl. The outbreak response, which ended up costing the government $850 million, was the most expensive animal health event in American history.

Luckily no humans were affected by the disease in North America — quite likely because the government was functioning properly at the time.

A Less Effective Response

Diseases can also solely strike wild populations — and monitoring some potential causes of those situations is another critical government function hobbled by the shutdown.

Marshall, the Rhode Island state veterinarian, says controlling disease in wildlife is naturally challenging and relies on monitoring trade — legal and otherwise.

“The main governmental tool to stop spread of disease is regulation of animal movement, both internationally and interstate,” he says.

If activities to prevent the smuggling of wildlife into the United States are reduced or eliminated during the shutdown, the lack of resources could increase risks of foreign diseases spreading, Marshall notes. Ongoing efforts to prevent the spread of foreign wildlife, insect and plant diseases into the continental United States have continued since the shutdown began, but on a more limited basis with fewer staff at work, according to federal contingency documents.

Meanwhile tens of thousands of government workers directly involved with the wellbeing of the nation’s wildlife, spanning multiple federal agencies, have been forced to cease all “nonessential” activities — those unrelated to human life or property. Federal employees are not allowed to go to their offices, use government equipment, answer emails or discuss the shutdown. This involves personnel responsible for running tests that could preemptively detect diseases in wildlife and hasten the response to any diseases that are detected, according to federal contingency documents.

Additionally, public affairs officials we reached out to say they have been forbidden to reply to media requests. If the shutdown continues, experts warn that lack of communication could slow public response to any emerging threats.

A Lack of Monitoring and Research

Despite the risk that wildlife diseases like Newcastle and avian influenza pose to farm animals, and in some cases also humans, the government has not dedicated any personnel to monitoring for possible disease during the shutdown.

Similarly, nearly all of agencies’ long-running research projects, even those with both government and nongovernment partners that offer insight into wildlife health and could detect disease, have been put on hold. Notably, the world’s longest-running monitoring program of a predator-prey relationship, the Isle Royale Moose/Wolf Project, is currently at risk of being completely scrapped this winter season due to the shutdown, according to news coverage of the issue. This monitoring project helped document a major decline in wolves during a parvovirus disease outbreak in the early 1980s.

Kira A. Cassidy, a research associate with the Yellowstone Wolf Project, which falls under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, says all of her agency’s ongoing research projects — including those involving disease — have been put on hold. In Yellowstone the only activities now performed by federal employees include law enforcement, emergency dispatch and responders, and maintenance staff for roads, according to Cassidy.

“A position is considered essential if their duties include the protection of life or property,” she says. “None of the biologists are considered essential.”

Calling for Federal Help During a Shutdown

Other diseases have also started to emerge during the shutdown. For example, since last November Texas biologists have found about a dozen dead freshwater turtles belonging to three species — red-eared sliders, Texas river cooters and spiny softshells — in Tarrant County. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department press office manager Steve D. Lightfoot reports that state biologists have also noticed between 30 and 40 turtles showing signs of illness in the same area, though there have been no dead or sick fish or birds observed. The cause of the sick and dead turtles remains a mystery.

“At this time we do not have a definitive cause,” says Lightfoot. “Diagnostics to date indicate a combination of bacterial and viral infections may be implicated. Parasitic infection may also be contributing.”

He confirmed that there are about a half-dozen state employees working on the case, but that the number of on-call federal employees permitted to help is unknown. Normally state employees have unrestricted access to the appropriate federal employees, who can further investigate disease outbreaks in well-equipped federal laboratories. In the case of a wildlife disease “emergency” during a shutdown, standby federal employees who have the knowledge and experience to diagnose disease outbreaks are notified and are required to work with no pay.

We asked Lightfoot if the government shutdown continues to affect his state agency’s efforts to get to the bottom of this turtle mystery.

“Definitely,” he replied. “We are currently submitting samples to a state lab to evaluate. Getting samples to the [federal] lab and getting lab results completed is a challenge.”

Experts warn that similar situations could play out across the country if the Trump administration and Congress continue to insist on keeping the federal government from operating.

Trump’s Border Wall Threatens Rare Butterflies and Native Bees

New photographs reveal that the National Butterfly Center in Texas is also home to an amazing array of 200 bee species — some of which exist nowhere else in the United States.

The list of environmental impacts from President Trump’s proposed border wall keeps growing.

Numerous experts have expressed fear that the wall would have devastating effects on birds, jaguars, fish, butterflies and potentially thousands of additional species.

Now a new research project reveals that dozens of beautiful native bee species, most of which are rarely seen in the United States, could also be hurt or wiped out by the border wall. Bees perform crucial work as pollinators of plants that feed birds and other animals. If their numbers are reduced or species are lost altogether, it could cause a cascade of harmful environmental impacts.

The bees, identified by nature photographers Paula Sharp and Ross Eatman along with a team of scientists, were found at the National Butterfly Center, a nonprofit that works to conserve and study wild butterflies in Mission, Texas. The Trump administration plans to build the border wall through more than half of the privately held 100-acre property.

With an uncertain construction date looming, Sharp and Eatman made their first trips to the National Butterfly Center in September and November 2018. Almost instantly they started encountering bees that few other photographers or scientists had ever seen.

They have now documented the bees that they found on a new website, Wild Bees of Texas, which went online this week.

“A large proportion of the species we’ve documented so far are rarely seen within the United States, or they are found in this country only in southern Texas or along the Rio Grande border,” says Sharp. “One species we stumbled on in September had never been documented before within the U.S.” That particular bee, a red-legged leafcutter, might even end up being a species new to science, although examinations are not yet final.

Another incredible species documented by Sharp and Eatman is the Aztec cuckoo leafcutter bee (Coelioxys azteca), which has previously been seen north of the Mexican border only a handful of times. Sharp says it “looks a little like a miniature lobster.”

Other notable species include the dwarf Epeolus bee (Epeolus pusillus), “which has lavender eyes,” and the Aztec sweat bee (Augochlora azteca), “which resembles a flying emerald.”

Throughout their time at the Center, Sharp and Eatman did more than just photograph the bees: They also documented the insects’ behavior — information necessary for their conservation.

“Our favorite so far is a chimney bee with a hairy orange face called Melitoma marginella,” Sharp says. “This bee hides in the deep throats of yellow esperanza blossoms during rainstorms. When the blossoms fall during cold snaps, the bees stay inside, riding them like escape pods as the wind carries them off. If you find esperanza flowers on the ground at the National Butterfly Center in November and peel back the petals, you’ll find the chimney bees still inside, their orange faces peering up at you.”

Even people who work at the site were pleasantly surprised by the number of bee species found by Sharp and Eatman. “Working with Paula and Ross was eye-opening, to say the least,” says Marianna Trevino Wright, executive director of the National Butterfly Center. “I will never step on fallen blossoms again now that I understand even these are shelter for bees.”

As with their previous project, Wild Bees of New York, Sharp and Eatman made sure they photographed the Texas bees alive, healthy and in their natural habitats. In the process they created stunning visuals that are much more vibrant than traditional scientific illustrations.

“Native bees are often dazzlingly beautiful,” Sharp says. “They can have eyes that are bright green or red or violet. They can curl their long antennae into elegant spirals, hold their tails high like scorpions, or load up their electrostatically-charged hairs with so much pollen that the bees look as if they’ve been dipped in yellow flour.”

So far the website showcases about 40 native bee species, but Sharp and Eatman hope to expand it to about 100 by the end of the year. Based on previous surveys, they estimate, their photo gallery could eventually contain as many as 250 species.

That’s assuming they have enough time to complete their work, of course, as virtually all of these species would be affected once construction on the border wall begins.

“Many of these bees range no more than a few hundred yards from their nests in a lifetime, and so the National Butterfly Center is the only home they’ve ever known,” says Sharp. She adds that the ecologically pristine facility serves as a safe zone from the pesticides, erosion, invasive species and habitat destruction that plague other nearby areas of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

All of that would quickly come to an end if construction crews arrive. The wall and relate infrastructure would not only be built on top of key habitat where Sharp and Eatman observed the bees, it would also create barriers too high and too solid for insects to pass through. That would have a cascading effect on the entire region.

“Bees are central to every habitat because they are the pollinators that sustain the plants that feed birds, mammals and other creatures,” Sharp says. “If you destroy the bees, you do irreparable harm to the environment.”

Sharp also offers blunt criticism of the border-wall plan. “To destroy regional treasures like the National Butterfly Center is extravagantly wasteful from an economic perspective,” she says. “Restoring what’s lost as a consequence of the wall — either by shoring up new areas or by attempting to repair environmental damage caused by the wall — will be prohibitively costly, and much of the damage will be irreversible.”

Can the planned construction be stopped at this point? As of this writing, President Trump’s government shutdown continues to place a chokehold on many of federal activities that would protect the environment, but nothing appears to be slowing the administration’s plans for the border.

“As we brace for the bulldozer ahead of the border wall, it’s disheartening to know that so much will be lost,” says Trevino Wright, who’s testifying to Congress about the border wall this week. “Humans are terribly shortsighted and foolish, and probably will not learn many important lessons until it’s too late.”

New Year, New Books: The 14 Best Environmental Books of January

Books coming out this month look at saving snow leopards and killer whales, Buddhist and Muslim solutions to climate change, and new ways to grow food.

It’s a new year, and many of us have made our resolutions for the months ahead. Well, here’s one more for you: Resolve to read about the critical environmental issues that will affect us not just this year but in the years to come.

Publishers have you covered for that resolution this month, with a wide array of interesting new books about climate change, wildlife, environmental history and sustainable food. Check out the list below for our picks for the 14 best eco-books of January 2019, with titles for everyone from wildlife-loving kids to professional conservationists. As usual our links are to publishers’ or authors’ websites, but you can also find any of these titles at your favorite bookseller or library.

Wildlife and Endangered Species:

The Snow Leopard Project and Other Adventures in Warzone Conservation by Alex Dehgan — A stunning true story about efforts to protect these endangered cats and other rare species while also helping to defend the human culture around them — and strengthening the bond between people and nature in the process.

Make a Home for Wildlife: Creating Habitat on Your Land by Charles Fergus — Whether you’ve got a tiny backyard or several acres, this could be a great book to make the most of the land around you.

A Puget Sound Orca in Captivity: The Fight to Bring Lolita Home by Sandra Pollard — If you want to understand the current plight of Southern Resident killer whales, it helps to start with their history. This is an important piece of that story, by the author of 2014’s Puget Sound Whales for Sale.

Rotten! Vultures, Beetles, Slime and Nature’s Other Decomposers by Anita Sanchez & Gilbert Ford — A fun kids’ book about gross stuff like maggots and fungi, because what better way is there to get kids interested in nature?

Climate Change:

The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption by Dahr Jamail — A former war reporter takes his journalism skills to a new battle, traveling around the world to see the impacts of climate change firsthand.

Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South by Rick Van Noy — Tales of people and places already adapting to climate change — to help show the rest of us what we need to do sooner rather than later.

Biodiversity and Climate Change: Transforming the Biosphere edited by Thomas E. Lovejoy and Lee Hannah — Famed biologist Edward O. Wilson provides the foreword to this massive new book addressing how climate change will impact extinction risks, food webs, invasive species, migration routes, forests and much more — and how conservationists and policymakers can respond.

The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World by Patrick Nunn — This isn’t specifically about climate change, but it’s still an important look at how traditional and indigenous folk stories and knowledge are full of valuable science about floods, shifting coastlines and other changing environments — in other words, information that can help us learn to adapt to future threats.

Climate Change and the People’s Health by Sharon Friel — An academic book providing a framework for addressing both climate change and social inequality, since the former drives the latter and harms peoples’ health in the process.

Paying for Pollution: Why a Carbon Tax Is Good for America by Gilbert E. Metcalf — Can market principles get us out of this climate change mess? An economist argues that they can. (Or, I don’t know, we could just stop emitting carbon?)

Eco-Religion:

Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis by David Loy — An important and thought-provoking call to action for Buddhists to save the planet, reflecting not just on the history of Buddhism but what it can do in the future.

Signs on the Earth: Islam, Modernity and the Climate Crisis by Fazlun Khalid — A religious case for an end to consumerism and industrialization, written by the founder of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science.

Sustainable Agriculture & Food:

One Size Fits None: A Farm Girl’s Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture by Stephanie Anderson — We all want farming to be green and planet-healthy. Anderson explores farms around the country that are using nontraditional agricultural techniques and are giving back to the land in the process.

Can We Feed the World Without Destroying It? by Eric Holt-Giménez — That’s a good question! This short book (really a long essay) digs into the issues and argues that we already produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet, we’re just growing and distributing it all wrong. Moving away from the existing exploitative system, Holt-Giménez argues, will both feed the planet and protect it from climate change and related threats.

That’s our list for this month. For dozens of additional recent eco-books, check out our “Revelator Reads” archives.

Did we miss any of your recent favorites? Post your own candidates in the comments.

Warning: A ‘Shrinking Window’ of Usable Groundwater

New analysis reveals that we have much less water in our aquifers than we previously thought — and the oil and gas industry could put that at even greater risk.

We’re living beyond our means when it comes to groundwater. That’s probably not news to everyone, but new research suggests that, deep underground in a number of key aquifers in some parts of the United States, we may have much less water than previously thought.

“We found that the average depth of water resources across the country was about half of what people had previously estimated,” says Jennifer McIntosh, a distinguished scholar and professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona.

McIntosh and her colleagues — who published a new study about these aquifers in November in Environmental Research Letters — took a different approach to assessing groundwater than other research, which has used satellites to measure changes in groundwater storage. For example, a 2015 study looked at 37 major aquifers across the world and found some were being depleted faster than they were being replenished, including in California’s agriculturally intensive Central Valley.

McIntosh says those previous studies revealed a lot about how we’re depleting water resources from the top down through extraction, such as pumping for agriculture and water supplies, especially in places like California.

But McIntosh and three other researchers wanted to look at groundwater from a different perspective: They examined how we’re using water resources from the bottom up.

The study may help close the gap about what we know and don’t know regarding how much water is available deep underground, as well as its quality.

It also rings some alarm bells.

A Different Approach

Instead of examining how fast water tables were falling, as in previous studies, the researchers looked at water chemistry to determine how deep underground you could drill for freshwater or brackish water before that water became too salty to use.

“We looked at the bottom limit of groundwater resources,” says McIntosh.

The researchers used information from the U.S. Geological Survey on the quality of groundwater across the country and looked specifically at salinity — how salty the water is. “We looked basin by basin at how that depth of fresh and brackish water changes across the United States,” says McIntosh.

The results were about half as much usable water as previous estimates. That means that deep groundwater reserves are not nearly as plentiful as we’d thought in some places.

That’s important because when shallow groundwater reserves become depleted or polluted, the strategy so far has been to drill deeper and deeper wells to keep the water flowing.

But we may not always be able to drill our way out of water shortages. “Tapping into these deep waters works for now, but the long-term prospects for using these waters are quite concerning,” says the report’s lead author, Grant Ferguson, an associate professor in the department of Civil and Geological Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan.

The problem isn’t evenly distributed across the country. While a number of aquifers in the West have deep freshwater reserves, the water in parts of the eastern and central United States becomes salty at much shallower depths. “Drilling deeper water wells to address groundwater depletion issues represents no more than a stopgap measure in these areas,” the researchers concluded in their paper. One area of particular concern the researchers noted was in the Anadarko and Sedgwick basins underlying parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, which has particularly shallow freshwater reserves.

Map of water depths — Depth to water with total dissolved solids (a) <3000 and (b) <10 000 mg l−1 based on median values in 100 m bins. (c) TDS distribution relative to the 50th and 95th percentile of water well depths.

Oil and Water

The study looked at a total of 28 sedimentary basins across the United States that were chosen because they’re known to contain oil and gas reserves.

The researchers found that the oil and gas industry uses fresh and brackish water, both of which are drawn from the bottom up. And that’s another element of the research that could raise concern.

In some cases the industry pumps out brackish water as part of its drilling operations. Industry waste is then injected back underground into deep aquifers. As a result, water reserves are depleted from pumping and possibly contaminated during re-injection, the researchers found.

Graphic of injection wells — Deep groundwater resources can be threatened by oil and gas production or injection wells.

The depth between oil and gas activities and drinking water reserves varied greatly across the country. Wyoming and the Michigan basin were two places where oil and gas activities are relatively shallow and in close proximity to fresh and brackish water, which could increase the chances of contamination of water resources. Water contamination from oil and gas activity has already been documented in Pavillion, Wyoming.

The authors suggest that carefully monitoring for potential contamination or overexploitation of water reserves may be crucial in these areas with minimal separation between groundwater and oil and gas wells used for either production or disposal.

The Future Is…Saltier

While brackish water can be used for some types of agriculture and by oil and gas activities, it hasn’t been used much yet for drinking because it requires desalination (although not as intensively as seawater). But as water resources become more constrained, particularly in the arid West where some communities and farms rely exclusively on groundwater, brackish water may be a more valuable future resource and a larger part of the water supply.

“I think of it in terms of water security. Both fresh and brackish aquifers are part of our potential water source into the future,” says McIntosh.

But further utilizing these deep-water resources will have “all kinds of policy and economic consequences because they aren’t going to be replenished as quickly as other waters” closer to the surface, says Ferguson. And that may mean better monitoring of oil and gas activity is needed in those regions, along with a possible rethinking of how we permit and manage drilling into those deep waters. “That would change the nature of how we’re using water in a lot of places,” he says.

While this research adds to our growing knowledge of groundwater resources, there is still a lot we don’t know about the chemistry of these deep aquifers beyond just salinity, says McIntosh. Addressing that knowledge gap, she says, will be important as we work to match water resources to our varying needs for drinking, industry and agriculture.

“This ‘bottom up’ approach is a novel one and will find great utility, but it does depend upon the availability of deep groundwater data,” says Michael Campana, a professor and hydrogeologist at Oregon State University who did not participate in the study. And the deeper we go, the less data we have, says Ferguson.

Both the researchers and outside experts suggest that more research is needed. This is particularly true in areas not associated with oil and gas activity that weren’t part of the study, points out Campana. But the authors say their results may still show the need for important changes on policy or behavioral levels regarding how we use our nation’s groundwater.

“There was this idea that deeper groundwater would be more pristine, and it is to a point, but there are all kinds of natural salinity and hydrocarbon problems once you get into deeper and deeper groundwater systems,” says Ferguson. “So we’re working with that idea that maybe the window of freshwater is not as big as we thought and it’s probably getting even smaller in a lot of areas.”

In an age of climate change, that’s something that may play out sooner rather than later.

Previously in The Revelator:

2019 Will Be a Big Year for Water

Hawaii’s Snail Extinction Crisis: ‘We’re Just Trying to Stop the Bleeding’

The death of a snail named George on New Year’s Day marked the extinction of his species. Saving the rest of Hawaii’s unique snails is a race against time — but not one without hope.

The first extinction of 2019 was a snail named George.

George, the last individual of a Hawaiian tree snail species known only as Achatinella apexfulva, died New Year’s Day in a laboratory on Oahu, where he had been a bit of a local celebrity. “He was featured in many newspaper, magazine and online articles, and hundreds of school children and visitors to the lab eagerly viewed him, the last of his kind,” the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources wrote in announcing his passing.

Once widespread and admired for their beauty, Achatinella apexfulva (a hermaphroditic species, despite the masculine name and pronouns) was nearly wiped out decades ago by an overzealous industry that collected and strung together their shells into traditional leis.

“The species was actually thought to be extinct quite some time ago,” explains David Sischo, a biologist who coordinates Hawaii’s Snail Extinction Prevention Program. “Then, in 1997, a small population was rediscovered in a couple of trees along a hiking path on Oahu.” The last 10 snails were brought to a captive-breeding facility, where they reproduced, giving birth to George and a few other baby snails.

The success didn’t last long. “Unfortunately there was a pathogen or something — we’re not sure what — and all of the population died except for this one,” Sischo says.

Now — after 14 years living in captivity — George, too, has died. No other members of the species have been found in the wild in the years since, so the species is almost certainly extinct.

George may have been alone for most of his life, but his situation wasn’t unique. Dozens, if not hundreds, of other unique Hawaiian snail species could soon follow in his slimy trail.

Hawaii’s Snail Extinction Crisis

Hawaii, often referred to as the “extinction capital of the world” for its high number of unique and endangered species, has already lost hundreds of snail species due to overcollection, invasive species and other threats. Although a lot is being done to protect what’s left, the snails’ disappearance appears to be speeding up.

“It’s pretty shocking how fast this extinction event is happening,” Sischo says. “Based on the declines that we’ve seen over the past two years, we expect all of our large tree and ground snails — at least, most of the populations that are left — to be gone within one to 10 years.”

Sischo reports that many snail populations have vanished practically in front of his eyes. “We’ve had many instances where we were, like, five minutes too late,” he says. “There have been times when we’ve just wanted to cry because we’ve gone back to a place where we were expecting to find hundreds of snails and we found 10 or zero — and it was the day we’d actually gone to bring some of them into captivity to save them.”

The declines can mostly be attributed to invasive predators, including rats (Rattus rattus) and other rodents, Jackson’s chameleons (Trioceros jacksonii), and, ironically enough, another snail — a predatory species called the rosy wolfsnail (Euglandina rosea) that was imported from Florida. Compounding the irony, the wolfsnail was first imported to Hawaii in the hopes that it would eat another invasive species, the giant African land snail (Lissachatina fulica), which was consuming crops on the islands.

Sischo says virtually all of the recent native species population disappearances correspond to the appearance of the predatory rosy wolfsnail in areas where it’s never been seen before.

“We’re not sure if climate change is allowing them to get up into these remote, high-elevation areas where maybe they’ve had some kind of temperature barrier, of if it was just a matter of time before they got there,” he says.

A rosy wolfsnail in Hawaii. Photo: Scot Nelson (public domain)

The Defenders

The most successful stalwart against these threats is the program Sischo runs. The team is constantly on the move, traveling to new areas to survey known populations, find remnant populations, run predator-control programs such as predator-proof fences, evacuate threatened snails from vulnerable sites, breed snails in a lab, and return those captive-bred snails to the wild to boost natural populations.

They do it all with a five-person team, the occasional intern, and an extremely limited budget, while working in conjunction with a long list of federal, state and private partners.

He admits that the inability to save more snails from extinction weighs heavily on them. “We’re just trying to stop the bleeding,” Sischo says. “It’s a significant burden on all of us, but we take it really seriously and are doing the best we can.” He adds that their success, especially the captive breeding and reintroductions, keep them going for the long fight ahead.

Meanwhile some conservationists hope that other news may get even more people interested in Hawaiian snails and inspire additional effort to conserve them.

Hidden Biodiversity

For several years now, it has been said that 90 percent of Hawaiian land snails are already extinct. That would have left the islands with around 75 out of 752 recognized species.

But a paper published in the December 2018 issue of Integrative and Comparative Biology changes that. It contains the results of 10 years’ of surveys of the Hawaiian Islands’ native snails and documents about 200 species that still exist. The paper, by Norine Yeung and Kenneth Hayes of Honolulu’s Bishop Museum, even documents the existence of several species that had been thought to be extinct, many of which live in remote mountain areas only accessible by helicopters.

“Just in the Amastridae genus, we put 22 species back on peoples’ radar, including one on Molokai, where they were thought to be totally extinct” says Yeung. “It hasn’t been seen in more than 50 years, and we found it.”

The authors say rediscoveries like that can energize conservation efforts — and re-energize individual conservationists.

“When we are watching things go extinct literally month to month, it’s probably the most defeating and depressing feeling,” Hayes says. “But to find things that still exist…that just tells us that that we’re doing is worthwhile and that we should keep doing it because hope hasn’t been lost.”

Of course, rediscovering a species or remnant population only to find out that it’s critically endangered creates a whole new level of stress. “It’s a bit anxiety-inducing, because you’re like, here’s the last five,” Hayes says. “What do we do?”

That’s a big question since, despite the success to date in captive-rearing some species, we don’t know much about what most Hawaiian snail species need to survive in the wild or in a lab.

“We know almost nothing about their life histories,” Yeung says. “We don’t know if they prefer particular plants, if they reproduce once or twice a year, how long they live, what they eat…all of those things are absent in our knowledge of these snails.”

That’s why focusing on the threats remains of paramount importance. “We’ve got to stem the tide of extinction,” Hayes says. That means everything from restoring habitats to building predator-proof fences to exploring ways to remove the predators in the first place.

It also means, as Yeung and Hayes’s paper puts it, that it’s important to change the public perception of snails “beyond the creepy, crawly, slimy things” that get an “ew” reaction from most adults — and therefore a hard pass from most research- and conservation-funding agencies.

Yeung, for example, works to bring young kids into the conservation fold. “When I’m talking with second and third graders, they think insects and the snails are really cute and cool and they know how important they are.” The museum builds on this effort with internships, senior-citizen volunteers, and other efforts to help people feel like they can make a difference. They’re also working with Hawaii’s indigenous groups, which place great cultural value on the snails.

“Even with every piece of data that we have, we still can’t fix the problem by ourselves,” Hayes says. “We have to make people outside of science understand the ecological importance of these species and the threats to our environment.”

A Challenging Future

For now the very thing that makes these Hawaiian snails so vulnerable may also be part of what keeps them going.

“Land snails can persist in very, very, very small areas,” Hayes points out, noting that they have often evolved in microclimates with very specific amounts of sunlight or precipitation, plants, and soil conditions. They may not be able to exist outside of those confines, but inside them they’re often safe. “There could be an area of five meters by five meters and an entire population of a species can exist there for long periods of time — unless in becomes impacted in some way.”

Those impacts are still expected to grow. Invasive species continue to increase their territory and climate change is projected to make things worse. Even if a species is protected by a predator-proof wall, its habitat could still become inhospitable due to changes in temperature or precipitation. Stronger and more frequent hurricanes could also wipe out entire populations or species.

As a result of these threats some species will continue to suffer — or even go extinct — in the years ahead. “We’ve got about 100 snail species on our radar that we know are crashing right now,” Sischo says.

Despite the severity of the problem, Sischo tells me, the extinction threat to these hundreds of species has remained sadly invisible to most people.

Will that finally change with George’s death? Over the past few days dozens of media outlets around the world have covered news of the species’ extinction, bringing awareness of the crisis affecting Hawaiian species to millions of readers and viewers. That matters. In his obituary, the Hawaiian DLNR called George “an ambassador for the plight of the Hawaiian land snails.” Maybe his death will bring attention to the tragic circumstances of this species’ disappearance and help prevent at least a few additional extinctions to come.

Previously in The Revelator:

Snails Are Going Extinct: Here’s Why That Matters

‘Spineless’ — What Jellyfish Can Teach Us About the Oceans’ Future

Juli Berwald’s book Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Act of Growing a Backbone is beautiful, scientific exploration of the much-maligned, but ecologically important, jellyfish.

As human industry belches out more carbon dioxide, the chemistry of our oceans is changing. The resulting acidification is endangering coral reefs and the myriad creatures that depend on them. Science writer and one-time ocean researcher Juli Berwald wondered how ocean acidification affects jellyfish. Will they be climate change winners or losers?

The answer, she learned, isn’t simple — scientists don’t even agree on whether jellyfish populations are increasing or decreasing. But her question offers a jumping off point into the deep blue. The result is Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Act of Growing a Backbone, a book that’s both a scientific journey and a personal one.

Jellyfish are beautiful and ethereal looking, but they don’t have the easy charisma of some marine animals. They’re not dolphins or clownfish or even octopuses. Most of us would rather not get close enough to touch them. Yet thanks to Berwald’s years of research, global treks and accessible language, Spineless is an enchanting read.

Scientists still have much to learn about jellies, but what we already know is fascinating enough. It turns out jellyfish have traveled to space, are informing robotics research — and are delicious in salad (if you know the secret to their preparation). And they can tell us volumes about the ocean they live in.

“Understanding jellyfish means recognizing the oceans in their complexity rather than homogenizing their problems,” she writes in the book.

We wanted to know more about jellies, so we asked Berwald about her process of discovery, what scientists are learning about jellyfish and how they can help us better understand the ocean’s biggest challenges.

Author Juli Berwald on a research trip for the book ‘Spineless.’

Your book is a scientific journey and a personal one. What was your favorite part of the process?

When I discovered jellyfish, I was an ex-oceanographer-turned-soccer mom living in Austin, Texas. I had become complacent writing textbooks but didn’t quite have the insight to realize I was craving something more. Jellyfish became a kind of secret obsession that took me back to the sea in my mind, even if I was still physically in a landlocked home office overrun with kids’ toys. As I became more fascinated with their biology and ecology, jellyfish gave me the confidence to discover their larger story, and mine too.

Since you first began studying jellyfish, what have you seen change about our scientific understanding of them?

The recognition that jellyfish aren’t a dead end to the food chain is a big deal. For decades, scientists thought of jellyfish as wasted energy largely because the best tool we had for studying what-ate-what was looking inside predators’ bellies. When you do that, you rarely find a jellyfish. But with new molecular tools we’ve discovered that loads of animals eat jellyfish — including top predators like penguins and tuna. It looks like jellyfish are at the very least an important food when supplies run short and maybe even critical to the food web.

As you write in your book, there are a number of things that make jellyfish unpopular — from stinging swimmers to clogging power plants. What are some things we should appreciate about them?

Jellyfish are a cornucopia of superlatives. The smallest animal in the world is a parasitic jellyfish called Polypodium. The colonial jellyfish, Praya dubya, grows to 120 feet, rivaling the blue whale’s length. The oldest muscle discovered is 540 million years old; it came from a jellyfish. And here’s a whopper: That stinging cell, it explodes out of its capsule with an acceleration 5 million times the acceleration of gravity. It’s the fastest known motion in the animal kingdom.

Also, jellyfish are the most efficient swimmers in the sea. And they aren’t out there just bumbling around. They have many little faces around the edge of their bell called rhopalia that they use to sense the world. Each one has eyespots, a sensory region like a nose, a balance organ like our inner ear and connects to a pacemaker like our heart. And that doesn’t even leave space to talk about their incredible glowing or their insane regenerative capabilities.

How can jellyfish help us better understand the crises facing the ocean?

Jellyfish have adaptations that allow them to do well in today’s damaged seas. They are both eaten by fish and compete for food with fish. So overfishing decreases their predators and increases their prey. They have a very important sessile stage called a polyp that lives on the underside of hard surfaces. Construction of docks, jetties and oil rigs provide a lot more coastal habitat for those polyps.

Because of their jelly insides, they can withstand low-oxygen environments better than more cellular animals with higher metabolism. Those dead zones are expanding because of pollution. And shipping and the proliferation of larger canals provides pathways for jellyfish to become invasive species. Jellyfish populations do ebb and flow naturally. But in places where jellyfish are chronic, it’s often a signal of a compromised ecosystem.

You wrote that funding in 2013 for space exploration outpaced ocean exploration 150 to 1. How do you think we can begin to close that gap and get more people interested in the fate of our oceans?

Ocean scientists have been trying to figure that out for a long time. It’s not that the ocean isn’t inspiring enough. It is. The problem might be exposure. Everyone can look up and wonder about space every day, but only if you live on the coast do you see the ocean every day.

The best answer I have is that we need more diverse voices telling stories that resonate in ways people can’t ignore. I personally don’t watch very many ocean documentaries because I get tired of somber male voices. (No offense, David Attenborough.)

Many books about marine science have that same problem. I used to finish them — often 10 chapters told in an authoritarian voice — and think, there’s no way I could write a book like that. Then I changed the inflection and I thought, but I could write a book like this. This being a book about my own journey to grow a spine as much as about the science of jellyfish and what these incredible creatures mean for our planet’s future.

The Biggest Issues for Wildlife and Endangered Species in 2019

It’s going to be a rough year, but we’ll also see some progress.

Wildlife didn’t have an easy go of it in 2018. We lost the last male northern white rhino, the vaquita porpoise continued its slide toward extinction, poachers kept targeting pangolins and other rare creatures, and through it all the Trump administration kept trying to whittle away at key protections for endangered species.

So with that rough bit of recent history, what does 2019 hold?

Well, in most cases it won’t be pretty. There will be more blood, more habitat loss, more legislative attacks and more extinctions — but at the same time, there will also be signs of hope and progress on many levels.

Here are some big issues that experts say we should be watching in 2019:

Climate Chaos

Of course, climate change will continue to threaten species around the world in 2019.

“The impacts of climate change aren’t showing signs of slowing, and this administration refuses to recognize it,” says Charise Johnson of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Water temperatures are rising, increased flooding, deforestation, fires, storms — these are all things that affect a species’ existence.”

And new threats continue to emerge. “There’s been a lot of discussion about how global climate change affects ocean acidification, and now there’s emerging evidence that the even greater threat is reduced oxygen levels,” says noted conservationist William Laurance of James Cook University. A study published last month found that ocean deoxygenation could have a major impact on zooplankton, one of the building blocks for the ocean food web. Deoxygenation also causes increased algal growth, like the red tides that choked the coasts of Florida this past year and killed hundreds of manatees and tens of thousands of fish.

“Changes in ocean composition will be a large-scale driver of mortality,” Laurance says. “Some people are calling this ‘the great dying.’ ”

A related issue in the Arctic also appears to be another emerging threat. According to the just-released “Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation in 2019” (the tenth annual edition of this study), climate-change induced release of carbon from polar ice will further worsen global warming, while the release of mercury from thawing permafrost will create a toxic threat for animals, plants and soil.

Meanwhile, on top of the obvious weather-related changes, climate change could create an additional unexpected threat to some species: wildlife trafficking.

“Some species will undoubtedly decline as a result of climate change, making them rarer and thus potentially even more desirable by those who trade in them,” explains Richard Thomas, global communications coordinator for TRAFFIC, the anti-wildlife-trafficking organization. “Addressing wildlife trade issues and promoting sustainable harvesting are likely to become more important than ever,” he says.

The (tiny) bit of good news related to climate change? Because so many scientists are studying it, we’re learning more and more about its effects.

“I think research showing when, where and how species are able to adapt to some changes is promising,” says amphibian biologist Karen Lips of the University of Maryland. The more we know about exactly how climate change threatens certain species — or about how they can adapt to it — the better we can do at protecting them from extinction.

Politics in the Trump Era — and Beyond

Among the greatest threats to wildlife are the Trump administration and similar politicians around the world, such as Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who took office last week and immediately moved to undermine indigenous rights in his country.

“The new president in Brazil could unravel 50 years of progress for species, tropical forests and indigenous people,” says Lindsay Renick Mayer, associate director of communications for Global Wildlife Conservation. That could be devastating to one of the world’s most biodiverse regions on the planet, which is often referred to as the “lungs of the Earth.”

Credit: Eric Kilby Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Mayer adds that the recent election in Madagascar could be just as bad. Former president Andry Rajoelina, whose previous tenure was marked by a dramatic increase in illegal logging, deforestation and biodiversity loss, was reelected last month, although as of press time the election remains mired in protests and accusations of fraud. “The risk of losing the amazing biodiversity of Madagascar is always a big story. We hope that the situation there doesn’t get worse and that there is a chance for improvement,” Mayer says.

Getting back to the Trump administration, many experts worried about how things will play out for this country’s wildlife in the year ahead.

“The federal government is shirking its duty to protect species and commit to conservation programs,” says Johnson of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who points to three potential rule changes would diminish the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act and other conservation regulations, among many other attacks against the laws. “This, in addition to funding cuts for species listings, will put a strain on conservation efforts,” she says.

Johnson expects funding to remain an issue in 2019, as will further attacks against the Endangered Species Act.

Others echoed those thoughts and fears about the ESA. “I think our current administration has shown that the environment and conservation are not high priorities,” says Lips. “I think that has a dampening effect on the actions of the federal agencies.”

There’s a potential positive side to this, she adds: “I have heard, however, that historically this produces increased donations to NGOs and increased activism by citizens.”

Indeed, that may have also helped inspire last November’s “blue wave,” the newly elected officials from which took office this month. Many of our experts expressed cautious optimism about these new government representatives.

“I think one of the biggest stories of the year is going to be what Democratic House oversight of the Trump administration can do for environmental policy,” says shark scientist David Shiffman. “Each individual thing they do will be very subtle and maybe you won’t even know what’s happening on time, but the aggregate effect, I think, will be slowing down a lot of the harmful decisions made by this administration.”

Roads to Ruin, But a Push to Preserve

But outside of Washington, things are speeding up. New road and infrastructure projects, many backed by Chinese investment, are currently being carved into critical habitats in Indonesia, Africa, the Amazon and other regions. Much of this stems from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a development strategy to build extractive industries in 70 nations around the globe along with overland roads, ports, railways and pipelines to exploit them.

road clearing — A forest is cleared for a new road. William Laurance

“We’re experiencing an avalanche of new infrastructure projects,” says Laurance, who points out that the Initiative has at least 7,000 developments planned or underway. One of the most notorious projects is a gigantic hydroelectric dam that could wipe out the newly discovered Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) in Sumatra.

Meanwhile, a similar — if not even more extensive — proliferation of illegal roads is being constructed around the world by loggers, miners, poachers and other extractive industries. These activities threaten everything from elephants and tigers to insects and rare plants.

One big problem is that conservationists don’t always know where these roads — legal or otherwise — are being built, and without that information it’s impossible to protect species from development.

“It’s actually really difficult to try to get even basic maps of where roads are,” Laurance says. Right now he and his team pore over satellite images by hand, looking for signs of new disturbance — not an easy prospect when images vary by surface, shadowing and other factors. “Our group has spent something like a thousand hours trying to map these roads,” he says.

Their results of their labor-intensive work are rather shocking: “For every kilometer of legal road, we’ve mapped around three kilometers of illegal roads,” Laurance says. “That’s a very rough average, but it gives you an idea of the magnitude of the problem.”

Laurance has issued a call for help to develop a software tool to automate the road-discovery process. “We’ve got an urgent need to detect the roads and tell governments, look, here’s where there’s illegal activity,” he says.

Without that, conservation — and species — will lose ground every day. “The bottom line is we need to be able to keep track of roads in real-time, on a global scale, and especially in developing countries,” he says.

As this road-building goes on, governments around the world face a tight deadline to protect some of their most pristine wildlife habitats — or at least say they’re doing so. The signatories to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets have until 2020 — next year — to meet 20 conservation goals, including conserving “at least 17 percent of terrestrial and inland water, and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services.”

Most countries haven’t come close to that goal yet. Many of the experts we spoke with expressed hope that the tight deadline will result in some good, quick land and water protection that could protect countless species, but cautioned that these efforts should be watched carefully to make sure they truly protect key habitats and that they offer connectivity between disparate species populations.

The oceans will also be a big part of the Aichi targets. “You’ll probably see a lot of new, large marine protected areas established in the next year,” says Shiffman. He cautions, though, that some of these could be established in places where there’s no fish or other species to protect, or no system in place in which to protect what’s there. “They could end up being paper parks — parks in name only,” he says.

A Host of Other Issues

Here are a few more factors predicted to play a big role in 2019.

plastic pollution — Photo: John R. Platt

First, we continue to learn more about how plastic waste affects wildlife and the environment. Most recently, a study found that 100 percent of sea turtles had plastic or microplastics in their digestive systems. With more and more plastic being produced every day, this will be a major focus of research and conservation the coming year.

Meanwhile many experts also expressed fear about emerging diseases, like those affecting bats, frogs and salamanders.

“Emerging diseases are increasing in numbers, impacts, and in incidents, and are likely to cause greater losses of species,” says Lips. “They don’t often get the attention that climate change does, and the time scale is accelerated.”

Lips also noted that it’s often hard to get funding and other support for these growing problems because they’re less in the public eye. “People and the media tend to focus on the current emergencies rather than the slow, long-term problems because we are not very good at maintaining focus and attention,” she says.

The threats of poaching, snaring and wildlife trafficking will also remain significant around the world, as the forests of southeast Asia and the plains of southern Africa became emptied of their animal life and as “valued” species such as tigers, rhinos and pangolins face ever-increasing pressures.

Right now this activity is all illegal, but that could change in the blink of a pen stroke. “We need to watch out for the pro-trade agenda” like this past year’s attempt by China to legalize the medicinal trade in rhino horns and tiger parts, cautioned Rhishja Cota, founder of the wildlife advocacy organization Annamiticus. This may also mean keeping an eye out on the Trump administration’s continuing efforts to promote big-game hunting and resulting trophy imports by its wealthy patrons.

Finally, as habitats shrink and poaching and other threats take their toll, a growing number of species are likely to benefit from last-gasp captive breeding, either to boost their wild populations or to keep them alive once their habitats have disappeared. The red wolf and Florida grasshopper sparrow captive-breeding programs may save those species from extinction in 2019. Another species starting the year off on better footing is one of the world’s rarest birds, a duck called the Madagascar pochard (Aythya innotata), just returned to the wild after 15 years thanks to a captive-breeding program in Scotland, of all places. Other incredibly rare species likely to benefit from similar programs this year include the Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) and maybe even the rarely seen saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis).

“We haven’t had a camera trap photo of saola since 2013 and no biologist has ever seen one in the wild,” says Mayer from Global Wildlife Conservation. “But the Saola Working Group and partners are hoping to detect saola and begin to catch them next year for a conservation breeding program in Vietnam. Next year could be the year we rediscover this species and work toward breeding it.”

The Countdown Begins

The year 2019 has just barely begun, but experts warn us that the opportunity to make a difference on these issues is already running short.

“I don’t want to sound too bleak, but time is literally running out for the world as we know it,” say TRAFFIC’s Thomas. “The Earth simply can’t take the punishment of relentless over-exploitation of its natural resources, poisoning of its atmosphere and pollution of its oceans. We need to put aside political differences and work together to do something about this catastrophic situation — and quickly.”

Which of these threats to wildlife and endangered species do you worry about most in the coming year — or which additional threats do you think also need to be discussed? Share your thoughts online using the hashtag #Wildlife2019.

Also in The Revelator:

2019 Will Be a Big Year for Water