An Orca in Grief: Tahlequah’s Call to Arms

To restore Southern Resident killer whales and salmon, we need to look at our dams — and ourselves.

Early this summer, riding ocean swells just west of Washington State’s San Juan Island in a whale-watching vessel and scanning the waves for a glimpse of glistening black fins, I found myself in a difficult place.

Some chaperone-coordinators and I had brought a group of low-income, “first-generation-to-college” high-school students all the way from north Idaho to see the Southern Resident killer whales, our region’s iconic orca. The students had spent the previous two weeks learning about this unique population of whales in our program’s pilot curriculum, Killer Whales, Salmon & You. From the looks on their faces, our group of youth — many grappling with intensely stressful situations in their lives — obviously felt invested in seeing these whales.

It was not to be.

I’d been in cellphone contact that morning with orca biologist Dr. Deborah Giles, who had been hoping to join us to share her expertise with our students. But she was, at that very moment, heading north toward Canada trailing the very whales we’d come to see. It seemed the whales — known as “residents” because in years past they’d reliably feed in and around the San Juan Islands during summer months — were no longer acting so residential.

We’d all seen this change in the whales’ behavior. “Up until very recently, they’d always be here in June,” a naturalist on our ship had quietly confided to me earlier. “Always.”

My alarm bells were clanging. How do you explain to students who’ve already faced so many hardships that they may be witnessing part of an extinction event?

Stoically, the two naturalists continued spotlighting the sea lions, eagles and land masses we were privy to. But as the hours wore on, the stark absence of dorsal fins turned into a truth serum.

“So, everyone,” one naturalist said heavily, after we’d crisscrossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca. “We heard from other boat crews that many of the whales are up in Canada today. They’re near the Fraser River, about a seven-hour boat ride from here, probably looking for Chinook salmon. Having the whales roam this far out at this time of year is really, really unusual.”

Our students already knew these whales ate almost exclusively Chinook . They also knew that their own backyards — the uplands of rural Idaho — once boomed with salmon. Half our students that day were native Nez Perce, harmed by the same legacy of colonialism that broke the salmon. Both white and native students milled around the ship’s berth, wrapped in blankets. As the day wore on I could see them, one at a time, slowly giving up on what should have been the high point of our trip.

Our naturalists explained the dire plight of this beloved population of whales: That the animals are starving; that the grinding impacts of the Pacific Northwest dams have finally brought them to the brink of extinction; and that unless we quickly and radically restore Chinook, the whales will vanish.

Someone asked about other threats, like boat noise and traffic and pollution, which they heard has been known to collect in whales’ tissues.

“We still definitely need to solve those issues, but without food….” our naturalist trailed off.

I wonder how those students felt a few weeks later, during Tahlequah’s tour of grief.

Tahlequah, of course, is the now well-known Southern Resident killer whale who dominated the news in July and August as she gave birth and then carried her dead calf for 17 agonizing days. If I had known on that boat that she was nearing the end of her pregnancy, and almost certainly struggling to eat enough to keep her baby healthy, I would have had an even tougher time explaining to our students why we weren’t seeing whales.

Just weeks after witnessing my students’ numb resignation out on the water, I and many others felt Tahlequah’s vigil deeply. She refused to let her family sink away, and this has crystallized into what I deeply hope is a worldwide moment of reckoning: Not unlike my indigenous students living with the dark legacy of white colonialism, the whales suffer their own dark legacy at the hands of systemic oppression and injustice.

So what do we do with this knowledge?

We need to decide whether the orcas will be a grim reminder of our colonialist trajectory of collapse or a standard-bearer of hope for a new era.

If it’s the former, we let the rest of these whales die, one by one, until none remain.

But if it’s the latter, we intervene immediately with a full battery of restoration measures while also sharing the grim history of how this tragedy came to pass.

Because of Tahlequah’s tragic struggle, many more people realize that these whales lost up to half their population to the marine-park industry in the 1960s and early ’70s. In the days before our boat tour, our students not only saw the documentary Blackfish, about this grim history, but also had the opportunity to visit Penn Cove on Whidbey Island, Wash., the place where many Southern Resident killer whales died or were captured. There they met Howard Garrett, founder of Orca Network, who shared not only the gravity of the threats facing these whales, but also told them of the local tribes’ reverent kinship with the creatures — and all they are doing to save them and the salmon they can’t live without.

Our students heard several options during an afternoon spent with Dr. Ken Balcomb, the founder and lead scientist of The Center for Whale Research. He’s a whale biologist who has tracked the Southern Residents for more than 40 years, cataloging what is now among the most substantial and respected life-history sets for any mammal. He said much the same thing the students had already learned: We need to address all the dangers to orcas, but without an immediate influx of salmon, they’ll starve. He thinks we might have five years.

Balcomb, like Garrett and Dr. Giles, is among the few people who know almost everything about the science and history of these whales — and how to intervene to save them.

So what exactly can we do? Balcomb’s talk focused heavily on a proposal to immediately restore wild Chinoook to millions of acres of their original spawning grounds, the rural uplands of Idaho, through a simple action to open channels around the edges of four key lower Snake River dams in eastern Washington. Essentially, cutting through the dirt berms flanking the dams would open up the river while leaving the concrete dam structures in place, at a cost much lower than that of removing the actual dams. Balcomb told us this proposal had been on the table for decades. However, despite its low relative cost, and potential to save millions of dollars for taxpayers faced with the hefty price tag of bolstering the antiquated structures, a lack of political will had prevented action.

But that was before a mother whale carried her dead calf for 17 days across 1,000 miles.

Have those 17 days of grief finally created an opportunity for change?

After our class and field trip many of the students resolved to join the Free the Snake Flotilla, a “kayaktavist”-style event to draw attention to opening the Snake River uplands to salmon recovery. First held in 2015, it will take place again this year from Sept. 7 to Sept. 8 with activist Winona LaDuke as keynote speaker. This year, because of Tahlequah, many more participants are expected.

Meanwhile, more than 300,000 people have signed a petition and mailed postcards asking Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and his recently formed Southern Resident Recovery and Task Force to seriously consider breaching the four lower Snake River dams. The task force is expected to develop an action plan for Southern Resident recovery by October 2019.

Action is needed by then, if not sooner, because Tahlequah may not be the last Southern Resident to suffer. Scarlet, a three-year-old calf also known as J50, is currently struggling mightily to survive. She’s one of the last young females capable of giving this family of whales a shot at reproductive sustainability and now the unprecedented recipient of an intervention that includes antibiotic doses and live Chinook salmon hand-delivered by the Lummi Nation, who consider her kin.

Whatever actions finally come, the truth is that there’s no singular silver bullet to save these whales. There are salmon and habitat to restore, dams to breach, PCBs and pollution to cleanse, boat traffic and noise pollution to curtail to curtail and pipelines to stop — like the Trans Mountain pipeline in Canada was blocked last week, in no small part because of how it would have affected Southern Residents. There’s also climate change to solve, indigenous wisdom to adopt, and most of all, the simple, dedicated work of coming together as allies, partners and kindred spirits to do what needs to be done — for Tahlequah and for all our children.

southern resident killer whales — Rachel Clark watches Southern Resident killer whales. Photo: Avery Caudill. Used with permission.

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.

Previously in The Revelator:

Killer Whales Face Killer Toxins

Welcome Tara Lohan, Our New Deputy Editor

The respected environmental journalist joins The Revelator to help us tell important stories about climate change, water, wildlife and other essential topics.

The Revelator’s readership keeps growing, and now so is our staff. Tara Lohan joins the Revelator team this week as our new deputy editor.

We’re excited to have her on board. Tara comes to us from Water Deeply, where she spent the past two and half years as managing editor. She and her team covered the environmental, economic and social issues of water in California and the American West — issues of great importance not just to the region, but to the whole country.

Before that Tara served as the senior editor for environmental issues at AlterNet, where she shepherded groundbreaking coverage of water, energy, food and related topics. She’s also written for dozens of magazines, edited two books and developed several multimedia features about fossil fuel development and the people and communities these projects directly affect.

Tara brings more than a decade of experience as an environmental journalist and editor to The Revelator at a time when there’s no shortage of important stories to tell. Climate change, the extinction crisis and the erosion of protections for public lands affect us individually and as a society — and we’re here to shine a bright, fearless light on the truth and provide the context you can’t find anywhere else.

You’ll start seeing stories written or edited by Tara on the site very soon. First, though, we sat down with her to talk about her experience, the importance of environmental journalism in today’s political landscape and what she hopes to accomplish in the months and years ahead.

What first drew you to environmental journalism, and why do you think it’s important today?

The first step for me was discovering the field of literary environmental nonfiction and the work of people like Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich and Terry Tempest Williams. I was lucky to go to a college where I could study environmental science and writing, as well as the overlap of the two.

But it wasn’t until I first began working for a newspaper in New Mexico after college that I really discovered that there was an environment “beat” in the journalism world. I was drawn to it immediately because it touched on so many crucial topics like water, energy, agriculture, equity and climate change.

Nearly 20 years later, I still think those are some of the most critical topics, but we need help in putting them into context. These days people have access to a lot of information and I think environmental journalists have the important task of helping people understand what this information means, why it matters and how it impacts us and the planet we call home.

What are some of the most interesting stories you’ve covered recently?

I recently spent six months trying to understand why California, where I live, still has hundreds of thousands of residents who have chronically contaminated drinking water. This is a problem that has persisted in many places for years and in some cases for decades. The most shocking part is that while many of these communities are rural, they are not remote. Most of the impacted areas are only a mile or two from clean drinking-water infrastructure, so with enough effort and resources these are solvable problems.

You just got back from a trip to British Columbia, where hundreds of wildfires have been burning the past few weeks. What was that like, and what does it tell you about the importance of covering environmental issues these days?

What I first noticed is that folks in British Columbia are extremely fire aware and there are very strict burn bans in place, including areas where no smoking is allowed. And the caution is well deserved: There are more than 500 wildfires in the province currently, with 55 deemed significant.

The impacts are also noticeable. While I was there, it was too smoky at times to venture out for a hike in the temperate rainforests of Vancouver Island because of nearby wildfires. Flights to interior areas of the province were also delayed because of poor visibility.

Wildfires are a source of big concern in British Columbia right now, but also throughout the West.

Flying home from Victoria to San Francisco, I saw nothing but wildfire smoke below, including a massive plume from the Mendocino Complex fire, which grew to become California’s largest in the few weeks I was away.

The increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires in many areas underscores the need for continued (and expanded) reporting on climate change, forest management, impacts to water resources and biodiversity and the growing wildland-urban interface that makes battling many of these blazes even more complex.

What issues do you expect to be following in the coming months?

For as long as I’ve been writing, I’ve been writing about water, so I’ll continue to follow stories about access to clean drinking water, drought and aridification, dams and diversions, and promising new technologies and collaborations. I’ll also be keeping an eye on threats to public lands, environmental policy and rollbacks of existing regulations, and the so-called “new normal” of climate change impacts.

What excites you about working for The Revelator?

I’m excited to join a publication with a track record of telling great stories. And I’m thrilled that my job involves getting to talk to smart and interesting people every day about some of the most important topics of our times.

Follow Tara Lohan on Twitter.

What Does Wilderness Mean — and What Does It Take to Protect It?

We have five questions for Shelley Silbert, executive director of the advocacy group Great Old Broads for Wilderness.

What is the value of wilderness? And what threat is posed to that value by the current administration’s attacks on U.S. public lands, which hold hundreds of millions of acres of the nation’s wilderness?

We wanted the long view, so for answers to our questions we went to Shelley Silbert, executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, a national grassroots organization led by women that engages and inspires activism to preserve and protect wilderness and wild lands. The organization was conceived in 1989 by older women motivated by their love of wilderness and has spent decades advocating for public access to protected spaces, including longstanding efforts to hold agencies and elected officials accountable for maintaining natural wilderness.

What great old wilderness did you visit recently — and what did that visit tell you about the threats to public land?

Shelley Silbert at Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness, Minn., by Peggy Malloy.

This summer Great Old Broads held a five-day camping event (we call them “Broadwalks”) in Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness. We spent our days hiking in the beauty of rugged peaks, clear rivers, grassy meadows and conifer forests. In the evenings we gathered to discuss the unabated threats to the Endangered Species Act and the future of some of the region’s most threatened fauna.

Public lands and waters that provide habitat for these species face immediate and urgent threats. The Chinook salmon population in the Salmon River’s Middle Fork is severely impacted by climate change and habitat alteration. The species is uniquely wild, indigenous and genetically unaltered by hatchery fish.

As the world’s highest-elevation spawning area for Chinook salmon, the Salmon River’s Middle Fork is critical habitat — doubly valuable on a warming planet. But four dams on the lower Snake River, into which the Salmon River flows, prevent adult salmon from returning to spawn. These dams produce very little hydropower. Their removal is crucial to salmon survival, and we only have a few years before these salmon populations crash. We must be active, strategic and vigilant in the fight to protect public lands and waters that serve as home to these and other species.

Great Old Broads has been fighting for public lands since 1989. How do the current dangers to these sites compare to what existed nearly 30 years ago?

The threats have never been more severe. This administration and Congress are hell-bent on extracting oil, gas, coal, lumber and more from our public lands. At the same time, our ecological systems are under inordinate stress from climate change, population growth and habitat degradation: pressures that can only be reduced through strong protective laws and policies. These factors are culminating in a perfect storm that’s heading toward our public lands. A vocal, active and demanding citizenry is the only chance we have of stemming this wave of destruction.

Has the perception that wilderness isn’t for women or elders shifted at all during that time frame?

More women and older people hike and camp in the wilderness than thirty years ago. What hasn’t changed is the assertion made by anti-wilderness politicians that since “older people can’t access wilderness,” it shouldn’t be protected. That claim rang false 30 years ago when used by Senator Orrin Hatch, and it still falls flat today. Great Old Broads want wilderness protected even if we can’t always get out to enjoy it. We know wilderness is critical for wildlife, water, air and the very survival of Earth. Its value goes far beyond the selfish desire to recreate.

Your previous associate director, Rose Chilcoat, just finished fighting what could be called a nuisance lawsuit for closing a gate on public land, although the case is still pending against her husband. What does this case illustrate about public lands in America today?

Rose worked with Great Old Broads for over 15 years advocating for protection of our wild lands. She documented and exposed abuses of public lands — from unauthorized off-road vehicle use and roads to violations of grazing permits and trespass livestock. She led many of our efforts to designate wilderness and national monuments. When Utah’s San Juan County criminally charged Rose for trespass, endangerment of cattle, and witness retaliation for writing the Bureau of Land Management, it was clearly an attempt to silence her and make an example of her to outspoken public-land advocates. In these divisive times, that’s a chilling testament to the venom of those who oppose conservation.

When the Utah Court of Appeals threw out the case for lack of merit, it showed that even with the current political insanity we’re experiencing, justice can still prevail in the courts. It gives some confidence that unfounded litigation against conservation advocates will not succeed. We all have the right to protect our nation’s land, water and heritage, and we won’t be silenced.

What issues will you be watching in the final few months of 2018 — and do you have any predictions for 2019?

Our most fundamental laws and policies are under attack in Congress, including the Wilderness Act, Antiquities Act and National Environmental Policy Act. The current administration is dead set on ignoring or getting rid of laws that protect public lands (and people) from the effects of rampant oil, gas and coal extraction. As a result, agencies are running roughshod over democratic principles, such as public involvement and input. The administration’s policies wreak havoc on forests, rivers, oceans and habitats along our southern border.

We are watching closely and using grassroots activism to defend against these attacks, including litigation as warranted. We hope to see a Congress inaugurated in 2019 that is serious about its moral and legal obligation to protect public lands and the climate for future generations.

Trump’s Proposal to Replace the Clean Power Plan Endangers Public Health and the World’s Climate

The so-called “Affordable Clean Energy Rule” exemplifies the administration’s irresponsibility on climate change.

In his first 19 months in office, Donald Trump has repeatedly defied established presidential norms — so flagrantly that it almost obscures the many ways he’s changed national policies for the worse. But despite all the scandals and mean-spirited tweets, it’s likely that his most enduring impact will be his administration’s systematic, reckless dismantling of ongoing efforts to curtail human-caused climate change.

The miseries of global climate disruption are already upon us. During the current decade, the world has experienced record heat waves, as well as intermittent periods of extraordinary cold, devastating floods, prolonged droughts, dangerous wildfires and large and powerful hurricanes. Despite these alarm bells and urgent warnings from scientists around the globe, the volume of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by human activity has continued to rise each year.

One clear example of the administration’s gross irresponsibility on climate change is the so-called “Affordable Clean Energy Rule,” recently proposed by Trump’s Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. A little study shows the rule is neither affordable nor clean.

In contrast with the significant emissions reductions in the Clean Power Plan, which the Trump/Wheeler rule is intended to replace, the new rule allows individual states to establish their own emissions standards for highly polluting power plants. In some instances states will even be permitted to ignore CO₂ emissions from power stations.

Instead of allowing emissions reductions to be calculated by a mix of measures — such as shifting from using coal to burning natural gas, adding new renewable energy sources, and encouraging energy conservation and plant efficiency — the Trump/Wheeler proposal would only allow for consideration of on-site steps to encourage plant efficiency. At best those limited measures would lead to extremely modest reductions of climate-altering emissions.

The cost-benefit analysis that accompanies the proposed rule fails to compare the paltry benefits of the Trump administration proposal with those that could have been achieved under the Clean Power Plan. It also declines to take into account the new plan’s costly impacts on human health, wildlife and overall environmental quality. But one impact stands out: By EPA’s own calculations, it will cause as many as 1,400 premature deaths annually because of the increased pollution it will permit.

Beyond this the proposal undermines EPA’s longstanding use of the “New Source Review” provision of the Clean Air Act. Since 2000 vigorous implementation of that part of the law has required significant air pollution control upgrades — improvements that have limited health-harming emissions of soot, sulfur dioxide and other air pollutants at more than 100 U.S. coal-burning power plants and 112 oil refineries.

Once it is finalized, the Trump administration’s latest anti-environmental proposal will almost certainly be challenged in court. Unless it is materially altered, the rule may not survive judicial review.

The Clean Air Act provisions on which the proposal is supposedly grounded require the EPA to publish emissions guidelines reflecting the “best system of emission reduction” that has been “adequately demonstrated.” It may prove impossible for the administration’s lawyers to convince federal courts that the exclusive use of improvements in power plant operating efficiency — without allowing any other available emission limitation techniques to also be considered — satisfies that clear statutory criterion. Moreover, the ACE proposal runs afoul of the agency’s previous, well-supported finding that emissions of greenhouse gases pose an “endangerment” to human health.

Even if it is eventually struck down by federal judges, the Trump administration’s deeply flawed proposal reflects an irresponsible public policy choice. By pretending that climate change is not a serious, ongoing problem, or that it’s merely a minor difficulty that may be overcome by weak half-measures, the president and his appointees are shirking their public responsibilities in a damaging way.

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.

How to Take a Bite Out of Venus Flytrap Poaching

Current laws further a cycle of poverty while not really protecting rare plants. There’s a way to fix that.

Walk into almost any garden shop, or even your local Wal-Mart, and you may notice a curious display: rows of fierce, lightning-fast carnivores in little plastic cups. These tiny cups contain Venus flytraps, the only plant of their kind and a species that’s quickly nearing extinction in the wild. But you’d never know that from the sale price of $5 to $10.

The allure of owning a flytrap, with its terrifyingly beautiful crimson jaws and macabre mystique, is undeniable. And, to be fair, many flytraps are cultivated and sold legally by growers. But all too often, that cheap novelty plant may have reached the store by a much more sordid and secretive means: a complex web of poaching, poverty and black-market dealers.

Venus flytraps (Dionae muscipula) grow in just a few small areas in North and South Carolina. Although they’re protected under state law (and are being considered for national protection under the Endangered Species Act), there’s a large illegal market for them. Poachers have been known to steal thousands of plants from the wild at a time and sell them to dealers for as little as 25 cents apiece.

Solving this is not easy under existing systems. The overarching problem with Venus flytrap poaching, as with all plant poaching, is that those who bear the brunt of enforcement are typically the most disadvantaged. People who crawl through swamps or chop down trees at night are often motivated by financial necessity — what I call “poverty poaching.” Because they’re more easily caught than illegal dealers, these poachers are often the only ones paying fines, furthering the cycle of poverty. Meanwhile the dealers who largely drive the market for poached plants usually escape enforcement, sometimes even falling entirely outside poaching laws.

What sets the problem of plant poaching apart from the more well-known crimes of wildlife poaching is the fact that the law tends to value plants less than animals. Plants are a vital part of any ecosystem, but those species that are heavily poached don’t enjoy the same level of protection and media spotlight as beloved animals like rhinos or elephants. That’s a shame, because poaching of highly coveted plants like ginseng, orchids and maples devastates these species and robs us of millions of dollars of natural value each year.

Few laws protect plants. Many state poaching laws — and even the federal Endangered Species Act — are designed more toward helping animals. Whatever small fines exist for protected plants are usually a small disincentive compared to the allure of quick profits.

To address this, my recent paper in the Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy proposes a multilevel approach using a relatively new North Carolina state law and the federal Lacey Act. The approach would provide more meaningful protection to the Venus flytrap and target illegal plant dealers with harsher punishments than small-time poverty poachers.

The starting point is a 2014 state law that made poaching flytraps a felony, with increased fines and potential jail time. The law shows the state’s desire to protect its beloved official carnivorous plant, but also reinforces the inequities of most poaching laws. The penalty only applies to poachers who are caught in the act, making enforcement very difficult and entirely bypassing the black-market dealers.

But this felony penalty could be a powerful tool if used in conjunction with the Lacey Act. The Lacey Act, which prohibits interstate trade in protected species, is designed as an overlay — a way to levy federal poaching charges using the substantive laws of a state, tribe or foreign nation. Federal prosecutors successfully used it recently to indict a lumber mill in Washington state that was intentionally buying poached maple wood, making roughly $800,000 from the stolen wood in just two years.

The Lacey Act provides two useful mechanisms for prosecutors. First, it allows for much scarier disincentives (up to $10,000 for a civil penalty and up to $20,000 and five years in prison for criminal penalties). Second, it can be used in some cases — especially in conjunction with a state permitting system — to more easily prove when a dealer intentionally or carelessly buys plants he should know were poached.

North Carolina already has some permitting requirements for flytrap dealers (as well as dealers in ginseng, another frequent poaching target). The combination of these state permitting laws, the state flytrap poaching felony, and the Lacey Act could be used to strike more effective — and more equitable — blows against the most egregious dealers.

Luckily, public awareness of the plight of the truly unique Venus flytrap is slowly starting to grow, and it seems positioned for greater protection. If that happens, this curious carnivore may serve as a case study for real change for poached plants. And the survival of Venus flytraps, as well as a wide array of other plant species, may depend on it.

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.

Living With a Carbon Tax

As Washington state prepares to vote on a carbon tax, how is the one in Alberta, Canada, faring?

I live in Alberta, Canada. Yes, that Alberta. The one that wants oil pipelines, is home to the tar sands, and is responsible for nearly 60 percent of Canada’s entire feeder-cattle production. You may think this is the last place on Earth that would support any kind of action to reduce carbon emissions but, lo and behold, there has been a carbon tax here for nearly two years.

How has it worked out? I’ll let you decide.

Alberta has a few different policies to reduce emissions from large-scale emitters and electrical-generation facilities, but it wasn’t until 2017 that it implemented the carbon tax, which is applied to heating and transportation (except farm fuels). The current rate is $30 Canadian ($23 U.S.) per metric ton and will increase to $40 Canadian in 2021 and $50 in 2022. For gasoline right now, this works out to just under 7 cents per quart. On the heating side, a typical home now sees a monthly tax of about $5 Canadian (U.S. $3.80).

What does the government do with this windfall? Part of the money goes back to Albertans in the form of rebates. For instance, a low-income family will receive a rebate of $540 this year. The rebate is structured so that one-third of Albertans should receive more in rebates than they spend on the tax, one-third will break even, and the highest income earners will get no rebate. For this year the province will have an after-rebate surplus of about $1.4 billion Canadian, which is targeted to go into green projects such as expansion of light rail transit, research, small business tax reductions and rebates on residential efficiency items.

Sounds not too bad, eh?

The tax makes the carbon-based fuels a little less competitive against alternatives, and environmental progress is made by using less of them. However, like many stories that seem to have a happy ending, this is a story that’s not yet finished. Recently the government announced that future increases to the carbon tax will be used for general revenue. This makes the plan no longer revenue-neutral. It’s also a Christmas present for opposition political parties and lobby groups, enabling them to convince an already lukewarm electorate that this is just another tax.

A recent poll indicates that two-thirds of Albertans would like to see the tax disappear. Strange, in my opinion, since a good portion of this group are making money on the rebate or, at worst, breaking even. The economy doesn’t seem to be suffering either, with Alberta’s economic growth leading all other provinces last year.

So why is there such resistance to the carbon tax? It’s the strong viewpoint of nearly half of Albertans that climate change is either not a problem or that it is not driven by human activity. The fact that our carbon dioxide emissions have already effectively increased the intensity of our sun by over a half percent is “fake news” to them.

With that mindset, many see the carbon tax as just another tax and not as a mechanism for nudging people to use fewer carbon-based fuels. This is backed up by new-vehicle sales last year, where less than 15 percent were compact or intermediate-sized cars.

Even with this considerable opposition, the carbon tax is likely to stay, at least for a while. If the provincial opposition party wins the next election and throws out the provincial tax, the Canadian federal government will impose its own version by 2019. Of course, the federal opposition party is also against the carbon tax, so the federal carbon tax may also be in jeopardy.

My feelings on all of this?

I believe a carbon tax is a necessary component of our battle to reduce emissions. What I’m not happy with is the shuffling of some of the revenue into general operating funds, since this makes it feel like every other tax when, in my opinion, it should be treated like the most transparent tool the government has to reduce emissions.

The other two tools at the government’s disposal — regulations and subsidies — are not transparent. For example, if we regulate higher fuel efficiency for vehicles, automobile companies will incur extra costs and pass this cost onto car buyers. If we want to speed up the introduction of solar power generation, we can put in subsidies or other incentives, but this money comes from the taxes we pay or, because most governments run a deficit, taxes our children will pay.

It will be very interesting to see how the next years play out here in Canada, both at the provincial and federal level. It would be nice to hear the political parties debate what kind of carbon tax should be implemented instead of whether there should be a carbon tax at all.

However, in my opinion, until a large majority of people finally understand that climate change is both manmade and real, any carbon tax here in Alberta — or other places, including Washington state, which will consider a carbon tax ballot measure on November’s election — will have limited positive impact and a precarious life.

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.

When This Rat Went Extinct, So Did a Flea

The extinction of the Christmas Island flea — and the current risk to other parasites — shows a major gap in conservation efforts.

When Western sailors first landed on the uninhabited volcanic outcropping in the Indian Ocean that would later become known as Christmas Island, they found it abounding with unique and interesting species that had evolved over thousands of years in isolation.

At that time one of the most plentiful Christmas Island species was a nearly two-foot-long rodent. Eventually dubbed Maclear’s rat (Rattus macleari), the island’s dominant mammal exhibited little to no anxiety about the sudden presence of humans.

“These animals, like most of those found in the island, are almost completely devoid of fear,” wrote British paleontologist Charles William Andrews in A Monograph of Christmas Island, published by the British Museum in 1900. “They are a great nuisance, entering the tents or shelters, running over the sleepers and upsetting everything in their search for food. They seem to eat anything, and destroy any boots or skins incautiously left within their reach.”

Andrews described this “fine new rat” as existing “in swarms” all over the island, where they could be “seen running about in all directions…the whole forest is filled with its particular querulous squeaking and the noise of frequent fights.”

Perhaps these bold rats should have realized they had something to fear when two-legged residents first showed up on their island home. By 1903, just three years after Andrews’ monograph was released, Maclear’s rat was extinct — probably due to a disease carried to the island by invasive black rats (Rattus rattus) that had stowed away on visitors’ ships.

Now, 115 years later, we know that Maclear’s rat was not alone in its fate. According to a paper published August 13 in the Journal of Insect Conservation, the disappearance of the rat also caused the extinction of another species that depended on it: a parasite called the Christmas Island flea (Xenopsylla nesiotes).

This is the first time that a host-specific flea has been declared extinct, according to the paper.

The discovery of the extinction was saddening, but not surprising, says the paper’s author, Mackenzie Kwak, a parasitologist with the National University of Singapore. “Parasites, particularly the host-specific species, are perhaps the most imperiled group of organisms on Earth,” he says.

Kwak, whose research focuses on assessing parasites’ extinction risk, has also documented other flea species of Australia, of which Christmas Island is now a territory. He found that four other species are endangered, two of them critically. All are host-specific fleas that parasitize one species each.

As he explains in his paper, specialized parasites are at the mercy of their host species, which actually makes them more prone to extinction than their hosts. He’s dubbed this the “cryptic loss effect.” If a theoretical possum species were living in four populations — only two of which carried host-specific fleas — and the two flea-carrying populations disappeared, the possum species as a whole could survive. The flea would not.

In fact, the loss of one host species could actually affect numerous species around it. “Many species host a huge range of parasites, so the extinction of one bird can have a cascade effect of also causing a handful of host-specific parasites to disappear as well,” Kwak says. Maclear’s rat is an example of that. Another parasite it once carried, a tick called Ixodes nitens, is also believed to be extinct.

Kwak says this cryptic loss effect means many parasite species are at risk of extinction, even if they are not currently recognized as such. “For every threatened vertebrate species listed on IUCN Red List, there is a number of unrecognized co-threatened parasites waiting to go extinct should their host decline,” he says.

To help prevent this, Kwak’s paper calls for a more holistic approach to conservation, with fleas and other parasites considered just as important to save as their host species. This might involve conservation efforts in the wild, translocating threatened populations to safer sites, or even captive breeding.

The idea of conserving wild species and their parasites is “something of a paradigm shift,” says Kwak. “At present conservationists are only concerned with eradicating wildlife parasites, even though host-specific parasites generally don’t adversely affect their host species. This shortsighted notion gives no thought to the value of parasites as wider biodiversity or big players in ecosystem functioning.” He says it has even led to at least one species — the Californian condor louse (Colpocephalum californici) — being purposefully driven extinct. “To have conservationists invested in conserving all threatened species, rather than some species, while causing the deliberate extinction of others, would be a welcome change,” he says.

Why should we worry about conserving parasites? It turns out that despite the negative connotations of the word, most parasites don’t kill their hosts, and they play some important roles. “We certainly know that parasites play key roles in food chains, nutrient cycling and in helping their host’s immune system stay strong and effective, so they have so-called ecological value,” Kwak says.

There may be other roles that we’re just starting to understand. “In our eternal quest for new therapeutic drugs, we are increasingly turning to the natural world,” he says. “We are becoming bio-prospectors, and parasites hold innumerable compounds which could revolutionize medicine. For example, some tapeworm species bioaccumulate heavy metals and they could one day be used to treat heavy metal poisoning. Fleas have powerful anticoagulants which are useful for controlling blood clots, and some botflies produce anesthetic compounds to numb pain. If we lose them to extinction their whole arsenal of potentially therapeutic compounds is lost forever.”

Of course, all of this is a century too late for the Christmas Island flea. But maybe it serves as a bit of a wakeup call — however itchy — for other imperiled parasites. Some of them may be disappearing right now, while nobody is looking.

Previously in The Revelator:

Parasite Lost: Did Our Taste for Seafood Just Cause an Extinction?

Christmas Island Bat, Last Seen in 2009, Confirmed Extinct

High Temperatures and Air Pollution May Increase Risk of Mental Illness, Suicide

Climate change will exacerbate the problem in the coming decades, according to recent studies.

Increasingly, science is suggesting psychiatric problems can be worsened by weather and air pollution.

For decades research has shown that heat stress negatively affects the body and exacerbates psychiatric illness; now it turns out the biological impacts of air pollution are no different. Common air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, ozone and particulate matter not only irritate the lungs but can also trigger immune responses throughout the body and reach the brain through the bloodstream, causing neuroinflammation. Studies have linked increased exposure to these pollutants to higher rates of psychiatric medication, hospital visits for depression and panic attacks, as well as psychiatric emergencies and suicide.

In one of the most recent studies in the United States, researchers found psychological stress was 17 percent higher in areas with high pollution. “This is really setting out a new trajectory around the health effects of air pollution,” Anjum Hajat, coauthor of the study, said in a press release. “The effects of air pollution on cardiovascular health and lung diseases like asthma are well established, but this area of brain health is a newer area of research.”

The next few decades may see these problems multiplying. Climate change is predicted to bring not just higher temperatures but also increased levels of ground-level ozone and particulate air pollution from wildfires, chemicals, stagnant weather patterns and other conditions.

In response, scientists are beginning to investigate how mental health will be affected by environmental change. A July 2018 study found a quantifiable link between above-average temperatures and increased rates of suicide. According to that analysis, as many as 26,000 additional people in the United States could die by suicide by 2050 if global warming is not curtailed. The study calculated that for months that are just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, the suicide rate that month increased by 0.7 percent. “Better understanding the causes of suicide is a public health priority,” lead author Marshall Burke of Stanford University told USA Today.

The study also highlighted the need for policies to mitigate future temperature rise if we hope to stem these mental-health threats; other experts have made similar calls. In a recent Nature article, public-health researchers called for a systems-wide consideration of the mental health effects of climate change. As they wrote in their paper, “mental health needs, funding of services and research are not being adequately addressed.” That could cost us all in the long run.

Trump’s Policies on Public Lands Will Hurt Local Economies

As Sec. Zinke prepares to open Grand Staircase-Escalante to mining, experts and business owners say tourism income far outweighs the potential from fossil-fuel extraction.

The Trump administration this week released draft plans for mining and other development within lands recently removed from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. The plans, which are now open for public comment, identify more than 1,600 acres formerly attached to the latter monument as “identified for disposal” by lease or sale, indicating their potential for coal, oil, natural gas and uranium development.

The administration claims these initiatives — the latest in its work to accelerate energy development by slashing regulations and protections for national monuments —will stimulate the economy, but experts say the rush to sell off public lands to the fossil-fuel industry could actually have a long-term damaging economic impact.

Emily Lande, a senior campaign representative at Our Wild America campaign at Sierra Club, says it has been “well documented” that public lands provide a lot of economic benefits, but the Trump administration has not only disregarded the economic benefits of protecting public lands, it has also tried to cover them up.

“The administration has the mindset that the only economic benefit that comes from public lands is from energy development and mining,” she says.

The Washington Post reported the Trump administration’s cover-up in July, when documents accidentally released by the Department of the Interior — and retracted a day later — showed the agency’s officials deliberately dismissed evidence that national monuments boosted “gateway” towns’ economies and instead focused on emphasizing energy development and logging.

Gateway towns are typically small, rural communities adjacent to national parks and monuments. These communities are mostly supported by tourism revenues from lodging, restaurants and gas stations and rely heavily on public lands for their livelihoods.

Several studies show that America’s public lands played a crucial role in supporting gateway communities in many parts of the country.

Among them, a 2017 report by Headwaters Economics, a nonpartisan independent research center, showed that population, employment, personal and per capita income have gone up in communities adjacent to national monuments since those monuments have been designated.

Gateway communities around Grand Staircase-Escalante, Cascade-Siskiyou, Craters of the Moon, Grand Canyon Parashant and a number of other national monuments in the West expanded after the monuments have been created, the report found.

In addition to growing their populations, these communities also saw growth in employment and per capita income in the years following monuments’ designation.

Another report, from the Outdoor Industry Association, was released before Trump slashed Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah; it found that monuments across the country serve as important economic drivers.

Hundreds of millions of annual visitors to monuments, parks and other Interior Department sites contribute $887 billion to outdoor recreation industries that support 7.6 million jobs, according to the report.

A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council highlighted the dangers of Trump’s sweeping proposal to open up almost the entire U.S. coastline — home to 68 national parks — to oil and gas drilling.

According to the report, coastal national parks generated $5.7 billion in economic output, supported 59,517 jobs and attracted 84 million visitors in 2017.

Putting oil rigs right outside protected areas, or inside previously protected sites, will have an adverse effect on this national economic engine, Lande says.

“People don’t really want to go to parks and see an oil rig, that’s just not what they are there for,” she says. “That will have negative consequences for the local economies and for the places that are really dependent on those protected landscapes in order to keep a sustained, healthy economy.”

Ironically, rural voters who turned out heavily for Trump in the 2016 election could be the hardest hit by his environmental policies, as small communities often depend on the health of public lands for their long-term income.

Lande says a particularly egregious example of Zinke’s destructive public-land policies is the rollback of federal protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah in December 2017.

“I think it’s the prime example because the monument is so established in that community, and people really build their lives around it,” she says. “To undo that protection and to shrink the size of that monument… that really puts a threat and a lot of pressure on a local community.”

Utah has always been at the fore of the debate on energy and public lands because of the high number of protected landscapes in the southern part of the state, all of which are located next to areas leased for oil and gas development.

Along with Grand Staircase, Trump has also drastically cut Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, which was designated by the Obama administration in December 2016, by 85 percent. Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon and Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada are awaiting potential similar fates.

The larger economic impact of opening public lands to oil and gas would be felt across the country, as development and increased emissions would contribute to climate change, Lande says.

“You are going to feel that in a community, you are going to feel that in a number of wildfires, you are going to feel that in air pollution and water pollution and costs that come from that — all public-health impacts,” she says. “I think there are larger and longer-term economic impacts that will be felt across our country.”

National Monuments, Local Economies

In Utah local and state officials have vocally opposed Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument ever since it was designated by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Once the Trump administration entered the White House, they doubled down on their rhetoric about federal overreach.

At the behest of Utah’s outgoing Sen. Orrin Hatch, Trump slashed the 1.9-million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante in Garfield and Kane counties by 900,000 acres. The move was meant to limit federal government’s control of local lands and give opportunities to the extracting industry to create jobs in the area.

But business owners in Garfield County, home of several gateway communities to Grand Staircase-Escalante, say tourism — not energy development — is the primary driver of the local economy.

One of those gateway towns is Boulder, Utah, which sits between the town of Escalante and Capitol Reef National Park and is praised for its pristine beauty. Surrounded by rugged southwestern landscapes, it’s one of the most isolated areas in the country, and business owners say visitors are attracted to its spectacular landscape and dark night skies adorned by the Milky Way.

Scott Berry, a co-owner of Boulder Mountain Lodge, says “the public demotion of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will likely discourage individuals, families, and businesses from bringing new ideas, and new capital to the gateway communities.”

Berry says he saw this influx 24 years ago when he opened the lodge and tourists from other states and countries poured into the town, transforming it from an insular rural community into a prime outdoor destination, which at the time was free from the crowds common for many national parks.

“It improved the character of the community, which started to blossom and see itself as a part of the world,” Berry says.

Blake Spalding, a co-owner of Hell’s Backbone Grill, moved to Boulder from Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1999. She opened the restaurant the following year.

“We wouldn’t have opened the restaurant had the monument not been created,” Spalding says in a telephone interview.

The vision for Hell’s Backbone Grill was to support the monument. After opening the restaurant, Spalding authored two books that highlight her affinity for Utah’s public lands. The most recent, This Immeasurable Place: Food and Farming from the Edge of Wilderness, co-authored by her business partner Jen Castle, tells the story how they started the farm-to-table restaurant in the small, Mormon community.

“We are unequivocally for the monument — and if anything, it should be made larger, not reduced in half,” Spalding says.

Although her business is booming, Spalding says people have written to her about canceling their trips to the area in protest of Utah officials’ handling of the state’s national monuments.

Berry, of the Bounder Mountain Lodge, has also had reservations cancelled. He says he couldn’t tell if the reduction of the monument had an immediate impact on his business as his guests didn’t tell him why they decided to change their trips.

Berry and Spalding are not isolated cases. According to the NRDC report, Garfield and Kane counties, homes to the monument, experienced 24 percent job growth, a 32 percent increase in personal income and a 17 percent increase in per capita income between 2001 and 2015.

More recently, tourism tax dollars in Kane and Garfield counties increased 20.8 percent and 10.2 percent, respectively, between 2015 and 2016, according to the report.

Ironically, Berry argues that this growth actually fed opposition to the monument.

“These newcomers are bringing new ideas to what have always been small, insulated communities in the middle of nowhere, slowly changing the social landscape,” he says. “Not surprisingly, these changes have made traditional residents uneasy, and disagreement about the monument is the way that unease gets expressed.”

This unease was the key factor that has played into local government’s push for the reduction of the monument and claims that mining could bring better jobs than recreational tourism. Studies point to large deposits of coal in the Kaiporawits Plateau, an area rich in dinosaur fossils which has been cut from the monument by the Trump administration.

Four mining claims have been staked in the former Grand Staircase so far, but Berry calls local conversations about mining “wishful thinking” and questions whether mining in the region would ever be economically viable.

“Local residents are well aware of the talk about the possibility of new energy and mining projects in the area are ‘castles in the clouds’,” he says.

To Berry there’s only one product that the remote area near Grand Staircase-Escalante can market sustainably now and in the future: the wild, untrammeled, awe-inspiring landscape.

“Right now hundreds of families in Boulder, Escalante, Tropic and Kanab are building the foundations of a future economy based on this unique opportunity,” he says. “We, as locals, and the nation at large will we have to decide if we have the courage to step into this future, or choose instead to retreat into dreams of the past.”

Editor’s note: The plans to sell off some of the public lands formerly attached to Grand Staircase-Escalante were withdrawn two days after they were announced. The Bureau of Land Management has now been directed to “modify” the proposal.

Grizzly Bears and Roads: The Grisly Truth

When roads are built in grizzly habitat, bears come into conflict with humans more often. A new report explains what’s necessary to keep the bears from dying.

Most people picture western Canada as sprawling, pristine wilderness, with high mountain peaks and thick pine forests as far as the eye can see. But cutting through the woods are hundreds of thousands of miles of resource roads — dirt and gravel roads that provide the public and the timber, oil and mining industries with a thoroughfare into the backcountry. In British Columbia and Alberta alone there are nearly 497,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) of such roads, slicing right through prime grizzly bear range.

How bad are these roads? A report published last month found that motorized access to wilderness areas is increasingly bad news for grizzly bears, both individuals and populations. When roads are present, grizzlies (Ursus arctos horribilis) die more often.

Resource roads — From “Resource Roads and Grizzly Bears in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.” Used with permission.

“Roads have a particularly influential impact on grizzly bears,” says Michael Proctor, an independent Canadian bear research ecologist and co-author of the report. “They also have an impact on elk and mule deer, but grizzly bears are thought to be a decent umbrella species in this region.”

Prior research has found that between 77 and 90 percent of grizzly bears that survive the natural perils of cub-hood will eventually be killed by people — and almost all are killed near roads. This increase in grizzly mortality isn’t due to bears getting hit by vehicles, but rather from conflicts with humans roaming the woods, especially during summer and fall sport- and subsistence-hunting seasons. During these times humans are out looking for deer and elk while bears are foraging nuts and berries to build up their fat supplies ahead of winter hibernation.

How roads affect bears — From “Resource Roads and Grizzly Bears in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.” Used with permission.

“More females have died from ungulate hunters defending their hunt” than have died from the formerly legal grizzly trophy hunt in some areas, explains Proctor, cofounder of the Trans-Border Grizzly Bear Project, which focuses on the conservation of grizzlies in the southern Selkirk and Purcell mountains of British Columbia, Montana and Idaho. “No one wants to get hurt by a grizzly bear, but you put people with guns out in the backcountry and bears die.”

Roads affect bears differently depending on their sex and age. For example, Alberta researchers have found that survival of reproductive-age females declines in areas where road density is greater than about half a mile of road per 250 acres. As females die the local population experiences cascading declines. Exactly how much a population will decline in these areas varies, depending on traffic volume, habitat quality and the tendency of local people to kill bears.

Animals also change the ways they make use of their surroundings in areas where roadways slice through their habitat, leaving populations increasingly fragmented. As a result, bears select smaller home ranges and experience reduced reproduction rates.

The new study ultimately corroborates a report issued last year by the British Columbia’s Auditor General’s office that found habitat degradation was the biggest threat to the province’s remaining 15,000 grizzlies — not trophy hunting, which conservationists had long fingered as the key practice putting bears in jeopardy. Resource roads in the province are increasing at a rate of 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) per year, according to the new report. Though British Columbia has far more resource roads than Alberta, it also has far more bears and fewer protections. Grizzlies are a threatened species in Alberta under the provincial Wildlife Act, with fewer than 1,000 left in the wilderness. British Columbia, meanwhile, doesn’t even have provincial protected species legislation, which makes it harder to enact conservation measures. It also means bears rarely come out ahead of industry and development. “British Columbia is a bit further behind in managing access than Alberta,” says Clayton Lamb, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta who also worked on the report.

grizzly on a road — A grizzly on the road. Photo: National Park Service

Alberta has already started working on such access management, but British Columbia has made few steps toward protecting the bears. Earlier this month the province announced it would close public access to roads near four key grizzly populations for a few months each year, but the roads will remain open to industry vehicles year-round, and other sites remain unprotected.

The authors ultimately recommend strategically reducing motorized access in both provinces to save grizzlies. “We’re not talking about ‘no roads’ in the backcountry, but a reasonable reduction,” says Proctor. He recommends closing roads in areas where grizzly bear conservation is a concern (like around threatened population groups), in areas where roads occur in high-quality habitats and around areas the provide habitat linkages between populations.

However, wildlife managers have struggled to implement road-access controls that would keep the recreating public out but allow industry in. “It’s universally hard to close a road,” says Proctor. “It was hard in the United States, but the U.S. has adapted.” Because bears have been extirpated in the majority of the lower 48, with no more than 1,000 bears in any of the six remaining population groups, the United States has implemented access controls more swiftly in hopes of protecting the few bears they have left before they disappear. As a cornerstone of recovery, U.S. managers established a motorized-access management system that adjusts road densities based on the security of bear habitat. This includes a requirement for large roadless areas. Canada, with more than 16,000 bears in the West, hasn’t faced such a conservation crunch yet and therefore has been slower to make changes.

On the surface it appears that Canada falls far behind the United States, but Proctor says it’s more that “our problems are finally catching up to us.”

Proctor says the conservation of grizzlies and their habitat on both sides of the border is vital for the species’ long-term survival. Reducing road access goes far beyond regional conservation in Alberta and British Columbia. It would also aid in creating large-scale connectivity between grizzly bear populations across North America. Each patch of habitat is vital to providing a chain between population zones.

This kind of big thinking falls in line with the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative, a conservation project with the aim of creating a continuous ecological corridor from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming up to Canada’s Yukon Territory. The corridor spans more than 500,000 square miles — ample room for roaming grizzlies.

Achieving any of these goals requires preserving more habitats with fewer roads. “We need to keep the backcountry core habitat healthy so we have healthy populations to connect,” says Proctor.