How Saving Southern California’s Steelhead Trout Could Also Help the State’s Watersheds

A coalition of public and private entities hopes to revive both fish and water supplies in a hotter, drier climate.

Can saving an endangered fish help heal some of California’s regional water woes?

Masses of steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) once migrated freely between the sea and river headwaters along the California coast. That began to change about a century ago as dams, stream realignments, bridges, invasive species and degraded estuaries all took their toll on steelhead, putting this intriguing member of the salmon family on a path toward near-extinction. Now a coalition of private and public entities hopes to reverse the trend — and re-invigorate vital watersheds in California’s most densely populated region in the process.

“It’s not just about water for fish,” says Sandra Jacobson, South Coast director for California Trout, Inc., a state conservation group also known as CalTrout. “Native fish are one of the best indicators of the health of a watershed. If human-caused factors are affecting the fish, it’s only a matter of time before our bays, beaches, recreational venues and even our drinking water are affected.”

The nonprofit spearheads the South Coast Steelhead Coalition, which aims to protect and restore steelhead populations along coastal waters in San Diego and Orange counties.

Steelhead, like salmon, return to the headwaters where they were born to spawn. However, unlike salmon, which die after depositing their eggs, a steelhead can survive to restart the cycle, spawning three or four times in its lifetime. These anadromous (oceangoing) fish can also thrive in fresh water, where they are known as rainbow trout. This and their ability to adapt to drought and flood cycles gives them the best chance of survival in California, where flashy watersheds are the norm, Jasobson says. Steeply sloped catchments such as high mountains channel massive amounts of rainwater into a streambed, producing flash floods and creating a temporary superhighway for anadromous fish.

“The steelhead like these flashy systems,” says Jacobson.

Steelhead populations dropped so precipitously that the species was listed as endangered in 1997. They’re still very much at risk; in the case of the Southern California coast steelhead, just 500 adult fish currently reach their spawning grounds. And they aren’t alone in their decline. A report released in 2017 by CalTrout and the University of California, Davis, found that if current trends continue, 74 percent of California’s 32 salmonid species will likely go extinct within the next 100 years.

The South Coast Steelhead Coalition hopes to reverse the trend and create conditions for steelhead to once again thrive. Recovery efforts include reworking waterways under bridges and dynamiting dams to restore the steelhead’s aquatic pathways up into their home watersheds. The project also works to remove non-native aquatic species like bass and sunfish, which compete for food and even eat steelhead eggs, further depleting the population. The project also actively protects native trout by improving habitats through removing excessive vegetation in streambeds, modifying smaller fish passages for increased access, and on rare occasions rescuing trout during extended drought conditions. These steps were included in a plan developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2012 to bring steelhead back from the brink.

In Pauma Valley, where the San Luis Rey River meanders through north San Diego County to rendezvous with the Pacific, the steelhead coalition concentrates on improving water quality, increasing both groundwater and surface-water flows, and removing the species’ biggest migratory barrier: the waterway underneath the Pauma Creek bridge on State Route 76. The most robust steelhead population lives in the headwaters of Pauma Creek as rainbow trout, and Jacobson says improved water quality and reworking the waterway under the bridge will support this population’s ability to migrate to the ocean and undergo smoltification, the process of transforming into their saltwater-adapted steelhead form.

Pauma Creek Bridge. © 2018 Debra Utacia Krol. All rights reserved.

The project also will help provide a sustainable water supply for residents in this heavily agricultural valley. Initiatives in the works include installing a weather station and soil sensors on the Pala Band of Mission Indians’ lands, where rains smack into the 6,100-foot-high western slopes of Palomar Mountain and plunge down Pauma Creek to join the San Luis Rey. Heidi Brow, a water resource specialist with the Pala Band, says farmers and residents can access information from the reporting stations to inform irrigation decisions and conserve water. The Pala Band also participates in rainwater-catchment and graywater-reuse programs, further conserving water and reducing groundwater pumping.

The stakes are high for people as well as fish. Pala’s wells ran dry in 2017 and the tribe had to purchase water from a local water district. Similarly, the five Pauma Valley tribes in the watershed just wrapped up a 50-year lawsuit to restore their water rights, only to encounter a water shortage this year.

Even as the coalition makes progress, some people aren’t convinced that the steelhead’s migration route can be saved, or that restoring them to their old waterways is cost-effective. “I’d love to have trout swimming all the way up,” says Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians Chairman Bo Mazetti, whose tribe’s land lies along the river. “But realistically, we’ve got climate change and drought occurring and there’s just no way the river is going to run all year anymore. We’re not in the old days any longer.” He’s also worried about the significant resources being spent on the project.

Jacobson disagrees with Mazetti’s first concern. “The trout don’t need water in the river all year long,” she says. The fish only migrate between December and May, when the river flows all the way to the ocean, meaning drought during summer months probably won’t affect them.

Weather station at Pala Band. © 2018 Debra Utacia Krol. All rights reserved.

However, nobody can dispute the hefty price tag for saving steelhead: Pala’s weather stations were partially funded by a $176,000 grant from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The price tag for just one new fish passage project currently in progress in Ventura County is even larger: it’s expected to reach $60 million by the time it’s completed in 2021.

Nonetheless, experts say restoring the coastal watersheds that the fish depend on will also help refill some of California’s most depleted aquifers, increasing water supplies throughout the drought-parched region. As Jacobson says, “The fixes we’re working on to save the fish will also help to save the rivers.”

Reporting for this article was made possible by an award from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources and with support from the UCLA Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategy’s Ethnic Media Fellowship Program.

Granting Legal Rights to Rivers: Is International Law Ready?

Four rivers around the world now have legal rights. But what are the implications of rights for nature for international environmental law?

Last year, four rivers were granted legal rights: the Whanganui in New Zealand, Rio Atrato in Colombia, and the Ganga and Yamuna rivers in India. These four cases present powerful examples of the increasing relevance of rights-centered environmental protection. Like corporations, which have legal rights in many jurisdictions, these rivers are rights-bearing entities whose rights can be enforced by local communities and individuals in court. But unlike corporations, these rights are not yet recognized in international treaties. Which raises the question: what are the implications of rights for nature for international environmental law?

Granting Rights to a River: Enhancing a Right-Based Approach

In international law, legal standing is principally employed to distinguish between those entities that are relevant to the international legal system and those excluded from it. Current international law conventions do not give legal standing to water resources. Instead, international conventions — such as the Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses — mainly address water management from the perspective of the participating states. Similarly, European legislation on freshwater resources, such as the Water Framework Directive, recognizes the importance of protecting water resources, but views them entirely as natural resources belonging to states.

In contrast to international law, some countries have granted rights to the nature, and specifically to rivers, in their national laws. In 2008, Ecuador recognized the constitutional right of Mother Earth and, in 2010, Bolivia adopted the Laws on the Rights of Mother Earth, which gives legal standing to nature and establishes an ombudsman for the protection of its rights. And in May 2017, Colombia’s Constitutional Court recognized the Atrato River as a legal person.

More recently, the Parliament of New Zealand granted the country’s third-longest river, the Whanganui, the legal rights of a person, after a 140-year campaign by the Whanganui Iwi tribe. In addition to compensating the Whanganui Iwi for grievances, the move seeks to preserve the river for future generations of Whanganui Iwi and all New Zealanders. As such, the river gains its legal personality not from an abstract legal entity, but from the people that are connected with the river.

India’s Ganges River and one of its main tributaries, the Yamuna River were granted these same rights. The high court in the northern state of Uttarakhand — not the national government, as in New Zealand, Ecuador, and Bolivia—issued the order, citing the case of the Whanganui in establishing that that the Ganges and the Yamuna should be accorded the status of living human entities.

These rivers now have the right to representation in the form of “guardians” or “allies” in legal proceedings against threats to their wellbeing, such as degradation. Like a charitable trust or society, these rivers can have “trustees” looking out for their best interests. Like people, these rivers have the right to sue others, seeking to force communities to take better care of the river, or face penalties.

Critics argue that these rulings could set precedents for granting rights to other natural entities such as forests, mountains, and deserts, inviting lawsuits to protect resources from degradation. Some critics have even pointed to extreme spin-offs in which stones and pebbles could eventually sue people for stepping on them. Defenders reject this view, and say the point is to protect the ecosystems human life depends on.

The practical implications of these legal innovations are not clear yet, but the stage is being set for an interesting comparative study: How does legal representation for rivers play out in different social, ecological, and economic contexts?

The Whanganui River is a relatively pristine ecosystem — especially in contrast to the heavily polluted Yamuna and Ganges rivers. Each day, 1.5 billion liters of untreated sewage enters the Ganges River, and many attempts to clean up the river have failed over the years. Will the river’s legal status improve this situation?

The governance challenge in India is significant: the limitations of a state court’s control over an environmental resource — which is by its very nature inter-jurisdictional — become clear. Furthermore, there are no financial resources to support the implementation. In New Zealand, however, financial redress of NZ$80 million was included in the settlement, as well as an additional NZ$1 million contribution towards establishing the river’s legal framework.

Are Transboundary Rivers People, Too?

The international treaties that govern transboundary rivers focus on the participating countries’ rights and entitlements, to ensure that one riparian country’s use or management of the river does not negatively affect the rights of another riparian. These international agreements rarely grant rights to individuals and local communities—and if they do, they usually only address access to information, public participation in decision-making processes, and access to justice.

In the transboundary context, the concept of trusteeship might be useful. According to the public trust doctrine, a nation has a legal duty to protect its natural resources for the public interest and for the common benefit of present and future generations. International rivers could come under the protection of the public trust, and local communities would be both owners and beneficiaries of the trust’s interests. In 1998, for example, Melanne Andromecca Civic proposed that the United Nations Trusteeship Council should be charged with the management of the Jordan River.

It is not clear whether these are the first steps towards a new international norm in the coming years. It is however clear that an anthropocentric view of the environment is, in some circumstances, being replaced by an eco-centric perspective — at least in some countries.

The anthropocentric and eco-centric perspectives can go hand-in-hand. For example, in 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognized, for the first time in international law, an autonomous right to a healthy environment under the American Convention. Moreover, the Global Pact for the Environment, an initiative launched by France during the 2017 UN General Assembly, affirms this right in its first article.

This double movement — on the one hand, recognizing the human right to a healthy environment, and on the other, the rights of nature — are both means to enhancing the legal protection of the environment and to “humanize” it. Granting legal personality to transboundary rivers may reinforce their environmental protections and strengthen the rights of riparian communities. National laws and jurisprudence could pave the way for new features in international legal frameworks that will take into account the granting of rights to shared water resources.

This essay was originally published by New Security Beat.

Lion-Hunting by Trump Donors Is Awful, But the Trade in Lion Bones Is Worse

Experts worry this booming trade could doom the big cats in the wild.

Last week angry headlines around the world decried the news that the Trump administration had issued trophy-import permits for 38 lions killed by 33 hunters — including many high-rolling Republican donors — between 2016 and 2018.

Lions (Panthera leo leo) have experienced massive population drops over the past two decades. The big cats gained some protection under the Endangered Species Act in 2016, but the Obama-era regulations still allowed some hunting and trophy imports as long as the host countries could prove that their hunts were sustainable. The Trump administration did away with that requirement last year and instead decreed that it would allow imports on a “case-by-case basis.”

Those 38 dead lions represent the Trump administration’s shift on hunting of endangered species.

More worrying than these trophies, however, was a story that came out around the same time but barely made a blip on the media’s radar. Just a few days before news of the Trump-era lion imports became public, a leaked letter from the South Africa Department of Environmental Affairs revealed that it had nearly doubled the amount of lion bones and skeletons it would allow to be exported from the country, from 800 a year to 1,500.

That’s a dramatic increase from the 573 lion skeletons exported from South Africa in 2011, which itself was nearly double the number of exports shipped during the three-year period of 2008 to 2010.

Unlike the lions slain by hunters, the South African bones will come from the country’s 200-plus lion farms, where the big cats are raised — often in terrible conditions — for use in “caged hunts.” There, according to the 2015 documentary Blood Lions, foreign hunters pay as much as $50,000 for the opportunity to shoot semi-tame lions in small, walled-off, inescapable encampments. The heads and skins from these caged hunts become trophies, but the rest of the bodies — and many of the other lion carcasses from the factory farms — are shipped to Asia, where the bones are ground down to be used as “medicine” and as a component in wine. (There is no medicinal quality in lion bones.)

These factory farms are believed to contain about 8,000 captive-bred lions — an astonishing number compared to the fewer than 20,000 lions estimated to still live in the wild throughout Africa. South Africa itself is estimated to hold fewer than 2,000 adult wild lions.

Where does this demand for lion products come from? Many experts say the increase in the lion-bone trade is a response to the decline in wild tiger populations in Asia. Tigers are also poached for “medicinal” products, although those big cats have become so rare in the wild — an estimated 3,900 animals spread across a dozen countries — that the industry has been forced to turn to other felines to feed its fortunes.

“The lion never had any traditional value in China, but it’s an analog to the tiger so it seems to be acceptable,” Luke Hunter, chief conservation officer of the big-cat conservation organization Panthera, told me in 2016.

As more lions enter the legal bone trade, the danger to wild lions increases. A July 2017 report from the Environmental Investigation Agency said that legal trade in lion bones further threatens wild tigers and lions by stimulating demand for products made from their bodies. In traditional Asian medicine, wild products are considered more potent and valuable than farm-raised equivalents.

Interestingly enough, the farms and lion-bone trade appear to also be inspiring an increase in the poaching of captive lions. A report issued last month found that at least 60 captive lions in South Africa have been killed by poachers since 2016, with dozens of additional attempted killings.

At least five captive tigers were also killed in South Africa during the same time period. It is unclear how many tigers exist in South Africa, but the country has exported more than 200 captive-bred tigers over the past five years, according to a recent report. About half of those cats were exported to Vietnam and Thailand, hubs of tiger-product smuggling activity.

All of this is big business and while most of it is legal, some of it may not be. Another new report, issued last month by two South African organizations called the EMS Foundation and Ban Animal Trading, accused the legal lion-bone trade of shipping a much greater quantity of bones than officially reported. The two organizations used their report to call for eliminating all lion exports from South Africa, restricting the breeding of lions and other big cats, and investigating the finances of breeders.

What does the future hold for wild lions? A 2015 study predicted that wild lions would see another 50 percent population decline over the next two decades due to poaching, the bushmeat trade (which often catches lions in snares intended for other wildlife), retaliatory killings for predation of livestock, and habitat loss. Add legal trophy hunting and poaching inspired by the legal bone trade into the mix and that timeline may become accelerated — and lions throughout Africa could pay the price.

Orangutans, Drones, Seaweed and Water Wars: The 13 Best New Eco-books for August

Books coming out this month also examine endangered languages, the lingering effects of colonialism and how war hurts the environment.

It’s the height of summer, and there’s no better way to while away the hot August evenings than to curl up with a good book. Luckily there are dozens of great new environmental books coming out in August to keep you reading all month long. Here are 13 thought-provoking new titles publishers have scheduled for release this month, with books for dedicated conservationists, animal-loving kids, history buffs and everyone in between.

Wildlife and Endangered Species:

Extreme Conservation: Life at the Edges of the World by Joel Berger — A globe-trotting, eye-opening journey to view and understand rare creatures living in some of the most extreme places on Earth. In the process Berger reveals how even these remote areas are being affected by climate change and people. One of the must-read books of the month.

Cuddle Me, Kill Me: A True Account of South Africa’s Captive Lion Breeding and Canned Hunting Industry by Richard Peirce — With the horrifying reality of South Africa’s booming lion-bone trade now in the news, and the recent revelation that the Trump administration has allowed the import of several lion-hunt “trophies,” this may be the most timely book of the month.

Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation by Juno Salazar Parreñas — An academic book that uses my favorite apes and the people caring for them as a way to talk about cultural history, colonialism, feminism, grief, science, anthropology and gender identity. This is seriously thought-provoking and challenging material, and it may be essential to understand it if we want to save orangutans from ourselves.

Whales: An Illustrated Celebration by Kelsey Oseid — A gorgeously illustrated kids’ book and mini-encyclopedia on the evolution, mythology and ecology of whales, dolphins and porpoises. I would have eaten this book up as a child, and I really enjoyed it as an adult.

Conservation Drones: Mapping and Monitoring Biodiversity by Serge A. Wich and Lian Pin Koh — Unmanned aerial devices (aka drones) can contain a treasure-trove of technology to help us learn more about wildlife and the natural world in an unobtrusive manner. Wich and Koh are pioneers in the field — most famously for their studies of orangutans — and they’ve turned their experience into this, the first book providing professional guidance on how to use drones in conservation and ecology.

Trees, Plants and Algae:

Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Water’s Edge by Susan Hand Shetterly — Another of this month’s must-read books, Shetterly dives into the world of iconic algae and the societies and ecosystems that depend upon it, including what some people are doing to try to prevent it from disappearing.

The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior by Stefano Mancuso — Plants may not have brains, but they could be smarter than you think. Mancuso, a scientist and the author of Brilliant Green, gets to the root of plants’ ability to learn, remember, react to external pressures and even adapt to avoid future threats. (Can we have some plants start running for political office?)

Science Comics: Trees – Kings of the Forest by Andy Hirsch — This is probably the only book you’ll read this month that stars an anthropomorphic acorn. These Science Comics volumes from publisher First Second are universally excellent. They may be geared toward kids, but anyone with an interest in ecology, trees and forests is sure to learn something from this latest addition to the series.

Endangered Languages:

The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages, edited by Kenneth L. Rehg and Lyle Campbell — Species aren’t the only things that can die out. Right now hundreds of languages around the world are at risk of extinction. The loss of these languages matters for preserving culture and science, but their disappearance also has important implications for biodiversity and climate change. This textbook, edited by two of the world’s most esteemed linguists, tackles the thorny issues impacting the words of the world with contributions from dozens of experts.

Inspirational How-to:

Writing for Animals: New Perspectives for Writers and Instructors to Educate and Inspire edited by John Yunker — How can fiction writers give authentic voices to animals and the issues that affect them? Playwright and novelist Yunker has gathered an all-star team for this valuable how-to book.

Looking Back and Ahead:

When the Rivers Run Dry, Fully Revised and Updated Edition by Fred Pearce — When it was first published in 2007 Pearce’s look at the worldwide water crisis quickly became one of the all-time most praised books on sustainability issues. Now he’s back with a new edition that shows us how water issues could be the defining crisis of the century.

The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene by Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin — A new history book examining how we’ve done the Earth wrong, combining science, philosophy and politics to look not just at the past (as the title would suggest) but also “the future of humanity in the unstable world we have created.”

Environmental Histories of the First World War edited by Richard P. Tucker, Tait Keller, J. R. McNeill and Martin Schmid — The War to End All Wars was almost a war to end the planet, causing ecological disasters wherever the bloodshed took place. This anthology looks back at how the war devastated rural and urban environments, consumed vast quantities of natural resources and led to widespread famine. It feels painfully relevant today.

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 favorites? Feel free to post your own recommendations in the comments.

Podcast: How Extinction Affects Everyone

Plus, a few tips on how to deal with the gloom and doom of environmental issues.

Sustainability expert Kaméa Chayne recently invited me to appear on her excellent Green Dreamer podcast to talk about the topics we focus on here at The Revelator. It ended up being a pretty broad conversation, addressing why everyone should care about endangered species and extinction, how we can inspire more conversation about eco-friendly values, and what people can do to avoid the feelings of “doom and gloom” that all-too-often accompany news about the environment.

Listen to the entire discussion below:

The Last Straw?

What’s the real environmental impact of a plastic straw compared to the 80 million people we add to our population every year?

There’s been a lot of press recently about Starbucks, Hyatt Hotels, McDonalds and other companies replacing plastic straws with more eco-friendly alternatives or eliminating them altogether. It’s true that Americans use a lot of plastic straws — somewhere between 200-250 million a day, based on comments by the president of the Foodservice Packaging Institute, a trade organization; extrapolations from BBC Reality Check in conjunction with McDonald’s; and figures provided by the National Restaurant Association.

But do straw bans really add up? Drawing upon data provided by Thomas Corporation, a data company for industrial manufacturers, and a number of other sources, let’s take a look at some of the things that the average American consumes in addition to those plastic straws that are currently grabbing the lion’s share of attention from the national media and environmental groups.

Over the course of a projected 79-year lifetime, the average American currently uses:

23,700 plastic and glass bottles and 27,650 aluminum cans (not to mention disposable Starbucks cups);
Paper products that equate to 474 full-grown trees (that’s six trees a year);
5,600 articles of clothing;
9 automobiles, with each vehicle owned an average of 7 to 8 years;
5 ranges or ovens, 7 washing machines, 6 dryers, 5 refrigerators and 8 microwaves (some appliances may be shared as a family during one’s lifetime);
5 air conditioners;
10 televisions;
4,000-plus disposable diapers;
And, yes, by my calculations, 24 pounds of plastic straws, each weighing just one sixty-seventh of an ounce.

As this partial list clearly shows, straws are just one small piece in the much larger mountain of our collective consumption. This feel-good movement of giving up straws is an easy and convenient “sacrifice” and greenwashes the reality of our environmental emergencies. It does nothing to address all of these products we consume, nor the resources such as fossil fuels and water that are used to extract, manufacture and deliver these goods and services.

The real question is, are Americans, other developed-world citizens and those aspiring to move into this category really ready and willing to sacrifice the stuff that causes truly profound impacts on the environment?

The honest answer, sadly, appears to be no.

And that’s a problem that we need to address as a society. All these goods carry with them an enormous ecological price tag of disruption, pollution, death and destruction to natural habitats like forests, soils, fresh water, oceans and the air. The impact is multiplied by the weight of our collective humanity — almost 8 billion people, with 80 million more being added to the earth every year — which, coupled with our consumption, is becoming too great for our planet to bear.

In fact, Earth Overshoot Day falls on Aug. 1 this year, marking the day that our global consumption exceeds the capacity of nature to regenerate. To maintain our current demand for resources, we would need 1.7 Earths, according to Global Footprint Network, an international nonprofit whose mission is to help end ecological overshoot. The Aug. 1 date projected for this year is earlier than any time in the dozen years the calculation has been made — and a warning about the heightened challenge from our escalating consumption exacerbated by our exploding global population.

Study after study shows that reducing our footprint on Mother Earth through curtailment of consumption will not work unless we fight the rising tide of humanity.

If we truly want a sustainable future, the answer isn’t straws. It’s acknowledging the elephant in the room, having an honest conversation about our human numbers, and compassionately and forthrightly working toward a better, safer and less crowded world.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

The Case for Introducing Rhinos to…Australia?

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and maybe even a few crazy ideas.

Rhinos in Australia might seem like an insane proposition — after all, the continent has had historically bad luck with introduced species. But on reflection it’s not quite as crazy as it sounds.

There are five species of rhinoceros in the world: two in Africa and three in Asia.

The world of all five species is being rapidly destroyed and shredded, their savanna and forest habitats sliced apart by clearings, fences, roads, and other obstructions.

Even worse, they are being slaughtered by armed poachers for their valuable rhino horn, which is falsely thought to have aphrodisiac or curative properties, for maladies ranging from hangovers to cancer.

Vietnam and China are overwhelmingly the biggest consumers of rhino horn. Chinese citizens and even diplomats working in Africa and Asia have reportedly engaged in the illegal smuggling of rhino horn and other wildlife products.

Collapsing Populations

Rhinos are relics of a great megafauna that until recently dominated the planet. Today, they are some of the most endangered animals on Earth.

For instance, the Sumatran rhinoceros is so rare that biologists refuse to disclose where it still lives, to avoid tipping off poachers — beyond confirming it persists in small pockets of northern Sumatra, Indonesia.

But the northern white rhino is virtually gone. The last male died on March 19, and only two females are alive in captivity.

In recent weeks scientists have used frozen sperm and harvested eggs to create a few test-tube embryos, which they hope to implant into a southern female in a last-ditch effort to stave off the northern subspecies’ demise.

Fatal Circumstances

All of this means that most of the nations with rhino populations are having profound difficulties maintaining them. Not that it’s easy. Rhinos are big, near-sighted, and rather predictable in their habits — easy prey for poachers.

They live in developing nations with many impoverished people, where lethal weapons are frighteningly common and the rule of law is precarious.

And they have horns worth up to US$300,000 each.

In efforts to staunch the slaughter, some nations are de-horning their rhinos, or assigning guards to watch over them day and night, like heavily armed sheep herders.

South Africa is even treating rhino-horn powder with powerful poisons to help scare off illicit consumers.

Lynn Johnson, an enterprising Melbourne businesswoman, has raised tens of thousands of dollars to place ads in Vietnamese magazines and newspapers, warning about the poisons and decrying the rhino slaughter.

Such measures are certainly helping, but it’s a fraught battle. Roads are proliferating dramatically in developing nations, increasing access to ecosystems for poachers. And human populations and the many pressures they bring are growing rapidly in Africa and Asia.

Some experts believe that captive breeding is the most viable near-term solution, especially for the distressingly rare Sumatran and Javan rhinos. Maintaining them in zoos or breeding facilities keeps alive the hope that they might one day be reintroduced to the wild.

A Crazy Idea?

But why not introduce rhinos to Australia? Before you laugh out loud, consider this.

Australia has abundant savannas, woodlands and rainforests that the various species of rhinos need to survive. And rhinos are generalist grazers or browsers, meaning they are not especially picky about what they eat.

Australia has a strong rule of law and minimal wildlife poaching, with huge numbers of ecotourists who would surely be keen to see spectacular rhinos. One group, the Australian Rhino Project, is already trying to establish a white rhino population in Australasia.

But while I might be crazy, I’m not stupid.

I am not suggesting that rhinos be allowed to roam free in Australia. Under such circumstances they could degrade native ecosystems and even pose a danger to people. Rather, rhinos should be contained in cattle stations or other enclosed areas.

And I am not suggesting that harboring rhinos in Australia would mean reducing efforts to save them in the wild or conserve their crucial habitats.

Indeed, preserving rhinos without protecting their native ecosystems is like saving a few shiny baubles from Christmas, while throwing away the Christmas tree that held them.

Rather, the idea would be to establish semi-wild or managed populations that could buffer rhinos against global extinction, and at the same time provide public education and raise money.

Any effort that failed to provide revenue to conserve wild rhinos and their native habitat — especially if it competed for funding with current conservation initiatives — would be a perverse and undesirable outcome.

Of course, when it comes down to it, introducing rhinos to Australia is a pretty wild idea. Maybe my tongue is in my cheek, and I’m just trying to get other tongues wagging about the desperate need for rhino conservation.

But whatever we do about rhinos, it’s clear that desperate times call for desperate measures.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

What Does the World Need to Understand About Wildlife Trafficking?

“Wildlife crime is organized crime, not an ‘animal rights’ issue,” says World Pangolin Day and Annamiticus founder Rhishja Cota.

At first glance rhinos, pangolins and jaguars don’t seem to have much in common.

But there are a few things that link them. For one thing, they’re all targets of poachers and smugglers, who traffic in their body parts and threaten the species with extinction.

For another, all three species have benefitted from the hard work of Rhishja Cota, founder of the wildlife advocacy organization Annamiticus (named after the extinct Vietnamese Javan rhino).

From her home base in Tucson, Ariz., Cota travels around the world in her quest to protect these and other species from wildlife trafficking. She’s pushed for improved enforcement of existing laws and helped to educate the public about issues related to imperiled species. Cota has also authored hundreds of articles about conservation, as well as a special field guide to help customs agents and other enforcement issues identify pangolins and their body parts, which have become the most heavily trafficked animals in the world.

As Cota prepared to leave for Geneva for this month’s meeting of the Animals Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), she spoke with us about her latest efforts to protect imperiled wildlife and what the world needs to do better to prevent these species from falling into extinction.

You organize the annual World Pangolin Day. How far do you feel pangolin awareness has come since you launched this in 2012, and how much further do we need to go?

I have a soft spot for the underdog and so launching World Pangolin Day has been one of the most rewarding projects of my wildlife career.

It is fantastic to see that World Pangolin Day has grown into a global event which is now recognized by pangolin people all over the world — local on-the-ground conservation programs, schools, artists, big international NGOs , as well as high-profile institutions such as the United Nations (CITES), USAID and the IUCN.

Pangolins are listed on CITES Appendix I, which bans international trade, and of course are protected by national laws throughout their range. In my opinion, providing education and training to help “first responders” — law-enforcement and customs officers — work collaboratively is critical for protecting pangolins. Additionally, the courts need to treat wildlife crime cases with the utmost seriousness. Wildlife crime is organized crime, not an “animal rights” issue.

You also recently launched plans for World Jaguar Day, to be held June 11, 2019. What inspired this, and what do you hope to accomplish in the nearly one-year lead-up to the first event?

I have been following the global wildlife trafficking crisis for about 10 years now. I can’t say I was at all surprised when illegal trade in jaguar teeth and bones surfaced and was linked to the famously insatiable Chinese demand for big cat body parts.

As a resident of the Tucson, Arizona, area, the jaguars in my backyard. I believe if we shine the spotlight on the jaguar — let the rest of the world know that the biggest cat in the Americas is facing the same threat as tigers and lions and leopards — maybe we can get ahead of the situation before it gets out of control, like it has with tigers.

Plans for the 2019 launch of World Jaguar Day were hatched in April of this year, actually. Then in May, I attended the Madrean Conference here in Tucson and spent a day immersed in the state of the jaguar.

What really struck me is the approach of treating jaguars throughout their range as one population — including the United States. We need to stop saying “a few remnant individuals in the U.S.” According to the jaguar experts at the Madrean Conference, where there is one male jaguar, there is a female jaguar.

In the lead-up to World Jaguar Day, we will be profiling innovative jaguar conservation programs and educating the public and the media about jaguar issues. We will be digging into the unsavory issue of jaguar trade and publishing our findings.

We’re looking forward to providing a launching pad for jaguar conservationists, wildlife enthusiasts, big-cat fanatics, NGOs, zoos, schools, the private sector and individuals to celebrate the iconic jaguar.

What other species are you focusing on at the moment?

Like I said, I go for the underdog and as such, I’m taking a very close look at opportunities to help freshwater turtles and tortoises.

Looking at the broad world of wildlife trafficking, what progress or potential progress excites you the most lately?

Wildlife crime needs to be dealt with on par with other types of organized crime. I think that is starting to happen. Meaningful jail sentences are handed down more frequently than say five years ago, and I know that there are multiple law-enforcement training initiatives happening in Asia and Africa that are focused on wildlife crime.

What do you wish more people understood about the impacts of trade in wild species?

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the media still runs with stories about “legal trade will save the species” and “farming wildlife to meet demand” and “selling stockpiles to fund conservation” without doing proper research, particularly on the law-enforcement challenges. The notion of supplying captive-bred species to commercial markets has been proven time and again to have a disastrous effect on wild populations, including tigers, bears, crocodiles and ivory stockpiles, to name just a few disasters. There is an abundance of literature on this topic, and certainly no shortage of wildlife trade policy experts — real experts, not wildlife breeders or pro-trade advocates — available for interviews.

In my opinion, when media outlets publish information that suggests legal trade, wildlife farming or selling stockpiles are options for saving wildlife, it can harm the efforts of legitimate wildlife conservation organizations. When we are dealing with something as delicate and finite as wildlife, media and communications professionals should strive to educate the public, not confuse or hoodwink for the sake of a headline or more clicks.

Murder and Intimidation of Environmental Activists Hits Record Levels

At least 207 people around the world were murdered in 2017 for standing up to agribusiness, mining and wildlife trafficking.

The assassins came for Colombian land-rights activist Hernán Bedoya on Dec. 5, 2017, shooting him 14 times and killing him instantly.

Bedoya, who had been defending his community against palm-oil and other industrial agriculture, was just one of a record number of environmentalists and eco-defenders who were murdered last year, according to data released today by Global Witness.

All told at least 207 men and women around the globe lost their lives in 2017 — four per week — as they tried to defend their homes and communities against mining, agriculture, wildlife trafficking and other legal and illegal activities.

The actual number of slain activists is probably much higher, as many of these killings take part in remote parts of the world and crimes are often covered up by government officials or corporations. Global Witness originally announced that 197 people had been killed in 2017, but the organization has since uncovered the details of an additional 10 murders.

More than half the killings occurred in just two countries: Brazil, with 57 deaths, and the Philippines, with 48 — the latter being the highest number of deaths Global Witness has ever documented in an Asian country. Around the world at least 46 murders were linked to agribusiness, with 40 linked to the mining sector. A record 23 people, mostly rangers in Africa, were murdered by poachers and wildlife traffickers.

Intimidation

The murders themselves are just one prong of attack against activists. Hundreds of additional people each year are also intimidated or silenced by violence, sexual assaults, arrests, death threats, cyber-attacks or lawsuits.

In one of the most brutal encounters cited by Global Witness, 22 indigenous activists in Brazil were attacked by ranchers who have claimed their land. Two of the assaulted men had their hands cut off with machetes.

Other cases are less bloody but destructive in their own ways. For example, last year a South African subsidiary of an Australian company filed defamation suits against two with the Centre for Environmental Rights and a local activist who had publicly criticized a sand-mineral mining operation.

This is a fairly common strategy to shut down public discourse, says Bern Johnson, executive director of Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), which partners with the South African attorneys. “Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are intended to intimidate and silence project opponents by burdening them with the expenses and burdens of mounting a legal defense,” he says. “Another ELAW partner, Eduardo Mosqueda Sánchez of Guadalajara, Mexico, was jailed for ten months on bogus charges while defending the land rights of the indigenous Nahua peoples.”

Some Solutions

What can be done to stop these assaults? Governments, companies and investors “can prevent these threats from emerging in the first place by listening to local communities, respecting their rights, and ensuring that business is conducted responsibly,” Global Witness senior campaigner Ben Leather said in a press release.

Other groups can also help. “International civil society organizations and stakeholders can act to prevent attacks, defend advocates and hold government and corporate perpetrators responsible for attacks on environmental defenders,” says ELAW’s Johnson. He points to important organizations such as the Defending Defenders Coalition, under which ELAW and other NGOs are forming a joint advocacy strategy, and international and regional human-rights mechanisms such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, which protect environmental defenders and advocates.

Protecting these people, however, is not always easy. “Because each environmental advocate works in a unique situation, threats against them must be handled on a case-by-case basis,” says Johnson. “What helps in one case might do harm in another.” He says ELAW coordinates with local partners to help people “reduce their risks and make themselves less attractive targets.” He points to Security Planner by the Citizen Lab and Security in a Box by Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line Defenders as helpful resources for protecting activists and their data from digital attacks.

Global Witness, meanwhile, says individuals can help by holding governments and corporations responsible for their actions, especially by choosing not to do business with offending companies.

The Cycle Continues

What will the picture of intimidated and murdered activists look like for 2018? As of this writing, nearly 60 activists and defenders are known to have been murdered this year. Most recently, a park ranger was killed by rhino poachers in South Africa’s Kruger National Park on July 19.

And as happens far too often in cases like this, no arrests have yet been made for the crime.

Is the Great Indian Bustard About to Go Extinct?

Only one male has turned up at the birds’ breeding grounds this year — and he’s too young to breed.

Nearly 60 years ago the legendary ornithologist Sálim Ali made a bold proposition: A three-foot-tall bird known as the great Indian bustard, he suggested, should be named as the national bird of India.

At the time the great Indian bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) was already a legally protected endangered species, but its population — then estimated at just 1,250 birds — was still on the decline due to rampant poaching and loss of habitat. Giving the bird a national iconic distinction, Ali felt, would motivate efforts to conserve the species before its numbers shrank any further.

“The great Indian bustard is a species that merits this distinction,” Ali wrote in 1960. “It needs an urgent nationwide effort to save the bird from its impending doom.”

Unfortunately that never happened. India eventually did choose a national bird, but that honor went to the peacock, in part because it was better known and, reportedly, because government officials were afraid that people would mispronounce the bustard’s name as “bastard.”

Is the great Indian bustard now paying the price for that lost opportunity? This month scientists in India warned that the species is perilously close to extinction, with a remaining population of just 150 birds.

Even worse, this year researchers have observed just a single male bird — a juvenile too young to mate — at the bustards’ traditional breeding grounds in the Kutch district of the Indian state of Gujarat.

This youngster is the only male to visit the grassland site in some time. “No adult breeding males have been observed on their known breeding territories in last two years,” says Devesh Gadhvi, deputy director of the Corbett Foundation, a nonprofit engaged in great Indian bustard conservation efforts.

A few males have been previously confirmed in the neighboring state of Rajasthan, and Gadhvi says there may be a handful of additional males elsewhere in Gujarat, although there is no data to verify that.

So why has this massive species nearly died out? Sadly, it appears to be a case of decades of neglect, and in some cases outright hostility toward the species.

As Ali warned, the birds have lost most of their historic habitat — currently about 95 percent of where they used to fly — to roadways, mines, canals and other development. In addition, many projects have converted grasslands — which the Indian government classifies as “wasteland” — into wooded areas, inhospitable to the ground-dwelling species. Poaching has also continued to take a toll, especially on birds that have flown into neighboring Pakistan, where the species may or may not still exist.

Those decades were the primary reason for the bustards’ decline, but now a new threat has emerged. Critics say the most recent bustard population drops are due to India’s push for renewable energy.

Over the past few years, important bustard habitats in Gujarat, Rajasthan and other states have been crisscrossed with high-voltage power transmission lines, many of which transmit electricity from wind turbines. The Corbett Foundation has documented numerous cases where power lines have been built right next to bustard habitat or in their migratory pathways. Bustards have trouble avoiding these power lines due to their limited field of vision and heavy weight, which limits their maneuverability. At least 10 birds, possibly as many as 15, are known to have been electrocuted by those power lines over the past decade.

Among those killed were the only two males known to live in the state of Maharashtra. In the Gujarat region, Gadhvi says other males may have died “from colliding with the newly installed high-tension power lines right between their breeding and wintering ground.”

Renewable-energy projects in India do not require environmental impact assessments, a loophole that has left the birds particularly vulnerable even as the country races to build its energy capacity. India added nearly 12,000 megawatts of renewable-energy projects between April 2017 and March 2018 and plans to add another 175,000 by the year 2022.

Can the energy grid be made safer for the bustard? “There has to be a will and there has to be a way,” says Valli Bindana, director of the new documentary SunGanges, about the environmental impacts of India’s energy policies. “People elsewhere have made grids ‘avian safe.’ Perhaps we need to borrow expertise. But whatever has to be done has to be done quickly.”

With this critically endangered species facing an uncertain future, experts and advocates from numerous conservation groups have called on the Indian government to do something wile there is still a great Indian bustard to protect. “These issues have been raised with the hon’ble Prime Minister of India…and the State Government of Gujarat but except [for] lip service none have taken this matter seriously,” the Corbett Foundation wrote recently on Facebook. “It is a national shame that we are allowing this species to go extinct despite knowing what should and can be done to prevent this.”

Maybe they should have listened to Sálim Ali in the first place.