The move comes the same day as a new study that shows overwhelming support for the environmental legislation.
More than 80 percent of Americans support the Endangered Species Act, according to a new study released the same day the Trump administration proposed several new initiatives designed to cripple the 45-year-old law.
The study, published July 19 in the journal Conservation Letters, found that 83 percent of the American public supports the Act. Backing was highest among liberals, at 90 percent, but 74 percent of conservatives also support the Act, according to the study. Even 68 percent of hunters and property-rights advocates, two groups that have traditionally criticized the law, expressed their support for it.
Lead author Jeremy Bruskotter, a conservation policy expert at Ohio State University, said the study was conducted to find out if the Endangered Species Act was really as controversial as some people often say it is. In a press release, he said the study proved the exact opposite: that Americans generally believe in the law and its provisions.
Of course, that’s not the way the Trump administration characterized the Act. “The Trump administration is dedicated to being a good neighbor and being a better partner with the communities in which we operate,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deputy director Greg Sheehan said in a press release about the proposed changes to the law. “One thing we heard over and over again was that ESA implementation was not consistent and often times very confusing to navigate. We are proposing these improvements to produce the best conservation results for the species while reducing the regulatory burden on the American people.”
The administration’s proposed changes to the administration of the Endangered Species Act include:
Making it easier to remove protection from species;
Weakening protections for critical habitats;
Changing the approval process federal agencies must follow when making decisions that could impact protected species;
Changing the definition of the requirement that the law protect species that are at risk of extinction in “the immediate future;” and
Rescinding rules intended to protect species newly designed as “threatened” (one step above “endangered”).
Trump’s Fish and Wildlife Service called for public comment on the proposals, but in a sign of how much it actually supports public input, the press release was only posted to the agency’s newsroom, not to its homepage. There the lead headline on July 19 was “Texas Refuge Has the Cure for Summertime Blues.”
Screenshot: July 19, 2018 12:00pm PDT
The Revelator will continue to follow this attempt at legislative rollback as it develops.
Increased access to the Internet is facilitating rampant online wildlife trade, providing an attractive marketplace to sellers and buyers.
The Internet has revolutionized the way the world exchanges and consumes ideas, information and merchandise. However, it also has its drawbacks. The Internet has facilitated illegal trade in wildlife, which is having a devastating impact on animals, ecosystems and the communities who rely on them.
Online platforms provide easy opportunities for all kinds of criminal activity, including wildlife trafficking. One of the biggest challenges is distinguishing legal from illegal trade. Items for sale cannot be examined in person. Traders sometimes use code words to disguise illicit activity. And there is usually little, if any, supporting documentation to confirm that the trade is legitimate. This documentation should be in the form of certification under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), as well as national or provincial permits.
A big chunk of research into online illegal wildlife trade has been aimed at trying to determine if the Internet really is a conduit for illegal wildlife trade, by looking at the scale of impact increased access has had on animal trafficking. Gathering this data is a challenge. But though it is difficult, it is not impossible.
One of the ways to collect this data is to use the search function on commercial websites and social media platforms, using specific keywords. When it comes to the four commodities chosen as the focus for this series — pangolins, leopards, rhinos and sungazer lizards — relevant keywords include “trophy”, “skin”, “fur”, “dragon”, “pelt”, “tusk”, “ivory”, “scales”, “taxidermy”, “rug”, “hide”, “bone”, “meat”, “delicacy”, “medicine” and “live.”
It is more complicated than simply punching in a word and pressing “search.” Often traders will alter the description of what they are selling to evade easy detection. It helps to pay attention to alternative spelling, slang words and entirely misleading product descriptions.
The beauty and the horror of online trade is that it distances the consumer from the trail of bloodshed that results in that “miracle cure,” new fur coat, ivory-coated trinkets for the mantelpiece, the “authentic” African bracelet picked up on safari, or that designer snakeskin handbag or pair of shoes.
Scaly business: Crocodile skin handbags are available in South Africa via websites like eBay for as little as R5,000 (shipping included) and are one of the more popular items for sale. Photo: eBay
A Million-dollar Marketplace
Most animals, their products and parts land up via online trade in Asia, Europe and the United States.
“The species offered for sale in each region or country varies greatly depending on the preferences of consumers,” according to a paper on wildlife cybercrime by Tania McCrea-Steele of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
For example, sungazer lizards are quite popular in the Middle East, where they are considered status symbols. In Asia pangolin meat is considered a delicacy, and their scales are widely used in Chinese medicine.
South African-based traders posted the most advertisements during IFAWS’s research for Wanted – Dead or Alive: 718 in total, offering nearly 8,500 wildlife specimens for sale. Most of these were parts and products, not live animals.
The most popular online marketplaces included eBay (45 percent), Gumtree (13 percent), Classifieds (12 percent), BidorBuy (8 percent) and OLX (5 percent). The most popular social media platforms were Facebook (33 posts), Instagram (17 posts) and Twitter (two posts).
Crocodile and alligator parts, often in the form of clothing and fashion accessories, were the most traded specimens online, with almost 7,000 in total. Ivory was next, with nearly 900 pieces advertised; there were also 161 live parrots, snakes (122 live specimens and 10 parts and products) and big cats, such as leopards, (56 live specimens and 39 parts and products).
The total value of the South African-based online wildlife market during the six-week IFAW investigation was $3.9 million, or R54 million.
‘Medicine’ from Malaysia: Pangolin scales are marketed as having medicinal properties by traditional Chinese practitioners. Photo: WWF/TRAFFIC/IUCN
Proof in the Pangolin
What is it that makes the Internet so attractive to sellers and buyers? Answering this question is difficult because, as described in “South Africa’s Wildlife Cryptotrade” (part one of this series), data collection is a significant challenge. This is especially so because it is easy to stay off the grid and remain anonymous.
Illegal traders don’t need to be hackers or to turn to the Dark Web (content that exists on “darknets,” which use the Internet but require specific software, configurations and authorizations to gain access) to sell and buy live animals, their parts and products.
Hard data collection aside, it is best to turn to the animals themselves to understand the issue. In just a decade, more than 7,300 rhinos have fallen victim to poaching (see PoachTracker). With more people being able to go online from anywhere in the world (as of January 2018, approximately 4 billion people have access to the Internet worldwide), there is no doubt that at least part of the trade process happens online. At the very least, products are advertised online, even if the actual exchange of money and/or the product takes place in person.
Most incidents of rhino poaching were by poachers looking to claim the horn and, according to conservation experts, the majority of these horns are sold on black markets in China and Vietnam. While many of these interactions are likely to take place in the back alleys and dark corners of the world, the process has to start somewhere: a buyer does not merely show up at the right place, at the right time without first knowing how, when and where a sale will take place.
Pangolins are the most trafficked mammal in the world, and in 2017 approximately 15 tons of pangolin scales were recorded to have been placed on the market. In both Africa and parts of Asia, their scales are said to cure a multitude of ailments, as part of traditional medicine.
Although a ban on global trade of all pangolin species was introduced in 2016, the demand for these mammals has not declined significantly enough for them no longer to be considered endangered. These animals are sometimes advertised under “anteater scales” across social media.
Endangered Species
Sungazer lizards are endemic to Highveld grasslands in South Africa, and are classified as “vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List of endangered species. Adverts on social media indicate part of their popularity is due to their dragon-like appearance — their biological name, Smaug giganteus, comes from the dragon in JRR Tolkien’s book The Hobbit.
Leopards are listed under Appendix I of CITES because they are vulnerable to extinction, and trade in their parts and products is only permitted under “exceptional” circumstances. However, a quick search reveals dozens of advertisements for “real” leopard-skin products.
It is unclear how many of these are legitimate; in many instances, sellers are simply referring to the pattern of a product, as opposed to the actual material. That being said, at least some of the products advertised are real, as indicated by the rate at which this species is being wiped out across the country. As with the other commodities, it is likely that at least part of the sales interaction takes place online.
This is the second of a six-part series on online illegal wildlife trade featured by Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism. Research was funded by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, and support was provided by the Endangered Wildlife Trust, TRAFFIC and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
A historian of wildfires explains the difference between urban and rural fire cultures, and what it means for protecting communities in fire-prone rural areas.
So far, the 2018 fire season has produced a handful of big fires in California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado; conflagrations in Oklahoma and Kansas; and a fire bust in Alaska, along with garden-variety wildfires from Florida to Oregon. Some of those fires are in rural areas, some are in wildlands, and a few are in exurbs.
Even in a time of new normals, this looks pretty typical. Fire starts are a little below the 10-year running average, and the amount of burned area is running above that average. But no one can predict what may happen in the coming months. California thought it had dodged a bullet in 2017, until a swarm of wildfires in late fall blasted through Napa and Sonoma counties, followed by the Big One — the Thomas fire, California’s largest on record, in Ventura and Santa Barbara.
Every major fire rekindles another round of commentaries about “America’s wildfire problem.” But the fact is that our nation does not have a fire problem. It has many fire problems, and they require different strategies. Some problem fires have technical solutions, some demand cultural calls. All are political.
Here’s one idea: It’s time to rethink firefighting in the geekily labeled wildland-urban interface, or WUI — zones where human development intermingles with forests, grasslands and other feral vegetation.
It’s a dumb name because the boundary is not really an interface but an intermix, in which houses and natural vegetation abut and scramble in an ecological omelet. It’s a dumb problem because we know how to keep houses from burning – but we have had to relearn that in WUI zones, hardening houses and landscaping their communities is the best defense. This is a local task, not a federal one, though the federal agencies have a supporting role and can, and do, help build local capacity.
Two Fire Cultures
America is recolonizing rural landscapes everywhere, and fire in the WUI is one outcome. The concept appeared and received its name in Southern California, but has long since spread throughout the West. Some of the worst WUI risks reside in the southeastern United States, though they have mostly remained latent. Then a deadly blaze like the one that blew through Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to the fringes of Dollywood in 2016 reveals the full extent of the risk.
Just as development has stirred together built and natural landscapes, it also has juxtaposed two immiscible cultures of fire. Urban and wildland fire agencies are as different as fire hydrants and drip torches.
The mantra of urban fire control is “Learn not to burn.” Every fire is an existential threat to life and property, and the core goal of fire codes is protecting lives. Urban firefighters wear turnout coats, helmets and self-contained breathing apparatus. They pummel fires with water and often operate inside structures.
For wildlands, the central code is “Learn to live with fire.” Firefighters wear hardhats, carry shovels and Pulaskis, and wear bandannas. They work in woods, prairies and chaparral, spray dirt as often as water, and secure perimeters by setting fires to remove flammable vegetation between the flaming front and their control lines. Their great challenge is to restore good fire to biotas that hunger for it.
The training that each group gets is largely worthless in the other’s setting. There are a few instances of cross-training, particularly in rural areas, but the prime example of a major agency that tries to cope with both types of threats is the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. Its experience shows what fusing these two purposes can mean.
Mixing the Missions
Cal Fire began as the California Department of Forestry, a land management agency, albeit one with serious fire responsibilities. In 1974, under the pressures of postwar development, it became the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In 2007 it collapsed that mission into Cal Fire, which operates like an urban fire service in the woods.
Decades ago, federal fire agencies gave up on suppression as a sole strategy. They recognized that the best way to control fire is to control the landscape, preferably through fire, and that eliminating all fires in places that have grown up with them only creates conditions that make wildfires worse. By contrast, for Cal Fire, the urgency of fires rolling into communities trumps all other tasks. If the last firefight fails, it has to double down for the next one.
Today the WUI is exerting a similar transformation at the national level. It threatens to become a black hole in America’s pyrogeography, drawing federal land agencies — primarily the U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management — away from managing fire as a means of managing land, and transforming them into urban fire-service surrogates and auxiliaries.
These agencies can and do help communities prepare for fires, but they do not have the tools, training or temperament to fight fire on an urban model. Cal Fire’s template is too expensive; moreover, it sucks resources away from managing fire well on the land, so it is too ineffective to serve nationally.
Turning the U.S. Forest Service into a National Fire Service may bring some relief to the WUI, but this would undermine the other missions in the agency’s charter, and ultimately weaken its ability to manage landscape fire. Already its fire mission is consuming over 50 percent of the Forest Service’s annual budget.
In six of the past 10 years, wildfire activities have consumes at least half of the U.S. Forest Service’s annual budget. Source: CRS
Urban Enclaves in the Wild
Research repeatedly shows that the critical component in the WUI fire environment is the structure itself. Once a fire strikes the urban fringe it may morph into an urban conflagration, spreading from structure to structure, as happened in Santa Rosa, California, last fall. Clearly, the wildland fire community has to improve fire resilience in its lands, which should reduce the intensity of the threat. But the real action is in the built environment.
The fact that so many horrendous fires have started from power lines illustrates how fires mediate between the land and the ways we choose to live on it. Strengthening structures, bolstering urban fire services, treating WUI areas as built environment — this is where we will get the greatest paybacks.
In effect, we need to pick up the other end of the WUI stick. Think of these areas not as wildlands encumbered by houses, but as urban or exurban enclaves with peculiar landscaping. Defining the issue as fundamentally a wildland problem makes fixes difficult. Defining it as an urban problem makes solutions quickly apparent. The goal should be to segregate the two fire cultures and their habitats, and let each do what it does best.
Americans learned long ago how to keep cities from burning. And then, it seems, we forgot.
All-female ranger teams are an innovative and potentially more effective way to defend wildlife, says the founder of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation.
Damien Mander has thought a lot about best practices for protecting wildlife.
As the Australian-born founder of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation, Mander has spent the past 10 years working on the front lines protecting rhino and other wildlife in four African nations. For most of that time his work in this dangerous arena took what he calls “a fairly military approach.” That’s not surprising considering his prior decade-long career with governmental and private military organizations.
More recently, however, he began to wonder if maybe “we’ve done it wrong all these years.”
That shift, he said recently at the 2018 Animal Rights National Conference in Los Angeles, led to the rollout of a new program from the anti-poaching organization. Launched in 2017, the Akashinga program (“The Brave Ones” in Shona) is focused on developing a new force of all-female wildlife rangers tasked with protecting rhinos, elephants and other wildlife from poachers. Akashinga has so far recruited and trained nearly three dozen women.
Mander said Akashinga is a departure from the male-centric military and special-ops world in which he has long operated — what he calls “one of the ultimate boys’ clubs” — and his newer realm of conservation rangers, where the male-to-female ratio is 100 to 1.
To build his Akashinga team Mander, who had not previously trained women, sought applicants from among the most vulnerable females in rural areas. He recruited abuse survivors, abandoned wives, orphans, sex workers and single mothers — women who, he said, “weren’t victims of circumstance; they were victims of men.” Also joining the team this past December was Tariro Mnangagwa, the youngest daughter of Zimbabwe’s president Emmerson Mnangagwa, reportedly as a show of her support for the women and their role in rebuilding the country.
Two team members, Nyaradzo Hoto and Petronella Chigumbura, had been scheduled to be in Los Angeles with Mander, but their travel visas did not come through in time.
With Akashinga, Mander isn’t giving up the hard tools in the conservationist’s toolbox. He is, however, looking at a move away from what his organization calls a “militarized paradigm of ‘fortress conservation’ which defends colonial boundaries between nature and humans.” Instead the focus is on rural communities and personal connections, working with the local population and employing locals — all women — to stop wildlife crime in areas that don’t have protection.
This solves more problems than just poaching. Too often, experts say, locals have insufficient input in how conservation programs will affect their communities, even though they will be people the most directly affected. Women are frequently left out of community decision-making, even though the mantra among environmental groups for many years now has been to empower women to engender desired results, including healthy outcomes for their families.
“A growing body of evidence suggests that empowering women is the single biggest force for positive change in the world today,” the foundation now notes on its website. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Women typically invest a higher proportion of their earnings in their families and communities than men.”
Akashinga training. Courtesy International Anti-Poaching Foundation.
The Akashinga recruits initially “went through 72 hours of hell,” said Mander, but only three of 37 women who entered the program dropped off after those first three days. They continued through the same paces as male rangers who train for anti-poaching work and completed an extensive program that covers camouflage and concealment, conservation ethics, crime scene preservation and crisis management. In Akashinga, they also learn how to deal with dangerous wildlife, democratic policing, firearm safety and proper use, first aid, human rights, information gathering techniques, leadership, patrolling, search and arrest, and unarmed combat.
The discipline the women displayed every day of training, and since, is also seen in their diet. All are vegans — a commitment they made to themselves and to the terms of Akashinga.
A Transformation
Arriving at the idea for Akashinga has been an evolution for Mander, who started his professional career at age 19, taking the demanding job of clearance diver with the Royal Australian Navy. He served with a highly trained team that applied its skills to maritime counterterrorism and disposition of explosives. At age 25 he shifted to a role of special operations sniper. Ultimately he completed 12 tours of duty in Iraq, which he said programmed him for just one thing — to destroy.
Now 38, Mander will tell you that back then he was among the least environmentally aware persons. “I had no idea what a conservationist did other than hug trees and piss off large corporations,” he said in a Sydney TedX Talk recorded in 2016. “I was the idiot that used to speed up in his car just trying to hit birds on the road.” Mander even admitted in that talk that he had poached as a teen. He was living a life “a world away from conservation.”
But after leaving the military and mercenary life, at a time when he felt adrift, a 2009 trip to Africa proved to be a revelation. In the Zimbabwe bush, he saw the extent of animal suffering and the aftermath of animal murders for their body parts. This, he said, hit at his core like nothing else in his experience.
Mander chose to be a voice for wild things and join the ranks of animal defenders, making what he believed would be a lifelong commitment to conservation. Ultimately, he also made the personal choice of veganism. Mander sold off his assets from the spoils of war and his mercenary work, and used the proceeds to start his foundation. He envisioned a conservation nonprofit that, as a direct action organization to end animal suffering, would employ military solutions to the war against poachers on the African continent, where anti-poaching tools and tactics had been virtually static for years.
As Mander described during his talk at the conference, he put some “shitty skills” to work for the right cause.
The thinking behind the foundation was that training rangers with 21st century military know-how and technology could be a game-changer for Africa. There, well-funded poachers often employ sophisticated weaponry and tactics against, more often than not, ill-equipped, overworked and underpaid rangers trying to defend rhino, elephant and many other threatened species. The illegal and brutal destruction of wildlife and natural resources worldwide is nasty business, and extremely lucrative, estimated to be worth more than $200 billion annually, with Africa being a prime target for poachers.
Supporting Wildlife and Community
Having experienced his conservation awakening in Zimbabwe, it’s rather fitting that another “first” for Mander is happening in this landlocked southern African country in an abandoned trophy-hunting area where 8,000 elephants have been killed in the past 16 years. Covering more than 850,000 acres in the Lower Zambezi, the area became the responsibility of the first Akashinga team, which trained and deployed in 2017.
For Mander’s imperative to “find a way to get community involved,” Akashinga fits the bill. “From what we’ve seen, women do not seem corruptible,” Mander said at his talk in Los Angeles.
That’s of note in Zimbabwe, where the corruption level is viewed as extremely high, aided by the reign of the recently deposed despot Robert Mugabe, who held the country in a vice of power and corruption for nearly four decades. How his exit last year, along with his wife’s arrest for purported illegal ivory dealing, will play out for the welfare of the people and the country’s rich wildlife — including antelope, buffalo, elephant, giraffe, leopard, lion, rhino, serval and zebra, among so many others — is an open question.
But that’s perhaps too macro a tale for Mander. “Getting frustrated with corruption is like going to the beach and getting pissed off about the sand,” he said.
What matters, Mander said, are results, and so far their efforts are paying off. As of this writing, the Akashinga team has about 60 arrests, which have resulted in more than 41 years of jail sentences. Recent actions resulted in arrests for serious crimes related to ivory smuggling, zebra poaching and sable antelope snaring.
Mander said Akashinga has been “more effective than anything I’ve seen.” He noted too that the women have an uncanny ability to “de-escalate everything.”
With the first Akashinga program in Zimbabwe, Mander said the communities see income coming in every month, with rangers’ salaries helping to replace income that had come in from trophy hunting. And the pride in the community is clear — some 2,000 people attended the graduation of the Akashinga team last year. The women have become role models in the area.
An all-female team has its antecedents in the Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit, South Africa’s first majority female anti-poaching team, but what may set Akashinga apart is how widely the program can be rolled out across the African continent. Its long-term success will depend on funding — that’s why Mander is currently touring the United States — but so far, it has proven its effectiveness.
“This is the evolution of man to see something we should have seen in the past,” Mander said. “Women will change the face of conservation forever.”
An Akashinga ranger and her family. Courtesy International Anti-Poaching Foundation.
A head-banging new study proves that loud music shakes, rattles and rolls the ecosystem.
It’s a rare scientific paper that cites both biologist E.O. Wilson and AC/DC guitarist Angus Young.
In fact, there’s only one paper with that distinction: “Testing the AC/DC hypothesis: Rock and roll is noise pollution and weakens a trophic cascade,” published this week in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
As you might guess from the title, the study — by ecologist Brandon T. Barton and other researchers from Mississippi State University — takes its cue from the famous AC/DC song “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” as an avenue to reveal the actual effects of anthropogenic noise (musical or otherwise) on species and their ecosystems.
Here’s the refrain from that song, which AC/DC released on their album Back in Black in 1980.
Rock ‘n roll ain’t noise pollution
Rock ‘n roll ain’t gonna die
Rock ‘n roll ain’t noise pollution
Rock ‘n roll it will survive (yes it will)
So what was the effect of this music on natural systems? Not so rockin’, as it turns out. The researchers fired up their boom boxes and blared music by AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and other hard-rocking bands (as well as a few less musical urban noises, like jackhammers) at some soybeans and their accompanying aphids (a pest insect) and ladybugs (which normally eat the aphids). During a two-week trial — in which Back in Black was played on a continuous 24-hour loop — the ladybugs became less effective predators and ate fewer aphids. This meant there were 40 times more aphids to consume the soybean plants, resulting in plants that were 25 percent smaller.
In other words, rock ‘n roll may survive, but the plants exposed to it were less likely to.
Now, this is about a lot more than AC/DC. The rock music may be the novel part of the experiment, but the most interesting tests were the ones using more urban noises, which were played at roughly the same volume as traditional farm equipment like tractors and combines. Those tests had the same effect on the ladybugs and aphids, which reveals the real-world consequences of anthropogenic sound. “Farm noise could actually reduce the efficiency of natural predators at controlling pests,” Barton said in a press release. “If that happens and the pests take off, you might have to spray more chemicals. So it could be a soundscape that’s influencing how many chemicals we have to use because it changes the efficiency of the predator.”
This is just the latest study that shows human-generated noise is causing trouble for ecosystems. A 2016 study found that the noise from natural-gas extraction sites robs owls of their ability to hunt. Another study published last year found that engine sounds from highways diminished the ability for nearby animals to find prey (or, conversely, to avoid predators), even when the animals live in parks and other protected areas. A study published earlier this year found that birds living near natural-gas well are experiencing PTSD-like symptoms.
What sets this new experiment apart, as Barton wrote in an essay for The Conversation, is that previous studies looked at the direct effect of noise on specific species. Here, the soybean plants weren’t themselves harmed by the music, but their ladybug protectors were. “Animals don’t live in isolation,” Barton wrote. “They’re embedded within a tangle of food web interactions with other species. So by affecting even one species, noise pollution — or any other environmental change — may generate indirect effects that spread from individual to individual, and eventually may affect entire communities.”
As for the communities affected by their study, the researchers do offer their apology to AC/DC for proving that “in some contexts, rock and roll is noise pollution.” They also, however, thank the band for their contribution to the work, which led to one of the more interesting acknowledgment sections I’ve seen in a recent scientific paper: “We thank B.F. Johnson, A.M. Young, M.M. Young, C. Williams, P.H.N. Rudd, and R.B. Scott for inspiration and motivation to conduct this research. This work is dedicated to the memory of M.M. Young, who passed away during the preparation of this manuscript.”
Ah, science: One more way rock ‘n roll will survive (yes it will) and live forever.
Now turn down the music, kids. There are some ladybugs doing important work over here.
The relationship between wolves and people raises deep questions that we still need to answer, says environmental ethicist and philosopher Michael Paul Nelson.
What is it about wolves that drive so much passion — either to conserve them and rebuild their populations or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, to hunt them or even remove them from the wild?
Answering that question gets to the heart of what it means to be human and what wolves mean to people, says Michael Paul Nelson, professor of environmental ethics and philosophy at Oregon State University.
Nelson knows his wolves, and the issues related to their conservation. He’s the philosopher-in-residence and historian of the Isle Royale wolf-moose project, the world’s longest study of a single predator-prey system, as well as a noted researcher into trophic cascades, the effects on ecosystems caused by the introduction or removal of predators. Nelson also cofounded the Conservation Ethics Group and is the co-author or co-editor of several books, most recently Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.
As the federal government has once again takes aim at reducing wolf protections, The Revelator spoke with Nelson about some tough questions regarding wolf conservation — including what wolves mean to us and to the ecosystems in which they live.
You’ve approached wolves from a philosophical viewpoint. What do you feel this brings to the study of wolves that might have otherwise not been addressed?
I think those with philosophical training, or those with innately philosophical minds, see things (for example, patterns, assumptions, inferences, etc.) that others might not — in the same way that artists might see something through a different lens.
Human interactions with wolves is, at its core, the playing out of basic philosophical ideas about what wolves are, what humans are, and what an appropriate relationship with wolves (or nature for that matter) ought to be. When we speak of wolves — whether poorly or positively — we evoke philosophical and ethical baggage of which we are seldom aware. When we suggest policy or management with regard to wolves, we are building arguments based both on empirical or scientific claims, but also on values and norms. My job is to try to bring some measure of clarity to that entire process.
The on-again, off-again Endangered Species Act protection for wolves just moved toward off again. Is America prepared to ever fully accept protection for wolves?
There are at least a couple of philosophical or ethical issues here that might be driving this flip-flopping.
First, this is in part a fundamental disagreement over whether wolves are members of the moral community. Do they possess intrinsic value and deserve direct moral standing? If so, the standard for protecting them would be higher, and the willingness to delist them would be lower. Or are they valuable only as a means to some other end, possessing only instrumental value and not deserving of direct moral standing? If that’s the case, the standard for delisting them would be lower, and the willingness to delist them would be higher — and for some, perhaps, there would be no willingness to list them in the first place since they do not believe wolves are even instrumentally valuable.
Second, it is fairly obvious to me that we fundamentally do not understand what “endangered” means in the Endangered Species Act. There are a couple of confusions here: 1) An endangered species has an unacceptably elevated risk of extinction, but we don’t have a sensible agreement on “acceptable risk.” 2) In the special context of the Endangered Species Act, a species is endangered when it’s lost from a “significant portion of its range.” However, we don’t have a sense for what “significant” is. In other words, how much must humans have reduced range before we say that’s a problem and that species should have special protection?
I see every reason to believe that this flip-flopping will continue until we address these core ethical and philosophical issues. We seem either reluctant to do this, or profoundly incapable of doing it.
Even as Endangered Species Act protection is at risk, a new plan to restore the wolf population on Isle Royale has just been approved. What lesson do you think can be applied from Isle Royale to broader wolf conservation or policy efforts?
Michael Paul Nelson, provided.
I think what we saw there, at least in part (and our research confirms this), is that people do not necessarily conflate the notion of a healthy ecosystem with the notion of non-intervention. There is reason to believe that, in the face of climate change, we recognize that human intervention into systems in order to secure what we think of as ecosystem health might be permissible, even mandated. Of course, this raises other interesting issues, like who among us is wise, humble, informed and compassionate enough to make such decisions about such interventions, and are our natural-resource programs creating such leaders of the future?
You’ve done a lot of work on the interactions between predators and their habitats, helping us to understand the trophic cascades caused by their loss or reestablishment. What do we still need to understand about the ecological value of wolves?
I worry that we are still a bit too naïve with regard to what a trophic cascade is, when it happens and when it does not, and what the reality of a trophic cascade implies.
Ecology is a science that attempts to maximize variables as it provides explanations for how the world works. When we engage in such an exercise — which runs contrary to so much science where we minimize or isolate variables of explanation — we inevitably can only provide answers that begin with “it depends.” So I think we struggle with some basic philosophy of ecology and science questions when we think about these things.
But I also worry that people jump too quickly from the perceived reality or non-reality of a trophic cascade (an empirical phenomenon) to statements about what we ought to do (a normative or ethical statement). Basic logic tells us that we cannot derive a prescription for action (an “ought”) solely from some set of facts of the matter (an “is”). Nothing prescriptive, therefore, follows from the fact of a trophic cascade alone. We have to make a value, normative or ethical claim as well.
I also worry (yes, I’m a worrier!) that we forget there are other reasons why wolves are valuable, worth protecting and worth caring about — for example, they have amazing life histories worthy of respect, they possess intrinsic value and they are direct relatives of our own domestic dogs — and that those values might be more powerful than arguments rooted in trophic cascades, which, after all, are still instrumentalist arguments.
Beyond trophic cascades, where do you feel the research opportunities are with wolves right now? What’s the next big question about them that we need to better understand or start to address?
I’m not sure I can answer that from an ecological perspective, but I think from a philosophical research perspective — and I hate to say this — that we’re not even very good at understanding what is an endangered species, as I mentioned above, and what it would take to even decide.
Note that I said “decide” and not “find out.” There’s an inherent judgment to make here — namely, what counts as an acceptable level of risk of extinction over how long a period of time has to be decided. This will be directly reflective of our assumptions about the moral status of wolves. This and a number of other really important philosophical (or mixed philosophical/ecological/social) questions or topics needing attention. I’m thinking of things like the use of CRISPR gene editing technology in a conservation context, assisted migration in the face of climate change, conservation triage, and a number of other critical conservation topics that require a deeply interdisciplinary approach.
Biologist Carter Niemeyer says gray wolves can only survive if we embrace wild spaces and scientific truth, not hatred and fear.
What does it take to save gray wolves in the United States?
Biologist Carter Niemeyer has spent more than three decades trying to answer that question. A former federal wildlife trapper, he was instrumental in the effort to return wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995. Later he coordinated the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s efforts to recover wolves in Idaho. Through all of this, he also studied wolves and their interactions with livestock, helping to dispel the myths that all too often turn ranchers and the public against these highly social and intelligent predators.
Now retired from the Service, Niemeyer — author of the memoirs Wolfer and Wolf Land — still devotes his life to wolf conservation. A frequent lecturer, he advocates for finding the middle ground where both wolves and humans can coexist on the landscape.
At a time when the federal government is once again considering taking wolves off of the endangered species list, we spoke with Niemeyer about what it takes to allow the predators to thrive and how we can dispel the myths that slow efforts to restore their populations.
Your own journey took you from wolf trapper to rescuer. Is there anything in your experience that could help others make a similar transition, for wolves or other species?
Carter Niemeyer
To understand and appreciate wolves you have to learn the truth about them — scientific truth — and put aside anecdotes and stories that are obviously conceived in fear, hate and resentment. Studying and watching wolves can teach people a lot about the animal. The fact is that wolves are shy predators that help wild prey populations remain healthy and sustainable. If people find room in their heart for wolves, then they can fully appreciate the benefits of maintaining wolves in abundance.
How do you feel about the continued expansion of wolf range? Are you satisfied, or is there still much further to go?
I’m encouraged by the way wolves have dispersed out of the core recovery areas in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Wolf numbers also continue to grow in Washington and Oregon, and recolonization may be under way in parts of Northern California. I think public education about wolves should be a top priority.
You’ve done a lot of work on the interactions between wolves and livestock. What’s the hardest thing to overcome at this point?
People working together can reduce predation by wolves on livestock, but the reality is that some livestock damage will always occur. That’s frustrating, because I want wolves to stay out of trouble. Wolves are predators that depend on large wild prey like deer, elk, moose, caribou and bison for food. In the absence of abundant prey, wolves are sometimes forced to kill livestock, and this can really create emotionally charged situations. It often results in hate and animosity toward wolves. Having been intimately involved with this over the years, I believe that awareness of wolf presence and better animal husbandry practices can minimize problems between wolves and livestock.
The on-again, off-again Endangered Species Act protection for wolves must get frustrating. How do you feel that will ultimately pan out?
The Endangered Species Act was really the only way to proceed with recovery because it guaranteed the highest protections for wolves while recovery was in progress. That protection ultimately resulted in viable, sustainable wolf populations. I think a lot people mistake an ESA listing as a permanent state of affairs, but it was never meant to function that way. Other regions that fall outside of ESA recovery areas, like Colorado, still need more time for wolf numbers to increase, and I think they will.
Wolves are prolific and resilient and I believe they will ultimately succeed in most areas where basic habitat needs, open space and abundant prey are all available — and all of this can happen even without ESA protection.
Is there anything that your average environmentalist or advocate tends to get wrong about wolves?
Wolves aren’t saints. They aren’t sinners, either. They’re just being wolves. I think people who put them on a pedestal are setting themselves up for a fall.
Also, though wolves are habitat generalists and can live almost anywhere, there are many regions of the U.S. where they will never be because there are too many people and too much livestock. Wolf advocates must first support public lands and wild places that reduce the interface between wolves and people. Wolves can only survive where human tolerance allows them to thrive.
The tiny fish doesn’t reproduce well in years when the water doesn’t flow. Several bad years in a row could push the species closer to extinction.
One day in the middle of June, heavy rains drenched Albuquerque while lightning lit up the barren mesa outlying the city. It was the rainiest June 16 on record for the New Mexico city, with almost an inch measured over the course of the day. But the precipitation didn’t do much to ease the region’s longstanding drought or recharge the dwindling flow of the once-mighty Rio Grande River.
Right now 90 percent of New Mexico is considered to be in severe to exceptional drought. Conditions are symptomatic of a growing — and troubling — trend of drying in the Southwest, where average annual temperatures have ticked upward by two degrees. The region has become increasingly prone to wildfire, and water is strictly managed, making farming everything from the state’s iconic green chile to southern New Mexico’s pistachios riskier than ever.
The effects of these changes on the climate are on full display in the Rio Grande, one of the largest and most heavily managed rivers in the United States, which spans 1,900 miles through largely arid and desert lands. This year the river is already dry along a 20-mile stretch south of Albuquerque. While the river has run dry for even 90-mile expanses in the past, what’s exceptional about current conditions is just how early the drying is happening — beginning in the first week of April instead of the typical mid-June. By summer’s end this year, 120 miles are expected run dry, exposing the sandy underbelly of the iconic, once-thriving watercourse.
This water shortage, experts say, has implications not just for humans but also for species of flora and fauna that depend upon the Rio Grande.
For one species, an increasingly dry riverbed could threaten its very existence.
The Rio Grande silvery minnow (Hybognathus amarus) has the distinction of being one of the most endangered species in the country. The small, short-lived fish began its decline in the 1960s following the advent of significant damming of the river. The population continued to suffer as the result of the introduction of non-native fish species, warming river temperatures and decreased annual precipitation. In addition to dams, the river’s ecosystem has been altered significantly over the past 100 years, and the strong flows that spur spawning and shallow eddies that support the silvery minnow during the rest of its life cycle have all but disappeared.
The consequences of drought for the species can be grave given their already abbreviated lifespans.
“Most silvery minnow die before age two,” explains Thomas Archdeacon, a fish biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who works on restoration and rescue efforts for the species. “The bulk of the population is usually made up of the youngest fish at any given time, so if you have a year of failed reproduction, the minnow can quickly go from the most common fish in the river to one of the least common.”
For the silvery minnow, sustained drought makes survival — let alone procreating — more difficult. “In a year like 2018,” Archdeacon says, “not only are the fish stressed early in the year, the adults are dying before spawning.” He points out that even in the reaches of the river that haven’t dried, water temperatures are climbing and flows are steadily dwindling, impacting the health of the fish and the likelihood that they will reproduce.
This follows trends seen in previous years. The success of fish’s population hinges largely on the spring hydrograph. “When there is poor snowpack,” Archdeacon says, “there is generally a year of failed reproduction.”
And so, in years like this, crews led by the New Mexico Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office muddy their shoes in the river, recovering stranded fish from pockets that have experienced severe drying and transferring them to more reliably full parts of the river. This year the first silvery minnows were rescued on April 2, the earliest recorded date that salvaging has taken place in the past 19 years.
Unfortunately, preliminary evidence suggests that many of the fish trapped, then released in areas of the river with perennial flow do not survive.
The office also heads up another important effort: the release of hatchery fish to boost the wild population. Each year thousands of captive-hatched fish are returned to the river, with well over a million having been released since the program started. “The number released each year scales with how good or poor the fish’s natural reproduction was,” Archdeacon explains. So once the river recovers in late fall — typically November — a large but as-yet undetermined number of hatchery fish will likely be released.
“Both these management options are reactive and not proactive,” Archdeacon says, meaning they’re more of a Band-Aid than a solution. And even though more than $150 million has been spent on such efforts since the fish was placed on the endangered species list in 1994, it’s hard to say at this point if the conservation budget for the fish will keep up with emerging climate-related threats. Archdeacon declined to comment on any future budgets for the silvery minnow.
What is certain, Archdeacon says, is that “it’s hard to get away from the reactive, labor-intensive management of the species if spring runoff continues to be poor.” In this increasingly warm part of the country, the outlook for the river — and the fish and other species that depend on it — isn’t too promising.
Broad, intensive efforts over the past two decades prevented the silvery minnow from becoming even more endangered, but as Archdeacon looks to the future he has a dire prediction for next year and beyond. “If there is a poor year again in 2019,” he says, “the clock will have reset and all progress erased.”
Drought has already killed more than 100 wild horses. Volunteers hope to prevent more deaths.
NAVAJO NATION – Glenda Seweingyawma plucked quarters from a giant pickle jar and dropped them into the water-station vending machine to fill up a large plastic barrel. It’s a common scene: About 40 percent of Navajos living on the reservation have to haul their drinking water.
But this water wasn’t for humans. It was for wild horses, which have come to depend on it.
“We took one load,” Seweingyawma said. “By the time we get back over there, it was already all gone. And then we get another load of water. And then we go back again and then it’d be gone. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we can’t keep up with these horses.’”
Two weeks ago, Seweingyawma and her friend Paul Lincoln woke up to a group of horses outside their trailer.
“When we first saw them, their heads were down and (they were) walking really slow,” Lincoln said. “They were just kind of like zombie horses. And that’s when we saw these ones drop in front of us, and then we said, ‘That’s it. We better start with buckets of water.’ ”
Last month, more than one hundred wild horses were found dead, stuck in thick mud surrounding a dried-up stock pond on the vast Navajo Nation.
The images, some of the most alarming we’ve seen of the drought, have prompted many people — both on and off the reservation — to take action.
Thanks to donations, including food and water from people all over Arizona, volunteers now are able to leave alfalfa and fill several water tanks. About a dozen people are taking care of about 200 horses.
Volunteers work to unload hay from Tracy and Buddy McDonald’s trailer. (Photo by Laurel Morales/KJZZ)
Lincoln drove his truck over dirt roads to the first stop, a clearing protected by boulders and dry scrub brush in the high desert of northeastern Arizona.
We came around a bend and there they were — a couple dozen horses that appear more spirited on this day, like the powerful symbols of freedom they’ve come to be known as. But Lincoln noticed a new one — a skinny speckled-gray stallion whose ribs you could count.
He whistled at the herd. “Hey, where you guys going? Come get some water.”
Usually they’d run from any sign of humans, but not lately, not when they haven’t seen rain in months. Navajo officials said this year has been the driest in 15 years of drought.
Bidtah Becker, director of Navajo Natural Resources, said the tribe flew over the reservation two years ago to get an accurate count and found at least 30,000 free-ranging horses in an area the size of West Virginia.
“It’s as much a range-management issue or grass-availability issue as it is a horse issue,” Becker said. “Horses compete with the livestock that Navajo people raise on the range.”
One horse eats 32 pounds of forage and drinks 10 gallons of water per day.
Wild horses normally would flee humans, but the deep drought has made them desperate for food and water. (Photo by Laurel Morales/KJZZ)
Becker has asked the tribal council for $1 million to support a plan that would partner with outside groups to round up horses for adoption, as well as administer contraception. But Becker said that would require yearly inoculations and staff or volunteers who can wrangle horses.
“Community support and getting the community not just on the Navajo Nation but surrounding the Navajo Nation to work together to address the number of feral or free-ranging horses on the nation is critical,” Becker said.
Many Navajo are concerned the horses will be taken to slaughterhouses, a method that was supported by the previous administration.
Becker said that is not part of the current plan because Navajos believe horses to be sacred.
That’s why Paul Lincoln has felt so strongly about saving them.
“They’ve been around longer than we have, so they’re sacred,” Lincoln said. “A lot of our traditions, we’re barely holding on to them.”
And, he said, he feels like the horses have come to him, asking for his help — and he’s able to give it.
Lincoln and Seweingyawma drive a second tank of water to another site next to a broken-down windmill. Tracy and Buddy McDonald show up from Flagstaff with water and hay. Everyone pitched in to unload it. They had read about the “horse heroes,” as they’ve been called, on social media.
“If you’re out here, there’s nothing to eat,” Tracy McDonald said. “And there’s thousands of horses. We need something to control these feral horses so we can continue to have them. It’s part of who we all are. But there’s such an overpopulation there’s no where near enough water or food.”
Will the infamous EPA administrator get to keep his soundproof phone booth? And will anything change at the EPA itself?
Even his soundproof phone booth, tactical pants and 24/7 security teams weren’t enough to save him. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has resigned from office — or possibly been forced to resign — following months of ethics scandals related to his profligate personal spending, secret schedules, expensive travel and cozy relationships with industry.
Pruitt’s full resignation letter was later published by Fox News. The letter praised President Trump and the “transformative work that is occurring” — and characterized the president’s election as “God’s providence.” Pruitt also claimed he was resigning because “the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us.”
Speaking of a toll taken on all of us, Pruitt’s tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency saw a seemingly never-ending list of actions designed to do anything but protect the environment. Pruitt-backed actions include removing climate change from official policies (and from EPA web pages), rolling back clean-air and clean-water regulations, extending the use of previously restricted toxic pesticides, and hiring oil-industry insiders to key positions.
Reactions to his resignation were quick and brutal.
“Good bye Scott Pruitt, the worst Administrator in EPA history and perhaps the word cabinet member ever,” tweeted former White House chief ethics counsel Richard W. Painter. “Fake science, fake ethics and fake religion (complete with a cultish theology of planet destruction) all rolled into one. Good bye.”
“While he clearly violated ethical standards and bilked taxpayers, he inflicted far worse injury on American children and families by abandoning science and the EPA’s public health and environmental mission,” said Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Scott Pruitt’s corruption and coziness with industry lobbyists finally caught up with him,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. “We’re happy that Pruitt can no longer deceive Americans or destroy our environment. This victory belongs to the hundreds of thousands of activists who fought to protect the Environmental Protection Agency from a corrupt crony set on destroying it from the inside.”
Ironically, Pruitt’s own last tweet from his official EPA Administrator account read “Happy Independence Day, America!” (That tweet has since been deleted.)
What Next?
Pruitt’s departure leaves a leadership vacuum — well, even more of one — at the EPA. The most likely potential nominee to replace him — and the man Trump has already announced will take over as acting administrator — is former coal lobbyist and climate-change denier Andrew Wheeler, who was confirmed as deputy EPA administrator on April 12 despite fairly vague and ineffective Democratic opposition. Wheeler’s name was bandied about earlier this year when it looked as though Pruitt was gunning for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ job. He is perceived as a Washington insider who “has spent years effectively navigating the rules,” according to The New York Times. In the long run, this may make Wheeler a much worse threat to the environment than Pruitt.
If Wheeler doesn’t make the cut to permanently take the position as the new EPA administrator, other potential Pruitt replacements include former industry lobbyist Susan Bodine, just one of a host of people who — like Pruitt himself — made names for themselves by suing the EPA before being brought on board the agency.
What will Pruitt’s legacy be? Well, it probably won’t be good. “Sadly, the ideological fervor with which Pruitt pursued the destruction of environmental regulations and the agency itself live on in the Trump administration,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group.
Others echoed that sentiment. “Pruitt was able to hang on as long as he did, amid all the mini-scandals, because Trump loved how he was working to dismantle EPA,” said Michael Gerrard, president of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “That won’t be lost on Wheeler, who will continue the wrecking, presumably without the distractions.”
Some expressed hope Pruitt will just be the first to go. Kendall, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said it’s “time for the EPA to clean house,” much as President Reagan did in 1983 after a set of ethics violations hit his agency. “The next EPA administrator needs to be someone who will uphold independent science and commit wholeheartedly to the agency’s science-based mission of protecting public health and the environment. Until then, Congress should conduct considerably more oversight because political appointees at the EPA are sidelining science and compromising the agency’s effectiveness.”
Meanwhile, experts say many of Pruitt’s environmental rollbacks may not last. As TheNew York Times pointed out a few months back, many of the deregulatory actions Pruitt has taken over the past year were handled so quickly and carelessly that they may not pass legal muster (and, indeed, have already failed in some cases).
But the damage to the EPA itself will take some time to heal. As Mother Jones writer Rebecca Leber wrote in April, “you can’t talk about Pruitt’s lasting damage without talking about how he’s attacking science and expertise, pursuing buyouts and restructuring offices, and his pulling back on state work.” And the people Pruitt brought into the EPA — many of whom share his conflicts of interest — seem likely continue his industry-friendly policies.
And what happens to Pruitt himself? Prior to his resignation, at least 18 federal investigations were looking into his reported ethical lapses. Whether or not he will be prosecuted for any of those problems — or if his wife will finally get that coveted Chick-fil-A franchise — remains to be seen.
Answering that question gets to the heart of what it means to be human and what wolves mean to people, says 
