Owl in America || December 10, 2024
Notes from an American environmentalist
“Owl in America” is a series of letters chronicling the next four years from the perspective of an environmental lawyer. Practicing conservation and public-lands law during the first Trump administration was an exercise in hope and dogged persistence amidst the ever more effective demolition issuing forth from Washington, D.C. Much ground was lost, only some of which was regained during Biden’s four-year term. This time around, I’m taking notes.
Hi all~
I gather news from several sources, one of which is The Washington Post. I’m sticking with it despite its billionaire problems, for now. I find that although the opinion editors might not be all we’d hoped, the climate, wildlife, and environment reporting is still good. So long as that continues, I’ll funnel my few dollars a month toward that institution, knowing that maybe a few cents on the dollar are going to pay those solid reporters.
Something in the Post’s Climate Coach newsletter this morning struck me, though. Under the Climate Coverage heading was the following list of articles:
“Small SUVs are now the country’s cleanest cars. Really.”
“How scientists are giving these rare, brainy birds a second chance” (about the release of five endangered Hawaiian crows (‘alala) into the wild from a captive breeding program)
“Why a two-year surge in global warmth is worrying scientists”
“A season of uncertainty for this Helene-stricken Christmas tree farm”
“EPA bans two cancer-causing chemicals used in everyday products” (about a ban of two toxic chemicals used in dry cleaning and auto repair)
“Killer whales bring back wearing salmon hats, but it’s not for fashion”
The first and third article are ‘climate’ articles. The fourth article, dealing with a tree farm, is about the impacts of extreme weather, which is clearly related to climate.
But the Hawaiian crow piece is only tangentially related, in that climate change poses an additional challenge to an already at-risk species. In the crow’s case, its near-extinction is primarily due to habitat loss and introduction of non-native predators like house cats.
And the piece on the Environmental Protection Agency chemical ban is pretty clearly about toxic pollution and health effects. (It’s great news, by the way! EPA has banned perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene, chemicals in widespread use in the U.S. which are neurotoxic and carcinogenic. Let’s hope the ban sticks after January 20.)
And as for the sixth piece listed, I don’t think tales of salmon-wearing orcas are strictly climate-related.
The way I think about our environmental polycrisis is that it’s a sort of Cerberus, a monster with three heads: climate change, biodiversity loss, and toxic pollution. There are other major problems as well, sure, but these big three work conceptually for me.
Yet somehow every story to do with biodiversity loss (the endangered crows) and toxic pollution (the toxic chemical ban) and even wildlife-interest stories (the salmon-hat orcas) has been completely subsumed in ‘climate.’
It’s odd, like when you reach middle age and realize words that meant one thing in your childhood have migrated to a new meaning in the decades since, without your noticing. Since when are chemical pollution and wildlife issues nothing more than ‘climate’ stories? Where did the ‘environment’ part of ‘climate and environment’ go?
There is a lot of overlap among the various heads of the polycrisis monster. In the end, will it turn out to have been important whether biodiversity and (other-than-carbon) pollution remain their own conceptual entities? After all, the three heads are all attached to one body, and the root causes of all three crises are the same.
Still, I wonder at it. It feels as though we’ve lost something when we don’t talk about the environment or the natural world as their own things anymore. In a lot of places, it’s all just climate now.
So here’s a biodiversity story, albeit one where the climate crisis is intensifying the damage done by habitat loss, and also one where the toxic chemical crisis is a major contributor, particularly in the form of insecticides. Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to designate the monarch butterfly as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The monarch is, to me, chief among the “once-common species that are now in danger of extinction”—I’m coming across more and more stories of these this year—and I’m glad the federal government has finally initiated the listing process. The monarch’s numbers, when the eastern and western populations are combined, are overall down 90% since the 1980s.
The usual caveat applies: who knows where this will go under the new administration? Today’s proposal opens up a three-month period for the agency to receive public comment. In the normal course of events, the listing would then become final twelve months from today, at the end of 2025. The Trump White House will almost certainly interfere before then. But for now, it’s good to see some progress being made here.
This listing proposal resulted from ten years of advocacy and lawsuits led by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety. If finalized, the agency will dedicate critical habitat for the butterflies in their California range and will draw up and fund a species recovery plan.
Monarchs overwinter in Mexico, which has listed them as a species of special concern. In Canada, to which some monarchs migrate, they were listed in 2023 under its Species at Risk Act.
Monarchs would be listed as a threatened species. Here’s a good shorthand from the agency for understanding the difference between “threatened” and “endangered,” under U.S. wildlife laws:
“Endangered” means a species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.
“Threatened” means a species is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.
An interesting legal detail on the draft U.S. listing—a bit in the weeds perhaps, but one of those things that makes a significant difference in the real world—is that the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a “4(d) rule” along with the monarch’s proposed listing.
If finalized next year, the monarch would be listed as “threatened” and not “endangered.” The Endangered Species Act prohibits harming, trading, or exporting (among other things) endangered animal species, but it lacks parallel protections for (a) plants (threatened or endangered) and (b) threatened animals. 4(d) is a section of the act that allows the agency to impose those full prohibitions to protect plants and threatened animals.
Since the endangered species law was enacted in the early 1970s, the government had maintained something called a “blanket rule,” which, by default, extended the full protections given endangered species to threatened species too, with no further regulations under section 4(d) needed. In 2019, the first Trump administration rescinded the blanket rule. This meant the agency had to issue species-by-species rules to ensure full protections. These processes can be delayed by various means, leaving imperiled beings unprotected in the interim.
In spring 2024, the Biden administration put back in place the blanket rule, again automatically extending endangered-species protections to threatened species, finding that it had worked well for 40 years. That the wildlife agency is issuing today’s listing along with a 4(d) rule specifically giving the threatened butterfly full protections—even though technically they don’t have to, as the blanket rule is again active—tells me the agency fully expects Trump to rescind it once more. Apparently, they wanted to make sure the monarch was at least set up to receive unequivocal protection before the Trump tornado arrives.
It’s not much in the grand scheme, but it is a glimpse into the feverish behind-the-scenes activities in our environmental agencies as they batten down the hatches for what’s to come.
Americans would be wise to follow their example.
Talk to you soon,
Rebecca
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/12/09/epa-ban-perc-tce-dry-cleaning-chemicals/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/12/07/christmas-trees-north-carolina-hurricane-helene
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/12/04/hawaiian-crows-alala-maui/
https://www.courthousenews.com/monarch-butterflies-land-on-federal-threatened-species-list/
https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2024-12/monarch-butterfly-proposed-endangered-species-act-protection
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-differences-between-endangered-threatened-imperiled-and-risk-species
*Inspired by historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American.
You can reach me at fearlessgreen@substack.com
I will be pleased to see the monarch listed as threatened as it certainly is. There is a much larger issue, however, which is the huge number of insects species that are threatened or endangered. This problem cannot be approached by listing one species at a time. It will require that broader issues like excessive pesticide and herbicide use be addressed. A good start would be to ban neonicotinoid pesticides since they are systemic poisons that make an entire plant, including the pollen and nectar, toxic to insects. These compounds have been banned by the European Union for a number of years.
Excellent work, Rebecca. Like you I've been watching the weird relationship between the language of "climate" and all other environmental issues for a while. The media made climate change and environmentalism synonymous (I'm tempted to say that CO2 took all the oxygen out of the room...) by virtue of neglecting other issues, but what we're seeing in the Post's Climate Coach round-up is I think a weak push-back. The Times' climate newsletter does the same thing. They're either taking a wimpy editorial approach to the reality that biodiversity loss is just as important to report on, or they're gently reminding their climate-obsessed readers of that fact. At the Guardian, meanwhile, they have an amazing range of biodiversity loss coverage, esp. in their Age of Extinction section. I'd like to see the Post and Times create a similar newsletter and push it hard as a twin to the climate coverage.
I like your Cerberus metaphor. I'm partial to the Planetary Boundaries concept, but it's a heavy lift for discussion. (Sidenote: Coincidentally, HCR's sister Katharine Richardson is one of the primary researchers behind the planetary boundaries work.)