Owl in America || November 26, 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’m hesitating here, but I guess I’ll just start with the really, really bad news. Last week, the British Natural History Museum declared the slender-billed curlew extinct. This beautiful being was a wading bird that had an unusual migration pattern: “Breeding on the steppes of Kazakhstan and southern Russia, the birds would fly south-west. Passing through the Danube Delta, across the Balkans and southern Italy, most would eventually end up in northern Morocco where the curlews would spend the winter.”
The curlew was last seen in 1995. In the intervening thirty years, people reported a few sightings here and there across southern and eastern Europe, but the researchers believe they were almost certainly misidentifications; another curlew species has an overlapping range.
According to the announcement, the curlew is the first mainland European bird to go extinct in 500 years. Biologists at the institute blame this on overhunting in southern Europe and destruction of their breeding grounds in central Asian steppes after the former Soviet Union intensified agricultural production there. The photo above was taken in Morocco at least 30 years ago and shows what must have been one of the last surviving members of the species.
There’s no framing possible for this loss. Like astronomy, extinction is a kind of rearview-mirror science. A supernova explodes a million light-years away, and we only find out about it when we see its light a million years later. Only the passage of time through the void left behind when a being departs this planet can prove they’re gone; we are grieving an ending that happened at least two decades ago.
That doesn’t make it any easier. Nothing does. I can only offer potential paths forward, as a sort of balm. They’re meant for me, too.
In the United States, the Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to protect 1.6 million acres as critical habitat to benefit the endangered rusty-patched bumblebee. Their range has shrunk by 90 percent, again because of agricultural intensification, including pesticide use and diseases spread from domesticated bees. Habitat in six states is up for protection: Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
After a pair of lawsuits brought by environmental groups, the agency listed this once-common bumblebee as endangered (in imminent danger of extinction) in 2017, making them the first bee species listed under the Endangered Species Act. But the previous Trump administration declared in 2020 that protecting critical habitat for them was not prudent, because protection would provide no benefit. That is clearly a ridiculous claim, and after yet more legal wrangling a judge agreed. This month’s proposal is the outcome, and thanks are due to a group of nonprofit advocates1 for sticking with this fuzzy friend through years of litigation.
The designation for the bee would require federal agencies to ensure their actions within the protected area do not damage or destroy habitat that is necessary for the species’ survival. The region under consideration is roughly equivalent to 2,500 square miles, about the size of Delaware.
Ecologists at Colorado State University studying the bumblebee’s genetics say that since the 2017 listing, programs to restore their habitat have sprung up, and they’re seeing encouraging signs that the species can find and benefit from pollinator-friendly home and community gardens (i.e., those that abstain from the use of pesticides or herbicides and provide native prairie plant species such as bee balm).
The agency is required by law to finalize any designation by fall 2025. It remains to be seen whether the incoming administration will honor our nation’s legal obligations to this species. In the meantime, the Fish and Wildlife Service will accept public comment through January 27, 2025.
While the agency says it will tally simple “yay or nay” votes regarding habitat protection, it is specifically asking for substantive commentary. Examples include information about particular land that should be included in the critical habitat zone, planned developments within the designated area, changes that might be expected because of climate change, and so forth. A full list is included in the “Information Requested” section of the announcement.
Meanwhile, over at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), staff are ramping up efforts to deal with a salmon-killing chemical emitted by car tires that ends up in coastal streams. 6PPD escapes as road friction tears away microscopic rubber particles. It breaks down into 6PPD-quinone, which is then washed into streams by rainfall, where it is toxic to aquatic life. The EPA is responding to a 2023 petition from three west-coast tribes—the Yurok Tribe, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, and the Puyallup Tribe of Indians—to prohibit tire manufacturers from using this chemical.
For decades, researchers had observed that coho salmon often became disoriented and died when entering certain streams to spawn and suspected a chemical running off roadways was to blame. The mystery was solved in 2020 when a group in Washington state published a study revealing the culprit, 6PPD-quinone.
To its credit, the state of California, home to a critically endangered population of coho, moved quickly to require tire manufacturers to disclose their use of 6PPD and research safer alternatives. Litigation and regulatory efforts are also underway in Oregon and Washington, two of the other Pacific states where coho breed.
The problem is that this chemical is in every commercially available tire in the U.S. The potential solution is that California is such a massive market for automobiles that regulatory changes there—similar to the way California has spurred an industry-wide shift toward cleaner cars—can drive changes to the entire auto industry. And, green infrastructure projects meant to trap other nasty substances from roads before they can enter waterways are already underway along the Pacific coast, and will serve to trap this chemical as well.
Of course, every federal environmental action, and even the continued functioning of the EPA, is up for grabs after January 6. It remains likely that the Pacific states and tribes will bring changes to tire manufacturing and stream protection before the U.S. government will.
In truly great coho news, the California state wildlife agency reported last week that coho salmon have been spotted for the first time in 60 years in the Klamath River above the site where the Iron Gate Dam was removed last month. Following on the heels of the first chinook salmon seen there a few days earlier, these fish returns prove that species can begin to recover in the blink of an eye when we restore their habitat. Imagine, the instinct to return home has persisted in generation after generation of these fish, blocked from their natal streams for—in some cases—up to 100 years. It seems beyond belief that their many-greats grandchildren somehow still knew where their many-greats grandparents had spawned, and within mere days of the dam’s removal, had swum back home. And yet, it appears this was the case.
The Klamath dam removal project, completed in October with the removal of the last of four large dams, was an enormous, multi-decade effort. It opened up 400 miles of the Klamath River to salmon and other species that hadn’t been able to reach them for the span of a human life. It required a strong coalition of tribes, the states of Oregon and California, the federal government, scientists, commercial fishers, landowners, environmentalists—and let’s not forget, Mother Nature—to pull it off.
Books will be written about how the effort held together, through several presidential administrations, legal setbacks, and threats to its funding, to achieve an incredible victory for the Earth. I worked occasionally on the periphery of the coalition, and was not privy to the innermost negotiations, but I have an inkling that much of the credit for this outcome will be due the Yurok, Karuk, and Klamath tribes.
The Yurok Tribe, mentioned above in connection with their work to protect coho from tire chemicals, live in and manage land in a long strip along both banks of the Klamath River from its mouth in Northern California to its confluence with the Trinity 44 miles upriver. They are one of a very few groups that colonial invaders never completely forced off their lands and are stalwart advocates for their surrounding ecosystems. The tribe have been instrumental in California condor recovery efforts. They’ve also developed new methods of recovering and protecting their homelands. For example, they recently completed a deal in partnership with the Western Rivers Conservancy in which they bought almost 50,000 acres of their stolen and logged forest back from a timber company. As a result, they now own the entirety of an important Klamath River tributary called Blue Creek from the confluence up to the boundary of the Siskiyou Wilderness, above which the strictest federal protections apply.
It is something profound to witness the outcomes possible when a human culture is tilted toward including all of the web of life in its decisions and actions.
If you have a moment or two, may I offer that a moment of silence, or a prayer, or some other reflection on the lost slender-billed curlews would not go amiss? For me, it felt right to take some time from my day to sit in silence on their behalf.
Talk to you soon,
Rebecca
P.S. Watch this when you have about 19 minutes to spare. It’ll salve your soul with beauty, I promise.
Sources:
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2024/november/the-slender-billed-curlew-is-declared-extinct.html
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/11/26/2024-27316/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-designation-of-critical-habitat-for-the-rusty-patched
https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/us-fish-and-wildlife-service-advances-critical-habitat-protection-endangered-rusty
https://warnercnr.source.colostate.edu/rusty-patched-bumblebees-struggle-for-survival-found-in-its-genes/
https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-seeks-data-on-salmon-killing-chemical/
https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-11/pet-001845_tsca-21_petition_6ppd_decision_letter_esigned2023.11.2.pdf
https://baynature.org/2023/03/02/a-nasty-salmon-killing-tire-chemical-is-in-bay-waterways-can-it-be-cleaned-up/
https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/lawsuit-launched-over-failure-to-protect-salmon-from-toxic-tire-chemical-2023-06-15/
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/22/2288085/-Breaking-Coho-Salmon-Return-to-Upper-Klamath-River-Basin-After-60-Year-Absence
https://caltrout.org/50th/klamath-dam-removal
https://www.registerguard.com/picture-gallery/news/environment/2024/10/12/native-tribes-along-the-klamath-river-celebrate-a-free-flowing-river/75549597007/
https://www.westernrivers.org/projects/ca/klamath-river-blue-creek
*Inspired by historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American.
You can reach me at fearlessgreen@substack.com
The coalition of rusty-patched bumblebee advocates includes NRDC (the Natural Resources Defense Council), the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Friends of Minnesota Scientific and Natural Areas—plus the Xerces Society that initially petitioned for protection.
Thank you, Rebecca, for this service. 🐝 I was happy to play a small part in getting that 6PPD-quinone study funded, as well as early mitigation measures such as extra street sweepers to sweep before a heavy rain.
Thank you for this wonderful piece of writing, Rebecca, so full of both heartbreak and hope.
I too live in an area where Indigenous people have not been forced off their land (though they've suffered through many other kinds of colonization), and I stand in awe of their stewardship of these Tewa homelands in Northern New Mexico, and learn much from them. We would all do well to follow their lead, they know the way.