As the Obama administration prepares to hand over the reins of the executive branch to President-elect Donald Trump, the Washington, DC-based Endangered Species Coalition released a "Top 10" list of imperiled species in need of strong conservation measures today.
The report, Removing the Walls to Recovery: Top 10 Species Priorities for a New Administration, highlights some of the most significant threats to vanishing wildlife such as jaguars and elephants, and identifies important actions the next administration could take to prevent their extinction.
Endangered Species Coalition
The report includes the imperiled Caribbean elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata. The Center for Biological Diversity nominated the elkhorn for the report because it is threatened by climate change, ocean acidification and disease. A foundational species, elkhorn coral plays a critical role as a building block for coral reef ecosystems. The worldwide decline of corals due to climate change will affect thousands of marine species and people that depend on them for survival.
"Elkhorn corals in the Caribbean are indicators of widespread ecosystem degradation," said Dr. Abel Valdivia, a marine ecologist with the center. "The recovery of elkhorn corals in the Caribbean and corals worldwide will depend in part of our capacity to drastically curb carbon emissions in the next decade to reduce ocean warming."
Other critically important species in the report are keystone species such as Hawaii's yellow-faced bees, jaguars and Snake River chinook salmon. All keystone species have a disproportionately large impact on other species and ecosystems relative to their abundance; Hawaii's yellow-faced bees are pollinators affected by habitat loss.
The jaguar of the southwestern U.S. is a keystone predator. It is particularly threatened by habitat fragmentation caused, in part, by impenetrable immigration barriers along the U.S.–Mexican border. The report urges Trump to abandon plans to further fortify the southern border and to make existing barriers more wildlife friendly.
OMG! #Trump Sons Auctioning Off $1 Million #Hunting Trip to Celebrate Inauguration https://t.co/05pOgnH1JS @CenterForBioDiv @PETA @NWF @NRDC— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1482243854.0
Snake River chinook salmon, meanwhile, are among the longest and highest-migrating salmon on the planet—often swimming 1,000 miles upstream and climbing more than 6,000 feet in elevation to reach their spawning grounds. More than 130 other species depend upon salmon, including orcas, bears and eagles.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to protect the greater sage grouse—an umbrella species—as endangered in 2014, citing an unprecedented region-wide habitat conservation effort tied to state and federal conservation plans. But several appropriations riders offered in Congress in 2016 would block implementation of these conservation plans, as well as any future Endangered Species Act protections for the imperiled bird. Meanwhile grouse numbers have declined 90 percent from historic levels. Protecting umbrella species like sage grouse conserves habitats on which many other species rely.
"Our native fish, plants and wildlife are critically valuable and part of the legacy we leave for future generations of Americans," said Leda Huta, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition. "We hope the next administration takes seriously its responsibility to protect endangered species and habitat. The fate of species is in their hands. Their actions could dictate whether species such as the vaquita, the red wolf and others become extinct in the wild."
The remaining species featured in the Endangered Species Coalition's report include the African elephant, bald cypress tree, gray wolf and vaquita—a small, severely endangered Mexican porpoise.
Consumers may be happy, but climate change is making coffee farmers bitter. Diseases and pests are becoming more common and severe as temperatures rise. The fungal infection known as coffee leaf rust has devastated plantations in Central and South America. And while robusta crops tend to be more resistant, they need plenty of rain – a tall order as droughts proliferate.
The future for coffee farming looks difficult, if not bleak. But one of the more promising solutions involves developing new, more resilient coffee crops. Not only will these new coffees have to tolerate higher temperatures and less predictable rainfall, they'll also have to continue satisfying consumer expectations for taste and smell.
Finding this perfect combination of traits in a new species seemed remote. But in newly published research, my colleagues and I have revealed a little-known wild coffee species that could be the best candidate yet.
Coffee Farming in a Warming World
Coffea stenophylla was first described as a new species from Sierra Leone in 1834. It was farmed across the wetter parts of upper west Africa until the early 20th century, when it was replaced by the newly discovered and more productive robusta, and largely forgotten by the coffee industry. It continued to grow wild in the humid forests of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, where it became threatened by deforestation.
At the end of 2018, we found stenophylla in Sierra Leone after searching for several years, but failed to find any trees in fruit until mid-2020, when a 10g sample was recovered for tasting.
Field botanists of the 19th century had long proclaimed the superior taste of stenophylla coffee, and also recorded its resistance to coffee leaf rust and drought. Those early tasters were often inexperienced though, and our expectations were low before the first tasting in the summer of 2020. That all changed once I'd sampled the first cup on a panel with five other coffee experts. Those first sips were revelatory: it was like expecting vinegar and getting champagne.
This initial tasting in London was followed by a thorough evaluation of the coffee's flavour in southern France, led by my research colleague Delpine Mieulet. Mieulet assembled 18 coffee connoisseurs for a blind taste test and they reported a complex profile for stenophylla coffee, with natural sweetness, medium-high acidity, fruitiness, and good body, as one would expect from high-quality arabica.
C. stenophylla growing in the wild, Ivory Coast. E. Couturon / IRD, Author provided
In fact, the coffee seemed very similar to arabica. At the London tasting, the Sierra Leone sample was compared to arabica from Rwanda. In the blind French tasting, most of the judges (81%) said stenophylla tasted like arabica, compared to 98% and 44% for the two arabica control samples, and 7% for a robusta sample.
The coffee tasting experts picked up on notes of peach, blackcurrant, mandarin, honey, light black tea, jasmine, chocolate, caramel and elderflower syrup. In essence, stenophylla coffee is delicious. And despite scoring highly for its similarity to arabica, the stenophylla coffee sample was identified as something entirely unique by 47% of the judges. That means there may be a new market niche for this rediscovered coffee to fill.
The taste testers approved of stenophylla's sweet and fruity flavour. CIRAD, Author provided
Breaking New Grounds
Until now, no other wild coffee species has come close to arabica for its superior taste. Scientifically, the results are compelling because we would simply not expect stenophylla to taste like arabica. These two species are not closely related, they originated on opposite sides of the African continent and the climates in which they grow are very different. They also look nothing alike: stenophylla has black fruit and more complex flowers while arabica cherries are red.
It was always assumed that high-quality coffee was the preserve of arabica – originally from the forests of Ethiopia and South Sudan – and particularly when grown at elevations above 1,500 metres, where the climate is cooler and the light is better.
Stenophylla coffee breaks these rules. Endemic to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, stenophylla grows in hot conditions at low elevations. Specifically it grows at a mean annual temperature of 24.9°C – 1.9°C higher than robusta, and up to 6.8°C higher than arabica. Stenophylla also appears more tolerant of droughts, potentially capable of growing with less rainfall than arabica.
Robusta coffee can grow in similar conditions to stenophylla, but the price paid to farmers is roughly half that of arabica. Stenophylla coffee makes it possible to grow a superior tasting coffee in much warmer climates. And while stenophylla trees tend to produce less fruit than arabica, they still yield enough to be commercially viable.
The stenophylla harvest on Reunion Island. IRD / CIRAD, Author provided
To breed the coffee crop plants of the future, we need species with great flavour and high heat tolerance. Crossbreeding stenophylla with arabica or robusta could make both more resilient to climate change, and even improve their taste, particularly in the latter.
With stenophylla's rediscovery, the future of coffee just got a little brighter.
Aaron P Davis: Senior Research Leader, Plant Resources, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Disclosure statement: Aaron P Davis receives funding from Darwin Initiative (UK).
Reposted with permission from The Conversation.