
Center for Biological Diversity
Conservation groups asked a federal court in Washington, D.C., Oct. 13, to hold the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) accountable for its role in the shrimp trawl-related deaths of endangered sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2011 alone, an extraordinary number of sea turtles—more than 1,400—have washed ashore dead or injured in the Gulf of Mexico and southeast Atlantic Ocean. The NMFS has linked these strandings to drowning in shrimp fishing nets. Despite this rise in sea turtle strandings and the devastating impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, the NMFS has not fulfilled its duty to protect these imperiled animals from harm.
“Sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico are still reeling from the impacts of last year’s oil spill, and they simply can’t withstand the chronic threat of drowning in shrimp nets,” said Jacyln Lopez, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The government’s own data show that record numbers of sea turtles have perished in the Gulf of Mexico this year, yet the fisheries service has not taken protective measures to prevent sea turtles from dying in the shrimp-trawl fishery.”
Shrimp trawling has for many decades been the primary threat to sea turtle survival in the U.S., and turtles in the Gulf of Mexico may be more vulnerable now to drowning in shrimp nets as a result of the BP spill and cleanup efforts. The shrimp trawl fishery incidentally captures and kills thousands of threatened and endangered sea turtles each year. Turtle excluder devices can help prevent turtles from drowning in the nets, but not all shrimpers are required to use them and still others simply don’t comply with existing regulations.
“The fisheries service is allowing this fishery to continue without requiring protections it knows can save turtles,” said Chris Pincetich of the Turtle Island Restoration Network. “Turtle excluder devices should be required now for all shrimpers.”
The NMFS admitted in August 2010 that it needed to reassess the impact of the shrimp fishery on sea turtles in light of the dramatic increase in strandings, but it still has not finished that analysis. Then, following 379 sea turtle strandings—by government estimates only 5 to 6 percent of actual mortality—along the coasts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in early 2011, the NMFS temporarily improved enforcement and announced that it would explore new rules to reduce sea turtle mortality. Meanwhile shrimp fishing continues as usual. The NMFS has denied requests from the conservation groups for emergency measures to reduce the harm to sea turtles.
“The fisheries service has admitted that increased turtle protections in the shrimp fishery are needed,” said Sierra Weaver, attorney for Defenders of Wildlife. “It’s time to translate that need for action into real protections for these animals.”
“Reducing sea turtle deaths from fisheries is key to preventing extinction,” said Marydele Donnelly, director of international policy at the Sea Turtle Conservancy. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that shrimping plus noncompliance and minimal enforcement equals a lot of dead turtles. By failing to uphold the law, the fisheries service is undermining decades of conservation and squandering millions of private and public dollars.”
The Endangered Species Act requires the NMFS to ensure that its actions do not jeopardize the continued existence of endangered species and to respond to evidence of new threats to their survival. Today’s lawsuit challenges the agency’s failure to protect sea turtles in the wake of a huge increase in strandings and seeks to establish protections for the turtles, including increased enforcement and observer coverage to reduce turtle deaths from shrimp trawls, closure of sensitive areas to shrimp trawling, and broader requirements for shrimp boats to use turtle-excluder devices to allow turtles to escape drowning in all types of trawl gear.
Conservation groups filing the suit include the Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Defenders of Wildlife, and Sea Turtle Conservancy.
For more information, click here.
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The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 320,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. www.biologicaldiversity.org
Turtle Island Restoration Network is an international marine conservation organization headquartered in California whose 55,000 members and online activists work to protect sea turtles and marine biodiversity in the United States and around the world. For more information, visit www.SeaTurtles.org.
Defenders of Wildlife is dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities. With more than 1 million members and activists, Defenders of Wildlife is a leading advocate for innovative solutions to safeguard our wildlife heritage for generations to come. For more information, visit www.defenders.org.
Sea Turtle Conservancy works to ensure the survival of sea turtles within the Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific through research, education, training, advocacy and protection of the natural habitats upon which they depend. www.conserveturtles.org
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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