Documents obtained by the AP show that Canadian company Midas Gold engaged in extensive lobbying with the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, in the spring and summer of 2018, which led to the company being named as lead for drafting a biological assessment on how Midas's open-pit gold mines would affect endangered fish.
A Chinook salmon leaps through white water in May 2001 in The Rapid River in Idaho. Documents show the U.S. Forest Service allowing a mininc company to write it's own environmental report which has the purpose of examining the potential effect the open-pit mines would have on salmon, steelhead and bull trout protected under the Endangered Species Act. Bill Schaefer / Getty Images
Before the lobbying efforts, which included meetings with top officials at the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service had rejected Midas's request to be involved in the drafting process because its mines would likely harm fish.
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Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
These five articles from The Conversation's archives describe public perceptions of the Endangered Species Act and the challenges of saving species on the edge.
1. Americans Support Protecting Endangered Species
Critics of the Endangered Species Act say the law is too bureaucratic and costly to private interests, and that states should have a bigger role. But when Ohio State University's Jeremy Bruskotter and Ramiro Berardo and Michigan Technological University's John Vucetich reviewed 20 years of data on public views of the law, they found that over that time, roughly 80 percent of Americans consistently supported it.
Notably, while liberals strongly favored protecting endangered species, nearly 75 percent of conservatives did so as well. In a 2015 survey, more than 70 percent of hunters, farmers and ranchers supported the Endangered Species Act.
Why, then, are critics of the law so determined to weaken it? The authors point to research showing that "policy outcomes in America are heavily influenced by 'economic elites' and business interests who … have greater clout with, and access to, policymakers" than average voters.
2. States Aren’t Equipped to Take Over
Some regulators and members of Congress have pushed to delegate responsibility for listing and protecting endangered species to states. But University of California, Irvine legal scholars Alejandro Camacho and Michael Robinson-Dorn found that state statutes were much weaker than the Endangered Species Act. And states would have to massively increase spending to maintain the levels of protection that exist now.
"States have substantial authority to manage flora and fauna in their boundaries," the authors wrote. "But species often cross state borders, or exist on federal lands. And many states either are uninterested in species protection or prefer to rely on the federal government to serve that role."
The authors found room for better consultation between federal agencies and states, but argue that rather than dismantling the Endangered Species Act, Congress should provide enough funding to achieve the law's goals.
The Trump administration is proposing to downlist the American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) from endangered to threatened. Once abundant throughout the Northeast, the beetle is now found in just five states.
3. Regulators Need to Set Priorities
As it stands, conservation agencies don't have enough funding or time to write recovery plans for more than 1,600 listed species listed. Choosing which ones to protect raises complicated tradeoffs between science and values. And without recovery plans, species are unlikely to rebound.
Arizona State University biodiversity scholars Leah Gerber and Timothy Male sought to develop an effective system for guiding these choices. They designed a decision tool called Recovery Explorer that uses an algorithm to identify the most cost-effective choices for recovery, based on factors such as geography, biology and the likelihood that funding will actually lead to recovery.
"Scientists and policymakers now have an opportunity to develop a more workable strategy to improve the Endangered Species Act," they write. "And for those species that are deemed worthy of protection, the next steps will be to promote their recovery and be willing to pay for it."
Camera trap footage of a female gray wolf and pups in Lassen National Forest in Northern California. The state listed the wolves as endangered in 2014, but farmers and ranchers have challenged this policy.
4. Species Can Rebound with Help
The American bald eagle is often cited as an example of an endangered species that has made a successful comeback. But its cousin, the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is an even more spectacular case.
Ospreys were abundant across North America up through World War II, catching fish in rivers, lakes and harbors. But like bald eagles, they were devastated starting in the 1950s by DDT and other insecticides, which poisoned the birds and prevented them from successfully hatching eggs. By the mid-1960s populations had plummeted.
Ornithologist Alan Poole believes that Ospreys' disastrous decline helped make the case for banning DDT and other insecticides that were lethal to wildlife. The other key, he writes, was widespread construction of poles to support osprey nests:
"Within just a few miles of where I live along the Massachusetts coast, over 200 Ospreys now nest each year, lured in by abundant nest poles we've built on wide-open marshes. Fewer than 20 Ospreys were found here in the 1960s."
While ospreys were never formally listed under the Endangered Species Act, Poole believes they were near the brink of extinction 50 years ago. He calls their recovery "a reward for all who value wild animals, and a reminder of how nature can rebound if we address the key threats."
Ospreys on a nesting platform at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland.
5. Some Species Are Running out of Time
Thousands of right whales once swam in the North Atlantic, but today there are only about 411 left. This critically endangered species is threatened by collisions with ships and entanglement in fishing gear, which can cause traumatic injuries that slowly kill or cripple the animals.
Michael Moore and Hannah Myers of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution say it's critical to develop alternative gear for lobster and crab fishermen that will eliminate ropes from the water column, where whales are likely to swim into them. Options in development include pop-up buoys that fishermen summon with an acoustic signal and sensors that acoustically identify traps on the ocean floor.
While some fishermen call these technologies unaffordable, others are helping to test them. "Just as no fisherman wants to catch a whale, researchers and conservationists don't want to put fishermen out of business," Moore and Myers assert. "In our view, ropeless technologies offer a genuine opportunity for whales and the fishing industry to co-exist if they can be made functional, affordable and safe to use."
Editor's note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation's archives.
Reposted with permission from our media associate The Conversation.
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The entangled North Atlantic right whale in this photo was spotted approximately one mile off Crescent Beach, Florida; researchers were able to disentangle the whale the next day.
But at the same time, growing numbers of right whales died after becoming entangled in lobster and crab fishing gear. This may have happened because fishing ropes became stronger, and both whales and fishermen shifted their ranges so that areas of overlap increased. Entanglement has caused 80 percent of diagnosed mortalities since 2010, and the population has taken a significant downward turn.
This comes after a millennium of whaling that decimated the right whale population, reducing it from perhaps between 10,000 to 20,000 to a few hundred animals today. And entanglement deaths are much more inhumane than harpoons. A whaler's explosive harpoon kills quickly, compared to months of drawn-out pain and debilitation caused by seemingly harmless fishing lines. We believe these deaths can be prevented by working with the trap fishing industries to adopt ropeless fishing gear – but North Atlantic right whales are running out of time.
Deadly Encounters
Whalers pursued right whales for centuries because this species swam relatively slowly and floated when dead, so it was easier to kill and retrieve than other whales. By the mid-20th century, scientists assumed they had been hunted to extinction. But in 1980, researchers from the New England Aquarium who were studying marine mammal distribution in the Bay of Fundy off eastern Canada were stunned when they sighted 26 right whales.
Conservation efforts led to the enactment of regulations that required commercial ships to slow down in zones along the U.S. Atlantic coast where they were highly likely to encounter whales, reducing boat strikes. But this victory has been offset by rising numbers of entanglements.
Adult right whales can produce up to an estimated 8,000 pounds of force with a single stroke of their flukes. When they become tangled in fishing gear, they often break it and swim off trailing ropes and sometimes crab or lobster traps.
Lines and gear can wrap around a whale's body, flukes, flippers and mouth. They impede swimming and feeding, and cause chronic infection, emaciation and damage to blubber, muscle and bone. Ultimately these injuries weaken the animal until it dies, which can take months to years.
Fishing rope furrowed into the lip of Bayla, right whale #3911.
Michael Moore / NMFS Permit 932-1905-00 / MA-009526 / CC BY-ND
One of us, Michael Moore, is trained as a veterinarian and has examined many entangled dead whales. Moore has seen fishing rope embedded inches deep into a whale's lip, and a juvenile whale whose spine had been deformed by the strain of dragging fishing gear. Other animals had flippers nearly severed by swimming wrapped in inexorably constricting ropes. Entanglement injuries to right whales are the worst animal trauma Moore has seen in his career.
Even if whales are able to wriggle free and live, the extreme stress and energy demands of entanglement, along with inadequate nutrition, are thought to be preventing females from getting pregnant and contributing to record low calving rates in recent years.
Solutions for Whales and Fishermen
The greatest entanglement risk is from ropes that lobster and crab fishermen use to attach buoys to traps they set on the ocean floor. Humpback and minke whales and leatherback sea turtles, all of which are federally protected, also become entangled.
Conservationists are looking for ways to modify or eliminate these ropes. Rock lobster fishermen in Australia already use pop-up buoys that ascend when they receive sound signals from fishing boats. The buoys trail out ropes as they rise, which fishermen retrieve and use to pull up their traps.
Other technologies are in development, including systems that acoustically identify traps on the seafloor and mark them with "virtual buoys" on fishermen's chart plotters, eliminating the need for surface buoys. Fishermen also routinely use a customized hook on the end of a rope to catch the line between traps and haul them to the surface when the buoy line goes missing.
Transitioning to ropeless technology will require a sea change in some of North America's most valuable fisheries. The 2016 U.S. lobster catch was worth U.S. $670 million. Canadian fishermen landed CA$1.3 billion worth of lobster and CA$590 million worth of snow crab.
Just as no fisherman wants to catch a whale, researchers and conservationists don't want to put fishermen out of business. In our view, ropeless technologies offer a genuine opportunity for whales and the fishing industry to co-exist if they can be made functional, affordable and safe to use.
Switching to ropeless gear is unlikely to be cheap. But as systems evolve and simplify, and production scales up, they will become more affordable. And government support could help fishermen make the shift. In Canada, the federal and New Brunswick provincial governments recently awarded CA$2 million to Canadian snow crab fishermen to test two ropeless trap designs.
Converting could save fishermen money in the long run. For example, California Dungeness crab fishermen closed their 2019 season three months ahead of schedule on April 15 to settle a lawsuit over whale entanglements, leaving crab they could have caught still in the water. Under the agreement, fishermen using ropeless gear will be exempt from future early closures.
A Rebound is Possible
The Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act require the U.S. government to conserve endangered species. In Congress, the pending SAVE Right Whales Act of 2019 would provide $5 million annually for collaborative research into preventing mortalities caused by the fishing and shipping industries. And an advisory committee to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently recommended significant fishing protections, focused primarily on reducing the number of ropes in the water column and the strength of the remaining lines.
Consumers can also help. Public outcry over dolphin bycatch in tuna fisheries spurred passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and led to dolphin-safe tuna labeling, which ultimately reduced dolphin mortalities from half a million to about 1,000 animals annually. Choosing lobster and crab products caught without endangering whales could accelerate a similar transition.
Population trends in the North Atlantic and southern right whale species (estimates for North Atlantic species prior to 1990 are unavailable; southern estimates prior to 1990 on decadal scale). Illegal whaling caused a downturn in the southern species in the 1960s.
Michael Moore / data from Pace et al., 2017 / North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium / International Whaling Commission / CC BY-ND
North Atlantic right whales can still thrive if humans make it possible. The closely related southern right whale (Eubalaena australis), which has faced few human threats since the end of commercial whaling, has rebounded from just 300 animals in the early 20th century to an estimated 15,000 in 2010.
There are real ways to save North Atlantic right whales. If they go extinct, it will be on this generation's watch.
Reposted with permission from our media associate The Conversation.
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