Spring is an excellent time to begin bird watching in earnest. Eugenio Marongiu / Cultura / Getty Images
The coronavirus has isolated many of us in our homes this year. We've been forced to slow down a little, maybe looking out our windows, becoming more in tune with the rhythms of our yards. Perhaps we've begun to notice more, like the birds hopping around in the bushes out back, wondering (maybe for the first time) what they are.
<p>When COVID-19 hit, I too found myself spending much more time in my apartment. Living in New York City during a pandemic presented fewer opportunities to safely get out into nature – an unfortunate struggle for myself and many other outdoorsy urbanites.</p><p>Yet, when I began birding, I found myself paying more attention to the nature that was, in fact, all<em> </em>around me. I noticed the European starlings perching in the holes of London planetrees, red-tailed hawks circling above the park, and a persistent red-bellied woodpecker with a penchant for the wooden post in my backyard. Looking for birds was a way to appreciate and acknowledge nature wherever I was; I could be excited about spotting birds anywhere – even outside my Brooklyn apartment, when I was forced to slow down and look around.</p><p>Spring is an excellent time to begin bird watching in earnest. While many <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/get-know-these-20-common-birds" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">common birds</a> we come to recognize are "<a href="https://morebirds.com/blogs/news/migration-is-for-the-birds-but-not-all-of-them" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">permanent residents</a>" – such as starlings, mockingbirds, juncos, house sparrows, and black-capped chickadees – springtime might bring some new feathered friends into view as populations <a href="https://birdcast.info/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">travel back north for the season</a>. There are <a href="https://pallensmith.com/2016/02/15/four-types-of-bird-migration-types/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">different types of migration</a>, but birds generally travel north-south in North America (northbound in the spring, southbound in the fall), primarily in search of nesting locations or food.</p>
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A Coeligena helianthea hummingbird is photographed during a birdwatching trail at the Monserrate hill in Bogota on November 11, 2020. Colombia is the country with the largest bird diversity in the world, home to about 1,934 different bird species, a fifth of the total known. JUAN BARRETO / AFP / Getty Images
<p>About 40% of birds are migratory, so <a href="https://www.perkypet.com/articles/north-american-bird-migration-4-flyways" target="_blank">whatever flyway you live within</a>, there will be plenty of new species to look out for. The <a href="https://www.perkypet.com/articles/atlantic-flyway-migration" target="_blank">Atlantic Flyway</a> alone (covering much of the east coast) sees 500 migratory species every year. Unless you live very far North, <a href="https://donnallong.com/spring-bird-migration/" target="_blank">from February through mid-April</a>, you should see <a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-basics-how-why-and-where-of-bird-migration/#:~:text=Birds%20migrate%20to%20move%20from,are%20food%20and%20nesting%20locations.&text=As%20winter%20approaches%20and%20the,the%20birds%20move%20south%20again" target="_blank">migrating birds</a> passing through as they head for their breeding areas.<br></p><p>Birding is unique in its accessibility and universality; no matter where you live – whether a bustling city, a rural town, or the South Pole – there will always be birds to learn about and look for. If you've never birded before, here are some things to keep in mind as you get started.</p>
1. Choosing the Right Binoculars
<p>Binoculars are a relatively indispensable tool for most birders – but, for those just starting out, it might not yet be worth the several-hundred-dollar investment. If you aren't able to scour the attics of friends or borrow a pair from a fellow bird watcher, some local birding and naturalist groups have <a href="https://vashonaudubon.org/all-about-vashon-birds/binoculars-check-out/" target="_blank">binocular loaning programs</a> for members, allowing you to plan ahead for a day (or week) of birding.</p><p>When you're ready to take the plunge, choosing a pair or binoculars should take some careful deliberation based on your needs and preferences; some <a href="https://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/bwdsite/explore/optics/top-10-tips-buying-binoculars-bird-watching.php" target="_blank">major considerations</a> might include size, ease of use, <a href="https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/binoculars.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">magnification</a>, and price. While professional binoculars can easily run north of $1,000, there are plenty of perfectly suitable entry-level binoculars under $200. You might not get the perfect precision and clarity of more elite models, but a less expensive pair will allow you to strengthen your birding skills while deciding if you're interested in investing in a premium pair.</p><p>For a budget-friendly option, check out resale options on eBay, Facebook marketplace, or neighborhood yard sales: you might find a nicer pair whose retail price isn't within your budget.</p>2. Know What Birds Are in Your Area
<p>When I began to pay more attention to the birds just outside my apartment building, I started to learn what species have always been around me: European starlings, house sparrows, blue jays, black capped chickadees, and the occasional red-bellied woodpecker. They had always been there, but I hadn't ever taken the time to identify them. Once you learn to <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/get-know-these-20-common-birds_" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">recognize common birds</a> in your area, you'll be able to identify the typical species right outside your window and in your community. Of course, permanent residential birds in your neighborhood will <a href="https://nestwatch.org/learn/focal-species/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">vary by region</a>, as will those migrating through it.</p>3. Get Out and Explore
<p>Venturing elsewhere might allow you to spot some different species beyond those frequenting your backyard. Anywhere with water or greenery offers a place for birding; as an urbanite myself, I've found that even small- and mid-sized parks in New York City allow me to find more elusive birds (although Central Park takes the crown for an afternoon of urban birding).</p><p>If you are able to travel a bit further from home, <a href="https://www.fws.gov/refuges/" target="_blank">national wildlife refuges</a> and <a href="https://www.americasstateparks.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">state/national parks</a> are excellent places to explore bird habitats and perhaps log some less-common sightings. The American Birding Association also lists <a href="https://www.aba.org/aba-area-birding-trails/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">birding trails by state</a>, and Audubon and BirdLife International identify <a href="https://www.audubon.org/important-bird-areas" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Important Bird Areas (IBAs)</a> across the country – important bird habitats and iconic places that activists are fighting to protect – where birders can spot birds of significance.</p>4. Finding a Bird: Stop, Look, Listen, Repeat
<p>The National Audubon Society recommends the "<a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/how-find-bird" target="_blank">stop, look, listen, repeat</a>" mantra when seeking and identifying birds.</p><p>First and foremost, spotting birds requires attention. Stopping – getting out of the car, pausing on the sidewalk, trail, or in the backyard to look up – is the most important step.</p><p>When looking for birds, try to avoid gazing wildly around; rather, scan your surroundings, focusing on any odd shapes or shadows, trying to think about where a bird might perch (power lines, fence posts, branches), or keep an eye on the sky for flying eagles and hawks. In open areas like fields and beaches, you might have a more panoramic view, and can take in different sections of the landscape at a time. Look around with the naked eye before reaching for the binoculars to hone in.</p><p>While it can be hard to sift through the noise, listening for birds is perhaps an even more important element of bird watching than looking. Once you spend more time in the field, you'll be able to parse apart the racket and identify specific species, especially aided by Audubon's Bird Guide app or by learning from their <a href="https://www.audubon.org/section/birding-ear" target="_blank">Birding by Ear series</a>.</p><p>Repeat this pattern as you continue on your way, stopping to look and listen for birds as you go, rather than waiting for them to come to you. </p>5. Identification
<p>When you head out for a day of bird watching – especially when you're hoping to spot some new species – you'll want to be armed with the tools to identify what you see. <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/how-identify-birds" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Major considerations when identifying birds</a> are their group (such as owls, hawks, or sparrow-like birds), size and shape, behavior, voice, field marks, season, and habitat.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.sibleyguides.com/about/the-sibley-guide-to-birds/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sibley Guide to Birds</a> and the <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/peterson-field-guide-to-birds-of-north-america-second-edition/9781328771445" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Peterson Field Guide</a> are widely considered the best books for identifying birds in North America, although many <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/what-bird-guide-best-you" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">specialized guides</a> focus on specific species or regions as well.</p><p>Plenty of <a href="https://blog.nature.org/science/2013/05/27/boucher-bird-blog-apps-smart-birder/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">bird identification apps</a> have popped up in recent years – including National Geographic Birds, Sibley eGuide to Birds, iNaturalist, Merlin Bird ID, and Birdsnap – which are basically a <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/the-best-birding-apps-and-field-guides" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">field guide in your pocket</a>. I'm partial to the Audubon Bird Guide, which allows users to filter by common identifiers, including a bird's habitat, color, activity, tail shape, and general type, adding them all to a personal map to view your sightings.</p>6. Recording Your Sightings
<p><span>As you deepen your commitment to birding, you might join the community of birders that track and quantify their sightings, building their </span><a href="https://www.thespruce.com/what-birds-count-on-a-life-list-386704#:~:text=A%20life%20list%20is%20a,which%20birds%20you%20have%20seen." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">life list</a><span>.</span></p><p>While a standard notebook noting the date, species name, habitat, vocalizations, or any other data you wish to include will suffice, some birders opt for a more <a href="https://www.riteintherain.com/no-195-birders-journal" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">structured birder's journal</a> with pre-determined fields to record your encounters, take notes, draw sketches, etc.</p><p>Many birders also choose to record their sightings online and in shared databases (which include many of the field guide apps), often pinpointing them on a map for others to view. Launched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon, <a href="https://ebird.org/home" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">eBird is one of the largest databases and citizen science projects around birding</a>, where hundreds of thousands of birders enter their sightings, and users can explore birds in regions and hotspots around the world. Users can also record their sightings on the <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ebird/id988799279" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">eBird app</a>.</p>7. Attracting Birds to Your Own Yard
<p>Feeding birds is a common phenomenon: more than 40% of Americans maintain a birdfeeder to attract birds and watch them feast.</p><p>Not all birdfeed is created equal, however. Many commercial varieties are mostly made with "fillers" (oats, red millet, etc.) that birds will largely leave untouched. After researching what birds to expect in your area – and which ones you want to attract – you can create your own birdfeed with <a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/types-of-bird-seed-a-quick-guide/?pid=1142" target="_blank">seeds that will appeal to them</a>.</p><p>Beyond filling a birdfeeder, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/eco-friendly-lawn-2651194858.html" target="_self">transforming your yard into an eco-friendly oasis</a> is by far the best way to attract birds. Choosing to forgo mowing your lawn, planting native flowers and grasses, and ditching the pesticides will bring back the bugs that birds feed on, and provide a safe haven in which birds can happily live and eat.</p><p>While it's widely considered acceptable – and even beneficial – to feed birds with appropriate seeds, communal birdfeeders often <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/to-feed-or-not-feed" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">foster unlikely interactions between different species</a>, who can then transmit harmful diseases and parasites to one another. Maintaining several bird feeders with different types of seeds might keep different species from coming into contact, and feeders can be <a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-to-clean-your-bird-feeder/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cleaned to prevent the spread of infection</a>.</p>8. Inclusivity and Anti-Racism in the Birding Community
<p>Like all outdoor activities and areas of scientific study, birding communities are subject to racist and discriminatory ideologies. Black birders have long experienced discrimination and underrepresentation in outdoor spaces. The work of organizations like the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/birdersfund/" target="_blank">Black & Latinx Birders Fund</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/birdability/" target="_blank">Birdability</a>, and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/feministbirdclub/" target="_blank">Feminist Bird Club</a> highlight the contributions and importance of birders of color, birders with disabilities, and women and LGBTQ+ birders to the birding community, as do activists and naturalists like <a href="https://www.instagram.com/hood__naturalist/" target="_blank">Corina Newsome</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tykeejames/" target="_blank">Tykee James</a>. The work of <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/its-bird-new-comic-written-central-park-birder-christian-cooper" target="_blank">Christian Cooper</a>, <a href="https://camilledungy.com/publications/" target="_blank">Camille Dungy</a> (read her poem <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58363/frequently-asked-questions-10" target="_blank">Frequently Asked Questions: 10</a>), and <a href="https://orionmagazine.org/article/9-rules-for-the-black-birdwatcher/" target="_blank">J. Drew Lanham</a> – including his essay "<a href="https://lithub.com/birding-while-black/" target="_blank">Birding While Black</a>" – are a great place to start.</p><p>Getting involved in birding means educating ourselves on these issues and taking meaningful action; the work of <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/its-bird-new-comic-written-central-park-birder-christian-cooper" target="_blank">Christian Cooper</a> and <a href="https://orionmagazine.org/article/9-rules-for-the-black-birdwatcher/" target="_blank">J. Drew Lanham</a> – including his essay "<a href="https://lithub.com/birding-while-black/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Birding While Black</a>" – are a great place to start. Just as birders are activists for protecting habitats and natural areas, we must also be active and aware of inclusivity in these spaces.</p>9. Get Involved
<p>To learn from and enjoy the company of other birders, check out local birding groups in your area to join. Many Audubon chapters host trips, meetings, and bird walks for members. The American Birding Association even maintains a <a href="https://www.aba.org/festivals-events/" target="_blank">directory of birding festivals</a> across the country.</p><p>Volunteering for birds is also a great way to meet other birders and take action for birds in your community; local organizations might have opportunities for assisting with habitat restoration or helping at birding centers.</p><p>Like all wildlife, climate change and habitat destruction threaten the livelihood of birds, eliminating their breeding grounds and food sources. A <a href="https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees" target="_blank">2019 report released by the National Audubon Society</a> found that two-thirds of North American birds may face extinction if global temperatures rise 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Staying informed about and taking action for legislation designed to protect birds and our climate – such as the recent <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5552/text" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Migratory Bird Protection Act</a> – is important for ensuring a livable future for wildlife and humans alike.</p><p><em>Linnea graduated from Skidmore College in 2019 with a Bachelor's degree in English and Environmental Studies, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Most recently, Linnea worked at Hunger Free America, and has interned with WHYY in Philadelphia, Saratoga Living Magazine, and the Sierra Club in Washington, DC. </em><em>Linnea enjoys hiking and spending time outdoors, reading, practicing her German, and volunteering on farms and gardens and for environmental justice efforts in her community. Along with journalism, she is also an essayist and writer of creative nonfiction.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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The brown pelican is seen on Queen Bess Island in Louisiana in March 2021. Casey Wright / LDWF biologist
Who says you can't go home again?
<p>A brown pelican rescued from the BP Deepwater Horizon <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oil-spill" target="_self">oil spill</a> in 2010 and relocated to Georgia has made the 700-mile trek back to Louisiana 11 years later.</p><p>"It's truly impressive that it made its way back from Georgia,'' Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Biologist Casey Wright said in a <a href="https://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/news/oilcovered-brown-pelican-transported-to-georgia-after-2010-deepwater-horizon-disaster-finds-its-way-back-to-louisiana" target="_blank">press release</a>.</p>
<p>The pelican was found covered in oil on June 14, 2010, on a rock jetty off of Bataria Bay, located on Louisiana's Queen Bess Island, <a href="https://www.wbrz.com/news/rescued-brown-pelican-found-during-2010-deepwater-horizon-disaster-flies-hundreds-of-miles-to-return-home/" target="_blank">WBRZ reported</a>. The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/birds" target="_self">bird</a>, tagged "Red 33Z" by its rescuers, was first taken to a triage facility, then a rehabilitation facility in Louisiana. However, it couldn't be released near its home due to oil contamination. Instead, the pelican was flown to the U.S. Coast Guard station in Brunswick, Georgia, and released there on July 1, 2010.</p><p>It isn't known exactly when Red 33Z made it back home, but Wright spotted and photographed the bird on a Bataria Bay rock jetty in March. This isn't unheard of behavior for pelicans.</p><p>"Brown pelicans, like most seabirds, are thought to be hard-wired, genetically, to return to their birth colony to breed, despite moving long distances during the non-breeding season," LDWF Non-Game Ornithologist Robert Dobbs said in the press release. "That may be an overly simplistic generalization, but re-sighting data of banded pelicans often support that pattern.''</p><p>Other birds released in Georgia, Texas and Florida after the spill have also been spotted back in Louisiana.</p>
<p><br> It is thanks to careful restoration work that Red 33Z could return home. Queen Bess Island is an important nesting colony for sea birds and 15 to 20 percent of the state's brown pelicans are hatched there. But heavy damage from the spill left only five habitable acres. However, a restoration project raised that number to 36 acres by February 2020.</p><p>"Queen Bess is one of Louisiana's best redemptive wildlife stories," LDWF Secretary Jack Montoucet said in a <a href="https://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov/2020/02/queen-bess-island-restored-time-nesting-season" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">statement</a> announcing the completed restoration. "It was on this very island in 1968 that we began the process of bringing back the Brown Pelican after <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/ddt-brief-history-and-status" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">pesticides</a> nearly wiped the species from the Louisiana landscape. Now we celebrate the birth of a healthy home for Brown Pelicans and many other bird species because of the marriage of science, wise planning, and the determination of state and federal governments to do the right thing."</p>However, not all birds had such a happy ending after the 2010 oil spill. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that 65,000 to <a href="https://www.fws.gov/southeast/news/2016/06/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-killed-as-many-as-102000-birds-across-93-species/#:~:text=Deepwater%20Horizon%20oil%20spill%20killed,species%20%7C%20U.S.%20Fish%20%26%20Wildlife%20Service" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">102,000 birds</a> died in the disaster, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/wildlife-georgia-oil-spills-birds-louisiana-d3f21c8982e9295cd9ec2ee21d1042d1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Associated Press reported</a>. Still, bird populations in the area have recovered their pre-spill numbers.
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boonchai wedmakawand / Moment / Getty Images
Delta-8 THC is a cannabis product that has become a bestseller over the past few months, as many consumers find they can legally purchase it from CBD retailers. Its proponents say that Delta-8 THC will give you a nice little buzz, minus some of the more intense feelings (including paranoia) that are sometimes associated with marijuana.
Delta-8 THC is being marketed as a legal option for consumers who either don't live in a state with legal cannabis, or are a little apprehensive about how traditional psychoactive THC products will affect them. But is it all it's cracked up to be? Let's take a closer look, exploring what Delta-8 THC is, how it differs from other THC products, and whether it's actually legal for use.
<h2>What is Delta-8 THC?</h2><p>To better understand <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/health/marijuana-hemp-delta-8-thc.html" target="_blank">Delta-8 THC</a>, it helps to cover some basics about THC and cannabis.</p><p>Cannabis plants come chock full of different <a href="https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/cannabis-marijuana-and-cannabinoids-what-you-need-to-know" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>cannabinoids</em></a>. These are naturally-occuring chemical compounds that bind with receptors throughout your body. They can offer a wide range of mental, emotional, and physical effects; indeed, the healing and therapeutic properties marijuana or <a data-linked-post="2648563694" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/strongest-cbd-oil-2648563694.html" target="_blank">CBD products</a> offer can be attributed to cannabinoids.</p><p>One of the most common cannabinoids is what's known as Delta-9 THC. Simply put, this is the part of marijuana that gets you "high." It's worth noting that Delta-9 THC remains illegal in many states, except for in the most minute doses, and is still illegal at the federal level. CBD products are made with trace amounts of THC, ensuring that consumers can enjoy positive health effects in a perfectly legal way, without the risk of getting high.</p><p>On a chemical level, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/health/marijuana-hemp-delta-8-thc.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Delta-8 THC</a> is not too different from Delta-9 THC; the distinction comes down to just a few molecules. But those molecules make a big practical impact: Delta-8 THC will give you a buzz, but the psychoactive effects are considerably milder than with Delta-9 THC.</p><p>More specifically, many cannabis enthusiasts report that Delta-8 THC helps them feel good but also leaves them relatively clear-headed; and, it doesn't produce the anxiety or jitteriness that often characterize a Delta-9 THC high.</p><p>Additionally, because of the way the law is written regarding Delta-9 THC, some CBD companies now sell Delta-8 THC products in places where traditional cannabis is still illegal.</p><h2>What's the Difference Between Delta-9 THC and Delta-8 THC?</h2><p>Here are the primary differences to note between Delta-9 and Delta-8 THC:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Delta-9 THC is the primary psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana. In other words, it's the part that gets you high.</li><li>Though some states have found workarounds, Delta-9 THC is still illegal under federal law.</li><li>Delta-8 THC is also found in the cannabis plant, though it's not quite as powerful or as well-known. </li><li>Delta-8 THC is milder in its psychoactive effects. And, it's not <em>technically </em>illegal under current law.</li></ul><p>These are just a few of the key distinctions to keep in mind. Delta-8 THC is popular among consumers who want a smoother high, and don't want to violate federal law.</p><h2>Is Delta-8 THC Legal?</h2><p>We noted that Delta-8 THC is not <em>technically </em>illegal. Here, we need to get into some of the nuanced legal considerations that surround this substance.</p><p>First of all, there are plenty of cannabis companies that actively promote Delta-8 THC as a legal way to get high. Again, that's technically true, but is still a point of debate for some.</p><p>For one thing, it's not explicitly listed as an illegal substance. While federal laws, and some state laws, specifically ban Delta-9 THC, Delta-8 THC is never mentioned. More to the point, though, many proponents will cite the<a href="https://www.usda.gov/farmbill" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> 2018 Farm Bill</a>. This law legalized several industrial hemp products on a national level, including CBD.</p><p>The Farm Bill also includes some fairly nuanced positions regarding THC. In summary, the law says that hemp and cannabis-derived products are legal so long as they contain less than 0.3 percent Delta-9 THC.</p><p>With that said, some lawyers contend that Delta-8's heyday may soon come to an end. That's because the Farm Bill clears it only so long as it's derived directly from hemp; most of the Delta-8 THC products sold today aren't made from hemp, but rather from synthetically-altered CBD.</p><p>Some of these issues are a little fuzzy, and <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/delta-8-thc-legal-weed-explained-1113859/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the legal future of Delta-8 THC</a> remains a little uncertain. For now, though, many experts would argue that it is legal to purchase.</p><h2>What Kinds of Delta-8 THC Products Are Available?</h2><p><em>Each product featured here has been independently selected by the writer. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn commission.</em></p><p>If you're looking to try Delta-8 THC products, you'll certainly find plenty of different products. Dispensaries and legal cannabis stores currently have a trove of products that use this cannabinoid. Some examples include:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Vape cartridges, tinctures, and capsules.</li><li>Beverages made with Delta-8 THC, including some seltzers.</li><li>Edibles, including Delta-8 THC gummy bears, chocolate bars, and more.</li></ul><p>The cannabis industry has really been running with Delta-8 THC, finding creative ways to bring it to market. And chances are, even more products will be springing up in the weeks and months to come. </p><p>It's very important to note that you should only purchase Delta-8 THC products from reputable brands and established cannabis retailers. We do not recommend purchasing any products that contain Delta-8 THC from gas stations or vape shops. If you are looking for a reputable place to explore these products, here are a few brands that we trust and recommend:</p>
<h2>What are the Pros and Cons of Delta-8 THC?</h2><p>As you consider whether Delta-8 THC is worth your time, it may be helpful to weigh the pros against the cons.</p><p><strong>Pros</strong></p><p>Let's start with some of the positives:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Delta-8 THC does have psychoactive effects, but it's a milder effect than with traditional Delta-9 THC.</li><li>Delta-8 THC is currently legal and widely accessible in multiple states.</li><li>There are a wide number of products that use Delta-8 THC.</li></ul><p><strong>Cons</strong></p><p>Now, a few of the downsides.</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Delta-8 THC isn't quite as commonplace as other cannabis products, including CBD, and some of the options on the market are expensive.</li><li>While this substance is technically legal, there are plenty of uncertainties over its legal future. It's something you want to keep in mind.</li><li>As a relatively new product, Delta-8 THC products are not regulated by the FDA and there is not independent testing in place to verify that it is safe or pure.</li></ul><p>As with any cannabis product, Delta-8 THC has its pros and cons. As you seek the cannabis product that's best for you, it's largely a matter of personal preference.</p><p>Also note that smoking, vaping, or otherwise imbibing any kind of cannabis-related product can carry some medical risks and negative health consequences. If you have any specific concerns, we recommend consulting with your doctor before you try any Delta-8 THC product.</p><p><em><strong>Josh Hurst </strong></em><em>is a journalist, critic, and essayist. He lives in Knoxville, TN, with his wife and three sons. He covers natural health, nutrition, supplements, and clean energy. His writing has appeared in Health, Shape, and Remedy Review.</em></p>
NuLeaf Naturals Full Spectrum Delta 8 THC Oil
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjAzNjAyMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTMxMjAyNX0.wRpb_E9ZFZFNgkYsYh6cleNbTezo16rUeTmifcP_yCk/img.jpg?width=980" id="60683" width="400" height="400" data-rm-shortcode-id="32630bf41fd6909a232194b540c570eb" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />nuleafnaturals.com
<p><a href="https://nuleafnaturals.com/product/full-spectrum-delta-8-thc-oil-30mg-ml/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">NuLeaf Naturals Full Spectrum Delta 8 THC Oil</a> is made from organic hemp and organic virgin hemp seed extract. It's available in a 150 mg bottle and a 450 mg bottle, which both provide 15 mg of Delta 8 THC per serving. This formula is also available in a soft gel.</p>
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Botany Farms Delta-10 THC Vape Cartridge
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjAzNjE2Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2OTcwNTgzM30.opm4l5-rSqV1HfvrbVE16EEVZvqxI42xgqnsQfL9p2M/img.jpg?width=980" id="2c749" width="400" height="400" data-rm-shortcode-id="a678e76d8cd5e13bae95d9c3ae664b85" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />botanyfarms.com
<p>The <a href="https://www.botanyfarms.com/product/delta-10-thc-vape-cartridge/?aff=14" target="_blank">Botany Farms Delta-10 THC Vape Cartridge</a> actually contains both Delta-10 and Delta-8 THC.This is designed to provide the desired effects of Delta-8 THC but without the drowsiness. They also offer a vape cartridge with a 1:1 concentration of <a href="https://www.botanyfarms.com/product/delta-10-delta-8-thc-vape-cartridge/?aff=14" target="_blank">Delta-8 THC</a> and Delta-10 THC. Note that while vape products can be used to aid in smoking cessation, we do not recommend vaping or smoking because of the negative health effects they can cause.</p>
$60
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An elephant in Zimbabwe. Letizia Barbi / CC BY-SA 2.0
By Charan Saunders
Last year the world reacted in shock when Namibia announced plans to auction off 170 live elephants to the highest bidder.
<p>Despite criticism, the plans have continued to move forward — and that may just be the start. Tucked away in a Feb. 1 <a href="https://www.met.gov.na/files/files/Elephant%20Auction%20Ministerial%20Response.pdf" target="_blank">press release</a> justifying the auction was a rehash of the country's oft-repeated desire to also sell ivory. The Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism's stated:</p><p>"<em>Namibia has major stockpiles of valuable wildlife products including ivory which it can produce sustainably and regulate properly, and which if traded internationally could support our elephant conservation and management for decades to come."</em></p><p>Namibia is not alone in this desire to capitalize on its wildlife. In Zimbabwe's national assembly last year, the minister of environment valued the country's stockpile of 130 metric tonnes (143 tons) of ivory and 5 tonnes (5.5 tons) of rhino horn at <a href="https://www.parlzim.gov.zw/national-assembly-hansard/national-assembly-hansard-18-june-2020-vol-46-no-47" target="_blank">$600 million</a> in U.S. dollars. This figure, which would value ivory at more than $4,200 per kilogram, has since been seized upon by commentators seeking to justify the reintroduction of the ivory trade.</p>
<p>I'm an environmental accountant dedicated to ethical conservation, so I wanted to understand these numbers and how they motivate countries. In truth, I found not even full black-market value comes close to arriving at this figure.</p><p>Black-market values are, of course, often invisible to the general public, but the most recent data from criminal justice experts finds that unworked (or raw) elephant ivory sells for about <a href="https://wildlifejustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/WildlifeJusticeCommission_Rapid-Assessment-Of-The-Illegal-Ivory-Trade-in-2020_August2020_Spreads.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$92/kg</a> on the black market in Africa, while rhino horn is currently selling for <a href="https://wildlifejustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/FINAL-raw-rhino-horn-digital-1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$8,683/kg</a>.</p><p>Therefore, a more realistic valuation of Zimbabwe's ivory stockpiles, using an optimistic wholesale price of $150/kg, would give a potential income of only $19.5 million in U.S. dollars.</p><p>This is a 30th of Zimbabwe's estimate.</p><p>And even then, those numbers fail to account for the disaster that would happen if ivory sales return — as we saw in the all-too-recent past.</p>
<h3>The One-Off Sales</h3><p>International trade in ivory has been banned since 1989, following a 10-year period in which African elephant numbers declined by 50%, from 1.3 million to 600,000. However, in 1999 and 2008 <a href="https://cites.org/eng" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CITES</a> allowed "one-off sales" of stockpiled ivory, to disastrous effect. The selling prices achieved then were only <a href="https://cites.org/eng/news/pr/2008/081107_ivory.shtml" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$100/kg</a> and <a href="https://cites.org/eng/news/pr/2008/081107_ivory.shtml" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$157/kg</a>, in U.S. dollars respectively, due to collusion by official Chinese and Japanese buyers.</p>
<img
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data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjAzNTM1My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3NTQzMjgwM30.Go5CVqcIJHxKgg7CMT7eWIuvAMo1MxAPeZ9tnUOjBf0/img.jpg?width=980"
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Illegal ivory. Gavin Shire / USFWS
<p>The intention of CITES in approving the <a href="https://cites.org/eng/news/pr/2008/080716_ivory.shtml" target="_blank">one-off ivory sales</a> was to introduce a controlled and steady supply of stockpiled ivory into the market. The legal supply, coupled with effective systems of control, aimed to satisfy demand and reduce prices. This in turn should have reduced the profitability of (and the demand for) illegal ivory. Poaching should have followed suit and decreased.</p><p>Instead, the sales led to an increase in <a href="https://conservationaction.co.za/recent-news/ivory-sales-zimbabwe-namibia-create-demand-spike/" target="_blank">demand</a> and, consequently, an increase in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/13/legal-ivory-sale-drove-dramatic-increase-in-elephant-poaching-study-shows" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elephant poaching</a>. The 2008 ivory sale was accompanied by a <a href="https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research/working-paper-series/does-legalization-reduce-black-market-activity-evidence-from-a-global-ivory-experiment-and-elephant-5ed6996401fa99.02945078" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">66% increase in illegally traded ivory and a 71% increase in ivory smuggling</a>. An <a href="https://eia-international.org/report/blood-ivory-exposing-the-myth-of-a-regulated-market/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">investigation</a> in 2010 by the Environmental Investigation Agency documented that 90% of the ivory being sold in China came from illegal sources.</p><p>The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) comparison of elephant poaching figures for the five years preceding and five years following the sale showed an "abrupt, significant, permanent, robust and geographically widespread increase" in poaching.</p><p>The problem has not faded away. Most recently the two African elephant species (savanna and forest) were declared endangered and critically endangered due to their continued poaching threat.</p>
<img
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data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjAzNTM1OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1OTEyMDg5OH0.PBTFFs40KA5vIc4mLw-1ppg0sKE8CeiGs7qdQdOLpe0/img.jpg?width=980"
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Regina Hart / CC BY 2.0
<p>Still, some African nations look fondly at the 2008 sale and have long hoped to repeat it. The Zimbabwe Ministry's 2020 statement follows yet another <a href="https://cites.org/eng/cop/18/prop/index.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">proposal</a> to the 18th CITES Conference of the Parties (COP18) by Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana to trade in live elephants and their body parts, including ivory. The proposal was not accepted by the parties.</p>
<h3>Why Didn't Ivory Sales Work?</h3><p>The one-off sales of ivory removed the stigma associated with its purchase, stimulated the market demand, and increased prices.</p><p>The ivory that China purchased in 2008 for $157/kg was drip-fed by the authorities to traders at prices ranging between $800 and <a href="https://conservationaction.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/EIA-Blood-Ivory.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$1,500 per kilogram</a>. This meant that the bulk of the profits went to filling Chinese government coffers — not to African nations — and in doing so, created a large illegal market which drove prices even higher.</p><p>Raw ivory prices in China increased from <a href="https://conservationaction.co.za/recent-news/price-of-ivory-in-china-triples-in-four-years/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$750/kg</a> in 2010 to <a href="https://conservationaction.co.za/recent-news/price-of-ivory-in-china-triples-in-four-years/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$2,100/kg</a> in 2014. The market had been stimulated, prices increased and the volume of legal ivory available was insufficient to meet demand as the Chinese government gradually fed its stockpile into the market.</p><p>Japan, the other participant in the one-off sales, has systematically failed to comply with CITES regulations, meaning that there were (and still are) <a href="https://content.eia-global.org/assets/2016/09/dirty_secrets_of_japans_illegal_ivory_trade/Japans_Dirty_Secret_English.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">no controls over ivory</a> being sold, allowing the illegal markets to function in parallel to the legal one.</p><p>In a very short space of time, criminals ramped up poaching and elephant numbers plummeted.</p>
<h3>What Has Happened to the Price of Ivory Since Then?</h3><p>With no recent legal international sales, combined with the significant U.S., Chinese and United Kingdom domestic ivory sales bans, the price for raw ivory paid by craftsmen in China fell from <a href="https://conservationaction.co.za/recent-news/price-of-ivory-in-china-triples-in-four-years/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$2,100/kg</a> in 2014 to <a href="https://www.savetheelephants.org/about-ste-2/press-media/?detail=dramatic-changes-in-china-s-ivory-trade" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$730/kg</a> in 2017. That's when <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/two-years-after-china-bans-elephant-ivory-trade-demand-for-elephant-ivory-is-down" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">China</a> closed all of its official ivory carving outlets and theoretically stopped all official ivory trade.</p><p>The price currently paid for raw ivory in Asia, according to an <a href="https://wildlifejustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/WildlifeJusticeCommission_Rapid-Assessment-Of-The-Illegal-Ivory-Trade-in-2020_August2020_Spreads.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">investigation</a> by the Wildlife Justice Commission, is currently between $597/kg and $689/kg, in U.S. dollars. Ivory sourced in Africa and sold in Asia has additional costs such as transportation, taxes and broker commissions. The prices paid for raw ivory in Africa have decreased correspondingly from $208/kg to $92/kg in 2020.</p><p>Those numbers pale in comparison to a living elephant. A 2014 study found that live elephants are each worth an estimated <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/elephants-are-worth-76-times-more-alive-than-dead-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$1.6 million in ecotourism opportunities</a>.</p>
<h3>Funding Conservation</h3><p>One half-truth is that the money earned from the legal sale will be used to effectively fund conservation.</p><p>One of the CITES conditions of the 2008 sale was that funds were to go to the conservation of elephants. South Africa placed a substantial portion of the income from its share of the pie in the Mpumalanga <a href="https://conservationaction.co.za/recent-news/misappropriation-ivory-funds-threatens-rhino-horn-sale/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Problem Animal Fund</a> — which, it turns out, was well-named. An internal investigation found the fund had "no proper controls" and that "tens of millions" of rand (the official currency of South Africa) had bypassed the normal procurement processes.</p><p>Ironically, proceeds were also partly used for the refurbishment of the Skukuza abattoir, where most of the 14,629 elephant carcasses from culling operations between 1967 and 1997 were processed.</p><p>All the while, Africa's elephant populations continued to decline.</p>
<h3>How to Stop Poaching</h3><p>In light of these deficiencies — and in light of elephants' recently declared endangered status — the very reverse of actual conservation can be expected if any nation is again allowed to sell its ivory stockpiles. The cost of increased anti-poaching efforts required from the consequent increase in poaching will outweigh the benefit of any income from the sale of ivory stockpiles.</p><p>To stop poaching, all international and local trade must be stopped.</p>
<img
class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" lazy-loadable="true"
data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjAzNTM3NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzI5NjgwN30.eGqyP2TcqWpotkgzA9wM8zpnoOtZCWZh9nwUcWlfmT8/img.jpg?width=980"
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John Culley / CC BY 2.0
<p>Repeating this failed experiment will send a message that it is acceptable to trade in ivory. Ivory carving outlets in China will re-open and demand for ivory will be stimulated. The demand for ivory in an increasingly wealthy and better-connected Asia will quickly <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(16)31005-3.pdf" target="_blank">outstrip legal supply</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589346.2016.1201378?journalCode=cpsa20" target="_blank">poaching will increase</a>.</p><p>Meanwhile, the <a href="https://www.google.co.za/search?dcr=0&sxsrf=ALeKk01cp-pJf_a-_SklCaLkrbzNNvgh6w%3A1613620282794&source=hp&ei=OuQtYPefLuKdjLsPlsOSqAo&iflsig=AINFCbYAAAAAYC3ySkhIMQq_p5FfrBs_4FPVcInojlhF&q=legal+ivory+trade+in+a+corrupt+world+and+its+impact+on+african+elephant+populations&oq=legal+ivory+trade+in+a+corrupt+world&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYADICCAA6BAgjECc6BQgAEJECOggIABCxAxCDAToICC4QsQMQgwE6BAguEEM6BAgAEEM6CwguELEDEMcBEKMCOgsILhDHARCvARCRAjoKCAAQsQMQgwEQQzoHCAAQsQMQQzoOCC4QsQMQgwEQxwEQrwE6BQguELEDOgsIABCxAxCDARCRAjoLCAAQsQMQgwEQyQM6BQgAEJIDOggILhDHARCvAToECAAQCjoFCAAQyQM6BggAEBYQHjoFCAAQhgM6CQgAEMkDEBYQHjoHCCEQChCgAVDTBFiDO2DCTmgBcAB4AIABmAOIAf5RkgEIMi0yNy45LjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6&sclient=gws-wiz" target="_blank">management of a legal ivory trade</a> requires strong systems of control at every point in the commodity chain to ensure that illegal ivory is not laundered into the legal market. With recalcitrant Japan continuing to ignore CITES, "untransparent" Namibia "<a href="https://www.met.gov.na/files/files/Elephant%20Auction%20Ministerial%20Response.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">losing tolerance</a>" with CITES, and <a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index/zwe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Zimbabwe ranking 157</a> out of 179 on the corruption perceptions index, not even the basics for controlled trade are in place.</p><p>Therefore, aside from the strong theoretical economic arguments against renewed one-off sales, the practical arguments are perhaps even stronger: If international ivory and rhino horn sales ever again become legal, the cost to protect elephants will skyrocket and these culturally valuable animals will plunge into decline — and possibly extinction.</p>
<p><em>Charan Saunders grew up in Cape Town and studied genetics and microbiology and then went on to qualify as a chartered accountant. She has worked in London in the forensic science field and was the chief financial officer of a major vaccine manufacturer for six years. She now serves as a financial director in the field of conservation.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/southern-africas-ivory-delusion" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
- Ivory Is Still Sold on eBay, Even Though It's Illegal - EcoWatch ›
- Wildlife Conference Mulls Loosening Restrictions on Ivory Trade ... ›
- Can We Protect Elephants by Eavesdropping on Their Underground ... ›
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New Montana Bills ‘Declare War on Wolves, Bears and Other Carnivores,’ Wildlife Advocates Say
08 April
Animals
A grizzly bear searches for salmon. Scott Suriano / Moment / Getty Images
A flurry of bills has recently been introduced to Montana's state legislature that reduces restrictions on the killing of grizzly bears and wolves — two predators which have historically struggled to survive in the state.
<p>One such bill is <a href="https://leg.mt.gov/bills/2021/billhtml/SB0098.htm" target="_blank">SB 98</a>, put forward by Republican Sen. Bruce Gillespie, which would expand the state law allowance for killing grizzly bears. Currently, Montanans can kill grizzly bears if they are caught in the act of killing their livestock, according to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/montana-wolves-bears-war-against-wildlife/" target="_blank">CBS News</a>. But the new bill — which has already passed the state Senate — would mean grizzly bears could be killed if they were "believed to be 'threatening' a person or livestock." The bill also states that grizzly populations have "<a href="https://leg.mt.gov/bills/2021/billhtml/SB0098.htm" target="_blank">recovered</a>" and should be taken off the federal <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/endangered-species">endangered species</a> list.</p><p>Other bills include SB 314, which would allow all but 15 breeding pairs of wolves to be killed, and HB 224, which would legalize the use of neck snares to hunt wolves.</p>
<p>With Montana's first Republican governor in 16 years, Greg Gianforte, and a Republican-controlled legislature, the bills represent "a political sentiment," according to Rep. Tom France, a Democrat and retired regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/us/montana-wolves-grizzlies-hunting.html" target="_blank">The New York Times reported</a>, adding that Montana's State Legislature is now saying, "We don't live by federal laws and aren't going to pay attention to them."</p><p>Proponents of bills like the ones aimed at limiting wolf numbers feel they have "no voice" when it comes to keeping the predators away from eliminating their game, like elk and deer, State Senator Bob Brown, a Republican who introduced one of the bills, said at a hearing, according to The New York Times.</p><p>"We can't sit by and allow our game — the thing that feeds so many families — to be taken off the table," he added.</p>
<p>Activists and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife">wildlife</a> advocates have opposed the bills, calling them a series of "bad bills" that "declare war on wolves, bears and other carnivores," according to a <a href="https://blog.humanesociety.org/2021/02/three-montana-lawmakers-declare-war-on-wolves-bears-and-other-carnivores-with-flurry-of-bad-bills.html?credit=blog_post_021921_id12086" target="_blank">statement</a> by Kitty Block, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. "These bills — all put forward by just three lawmakers, Rep. Paul Fielder, Sen. Bob Brown, and Sen. Bruce Gillespie — also seek to usurp biologists, including the state's wildlife agency," Block wrote.</p><p>In 1975, the grizzly bear was listed on the Endangered Species Act when only about 800 to 1,000 of remained, The New York Times reported. Today there are an estimated 1,800 in the Lower 48 — a successful recovery attributed to restrictions on hunting and poaching.</p><p>Sen. Gillespie, however, said the state's grizzly management is currently "stuck in a time capsule," according to the <a href="https://missoulacurrent.com/outdoors/2021/01/grizzly-bears-4/" target="_blank">Montana Free Press</a>. "They long ago hit the target of 300 [grizzlies]... That means there are many times more conflicts [and] attacks — life-and-death conflicts," he added.</p>
<p>Despite popular conception, fatal grizzly bear attacks are extremely rare — only one person dies on average every three years in the lower 48, according to <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/grizzly-bear-resurgence-increased-interactions-humans" target="_blank">National Geographic</a>. But as human and grizzly bear populations continue to expand, things might get "interesting," James Jonkel, a biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks who manages bears in and around Missoula, told National Geographic.</p><p>According to biologists, the problem will not be a lack of space across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and even California, but rather of "social acceptance," National Geographic reported.</p>
<p>A new survey of Montana residents by Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP) and the Human Dimensions Lab at the University of Montana shows that Montana residents "overwhelmingly hold positive attitudes toward grizzly bears," the Sierra Club <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2021/04/montana-survey-reveals-widespread-support-for-grizzly-bears" target="_blank">wrote in a statement</a>. Eighty-five percent agree that grizzly bears "are part of what makes Montana special" and 81 percent enjoy knowing grizzly bears exist in the state, even if they never see one.</p><p>The survey, however, also shows that this acceptance declines when surveying people who live and work on agricultural-ranching landscapes. "Survey responses reveal remaining public misconceptions about the role of hunting in preventing conflicts between bears and people," the Sierra Club wrote. These misconceptions include the knowledge that hunting could resolve human-and-bear conflict or scare the bears away — both claims that have been refuted by <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/program/documents/Common%20Myths%20Regarding%20Grizzly%20Bear%20Management%20.pdf" target="_blank">grizzly bear experts</a>.</p><p>Instead, experts recommend prevention measures like electric fencing, carcass removal and removing food and items that may attract bears in order to avoid future conflict and achieve a "'self-sustaining grizzly population' that Montanans favor," the Sierra Club concluded. </p>
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Tourists on a whale-watching boat of the California coast were treated to a marvel of marine life last month: a dolphin "stampede!"
That word for the phenomenon was coined by Dana Point Whale Watching, who posted a Youtube video of hundreds to thousands of common dolphins swimming in one direction March 19.
<p>"This is pretty phenomenal," a voice can be heard exclaiming in the footage. </p>
<p>The tour company, which has operated out of the Orange County city that gives it its name for the last 50 years, kept pace with the massing dolphins for around four hours, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dolphin-stampede-pod-california-orange-county_n_606b860fc5b6c00165c455d4" target="_blank">HuffPost reported</a>.</p><p>"The dolphins take off so fast they turn up the water making it white water," the tour company wrote in the video description. "You can hear them swimming through the rushing water. They are so graceful even in the frenzied behavior and we are so amazed to see them right of[f] our coast."</p><p>A large group of dolphins is actually known as a super or mega pod, according to HuffPost. The marine mammals usually travel in pods of 200 or fewer. But sometimes, they merge when food concentrates in a single area.</p><p>This isn't the first time the phenomenon has been recorded. One of the most spectacular instances was in 2013, when as many as 100,000 dolphins were spotted off the San Diego coast, as <a href="https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/thousands-of-dolphins-spotted-near-san-diego/2053820/" target="_blank">NBC 7 San Diego reported at the time</a>. The superpod covered a five by seven mile stretch of ocean.</p><p>"They're definitely social animals, they stick together in small groups," Marine mammal expert Sarah Wilkin told NBC7 San Diego at the time. "But sometimes, the schools come together."</p><p>What is unique to Dana Point Whale Watching is their word choice. Some commenters objected to the term dolphin stampede.</p><p>"'Stampede' is a poor description," one Youtube commenter wrote. "It implies that this is a panicked, clumsy mass movement of animals. I have driven in a boat through a super-pod such as this, and these animals are anything but that. They are graceful and controlled. It's a beautiful thing to see."</p><p>However, most internet users were just grateful for the sight. The video went "viral" with around 25,000 views and more than 400 likes as of Monday, <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/environment/546526-spectacular-sighting-of-1000-dolphin-stampede-off" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Hill reported</a>. As of Tuesday, the number of views had nearly doubled to 45,625.</p><p>As the tour company wrote on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CMkxNQ8AOe2/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Instagram</a>, "Who doesn't love a dolphin stampede!"</p>
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Sea Level Rise Is Killing Trees on the Atlantic Coast, Creating ‘Ghost Forests’ Visible From Space
06 April
Climate
Ghost forest panorama in coastal North Carolina. Emily Ury / CC BY-ND
By Emily Ury
Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina's Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina's Outer Banks. The trees growing in the water are small and stunted. Many are dead.
<p>Throughout coastal North Carolina, evidence of forest die-off is everywhere. Nearly every roadside ditch I pass while driving around the region is lined with dead or dying trees.</p><p>As an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uHGlqtEAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ecologist studying wetland response to sea level rise</a>, I know this flooding is evidence that climate change is altering landscapes along the Atlantic coast. It's emblematic of environmental changes that also threaten wildlife, ecosystems, and local farms and forestry businesses.</p><p>Like all living organisms, trees die. But what is happening here is not normal. Large patches of trees are dying simultaneously, and saplings aren't growing to take their place. And it's not just a local issue: Seawater is raising salt levels in coastal woodlands along the entire Atlantic Coastal Plain, from Maine to Florida. Huge swaths of contiguous forest are dying. They're now known in the scientific community as "ghost forests."</p>
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Deer photographed by a remote camera in a climate change-altered forest in North Carolina. Emily Ury / CC BY-ND
<h3>The Insidious Role of Salt</h3><p>Sea level rise <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-4-sea-level-rise-and-implications-for-low-lying-islands-coasts-and-communities/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">driven by climate change</a> is making wetlands wetter in many parts of the world. It's also making them saltier.</p><p>In 2016 I began working in a forested North Carolina wetland to study the effect of salt on its plants and soils. Every couple of months, I suit up in heavy rubber waders and a mesh shirt for protection from biting insects, and haul over 100 pounds of salt and other equipment out along the flooded trail to my research site. We are salting an area about the size of a tennis court, seeking to mimic the effects of sea level rise.</p><p>After two years of effort, the salt didn't seem to be affecting the plants or soil processes that we were monitoring. I realized that instead of waiting around for our experimental salt to slowly kill these trees, the question I needed to answer was how many trees had already died, and how much more wetland area was vulnerable. To find answers, I had to go to sites where the trees were already dead.</p>
<p>Rising seas are inundating North Carolina's coast, and saltwater is seeping into wetland soils. Salts move through groundwater during phases when freshwater is depleted, such as during droughts. Saltwater also moves through canals and ditches, penetrating inland with help from wind and high tides. Dead trees with pale trunks, devoid of leaves and limbs, are a telltale sign of high salt levels in the soil. A 2019 report called them "<a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/the-seeds-of-ghost-forests/" target="_blank">wooden tombstones</a>."</p><p>As the trees die, more salt-tolerant shrubs and grasses move in to take their place. In a newly published study that I coauthored with <a href="https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/bernhardt" target="_blank">Emily Bernhardt</a> and <a href="https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/wright" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Justin Wright</a> at Duke University and <a href="https://evsc.as.virginia.edu/people/profile/xiyang" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Xi Yang</a> at the University of Virginia, we show that in North Carolina <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2339" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this shift has been dramatic</a>.</p><p>The state's coastal region has suffered a rapid and widespread loss of forest, with cascading impacts on wildlife, including the endangered <a href="https://www.fws.gov/southeast/wildlife/mammals/red-wolf/#:%7E:text=Today%2C%20only%20about%2020%20red,facilities%20throughout%20the%20United%20States." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">red wolf</a> and <a href="https://www.fws.gov/rcwrecovery/files/rcwoodpecker.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">red-cockaded woodpecker</a>. Wetland forests <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aba136" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">sequester and store large quantities of carbon</a>, so forest die-offs also contribute to further climate change.</p>
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Researcher Emily Ury measuring soil salinity in a ghost forest. Emily Bernhardt / CC BY-ND
<h3>Assessing Ghost Forests From Space</h3><p>To understand where and how quickly these forests are changing, I needed a bird's-eye perspective. This perspective comes from satellites like <a href="https://eospso.nasa.gov/mission-category/3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">NASA's Earth Observing System</a>, which are important sources of scientific and environmental data.</p><p>Since 1972, <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/nli/landsat" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Landsat satellites</a>, jointly operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, have captured <a href="https://eros.usgs.gov/image-gallery/image-of-the-week/landsat-archive-hits-nine-million-scenes" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">continuous images of Earth's land surface</a> that reveal both natural and human-induced change. We used Landsat images to quantify changes in coastal vegetation since 1984 and referenced high-resolution Google Earth images to spot ghost forests. Computer analysis helped identify similar patches of dead trees across the entire landscape.</p>
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A 2016 Landsat8 image of the Albemarle Pamlico Peninsula in coastal North Carolina. USGS
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Google Earth image of a healthy forest on the right and a ghost forest with many dead trees on the left. Emily Ury
<p>The results were shocking. We found that more than 10% of forested wetland within the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge was lost over the past 35 years. This is federally protected land, with no other human activity that could be killing off the forest.</p><p><a href="https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/" target="_blank">Rapid sea level rise</a> seems to be outpacing the ability of these forests to adapt to wetter, saltier conditions. <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Extreme weather events</a>, fueled by climate change, are causing further damage from heavy storms, more frequent hurricanes and drought.</p><p>We found that the largest annual loss of forest cover within our study area occurred in 2012, following a period of extreme drought, forest fires and storm surges from <a href="https://www.weather.gov/mhx/Aug272011EventReview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hurricane Irene</a> in August 2011. This triple whammy seemed to have been a tipping point that caused mass tree die-offs across the region.</p>
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Habitat maps we created for the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge showing the change over time and the prevalence of ghost forests. Ury et al, 2021., CC BY-ND
<h3>Should Scientists Fight the Transition or Assist It?</h3><p>As global sea levels continue to rise, coastal woodlands from the <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8357/katrina-damage-to-gulf-coast-forests" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gulf of Mexico</a> to <a href="https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/chesapeake-bay-ghost-forests-highlight-wetland-transformation#:%7E:text=In%20the%20Chesapeake%20Bay%20region,lapping%20at%20their%20bleached%20trunks." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Chesapeake Bay</a> and elsewhere around the world could also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ehs2.1258" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">suffer major losses</a> from saltwater intrusion. Many people in the conservation community are rethinking land management approaches and exploring more <a href="https://www.landscapearchitecture.nz/landscape-architecture-aotearoa/2018/9/7/adaptive-planning-for-coastal-climate-change" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">adaptive strategies</a>, such as facilitating forests' inevitable transition into salt marshes or other coastal landscapes.</p><p>For example, in North Carolina <a href="https://coastalresilience.org/project/north-carolina/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Nature Conservancy</a> is carrying out some adaptive management approaches, such as <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/living-shoreline.html#:%7E:text=Living%20shorelines%20are%20a%20green,sills%20to%20stabilize%20the%20shoreline." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">creating "living shorelines</a>" made from plants, sand and rock to provide natural buffering from storm surges.</p><p>A more radical approach would be to introduce marsh plants that are salt-tolerant in threatened zones. This strategy is controversial because it goes against the desire to try to preserve ecosystems exactly as they are.<br></p><p>But if forests are dying anyway, having a salt marsh is a far better outcome than allowing a wetland to be reduced to open water. While open water isn't inherently bad, it does not provide the many ecological benefits that a salt marsh affords. Proactive management may prolong the lifespan of coastal wetlands, enabling them to continue storing carbon, providing habitat, enhancing water quality and protecting productive farm and forest land in coastal regions.</p>
<p>
<em>Emily Ury is a Ph.D. candidate in Duke University's Program in Ecology.</em>
</p><p>
<em>Disclosure statement: Emily Ury received funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the North Carolina Sea Grant. Additional support for this project came from the National Science Foundation.</em>
</p><p>
<em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/sea-level-rise-is-killing-trees-along-the-atlantic-coast-creating-ghost-forests-that-are-visible-from-space-147971" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em>
</p><script async="async" data-counter="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147971/count?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" id="theconversation_tracker_hook" src="https://theconversation.com/javascripts/lib/content_tracker_hook.js" type="text/javascript"></script>From Your Site Articles
- 'Ghost Forests' Are an Eerie Sign of Sea-Level Rise - EcoWatch ›
- Mangroves Could Help Save Us From Climate Change. Climate ... ›
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Construction workers prepare to remove the Veazie Dam on the Penobscot River in Orono, Maine, on July 22, 2013. Gordon Chibroski / Portland Press Herald / Getty Images
By Tara Lohan
Atlantic salmon have a challenging life history — and those that hail from U.S. waters have seen things get increasingly difficult in the past 300 years.
<p>Dubbed the "king of fish," Atlantic salmon once numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the United States and ranged up and down most of New England's coastal rivers and ocean waters. But dams, pollution and overfishing have extirpated them from all the region's rivers except in Maine. Today only around 1,000 wild salmon, known as the Gulf of Maine distinct population segment, return each year from their swim to Greenland. Fewer will find adequate spawning habitat in their natal rivers to reproduce.</p><p>That's left Atlantic salmon in the United States critically endangered. Hatchery and stocking programs have kept them from disappearing entirely, but experts say recovering healthy, wild populations will require much more, including eliminating some of the obstacles (literally) standing in their way.</p><p>Conservation organizations, fishing groups and even some state scientists are now calling for the removal of up to four dams along a 30-mile stretch of the Kennebec River, where about a third of Maine's best salmon habitat remains.</p><p>The dams' owner — multinational Brookfield Renewable Partners — has instead proposed building fishways to aid salmon and other migratory fish getting around dams as they travel both up and down the river. But most experts think that plan has little chance of success.</p><p>A confusing array of state and federal processes are underway to try and sort things out. None is likely to be quick, cheap or easy. And there's a lot at stake.</p><p>"Ultimately the fate of the species in the United States really depends upon what happens at a handful of key dams," says John Burrows, executive director of U.S. programs at the <a href="https://www.asf.ca/" target="_blank">Atlantic Salmon Federation</a>. "If those four projects don't work — or even if just one of them doesn't work — you could basically preclude recovering Atlantic salmon in the United States."</p>
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<h1>Prime Habitat</h1><p>The best place for salmon recovery is in Maine's two largest watersheds.</p><p>"The Penobscot River and the Kennebec River have orders of magnitude more habitat, production potential and climate resilient habitat" than other parts of the state, says Burrows.</p><p>The rivers and their tributaries run far inland and reach more undeveloped areas with higher elevations. That helps provide salmon with the cold, clean water they need for spawning and rearing. Smaller numbers of salmon are hanging on in lower-elevation rivers along the coastal plain in Maine's Down East region, but climate change could make that habitat unsuitable.</p><p>"There's definitely concern about how resilient those watersheds are going to be for salmon in the future," says Burrows. "To recover the population, we need to be able to get salmon to the major tributaries farther upriver, in places where we're still going to have cold water even under predictions with climate change."</p><p>One of those key places is the Penobscot, which has already seen a $60 million effort to help recover salmon and other native sea-run fish. A 16-year project resulted in the removal of two dams, the construction of a stream-like bypass channel at a third dam, and new fish lift at a fourth. In all, the project made 2,000 miles of river habitat accessible.</p>
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Veazie dam on the Penobscot River is breached in 2013 as part of a river restoration project. Meagan Racey / USFWS
<p>While there's still more work to be done on the Penobscot, says Burrows, attention has shifted to the Kennebec. The river has what's regarded as the largest and best salmon habitat in the state, especially in its tributary, the Sandy River, where hatchery eggs are being planted to help boost salmon numbers.</p><p>"That's helped us go from zero salmon in the upper tributaries of Kennebec to getting 50 or 60 adults back, which is still an abysmally small number compared to historical counts," says Burrows. "But these are the last of the wildest fish that we have."</p><h1>The Obstacles</h1><p>The Sandy may be good salmon habitat, but it's also hard to reach. Brookfield's four dams stand in the way of fish trying to get upriver.</p><p>At the lowest dam on the river, Lockwood Dam in Waterville, there's a fish lift — a kind of elevator that should allow fish that enter it to pass up and around the dam. But if fish do find the lift — and only around half of salmon do — they don't get far.</p><p>"It's a terminal lift," says Sean Ledwin, division director of Maine's Department of Marine Resources' Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat. "The lift was never completed. So we pick up those fish in a truck and drive them up to the Sandy River."</p><p>That taxi cab arrangement isn't a long-term solution, though, and was part of an interim species protection plan.</p><p>Only the second dam, Hydro Kennebec, has a modern fish passage system. But how well that actually works hasn't been tested yet since fish can't get by Lockwood Dam. As part of a consultation process related to the Endangered Species Act, Brookfield has submitted a plan proposing to fix the fishway at Lockwood and add passage to the third and fourth dams.</p><p>But federal regulators found it inadequate.</p><p>"Brookfield's proposal was rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee [which oversees hydroelectric projects] and all the [federal management] agencies," says Ledwin. The company now has until May 2022 to come up with a new plan.</p><p>State scientists aren't convinced Brookfield's plan would work either.</p><p>"We have really low confidence that having four fishways would ever result in meaningful runs of all the sea-run fish and certainly not recovery of Atlantic salmon," says Ledwin. "We don't think that it's going to be conducive to recovery."</p><p>In addition to considerations related to the Endangered Species Act, Shawmut Dam, the third on the Kennebec, is currently up for relicensing, which triggers a federal review process by FERC.</p><p>And at the same time the Maine Department of Marine Resources has drafted a <a href="https://www.maine.gov/dmr/laws-regulations/documents/Final%20Amendment_12_22.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">new plan</a> for managing the Kennebec River that recommends removing Shawmut Dam and Lockwood Dam. A public comment period on the proposed plan closed in March.</p><p>Brookfield isn't happy with it and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/toronto-dams-fish-salmon-maine-d43d50c2b875fefd85d3de332d847268" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">responded with a lawsuit </a>against the state.</p><p>It was good news to conservation groups, however, which would like to see all four of the dams removed if possible — or at least a few of them.</p><p>"There's no self-sustaining population of Atlantic salmon anywhere in the world that we know of that have to go by more than one hydro dam," says Burrows. He believes that having Brookfield spend tens of millions of dollars on new fishways will just result in failure for salmon.</p>
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Atlantic salmon parr emerging from a stream bed in Maine. E. Peter Steenstra / USFWS
<p>It's partly a game of numbers. Not all fish will find or use a fishway. And if you start with a low number of returning fish and expect them to pass through four gauntlets, you won't be left with many at the end.</p><p>"If you're passing 50% of salmon that show up at the first dam, and then you've got three more dams passing 50%, that means you're left with only an eighth of the population you started with by the end," says Nick Bennett, a staff scientist at the <a href="https://www.nrcm.org/" target="_blank">Natural Resources Council of Maine</a>. "You can't start a restoration program where you're losing seven-eighths of the adults before they even get to their spawning habitat."</p><p>And getting upriver is just part of the salmon's journey. Juvenile salmon face threats going downstream to the ocean as well, including predation and warm water in impoundments. They also risk being injured or killed going through spillways or turbines. Only about half are likely to survive the four hydro projects.</p><p>Atlantic salmon, unlike their Pacific cousins, don't always die after spawning, either. So some adults will also make the downstream trek, too.</p><p>"Just looking at our reality, at least two dams need to go, hopefully three, and it would be amazing if all four would go," says Burrows.</p>
<h1>Ecosystem Restoration</h1><p>The fate of Atlantic salmon hangs in the balance, but so do the futures of other fishes.</p><p>The Pacific coast of the United States is home to five species of salmon. And while the Atlantic side has just the one, it has a dozen other native sea-run species that have also seen their habitat shrink.</p><p>"Those dams are preventing other native species like American shad, alewives, blueback herring and American eel from accessing large amounts of historic habitat," says Burrows.</p><p>Ledwin says removing dams on the Kennebec could result in populations of more than a million shad, millions of blueback herring, millions of eels and hundreds of thousands of sea lampreys.</p><p>"The recovery of those species would actually help Atlantic salmon as well because they provide prey buffers and there are a lot of co-evolved benefits," he says.</p><p>Salmon are much more successful at nesting when they can lay their eggs in old sea lamprey nests, explains Bennett. "But sea lamprey are not good at using fish lifts and we've essentially blocked 90% of the historic sea lamprey habitat at Lockwood dam. We need to get those fish upstream, too."</p><p>Dam removal advocates don't have to look too far to find an example of how well river ecosystems respond when dams are removed.</p><p>The <a href="https://therevelator.org/edwards-dam-removal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">removal of the Edwards Dam</a> on the lower Kennebec River in 1999 and the Fort Halifax Dam just upstream on the Sebasticook in 2008 helped ignite a nationwide dam-removal movement. It also brought back American shad, eel, two native species of sturgeon and millions of river herring to lower parts of the watershed.</p>
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Alewives returned by the millions after the Edwards and Ft. Halifax dams were removed. John Burrows / ASF
<p>"We've got the biggest river herring run in North America now due to the dam removals," says Ledwin. "And the largest abundance of eel we've ever seen on the lower Kennebec."</p><p>The resurgence of native fishes helps the whole ecosystem. When they returned, so too did eagles, osprey and other wildlife.</p><p>"When people see all those fish in the river and the eagles overhead, it just kind of blows their minds because they never realized what had been lost for so long in our rivers," says Burrows.</p><p>Rebuilding key forage fish like herring also benefits species that live not just in the river, but the Gulf of Maine and even the Atlantic Ocean. The tiny fish feed whales, porpoises and seabirds. They're also used for lobster bait and can help rebuild fisheries for cod and haddock, which has economic benefits for the region, too.</p><p>"We have to rebalance the scales if we want to have marine industries and commercial fishing industries and if we want the ecological benefits of what sea-run fisheries do for us," says Bennett.</p><h1>The Path Ahead</h1><p>The process to determine whether any — or all — of the four Kennebec dams that stretch from Waterville and Skowhegan are removed will take years, a diverse coalition, financial resources and agreements to meet the concerns of communities and the dam owner.</p><p>"These things come down to compromise, so there may be situations where one of those dams might not be a candidate for economic or social reasons," says Burrows. "But it will be interesting to see if in the next couple of years we can get to a place where we can have meaningful conversations with federal agencies, the dam owner and continue to engage the communities about the potential of removal at some of these sites."</p><p>And if removal of the four dams did happen, it wouldn't open up the river all the way to its headwaters. Another nine dams still lie upstream in the watershed that obstruct fish passage.</p><p>"Some of those are major dams in terms of power, production and economics," says Burrows. "So we're not calling for those to be removed."</p><p>The four lower dams provide just 46 megawatts of power — enough to supply about 37,000 homes and 0.43% of the state's annual electricity generation. It's a small amount of power relative to the damage they cause sea-run fish, says Bennett.</p><p>"By comparison we expect to add 1,200 megawatts of solar generation in the next five years," he says. "So these four dams aren't particularly important in our climate fight." And removing them would open up substantial amounts of habitat to aid salmon recovery that seem worth the tradeoff in lost power.</p><p>That's not the case, he says, for the nine larger dams upstream.</p><p>"We need those dams. We need hydroelectric power in Maine," says Bennett. "But we made big mistakes in our past use of our rivers. And we went way overboard in favor of hydroelectric power at the expense of fish."</p><p>Outside of the rivers, Atlantic salmon still face a tough road. Climate change is warming ocean temperatures, changing salinity and altering food webs. But having so many unknowns in the marine environment in the coming decades provides more reason to focus efforts on restoring rivers where scientists already know what works, says Burrows.</p><p>And if that's done right, the benefits will extend far beyond salmon.</p><p>"It's not just about salmon — it's about these other native fish, it's about the wildlife, water quality, economic opportunity for ground fishermen and lobstermen, and more sustainable forms of recreation and community development," says Burrows. "If we remove a dam or two here and rebuild these fish populations to pretty big levels that really impacts a whole bunch of different parts of society. That's what we want to try to do here on the Kennebec."</p>
<a href="https://therevelator.org/author/taralohan/" target="_blank"><em>Tara Lohan </em></a><em>is deputy editor of The Revelator and has worked for more than a decade as a digital editor and environmental journalist focused on the intersections of energy, water and climate. Her work has been published by The Nation, American Prospect, High Country News, Grist, Pacific Standard and others. She is the editor of two books on the global water crisis.</em><p><br/><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/kennebec-atlantic-salmon/" target="_blank">The Revelator.</a></em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A recent study found that cats kill more than one billion birds every year in the United States alone. fotostok_pdv / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Invasive species are causing increasingly costly damage, new research finds.
<p>Exotic, invasive species, introduced by humans, wreak ecological and economic havoc in new habitats. In a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03405-6" target="_blank">study</a> published in Nature, researchers found the costliest among these species are Aedes mosquitoes, rats, cats, termites and fire ants, <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/invasive-species-cost-billions-damages-global-economy" target="_blank">Science News reported</a>.</p><p>"For decades, researchers have been evaluating the significant impacts of invasive species, but the problem isn't well known by the public and policy makers," Boris Leroy, a biogeographer at the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris, told Science News. "By estimating the global cost, we hoped to raise awareness of the issue and identify the most costly species."</p>
<p>Researchers found that over the past four decades (1970 to 2017), invasive species have cost nearly $1.3 trillion in damages, the French National Centre for Scientific Research wrote in a <a href="http://www.cnrs.fr/en/how-much-are-invasive-species-costing-us" target="_blank">statement</a>.</p><p>The research analyzed over 1,300 estimates of damages by invasive plants and animals, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/damage-from-alien-species-invasions-trebling-every-decade" target="_blank">The Guardian reported</a>. And while these damages yielded an annual average of $26.8 billion, the annual bill actually tripled every decade. "In 2017 alone, it hit $162.7 billion, or 20 times the combined budgets of the WHO and the UN Secretariat that year," the French National Centre for Scientific Research wrote.</p>
<p>The study, which was the most comprehensive of its kind, was intentionally conservative, relying on only observed data, The Guardian reported. "But there are so many unquantifiables from a monetary perspective, like ecosystem damage and lost productivity, so it's still the tip of the iceberg," profesor Corey Bradshaw, of Flinders University in Australia, who was part of the study, told The Guardian, adding that the real costs could be 10 times higher.</p><p>The international research team said growth in global trade is to blame for the uptick in economic cost. Deforestation and agricultural expansion have also helped species move easily from habitat to habitat, Science News reported.</p>
<p>Coming with a heavy annual cost of about $149 billion, Aedes mosquitoes, including the Asian tiger mosquito and the yellow fever mosquito, rank as the costliest invasive species. First arriving in the U.S. around the 1980s, in used tires shipped from Asia, the Asian tiger mosquito quickly spread across 40 states and has invaded parts of Europe, South America, Africa and Australia. The yellow fever mosquito, originally from sub-Saharan Africa, has spread around the world in similar ways. Together they transmit diseases like Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever and dengue, Science News reported.</p><p>Cats also come with a costly toll, causing about $52 billion annually in damages. Originally from Europe and the Middle East, they now live on all nonfrozen continents where the majority of their cost comes from their impact on native biodiversity. A <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cats-kill-more-one-billion-birds-each-year" target="_blank">recent study</a> found that cats kill more than one billion birds every year in the United States alone, Science News reported.</p>
<p>The researchers emphasize that these costs of biological invasions "remain vastly underestimated and under-reported," but "no reversal of the trend is visible on the horizon since the continued expansion of international commerce and transport generally brings with it more invasive species," according to a statement by the CNRS.</p><p><span></span>While these projections may seem dire, professor Helen Roy from the UK Centre for Ecology & Haydrology, who was not involved in the study, said there's still "some cause for optimism," The Guardian reported. Opportunities to invest in cargo inspections and other biosecurity measures to stop the spread of invasive species could help reduce costs. "It's much cheaper than waiting for the species to establish and spread widely before responding," Roy told Science News.</p>
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A black bear cub in Sequoia National Park in California. brentawp / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Several black bears appearing "friendly to the public" have been reported across the Sierra Nevada region recently, concerning biologists that a mysterious disease is causing the bears to no longer fear humans and potentially suffer an early death, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) wrote in a statement.
<p>Over the past 12 months, veterinarians have captured several bears for similar behaviors, and all of them had encephalitis, inflammation in their brains, <a href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article250247805.html" target="_blank">The Sacramento Bee reported</a>. Scientists also discovered five new viruses in some of the bears with symptoms, but have yet to determine if they are linked to the swelling.</p><p>Normally, black bears are timid around humans, showing no interest in interacting. But in February, the CDFW received calls regarding a small black bear in Pollock Pines, El Dorado County that had appeared at a utility worksite.</p><p>The bear showed little concern over attempts to be shooed away and at one point jumped in the back of a car trunk, the CDFW reported. When a wildlife biologist began to investigate in the region, they found one small bear to be "dog-like" in its behavior, seeming not "quite right, walking oddly, dull and not responsive like a normal bear should be."</p>
<p>At the agency's Wildlife Investigations Laboratory, biologists found that the Pollock Pines bear weighed only 21 pounds, nearly 60 pounds under that of a healthy bear of the same age, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/sickly-black-bears-acting-friendlier-fearless-around-humans-n1262416" target="_blank">NBC News reported</a>. After a week of testing, it was euthanized, making it the third bear to show up in the laboratory in just 12 months and suffer from encephalitis.</p><p>So far, bears with similar symptoms have been found on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe and recently in Humboldt County in northern California. And while scientists say the bear's conditions are from encephalitis, which can come from viruses, bacteria, fungi or parasites, they have yet to pinpoint the root cause for the brain swelling, NBC News reported.</p><p>"Any time a wild animal comes into our care, the best-possible outcome is a release back to the wild," explained CDFW wildlife veterinarian Brandon Munk, in a <a href="https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Mammals/Black-Bear/Blog/tag/encephalitis" target="_blank">statement</a>. "That's just not possible for these neurologically impaired bears. At this point, we don't know what causes the encephalitis so we don't know what, if any, health risks these bears might pose to other animals."</p>
<p>Between 30,000 and 40,000 black bears still remain and so far the mysterious disease hasn't caused a significant decline in black bear populations, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/bears-wildlife-nevada-california-136fa83a3d5080f53b7685b4dad29be4" target="_blank">AP News reported</a>. But in the Tahoe region, where a high density of black bears live, some biologists worry if the reports in the region are simply due to the fact that higher populations of people may come across the sickly bears.</p><p>"What wildlife managers think about a lot is, when you're in an area where animals are very charismatic, as well as having a high human population that's invested in that population, the symptoms are more likely to be seen," Jamie Sherman, a veterinarian at UC Davis' One Health Institute who has studied bear diseases, told The Sacramento Bee. Symptomatic bears in less populated regions, however, may be going unnoticed, biologists warn.</p><p>While scientists say viruses found in the bears can not threaten human health, increasing interaction between humans and bears with "neurological abnormalities" could lead to more contact. The CDFW, for example, pointed to a 2019 viral video where a black bear approached a snowboarder without fear, sniffing his leg curiously.</p>
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<p>Today the bear, named Benji, lives at the San Diego Humane Society's Ramona Campus and has never fully recovered from encephalitis, requiring costly treatment to stay alive in captivity. In 2014, the CDFW treated another sickly young bear and placed it at the Orange County Zoo, according to state officials.</p><p>"These bears serve as something of a cautionary tale as neither fully recovered and both have required significant veterinary care, resources and treatment over time – expenses that are difficult for many wildlife facilities to absorb and limit the placement options for similarly afflicted bears in the future," the CDFW wrote in a statement.</p>
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A farm worker sprays pesticides on lemon groves in Spain. Worledit / iStock / Getty Images Plus
About one third of the world's agricultural land is at high risk from pesticide pollution, a new study has found.
<p>The research, published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00712-5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nature Geoscience</a> Monday, looked at the use and spread of 92 active pesticide ingredients in 168 countries. They considered an area at risk if the concentration of a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/chemicals" target="_self">chemical</a> exceeded the limit at which it would have no effect, and at high risk if that concentration exceeded the limit by a factor of 1,000.</p>
<p>"Our study has revealed 64 percent of the world's arable land is at risk of pesticide pollution," University of Sydney Research Associate and the study's lead author, Dr Fiona Tang said in a <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/03/30/two-thirds-of-farmland-at-risk-of-pesticide-pollution.html" target="_blank">University of Sydney press release</a>. "This is important because the wider scientific literature has found that pesticide pollution can have adverse impacts on human health and the environment."<br></p>
<p>Further, a total of 31 percent of land was at high risk, the study authors wrote.</p><p>Pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are widely used to boost productivity in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/farming" target="_self">farming</a>, the press release noted. However, they have unintended consequences for human and environmental health. They can enter bodies of water through runoff or by entering the groundwater, contaminating <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drinking-water" target="_self">drinking water</a>. Pesticides like <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/chlorpyrifos" target="_self">chlorpyrifos</a> have been shown to harm the cognitive development of children, while <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/organic-pesticides-health-foe-2617140140.html" target="_self">others</a> have been linked to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer" target="_self">cancer</a>. They also pose a threat to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" target="_self">wildlife</a> such as <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/pesticides-bees-genes-altered-2631023137.html" target="_self">bees</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/neonicotinoid-pesticides-birds-2518407784.html" target="_self">birds</a>.</p><p>These threats are why the research is important, Tang told AFP.</p><p>"It is significant because the potential pollution is widespread and some regions at risk also bear high <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self">biodiversity</a> and suffer from water scarcity," <a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-03-global-farmland-high-pesticide-pollution.html" target="_blank">she said in an AFP article published by Phys.org</a>.</p>
<p>Specifically, 34 percent of the high risk areas were in regions with high biodiversity while five percent were in water-scarce areas, the study found. Nineteen percent of the high risk areas were in low or middle income countries.</p><p>Regionally, Asia had the most high-risk land, with China, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines especially impacted, the press release said. In Europe, almost 62 percent of agricultural land was at high risk, AFP reported. This was largely due to high concentrations in Russia, Ukraine and Spain.</p><p>The researchers looked at 59 herbicides, 21 insecticides and 19 fungicides and based their calculations on application rate data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. They then used a model to estimate how much of the pesticides would remain in the soil, atmosphere, groundwater and surface water.</p>
<p>The researchers pointed out that pesticide use is only expected to increase in the future because of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> and population growth.</p><p>"In a warmer climate, as the global population grows, the use of pesticides is expected to increase to combat the possible rise in pest invasions and to feed more people," coauthor and University of Sydney associate professor Federico Maggi said in the press release.</p><p>However, the researchers advised a different path.</p><p>"We urgently recommend that a global strategy is established to transition towards sustainable agriculture and sustainable living with low pesticide inputs and reduced food loss and food waste to achieve responsible production and consumption in an acceptable, profitable system," they wrote.</p>
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An Indonesian forestry company with possible links to pulpwood and palm oil powerhouse Royal Golden Eagle has cleared forests the size of 500,000 basketball courts since 2016. Bay ISMOYO / AFP/ Getty Images
By Hans Nicholas Jong
An Indonesian forestry company with possible links to pulpwood and palm oil powerhouse Royal Golden Eagle has cleared forests the size of 500,000 basketball courts since 2016, some of them home to critically endangered orangutans, according to a new report.
<p>Nusantara Fiber controls 242,000 hectares (598,000 acres) of industrial tree plantations via six subsidiary companies in the Bornean provinces of West, Central and East Kalimantan. Industrial trees include acacia and eucalyptus, which are used in the production of paper and textile fibers; timber trees; and trees grown for biomass energy generation.</p><p>The Nusantara Fiber group obtained most of its permits from 2009-2011 and started clearing forest areas to develop its plantations in 2016, according to a spatial analysis by the research consultancy Aidenvironment. The analysis used satellite imagery, forest cover maps from Indonesia's Ministry of Environment and Forestry, and Global Forest Watch maps of tree cover loss.</p><p>The analysis shows that from 2016 to 2020, the group cleared 26,000 hectares (64,200 acres) of forests, making it the top deforester among all company groups with industrial tree concessions in Indonesia during this period.</p><p>Most recently, the group cleared 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) of forests in 2020. It contends these areas were designated as degraded land, and that its clearing activity was approved by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, which Aidenvironment acknowledged in its report. "Indeed, the Indonesian government has not banned all forest-clearing," it said.</p><p>But the forests that were lost were still valuable, according to the NGO. It cited a concession managed by PT Industrial Forest Plantation (IFP), one of Nusantara Fiber's six subsidiaries, in Kapuas district, Central Kalimantan province. Based on a 2016 assessment of orangutan habitat in Indonesia, the forests inside IFP's concession overlapped almost fully with a known habitat of the southwestern subspecies of the Bornean orangutan, <em>Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii</em>, a critically endangered animal.</p><p>A 2014 assessment commissioned by IFP had also identified the presence of orangutans inside the concession boundaries, as well as other protected fauna and flora, including 29 bird species, 22 mammal species, six types of reptiles, and 15 tree and plant species.</p>
<p>Despite these assessments, IFP went on to deforest 10,700 hectares (26,400 acres) between 2016 and the end of October 2020. Most of the deforestation took place in 2019 and 2020, with 3,200 hectares (7,900 acres) and 5,800 hectares (14,300 acres) of forests cleared respectively.<br></p><p>"Bornean orangutans are Critically Endangered, so any disturbance of their habitat is massively concerning," Aidenvironment Asia program director Chris Wiggs told Mongabay.</p><p>Aidenvironment said IFP's case shows how the cleared areas were still valuable, even though they might have been classified as secondary or degraded forests. As of now, there are approximately 50,000 hectares (124,000 acres) of forests remaining in Nusantara Fiber's concessions. They are at risk of disappearing too, as the concession holders are licensed to clear them.</p><p>"If it's cleared it could have a devastating impact on orangutans and wider biodiversity in this area." Wiggs said. "Nusantara Fiber must urgently halt forest clearance on its concessions."</p><p>Aidenvironment also called on Nusantara Fiber to publish assessments of high conservation value (HCV) and high carbon stock (HCS) areas inside the concessions. Audits of some of Nusantara Fiber's subsidiaries make references to HCV assessments that <a href="https://kaltim.prokal.co/read/news/262093-pt-sba-dan-pt-mps-gelar-konsultasi-publik.html" target="_blank">appear</a> to have been conducted, yet none of these assessments are publicly available. There's also no information on any HCS assessments that may have been carried out.</p>
<h3><strong>Who's Behind Nusantara Fiber?</strong></h3><p>Despite being the top industrial tree plantation deforester, the Nusantara Fiber group is shrouded in secrecy, with its owners' identities concealed thanks to the offshore secrecy jurisdiction of Samoa. That's where Nusantara Fiber's parent company, Green Meadows Holdings Limited, is registered.</p><p>While registering in an offshore jurisdiction is not in itself illegal, it's often done to shield the beneficial owners of a company from liabilities, obligations and accountability in the territory where it operates.</p><p>"Establishing connections between companies is always difficult, and it's made harder when companies use secrecy jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands," Wiggs said.</p><p>In the case of Nusantara Fiber, Aidenvironment has unearthed historical records and incorporation documents that potentially link the group to palm oil and pulp and paper conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle (RGE). A subsidiary of Green Meadows Holdings Limited is Hong Kong-based Green Meadows Fiber Products Limited. This company is also the majority owner of Nusantara Fiber's plantation subsidiaries.</p><p>Two of the three first directors of Green Meadows Fiber Products Limited previously worked at RGE, Aidenvironment found. "Another couple of the first directors are or were involved in various palm oil businesses totalling 27 palm oil mills and/or kernel crushers, and RGE is a customer of all 27 companies," the report says. "Historical ownership records of Nusantara Fiber group's companies reveal past control by entities that are part of or connected to RGE, before the companies were moved to secrecy jurisdictions."</p><p>These records, Wiggs said, "clearly connect the group to Royal Golden Eagle," and should be reason enough for RGE to step up and put an end to the deforestation conducted by Nusantara Fiber's industrial tree plantations.</p><p>"The RGE group of companies should engage with the Nusantara Fiber group, and use its leverage to immediately stop the present and any future deforestation," Aidenvironment said. "The leverage should decisively include the palm oil businesses RGE undertakes with past or present directors of the Nusantara Fiber group."</p>
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A chart of Royal Golden Eagle trade volume and deforestation within Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.
<p>RGE is the fourth-biggest palm oil refiner in Indonesia, which in turn is the world's top producer of palm oil. Like its major competitors, RGE has a policy of no deforestation, no developing on peatland, and no exploiting workers and local communities, known as an NDPE policy. It covers commitments to preserve HCV and HCS areas as well as peatlands, but is restricted only to its palm oil business.</p><p>For its pulp and paper business, which is supplied by industrial tree plantations, RGE has adopted what it calls a Forestry, Fibre, Pulp & Paper Sustainability Framework across the group. While it's similar to the NDPE policy in use across its palm oil business, this sustainability framework still allows development of peatland as long as it's not forested, Aidenvironment said.</p><p>It called on RGE to apply its NDPE policy to all its businesses, not only palm oil.</p><p>"Whenever the palm oil refiners adopted a cross-commodity NDPE policy, they could stop more deforestation," Aidenvironment said.</p><p>Even then, the policy would only apply to companies and their suppliers that RGE acknowledges as being part of the RGE group of companies. In the case of Nusantara Fiber and its subsidiaries, RGE has denied any connection.</p><p>"We can confirm that neither RGE nor [pulp and paper unit] APRIL Group's supply chain have any connection to the six Nusantara Fiber Group companies mentioned in Aidenvironment's February 2021 report," RGE spokesman Ignatius Ari Djoko Purnomo told Mongabay.</p>
<p>He added the fact that two of the Nusantara Fiber group's directors were past RGE employees didn't constitute any kind of link. "We operate in a free and open employment market in which employees can choose to join or leave employers as they wish," Ignatius said.</p><p>In response to the ownership of the 27 Nusantara Fiber-linked palm oil mills that RGE sources from, Ignatius said the group had no knowledge of the alleged ownership links listed in the report.</p><p>"There was no alleged violation against palm oil industry standards or Apical's sustainability policy by these suppliers noted in the report," he said, referring to RGE's palm oil arm, Apical. "Apical is not the sole buyer of palm oil from these suppliers."</p><p>Wiggs said RGE should have provided its own data to back up its denials and be fully transparent.</p><p>"We welcome any willingness by Nusantara Fiber and Royal Golden Eagle to clarify any incorrect data in our report," he said. "Agricultural sectors must be fully transparent about their ownership structures, corporate links and operations."</p><p>Instead, he said, RGE is able to deny any connection to Nusantara Fiber because both entities use opaque and complex company structures.</p><p>"Industrial tree and palm oil businesses should refrain from using opaque company structures," Aidenvironment said, "because this hinders their accountability for unsustainable practices."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/03/nusantara-fiber-royal-golden-eagle-deforestation-kalimantan-borneo/" target="_blank">Mongabay.</a></em></p>
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The presence of Florida panther kittens is a hopeful sign for species recovery. Carlton Ward Jr.
"How America's most endangered cat could help save Florida."
As its headline promises, National Geographic's latest feature on the endangered Florida panther explores the unspoken, symbiotic relationship between the big cats and the humans they must coexist with. The article also showcases intimate, rare photographs of the panthers, which took five years to capture.
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals/Florida-Panther#:~:text=Florida%20panthers%20are%20about%20six,the%20southwestern%20tip%20of%20Florida." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National Wildlife Federation (NWF)</a>, Florida panthers are actually a subspecies of mountain lion — the only one remaining in the Eastern U.S. They're also known as pumas and cougars. The subspecies' historic range once extended from Florida to Louisiana throughout the Gulf Coast states, and even Arkansas, NWF reported. Today, wild Florida panthers can only be found in southwestern Florida.</p><p>Hunting decimated the population, and the species was among the first to be added to the U.S. <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/endangered-species" target="_self">endangered species</a> list in 1973, with fewer than 30 individuals remaining, according to the National Geographic article. Habitat loss compounded the issue. With such a small population, inbreeding, which could lead to diseases and genetic malfunctions, was of particular concern. Journalist Douglas Main wrote the feature story, and he shared in a <a href="https://twitter.com/Douglas_Main/status/1369312122879041538" target="_blank">twitter thread</a> how many people feared that Florida's panther had gone, or would soon go extinct, during that decade.</p><p>A massive <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation" target="_self">conservation</a> effort ensued, including bringing in eight Texas mountain lions to breed with the native Florida population in order to inject fresh genetic diversity into the population, Main said.</p><p>However, the subspecies is still so critically endangered that it remains vulnerable to "just about every major threat," NWF reported. Habitat loss is the biggest obstacle.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.fws.gov/southeast/wildlife/mammals/florida-panther/" target="_blank">U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)</a>, Florida panthers require large, contiguous areas of suitable land to live on. They are solitary and roam widely in order to meet their social, reproductive and energetic needs, FWS reported. Unfortunately, they are still restricted to less than five percent of their historical range, the report noted.</p><p>As more people move to Florida, continued development threatens the little remaining open land and panther habitat. For panthers, this is a huge challenge to recovery, and has increased cat-on-cat territorial spats and car collisions — the leading causes of death, National Geographic reported. About 25 Florida panthers are killed annually by vehicles, a devastating blow to a tiny population and "a reflection of how development and road construction threaten the species at a time when roughly 900 people are moving to Florida every day," the story detailed.</p><p>The conservation efforts worked to save the panther from the brink of extinction, but they're still very much at risk, said National Geographic Explorer <a href="https://www.instagram.com/CarltonWard/" target="_blank">Carlton Ward Jr</a>. Ward is an eighth-generation Floridian and habitat protection advocate, as well as the photographer who spent five years capturing the panther images for the feature.</p>
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A male panther leaps over a creek at Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Florida. The rarely seen cats, which number only around 200, are reclaiming territory north of the Everglades, but their habitat is threatened by encroaching suburban sprawl. Carlton Ward, Jr.
<p>For Ward, it <a href="https://floridawild.com/path-of-the-panther/" target="_blank">became an obsession</a> to document the elusive, endangered cats, and the pictures reflect that. "The lead image for the story, a panther jumping across a log around a flooded section of swamp, that picture took two years to capture," he admitted.</p><p>For five years, Ward set up state-of-the-art camera traps throughout the Florida woods and swamps. He shared with EcoWatch what he learned about the need to continue balancing Florida's tremendous population growth with conserving the iconic species.</p><p>"We need to cultivate a culture of coexistence," Ward said. "If the panther goes extinct, I will be worried about all the other wildlife and people in Florida, because it means we will have missed the opportunity we have now to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/land-conservation" target="_self">conserve enough land</a> to ensure balance between wildlife and people."</p><p>Today, the panther population has grown to roughly 200, and Ward's photos show that the cats are moving northward to reclaim old territories. This is critical, because northward expansion is the only path for long-term survival, Main wrote in National Geographic.</p>
<p>"The southern tip of Florida is not enough land to sustain a genetically viable, resilient population of panthers," Ward told EcoWatch. "The cats can only continue moving north if the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a patchwork of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-lands" target="_self">public</a> and private lands that run through the state, is preserved. The Florida Wildlife Corridor is the lifeline and path of recovery for panthers."<br></p><p>Yet this requires the participation of landowners and ranchers, who need more conservation funding to prevent their open spaces from becoming subdivisions, parking lots and roads, Main explained in the story. Conservation easements use up development rights while allowing the owners to continue farming and ranching, Main said.</p><p>"The land is still there. We have a moment right now where we can choose to conserve," Ward told EcoWatch. "Hundreds of landowners are open to conservation as an alternative to development. They're waiting for conservation easements or to sell their land for national parks. We need to meet this opportunity."</p>
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Wildlife veterinarian Lara Cusack handles more kittens belonging to FP224. These young cats were measured and given immunity boosters while their mother was hunting away from the den. When panthers have space and protected habitats, their populations can grow. Only about one in three Florida panther kittens survives to adulthood. Carlton Ward Jr. / National Geographic Society
<p>Landowners and ranchers, who were traditionally pitted against panthers when their cattle were eaten, will also benefit from increased protections for the cats. "On the Endangered Species Act, do you see 'cowboy' or 'rancher' written on it? No, but we benefit from the protections afforded the panther," Main quoted Florida rancher Elton Langford. "Both share a common enemy: Development," Main wrote.</p><p>People with multi-generational connections to the land share something in common with a species that's lived there for 20,000 years, Ward said. Both need the land to remain intact and open.</p><p>"There is common ground and common threat and common opportunity," Ward concluded. "That's where I feel the most hope — in how much common ground there is in saving a species, helping sustain a way of life and in sustaining the headwaters of the Everglades and the water supply. The panther is a great icon for everyone to conserve all of this."</p><p>For more on this story, visit <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/florida-panthers-return-imperiled-by-development-feature" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National Geographic</a>. The story appears in print in National Geographic's April 2021 issue.</p>
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"Return of the Florida Panther" is featured in the April 2021 issue of National Geographic. National Geographic Society
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