Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Trawl the sea or mine for metals? Pacific nations wrestle with how to protect oceans - and livelihoods

News Feed
Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Dotted across the north-west of the Pacific Ocean, the limestone islands of Palau rise like forested domes. Beneath the waves, reefs pulse with activity – fish dart through coral gardens, turtles drift nearby, while sharks with black-tipped fins shadow a passing tourist boat.Nearly a decade ago, the country took a bold step to safeguard this vibrant seascape, declaring 80% of its waters a no-fishing sanctuary. Ngerukewid, also known as the ‘Seventy Islands’, is a group of dozens of small, raised coral islands nestled within Palau’s lagoon. But support for the sanctuary – which covers a massive area about the size of Sweden – has soured among some Palauans. Those who rely on the ocean feel caught between the need to feed their families and the rules designed to protect their waters.“If 80% of Palauan waters is a marine sanctuary, where am I going to get my fish?” asks Dennis Daniel, a waste management worker, while drinking beer on the shoreline of Palau’s most populous town, Koror. Fishermen have struggled to supply the local tuna markets, fuelling frustration over the nation’s strict fishing restrictions.As a result, Palau’s government wants to reopen parts of the sanctuary to allow more fishing. It plans to shrink its no-fishing zone by more than a third and open a new fishing port on the west coast of its largest island.Officials argue the move will help families like Daniel’s, while still protecting half of Palau’s waters from commercial fishing. Critics, however, warn that scaling back protections will only harm Palau’s marine diversity, already vulnerable to the climate crisis.Palau’s struggle is not unique. In communities across the region, where the ocean is often their biggest resource, mounting economic pressures are forcing a rethink of environmental commitments.Collectively, small island Pacific states manage roughly 10% of the planet’s oceans, making their decisions critical not only for their own futures, but for the health of marine ecosystems worldwide. The Pacific is also home to some of the most valuable fisheries in the world, with the region supplying about 30% of the world’s tuna.In 2017, the Cook Islands designated its entire ocean as the world’s largest marine park, called Marae Moana. Beneath these same waters lie a vast wealth of polymetallic nodules rich in cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese – and over the past four years the Cook Islands’ government has been exploring the possibility of commercially developing these underwater minerals in areas outside certain protected zones, at least 100km off its coasts. That could include seabed mining.The Pacific nation has granted three exploration licences for companies to map and analyse its seabeds, and is working on developing technical and environmental assessments to guide any future seabed mineral activities.Seabed mining is not under way in Cook Islands as it conducts assessments and studies feasibility. In an email interview with the Guardian, the Cook Islands prime minister, Mark Brown, said no minerals harvesting or mining “will be permitted until the scientific basis is clear”.“We are 99.99% ocean and 0.01% land, so it is inevitable that we will turn to our blue economy for further opportunities for our future prosperity,” Brown said in written responses to the Guardian’s questions.“As a Pacific island nation, the Cook Islands are deeply conscious of the need to protect our environment while creating sustainable opportunities for our people.”Meanwhile, in 2021 Kiribati announced it would reopen a world heritage site and one of the world’s largest marine protected areas to commercial fishing, citing the strain of lost revenue. Palau’s president, Surangel Whipps Jr, said the move highlights the challenges Pacific nations often face meeting their conservation aspirations with economic survival.“There was no sustainable financing there, there was no system in place to ensure that [Kiribati’s marine sanctuary] can go on,” Whipps told the Guardian. “So at the end of the day, they had to feed their people.”Whipps says Palau is facing a similar predicament, but hopes the redesign of its marine sanctuary would prove to other Pacific nations they “can do both”: protect the ocean while reaping fish and profit from it.Not everyone agrees on how best to strike this balance. Palau’s former president Tommy Remengesau Jr, who led the sanctuary’s creation during his presidency, says the sanctuary rollback is an unnecessary undoing of Palau’s globally leading commitments.“It doesn’t make sense to open up a good thing,” he says. “The sustainability of our ocean resources are being threatened and, unless we balance conservation and harvesting, there won’t be a future for our children.”Palau’s waters are considered especially biodiverse; a recent National Geographic expedition recorded the region’s highest abundance of key species, like silky shark and yellowfin.However, researchers also found abandoned fishing gear and depleted shark populations: clear signs of overfishing. They concluded that Palau and similar Pacific nations needed “large protected areas” to prevent further decline.Though the size of this protection remains a subject of heated debate, the sanctuary is broadly supported by Palauans – particularly tourism workers who view it as a vital draw for visitors.----------Captain Troy Ngiraikelau weaves his boat through the emerald maze of Palau’s islets, shuttling tourists to dive sites. He says he has noticed fewer schools of fish on the reefs compared with when he was a child, and is therefore supportive of Palau’s ambitious marine protections.“There’s a lot of people who live in Koror, so if they go out every weekend and fish everything then we end up with nothing,” Ngiraikelau says. “I think it’s good that we have the marine sanctuary.”Tourism once employed a quarter of Palau’s workforce, generating more than 40% of the nation’s wealth. Legislators hoped the sanctuary would further boost ecotourism, but its launch in 2020 coincided with the Covid pandemic, causing a steep drop in the sector and plunging the country’s economy into crisis. I think it’s good that we have the marine sanctuary“One thing we learned from the impact of Covid-19 is that we cannot rely on developing Palau’s economy just based on tourism,” says Palau’s environment minister, Steven Victor. “We need to diversify our economy.”For fishing companies tasked with leading this economic revival, marine protections are harming their bottom line. Jackson Ngiraingas, a former politician who owns Palau’s only domestically flagged longline tuna fishing boat, says increasing the fishing zone is his only path to catching enough fish to sell overseas and become profitable.“We have to expand to the international market for export, because that’s where the money is,” he says.About 3% of the planet’s ocean is currently under adequate marine protections, according to the Marine Conservation Institute. The UN has set a goal to protect at least 30% of oceans by 2030, but there are fears marine sanctuaries are not being created fast enough to meet this target.Prof Kate Barclay, a marine social scientist specialising in Pacific fisheries from the University of Technology Sydney, says the region’s reefs are susceptible to overfishing so “those are where you really do need to be very careful for environmental sustainability”. Steven Victor, the minister of agriculture, fisheries and the environment, explains the purpose of the marine tanks at the Palau fisheries. At the same time, deep sea mining remains an emerging frontier for Pacific nations. Views on the practice are mixed – 32 countries around the world have called for a moratorium on the industry, while some Pacific nations like Kiribati, Tonga, Nauru and the Cook Islands are exploring the potential of the sector.Brown acknowledges and shares concerns that seabed mining could undermine marine health. Through its marine park, he says his government has built a sustainable model for balancing conservation and his people’s livelihoods.He adds that “robust laws and strict environmental safeguards” will ensure any future seabed development “protects the integrity of our ocean heritage and supports our conservation goals”.“Seabed minerals exploration provides an opportunity to diversify our economy and strengthen our resilience to challenges like climate change and global economic shifts, especially as we currently rely heavily on tourism,” he says. Barclay says it is unfair to criticise Pacific countries, who have limited industries and are suffering the impacts of climate change, for seeking wealth in their oceans.“I don’t think it’s my position … to tell them what they should or shouldn’t do with their resources,” she says.

Palau plans to allow more fishing in its marine sanctuary, as countries across the region seek to balance conservation with economic needsDotted across the north-west of the Pacific Ocean, the limestone islands of Palau rise like forested domes. Beneath the waves, reefs pulse with activity – fish dart through coral gardens, turtles drift nearby, while sharks with black-tipped fins shadow a passing tourist boat.Nearly a decade ago, the country took a bold step to safeguard this vibrant seascape, declaring 80% of its waters a no-fishing sanctuary.Ngerukewid, also known as the ‘Seventy Islands’, is a group of dozens of small, raised coral islands nestled within Palau’s lagoon. Continue reading...

Dotted across the north-west of the Pacific Ocean, the limestone islands of Palau rise like forested domes. Beneath the waves, reefs pulse with activity – fish dart through coral gardens, turtles drift nearby, while sharks with black-tipped fins shadow a passing tourist boat.

Nearly a decade ago, the country took a bold step to safeguard this vibrant seascape, declaring 80% of its waters a no-fishing sanctuary.

  • Ngerukewid, also known as the ‘Seventy Islands’, is a group of dozens of small, raised coral islands nestled within Palau’s lagoon.

But support for the sanctuary – which covers a massive area about the size of Sweden – has soured among some Palauans. Those who rely on the ocean feel caught between the need to feed their families and the rules designed to protect their waters.

“If 80% of Palauan waters is a marine sanctuary, where am I going to get my fish?” asks Dennis Daniel, a waste management worker, while drinking beer on the shoreline of Palau’s most populous town, Koror. Fishermen have struggled to supply the local tuna markets, fuelling frustration over the nation’s strict fishing restrictions.

As a result, Palau’s government wants to reopen parts of the sanctuary to allow more fishing. It plans to shrink its no-fishing zone by more than a third and open a new fishing port on the west coast of its largest island.

Officials argue the move will help families like Daniel’s, while still protecting half of Palau’s waters from commercial fishing. Critics, however, warn that scaling back protections will only harm Palau’s marine diversity, already vulnerable to the climate crisis.

Palau’s struggle is not unique. In communities across the region, where the ocean is often their biggest resource, mounting economic pressures are forcing a rethink of environmental commitments.

Collectively, small island Pacific states manage roughly 10% of the planet’s oceans, making their decisions critical not only for their own futures, but for the health of marine ecosystems worldwide. The Pacific is also home to some of the most valuable fisheries in the world, with the region supplying about 30% of the world’s tuna.

In 2017, the Cook Islands designated its entire ocean as the world’s largest marine park, called Marae Moana. Beneath these same waters lie a vast wealth of polymetallic nodules rich in cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese – and over the past four years the Cook Islands’ government has been exploring the possibility of commercially developing these underwater minerals in areas outside certain protected zones, at least 100km off its coasts. That could include seabed mining.

The Pacific nation has granted three exploration licences for companies to map and analyse its seabeds, and is working on developing technical and environmental assessments to guide any future seabed mineral activities.

Seabed mining is not under way in Cook Islands as it conducts assessments and studies feasibility. In an email interview with the Guardian, the Cook Islands prime minister, Mark Brown, said no minerals harvesting or mining “will be permitted until the scientific basis is clear”.

“We are 99.99% ocean and 0.01% land, so it is inevitable that we will turn to our blue economy for further opportunities for our future prosperity,” Brown said in written responses to the Guardian’s questions.

“As a Pacific island nation, the Cook Islands are deeply conscious of the need to protect our environment while creating sustainable opportunities for our people.”

Meanwhile, in 2021 Kiribati announced it would reopen a world heritage site and one of the world’s largest marine protected areas to commercial fishing, citing the strain of lost revenue. Palau’s president, Surangel Whipps Jr, said the move highlights the challenges Pacific nations often face meeting their conservation aspirations with economic survival.

“There was no sustainable financing there, there was no system in place to ensure that [Kiribati’s marine sanctuary] can go on,” Whipps told the Guardian. “So at the end of the day, they had to feed their people.”

Whipps says Palau is facing a similar predicament, but hopes the redesign of its marine sanctuary would prove to other Pacific nations they “can do both”: protect the ocean while reaping fish and profit from it.

Not everyone agrees on how best to strike this balance. Palau’s former president Tommy Remengesau Jr, who led the sanctuary’s creation during his presidency, says the sanctuary rollback is an unnecessary undoing of Palau’s globally leading commitments.

“It doesn’t make sense to open up a good thing,” he says. “The sustainability of our ocean resources are being threatened and, unless we balance conservation and harvesting, there won’t be a future for our children.”

Palau’s waters are considered especially biodiverse; a recent National Geographic expedition recorded the region’s highest abundance of key species, like silky shark and yellowfin.

However, researchers also found abandoned fishing gear and depleted shark populations: clear signs of overfishing. They concluded that Palau and similar Pacific nations needed “large protected areas” to prevent further decline.

Though the size of this protection remains a subject of heated debate, the sanctuary is broadly supported by Palauans – particularly tourism workers who view it as a vital draw for visitors.

----------

Captain Troy Ngiraikelau weaves his boat through the emerald maze of Palau’s islets, shuttling tourists to dive sites. He says he has noticed fewer schools of fish on the reefs compared with when he was a child, and is therefore supportive of Palau’s ambitious marine protections.

“There’s a lot of people who live in Koror, so if they go out every weekend and fish everything then we end up with nothing,” Ngiraikelau says. “I think it’s good that we have the marine sanctuary.”

Tourism once employed a quarter of Palau’s workforce, generating more than 40% of the nation’s wealth. Legislators hoped the sanctuary would further boost ecotourism, but its launch in 2020 coincided with the Covid pandemic, causing a steep drop in the sector and plunging the country’s economy into crisis.

“One thing we learned from the impact of Covid-19 is that we cannot rely on developing Palau’s economy just based on tourism,” says Palau’s environment minister, Steven Victor. “We need to diversify our economy.”

For fishing companies tasked with leading this economic revival, marine protections are harming their bottom line. Jackson Ngiraingas, a former politician who owns Palau’s only domestically flagged longline tuna fishing boat, says increasing the fishing zone is his only path to catching enough fish to sell overseas and become profitable.

“We have to expand to the international market for export, because that’s where the money is,” he says.

About 3% of the planet’s ocean is currently under adequate marine protections, according to the Marine Conservation Institute. The UN has set a goal to protect at least 30% of oceans by 2030, but there are fears marine sanctuaries are not being created fast enough to meet this target.

Prof Kate Barclay, a marine social scientist specialising in Pacific fisheries from the University of Technology Sydney, says the region’s reefs are susceptible to overfishing so “those are where you really do need to be very careful for environmental sustainability”.

  • Steven Victor, the minister of agriculture, fisheries and the environment, explains the purpose of the marine tanks at the Palau fisheries.

At the same time, deep sea mining remains an emerging frontier for Pacific nations. Views on the practice are mixed – 32 countries around the world have called for a moratorium on the industry, while some Pacific nations like Kiribati, Tonga, Nauru and the Cook Islands are exploring the potential of the sector.

Brown acknowledges and shares concerns that seabed mining could undermine marine health. Through its marine park, he says his government has built a sustainable model for balancing conservation and his people’s livelihoods.

He adds that “robust laws and strict environmental safeguards” will ensure any future seabed development “protects the integrity of our ocean heritage and supports our conservation goals”.

“Seabed minerals exploration provides an opportunity to diversify our economy and strengthen our resilience to challenges like climate change and global economic shifts, especially as we currently rely heavily on tourism,” he says.

Barclay says it is unfair to criticise Pacific countries, who have limited industries and are suffering the impacts of climate change, for seeking wealth in their oceans.

“I don’t think it’s my position … to tell them what they should or shouldn’t do with their resources,” she says.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Biden administration declines to remove grizzly bears from endangered list

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) will keep endangered species protections for grizzly bears in place in most of the western U.S., the agency announced Wednesday, rebuffing states that petitioned for their removal. In its announcement, USFWS declined petitions from both Wyoming and Montana but proposed to allow private landowners to kill bears to...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) will keep endangered species protections for grizzly bears in place in most of the western U.S., the agency announced Wednesday, rebuffing states that petitioned for their removal. In its announcement, USFWS declined petitions from both Wyoming and Montana but proposed to allow private landowners to kill bears to protect livestock, and without a permit if livestock are in imminent danger. However, it left protections in place for much of the population in Idaho, Montana, Washington state and Wyoming. “This reclassification will facilitate recovery of grizzly bears and provide a stronger foundation for eventual delisting,” USFWS Director Martha Williams said in a statement. “And the proposed changes to our … rule will provide management agencies and landowners more tools and flexibility to deal with human/bear conflicts, an essential part of grizzly bear recovery.” Advocates of delisting the bears have pointed to their threat to livestock and steadily rebounding populations, including recent expansions into western Washington. Grizzlies currently number about 2,000 in the 48 contiguous states, up from fewer than 1,000 in the 1970s but only a fraction of what was once 50,000. The George W. Bush and first Trump administrations attempted to delist the species but were blocked in court. House Natural Resources Committee Chair Bruce Westerman blasted the announcement in a statement Wednesday. "The only reasonable announcement by the USFWS today would have been a total delisting of the grizzly bear in these ecosystems. USFWS is blatantly ignoring science in their decision by hiding behind bureaucratic red tape,” Westerman said. “Their decision endangers communities, especially farmers and ranchers, who live under the threat of grizzly bear attacks.” Conservation groups, however, praised the decision, with Andrea Zaccardi, carnivore conservation program legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, saying it will give grizzlies “a real chance at long-term recovery, instead of being gunned down and mounted on trophy walls.” The decision is one of several wildlife and environmental protections announced in the waning days of the Biden administration, with the second Trump administration likely to take aim at much of Biden's environmental policies. Earlier this week, the White House announced restrictions on offshore drilling and two new national monuments in California.

A Tiny, 'Endangered' Fish Delayed a Dam's Construction in the 1970s. Now, Scientists Say the Snail Darter Isn't So Rare After All

A lawsuit to protect the snail darter from the Tellico Dam in Tennessee offered the first real test of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. But a new study disputes the fish's status as a distinct species

Though small, the snail darter has played an outsize role in American law, conservation and biology. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters via Flickr Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee described an “awful beast” in 1979. That beast—which he also called “the bane of my existence, the nemesis of my golden years, the bold perverter of the Endangered Species Act”—was none other than the snail darter, a fish no more than 3.5 inches in length. Still, the tiny creature had plagued the politics of Tennessee throughout the decade. Since its discovery in the 1970s and protection under the Endangered Species Act, the snail darter has cast a long shadow over American law, conservation and biology. Against Baker’s wishes, a Supreme Court ruling about the endangered status of the little fish upended progress on a controversial dam in Tennessee for years. But now, a new study published last week in Current Biology suggests the snail darter isn’t a genetically distinct species at all—and that it was therefore never endangered in the first place. “There is, technically, no snail darter,” Thomas Near, an ichthyologist at Yale University and a senior author of the study, tells Jason Nark of the New York Times. Instead, Near and his co-authors argue, the tiny fish known as Percina tanasi that embodied a David and Goliath battle against the Tellico Dam is an eastern population of the stargazing darter—not a distinct or endangered species. The Tellico Dam in Tennessee, where the fish known as the snail darter held up construction for several years. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters via Flickr The controversy began in 1967, when the Tennessee Valley Authority initiated construction on a dam on the Little Tennessee River, some 20 miles southwest of Knoxville. Environmentalists, local farmers and the Cherokee, whose land and ancestral sites were to be flooded, opposed the project, per the New York Times. They sought a way to halt the dam, and, in 1973, a zoologist at the University of Tennessee named David Etnier found that solution. Etnier was snorkeling with a group of students in Coytee Spring, not far from the dam site, when he discovered a previously unseen fish darting across the riverbed. He called it the snail darter, because of its feeding habits, and it received endangered species protection in 1975. “Here’s a little fish that might save your farm,” Etnier reportedly told a local, according to The Snail Darter and the Dam by Zygmunt Plater. Plater, an environmental lawyer, represented the snail darter in front of the Supreme Court after its endangered status went challenged by the TVA. He was initially victorious in protecting the fish: In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that “the Endangered Species Act prohibits impoundment of the Little Tennessee River by the Tellico Dam” because of the presence of the endangered snail darters. The ruling in Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill “gave teeth” to the new Endangered Species Act and “helped to shape environmental law for decades to come,” according to a statement from Yale. But lawmakers like Baker were still eager to see the dam completed and derided the decision as environmental overreach, seeing little reason to delay a major project for a seemingly minor fish. Representative John Duncan Sr., a fellow Tennessee Republican, called the snail darter a “worthless, unsightly, minute, inedible minnow,” according to the New York Times. The anti-fish brigade ultimately triumphed in 1979, however, by adding a rider that exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act to a spending bill. Jimmy Carter signed the whole bill into law, and the dam opened just a few months later. In the meantime, conservationists “scrambled to save the small fish by moving it to other waterways,” as David Kindy wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2021. Their efforts resulted in a resurgence of the snail darter population that led to its removal from the endangered species list in 2022. U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland called its recovery “a remarkable conservation milestone that tells a story about how controversy and polarization can evolve into cooperation and a big conservation success,” according to the Associated Press. But Near’s new study casts this entire history into doubt. A historical range map for the snail darter (Percina tanasi) in the Tennessee River watershed is shown in red, and the stargazing darter's (Percina uranidea) historical range is shown in blue. Ghezelayagh et al., Current Biology, 2024. Photographs courtesy of Uland Thomas and Jon Michael Mollish Jeffrey Simmons, a co-author of the study and former biologist with the TVA, was wading through the creeks near the Mississippi-Alabama border in 2015, when he thought he saw a snail darter far from where it was known to dwell. This apparent discovery prompted a team of scientists led by Ava Ghezelayagh, then an ecologist at Yale, to undertake anatomical and genetic research of the fish. “Our approach combines analyses of the physical characteristics and the genetics, which scientists weren’t doing in the 1970s,” Near says in the statement. “Despite its legacy, the snail darter is not a distinct species,” the authors of the study conclude. But the disputed fish has not left its controversy behind quite yet. Plater, the lawyer who defended the fish in court, takes issue with the study, calling the researchers “lumpers” instead of “splitters,” according to the New York Times. That means they tend toward reducing species with their research rather than expanding them. “Whether he intends it or not, lumping is a great way to cut back on the Endangered Species Act,” Plater says of Near to the New York Times. Near, for his part, argues that, “while we’re losing the snail darter as a biological conservation icon, our findings demonstrate the capability of genomics, in addition to studying an organism’s observable features, to accurately delimit species,” he says in the statement. And, in other genetic and anatomical research, his teams have uncovered new species. “We’re discovering species that are truly imperiled, which helps us better understand where to devote resources to protect biodiversity,” he adds. “This is still a success story,” Simmons says to the New York Times. “Its listing under the Endangered Species Act worked, regardless of what you call this fish.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

10m trees to be planted in US to replace ones destroyed by hurricanes

Arbor Day Foundation non-profit to plant trees in six of the worst-hit states over the next four yearsSome costs of the recently ended supercharged 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, those that can be quantified at least, are astounding.A succession of storms that ravaged large areas of the US killed at least 375 people, the most in the mainland US since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Some estimates pegged damage and economic loss at $500bn. Continue reading...

Some costs of the recently ended supercharged 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, those that can be quantified at least, are astounding.A succession of storms that ravaged large areas of the US killed at least 375 people, the most in the mainland US since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Some estimates pegged damage and economic loss at $500bn.Another eye-catching figure is 10m, which is the number of trees the non-profit Arbor Day Foundation (ADF) is planning to plant in six of the worst-hit states over the next four years to replace those destroyed by the major hurricanes Beryl, Debby, Helene and Milton, and other cyclones, in the season that concluded on 30 November.The group says it’s impossible to know exactly how many trees were lost, but the restoration program that will be executed in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, with assistance from state and local governments, corporate sponsors, community groups and individual volunteers, will be the most ambitious undertaking of its more than 50-year existence.ADF has worked previously in other affected areas, most recently with partners along Florida’s Gulf coast, Panhandle and in Miami after Hurricanes Irma and Michael in 2017 and 2018 respectively, but nothing on this scale.“The emotion that you see from people when they get to get a tree, to take home to plant, to be an active part of recovery, bringing life and hope and healing back to their neighborhoods and to their community is inspiring,” said Dan Lambe, ADF’s chief executive.“What’s so cool about it is it’s every different part of the community you could imagine, every demographic, every age category. People are just so excited to be contributing to the recovery.“And beyond the emotional side of it, in these cities, these communities and these forests, trees are not a nice-to-have, they are a must-have.“From extreme heat, from biodiversity challenges, and ecosystem challenges to the just broader resilience and readiness for the next storm, trees just do so much for us. So it’s both an emotional and an environmental recovery, and we’re proud to get to be a part.”One of the largest areas of focus will be Florida’s heavily populated Tampa Bay region. Although it escaped direct hits from any of the state’s record-tying three landfalling major hurricanes this year, Debby, Helene and Milton, the storms’ giant wind fields still caused severe impacts.“I was born and raised here, and I’ve never before seen such devastation, so many trees down,” said Debra Evenson, executive director of the Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful environmental group that has partnered with ADF to identify the greatest areas of need and set up a replanting schedule.“They covered the streets. Just on our property, at our office, we probably had five trees down. The devastation was everywhere. It wasn’t just one specific area, it hit all of Tampa Bay, just thousands and thousands of trees.”Evenson’s group can count on more than 25,000 volunteers to assist with the project, which she expects to begin before the end of this year with community giveaways, and ramp up after new year with planting days. Schools, lower-income neighborhoods and community spaces will receive early attention.“It’s like, OK, what type of trees do we want to get? We can plant trees in parks and rights of way, but right now it’s like we really want to give trees to the community to help with the canopy,” she said.“It’s in the community, in people’s homes, where so many were lost. They’re crepe myrtles, live oak and magnolia trees … you don’t really understand everything the trees provide until they’re gone. It’s not just air quality, it’s reducing stormwater runoff, it’s providing shade that regulates temperature. We’re in Florida, it’s 100F sometimes, and it’s like ‘why is my electric bill so high?’skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s because you’re missing your shade trees now. So these trees will be substantial to the community and help with not just all of that, but the conservation and the natural beauty.”Evenson said bringing fruit trees back to deprived areas would also be a priority.“We go into areas that are food deserts, where they don’t have the funds to replant these types of big trees that grow and give shade and bear fruit. To them, this is life-changing,” she said.Lambe said Asheville, the historic North Carolina city flooded and torn apart by Hurricane Helene, was another area of great need.“We’ve already been distributing trees with community leaders there, to neighborhoods that are ready to replant,” he said.“It was shocking that a community like Asheville was being impacted by a hurricane, and they don’t have a lot of experience with recovery. We’ve been able to take lessons from elsewhere and remind partners that first of all you take an inventory, do an assessment, don’t rush the restoration.“Do it when it’s right, and know that the Arbor Day Foundation is going to be there to help with those recovery efforts as a long-term commitment, because we want to give confidence to those communities that we’re ready to help.”

English wildlife ‘could be disappearing in the dark’ due to lack of scrutiny

Conservationists issue warning as figures show three-quarters of SSSI sites have had no recent assessments Conservationists have said wildlife could be “disappearing in the dark” after figures showed that three-quarters of England’s most precious habitats, wildlife and natural features have had no recent assessment of their condition.The warning follows the publication of figures covering assessments of protected natural sites known as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) in the last five years. SSSIs are legally protected because they contain special features such as threatened habitats or rare species, and together they cover more than 1.1m hectares (2.7m acres), about 8% of England’s land area. Continue reading...

Conservationists have said wildlife could be “disappearing in the dark” after figures showed that three-quarters of England’s most precious habitats, wildlife and natural features have had no recent assessment of their condition.The warning follows the publication of figures covering assessments of protected natural sites known as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) in the last five years. SSSIs are legally protected because they contain special features such as threatened habitats or rare species, and together they cover more than 1.1m hectares (2.7m acres), about 8% of England’s land area.Nearly two-fifths of the habitats and other features for which SSSIs are protected were in an unfavourable condition, according to figures from the conservation agency Natural England.They also show that only 3,384 – or about 25% – of features had been assessed for their condition since the start of 2019 up to last month. It leaves 10,148, or 75%, without an up-to-date assessment of how they are faring.The figures, revealed after a request from PA Media, were described by conservationists as a reminder of the under-resourced state of environmental watchdogs.SSSIs are integral to Britain’s international commitment to protect 30% of its land and seas for nature by 2030, a pledge made by Boris Johnson as prime minister and sometimes called the 30x30 commitment.Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “The protected site network is critical natural infrastructure supporting wildlife, health and wellbeing, and a resilient economy. But with over three-quarters of sites not inspected in the last five years, regulators will have no idea whether they are in good condition and the government won’t know where it should be targeting its efforts in order to reach critical 2030 targets.“Wildlife could be disappearing in the dark while ecosystems break down. It’s like shutting the door on a new power plant and not visiting for a decade.”More than 5,000 SSSI features, about 39% of the total, were in an unfavourable state in their last assessment, which could have been well before 2019. Of those, 10% were declining and 22% recovering.About 40% of features were in a favourable condition, more than a fifth were classed as “not recorded” due to incomplete data, and less than 0.5% had been destroyed.A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Protected sites are at the heart of our vision for making space for rare habitats and threatened species to thrive as well as green spaces for us all to enjoy. It’s why this government has wasted no time in establishing a rapid review of our plan to deliver on our legally binding targets for the environment, including measures to improve the condition of protected sites. We will deliver a new statutory plan that will help restore our natural environment.”skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionNatural England is developing a long-term programme to determine when SSSIs need to be assessed, as well as improving monitoring with remote sensing technology and greater use of data.The amount of land that is “effectively protected” for nature in England has declined to just 2.93%, despite government promises to conserve 30% of it by 2030, according to research published in October.The land figure was found to have been falling owing to declines in quality of SSSIs, which are changing because of the climate crisis, water pollution and overgrazing.

Suggested Viewing

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.