While I wish President Obama had made climate change his first legislative priority, instead of health care, he nonetheless has publicly committed to making progress to address climate change.  And he has taken some significant steps in the right direction.   Since most of Obama’s efforts in this area have gone largely unnoticed, I am highlighting some of them here:

• Obama’s 2011 budget request includes significant increases in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs at the federal Departments of Energy, Interior, and Agriculture.
• The Administration is raising vehicle efficiency standards to historic levels.  Most notable are the first national emissions and efficiency standards for heavy vehicles.
• The Administration is reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s largest energy consumer, the federal government. 
• The Administration is moving forward on greater renewable energy production on public lands.
• Having determined that climate change is a threat to public health and welfare, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from large polluters.
• EPA is toughening its regulation of environmental impacts from fossil energy industries, such as the impacts of mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia.
• A presidential task force has been working for more than a year to frame a national strategy for climate adaptation.
• Another presidential task force is developing national policy for protecting our oceans, coasts, and the Great Lakes.
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has incorporated the effects of climate change on wildlife into the grants it makes for protecting endangered species.
• The U.S. Department of Energy has cleared its backlog of new appliance efficiency standards, an achievement expected to save the public billions of dollars over the next 30 years.
• The Administration has created a strategic plan for high-speed rail in America.
• The Administration included more than $80 billion in green investments in the stimulus package, making it the largest piece of energy legislation in U.S. history.
• President Obama has directed nine federal agencies to expedite construction of transmission lines on public lands to help distribute renewable energy.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Nature Conservancy are working to protect coral reefs from climate-related damage in the Caribbean, Florida, Hawaii, and the Pacific Islands.
• The Federal Trade Commission has issued new guidelines on truth in green labeling.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued guidance on how publicly traded companies should report climate risks.
• EPA and the Department of Transportation are revising fuel-economy labeling for cars and light trucks to show each vehicle’s carbon emissions profile.
• EPA requires 10,000 of the nation’s largest carbon emitters, as well as federal agencies, to publicly report their emissions.
• The Administration is working on a requirement that climate impacts must be considered in environmental assessments of federally funded projects.
• Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued an order to improve federal water policies to deal with climate change, population growth, and other pressures on freshwater supplies.
• NOAA created a new office to improve climate change information for local governments, academia, and industry.
• Just weeks ago the military equipped a field encampment of Marines in Afghanistan with fold-up solar panels, energy-efficient lights, solar chargers for phones and computers, and solar tent shields that provide both shade and power for tents.
• The Navy recently introduced its first hybrid vessel, the USS Makin Island.  On its first voyage, from Mississippi to San Diego, the ship used 900,000 gallons less fuel than a traditional vessel.
• The Air Force is slated to operate its entire fleet on biofuels by next year.
• The Administration has negotiated agreements to collaborate on carbon sequestration and clean energy technologies with Canada, Mexico, China, and India.

     All of the above actions are helpful steps in addressing climate change.  But it cannot be denied that they are extremely modest.  Taken together, they account for about 70% of Obama’s goal to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by a mere 3% by 2020, according to Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.  Still, “Obama and his team have made more progress on this issue in 22 months than all his predecessors managed since Lyndon Johnson was warned about climate change by his science advisors in the 1960s,” writes Becker.  And he’s done it at the same time he’s wrestled with his immediate predecessor’s debilitating legacy of red ink, the Great Recession, Wall Street scandals, the housing crisis, the collapse of some of the nation’s biggest companies, and two wars.”

     The above list of the Obama administration’s accomplishments on global warming come from Bill Becker.–April Moore

     In an unusual alliance of conservation organizations, oil and gas interests, and local governments, Utah’s dramatic Desolation Canyon has been saved from massive natural gas exploration.   

     One of the most remote and rugged stretches of riverland  in the American West, eastern Utah’s Desolation Canyon offers breathtaking views of red rock cliffs and multicolored rock spires.  This canyon, carved by the Green River, is a favorite of rafters and hikers.  And the largest existing collection of Native American rock art can be found along one of Desolation Canyon’s tributary canyons.

     Back in 1969, Desolation Canyon was designated a National Historic Landmark.  Even so, under the Bush administration, Desolation Canyon was one of many prized Utah public lands that were rushed to the oil and gas leasing block.  Environmental reviews were limited or bypassed altogether for many of these lands, including Desolation Canyon.  Consequently, the Denver-based Bill Barrett Corporation (BBC) obtained the rights to drill for natural gas on the western side of Desolation Canyon.  BBC planned to install 225 surface drill pads in the area, which would have  caused severe fragmentation of wildlife habitat, and would have resulted in heavy traffic and pollution in the area.

     But thanks to the recent historic agreement, hammered out after years of negotiation, BBC has agreed to develop only five locations in this wilderness land.  And all five sites will be underground, out of sght.  None of the five will be near the proposed Wilderness sections of the canyon, nor will any be near the canyon’s Native American archeological sites.    Measures will also be taken to protect the area’s air quality.   

     “We were able to convince the Bill Barrett Corporation to walk away from the vast majority of their leases and to agree to specific precautions in others so that these lands can be protected as designated wilderness someday,” says Laura Bailey of the Wilderness Society, one of the conservation groups that worked to forge the historic agreement.  “Without this agreement,” she says, “we would be continuing to fight drilling on every acre of this spectacular landscape rich with culture.”

     Conservationists are hopeful that Desolation Canyon will someday be designated Wilderness by Congress.  The recent agreement is a critical step toward that goal.  If the area were to be inundated with drills and industrial equipment, then it would not qualify for permanent Wilderness protections.

     Not only is the recent agreement a great victory for all who care about Utah’s rugged southwest canyons, but it is also a new and rare example of conservation groups, oil and gas interests, and local governments working together to balance energy development with conservation needs on public lands, according to the Wilderness Society.–April Moore

 

 

 

Desolation Canyon, Utah

     Perhaps you remember back to 1985 when scientists discovered a thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer.  The depletion was most extreme over the north and south poles.   This depletion of the ozone layer was a serious problem, since ozone protects the earth and its inhabitants from harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun.  The reason for the growing ozone holes was the widespread use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), substances which were used in refrigerators, spray cans, and in many other consumer products. 

     But a 1987 treaty, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, led to a worldwide phase-out of the production and consumption of these harmful chemicals.  According to a recent report by UN scientists, these substances have been cut by 98% worldwide.  As a result, stratospheric ozone is no longer thinning, and the ozone holes over the polar regions have stopped growing.

     If it hadn’t been for the Montreal Protocol and compliance by countries around the world, “atmospheric levels of ozone-depleting substances could have increased tenfold by 2050,” says Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN’s Environment Programme.  Such an increase, he explains, could have led to 20 million additional cases of skin cancer and 130 million more cases of eye cataracts, not to mention damage to human immune systems, wildlife and agriculture.

     Scientists predict that, thanks to the virtual elimination of CFCs, the ozone layer outside the polar regions will return to pre-1980 levels before the middle of this century.  The ozone layer over the poles, however, will take much longer to recover.

     “The Montreal Protocol is an outstanding example of collaboration among scientists and decision-makers that has resulted in the successful mitigation of a serious environmental and societal threat,” notes Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization. 

     In addition to halting ozone depletion in the stratosphere, the Montreal Protocol also reduces climate change, according to the report, “because many substances that deplete the ozone layer are also potent greenhouse gases.”

     The news is not all good, however.  CFCs have been replaced by substances called hydrochlorofluorocarbons.  While these substances do not harm the ozone layer, they are a much more potent greenhouse gas than the most abundant greenhouse gas–carbon dioxide.–April Moore

 

hole in the ozone layer

 

 

    

    

     Two former enemies, Russia and China, are now working together to protect the endangered Siberian tiger.  Only about 500 of these magnificent animals remain in the wild, and most can be found in a region that includes land on both sides of the Russia-China border. 

     This is  great news.  The agreement, facilitated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), establishes the world’s first transboundary, protected area for the endangered Siberian tiger.  And these animals desperately need protection.  They hover at the edge of extinction, thanks to expanded logging in the forest where they live, fragmentation of their habitat, a decline in populations of their prey, and poaching for sought-after tiger body parts.

      More than 300 of the tigers in the newly protected area live on the Russian side of the border.  Since the 1930s, when the  Siberian tiger in Russia had reached a dangerous low of just 20-30 animals, intensive conservation efforts built the population to more than 300.  But recently, their numbers in Russia have again begun to decline.  The Siberian tigers on China’s side of the newly protected area number only 18-22. 

     “While tigers–the species at the top of the ecosystem–are better conserved through the agreement, other species, the forest habitat, and all the biodiversity resources will also benefit from this protected area,” says Dr. Zhu Chunquan, WWF-China’s conservation director.  Such endangered animals as the Far East Leopard, the musk deer, and the goral (a goat-like animal) will gain protection as well.  And so will the tigers’ prey–deer, boar, elk, and other large animals.  A Siberian tiger needs to consume about 20 pounds of meat per day. 

     As part of the agreement, the Russian side (Primorsky Province) and the Chinese side (Jilin Province) will share information and will adopt uniform monitoring systems for the tigers and their prey.  The two sides will conduct joint ecological surveys and will work together to develop an anti-poaching campaign along the Russia-China border.

     Interestingly, 2010 is China’s Year of the Tiger.  One goal of the agreement is to double China’s Siberian tiger population by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.  

     Other countries with tiger populations are also taking action during this Year of the Tiger.  India and Nepal recently signed an agreement to work together to conserve biodiversity, including tigers, and to strengthen ecological security in the transnational region.  And a groundbreaking conservation declaration from the 13 nations in which all the world’s wild tigers live is due to be signed by the end of this year.  The Declaration is to create a global tiger recovery program and to promote transboundary cooperation among the 13 nations in which tigers range.

     To all this good news, I say Bravo!  And thanks to the World Wildlife Fund and to the Russian and Chinese governments for the hard work required to bring about such an agreement and to implement it.–April Moore

    

 

   

     More than 40 national environmental organizations actively supported President Obama’s appointment of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.  In a letter to Senators prior to last Thursday’s Senate approval of Kagan’s confirmation, the groups cited her “understanding of the importance of fair Court decisions that uphold, enforce, and correctly interpret laws that protect people, wildlife, and the environment.”

     Since the Supreme Court decides the fate of lawsuits that attack safeguards for clean air, clean water, endangered species, and special natural places, it is important that the Supreme Court be made up of Justices who respect the right of future generations to a healthy planet.  Unfortunately, however, four of the current Justices–Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas, and Scalia–are no friends of the earth.

     Four other Justices–Ginsberg, Sotomayor, Kennedy, and Breyer–have been much more sympathetic to environmental issues.  Kagan is replacing the fifth pro-environment Justice, John Paul Stevens.  In his decisions, Stevens upheld the power of governments to regulate pollutants.  So while the appointment of Kagan does not give us an environmental majority on the Court, her appointment does mean that we should not lose ground.

    Indeed, Kagan’s environmental background is reason to cheer her presence on the nation’s highest court.  As Dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan made environmental law a top priority there.  She helped found the Environmental Law Program and started the Harvard Law School Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, which she called “the heart of our environmental program.”  She wrote in 2008 that “this program is fast becoming an international leader in showing how law schools (and lawyers) can actively shape a field that will in many ways determine the world’s future.”

     Now that Elena Kagan is a member of the Supreme Court, and the “mum’s the word” Senate confirmation process is over, let’s hope she will be a strong voice on the Supreme Court for the environment.–April Moore

Elena Kagan, newly appointed Supreme Court Justice

 

  

     I often wish the U.S. were more like Canada.  Canada has been much more serious about protecting its natural treasures than has the U.S.  Nonetheless, the following good news story from Canada is good news for all of us.           

     Over the last year or so, the Canadian government been putting in place important protections for its Arctic north.

     Last summer, Canada declared a large chunk of Ontario’s boreal (northern) forest off-limits to further development.  Then, soon after, Canada went further, establishing three National Wildlife Areas in the Arctic.  The designation means that the areas’ natural features will be protected from disturbance and from activities considered harmful to species living there or to the habitat as a whole.

     All three sites are located on Baffin Island.  Some of the species that will be protected, thanks to the recent designations, are bowhead whales, polar bears. walruses, seals, and many species of birds.

     The Inuit people, who live in Canada’s far north, had been advocating with Canada’s federal government since 2001 for the National Wildlife Area designations.  The day the designations were signed into law, was “a big day for Inuit,” stated James Eetoolook, acting president of the Inuit organizations that had worked to bring about the federal protections.

     And just this month, the Canadian government extended last year’s protections.  Now, vessels, foreign and domestic, must report to Canada’s Coast Guard when they are traveling through Arctic waters.  ”With mandatory reporting,” explains Gail Shea, Canada’s Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, “the Canadian Coast Guard will be able to keep watch on vessels carrying pollutants, fuel oil and dangerous goods, and respond quickly in the event of an accident.”–April Moore 

northern fulmar, one of the birds protected in the Canadian Arctic

    

     Good news for all who care about healthy coastal marine ecosystems! 

     In an important step toward fulfilling California’s far-reaching Marine Life Protection Act, more than 85 square miles of waters along the state’s northern coast have been designated marine protected areas.  The Act, the first of its kind in the country, requires California to establish a system of marine protected areas all along its coastline.   Waters in the northern and southern ends of the state have already been set aside under the Act, and protected status will be in place for areas all along California’s 1,100 mile coastline in 2011.  The protections will not interfere with fishing along close to 90% of the state’s coast.

     The recent step protects such special north central California sites as Point Reyes Headlands, the Farallon Islands, and Bodega Head. 

     “The Marine Life Protection Act allows us to create a legacy of healthy, resilient oceans for our kids and grandkids,” says Karen Garrison of the Natural Resources Defense Council.  Scientists who have researched marine reserves in the Channel Islands and the Great Barrier Reef report that such reserves benefit fishermen as well as fish.  

     The new marine protected areas will be monitored by scientists as part of the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of California’s coastal ocean.–April Moore

Point Reyes Headland

Farallon Islands

     It is 30 years ago this month that Mount St. Helens ‘blew.’ 

     Without warning on a Sunday morning in May, the mountain in southwestern Washington erupted.  The blast killed 57 people, 7,000 elk and deer, and it ’shortened’ the mountain from a 9,665-foot peak to a crater just 8,300 feet high.  The eruption of this volcano, which had been considered dormant until that day, triggered the largest landslide in recorded history.  As a result, 230 square miles of forest were laid waste, and 14 miles of river valley were clogged with mud.  The churning pillar of ash and rock that Mount St. Helens spewed upward and eastward turned day into night in Yakima and Spokane, and spread particles of volcanic ash as far east as New England.

     But this is a success story, not a tale of utter destruction. 

     Miraculously, 30 years after Mount St. Helens erupted, the mountain is coming back!  While scientists predicted that the barren, ‘lunar’ landscape that the pristine mountain ecosystem had become on May 18, 1980, could never recover, life is returning to Mount St. Helens!  Humans left the mountain relatively undisturbed after the eruption, and now scientists are viewing Mount St. Helens is a testament to the resilience of nature.  It has become apparent that many, many plants and animals can make a dramatic comeback, even after a catastrophic disturbance.

     Today, visitors to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument can see many signs of regeneration:  alpine wildflowers and herbs, patches of scrubby willow and alder trees, chipmunks and grazing elk.  From microbes to mammals, from fungi to flowers, millions of plants and animals of thousands of species are now flourishing on Mount St. Helens.  And while the mountain today is a far less diverse ecosystem that it was before the eruption, so much life has returned that scientists now expect that in 30 more years a forest will begin to grow in what is still wasteland below the crater.   

     Mount St. Helens has provided scientists with an unprecedented opportunity to observe what happens to a landscape that is virtually wiped clean biologically.  Researchers report that they have learned a great deal about how plants and animals respond to volcanic blasts.   For example, when mountain lupine began to grow in profusion on the incinerated plain below the crater, scientists were surprised because the large seeds of the purple wildflower had not been thought to travel great distances on the wind.  Yet they did.   There have been many similar surprises.    “We have learned to expect the unexpected,” says Jeanne Bennett, executive director of the nonprofit Mount St. Helens Institute.

     The national monument that Mount St. Helens has become attracts more than 200,000 visitors every year.  I can imagine that it would be a thrill to visit the place every few years and observe new life each time–more plant and animal species returning to a mountain once deemed forever dead!–April Moore

Mount St. Helens--2010

Mount St. Helens explosion, May 18, 1980

     I am happy to report that a bird once thought to be extinct has made a comeback.  

     Bermuda Petrels  once inhabited the Bermuda islands by the tens of thousands.  But when the Spaniards first came to the islands in the early 1500s, they were spooked by the petrels’ haunting, nighttime calls.  Believing the island to be inhabited by devils, the superstitious Spanish sailors never settled there.  Unfortunately, however, they left behind pigs as food for shipwrecked sailors.

     Within 100 years, the pigs had killed off 90% of the petrel population, eating eggs and chicks from the nests the petrels had burrowed into the ground.  When the English arrived in 1609, there were only a few of the petrels surviving on remote islands in the archipelago.  Thanks to predation by animals brought over by the settlers, combined with hunting by the settlers themselves, the Bermuda Petrel (locally called the cahow) was thought to be extinct by the 1620s.

     Then, more than 300 years later, in 1951, 18 nesting pairs of the Bermuda Petrel were spotted on a few tiny, remote, rocky islands of the Bermuda archipelago.   One of the bird’s ‘discoverers’ was then teen-aged David Wingate.   The discovery inspired him to attend Cornell University, where he studied ornithology.  He returned to Bermuda and devoted his entire career to protecting the Bermuda Petrel, which lives nowhere else in the world.

     Wingate and other wildlife managers worked to restore a viable petrel population.  They created artifical nesting burrows that could not be accessed by non-endangered birds known to take over petrel nests. 

     Thanks to the efforts of Wingate and his team, the Bermuda Petrels’ numbers grew, albeit slowly.   But when a hurricane swept through in 2003, many of the nesting burrows on three of the four breeding islands were damaged. Many of the nests were destroyed completely.  

     Scientists responded by creating a new and safer habitat for the fragile petrel population.  A special reserve was created on one of the islands.  Nesting sites were built at a high elevation, to ensure protection from hurricane flooding and erosion.  Native trees were replanted, so that the island today has a closed canopy forest similar to the one under which the birds nested before the English settlers appeared.   

     In 2009 the first live petrel birth in the reserve was documented.  Today there are roughly 200 of the birds in Bermuda.  Scientists are cautiously optimistic about the bird’s future.  But the petrel is a slow breeder, with females laying just a single egg every year or even every other year.  

     Bermuda Petrels spend most of their adult lives on the open seas.  When they are five years old, they return to their original nesting grounds to begin breeding.  Petrels mate for life.–April Moore

 

photo by Ned Brinkley

    

  

     For the first time in more than a century, a California condor chick has hatched inside Pinnacles National Monument, the federal wildlife reserve in California that was once the species’ domain.  The young condor chick brings the total number of California condors in the world to 350.

     Biologists and others have been celebrating the birth.  After all, this bird–the largest North American land bird–was at the brink of extinction less than 30 years ago.  In 1982, only 22 of the birds were left in the world, thanks to habitat loss, poaching, and lead poisoning.  Those birds were then placed in a captive breeding program at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. 

     By 1991, the condors’ numbers had increased enough that biologists could begin reintroducing the birds into the wild, to their native California and the Southwest.  Now, about 180 of the 350 California condors live free in the Grand Canyon area, Zion National Park in Utah, and in the coastal mountains of California and northern Baja California.  

     The newest condor chick is being raised by a female who was released into the wild in 2004 at Pinnacles and by a male released that same year on the California coast.  The couple had produced an egg that proved not viable, so biologists replaced the egg in the bird’s nest with a fertile condor egg.   

     The California condor is an impressive bird.  It is a black vulture with a largely bald head.  The skin color of the bird’s head ranges from yellowish to bright red, depending on the bird’s mood!  The wingspan of the California condor is wider than that of any North American bird, and the condor is one of the longest-living birds in the world.  A California condor can live for up to 50 years.  A scavenger, the condor eats large amounts of carrion.

     I am thankful to the scientists and others who worked with care and wisdom over the years to prevent the complete extinction that would have taken place without their committed efforts.–April Moore

 

photo by Michael Quinn