Sea Turtles: A Podcast
Category Archives: Recent Research
James Spotila’s Window Into the Untold Stories of Sea Turtles
By Shivani Kuckreja
Over the course of the last few decades, sea turtle populations have been decreasing rapidly. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of loggerhead turtle nests on Florida’s beaches decreased by 50%. Furthermore, in Indonesia’s Bird’s Head Peninsula, the number of leatherback turtle nests decreased by 78% between 1984 and 2011. Today, it is thought that one out of every one thousand sea turtles progresses to adulthood. Around the world, these creatures are seen less and less often, due to human interference, climate change, and commercial overfishing. But James R. Spotila is aiming to reverse this trend.
A graduate of the University of Dayton, Ohio, Spotila currently holds the L. Drew Betz Chair Professor of Environmental Science Drexel University and leads Drexel’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. With over one hundred articles published in leading biology, ecology, and physiology journals, Spotila’s knowledge of sea turtles around the world is broad and deep. In 2004, he authored award-winning book Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation. Seven years later, Spotila published a second book, titled Saving Sea Turtles: Extraordinary Stories from the Battle against Extinction.
With Spotila’s background grounded in the extensive knowledge of sea turtles and with his choice of book title, I expected Spotila’s Saving Sea Turtles: Extraordinary Stories from the Battle against Extinction to provide an engaging focus on a few detailed narratives of certain species of sea turtles.
In contrast to my expectations, Spotila provides a breadth of stories that offer glimpses into the lives of sea turtles without developing narratives fully enough to spark my empathy. While the topics of the narratives flow from one to the next, the narratives themselves seem to cut off to give way to a peek into a related topic far too soon. Within two pages, a narrative on turtle eggs and Viagra cuts off to lead way to an introduction to sea turtle nesting habits. Similarly, passages about the juvenile years of a sea turtle in the middle of the ocean are quickly followed by a new section of the book detailing the species’ eating habits. Especially with a book so broadly about sea turtles, (rather than focusing on one or two types of sea turtles), I felt as if I was still processing the very general information laid out in one narrative as I was being urged to move onto the next. While narratives can be powerful tools used to foster empathy and engage audiences, Spotila’s focus on a breadth of narratives rather than the depth of them leads to more overcharged passages than it does to clarity, and detracts from the self-reflection that should take place among readers when interacting with someone else’s stories.
In fact, what Spotila describes as a book that “contains facts and stories that will provide information and hope so that people today will…keep the dream alive of oceans full of sea turtles…” (x) seems to align more with a metanalysis of journal articles than it does with other books. Each narrative contains heavily condensed details of long-term studies conducted around the world throughout many different time periods. Over the course of the book, Spotila refers to studies on O2 and CO2 conducted in Florida and Costa Rica in the 1990s and 2000s, books on sea turtle juveniles written in the 1960s, and research on shrimp trawling in the 1970s, to name a few cited studies. Tackling such a wide range of topics during varying time periods, Spotila continues to struggle to weave engaging narratives throughout the book. Though I found the studies cited new and interesting, particularly those relating to the migration patterns of sea turtles, these studies overshadow the larger implications and complexities of the causes of and solutions to the sea turtle decline.
Overall, I felt Spotila could have better focused his time on suggesting solutions to ameliorate the decline of sea turtles worldwide. The last two pages of the book captured my attention the most and left me asking for more information, but the journey to those concluding pages felt as long as the average leatherback sea turtle migration.
Within the last two pages, Spotila hastily synthesized the complex relationships between the groups of people that rely on sea turtles to make a living, and gave readers some suggestions as to how we can play our part “in this unfinished play” (205). As a reader, this is the part I cared most about. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the book left me with more questions than answers, and while one may find this a positive reaction- a drive to learn more- I found it frustrating.
How can we address the growth of the human population without further declining the sea turtle population? In which ways can we change social norms to better protect sea turtles? Which economic tools (i.e. tax, subsidies) could the government use to help ensure that there is less illegal activity surrounding turtle egg poaching? How can we address the fact that “the developers have the will to develop, the commercial fisheries have the will to take all they can, and the poachers have the will to harvest all the eggs they can carry”? (204).
While I was hoping to finish Spotila’s book feeling motivated and driven to save sea turtles, I am left trying to deduce the endings of unfinished stories in order to better understand how I can help sea turtles survive and thrive in the future.
It’s Not Easy Being Green: Managing Eutrophication in Lake Erie
Algae from fertilizer runoff chokes Lake Erie. Photocredit: NASA, Jesse Allen, and Robert Simon
In 2011 Lake Erie turned green. A massive algae bloom covered the water, blocking sunlight, starving aquatic plants, and producing liver toxins, which posed a threat to human health. A similar event in 2014 deprived 500,000 Toledo, Ohio residents of drinking water for three days. Lifeguards have reportedly gotten sick from exposure to the water, and some people are starting to wonder if lake’s paint-like green goop will hurt the local tourism industry and are asking visitors to plan their vacations around the location of the algae blooms. All signs point to the algae blooms getting worse over time. The cause was the phosphorus in the artificial fertilizer used in conventional agriculture.
Phosphorus is element number fifteen on the periodic table, and nowhere near the first thing on most peoples’ minds. We all depend on phosphorus, because phosphorus is part of DNA. Usually, phosphorus recycles naturally in a biological system as plants take up phosphorus from the soil, animals eat the plants, and then excrete the phosphorus back into the soil. Most of the phosphorus available in a natural system comes from another living things, and phosphorus-rich rocks slowly wear down, adding back whatever phosphorus might be lost. However, human phosphorus mining has made unprecedented amounts of phosphorus available to biological systems, and those systems often can’t keep up. Since WWII, fertilizer use has increased drastically in an attempt to keep up with population growth. This new reliance on artificial fertilizers changed the face of agriculture, and led to some unexpected problems. When too much phosphorus accumulates in a pond, lake, or other large body of water, it sets off a process called eutrophication. During eutrophication, algae use the excess phosphorus to grow rapidly, which causes the algae to take up resources like oxygen more quickly than they otherwise would. In extreme examples, the algae can take up so much oxygen that fish can no longer live in the pond or lake.
So, what to do about it? The strategy will depend on the history of the specific catchment: the land area that drains into a given body of water. Many past attempts at managing catchments have not been as successful as managers had hoped. A summary paper written by people from a number of institutions including the Lancaster Environment Center and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology tried to make sense of global phosphorus management by placing catchments into three categories. Their hope was that these categories would help managers close the gap between phosphorus need and phosphorus availability, so that excess phosphorus won’t run off. The first category describes equilibrium, with inputs and outputs being roughly the same. This group requires no management. The second type of catchment has higher inputs than outputs, and accumulates phosphorus. The amount of phosphorus in these cases can outstrip the local plant-life’s ability to absorb it. Managers of this type of catchment should focus on avoiding increased inputs of phosphorus. The final type loses phosphorus over time, since outputs are greater than inputs. According to the article, managers of these catchments should focus on limiting phosphorus loss, and promoting a cycle, instead of increasing the phosphorus inputs.
Intervention details would of course depend on the specific location, and a number of factors contribute to Lake Erie’s phosphorus load. For example, while low-tillage farming, while usually a good idea, may contribute to the problem when combined with high phosphorus inputs. In high-tillage farming, farmers work the fertilizer into the soil, while in low-tillage farming, farmers apply fertilizer to the surface where it can easily run off. The low tillage farming was an environmental policy put in place to help avoid erosion. While this policy would usually conserve soil resources, the huge phosphorus inputs undermine the purpose of the technique. Whether this policy can remain in place without destroying the lake is still uncertain. Climate change speeds the problem, since warm temperatures promote increased algae growth, and changes in the patterns of spring rains wash more phosphorus into the lake. In addition, after phosphorus gets into a lake, it can be hard to reverse the damage, even if no more phosphorus is added, since biological processes take over and the same phosphorus gets cycled over and over again in the lake ecosystem.
Lake Erie has a long way to recover, and as climate change washes the surrounding farmland with ever-larger spring storms and sweeps ever-larger loads of phosphorus into the lake, algae blooms may only get worse, and the people and animals that depend on Lake Erie will only suffer more in the future if a solution isn’t found. And since agricultural runoff is the primary source of phosphorus draining into the lake, this question is firmly tied to the amount and kinds of food the farmers can grow and what techniques and materials they use in the process. Can the residents of the Lake Erie catchment produce the right amount of food without poisoning the lake? The answer may be that they’ll have to.
Toward a Btter Solution: New Study Analyzes Insect Resistance in Bt Crops
In 1983, geneticists inserted a bacterium gene, “Bt” into a plant to create the first inherently pest-resistant crop. Just over a decade later, “Bt” corn was introduced to the US market, and 15 years after that the genetically modified crop made up 67% of corn planted in the US. The crop, which requires no chemical pesticides to resist corn borers and other insects, reduced pesticide use by 18.5 million pounds and saved farmers $139 million in pesticide costs (and that’s just data for 2004).
US producers aren’t the only winners in this story. Worldwide, over 420 million hectares of land are devoted to Bt crops – an over 60-fold increase since 1996 – and producers and consumers globally have enjoyed the benefits. In India, Bt cotton has increased yields by over 30%. In China, annual gains of Bt cotton are estimated at $1 billion. Worldwide, Bt crops have resulted in more efficient use of water, more productive agriculture, and reduced food costs.
So what could possibly be wrong with this technology? It turns out that the very insects Bt crops are designed to repel might be becoming resistant. A recent study in Nature details this phenomenon, yet offers evidence to show it is far from inevitable.
In their 2015 paper, “Insect Resistance to Bt Crops: Lessons From the First Billion Acres,” Bruce Tabashnik, Thierry Brévault, and Yves Carrière outline the theory behind evolutionary resistance to Bt cotton and corn, analyze to what degree pest adaptation to Bt is occurring, and offer advice to slow it from happening.
So how exactly does Bt technology work, and how do pests build up resistance? Bt is an organic soil bacterium that produces proteins toxic to many insects. When inserted into the genes of a crop – say corn or cotton – the plant can resist pests internally—in particular those that bore into stems. However, insects are able to adapt. An insect can randomly develop a trait that renders it resistant to the Bt gene, pass it on to future generations, and eventually, through natural selection, subsist happily on the very crops designed to repel it. If this phenomenon is so easy to predict, shouldn’t we have measures in place to prevent it from happening? We do, in fact, and Tabashnik, Brévault, and Carrière explain the biology behind these processes.
The research team explains the “refuge theory” – the practice of planting non-Bt crops in a field of Bt crops in order for “resistant” pests to mate with non-resistant pests, and prevent the “resistance” gene from being passed on. At the heart of their research was the question: are producers and farmers taking the necessary precautionary measures to avoid resistance? To answer this question, the researchers synthesized years of data, and analyzed whether or not producers were selling crops with high enough concentrations of Bt toxins, and whether or not farmers were complying with “refuge” regulations.
Their findings were not encouraging. Since 2005, the number of pest species with field-evolved resistance to Bt toxins has increased from 1 to 5. One case reported over 50% resistant individuals and reduced effectiveness expected, and another 4 reported 1-6% resistance. While this last conclusion might not seem so dire, it’s important to consider the rate at which these pests develop resistance. For a particular moth exposed to Bt corn in the Philippines, survival increased from .4% to 5.5% (a fourteen-fold increase) in only two years!
Tabashnik, Brévault, and Carrière highlight the gravity of these conclusions, but are encouraged by the lack of significant increase in resistance in the remaining 11 cases. They point to the factors in these cases that led to this result: a recessive “resistance” gene, few pests with “resistant” genes in the population, and an abundance of non-Bt crops in the field. The other 13 cases where resistance developed all violated these conditions; producers were selling Bt crops with too-low doses of toxins, farmers weren’t planting enough non-Bt crops… etc. The research team found just what they expected; resistance occurred according to evolutionary theory.
So does this mean that the gains from Bt crops have been moot, and that we should fear for our increased dependence on them? It turns out, only if producers and farmers aren’t following protocol. Producers of Bt crops must meet Bt toxin dosage requirements, and farmers must plant an abundance of non-Bt crops for every Bt crop (the EPA recommends a ratio of 1:5.) Farmers must also routinely monitor fields and report cases of resistance. If producers and farmers fail to follow protocol, pests will inevitably develop resistance, and the Bt crops that have been so beneficial at reducing pesticide use, increasing yields, and saving money will be no more effective than their conventional counterparts.
Bombs to Bison: Determining the future of retired military installations
Bison and the Denver skyline, Rocky Mountain Arsenal, 2013. Photo by Hans Watson
What makes a wildlife refuge special?
Is it the ability to protect ecosystems and endangered species? Is it the protection of open space for recreational uses, like fishing and hiking? Is it the thought of keeping wilderness safe for future generations? How do the explosives fit in?
This is a very real question, and one that’s becoming increasingly relevant as the United States retires and reassigns the millions of acres of military land it acquired in the years surrounding World War II and the Cold War. In Indiana, the military history of Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge is written in the 7 million inert projectiles with live fuses, 1.5 million rounds of unexploded ordnance, and 75,000 kilograms of depleted uranium remaining at the site. In Colorado, prairie species like the American bison are slowly returning after a multi-billion dollar remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater at the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver. Sites like these can be important to conservation efforts, but behind new visitor-friendly goals belie complex histories that can’t be ignored, as David Havlick discusses in his 2014 paper “Opportunistic Conservation at Former Military Sites in the United States”.
Reusing military land for public use isn’t a new idea, but Havelick may be the first to comprehensively discuss the challenges faced by wildlife refuges struggling to contend with their military past, and the opportunities they offer for conservation.
Military to wildlife refuge conversion (sometimes abbreviated as M2W) can, in theory, work well both for the American people and the Department of Defense: since the military is responsible for paying for and carrying out remediation of retired bases, it’s far better for them to find a use that allows them to avoid the painful process of combing the entire base for hazards in preparation for construction. Instead, officials can focus on the areas where the contamination poses a risk to the public, and leave the rest as it is. Once these sites have been remediated, they’re usually turned over to the Fish and Wildlife Service for management. The United States has closed or reassessed over 400 military operations in the past quarter century, and EPA projections indicate that an attempt to fully remediate all 16,000 contaminated military sites in the country would constitute the largest remediation project in the U.S. government’s history. With M2W, the military offloads unwanted land while limiting expenditures, simultaneously providing open space for the public and supporting local ecosystems.
The sites’ military history doesn’t disappear when they’re declared wildlife refuges. At Big Oaks, rolling grasslands cleared by decades of munitions testing now support native birds and reptiles found nowhere else in the state. To maintain these grasslands, refuge workers conduct regular prescribed burns to decrease the risk of catastrophic wildfires. Because of the site’s history, however, conventional burn methods were deemed too dangerous given the presence of undetonated bombs, shells, and grenades. Instead, refuge workers experimented with ignition by remote-control helicopter rather than using human pilots. In the case of an accidental detonation, at least no human would be harmed.
Paradoxically, the presence of these dangers can protect wildlife; one refuge official pointed out that “From an enforcement and public education standpoint, it’s much easier to keep people out of refuges when there’s a public safety concern, such as UXO [unexploded ordnance] than for biological reasons.”
Environmental accountability in the military is a relatively new concept. With few notable exceptions, awareness of how domestic military activities affect the environment really only began to develop in the 1960s and 70s, well within the lifetimes of many people alive today. For this reason, the actions taken at these sites establish an important precedent for how we deal with contaminated military areas in the future. Military to wildlife refuge conversion, if approached with the right intentions, can save deeply contaminated land. If approached with the wrong intentions, it can provide an environmental smokescreen that masks a history of military negligence. War has changed a lot in the past fifty years, but we’re still living with the environmental consequences of previous generations’ choices. We have the chance to revisit those choices and at least try to make them right, by engaging with these sites’ military histories rather than obscuring them. If we don’t, future generations will suffer for it.
Will Women Survive the Incoming Storm?
A woman stands with her back against the wind on a small char island in Bangladesh.
Source: Bangladesh Climate Change Knowledge Network
On the evening of November 15th, 2007, a category-4 storm called Cyclone Sidr struck the low-lying coast of Bangladesh destroying everything in its path. The cyclone ravaged through 30 southern districts in both the Barisal and Khulna Divisions, where thousands of people lost their homes to strong 240 km/hr. winds, and countless others drowned and lost their lives to tidal surges 7 feet high. When the water receded, more than 3,000 individuals were dead, with over 65% of them women, and 5,000 more were missing (UNICEF Bangladesh 2007). Cyclone Sidr became one of the biggest tropical cyclones and one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit Bangladesh. Over 8.9 million Bangladeshis were affected by the storm, either through the loss of life, home, and livelihood, with women being the most disproportionately affected.
After the storm various researchers began to look into the different ways vulnerable communities, especially those of women were affected by climate change. In January 2015, the International Policy Research Institute (IPRI) published a report, which served to highlight the different ways vulnerable communities in countries like Bangladesh are disproportionally affected by climate change. The report, titled “Climate Change Adaptation Assets and Group-Based Approaches: Gendered Perceptions from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mali and Kenya[1],” especially highlighted the ways in which women will be affected by climate change.
A country map of Bangladesh
Source: Ezilion Maps
In order to understand these impacts for women, it is important to visualize the country as a whole. Bangladesh is a lush, green, predominately agricultural country located in South Asia and is among the most densely populated countries in the world. Approximately 75% of the population lives in rural areas that are highly dependent on subsistence farming among other agricultural activities that are highly sensitive to the impacts of climate change. Among these people is Swapna Begume. She has been living in her small town, South Kainmari, located in the Khulna Division of Bangladesh. She recalls Cyclone Sidr as a traumatizing experience, because even though they are constantly affected by natural disasters, like cyclones, the events are becoming much more magnified and destructive than ever.
The climatic changes Swapna talks about are just a few of the kinds of events the International Policy Research Institute addresses in their report. They include the possibility of a scenario with high emissions (more than 12,000 parts per million of CO2 equivalent), where global average sea levels could increase by approximately one meter by the end of the century. This would send a good portion of Bangladesh’s coastline underwater, and flood areas surrounding the over 80 rivers and tributaries running through the country! Not only so, climate change, or sea level rise in particular, would also increase the rate at which many of the riverbanks along the three main rivers, the Brahmaptura, Ganges, and Meghna, are eroding. Furthermore, extreme weather events, such as massive flooding, killer cyclones (like Sidr), destructive storm surges, devastating droughts, heavy monsoon downpours, and deadly salinity intrusion can all further damage crops and undermine the already fragile livelihoods of most coastal communities.
A community stands at the edge of an eroded riverbank in Bangladesh
Source: South Asian Disaster Knowledge Network
Women are at the forefront of the effects of these issues, especially in rural communities. More recently, there has been an influx in the number of male heads of households moving from the coastal regions of Bangladesh to urban areas. What this means for women is that they are then left behind to help keep everything, property and crops, afloat. When river erosion causes the main riverbanks to disappear, the only buffer or protection between coastal villages and flooding sources is destroyed. Furthermore, in the case of disaster, the female head of the household has the responsibility to secure the safety of everyone and everything before she can think of herself. After disasters, even if a woman survives, if her husband or father is killed during a natural disaster, she can lose access and ownership of her property, due to gender biased inheritance and family laws, lack of information about legal rights, and inability to access the justice system. For women in Bangladesh, control over assets and property is highly dependent on gender, which almost always favors men, so women are forced to attempt to survive in the harshest of conditions. Climate change also plays a huge role here because the impacts are expected to magnify the intensity and frequency of destructive storms like Cyclone Sidr. Swapna remembers that during Cyclone Sidr she was forced to decide whether she would save herself and her daughter or attempt to collect and safeguard her sheep and home.
Moreover, for those, like Swapna, who heavily rely on natural resources for survival, their ability to find resources and ways to adapt to climate change impacts is hindered by their gender. In a traditional society, like the one that exists in Bangladesh, women are often not allowed to be part of public conversations and are, therefore, less likely to receive critical information for emergency preparedness. The desire to gather the knowledge and tools in preparation for climate change is present in communities of women; the only thing missing is data that will support this will. The International Policy Research Institute included a very important point: adaptation strategies are defined by the way both men and women’s ideals intercept and intertwine with each other. However, with the current lack of information on the impacts climate change has on women, adaptation strategies will not be inclusive of women’s needs.
[1] Aberman, Noora-Lisa; Ali, Snigdha; Behrman, Julia A.; Bryan, Elizabeth; Davis, Peter; Donelly, Aliveen; Gathaara, Violet; Kone, Daouda; Nganga, Teresiah; Ngugi, Jane; Okoba, Barrack and Roncoli, Carla. 2015. Climate, change adaptation assets and group-based approaches: Gendered perceptions from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mali and Kenya. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1412. Washington, D.C.; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/128950
Race, Place, and Money: The Disparities of Lead Contamination
Community members in Southeast Los Angeles protest for the permanent closure of Exide Technologies in Vernon. Photo credit: Idalmis Vaquero
Just two miles from Exide Technologies in Vernon, California, a young Latina girl picks up some soil while playing at Salazar Park. Her mother immediately drops her work, and takes her daughter home to wash the soil off her hands. Why did she need to wash her daughter’s hands? State officials have told people in Southeast Los Angeles to keep children from playing with soil- testing has shown elevated lead levels in the soil near Exide’s Vernon facility, a lead smelter that has a chronic history of environmental violations.
A recent study published in the Environmental Geochemistry and Health Journal by Aelion et al., highlights the social inequities of lead exposure that are seen in this case. The study found that Black and Latino low-income children living in urban areas are at a greater risk of exposure to lead in soil compared to White children who come from a more affluent backgroud. The study examined two rural and two urban areas in South Carolina and found a relationship between lead exposure based on race, ethnicity, income, and geographic location.
Although legislation passed in the 1970s banned lead-based paint and leaded gasoline, exposure to lead is still a major public health issue, especially in recent years where over 177,000 children had blood lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter. Although 5 micrograms per deciliter sounds like a small dose, the effects have huge consequences. Lead exposure has been linked to impaired brain development in the early years, negative neurological outcomes, lower IQ, behavioral problems, and hearing impairments. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are no known safe blood lead levels in children and lead exposure is entirely preventable, which means more should be done to protect all children.
So why are some children more at risk that others? These are some reasons the study by Aelion et al. found:
- Race matters.
Aelion et al. point to race as an important determinant of lead exposure, with Black and Latino communities having a higher risk. This is partially due to the racial residential segregation that still exists in the United States today. To provide some context, 85% of residents living in Southeast Los Angeles are of color and 69% of those are Latino. Residential segregation, on average, affects access to employment opportunities, the quality of housing and neighborhoods, and the access and quality of medical care. These factors raise the likelihood that a person works at a facility that handles lead, a family lives in housing with lead-based paint, and a family lacks access to blood lead testing and medical treatment for children with possible lead poisoning.
- Low-income, high risk.
It is also important to note that many racial and ethnic minority individuals are also low-income. The study by Aelion et al argues that the combined association of race and a low income creates an even higher risk of lead exposure in children. In addition to being a predominately Latino community, 55% of the households in Southeast Los Angeles live 200% below the national poverty line. Low-income communities generally have less social participation given a higher concern to meet basic needs, which means people are less likely to demand lead clean-up in their communities even if there is contamination. Some families also tend not to address lead contamination, because it is a costly issue that does not have the most immediate or obvious effects.
- Urban areas mean more lead.
According to Aelion et al., urban areas have higher concentrations of lead since they generally have more potential sources of pollution. Congested roads with a legacy of leaded gasoline, housing units built before the 1970s with lead-based paint, and industries that handle lead increase the pathways by which the pollutant can enter a child’s body.
The threat of lead contamination is even more serious in Southeast Los Angeles. There are 9 lead emitters in Southeast Los Angeles, one of which is Exide, a facility that has over a dozen of environmental violations for emitting high levels of lead into the air, water, and soil nearby. Los Angeles also has a many roads and a substantial amount of housing built before 1970s. The simple fact that a child lives in an urban environment contributes to a higher risk of lead exposure. However, it is important to recognize that all of these factors are interconnected; low-income children of color also tend to live in inner cities.
Fortunately, there are environmental justice organizations that are addressing the various dimensions of this problem. Organizations, such as Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ) in Southeast Los Angeles tirelessly fought for the closure of Exide Technologies and are currently fighting for the cleanup of the homes affected.
But, this is not just about Los Angeles or South Carolina. There is a strong awareness that the fight to reduce lead exposure is not yet over.Communities around the country affected by unjust lead exposure should know that they are not alone; our children’s futures depend on our efforts to demand a safe environment for them to live and play in.
Whole Foods, Fractured Communities: Green Gentrification in Jamaica Plain
Activists with Whose Foods / Whose Communities, a multicultural coalition against gentrification, demand “an affordable and diverse Jamaica Plain.” Photo courtesy Whose Foods / Whose Communities.
Working to Get Leatherback Turtles Off of the Endangered Species List
The largest turtles on earth, leatherback turtles can be traced back to a family of turtles that existed 100 million years ago. With soft, rubbery shells measuring up to seven feet in length, these unique and historic creatures are easily identifiable. Over time, however, leatherback turtles are seen less and less often. In 1970, the species was deemed endangered- a label it continues to carry today.
http://nmlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/leatherback.jpg
There are many reasons why the leatherback turtle population is declining: the destruction of coastal nesting habitats, the frequency with which turtles drown in fishing nets, the Malaysian preference for turtle eggs as sources of nutrition, and the inability of turtles to tell the difference between their main food source and plastics, to name a few.
For humans, particularly those who rely on fish as sources of income or food, the loss of the leatherback turtle will have serious repercussions. The turtles’ main source of nutrition is jellyfish. The loss of the leatherback turtle population would cause a burgeoning of the jellyfish population. Because jellyfish feed on fish larvae, the populations of commercially popular fish could decline, impacting fishermen and consumers, thus impacting our economy.
Leatherback turtles need human help, and there are many ethical reasons why fishermen should answer their plea. For starters, there is a historical aspect to the species existence. Leatherback turtles were on this earth well before humans were and only began their steep decline with the existence of humans. Because fishermen are the primary reasons why leatherback turtles are disappearing, it is their responsibility to clean up the mess that the majority of them have made. Furthermore, leatherback turtles play an important role in various ecosystems worldwide, and healthy ecosystems contribute to large economic gains, particularly in the fishing industry.
While we must work to ensure that the fishermen do not accidently kill the turtles that help maintain their jobs, we must not shy away from putting in effort to expand leatherback turtle populations worldwide.
Compound Risks and Resiliency: Why U.S. Coastal Cities May Not Be Doing Enough to Strengthen Resilience against Climate Change
Flooding paralyzes lower Manhattan during Superstorm Sandy (Photo courtesy of Flickr)
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, unleashing winds of 125 mph, record-breaking storm surge and heavy, persistent rainfall. The storm was particularly devastating for New Orleans, where conditions overwhelmed the city’s inadequate flood-protection system, inundated entire neighborhoods and displaced up to 400,000 residents. Seven years later, Superstorm Sandy roared up the East Coast, bringing extreme storm surge and eventually becoming the second costliest natural disaster in U.S. history behind Hurricane Katrina. As damaging as Sandy was, however, the storm could have been many times more destructive than Katrina. The reason? While Katrina brought with it great storm surge and heavy precipitation, Sandy actually produced very little rainfall. The significance? New research now suggests that major U.S. coastal cities are increasingly at risk of storms that produce both strong storm surge and rainfall. Consequently, over 123 million people, or nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population who live along the coast are now much more likely to experience destructive storms more like Katrina than Sandy.
In a new study published in Nature Climate Change, researchers have found that the odds of an event similar to Hurricane Katrina have since doubled for cities like New Orleans and New York in the past 30 years. Based on historical data, the study finds that storm surge and heavy precipitation, two mechanisms by which flooding in coastal zones can occur, are not only increasing, but are also occurring together as a result of climate variability and change. According to the study, the frequency of this phenomena, known as compound flooding events, has been rising over the past three to four decades in six major U.S. coastal cities (New York City, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, Los Angeles and St. Petersburg).
Hurricane Katrina was a drastic example of a compound-flooding event that caused inadequate infrastructure such as levees and floodwalls to breach and crumble due to the dangerous combination of heavy storm surge and significant rainfall. Meanwhile, Superstorm Sandy, which had significant storm surge as well, hardly produced any rainfall and was therefore not a compound flooding event. If Superstorm Sandy had been one, the loss of life and damage could therefore have been significantly worse for millions who reside on the East Coast. By the same token, however, because compound flooding events are indeed occurring twice as often in the last 30 years for coastal cities, then NYC and other coastal cities should expect and prepare for Katrina-like events.
Despite this meteorological difference, both Katrina and Sandy also demonstrated that the impacts of severe flooding, whether caused a by compound event or not, are disproportionately borne by low-income and minority communities. Following Katrina, one-fifth of those displaced by the storm were likely to have been poor and African Americans alone were estimated to have accounted for 44 percent of the victims. Following Sandy, African Americans and Latinos were found to have disproportionately resided in census tracts within three miles of the storm surge. Storm surge is especially damaging since it also causes overflow of industrial waste sites and contamination of water supplies-many of which belong to low-income and minority groups. When combined with a heavy precipitation event, where rainfall overflows sewers and storm drainage systems, the impacts of storm surge on low-income and minority communities can be exacerbated.
In the aftermath of both storms, these two cities have responded by improving resiliency including efforts building community preparedness against future storms and promoting long-term sustainability. After 10 years of rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans has bounced back, regaining up to 90 percent of its population since the storm hit and building its resilience against the impacts of future storms. Meanwhile, NYC is undertaking rigorous efforts to build a stronger, more resilient community to prepare for future risk. Yet, as this study illustrates, it is becoming increasingly likely that NYC will soon have a Katrina-type event in its future. Therefore, NYC and other major cities must quickly learn from the lessons of Katrina, recognize the disproportionate impacts that people of color face from extreme weather events and continue to strengthen resilience to meet these increasing risks. With a more accurate gauge of the risk, cities should therefore reflect these growing understandings of climate change and its subsequent impacts.