Category: Environment

Thinking Globally and Acting Locally (and Beyond) for Endangered and Threatened Species

There are important lessons to be learned from the case of the bald eagle. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) – now under threat itself – is important, but as the bald eagle shows, we have to use all the tools available to us at the local, state, and national levels to protect endangered and threatened species.

The iconic bald eagle is considered a success story of the ESA, although the truth is a bit more complicated than that. Before the ESA was passed in 1973, the bald eagle was covered by preceding legislation such as the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940. Two other actions are considered crucial to the recovery of the bald eagle in the U.S.: the banning of the pesticide DDT in 1972 and the subsequent importing of eagles from Canada to the U.S. in the 1970s. Together, these protections and actions allowed the bald eagle to be removed from the list of endangered species.

Although the bald eagle still has some protections within the U.S., its delisting under the ESA does present some challenges; for example, prime bald eagle habitat can be developed on without facing legal challenge. Thus, we should not rest on our laurels too much, even for a success story like the bald eagle.

Moreover, at the national level, the ESA is under attack. As the New Yorker summarizes:

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July 29, 2018
Women for Water Research swim Trans Tahoe Relay

On Saturday, July 21, I had the opportunity to join five other UC Davis-affiliated women to swim the Trans Tahoe Relay. The Trans Tahoe Relay serves as a fundraiser for Keep Tahoe Blue, but we also swam to support the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) and the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS). The day was sunny, the water was cool, clear, and refreshing, the mountains ringing the lake were beautiful. It was an exhilarating, fun, tiring, and fulfilling day.

Just to give a sense of size of the lake and its surroundings, here I am with my guard poodles at a Lake Tahoe overlook in August 2014.

The Trans Tahoe Relay is a race that crosses the northern end of Lake Tahoe from east to west at a part of the lake where it is 10 miles wide. (The lake overall is approximately 22 miles long and 12 miles wide – it’s a very large and deep lake!). Teams are composed of six swimmers each, with a support boat. (We owe big thanks to TERC for providing us with a boat and to TERC’s director, Geoff Schladow, for piloting the boat). The rules are that each swimmer swims for 30 minutes, and then takes turn swimming 10 minutes each, until the 10 miles is completed. On our team, after our first leg each of us did two 10-minute legs, with two members of the team doing a third 10-minute leg. So, we didn’t break any speed records, but we were happy with our result anyway!

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July 24, 2018
Bad process leads to mediocre decision on pesticide use in Davis, and not without wasted time and effort from staff and citizens

At its November 7, 2017 meeting, the City Council voted to change its Integrated Pest Management (IPM) policy, as well as ban the use of neonicotinoids (implicated in colony collapse disorder in bees) and a phase-out of glyphosate (often sold as Roundup, listed by the State of California as a probable human carcinogen). The decision was a mixed bag, containing some good elements and some bad. This article describes some of the events that led up to that decision. I write now because, with a new Council just seated, I hope that some of the bad process chronicled here can be avoided for future decisions.

This piece will of necessity be a bit lengthy. And that is part of my point. It took far too long for this issue to come to the City Council for a vote. At every turn certain staff members[1] sought to delay and subvert the will of commissioners, of citizens, and even of City Council members. As Jon Li says, sometimes one has to ask, “who is in charge in Davis?”

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July 17, 2018
Deadly predators threaten wolves

According to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, this past week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it is considering a proposal to strip Endangered Species Act protection from nearly all wolves in the lower 48 states.

The FWS tried to do the same thing back in 2013. The proposal was (as I described in a blog post for a different blog) arbitrary, capricious, and inconsistent. It received a huge pushback from the scientific community as well as many environmentally-minded individuals. But then the proposal was never acted on. I have been wondering what had happened to it – was it shelved because it was so poorly crafted, or was there some other reason?

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June 18, 2018