location: California

location: California

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50 years of geographic insight: In interview with Jack Dangermond on Esri’s journey and the future of GIS
- The digital mapping platforms developed by Esri, including ArcGIS, have revolutionized conservation and environmental planning, management and policymaking. Esri co-founder Jack Dangermond calls geographic information systems (GIS) “a sort of intelligent nervous system for our planet at a time when humanity desperately needs one to address the environmental and humanitarian crises at hand.”
- He credits Esri’s success to a sustainable trajectory of heavy investment in R&D, not being beholden to outside investors, and providing discounted and free use of its software to environmental nonprofits.
- In this interview with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler, Dangermond says that technology, amid the current fractured political climate, should be employed to encourage understanding rather than dwell on divisions.
- The text of the interview has been edited for clarity and flow.

Largest dam removal ever, driven by Tribes, kicks off Klamath River recovery
- The largest dam-removal project in history was completed in October, freeing 676 kilometers (420 miles) of the Klamath River and its tributaries in California and Oregon.
- The project involved removing four dams, built between 1918 and 1964 to provide electricity. They had devastating effects on salmon populations and tribal communities, leading to a decades-long, tribe-led movement for their removal.
- The $450 million project involved complex engineering to remove the dams and, now, to restore the river ecosystem, including replanting native vegetation and reshaping the river channel, incorporating tribal knowledge to improve habitats for salmon and other species.
- The first chinook salmon in more than 60 years are already spawning above the former Iron Gate dam and a fall-run Chinook salmon was identified in Oregon for the first time in more than 100 years. Experts expect coho salmon populations to recover in six to 12 years and Chinook salmon in 15 to 20 years in what was once the third-largest salmon producing river in the contiguous U.S.

Biomass power grows in Japan despite new understanding of climate risks
- New biomass power plants continue to come online in Japan, requiring an ever-greater quantity of imported fuel. The government’s feed-in tariff scheme, which has been tweaked but not canceled, incentivized these projects.
- Although understanding of forest biomass’s negative environmental and climate impacts is growing in Japan, policy advocates say operators of existing biomass power plants need to pay back construction bank loans, and the government’s refusal to admit its mistake is keeping biomass plants running.
- A major biomass fuel type is wood pellets, which in Japan is presently primarily sourced from plantation forests in Vietnam and primary forests in British Columbia, Canada. While BC ecologists have spoken out against wood pellets, and found allies in Vietnam, the biomass issue has proved challenging for Japan’s forest advocates.
- Though historically a small source of wood pellets for Japan, the growing popularity in Indonesia of pellets for both export and domestic use risks tropical forests there being cleared to make way for biomass energy plantations, NGOs warn.

Studying snakes without rattling them? There’s now tech for that
- Scientists have used tiny, noninvasive radio transmitters and accelerometers to study the habitats and behaviors of red diamond rattlesnakes.
- While the radio transmitters help researchers keep track of the snakes, the accelerometers give them an in-depth understanding of the snakes’ physical movements as they hunt, eat and even mate.
- Historically, tracking snakes has involved surgically implanting telemetry radios into them, but this process is time-consuming and also risks infecting the animals.
- Red diamond rattlesnakes, native to southwest California in the U.S. and Baja California in Mexico, face increasing threats from habitat loss and vehicle strikes.

Otter-preneurs: Female sea otters lead the way in tool use for survival
- In Monterey Bay, California, southern sea otters face food scarcity as their preferred prey, urchins and abalone, have declined due to climate change, overfishing and other environmental factors.
- To adapt, some sea otters, particularly females, use tools like rocks, shells and even discarded glass bottles to crack open harder-shelled alternative prey like snails, clams and mussels.
- A study of 196 tagged sea otters found that frequent tool users, especially females, could consume prey up to 35% harder than non-tool users and had significantly less tooth damage.
- The findings highlight the importance of behavioral flexibility in the face of ecological challenges and underscore the need to protect the threatened southern sea otter population, which plays a crucial role in maintaining the balance of coastal ecosystems.

UK’s Drax targets California forests for two major wood pellet plants
- Golden State Natural Resources (GSNR), a California state-funded nonprofit focused on rural economic development, along with the U.K.’s Drax, a global maker of biomass for energy, have signed an agreement to move ahead on a California project to build two of the biggest wood pellet mills in the United States.
- The mills, if approved by the state, would produce 1 million tons of pellets for export annually to Japan and South Korea, where they would be burned in converted coal power plants. The pellet mills would represent a major expansion of U.S. biomass production outside the U.S. Southeast, where most pellet making has been centered.
- GSNR promotes the pellet mills as providing jobs, preventing wildfires and reducing carbon emissions. California forest advocates say that cutting trees to make pellets —partly within eight national forests — will achieve none of those goals.
- Opponents note that the U.S. pellet industry is highly automated and offers few jobs, while the mills pollute rural communities. Clear-cutting trees, which is largely the model U.S. biomass firms use, does little to prevent fires and reduces carbon storage. Pellet burning also produces more emissions than coal per unit of energy produced.

Where sea otters play, salt marshes stay, new study shows
- A new study has found that sea otters are helping to slow down salt marsh erosion in Elkhorn Slough in California by eating burrowing crabs.
- Drawing on a range of data sources, which included surveys and field experiments, the authors found that in places where sea otters were abundant, the erosion of the salt marsh slowed by as much as 80-90% over the course of the study.
- Salt marshes worldwide are disappearing due to climate change-driven factors such as rising sea levels and other human pressures.

First ever U.S. Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area declared in California
- The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, Resighini Rancheria, and Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community designated the first ever Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area (IMSA) in the U.S. along the northern California coast.
- The tribes plan to steward nearly 700 mi2 (1,800 km2) of their ancestral ocean and coastal territories from the California-Oregon border to Little River near the town of Trinidad, California.
- As sovereign nations, the tribes say they’re not seeking state or federal agencies’ permission to assert tribally led stewardship rights and responsibilities; rather, they want to establish cooperative relationships recognizing their inherent Indigenous governance authority.
- The tribes aim to restore traditional ecological knowledge and management practices that sustained the area’s natural abundance before colonial disruption.

Marine conservation technology hub rises from old L.A. wharf (analysis)
- In 2014, the Port of Los Angeles gave a 50-year lease to an aging wharf called City Dock No. 1 to a project called AltaSea.
- AltaSea is a non-profit project founded in 2014 that in less than 10 years has become a leading ‘blue economy’ research hub focused on renewable ocean energy, sustainable aquaculture and other blue technologies.
- Hub tenants include marine renewable energy startups, sustainable aquaculture projects, a marine seed bank, a research effort aimed at decarbonizing oceanic shipping, and other projects.
- This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Is there a ‘lighter side’ to our possible environmental apocalypse? (commentary)
- Ocean activist and author David Helvarg deals with dark thoughts about the state of the world environment with humor in a new op-ed.
- “As a professional ocean advocate, I try and see the bright side of environmental and climate impacts such as sea level rise. While the ocean today covers 71% of the planet, it could soon cover 75%. More ocean means more ocean to love,” he jokes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Gordon Moore, tech legend and conservation philanthropist, has died at 94
- Technology entrepreneur and conservation philanthropist Gordon Moore died on Friday, March 24, at the age of 94.
- While most widely known for his career in technology, including predicting the pace of semiconductor chip development — which became known as Moore’s Law — and co-founding chipmaker Intel, Moore and his wife Betty have been major backers of conservation efforts from the Arctic to the Amazon.
- In the Amazon, the Moore Foundation has committed more than $800 million since 2000 to a range of initiatives, making it the single largest private funder of conservation in Earth’s largest rainforest.

Climate change is exacerbating human-wildlife conflict, but solutions await: Study
- A review of 49 studies reveals that a variety of weather-related phenomena that are likely to become increasingly common due to climate change may increase human-wildlife conflict.
- The most commonly reported conflict outcomes were injury or death in people (43% of studies) and wildlife (45% of studies), and loss of crops or livestock (45% of studies). Many documented cases are occurring in the tropics, with animals such as Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) in Mexico, and elephants in Africa and Asia, increasingly coming into conflict with local communities.
- The impacts of climate change on human-wildlife conflict may especially affect vulnerable human populations, particularly when combined with pressures that limit mobility and flexibility in humans and animals. These stressors should be minimized where possible, researchers suggest.
- A better understanding of the climatic drivers of human-wildlife conflict could help prevent or alleviate conflicts. Predicting the onset of extreme weather events such as droughts, and proactively responding with temporary measures to protect animals and people, could be one effective solution, as could sharing information on how to avoid the hazards of wildlife conflict.

Western monarch populations reach highest number in decades
- The western monarch butterfly population reached its highest number since the year 2000, with more than 335,000 butterflies counted during the annual Thanksgiving Western Monarch Count in California and Arizona.
- Western monarchs winter in California and migrate thousands of miles every year, in a migratory cycle that takes three or four generations. They are counted annually in their by volunteers at these sites.
- The population rebound is a positive development, but the species is still considered endangered and far from its population numbers in the 1980s when millions of butterflies could be seen in the trees.
- Conservation efforts include protecting overwintering sites, planting native plants, reducing pesticide use and supporting conservation initiatives; the public can also participate in community science projects and make simple changes in their gardens and communities.

California’s network of marine protected areas must be strengthened and expanded (commentary)
- During December 2022, California is holding its first 10-year review of its marine protected areas network, to be used to inform the network’s future.
- Previously, Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out a goal to protect 30% of the state’s land, water, and sea space over the decade.
- “As state regulators take account of the progress it has made of protecting marine ecosystems and wildlife, California should expand and strengthen upon its MPA success stories to ensure 30% of its state waters are fully protected by 2030,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indigenous knowledge guides the conservation of culturally important plants
- The Karuk Tribe in northern California has traditionally managed plants for food, fiber, and medicine, but decades of fire suppression and climate change are threatening culturally important species.
- Researchers partnered with Karuk Tribe land stewards to understand how fire suppression and drought have affected the quality of four plants central to their food security and culture.
- In this long-term collaborative study, Indigenous Knowledge expands on western science methods, assessing the ecological health of plants and their cultural usefulness.

Tribe and partners light up a forest to restore landscape in California
- The Karuk Tribe partnered with the U.S. Forest Service and other stakeholders to reintroduce traditional burning to help restore forests in the Klamath Mountains.
- The four-year-old project aims to prevent wildfires and make overgrown forests in Northern California look more like they did thousands of years ago when the Tribe stewarded them.
- So far, the project’s successes have been encouraging, however, the Tribe and Forest Service have encountered hurdles in their relationship and have had difficulty agreeing on different fire techniques.
- The project hopes to make burning a seasonal and sustainable part of ecosystem management.

Monarch butterflies are officially endangered
- The iconic monarch butterfly has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, meaning the species is likely to go extinct without significant intervention.
- The number of migratory monarch butterflies has dropped more than 95% since the 1980s, according to counts at overwintering sites in California and Mexico.
- Renowned for their impressive migrations of more than 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) over several generations, the monarch decline is driven by habitat loss, herbicide and pesticide use, logging at overwintering sites in Mexico, urban development and drought.
- Experts say that planting milkweed, reducing pesticides and protecting overwintering sites for butterflies are measures needed to protect this beloved species.

Scientists strive to restore world’s embattled kelp forests
- Kelp forests grow along more than one-quarter of the world’s coastlines, and are among the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems. But these critical habitats are disappearing due to warming oceans and other human impacts.
- Sudden recent wipeouts of vast kelp forests along the coastlines of Tasmania and California highlighted how little was known about protecting or restoring these vital marine ecosystems.
- Scientists are finding new ways to help restore kelp, but promising small-scale successes need to be ramped up significantly to replace massive kelp losses in some regions.
- Global interest in studying seaweed for food, carbon storage and other uses, may help improve wild kelp restoration methods.

California court ruling opens door for protection of insects as endangered species
- A court ruled this week that the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) can apply to invertebrates, including insects.
- This means legal protections will be in place for four native, endangered bumblebee species in California.
- The decision marks the end of a court battle between conservation groups and a consortium of large-scale industrial agricultural interests.
- An estimated 28% of all bumblebees in North America are at risk of extinction, with consequences for ecosystems and crops, as one-third of food production depends on pollinators.

California subpoenas ExxonMobil over plastic pollution
- California Attorney General Rob Bonta has subpoenaed ExxonMobil as part of an investigation into the role fossil fuel and petrochemical industries have played in the widening plastics crisis.
- The California Department of Justice is looking into whether ExxonMobil deliberately misled the public about the harmful effects of plastic and the difficulties of recycling it.
- In response, ExxonMobil has said the company shares society’s concerns about the plastics crisis, and that it is working to address the issue with advanced recycling technology.
- Environmental experts have welcomed the investigation, saying it’s time for the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries to be held accountable for the role they have played in this environmental issue.

Western monarchs make a spectacular comeback in California
- The population of monarch butterflies overwintering in California has increased a hundredfold, according to an annual count: more than 247,000 butterflies were counted in 2021, up from 2,000 butterflies in 2020.
- Scientists are unsure why numbers have soared, but speculate it is due to a suite of environmental factors including climate and food resources.
- Although this year’s count is overwhelmingly positive, the population has still plummeted from historic numbers; more than 1.2 million butterflies were recorded in 1997.
- Pesticide- and herbicide‐intensive agriculture, urban sprawl, pollution, and climate change have contributed to the global decline of insects, including monarchs.

‘We scientists engage in soft diplomacy’: Q&A with Christine Wilkinson
- Christine Wilkinson is a carnivore ecologist, National Geographic Explorer and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who uses technology to examine interactions between humans and wildlife in East Africa and California.
- Her work is interdisciplinary, using participatory mapping to include local communities in her work and learn about how peoples’ perceptions about carnivores affects conflicts with them.
- Wilkinson also notes that human-wildlife conflicts areas are rooted in human-human conflict, often based in socioeconomic and sociopolitical contexts as well as histories.
- Wilkinson spoke with Mongabay about why hyenas get such a bad rap, her dream of a solar-powered camera-trap grid, and her work bringing together other African American scientists in mammalogy.

‘Everyone is capable’ of climate action, say Kevin Patel and Julia Jackson
- Earlier this week climate activists Kevin J. Patel and Julia Jackson published a commentary in Newsweek that effectively accused the Biden Administration of betraying their climate commitment at last month’s U.N. Climate Change Conference by proceeding with an auction of 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for offshore drilling.
- Patel and Jackson have personal reasons for their climate activism: Patel has suffered life-long heart issues due to poor air quality in Los Angeles, while Jackson lost her home in Sonoma to a wildfire in 2019. Both run non-profits focused on rallying young people around climate action.
- Patel founded OneUpAction International in 2019 to empower traditionally marginalized youth communities with resources to press for change. Jackson, whose parents created a global wine company that emphasizes sustainability, founded Grounded in 2017 to identify and amplify solutions to planetary problems.
- Patel and Jackson spoke about their activism, their recent Newsweek commentary, and other issues in a December 2021 exchange with Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler.

How Andean Condors in Peru saved the California condor from extinction (commentary)
- The California Condor narrowly dodged extinction in the 1980s thanks to conservation efforts involving Andean Condors reintroduced to Peru’s Illescas peninsula.
- The Illescas wilderness will soon be officially protected as Illescas National Reserve, a development which spurred Enrique Ortiz, Senior Program Director at the Andes Amazon Fund, to recount the story of how Andean Condors helped save the California Condor.
- The Spanish version of this piece originally appeared on Mongabay-Latam.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Can we save the bees? Absolutely. Let’s start with the native species (commentary)
- To ‘save the bees’ we must begin with the most important question: which bees need saving?
- Honey bees are not native to North America, and generally prefer to pollinate non-native plants and crops, yet they enjoy mass appeal and major support campaigns via everyone from almond farmers to actress Angelina Jolie.
- North America’s native bees are adapted to the continent’s unique habitats and flowering plants that occur therein, therefore supporting native flora. But when floral resources are scarce, honey bees outcompete the natives for resources even in native ecosystems.
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Thanks to the Yurok Tribe, condors will return to the Pacific Northwest
- The California condor is a creature of great cultural significance to the Yurok Tribe in what is now Northern California, but was wiped out from their ancestral territory by the early 20th century.
- Tribal elders made the decision to bring the bird back in 2003, kicking off years of research and outreach to pave the way for this critically endangered species’ return.
- This spring, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally gave the green light for a population of California conders to be reestablished in the Pacific Northwest; the first four will be released next spring.

Playing the long game: ExxonMobil gambles on algae biofuel
- Algae biofuel initially looked promising, but a few key problems have thwarted major research efforts, including development of a strain of algae able to produce plentiful cheap fuel, and scaling up to meet global energy demand.
- Other alternative energy solutions, including wind and solar power, are outpacing algae biofuel advances.
- Much more investment in money and time is needed for algae biofuel to become viable, even on an extended timeline out to mid-century. While big players like Shell and Chevron have abandoned the effort, ExxonMobil continues work.
- In 2017, ExxonMobil, with Synthetic Genomics, announced they had used CRISPR gene-editing technology to make an algal strain that could pave the way to a low-carbon fuel and a sustainable future. But many environmentalists met the claim with skepticism, suspecting greenwashing.

Humanity’s challenge of the century: Conserving Earth’s freshwater systems
- Many dryland cities like Los Angeles, Cairo and Tehran have already outstripped natural water recharge, but are expected to continue growing, resulting in a deepening arid urban water crisis.
- According to NASA’s GRACE mission, 19 key freshwater basins, including several in the U.S., are being unsustainably depleted, with some near collapse; much of the water is used indiscriminately by industrial agribusiness.
- Many desert cities, including Tripoli, Phoenix and Los Angeles, are sustained by water brought from other basins by hydro megaprojects that are aging and susceptible to collapse, while the desalination plants that water Persian Gulf cities come at a high economic cost with serious salt pollution.
- Experts say that thinking about the problem as one of supply disguises the real issue, given that what’s really missing to heading off a global freshwater crisis is the organization, capital, governance and political will to address the problems that come with regulating use of a renewable, but finite, resource.

First COVID-19 cases in zoo gorillas raise alarm about wild populations
- Gorillas at San Diego Zoo in California have tested positive for COVID-19, the first cases of the novel coronavirus infecting great apes.
- Gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans share more than 95% of the human genome and are known to be at risk from certain human diseases.
- Zoo authorities said an asymptomatic staff member might have infected the gorillas.
- The news is likely to send alarm bells ringing, especially in Africa, home to the only wild populations of gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

Nature drone photos: 2020 highlights (Insider)
- Mongabay implemented a moratorium on reporting-related travel in mid-March due to the pandemic.
- Accordingly, the opportunities to take photos this year were limited, mostly to a pre-pandemic trip to the Amazon and pictures captured locally in California.
- This set includes 35 of Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler’s drone photos from the year.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers. All insider content is temporarily available to everyone.

It’s time to redefine business to save the planet (commentary)
- Humanity must make an evolutionary leap from a consumer species to a restorer species, and business can lead it. How? Start by embedding trees into every financial transaction.
- With current statistics showing the loss of nature at 68% globally since 1970, it’s clear that we’re not trying hard enough, not all of us. We’re waiting for someone else to solve this, abdicating responsibility en masse.
- “If ever there was a moment to discover what we’re actually capable of it’s now, because this is not what humanity evolved for. Our ancestors didn’t fight to live just for us to shop ourselves into extinction.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Philanthropist Wendy Schmidt: ‘Solutions are always local’
- Coming from respective backgrounds of design and technology, Wendy Schmidt and her husband, Eric, are the driving force behind some of the charitable organizations and investment vehicles working to address the challenges of climate change, clean energy, ocean health, and more.
- Wendy Schmidt says they bring a systems-thinking approach to these challenges, to allow stakeholders to see connections that may not be obvious on the surface and work toward more resilient solutions.
- “Humans need to develop new systems that work in harmony with the natural world, that are resilient in the face of a changing planet,” she says.
- In this interview with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler, Schmidt advocates for the role of technology, but also explains why the idea that technology can be “scaled” to meet any challenge is problematic.

Public lands and parks are our common heritage: Bruce Babbitt
- Until recently, protecting the environment was a bipartisan issue for Americans. But in an era marked by bitter divides, this is no longer the case.
- Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and Secretary of the Interior in the Clinton Administration, believes that environmental protection can again be a unifying issue for Americans. But to get there, advocates will need to rebuild consensus around issues that have wide support, like public lands and the benefits afforded by a healthy environment, and engage stakeholders who have often been ignored.
- Babbitt’s views are grounded in his long career in public office where he had to consistently navigate political divides: first as a Democratic governor in a traditionally conservative state with a Republican legislature, then as a member of the cabinet in the Clinton Administration when Republicans controlled Congress from 1994 through 2000.
- Babbitt spoke about his work, his ideas on how to build constituencies to bridge political divides on environmental issues, and his concerns about climate change during an October 2020 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

Can an art museum drive sustainability? Q&A with MOCA’s Klaus Biesenbach
- Contemporary art may seem tangential to environmental concerns for many people, especially those who are active practitioners of conservation, but The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles is looking to shift that perception.
- MOCA has formed an Environmental Council that aims to address some of today’s most pressing environmental issues. The council, composed of a diverse grouping of high-profile environmentalists, will specifically focus on climate, conservation and environmental justice and its cross-section with art in Los Angeles and “beyond”, according to a recent press release provided to Mongabay.
- In this exclusive interview, Director of MOCA Klaus Biesenbach speaks about the formation of MOCA’s Environmental Council and what it aims to achieve.

‘Off the chart’: CO2 from California fires dwarf state’s fossil fuel emissions
- This year’s fires in California have already burned through 1.4 million hectares (3.4 million acres) of land, and the fire season isn’t set to end for at least a couple of months.
- As of Sept. 15, the fires had generated more than 91 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is about 25% of the state’s annual emissions from fossil fuels.
- Higher carbon emissions contribute to a multipart climate feedback, accelerating climate change which then sets the stage for more fires that will emit an increasing amount of carbon dioxide, experts say.

In California, forest fires spark a babel of birdsong, study shows
- In California, a group of researchers mapped the sounds of the hermit warbler (Setophaga occidentalis) and analyzed the impacts caused by forest fire on the birds’ songs.
- The researchers found that the diversity of sounds increased in areas that had been affected by forest fires. Three factors impacted the songs: the fires; the massive effect of bird dispersion, which makes room for individuals from other groups to insert their “dialects”; and the time interval due to migration.
- “The result was that some areas have birds singing in more than one dialect, resulting in a complex diversity of sounds in California,” says the study’s lead author.

Bubbles, lasers and robo-bees: The blossoming industry of artificial pollination
- Ninety percent of flowering plants require the help of animal pollinators to reproduce, including most of the food crops we eat.
- But massive declines in the populations of bees, the most efficient pollinators around, and the rising cost to farmers of renting them to pollinate their crops, has spurred the growth of the artificial pollination industry.
- The technologies being tested in this field include the delivery of pollen by drones and by laser-guided vehicles and even dispersal via soap bubbles.
- Proponents of artificial pollination say it can both fill the gap left by the declining number of natural pollinators and help in the conservation of these species; but others say there may not be a need for this technology if there was a greater focus on conservation.

Western monarch butterfly numbers critically low for second straight year
- The latest annual count of western monarch butterfly numbers at their overwintering sites on California’s Pacific coast has revealed a second consecutive tally of less than the critical threshold of 30,000.
- The group behind the count says that figure may be the tipping point for the species, below which the population decline would accelerate into a downward spiral.
- A major threat to the butterflies is the loss of suitable habitat; 20 of their overwintering sites have been damaged by human activity in the past five years, and the vast majority of the remaining 400 sites lack protection.
- Scientists are calling on farmers to minimize pesticide use and plant climate-adapted hedgerows; land managers to restore habitat by growing monarch-suited vegetation; and ordinary citizens to make their own small yet meaningful contributions.

2019: The year rainforests burned
- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.
- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.

Heat stress is causing desert bird populations to collapse
- Sites in the Mojave Desert in the western U.S. surveyed by ecologists a century ago have lost an average of 43 percent of their breeding bird species.
- New research suggests higher temperatures have increased the daily water needs of birds, which could decimate their populations if climate change worsens.
- The most vulnerable birds are larger, carnivorous species such as turkey vultures and prairie falcons that get most of their water from prey.

How bioacoustics can transform conservation – Wildtech event in Palo Alto
- On October 17th Mongabay is holding a WildTech discussion panel on the potential for bioacoustic monitoring to transform conservation. The event is being hosted by the Patagonia store in Palo Alto, CA.
- Panel participants include University of Wisconsin ecologist Zuzana Burivalova, Conservation Metrics CEO Matthew McKown, and Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler.
- Doors open at 6:30 pm for snacks, beverages, and networking. The panel discussion begins at 7:15 pm.
- Admission is free but space is limited, so please RSVP.

New toolkit identifies multiple species from environmental DNA
- Researchers have developed a DNA analysis toolkit designed to speed the identification of the multiple species in a biological community by analyzing environmental DNA from a sample of water or soil.
- To confirm the presence of a species at a site, the tool compares its genetic barcode (short DNA sequence) to barcodes of known species in one of several reference databases.
- The toolkit’s advantage is its ability to quickly process many barcode sequences, at multiple analysis locations on the gene, that enable it to identify the species of the DNA sequences of many organisms at the same time.

Crab season to be cut short in California to protect whales and turtles
- A settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will close California’s Dungeness crab fishery three months early in 2019 to reduce the chances that whales and other sea life will become entangled in fishing gear.
- The crabbing season in 2020 and 2021 will also be shuttered early in places where high concentrations of whales come to feed in the spring, such as Monterey Bay.
- Conservationists applauded the changes, saying that they will save animals’ lives.
- The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations was also involved in hammering out the settlement, and its representative said that the new rules, while “challenging,” would help the industry move toward a “resilient, prosperous, and protective fishery.”

A nature and reptile enthusiast’s Southern California love story (insider)
- Mongabay’s Director of Partnerships shares what inspired his love of nature.
- The Santa Monica Mountains, just north of Los Angeles, was the scene of Martin’s childhood search for snakes, lizards, skinks, salamanders, newts, frogs and turtles. Oh, and tarantulas and scorpions.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.

Should Trump be listening to indigenous people on fire management?
- The U.S. President again this week used an inaccurate statement about forest management to make a political point.
- Forest ecologists pushed back, saying Trump’s understanding of forest management is problematic.
- A better management technique than the President’s idea of forest cutting has long been in use in California: prescribed burns, which indigenous peoples have practiced for millennia.
- A recent Mongabay feature on the Karuk and Yurok indigenous peoples in northern California illustrated how they still use fire on their lands, and how it’s becoming a model for governmental land managers.

How Mongabay grew from a guy in his pajamas to a multinational media organization (insider)
- Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler writes about how Mongabay grew from a small venture into an environmental media outlet spanning continents.
- Despite its humble beginnings, Mongabay’s reputation grew rapidly, with many perceiving it as a large organization, though it was just one person managing everything from his apartment or, when on the road, his backpack.
- By investing large amounts of time into building the site, the founder turned his dedication into startup capital, ultimately leading him to leave his full-time job to focus on Mongabay and pursue an ad-based revenue model.
- Establishing Mongabay Indonesia in 2012 as a non-profit marked a significant milestone; the site quickly gained traction, influencing national leaders and catalyzing future expansions in Latin America and India.

The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
- This is our annual rainforests year in review post.
- Overall, 2018 was not a good year for the planet’s tropical rainforests.
- Rainforest conservation suffered many setbacks, especially in Brazil, the Congo Basin, and Madagascar.
- Colombia was one of the few bright spots for rainforests in 2018.

Photos highlight evolving roles of AI, citizen science in species research
- A recent observation by an amateur naturalist of a fiddler crab species hundreds of kilometers north of its known range challenged the complementary strengths of computer vision and human expertise in mapping species distributions.
- The naturalist uploaded this record to the iNaturalist species database used by amateurs and experts to document sightings; expert input correctly identified the specimen after the platform’s computer vision algorithms did not acknowledge the species outside its documented range.
- Citizen naturalist observations can be used to document rapid changes in species distributions. They also can improve modeling and mapping work conducted by researchers and play an increasing prominent role in building environmental databases.

Fire and agroforestry revive California indigenous groups’ traditions
- In Northern California, the Karuk and Yurok indigenous peoples are burning away decades of forest management practices and revitalizing their foodways and communities.
- Prescribed burning is the main tool in the groups’ agroforestry system, which encourages proliferation of traditional foods like huckleberries, acorns, salmon and elk, medicinal herbs like wormwood, plus willow, bear grass and hazel for basket making.
- Agroforestry is the conscious tending of groups of trees, shrubs and herbs in a forest system that benefits biodiversity, sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, improves water quality, and also provides traditional foods that these indigenous peoples need to carry on their customs.
- At a time when California is repeatedly ravaged by wildfires, these groups’ fire management practices are being studied by state and national agencies to inform their own fire management techniques.

Satellites and citizen science pinpoint migratory bird refueling stops
- Researchers used satellite images to assess the effectiveness of financial incentive programs for farmers in creating habitat for waterbirds, including ducks, geese, and shorebirds, in California’s Central Valley, where nearly all natural wetlands have been converted to agriculture.
- Observations of 25 waterbird species by hundreds of citizen scientists helped to identify the target zones for water management and to verify the birds’ use of managed areas.
- The satellite data indicated that a severe drought substantially reduced the birds’ open-water habitat and that the incentive programs created more than 60 percent of available habitat on specific days during the migrations.
- The researchers state that remotely sensed data can be used effectively to track water availability and regularly update water and wetland managers on how much habitat is available and where, so they can coordinate water management activities.

Forests and indigenous rights land $459M commitment
- A group of 17 philanthropic foundations has committed nearly half a billion dollars in support of land-based solutions to climate change and the recognition of indigenous peoples’ and traditional communities’ collective land rights and resource management.
- The announcement is notable because it brings together a range of philanthropies that have often taken a siloed approach to tackling the world’s social and environmental problems.
- The pledge, which includes both previous commitments and new money, raises the profile of two often overlooked opportunities in climate change mitigation: forests, which could help meet up to a third of global emissions targets by 2030, and indigenous and local communities, whose lands comprise nearly a sixth of global forest cover.
- The foundations signed an agreement stating five shared priorities, ranging from the rights of indigenous communities to transitioning toward more sustainable food systems.

Aligning forces for tropical forests as a climate change solution (commentary)
- Tropical forest governments need help to achieve their commitments to slow deforestation and are not getting it fast enough; companies could deliver some of that help through strategic partnerships, especially if environmental advocacy strategies evolve to favor these partnerships. Aspiring governments also need a mechanism for registering and disseminating their commitments and for finding potential partners.
- Climate finance is reaching most jurisdictions, but not at the speed or scale that is needed. Tropical forest governments need help making their jurisdictions easier to do business in and more bankable; they are beginning to develop innovative ways to use verified emissions reductions, to create industries and institutions for low-carbon development, and to establish efficient, transparent mechanisms for companies to deliver finance for technical assistance to farmers.
- Partnerships between indigenous peoples and subnational governments have emerged as a promising new approach for both improving representation of forest communities in subnational governance and delivering greater support, unlocking climate finance in the process.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Climate leadership means keeping fossil fuels in the ground in tropical forests and beyond (commentary)
- Ahead of next week’s Global Climate Action Summit, Amazon Watch’s Executive Director Leila Salazar-López argues that California Governor Jerry Brown can show true climate leadership by phasing out oil and gas production in the state.
- She notes that large volumes of crude oil from the Ecuadorian rainforest are processed in California, making the state complicit in the environmental problems plaguing indigenous communities in the Amazon and local communities living near refineries in the state.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

An anti-poaching technology for elephants that is always listening
- Summer 2018 marked the successful completion of the first of three test phases for a new anti-poaching technology elephants can wear on a tracking collar.
- Called WIPER by its development team, the device integrates with wildlife tracking collars and listens for the shockwave, or sonic boom, of a high-powered rifle, a common weapon in the industrial killing of elephants and other megafauna.
- WIPER’s design overcomes two key challenges for high-tech wildlife monitoring: power source (by creating a sleep mode) and cost (by putting designs in the public domain).
- WIPER provides real-time alerts and location data when a rifle is fired within 50 meters (50 yards) of the collared animal. WIPER may not protect the animal wearing it, but it helps security personnel close in on poachers, which may deter future poaching.

California’s big climate change opportunity: tropical forests (commentary)
- California Governor Jerry Brown has yet to seize one of California’s best opportunities to slow climate change: tropical forests.
- Governor Brown has the opportunity to unleash one of the world’s most cost-effective climate solutions using the global influence of California’s climate policies, increasing the impact of the Action Summit in the process.
- Governor Brown could use California’s global influence to show governments of tropical forest regions that their efforts to slow deforestation and speed forest recovery will be recognized and rewarded.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Scientists call on California governor to OK carbon credits from forest conservation
- A group of prominent scientists is calling on California governor Jerry Brown to incorporate tropical forest conservation into the state’s cap-and-trade regulation.
- California has been mulling the inclusion of tropical forests in its cap-and-trade regulation, which was authorized by the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32), for a decade.
- If California were to adopt the tropical forest standard in its climate law, the move would signal to tropical forests nations that industrialized countries are willing to put money into forest conservation efforts as part of their climate change mitigation frameworks, say the scientists.

Backfire: How misinformation about wildfire harms climate activism (commentary)
- In this commentary, Douglas Bevington argues that climate activists may be inadvertently hurting their cause when they repeat erroneous claims about forest fires in the American West.
- Bevington says that fire suppression has caused an ecologically harmful shortage of fire in western forests.
- He adds that forest fire policy is being used as a pretext for logging and biomass energy production.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Let there be light — but be mindful of the wildlife
- Artificial lights affect biological processes, such as plant photosynthesis, animals’ orientation and migrations, and human circadian rhythms. As communities replace older lights with energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) lamps, they must weigh the needs of people with damage to local wildlife.
- Researchers have developed an tool that categorizes LED lamps by their output, energy efficiency and predicted impacts on wildlife, people and the darkness of the night sky.
- The researchers predict that filtered yellow-green and amber LEDs should have lower effects on wildlife than high-pressure sodium lamps, and that blue-toned light will affect wildlife — including birds, insects, fish, and sea turtles — more than orange- and yellow-toned light.
- Their results are presented on an updatable website to guide lighting designers and local government officials in installing lighting technologies that are both energy-efficient and less likely to harm wildlife.

eDNA may offer an early warning signal for deadly frog pathogen
- Scientists sampling water for the environmental DNA of fish had the unique opportunity to test the potential of using eDNA to detect the presence of a fungus deadly to frogs while the animals are still healthy.
- The Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd, or chytrid) fungus has decimated frog populations across the world and is very difficult to detect until the frogs of a newly infected population start to die.
- The research suggests that eDNA could help managers predict which lakes and other water bodies harbor the chytrid fungus and take action to protect surviving amphibian populations.

How to build a Guardian: students learn about making technology work in the field
- Students in several science and tech schools in California are learning to design and build Guardians, acoustic monitoring devices to help protect rainforests from illegal logging while keeping a record of the sounds made by forest wildlife.
- Led by the non-profit Rainforest Connection, the students are constructing the Guardians from old, recycled smartphones armed with solar power and Google’s open source machine learning framework, TensorFlow, which transforms them into field-tough listening tools.
- The program also addresses the challenges of designing and developing technology for humid, rugged, remote field conditions typical of indigenous reserves and protected areas.

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