Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Wetlands in Izembek National Wildlife Refuge (©USFWS)

Isabel Ricker, Landscape Conservation Coordinator

A few months ago we told you about an important milestone being reached in the battle to preserve the wilderness and wetland integrity of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. This occurred when the Fish and Wildlife Service released its final environmental impact statement (EIS) recommending against building a $30 million road through the refuge. When a federal agency issues a final EIS, it has to wait at least 30 days before it can finalize its recommendation and begin its implementation. When the Service issued the Izembek EIS, the final decision rested in the hands of then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, but he subsequently retired from office without resolving the dispute over the proposed Izembek road.

So where do things stand at this point with regards to that road? Despite having fallen off the political radar screen in recent weeks, the future of this incredible wildlife refuge remains as uncertain as ever. And for that we can thank Congressional politics playing out as usual.

The problem stemmed from Salazar’s retirement and the need for the Senate to confirm his proposed successor, Sally Jewell. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska threatened to block Jewell’s nomination unless the Department reversed the Service’s recommendation against the Izembek road. So at the last moment before a vote on her nomination, an unfortunate deal was struck by the Department which agreed to seek further public comment from the supporters of the road. The deal between Senator Murkowski and Interior will likely delay a final decision on Izembek for many months, but it does not bind or force the Department to ultimately approve the road. So the fate of Izembek now rests in Sally Jewell’s hands.

Many species of birds, especially the Pacific black brant, rely on Izembek’s protected habitat (©Ryan Hagerty/USFWS)

Izembek was established in 1960 to protect some of the most distinctive and important wetlands in the world, and is home to an abundance of wildlife, including 98% of the world’s population of Pacific black brant (a sea bird), as well as grizzly bear, caribou, and salmon. The proposed road would bisect refuge and designated wilderness lands in order to connect the communities of King Cove and Cold Bay, crossing sensitive wetlands as well as steep slopes prone to avalanches. Numerous studies – by the federal government, the state of Alaska and wildlife experts – have concluded since the 1980s that a road through Izembek would permanently and significantly damage the wilderness and wildlife habitat value of the refuge. Furthermore, the road would set a dangerous precedent of sacrificing our nation’s protected wilderness national wildlife refuges for indefensible development projects.

The damage from the road is not being exaggerated. In the final EIS for the project, which was released earlier this year, the Service determined that the road would require the construction of eight bridges, 19 culverts and 254 stream crossings. Despite this unambiguous assessment by the Service, proponents of the road continued to push for its approval, saying that the road is a public health necessity for King Cove. Ironically, the village of King Cove had previously been provided with a $9 million all-weather hovercraft to cross the bay in medical emergencies to the air strip at Cold Bay, but the community ultimately gave the hovercraft away.

The hovercraft that they no longer wanted was able to reach Cold Bay in 20 minutes in a medical emergency. By contrast, the proposed road would take more than two hours to travel, even in the best of weather conditions. The hovercraft had a 100% success rate with 30 medical evacuations, while the road would be impassable for much of the year due to frequent icing, high winds, blizzards and other inclement weather. Pete Mjos, the region’s former U.S. Public Health Service director, has said that attempting to travel on the proposed road during the region’s extreme winter storms would be “foolish beyond reason” and “would clearly jeopardize life.”

The Aighleen Pinnacles in Izembek NWR (©John Sarvis/USFWS)

The best estimates suggest that between past efforts to enhance medical services to King Cove and the construction of the proposed road, the final bill to the American taxpayer would be close to $75 million, an extraordinary expense in a time of federal budget austerity. Two weeks ago, Defenders of Wildlife CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark and former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post that details the decades-long history of King Cove’s pork-barrel projects and the environmental consequences of this road.

Secretary of the Interior Jewell will face many tough decisions in her new position, but the Izembek road should not be one of them. While Izembek may be politically challenging to decide, from an economic and environmental perspective, it is easy and self-evident – the road must be rejected. We urge the new secretary to make the right decision – the honest and responsible decision – and preserve this iconic wilderness wildlife refuge. Both American taxpayers and the Izembek wildlife will thank her.

©Pauline I. Stacey

Laurie Macdonald, Florida Program Director

Last month, we celebrated the First Annual Everglades Day, designated by the Florida legislature in recognition of America’s unique and intriguingly diverse Everglades ecoregion. The date, April 7th, was also the birthday of the late Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, an iconic heroine and newspaper reporter who spent many years writing about and advocating for Everglades protection.

The Everglades region is recognized as an International Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site and a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance. The area encompasses three national parks, and a dozen national wildlife refuges and marine preserves, as well as a host of state, regional and local parks, forests and wildlife management areas. Extensive private land holdings in the region are also an integral component of valuable wildlife habitat ranging from 100,000-acre ranches to thousands of one-acre lots.

Biodiversity here is among the highest in the nation, with many species found nowhere else in the U.S. Many of Defenders’ key species are in the region, including Florida panthers, manatees, sea turtles, gopher tortoises and other listed species such as the Everglade kite, wood stork, Big Cypress fox squirrel, American crocodile and Key deer.

The Everglades are truly a national treasure and deserve the utmost protection and management. Without adequate funding, we’d be unable to acquire the habitat and linkages that species like panthers and bears need, protect water quality or work to protect natural systems from degradation and invasive species.

Throughout the month of April, we took action to protect south Florida’s Greater Everglades region. Defenders’ Florida Representative Elizabeth Fleming, our lobbyist Travis Moore and I, as well as other Everglades Coalition members, met with volunteers from around the state in Tallahassee to speak with our state senators and representatives who were in the midst of the Florida legislative session. Our message: The state budget needs to provide adequate funding for Everglades protection and restoration projects that protect our water and wildlife. One third of all Floridians rely on clean water from the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, and more than 120 federal and state endangered and threatened species depend on the region’s varied wetland, upland and marine habitats. The health of the Everglades brings economic health to the region. Quite simply, what’s good for the Everglades is good for southern Florida and beyond, because its visitors and migratory wildlife come from around the globe.

Staff and volunteers on the steps of the Florida Capitol.(©Pauline I. Stacey)

This was the first trip to the state capital for Will Johnson, a Defenders volunteer who made the nearly 7-hour drive to Tallahassee from Naples, who said, “Everglades Action Day is a great opportunity to engage with legislators and a wonderful group of activists to help preserve and protect the beauty and wildlife of Florida.”

Another volunteer, Magdalena Braker, took the long ride by joining others on a chartered bus that the Everglades Coalition reserved for the event, starting in Miami and picking up activists along way. Magdalena urged legislators to provide funding and support for the Everglades with this message: “La riqueza natural y servicios ambientales de los Everglades se están marchitando debajo presiones urbanas y venimos para emfátizar la importancia de los Everglades tanto para las especies silvestre como para los ciudadanos del sur de la Florida.” Which means:

“The natural resources and ecosystem services of the Everglades are withering under the pressures of urbanization, and we come here to emphasize the importance of the Everglades, not only for the native wildlife, but for South Floridians.”

The nearly 60 volunteers who made the trip from around the state to Tallahassee attended more than 30 meetings with their elected officials, asking them to make funding for the Everglades a priority. And it made an important contribution to Everglades protection! Just last week, as the 2013 legislative session concluded, the Florida Legislature designated $70M for Everglades restoration projects. Thanks for all who participated in our action day! If you’re in Florida, join us next year for lobby days at the state capital! And no matter where you live, get to know your state representative and senator back in your district. It always makes a big difference when elected officials hear directly from their constituents.

Fl. Representative Powell meets with volunteers and activists (©Pauline I. Stacey)

Birds like this great white heron rely heavily on coastal refuges for safe habitat. (Photo credit: Joseph Oliver)

Aimee Delach, Senior Policy Analyst, Climate Adaptation

As Julie shared last Tuesday, the National Wildlife Refuge System, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), includes approximately 150 million acres of lands and waters managed primarily for wildlife conservation and protection of habitats. For many Americans, our national wildlife refuges are their best chance to see rare sights like huge flocks of migrating snow geese, endangered whooping cranes, and many other species.

One of the threats facing these amazing places is climate change. The effects of a shifting and increasingly volatile climate are already being felt across the U.S., and for the animals that make their homes in wildlife refuges  — including many species that are already threatened or endangered  — it represents a serious danger. One way climate change will continue to affect refuges is by a rise in sea levels, due to the melting of land-based ice and the expansion of the oceans as they warm. Recent studies suggest that sea-level rise could easily exceed 39 inches by 2100. That’s more than three feet! For the more than 150 national wildlife refuges located in coastal areas, sea-level rise has the potential to reshape wetlands, shift habitats inland and upland, and even put large parts of some refuges entirely underwater.

This is a concern, not just for the lands already protected as a part of the National Wildlife Refuge System, but also for lands that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to add to the system. The process that USFWS uses to add land to refuges only takes the value of current habitat into account, but not how resilient the habitat can be in the face of threats like sea-level rise. Without considering the effects of climate change as part of the deciding factor of what land to buy, USFWS may not be making the best investments of their limited funds if some of that land is going to be underwater within a few decades. So Defenders’ climate team, with the help of a summer intern from Duke University, decided to look into it ourselves.

This is what Blackwater NWR could look like by 2075. The red area — both what they have now, and what they plan to buy — will likely be completely flooded.

We assessed the sea-level rise threat to the lands within both the acquired boundary (the land the refuge already owns) and the approved boundary (the land they are planning to acquire) of eight coastal refuges. We used a publicly-available analysis tool called the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM) that shows how rising sea levels will likely change the coastal landscape. The model lets you choose from among several scenarios of sea level rise over the 21st century, which is important because we don’t yet know precisely how much the climate will warm and the sea level will rise. The model then incorporates local conditions and processes to give a site-specific picture of how each area will be impacted. This is important because conditions at each site are different. Some coastal areas have rivers that are delivering sediments at a rate that could help refuge lands “keep up” with the rise. In other places, the land is eroding, which means that the local impacts of sea-level rise will be more pronounced.

We found that the impact of sea-level rise will vary among the eight refuges we investigated. Four of the refuges could have less than 5% of their land area vulnerable, while two could lose more than 40% of their refuge lands by 2075. One of the highly impacted refuges, Blackwater NWR, may be able to keep vital habitat by buying new land on the north side, where areas of marsh will persist and new marsh will be created. Great White Heron NWR, on the other hand, could run out of land entirely; it could lose almost 90% of its current land, and three-quarters of the land it plans to acquire. That would mean the loss of nesting habitat for loggerhead and green sea turtles, as well as over 250 species of birds that call the islands of Great White Heron NWR home, including the refuge’s namesake.

Too many species of wildlife depend on our nation’s coastal refuges for us to afford to lose them. These are places that provide ecological, recreational, and economic support to their communities. But they can’t do so if they find themselves underwater. We want the USFWS to make smart conservation investments in buying new land for coastal wildlife refuges, so we’re doing more than just pointing out the problem. Based on our findings, we’re offering several recommendations:

• Unless there is an immediate conservation need that justifies protecting a vulnerable parcel, or USFWS determines a parcel is important to allow for marsh habitats to transition or shift inland as sea levels rise, individual refuges should focus on acquiring land that is less vulnerable to sea-level rise.
• When a vulnerable parcel needs to be protected, USFWS should consider alternatives to land purchase, such as easements, which may be a more cost-effective way to provide protections in the short term.
• USFWS should alter approved refuge boundaries as appropriate to maximize long-term conservation benefits in the face of sea level rise. For instance, the area to the north of Blackwater NWR has wetlands that will outlast sea level rise, and moving the refuge boundary to include these would allow USFWS to protect more habitat for the long term.

We know that we face two enormous challenges as we try to protect wildlife and habitat into the future. First, climate change is posing new threats to species and altering landscapes, and in the case of coastal areas, taking some away entirely. And second, ongoing difficulties with the federal budget mean that taxpayer investment in land conservation is likely to be limited. But by understanding the effects of climate change, we can adjust our strategies to make the smartest possible investments for the future of our wildlife and the wild places they need to survive.

This table shows an overview of what we found for each of the eight refuges. To learn more, check out the report and recommendations here [PDF], or download the entire report [PDF]

Coast to Coast” is a summer blog series highlighting some of America’s most imperiled wildlife. By using the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s new state-by-state endangered species map, we will tell  stories about native plants and animals in unique landscapes where Defenders will be focusing its conservation efforts in coming years.

Though few in number, the greater sage-grouse is easy to spot. With its hunched shoulders and a puffed white chest, the large, grounded grouse looks like a cross between a turkey and an opera singer. In springtime, males like to put on quite a show as they sashay between the sagebrush and enter their arena. But these brazen birds aren’t fighting to the death; they’re dancing for potential mates. The lucky ladies get to choose the guys with the best moves.

Watch along with a bus full of Idaho high school students, who got to see this delightful dance up close during a field trip last spring:

While these birds put on a dazzling display, they are dependent upon a natural landscape called the “Sagebrush Sea.” Stretching from Washington to Colorado, this arid ecosystem is covered with sagebrush, a key source of food and shelter for sage grouse. Once teeming with trees, streams, wildflowers and hundreds of unique species, the Sagebrush Sea is steadily shrinking. Agriculture development, resource extraction and weed infestation have all contributed to its decline. In recent years, wildfires caused by extreme temperatures and drought have brought even more danger to landscapes across the western United States.

The resulting habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation has taken a toll on sage grouse over the last 50 years. Today, the species is only found in half of its historic range, and sage grouse aren’t the only ones in trouble. From rare pygmy rabbits to migratory birds that stop in the marshes that dot the Sagebrush Sea, hundreds of other species depend on this landscape. To save the sage grouse, we have to save the land that they and other species need to survive.

Sage grouse were denied federal protection in 2004 and are currently stuck in limbo on the list of candidate species. But Defenders isn’t waiting to take action. We’re fighting for stronger protections on our public lands, where energy development threatens important wildlife habitat. We’re also working with our colleagues at The Nature Conservancy and the Sagebrush Cooperative to develop incentives to encourage private landowners to conserve wildlife.

By protecting the Sagebrush Sea, we hope to ensure that America’s grooving grouse continues to have a place to strut his stuff.

A new report released today by the Environmental Working Group and Defenders highlights the massive wildlife habitat loss stemming from unlimited and unregulated crop insurance subsidies like the ones on the pending 2012 farm bill.

New research from the report indicates that, between 2008 and 2011, over 23 million acres of viable wildlife habitat were converted into cropland, particularly in areas of the Midwest and Great Plains. The loss of these wetlands and grasslands now pose a significant risk to the long-term survival of songbirds and waterfowl, as well as several at-risk species, such as swift fox, mountain plover, sage grouse, and lesser prairie chicken. The secondary pollution effects of crops in these areas with the use of chemicals and fertilizers has also been observed, leading scientists to worry that pressure on these species will only increase.

Much of the conversion from wildlife habitat to cropland has occurred as a result of crop insurance subsidies. Because these subsidies lower farmers’ risks of plowing crops in certain vulnerable wetlands and grasslands, they provide greater incentives for farmers to work there and eliminate prime areas of wildlife survival. Further, these crop insurance subsidies are not currently subject to payment limits and conservation requirements.

Sage grouse are one of countless species that rely on private farm land for their survival.

With the release of this report, Defenders and EWG are hoping to influence Congress to make changes in regards to adding conservation requirements as they prepare to outline legislation for the 2012 farm bill. New “conservation compliance” provisions could require growers to implement basic elements of environmental protection as part of an agreement to receive crop insurance subsidies. While there is much work still to be done, it is the hope that this report will highlight the vulnerability of wildlife and allow for genuine impacts on the upcoming farm bill.

To learn more about how crop subsidies contribute to massive habitat losses, please visit this article from EcoWatch.

“Coast to Coast” is a summer blog series highlighting some of America’s most imperiled wildlife. Using the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s new state-by-state endangered species map, Defenders is drawing attention to native plants and animals most in need of help.

In honor of the Fourth of July holiday last week, the first species comes from the first states. Found in all but two of the 13 original colonies, the bog turtle once ranged far and wide in America.

Young Bog Turtle- Courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Despite its large territory, however, this tiny turtle is facing some titanic threats. Reaching lengths of only 4.5 inches, the bog turtle is not only the smallest turtle in North America but has also become one of the rarest.

Bog turtles rely on fragile marshes and wetlands for everything from food – like seeds, berries and invertebrates — to finding mates. They’re perfectly adapted to life in the swamp, where they elude predators by burrowing into the muddy soil and disappearing from sight.

But when these wet places disappear, so do the turtles. In recent decades, their population has declined dramatically. A large percentage of the bog turtle’s former habitat has been drained and converted to farmland, making it virtually impossible for this wetland wonder to survive. Invasive plants, such as the Purple Loosestrife from Asia and Africa, are crowding in. Their roots grow too thickly for any nutrients to pass through. And poachers often nab this diminutive dude as a favorite of the pet trade.

These threats have resulted in a perfect storm for the bog turtle, which was finally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1997. Progress toward recovery has been slow to date, but a promising program was put in place in 2008 as part of the Farm Bill. The bog turtle was selected as one of seven unique species under the Working Lands for Wildlife program in need of additional help from private land owners.

The voluntary program offers incentives to farmers and other private landowners to help conserve the species. By altering or restricting livestock grazing and controlling weeds, farmers and ranchers can improve and restore habitat for bog turtles. As an added bonus, efforts to protect wetland areas for bog turtles will also benefit wild turkeys, bass and trout.

To find out more about this terrific turtle listen to this podcast featured on the Fish and Wildlife Service’s website.

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