I recently had the chance to speak at The Economist‘s sustainability conference, and I asked how many people in the audience spend time in our national parks. Hands shot up everywhere. Then I asked them to keep their hands up if they enjoy visiting parks on Labor Day weekend. Hands disappeared, heads shook no, and people chuckled.
So many of us want to get outside and enjoy nature, but we don’t want to wait in traffic for hours trying to get into a park. Demand for the national parks exceeds supply and, as the Sierra Club’s former executive director Carl Pope pointed out to me, Labor Day weekend traffic jams at our parks illustrate this perfectly. People across the rainbow of humanity that is America really want to visit the country’s wild places.
Historically, protecting natural spaces and establishing parks has been job number one for the Sierra Club. In 1890, John Muir led the movement to protect 750,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada as Yosemite National Park. Two years later, the Sierra Club was born. From our role in the creation and protection of parks like Grand Canyon and Grand Teton to our contribution to the passage of the Wilderness Act, which has protected 112 million acres of public land from reckless development, the Sierra Club has been—and will always be—an influential advocate for natural spaces.
Now we must double the number of parks in this country. And I don’t just mean the 425 National Park Service sites but also other federally managed places and state and local parks too. We want to ensure that every person, no matter where they live, can explore and enjoy our natural spaces.
This work goes far beyond the causes of conservation and access to the outdoors. We created parks to save souls (“places to play in and pray in,” as Muir wrote). Today we need them to preserve our collective future.
To avoid irreparable harm to the planet, we need to reduce climate-killing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dramatically and quickly. Beyond ending our addiction to fossil fuels, one of the best nature-based ways to do this is to preserve natural spaces—especially where mature and old-growth trees act as carbon sponges.
Our national goal is to protect 30 percent of US lands and waters by 2030 to slow climate decay and biodiversity loss. Right now, only about 12 percent is protected. We must safeguard more land in the next seven years than we have in the past 100.
The benefits go beyond preserving wildlife habitats and providing more clean air and water. We can measure them in dollars.
The National Park Service says that for every dollar Congress invests in national parks, $10 is returned to the economy. And communities where we establish public lands as parks will be more resilient to the extreme weather that accompanies climate decline.
As we save more natural spaces, we must discard practices that have too often left out Indigenous communities. Since long before this was a country, Indigenous people have stewarded the landscapes they have called home. Co-management agreements like the one for Bear Ears National Monument recognize that Native knowledge is essential to the long-term protection of our lands and waters (see “Unraveling Manifest Destiny“).
As I write this, the Sierra Club is training state leaders across the country to accelerate the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act. When President Biden signed it one year ago, the massive investment in growing America’s economy in such a visionary way earned him comparisons to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Leading our nation in doubling the size of protected lands would earn him comparisons to another Roosevelt. The Sierra Club’s job at this moment is the same as it was for our founder: to make the case in a way that can neither be ignored nor denied.
Ben Jealous is the executive director of the Sierra Club. | Photo by Ian Martin
In 2011, Batson-Cook, assisted by Scott Bridge Co., was chosen to build the world’s longest urban whitewater course in Columbus, Ga., through the Chattahoochee River Restoration project. The project both enhanced the river’s local environment and created a state-of-the-art whitewater facility.
Photo courtesy Batson-Cook Co
The Columbus, Ga., project won the top award in the water and environmental project category.
Contractors hired divers to survey the river and help determine its “true” channel, which helped builders determine where underwater structures, such as boulders, should be placed in order to achieve the designer’s intent for both the river’s natural bank restoration as well as the whitewater course. The project team’s biggest challenge was removing two dams that were more than 100 years old—the Eagle & Phenix Dam and the City Mills Dam—that were built in the late 1800s to provide power to the now-abandoned textile mills located along the river. To take out the structures, crews drilled holes down through the top of the dams and placed dynamite topped with crushed gravel and then more dynamite. Once blasted, the team used heavy equipment to manually dismantle the rest of the structure. Also, the project team recontoured the river bed to create whitewater courses; changed the contour of the river’s flow for the whitewater rapids; and constructed a habitat pool for fish and wildlife.
The breaching of the 130-year-old Eagle and Phenix Dam, removal of the City Mills Dam, and formation of natural habitat pools, construction of a boat launch, viewing terrace, and pedestrian bridge unleashed the potential of the river and community, dramatically improving the local downtown experience, providing new economic opportunities, attracting new residents and businesses, and boosting tourism. Dozens of new in-river features provide over two miles of world class whitewater kayaking and rafting. Numerous bank improvements allow for better tourist access and observation areas. In addition, the project created habitat for the endangered Shoal Spider Lilly and native Shoal Bass, an important game fish only found in the southeastern U.S.
The Chattahoochie River Conservancy played a large part in reclaiming this magnificent river.
“The dams built along the Chattahoochee River have done immense damage to the ecosystem. By removing the dams no longer serving a purpose to the community, we are able to restore sections of the river to a state that closely resembles pre-dam habitat. These restored sections may be small (3-10 miles) but are immensely valuable in the fight to restore the Chattahoochee River. In impounded areas where dam removal is not an option, we partner with the Department of Natural Resources, Georgia Power, and the US Army Corps of Engineers to improve the habitat within the reservoirs and reduce the impacts of invasive species.“
All told, the Chattahoochee River Restoration project helped restore this once highly-disturbed river back to its natural and unrestricted flow and transformed it into a thing of beauty for the community that will also be attracting numerous visitors and recreationists.
At first, the dead floated downstream a few at a time. Then they came by the hundreds, and then the thousands.
For mile after mile, the Klamath River was filled with tens of thousands of dead salmon. As Annelia Hillman paddled a canoe with a friend one September day 21 years ago, her heart sank when she saw the carcasses floating past. She and other members of the Yurok Tribe say they will never forget the stench of death.
“It’s like seeing your family perish in front of you,” Hillman said. “I would compare it to a massacre, really, in terms of the emotions and the trauma that it has caused for us.”
Annelia Hillman, a traditional food coordinator for the Yurok Tribe, picks vegetables in a community garden on the Klamath River. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The grief drove Hillman, then 27, to begin protesting to demand change. The mass fish kill of 2002, estimated at up to 70,000 salmon, became a defining event for a generation of young Native activists — a moment that showed the river ecosystem was gravely ill, and badly in need of rescuing.
Water diversions for agriculture had dramatically shrunk river flows. And the Klamath’s hydroelectric dams, which had long blocked salmon from reaching their spawning areas, had degraded the water quality, contributing to toxic algae blooms and disease outbreaks among the fish.
At first, when Indigenous leaders demanded that dams be removed, their chances of success seemed remote at best. But after more than two decades of persistent efforts, including protests at company shareholder meetings,demonstrations on the river and complicated negotiations, the four dams along the California-Oregon border have finally started to be dismantled. One small dam has already been removed, and three more are slated to come down next year.
Chinook salmon swim at the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery below the dam on the Klamath River. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
For members of the Yurok, Karuk and other tribes who have been immersed in the struggle for much of their lives, the undamming of the Klamath represents an opportunity to heal the ecosystem and help fish populations recover by opening up hundreds of miles of spawning habitat. They say the coming changes hold promise for them to strengthen their ancestral connection to the river and keep their fishing traditions alive.
“This river is our lifeline. It’s our mother. It’s what feeds us. It’s the foundation to our people, for our culture,” Hillman said. “Seeing the restoration of our river, our fisheries, I think is going to uplift us all.”
Work on the dam removal project began in June. The smallest dam, Copco No. 2, was torn down by crews using heavy machinery. The other three dams are set to be dismantled next year, starting with a drawdown of the reservoirs in January.
“The scale of this is enormous,” said Mark Bransom, CEO of the nonprofit Klamath River Renewal Corp., which is overseeing dam removal and river restoration efforts. “This is the largest dam removal project ever undertaken in the United States, and perhaps even the world.”
The $450-million budget includes about $200 million from ratepayers of PacifiCorp, who have been paying a surcharge for the project. The Portland-based utility — part of billionaire Warren Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway — agreed to remove the aging dams after determining it would be less expensive than trying to bring them up to current environmental standards.
The dams were used purely for power generation, not to store water for cities or farms.
“The reason that these dams are coming down is that they’ve reached the end of their useful life,” Bransom said. “The power generated from these dams is really a trivial amount of power, something on the order of 2% of the electric utility that previously owned the dams.”
An additional $250 million came through Proposition 1, a bond measure passed by California voters in 2014 that included money for removing barriers blocking fish on rivers.
A tunnel, left, at Iron Gate Dam, where modifications are underway. The tunnel will be used to drain the lake early next year. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times
Crews hired by the contractor Kiewet Corp. have been working on roads and bridges to prepare for the army of excavators and dump trucks.
“We have thousands of tons of concrete and steel that make up these dams that we have to remove,” Bransom said. “We’ll probably end up with 400 to 500 workers at the peak of the work.”
During a visit in August, Bransom stood on a rocky bluff overlooking Iron Gate Dam, where crews were working on a water drainage tunnel.
There won’t be major dam-wrecking explosions, he said, but workers plan to blast open some dam tunnels to move out tons of accumulated sediment from the reservoirs. As the water is drained, crews working on boats will also spray fire hoses to wash away muddy silt and send it downstream.
In addition to tearing down the dams, the project involves restoring about 2,200 acres of reservoir bottom to a natural state.
A Klamath River Renewal Corp. biologist takes water samples. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times
In recent years, workers have collected nearly 1 billion seeds from native plants along the Klamath and sent seeds to farms to be planted and harvested. That has produced nearly 13 billion seeds — 26 tons in all — which will be planted once the reservoirs are drained.
The aim is for native vegetation to regrow across the watershed while fish begin to access 420 miles of spawning habitat in the river and its tributaries.
“Nature knows what it wants to do. So what we’re really trying to do here is work with Mother Nature to create conditions that will allow for river healing and for restoration of balance here,” Bransom said. “We can offer a light touch to help nudge things in the right direction.”
Fed by Cascade Range snowmelt, the Klamath River takes shape among lakes and marshes along the California-Oregon border and winds through steep mountainous terrain before ending its journey among redwood forests on the Pacific Coast.
For the Yurok, the fight to remove dams is the latest in a series of struggles over the river’s management and the preservation of their way of life.
Susan Masten, a leading advocate for tearing down the dams, recalls a time in 1978 that the Yurok call the “Salmon Wars,” when federal agents descended on the reservation to enforce a ban on fishing.
Just five years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had affirmed the tribe’s fishing rights in a landmark case involving Masten’s uncle, Raymond Mattz. But federal officials had ordered a halt to tribal fishing on the Klamath even as other fishing continued along the coast.
A man rides past an “Undam the Klamath” mural on the Orleans Market in Orleans. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The Yurok, who sought to defend their fishing rights and tribal sovereignty, faced off with officers in riot gear holding billy clubs and M-16 rifles. Many residents feared for their lives, Masten said.
Masten recalled seeing officers drag a woman away by her hair as tribe members protested on a riverbank. Another time, she said, agents twisted her grandfather’s arm behind his back.
The tensions eventually subsided when the marshals left, and the Yurok successfully asserted their rights to continue fishing. But they saw other threats in the declining fish populations — and the four hydroelectric dams that were built without tribal consent between 1912 and the 1960s.
Former Yurok tribal chairperson Susan Masten stands on a boat on the Klamath River. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
“I really didn’t think that I would see dam removal in my lifetime,” Masten said.
Masten, who is 71, spoke while drifting across the estuary in a motorboat near the river’s mouth. As the surf crashed against a barrier of sand, pelicans, cormorants and ospreys soared over the dark water.
“Everything that’s around here is connected to this river,” Masten said. “And so for us to ensure the future for our children, we need to ensure that this river is here and that it’s healthy, and that the ecosystem is healthy, because it’s the heartbeat of our people. It’s the lifeway of our people.”
Masten lives in her ancestral village of Rek-woi, or Requa, in a home on a bluff overlooking the river’s mouth. Once the dams come down, she said, she expects to see the fish thrive and the entire ecosystem flourish.
“The river has a way to heal itself, and it can heal itself very quickly if it’s allowed to do so,” Masten said. “I’m excited that my grandchildren will be able to benefit from it.”
Yurok tribal attorney Amy Bowers Cordalis, a leader of the Indigenous conservation group Ridges to Riffles, stands beside the boat ramp in the village of Requa near the mouth of the Klamath River. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Masten’s niece, Amy Bowers Cordalis, is a lawyer for the tribe who focuses on the Klamath River and was involved in negotiating agreements involving California, Oregon and PacifiCorps to enable dam removal.
“We kept pushing and pushing,” Bowers Cordalis said. “We all came together and figured out a way to remove dams.”
She stood by a boat ramp that in August typically would be bustling with families hauling out their nets and fish. But the ramp was mostly deserted.
The tribe’s leaders took the rare step of canceling subsistence fishing this year to protect the dwindling salmon population, a decision that mirrored the shutdown of commercial fishing along the coast.
Several years ago, Bowers Cordalis also worked on the Yurok Tribe’s declaration of the river as a legal “person” under tribal law, a step intended to provide greater protections.
One key problem, she said, is that the dams have allowed nutrient-filled agricultural runoff to fester in lakes, feeding algae blooms. When the river isn’t safe for bathing, it prevents the tribe’s members from carrying out ceremonies that involve entering the water.
An idle canoe sits on the shore at a fishing camp along the Klamath River. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Tearing down the dams is a first step in “a new era of healing,” Bowers Cordalis said. She said she hopes to eventually get back the flourishing river with abundant fish that her great grandmother saw a century ago.
From the river behind her, a salmon flew into the air, its scales shimmering, and landed in the water with a plop. Then another salmon jumped.
“A big run just went through!” a man called out from a boat.
Bowers Cordalis said it was encouraging to see that some salmon, even with their population so low, were making it upstream to spawn.
“We have so much hope that this river will restore itself,” Bowers Cordalis said. “Dam removal is just the beginning. Dam removal is the end of colonization of this river.”
Not everyone is happy to see the dams go. In some areas, the removal project has generated heated opposition.
In the community of Copco Lake, some residents live in waterfront homes with boats and docks. Their homes will be left high and dry when the reservoir is drained.
Alan Marcillet, a resident who enjoys kayaking, said most people in the community aren’t looking forward to the disruptive changes.
“It’s just going to be a mud pit,” Marcillet said. “The community will just die. I would think of the hundred people that live up here, perhaps half of them won’t return.”
Two of his neighbors, German and Jeanne Diaz, bought their retirement home overlooking the lake more than two decades ago. Now, their view is about to change dramatically, and they say they’re concerned about whether the mud that’s exposed at the bottom of the reservoir will turn to dust and pollute the air.
“What is it going to do to the community?” German Diaz said. “Are we going to be going through sandstorms for a while?”
Copco Lake resident Geneve Spanauss Harder looks over Western Outdoor News tabloids from the 1970’s at her home. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The Klamath River Renewal Corp. has been accepting claims from landowners to pay for damages linked to dam removal. But Diaz said he doesn’t plan to apply for that money.
“We’ve already seen property values drop,” Diaz said. “What can we do?”
Other residents said they see the reservoir as beneficial because it attracts wildlife and serves as a water supply for firefighting helicopters.
Geneve Spannaus Harder, an 80-year-old resident whose great grandfather once owned an apple orchard on lands now submerged by the reservoir, said she and many others strongly oppose draining the lake.
“It’s just going to change the whole scenario of the community,” she said. “I don’t think we know what we’re going to get.”
Because of a closed salmon fishing season, none was available at this year’s Yurok Salmon Festival in Klamath. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
This August, when the Yurok Tribe held its annual Klamath Salmon Festival, no salmon was served. Instead, there were tri-tip sandwiches and frybread, and the parade featured a skit about dam removal with participants holding large paper cutouts of fish.
At one stand, people were asked to write a few words on cards about their hopes for the Klamath River’s future. The cards were hung on strings. One read: “I wish for the salmon to recover and run free forever!”
Nearby, T-shirts were being sold with an illustration depicting the undamming. It features a young woman, her eyes covered with ceremonial bluejay feathers, balancing two baskets like the scales of justice as water breaks through a dam and surges into the river.
Young men compete in a Yurok Tribe stick game tournament during the Yurok Salmon Festival. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
The artist, 23-year-old Tori McConnell, said the young woman represents both the people and the river in a state of transition. The tears running down her cheeks are like her prayers, McConnell said, “overflowing into the baskets of justice.”
McConnell, a Yurok Tribe member who is this year’s Miss Indian World, said she is hopeful.
“There’s a lot of work to be done to restore the salmon population,” McConnell said. “But I hope we will see that happen in our lifetime.”
Populations of chinook and coho salmon, as well as other fish, have declined more than 90% in the Klamath over the past century, said Barry McCovey Jr., the Yurok Tribe’s fisheries director.
The dams have been a big factor, he said, and “we have our eyes on righting that wrong.”
But fish populations have also been ravaged by other factors, including gold mining that scarred the watershed, and decades of logging that left denuded areas, releasing fish-harming sediment into the river.
Additionally, fire suppression in forests over the last century and the lack of traditional burning by Indigenous people has left forests primed for catastrophic wildfires, unleashing tainted runoff that becomes “poison to the ecosystem,” McCovey said. “You combine all that together, and then you layer on top of that climate change,” he said.
The Klamath’s water is heavily used to serve agriculture, irrigating crops such as onions and hay. The Yurok Tribe is suing the federal government over decisions that they argue don’t provide the minimum flows required for fish, including threatened coho salmon.
Yurok tribe fisheries biologist Barry McCovey at the mouth of the Klamath River. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The removal of dams is a pivotal milestone and it comes at a critical time for struggling salmon populations, McCovey said, but recovery isn’t going to happen in a couple of years. “We have to accept that these things take time,” McCovey said.
“I don’t think in my lifetime I’ll ever see a fully recovered Klamath River ecosystem,” he said. “And maybe no one will ever see that. But the goal is to move closer to that.”
McCovey said restoring balance to the ecosystem will take generations, and he is prepared to continue working toward that goal.
In the meantime, he and others have been talking about what they will do once all the dams are gone.
McCovey said he hopes to take a rafting trip, traveling for miles with the current as the river flows freely once again.
Ian James is a reporter who focuses on water in California and the West. Before joining the Los Angeles Times in 2021, he was an environment reporter at the Arizona Republic and the Desert Sun. He previously worked for the Associated Press as a correspondent in the Caribbean and as bureau chief in Venezuela. He is originally from California.
Albert Brave Tiger Lee is a Southern California native, son of Korean immigrants, a father and a staff videographer at the Los Angeles Times. His work spans various mediums of visual story telling and has been in recognized for various disciplines including a National Emmy Award for News and Documentary, RFK Journalism Award, Picture of the Year International, Best of Photojournalism and the Columbia Dart Award.
Louisiana’s Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Will Create Up to 27 Square Miles of New Land
NEW ORLEANS —The State of Louisiana’s ground-breaking for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, the largest single ecosystem restoration project in U.S. history and a monumental milestone decades in the making, will help reconnect the Mississippi River to its surrounding wetlands. The National Wildlife Federation has worked for decades to advance large-scale sediment diversions as the most effective way to rebuild the Mississippi River Delta, creating vital habitat for wildlife and a crucial buffer for coastal communities against increasing threats from storm surge.
Louisiana loses a football field of land every hour and has lost nearly 2,000 square miles in the last century — about the size of the state of Delaware.
To address its land loss crisis, the state has a comprehensive plan to build and sustain coastal wetlands. The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, which will mimic natural land-building processes, is a cornerstone of that plan, and is predicted to restore up to 27 square miles (17,000 acres) of wetlands in the Barataria Basin and is designed to work with other restoration projects in the outfall area, creating the potential for enhancing hundreds of acres of restored wetlands in total.
“The monumental Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion is the most important project to restore and expand wetlands in the history of the United States, a remarkable achievement that can help begin to turn the tide on Louisiana’s land loss crisis,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. “The landmark project will not only rebuild essential habitat for iconic wildlife species that depend on the Bayou State’s globally-significant coastal resources, it will also provide critical protection for vulnerable coastal communities by enhancing the wetland buffer that reduces the velocity and volume of storm surge. Harnessing the power of the Mississippi River itself to build up its delta — as the system did naturally for thousands of years — is the premier example of how we can work with nature to improve outcomes for both people and wildlife alike to combat escalating climate impacts. We commend the state and federal officials across Louisiana and all those involved in the decades of effort culminating in today’s groundbreaking and urge other regions to draw inspiration from this innovative nature-based solution to create a more resilient future for generations to come. We have no time to lose.”
Editor’s Note: Wetland mitigation accounts for a significant annual investment in habitat restoration and protection, but is it a reliable conservation tool? This article concludes that despite the nationwide goal of “no net loss,” the federal compensatory mitigation program may currently lead to a net loss in wetlands acres and functions.
The nation’s 1989 goal of achieving a “no overall net loss” of wetland acres and functions has a significant influence on how the regulatory agencies administer §404 of the Clean Water Act and, in particular, the decisions they make about compensatory mitigation for permitted losses. Each year approximately 47,000 acres of wetland mitigation are required under the §404 program (ELI 2007) to compensate for about 21,000 acres of permitted losses (Martin et al. 2006), a potential gain of 26,000 acres annually. Although the amount of compensatory mitigation required provides a significant buffer in meeting the “no net loss” goal, the required compensation must be implemented on the ground and the restored wetlands must successfully replace lost wetland acres and functions in order to achieve the goal.
The success of wetland mitigation projects can be judged on whether a project meets its administrative and ecological performance measures. Administrative performance refers to the degree to which compensatory mitigation projects meet their permit requirements, such as submitting monitoring reports in a timely manner. Ecological performance refers to meeting ecological standards that ultimately result in a compensatory wetland that replaces lost aquatic resource functions.
In 2001, the National Wetlands Newsletter published Count it by Acre or Function: Mitigation Adds Up to Net Loss of Wetlands (Turner et al. 2001), providing further insight to a National Research Council (NRC) report that found that compensatory mitigation failed to achieve the national policy of no net loss of wetlands. This article reviews recent literature to determine whether or not compensatory mitigation projects required by state and federal agencies are meeting administrative and ecological performance measures. Most of the studies evaluated permittee-responsible (also known as project-specific) mitigation projects. However, some more recent evaluations deal more specifically with wetland mitigation banks.
Administrative Performance
Turner and colleagues’ (2001) seminal review of the success of mitigation implementation found that mitigation projects across the country often fail to comply with their permit conditions. Of 19 reviewed studies, 10 found that the majority of evaluated projects were compliant with permit conditions, while 9 studies found that only 4 to 49% of the projects were fully compliant.
More recent studies have similar findings. Of seven studies evaluating the percent of sites meeting 100% of the required permit conditions, four found that the majority of the projects reviewed complied with all permit conditions (Ambrose and Lee 2004—69%; Cole and Shaffer 2002—60%; Minkin and Ladd 2003—67%; Sudol and Ambrose 2002—55%), while three found that only 18 to 46% of projects complied with all permit conditions (Ambrose et al. 2006—46%; Brown and Veneman 2001—43%; MDEQ 2001—18%). Ambrose and colleagues (2006) found that, on average, permitees met 73% of permit conditions. A 2002 study of compensatory mitigation in New Jersey found that on average mitigation projects met only 48% of their design requirements and permit specifications (Balzano et al. 2002). Monitoring, submission, and long-term maintenance requirements seem to be the criteria that most often go unmet, while vegetation criteria are more frequently achieved (Ambrose et al. 2006, Ambrose and Lee 2004).
A lack of monitoring and oversight of mitigation projects may contribute to low success rates. Cole and Shafer (2002) found that fewer than 10% of permit files reviewed in their Pennsylvania study contained required monitoring reports. In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ oversight of compensatory mitigation in a representative sample of Corps districts. The GAO found that the districts performed limited oversight to determine the status of required compensatory mitigation (GAO 2005). The districts did, however, provide somewhat more oversight for mitigation conducted by mitigation banks and in-lieu fee mitigation than for permittee-responsible mitigation. For the 60 mitigation banks that were required to submit monitoring reports, 70% of the files showed that the Corps had received at least one monitoring report. The percentage of the mitigation bank files with evidence that the Corps conducted an inspection ranged from 13 to 78%.
Ecological Performance
Studies of the ecological performance of compensatory mitigation have shown that compensatory wetland projects fail to replace lost wetland acres and functions even more often than they fail in their administrative performance. In fact, permit compliance has been shown to be a poor indicator of whether or not mitigation projects are adequately replacing the appropriate habitat types and ecological functions of wetlands.
Replacing Acres
Several studies have questioned the success of wetland compensatory mitigation in replacing lost wetland acreage. In its comprehensive national study on compensatory mitigation, the NRC re- ported that between 70 to 76% of mitigation required in permits is actually implemented (NRC 2001). A review of mitigation sites in Michigan found that only 29% of the permits implemented the required amount of mitigation (MDEQ 2001). A study in California found that 46% of sites met acreage requirements (Ambrose and Lee 2004). Several other studies have had similar results, suggesting that the §404 program is failing to compensate for lost wetland acres (Balzano et al. 2002, Johnson et al. 2002).
Replacing Functions
In addition to not meeting acreage requirements, mitigation wetlands often do not replace the functions and types of wetlands destroyed due to permitted impacts. Turner and colleagues (2001) found that an average of only 21% of mitigation sites met various tests of ecological equivalency to lost wetlands. Two recent studies compared mitigation sites to impact sites. One found that only 17% of the sites evaluated successfully replaced lost functions (Minkin and Ladd 2003). The other study determined that 29% of the sites were successful in this regard (Ambrose and Lee 2004). The former study also found that 50% of the mitigation sites evaluated were actually non-jurisdictional riparian and upland habitat. Four studies comparing mitigation sites to reference wetlands found that fewer than 50% of the sites evaluated were considered ecologically successful (Ambrose et al. 2006—19%; Johnson et al. 2002—46%; MDEQ 2001—22%; Sudol and Ambrose 2002—16%). Ambrose and colleagues’ statewide study of 143 permit files in California found that 27% of the constructed mitigation did not even meet the jurisdictional definition of a wetland (Ambrose et al. 2006).
Compensatory mitigation as required under §404 may also result in a shift in wetland type. For example, a study of 31 mitigation sites in Indiana found failure rates of 71% for forested mitigation sites, 87% for wet meadow areas, and 42% for shrub areas, but only 17% of the shallow emergent areas and 4% of open water areas were failures (Robb 2001). These results indicate that mitigation may be resulting in the replacement of forested wetland sites with shallow emergent and open water community types. Similar results have been reported in New Jersey, where a study of that state’s mitigation program found that emergent wetlands were the only wetland type that achieved a greater than 1:1 replacement ratio, while forested wetlands were successfully replaced at a ratio 0.01:1 (Balzano et al. 2002). A Pennsylvania study of 23 §404 permits issued from 1986 to 1999 showed that only 45% of the mitigation wetlands were of the same type as the impact sites and that the mitigation had resulted in a shift from wetlands dominated by woody species to less vegetated mitigation wetlands and a replacement of scrub-shrub, emergent, and forested wetlands with open water ponds or uplands (Cole and Shaffer 2002).
Several recent studies of bank sites indicate that banks are generally no more successful at replacing lost acres and functions than permittee-responsible mitigation. A 1999 study reported a net loss of 21,000 acres of wetlands due to inclusion of enhancement and preservation as mitigation methods at bank sites (Brown and Lant 1999). A more recent comprehensive review of 12 mitigation bank sites in Ohio found that 25% of the bank areas studied did not meet the definition of wetlands (Mack and Micacchion 2006). Of the actual wetland acreage, 25% was considered in poor condition, 58% was fair, and 18% was good quality in terms of vegetation as compared to natural reference wetlands. The study also found that amphibian community composition and quality was significantly lower at banks than at natural forest, shrub, or emergent wetlands and that pond-breeding salamanders and forest-dependent frogs were virtually absent from the bank sites. Overall, of the banks studied, three were mostly successful, five were successful in some areas and failed in others, and four mostly failed. A recent study from Florida found that of the 29 banks evaluated, 70% fell within the moderate to optimal range of function. Although the baseline conditions of most sites were in the high functional range, most of the projects relied upon enhancement, rather than restoration, as the mitigation method (Reiss et al. 2007).
Mitigation and Wildlife Habitat
Many compensatory mitigation projects do not include wildlife criteria in their design and performance standards (NRC 2001). Only a handful of studies on compensatory mitigation attempt to address the ability of compensatory mitigation to replace wildlife habitat lost through the §404 program. These studies indicate that compensatory mitigation sites are not effectively replacing lost wildlife habitat. One study reported that over half of the mitigation sites evaluated did not adequately compensate for wildlife habitat services lost due to permitted activities (Ambrose and Lee 2004). Only 41% of the studied sites had successfully replaced wildlife habitat and connectivity, while replacement failed at 38% of sites (25 of these sites were considered extreme failures). In Washington state, 55% of the sites surveyed in one study had only a moderate contribution to wildlife functions (Johnson et al. 2002), while in New Jersey the wildlife suitability assessment criteria achieved the lowest score of all the assessment criteria used to evaluate mitigation sites (Balzano et al. 2002). The New Jersey study reported that, on average, mitigation sites provided limited protective cover, adjacent food sources, and nesting habitat for wildlife and that there were moderate human impediments to wildlife use of the sites.
Conclusion
Although wetland mitigation accounts for a significant annual investment in habitat restoration and protection, it has not, to date, proven to be a reliable conservation tool. Despite the nationwide “no net loss” goal, the federal compensatory mitigation program may currently lead to a net loss in wetlands acres and functions. On the high end, Turner and colleagues (2001) estimated that the §404 program may lead to an 80% loss in acres and functions. The success of compensatory mitigation could be enhanced by improving permit conditions and requiring clearly defined performance standards (Ambrose et al. 2006, NRC 2001, Turner et al. 2001). However, there are currently no national guidelines or models for developing ecological performance standards. Permits should clearly define performance standards that are based on ecological criteria such as community structure, soil, hydrology, amphibian communities, and vegetation (Fennessy et al. 2007). Currently, many permits simply require a certain percentage of herbaceous cover as a criterion for accessing the success of mitigation site because it is easily measured and may quickly reach required thresholds. However, percent herbaceous cover may not be a sufficient surrogate for most wetland functions (Cole and Shafer 2002).
Mitigation success may also be improved by making site selection decisions within the context of a watershed approach (NRC 2001). In 2002, the Corps issued guidance in support of the watershed approach, and draft compensatory mitigation regulations issued jointly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps in 2006 may codify the approach. Under the watershed approach outlined in the proposed mitigation rule, there also may be opportunities for mitigation to support habitat conservation objectives (Bean and Wilkinson 2008). Improved compliance monitoring would also help to ensure the success of mitigation projects. As a recent GAO study indicates, many Corps districts have limited oversight of compensatory mitigation projects (GAO 2005). Increasing post-implementation monitoring and tying required monitoring periods directly to achieving final performance criteria would improve both the administrative and ecological performance of mitigation sites.
References
Ambrose, R.F. and S.F. Lee. 2004. An Evaluation of Compensatory Mitigation Projects Permitted Under Clean Water Act Section 401 by the Los Angeles Regional Quality Control Board, 1991-2002. California State Water Re- sources Control Board, California.
Ambrose, R.F., J.C. Callaway, and S.F. Lee. 2006. An Evaluation of Compensatory Mitigation Projects Permitted Under Clean Water Act Section 401 by the California State Water Quality Control Board, 1991-2002. Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, California.
Balzano, S., A. Ertman, L. Brancheau, W. Smejkal, A.S. Greene, M. Kaplan, and D. Fanz. 2002. Creating Indicators of Wetland Status (Quantity and Quality): Freshwater Wetland Mitigation in New Jersey. NJ Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Science, Research, & Technology.
Bean, Michael and Jessica Wilkinson. January 2008. Design of U.S. Habitat Bank- ing Systems to Support the Conservation of Wildlife Habitat and At-Risk Species. Washington, DC: Environmental Law Institute.
Brown, P., and C. Lant. 1999. “The effect of wetland mitigation banking on the achievement of no-net-loss.” Environmental Management 23(3): 333-345.
Brown, S.C. and P.L.M. Veneman. 2001. Effectiveness of compensatory wetland mitigation in Massachusetts, USA, Wetlands, 21(4): 508-518.
Cole, C.A. and D. Shaffer. 2002. “Section 404 Wetland Mitigation and Permit Suc- cess Criteria in Pennsylvania, USA.” 1986-1999. Environmental Management 30(4): 508-515.
Environmental Law Institute. 2007. Mitigation of Impacts to Fish and Wildlife Habitat: Estimating Costs and Identifying Opportunities. Washington, DC
Fennessy, S., A. Rokosch, and J.J. Mack. 2007. Developing Performance Standards for the Assessment of Wetland Mitigation Projects. National Wetlands News- letter. 29(2) 3.
Johnson, P., D.L. Mock, A. McMillan, L. Driscoll, and T. Hruby 2002. Washing- ton State Wetland Mitigation Evaluation Study. Phase 2: Evaluating Success. Washington State Department of Ecology. February 2002. Publication No. 02-06-009
Mack, J.J and M. Micacchion. 2006. An Ecological Assessment of Ohio Mitigation Banks: Vegetation, Amphibians, Hydrology, and Soils. Ohio EPA Technical Report WET/2006-1. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Division of Surface Water, Wetland Ecology Group, Columbus, Ohio.
Martin, S., B. Brumbaugh, P. Scodari, and D. Olsen. 2006. Compensatory Miti- gation Practices in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Institute for Water Resources.Working Paper.
Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. 2001. Michigan Wetland Mitiga- tion and Permit Compliance Study. Lansing, MI: Land and Water Management Division.
Minkin, P. and R. Ladd 2003. Success of Corps-Required Mitigation in New Eng- land, USACE New England District
National Research Council. 2001. Compensating for Wetland Losses Under the Clean Water Act, National Academy of Sciences.
Reiss, K.C., E. Hernandez, M.T. Brown. 2007. An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Mitigation Banking in Florida: Ecological Success and Compliance with Permit Conditions. Florida Department of Environmental Protection #WM881. EPA Grant #CD 96409404-0.
Robb, J.T. 2001. Indiana Wetland Compensatory Mitigation: Area Analysis. EPA Grant #CD985482-010-0 Indiana Department of Environmental Management. June 2001
Sudol, M.F., and R.F. Ambrose. 2002. The U.S. Clean Water Act and habitat re- placement: evaluation of mitigation sites in Orange County, California, USA. Environmental Management 30: 727-734.
Turner, R.E., A.M. Redmond, J.B. Zedler. 2001. “Count It By Acre of Function— Mitigation Adds Up to Net Loss of Wetlands.” National Wetlands Newsletter 23(6).
U.S. Government Accountability Of ce. 2005. Wetlands Protection: Corps of Engineers Does Not Have an Effective Oversight Approach to Ensure That Compensatory Mitigation Is Occurring. Washington, DC: GAO. GAO-05- 898.
Waterfowl and waterbirds are integral parts of wetland ecosystems. Ducks, geese and other migratory birds deliver more valuable benefits to our environment and to us than we realize.
By Lauren Rae May 22, 2020
As dedicated conservationists, we’re committed to ensuring that waterfowl have the habitats they need to thrive. But what have they done for us, lately? Turns out, it’s a whole lot.
Many of us get unspeakable joy from being near a local wetland at sunset as flocks of birds return from an evening of feeding. Others treasure the family tradition of setting up a blind in the marsh on a brisk autumn morning.
After decades of successful conservation work spanning North America, waterfowl populations are strong, bringing with them endless opportunities for us to enjoy their beauty and bounty.
But there’s more to appreciate about our feathered friends than you may realize. As ambassadors for the ducks, we feel compelled to highlight some of the lesser known and unique services they provide. Allow us to sing (quack and honk) their praises.
Waterfowl help biodiversity with wetland-to-wetland delivery
Waterfowl and waterbirds are integral parts of wetland ecosystems. They’re large-bodied and often airborne, which makes them relatively easy to observe. And they’re mobile; travelling far distances and stopping at multiple wetland sites along the way. Every time they splash down at these migratory pit stops, they leave something behind, like an avian Amazon delivery driver.
Last year, DUC restored more than 50,000 acres (20,200 hectares) of wetlands. When waterfowl visit these newly restored habitats, they can establish biodiversity by introducing plant, invertebrate, amphibian and fish species from other sites. Frog eggs might get transported from pond to pond if they are stuck on a goose’s foot, for example. Insect larvae that survive in a duck’s intestinal tract might get deposited in a wetland far from where it was ingested.
This wetland-to-wetland delivery method works for established ecosystems, too. In the face of climate change, dispersal by waterbirds can help a species shift its range. As conditions get warmer, waterfowl can help other species expand northward to climates where they can continue to be successful. It also helps keep a species’ gene pool diverse, making it easier for the species to avoid inbreeding and adapt to changing environments. Having many types of genes gives species a stronger toolkit for facing adversity. Either way, dispersal by waterbirds can benefit individual species and enhance biodiversity in wetlands.
How birds help with pest problems and invasive species
Introduced or invasive species often raise a red flag—and rightfully so. They wreak havoc on natural ecosystems and have major economic consequences. Although they could potentially spread undesirable species to new areas, waterfowl can be of help here, too. For instance, diving ducks like scaup feed on invasive zebra mussels and can decrease their abundance. The same holds true for plant pests. Ducks that winter in flooded rice fields eat the seeds of weeds, giving the farmer a leg-up the following growing season. Ducklings, too, can make a dent in pest populations. They eat a lot of larvae that would otherwise become pesky, biting mosquitoes.
Canada geese are notorious for protecting their nests and goslings during the breeding season. This aggression can benefit other birds nesting nearby, keeping predators—and people—at a safe distance, which helps survival of young birds regardless of their species.
Waterfowl help ecosystems and the economy
Anyone that has a hard time appreciating the many ways waterfowl help ecosystems should know that they contribute financially, too. With all that hunters invest in waterfowling, a single duck is worth $26 in the Canadian economy (not to mention that northern communities have traditionally subsisted on waterfowl harvest and it continues to be a cornerstone of many cultures). And in Iceland, one of the last remaining locations where down from non-domesticated ducks is harvested, eider feathers bring $40 million to retail markets.
The ripple effect of conservation
It’s comforting to know that, whatever our reasons for conserving wetlands, our work on behalf of the ducks supports hundreds of other species, including ourselves.
Peter, Paul, and Mary could very easily have been talking about our country’s wetlands instead of flowers in their 1962 hit, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” When wetlands were first forming, thousands of years ago as the ice age ended, the United States was 90% covered with wetlands. Today, coastal and inland wetlands cover only about 5.5% of the United States.
The Ramsar Convention estimates that nearly 90 percent of all the world’s wetlands have disappeared since the 1700s, and those that remain are at risk of disappearing three times faster than forests. In 1989, Congress directed the Department of the Interior to compare the estimated total number of wetland acres in the 1780s and in the 1980s in the areas that now comprise each state. The report, released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), was designed as a one-time effort to document historical wetland losses from colonial times through the 1980s. This report is updated every 10 years providing new information based on a statistical analysis of wetlands changes from the 1970s through the 1980s.
As with historical estimates, data on present wetland acreage must be interpreted with caution. For some states, wetlands have been mapped for the entire state by the FWS National Wetlands Inventory. However, for those states where wetlands are not completely mapped or where acreage summaries are not yet compiled, an accurate accounting of wetland acreage is not always available, so the best national or regional data available to determine statewide totals was used. Additionally, the status of wetlands in the United States is constantly changing. It is estimated that, on average , over 60 acres of wetlands have been lost every hour in the lower 48 states during this 200-year time span.
Considerable changes in wetland distribution and abundance have taken place since the 1780s. In the conterminous United States, only an estimated 104 million acres of wetlands remained through the 1980s, representing a 53-percent loss from the original acreage total. If Alaska and Hawaii are counted, an estimated 274 million wetland acres remain.
By all estimates, the national decline in wetlands from the 1780s to the 1980s is dramatic. Losses in particular regions of the country such as the mid-western farm belt states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin are even more startling. Alaska stands alone as the only state in which wetland resources have not been substantially reduced.
Incomplete baseline data on the wetlands in the United States prevents an accurate appraisal of the “health” of these remaining resources. However, population growth and distribution and agricultural development greatly affect land-use patterns that impact wetlands . Despite increased efforts to conserve wetlands through state and federal legislation, hundreds of thousands of acres have been drained annually. Wetland acreage has diminished to the point where environmental and even socio-economic benefits are now seriously threatened.
The years from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s were a time of major wetland loss, but since then the rate of loss has decreased. How will climate change and global warming affect wetlands as our country and the rest of the world continue to experience unprecedented heat waves. The fact that the definition of a wetland changes often makes these numbers even harder to predict. The total amount of wetlands can change in an instant depending on the wording of a government document.
Various factors have contributed to the decline in the loss rate of wetlands including implementation and enforcement of wetland protection measures and elimination of some incentives for wetland drainage. Public education and outreach about the value and functions of wetlands, private land initiatives, coastal monitoring and protection programs, and wetland restoration and creation actions have also helped reduce overall wetland losses. Hopefully, this will be enough.
Only about one-half of Florida’s original wetlands remain, but Florida still has more wetlands than any of the other forty-seven conterminous States. On top of that, over the last few decades, the State of Florida has been diligently restoring some of the lost wetlands.
The Kissimmee River once meandered for 103 miles through central Florida. Its floodplain, reaching up to three miles wide, was inundated for extended periods by heavy seasonal rains. Native wetland plants, wading birds and fish thrived there. The Kissimmee Basin encompasses more than two dozen lakes in the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes (KCOL), their tributary streams and associated marshes and the Kissimmee River and floodplain. The basin forms the headwaters of Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades; together they comprise the Kissimmee-Okeechobee-Everglades (KOE) system, but prolonged flooding in 1947 prompted a public outcry for federal assistance to reduce flood damage to property. In 1948, the U.S. Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct the Central and South Florida Project.
Site History
In the 1960s, the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control (C&SF) Project modified the native KOE system extensively throughout South Florida, including construction of canals and water control structures to achieve flood control in the Upper and Lower Kissimmee basins. The Kissimmee River was channelized by cutting and dredging a 30-feet-deep straightaway through the river’s meanders creating the C-38 canal.
After the river channel was straightened, 40,000 acres of floodplain below Lake Kissimmee dried out, reducing the quality of waterfowl habitat by ninety percent, and the number of herons, egrets and wood storks by two-thirds. Catches of largemouth bass in the river were consistently worse after the channelization. While the Kissimmee was not a significant source of pollution for Lake Okeechobee before channelization, in the 1970s and later the river contributed about 25% of the nitrogen and 20% of the phosphorus flowing into the lake.
While the project delivered on the promise of flood protection, it also destroyed much of a floodplain-dependent ecosystem that nurtured threatened and endangered species, as well as hundreds of other native fish and wetland-dependent animals.
Efforts to restore the Kissimmee River to its original flow were approved by Congress in 1992 and began with modification to the headwater lakes in 1997. The United States Army Corps of Engineers had initially hoped to complete the project in 2015. In 2006, the South Florida Water Management District had acquired enough land along the river and in the upper chain of lakes to complete restoration. In all, forty-three miles (69 km) of the Kissimmee River will be restored.
Project Goals
Major initiatives in the Kissimmee Basin include the Kissimmee River Restoration Project, the Kissimmee River Restoration Evaluation Program and the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes and Kissimmee Upper Basin Monitoring and Assessment. Several activities are associated with these projects, including ecosystem restoration, evaluation of restoration efforts, aquatic plant management, land management, water quality improvement and water supply planning.
The Kissimmee River Restoration Project will restore more than forty square miles of the river floodplain ecosystem, 20,000 acres of wetlands, and forty-four miles of the historic river channel. This major restoration effort is a 50-50 partnership between the USACE and the SFWMD. Over the past 22 years, the USACE and SFWMD worked together to:
Complete backfilling of 22-miles of the C-38 canal between Lakes Kissimmee and Okeechobee.
Reconstruct remnant river channels across the backfilled canal to reconnect and restore flow in remnant river channels.
Remove two water control structures.
Add two gates to the S-65 water control structure.
Acquire more than 100,000 acres of land to restore the river and floodplain.
Restoration Progress
Already, wildlife is returning to the restored sections of the river. When flooding began again, muck and smothering aquatic weeds were flushed out. Sandbars reemerged. Encroaching dry land trees began dying back. Once-dormant plants began to reestablish themselves. The species included pink-tipped smartweed, horsetail, sedges, rushes, arrowhead, duck potato and pickerel weed. Flooding and continuous flow increased levels of dissolved oxygen in the water, creating near perfect conditions for aquatic invertebrates such as insects, mollusks, works, crayfish, and freshwater shrimp. This, in turn, boosted fish populations and it led to a rise in bird and alligator populations. The entire food chain benefited. The Kissimmee River restoration is one of the largest ecosystem restoration projects in the world.
The decades-long project to restore the historic Kissimmee River is now nearing completion. “There’s two phases to complete Kissimmee River restoration,” said Lawrence Glenn, director of the SFWMD’s water resources division. “The first step, construction, is now complete. Next is what Glenn calls “the restoration of hydrology.”
Standing from the bow of an airboat, Glenn pointed to the meandering grassy waters behind him. In the exact spot where the C-38 Canal once flowed, there was now an abundance of birds flying overhead. “The next step is managing the quantity, timing and distribution of the river’s water, to ensure the ecology thrives,” he said.
Koebel Jr., J. W. (1995). An historical perspective on the Kissimmee River restoration project. Restoration Ecology, 3(3), Pages 149-159. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1526-100X.1995.tb00167.x
John D. Byrd, Mississippi State University, Bugwood.org
Introduced species that cause economic or environmental harm, or harm to human health, are called invasive species. The National Invasive Species Information Center states that “…these plants are characteristically adaptable to new habitats, grow aggressively, and have a high reproductive capacity. Invasive plants are often introduced to a new location without environmental checks and balances, such as seasonal weather, diseases, or insect pests that kept them under control in their native range. Their vigor, combined with a lack of natural enemies, often leads to outbreak populations.”
Invasive Wetland Plants
When one thinks of invasive wetland plant species, these four species probably come to mind, Reed Canary Grass (Phalaris arundinacea), Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), Common Reed (Phragmites spp.), and Cattails (Typha spp.). Reed Canary Grass was introduced by settlers and farmers who planted this grass as a food source for their livestock. Boats from Eurasia inadvertently carried Phragmites seeds in their ballast. Purple Loosestrife was either accidentally introduced via ship ballasts or deliberately brought over as an ornamental.
Wetlands provide benefits ranging from water filtration to storm surge protection; however, wetlands have become vulnerable to invasive species. Wetlands seem to be especially vulnerable to invasions. Even though ≤6% of the earth’s land mass is wetland, 24% (8 of 33) of the world’s most invasive plants are wetland species. Furthermore, many wetland invaders form monotypes, which alter habitat structure, lower biodiversity (both the number and “quality” of species), change nutrient cycling and productivity (often increasing it), and modify food webs. Wetlands are landscape sinks, which accumulate debris, sediments, water, and nutrients, all of which facilitate invasions by creating canopy gaps or accelerating the growth of opportunistic plant species (Zedler & Kercher, 2004).
Purple Loosestrife
Purple loosestrife, a native to Eurasia, was introduced to eastern North America in the early to mid-1800s. It has the ability to become the dominant plant species in many wetlands. One plant can produce as many as 2 million wind-dispersed seeds per year, and underground stems grow at a rate of 1 foot per year.
Control of invasive wetland plants generally falls into one of three categories: mechanical, chemical, and biological. Mechanical control means physically removing plants from the environment through cutting or pulling. Chemical control uses herbicides to kill plants and inhibit regrowth. Biological controls use plant diseases or insect predators, typically from the targeted species’ home range.
Biological Control
Biological controls are moving into the forefront of control methodologies, but the only widely available and applied biocontrol relates to Purple Loosestrife. Three different species have been used in North America to attempt to control purple loosestrife: two species of beetles and one weevil.
Galerucella pusilla and G. calmariensis are leaf-eating beetles that seriously affect growth and seed production by feeding on the leaves and new shoot growth of purple loosestrife plants. The two species share similar ecology and life history. Adults feed on young plant tissue, causing a characteristic “shot hole” defoliation pattern. The larva feed on the foliage and strip the photosynthetic tissue off individual leaves, creating a “windowpane” effect. At high densities (greater than 2-3 larvae per centimeter of the shoot), entire purple loosestrife populations can be defoliated. Several defoliations are needed to kill the plant. Adult beetles are mobile and possess good host-finding abilities.
According to wetland scientist, Tom Ward, species of Galerucella beetles have been released in Upstate New York in prior years as a biological control for Purple Loosestrife.
“Every year, I find new beetles in new areas. While the loosestrife is not completely eliminated, it is controlled, as individual plants become stressed to the point where they do not flower. The beetles have had good success at controlling the loosestrife. In my experience, I would estimate that it is between 70-75% effective. The beetles, once released, naturally reproduce on their own and then disperse as the food source gets depleted. Therefore, loosestrife control is cyclic. Once the beetles deplete the food source, they move to other nearby food sources. That allows the loosestrife to regenerate, but not at levels experienced before release. As the loosestrife returns to a specific site, so do the beetles.”
Tom Ward, CWB, PWS
Future Use
Recent scientific advancements in genetics and interactions between host plants and their micro-organisms create a unique opportunity to develop cutting-edge technologies to control invasive and promote native species establishment, further improving the efficiency and results of management actions. Sequencing and describing a plant’s genome opens the door to species-specific treatments that limit the expression of specific traits that help non-native plants outcompete native plants and invade critical habitats. By testing new non-toxic bioherbicides that target the relationship between invasive plants and bacteria, fungi, and other microbes, we can advance our understanding of how microbes contribute to plant invasiveness. However, these lines of research are novel and still full of many unknowns.
Zedler, J.B. and Kercher, S. (2004) Causes and Consequences of Invasive Plants in Wetlands: Opportunities, Opportunists, and Outcomes. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 23, 431-452. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07352680490514673
If you have ever watched the movie, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” you will remember the scene where a man is coming down the street yelling, “Bring out yer dead!,” to which a person on the cart exclaims, “I’m not dead yet.” Well, the same could be said about fracking. From the fracking boom of just a few years ago, we see many wells being capped off and new wells not being drilled. What happened?
To quash the nascent US fracking industry, OPEC+ increased output to lower the price of oil but found they could not maintain those prices forever. Fracking became more efficient and hung on. OPEC+ was finally forced to raise prices back up, with prices stabilizing in the $60/bbl. range. Then, in 2019, the COVID pandemic hit, and its repercussions dominated 2020. Oil demand waned and oil companies began tightening their collective belts. But it may be time to start ramping up production once again.
Hydraulic fracturing in Texas, North Dakota, and most recently, the Marcellus region in Pennsylvania, has turned the US into a net energy exporter. Fracking is one of the main reasons that the US became the world’s largest oil producer, producing over 18,875,000 bpd and fracking may be getting an invigorating boost from several unrelated sources.
The unprecedented attack on Ukraine by Russia and the ensuing conflict has caused many countries, primarily those in Europe, to rethink their commitments to buying Russian oil and gas. As more countries, including the US, pull out of their deals with Russia, countries are scrambling to find alternative energy sources. While this may be a boon for renewable energy in the long run, in the short run, alternative sources of oil and gas are frantically being sought out to make up for shortfalls in Europe to prepare for the rapidly approaching winter months.
The U.S. is considered a swing oil producer and its production is tightly related to market demand. Financers of oil companies are now weighing their options, “Is the oil shortage going to be a temporary one or not?” They have been burned before by previous rapid expansion that did not translate into the profits investors expected. Investors and oil company executives are unsure of what to do. Should the spigots be turned back on, or should we wait and see?
It may not be that simple though. Oil companies may not be able to help offset the loss of Russian supplies sufficiently. During COVID, many workers in the fracking field found other employment and may not be that enthusiastic about jumping back on a ship that may or not float. Loss of funding for infrastructure has left the industry with a severe lack of equipment, which would be needed to get production back to pre-COVID levels. According to Chris Wright, chief executive of Liberty Oilfield services, “We have shortages of labor, sand and equipment, and it will take 18 months to ramp up”. A lot of equipment has been retired; a lot of equipment is past its useful life.” (Eaton, 2022)
Oil companies, however, have not been sitting patiently with their hands folded waiting for a war to boost demand. They found an existing demand and are making huge investments in exploiting it. As the world increasingly turns toward renewable energy and strives to decarbonize, fossil fuel giants like Shell are trying to advance a new plastics boom to keep their ventures afloat. Lured to Pennsylvania by an “unlimited tax credit,” Shell oil has invested over six billion dollars to produce a huge ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania and, if current profit predictions pan out, there will certainly be other plants that will follow. They will all require copious quantities of shale gas obtained through fracking. Hence, the Shell plant was built near the Marcellus shale fields of Pennsylvania (Marusic, 2022).
Ethane cracking is a process that takes ethane, a gas commonly found with oil and natural gas deposits, and it turns it into the building blocks of plastic. As part of the refining process, ethane is first separated from methane as the raw shale gas is refined. Methane continues along one route and ethane goes into producing plastic. In the cracking process, ethane is converted to ethylene and then into polyethylene. Polyethylene pellets are then transported to plastic producers.
When the ethane cracker plant was proposed, nearby residents were promised a 25-year operating contract, thousands of construction jobs, and over six hundred permanent workers hired upon completion. In addition, local businesses in the region could expect up to 20,000 direct and indirect new jobs.
At the outset, this would seem like a workable solution. There seems to be a never-ending need for plastics in our modern economy. According to a report from NPR, ever since China stopped accepting most of our waste plastic, only about 5% of the plastic currently produced is being recycled. Plastic from ethane cracking would help make up the difference by providing the raw material needed for new products.
Yet, there are concerns that this plastic will end up doubling the size of our landfills and residents worry about increases in air pollution from cracker plants. As always, will the benefits outweigh the costs?
Another industry that will see their services in high demand are environmental companies and consultants. From the increase in gas production from current wells, the fracking of new wells, and the associated pipelines and rights-of-way that will be built, there will be a tremendous increase in the need for wetland delineation services. Every one of these new projects will require delineation of the sites.
Hopefully, the war in Ukraine will soon be over but no one knows how countries will respond to their energy needs in the future. Will they return to their traditional fossil fuel trading partner, Russia, or will the US become Europe’s new go-to partner for oil and gas? As is usually the case, money will be the central focus. Where can we get the energy we need at the lowest price while minimizing political fallout?
As for plastics, we have become dependent on them, and production is expected to double by 2040 and increase by 2.5 times by 2050.
We are certainly in for some major changes. Which direction they take is still the subject of debate.
References:
1. Smith, K. (2022, February 24). Fracking Is a Powerful Weapon Against Russia. Bloomberg -The Washington Post.
2. Marusic, K. (2022, September 15). These are the New Titans of Plastic – Pennsylvania becomes the newest sacrifice zone for America’s plastic addiction. Sierra Magazine.
3. Eaton, C. (2022, March 9). Frackers Say Bottlenecks Impede Output Boost as Oil Prices Soar. The Wall Street Journal.
4. Frazier, R. (2017, April 7) This is exactly How Natural Gas Gets Turned into Plastics. Part of a series, “Energy – The coming Chemical Boom.” The Allegheny Front This story was originally published on September 9, 2016.
