Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 14

Despite its reputation as a barren wasteland, the desert regions of the American southwest are some of the most biologically rich areas in all of North America. Within 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, there are 25 million acres of protected public lands, including six national parks, six wildlife refuges and a number of wilderness areas.

Of this area, the Coronado National Forest, part of the ecologically rich Sky Island mountain range that extends from Sonora, Mexico, into southern Arizona and New Mexico, contains more threatened and endangered species than any other national forest in the country. Many of these threatened species are charismatic megafaunas, such as the Mexican gray wolf, ocelot, jaguarundi, and a lone jaguar that has reentered the region from Mexico after the species was driven to extinction in the U.S. during the 20^th century.

Yet these species and many others are increasingly threatened by the expanding wall the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building on the border to deter unauthorized migration from Mexico. A 2011 study by Penn State biologist Jesse Lasky found that, of 369 animal species documented within 30 miles of the border, 50 were considered endangered.

The 654 miles of wall that already exist along the 2,000-mile long border has prevented at least 45 of those species from migrating, potentially reducing their gene pool and cutting them off from water sources and hunting grounds. “A lot of species do best in Northern Mexico, but with changes in precipitation patterns, they would need to disperse across the border,” says Lasky. “This is something we should be thinking about a lot more – how fast organisms are responding to climate change.”

Additionally, new roads created by the Border Patrol into more remote areas of Arizona’s southern desert have also disrupted desert habitat and destroyed many miles of cryptobiotic soil, clumps of fungus and algae that retain moisture and assist in plant growth that take many years to form.

In autumn of 2017, President Trump requested $1.6 billion for the construction of 74 miles of additional wall that would bisect the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas as well as reinforce an existing wall on the San Diego-Tijuana border in California. Environmentalists worry that apart from bisecting habitat and preventing animal migration, the wall could also exacerbate the risk of flooding to both ecosystems and human settlements.

In Nogales and the adjacent Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, debris has been known to pile up behind the border fence, damming water behind it until it bursts through in a flash flood event that drowns out habitat and occasionally kills people. “Flood water always has debris in it,” says Dan Millis of the Sierra Club Borderlands project. “That’s how you get these damming events that blew out chunks of the wall. Damming also causes erosion – it creates the situation we saw in Arizona where debris backs up the water and then the sediment building upstream created a waterfall that causes more erosion. This is liable to happen in Texas.”

Due to a law passed in 2005 called the Real ID Act, the DHS has the right to waive most environmental regulations in the name of national security, depriving environmental advocacy groups of the power to litigate against the federal government. Yet as the Trump administration makes plans to build 700 to 900 additional miles of concrete wall along the border to the tune of at least $12 billion, environmentalists, scientists, and regional stakeholders are coming up with alternative solutions that promote border security while also enhancing the health of borderland ecosystems.

One such proposal is to create a large international nature reserve on the Rio Grande that is co-owned and operated by the U.S. and Mexican governments. The Rio Grande’s volume is currently on the decline due to climate change as well as diversions by both countries for municipal, agricultural and industrial uses. It also suffers from excessive pollution from raw sewage and fertilizer runoff, possibly contributing to the loss of half a dozen of its native fish species. By restoring the riparian areas on both sides through the planting of trees, reducing water diversions and cleaning up pollution, the river’s water volume and velocity will likely increase, deterring people from crossing while also providing more robust habitat for wildlife.

Yet another option is to rely more heavily on advanced surveillance technology to monitor the border and reduce the environmental damages associated with a physical wall and terrestrial Border Patrol vehicles. The Department of Homeland Security already employs predator drone aircraft, high-elevation blimps, and helicopters equipped with video cameras and infrared sensors used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to monitor border activity. “Technology is definitely first,” said David Aguilar, principal of the Washington D.C.-based Global Security and innovative Strategies consulting firm. “These are things that can be used on any part of the border. There are places where you just can’t put a wall.”

Despite insistence from some that security concerns trump environmental ones, this is a false choice. While no solution is 100% effective, it is possible to secure our border without sacrificing the species and ecosystems that make the borderlands beautiful and worth protecting.

Sources:

1. Barclay, Eliza and Sarah Frostenson. “The ecological disaster that is Trump’s border wall: a visual guide.” Vox. Vox, 29 October 2017. Web. 9 February 2018.
2. Goldfarb, Ben. “Where wildlife is up against the wall.” High Country News. High Country News, 10 February 2017. Web. 9 February 2018.
3. Lasky, Jesse R. et. al. “Conservation biogeography of the US-Mexico border: a transcontinental risk assessment of barriers to animal dispersal.” Wiley Online Library. Diversity and Distribution: A Journal of Conservation Biogeography, 3 May 2011. Web. 9 February 2018.
4. Montemayor, Gabriel Diaz. “There’s a better alternative to building a border wall: restoring the Rio Grande.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 28 August 2017. Web. 19 February 2018.
5. Nixon, Ron. “On the Mexican Border, a Case for Technology Over Concrete.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 June 2017. Web. 19 February 2018.
6. Ray Ring. “Border out of control.” High Country News. High Country News, 16 June 2014. Web. 9 February 2018.

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 12

As spring draws nearer, the weather is supposed to gradually become warmer and warmer, until walking outside without a jacket is no longer outrageous. However, if you happen to live in North Carolina, the weather cannot seem to decide whether it wants to welcome spring or desperately hold on to winter. Today, snow falls, but tomorrow could bring temperatures in the high 70s or 80s. However, this is not the only phenomenon that North Carolina cannot seem to make up its mind about. Enter Shelly Island.

Shelly Island appeared overnight in July 2017. It is located in the famous Outer Banks off the coast of Cape Point, which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Scientists are not completely sure how the island originally formed, but they think it has something to do with the weather conditions of July 2017. Last summer, the winds, and currents appeared to be just right to bring sands from the northern barrier islands to the southern tip of Cape Point to form Shelly Island. This island became a new attraction for tourists interested in snorkeling and kayaking, and it grew to be about 27 acres in area. However, do not start planning your trip to Shelly Island for the summer of 2018. New photos from NASA show that Shelly Island disappeared just as quickly as it came. Moreover, the island is now beneath the waves once again.

How did this happen? The blame can be thrust upon the many hurricanes of the fall of 2017: Hurricanes Irma, Jose, and Maria. The erosion created by these storms first split the island in two and have now completely erased what was once Shelly Island. By October 2017, Shelly Island was “ninety percent gone,” according to Virginia businessman Ken Barlow who was one of many seeking ownership of the new island. Only a small crescent, about 100 acres in area, was left after the fall, and by February 2018 the island was no more.

Could Shelly Island return? Possibly. Again, scientists are not positive how Shelly Island came to be in the first place. However, people such as Barlow suspect the formation of the island had to do with nearby dredging operations, which are resuming. So hold on to your kayaks and your snorkeling equipment: Shelly Island could come back. This would be good news for local businesspeople interested in buying parts of the island and for the local economy that could benefit from growing interest from tourists. Shelly Island may be a mystery, but it is a mystery that comes with positive outcomes.

Sources:

Ghose, Tia. “Mysterious Sandbar Island that Formed Last Summer is Gone Once Again.” Live Science. Live Science. March 8, 2018. Web. March 12, 2018.

Price, Mark. “The strange new NC island mystifies the world yet again.” Charlotte Observer. Charlotte Observer. October 1, 2017. Web. March 12, 2018.

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 10

Coffee. To anyone who regularly has early mornings, this single drink can be a lifesaver. Coffee is more than just a drink. It gets people up in the morning when they least want to leave their beds. But according to a relatively recent study, it may be even more than that.

In addition to providing people with the ability to go to school or work, coffee is also a very valuable commodity. This is true globally. Coffee is consumed on every continent (except, perhaps, Antarctica), so it is very important to the human economy. However, humans are not the only ones who enjoy their coffee.

Although we often think of coffee as a delicious beverage, it is first a plant. There are many different species of this plant, but two of these species include Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora. (The second species is often referred to as C. robusta.) These species are very important to an often-overlooked group of coffee connoisseurs: birds. Moreover, because there are so many species of coffee and because birds value the plants as homes, a group of conservation biologists decided to determine the effects of the different species on biodiversity.

In this study conducted in India, researchers compared the diversity of birds who made their homes in C. arabica farms versus C. robusta farms. There were some differences in habitat preferences, but overall, these researchers came to a more generic conclusion. Within coffee farms in general, there is a great abundance of birds. This is a very important conclusion, as coffee as a commodity is constantly growing in demand.

So what does this mean for birds and the future of coffee? Past studies tended to not focus on the differences between coffee species, but on the differences between different types of tropical plants. This allowed conservationists to focus their attention on helping support the ecosystems of certain plants. This study made it known that across coffee species, these plants are important in terms of avian conservation. In other words, if we want to protect the birds, we need to take care of the coffee properly. For farmers, this could mean focusing management efforts towards making coffee plants safer for birds by, for example, limiting pesticide usage. However, this could mean finding a balance between protecting birds from toxins and protecting plants from the birds.

Moreover, what this study proved was that conservation efforts need to be more focused on the effects of coffee farming on biodiversity. As the demand for coffee rises, so does the need for these efforts. Birds are just as valuable to ecosystems as coffee is to economies. Without coffee, economies may rupture, and without birds, ecosystems may rupture. At this point, there is an unknown, delicate balance between protecting the environment and protecting the crop, but with the cooperation of conservationists and coffee farmers, this balance can be achieved for the benefit of economies and ecosystems.

Source:
Chang, C.H. Karanth, K.K, and Robbins, P. Birds and beans: Comparing avian richness and endemism in arabica and robusta agroforests in India’s Western Ghats. Scientific Reports [Internet] .16 February 2018. [cited 2018 February 2018]; 8: 3143. Available from doi:10.1038/s41598-018-21401-1.

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 8

The world is made up of two types of people: people who like snakes and people who do not like snakes. This first class of people see snakes as captivating, multi-colored animals that serve as a good friend, ready to curl around your fingers as soon as your familiar, loving hand draws near to their equally loving reptilian bodies. On the other side, the latter class of people are repelled at even a pixelated image of a snake living hundreds of miles away, seeing these cold-blooded reptiles as just the device through which Satan tricked Eve. And unfortunately, if you happen to belong to this latter class of people, there is some bad news: rare sea snakes have continued to wash up unexpectedly on the beaches of California. Moreover, the range of the uncommon yellow-bellied sea snake (Pelamus platurus) is beginning to expand.

So, what is a sea snake? And, further, what is a yellow-bellied sea snake? These reptiles are exactly what they sound like: they are snakes that live in the sea. In fact, their bodies are not suitable for living and slithering on land. Spending their lives in the tropical warmth of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, sea snakes feed on small fish and drink rainwater that collects on the surface of the ocean. Sea snakes also are very venomous. Possessing a neurotoxin that stops communication between muscles and nerve cells, the bite of a sea snake can cause respiratory, heart, or nerve failure. But don’t worry too much because Greg Pauly, herpetological curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, says, “Their fangs are tiny, and they can barely open their mouths wide enough to bite a person.” And until recently, sea snakes lived far, far away from humans.

Since 1972, five sea snakes have washed up in California, hundreds of miles north of their typical range. Why? Until the most recent sea snake washed up on southern California’s Newport Beach, all the snakes had arrived during El Nino years. Because sea snakes tend to follow where the currents lead them, it was strange to see sea snakes in California, but the presence of El Nino made it make sense that these snakes would be so far outside their range. However, on January 10, 2018, when the fifth sea snake arrived, El Nino could not be blamed.

University of Florida biologist and sea snake expert Harvey B. Lillywhite suspects the mysterious arrival of the snakes has to do with the Davidson Current. Rising toward the surface from October through February, the Davidson Current may pick up sea snakes floating near Baja and take them places like Newport Beach. But, historically, not many sea snakes dwell near Baja. Thus, both Pauly and Lillywhite state that warming waters may have something to do with the expanding of sea snakes’ range. However, Pauly admits, “This is all speculation.”

The yellow-bellied sea snake that arrived this past week in California did not survive the colder waters of California. But her death may not be in vain: herpetologists like Lillywhite and Pauly are using her tissue samples and other data to hopefully determine how these sea snakes came to be in California. But until then, California may be seeing a few more sea snakes in their future.

 

Sources:

Goldman, Jason G. “Venomous Sea Snake Found Off California-How did it Get There?” National Geographic. National Geographic, 17 January 2018. Web. 19 January 2018.

Kaplan, Sarah. “Rare venomous sea snakes keep washing up on California beaches.” Washington Post. Washington Post, 14 January 2016. Web. 19 January 2018.

Ritchie, Erika I. “Discovery of rare, venomous sea snake in California could mean trouble for sea lions.” Mercury News. Mercury News, 11 January 2018. Web. 19 January 2018.

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 6

On January 1^st, the Chinese government instituted a ban on imported recycled plastic and paper materials, throwing the global recycling market into turmoil.Since the 1990’s, China has been the number one consumer of raw recycled materials, receiving a full half of the world’s waste plastic, metal and paper as cheap fodder for its rapid urban-industrial expansion. In 2016, China purchased 7.3 million tons of “solid waste” worth about $18 billion, leaving a gaping hole in global demand after the ban that experts fear will not easily be filled.

The ban prohibits the import of 24 different types of commonly recycled waste products, including low-grade polyethylene terephthalate found in plastic bottles and unsorted paper. It also requires that all non-banned imported recyclables contain no more than 0.5% contamination, a threshold stricter than any European or American standard on recyclables.

“Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials,” Beijing wrote to the World Trade Organization explaining the logic behind the new ban. “This polluted China’s environment seriously.”

While Chinese officials were initially willing to ignore the environmental costs of importing contaminated scrap materials, such as soil and water pollution, the country’s explosive economic growth affords it the option of sourcing newer, cleaner plastics for its domestic needs over recycled ones.

“What’s happened is that the final link in the supply chain has turned around and said: ‘No, we’re not going to take this poor quality stuff anymore. Keep it for yourself,’” said Simon Ellin, chief executive of the British Recycling Association. “The rest of the world is thinking, ‘What can we do?’ It’s hard times.”

This decision is having profound impacts on the capacity of Western nations to handle their recycling, most of whom sent their waste to China and thus do not have the infrastructure to process recyclables themselves.

Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, are resorting to either incinerating or burying their plastics in landfills as a short-term solution to the crisis, though both options are environmentally damaging. Other countries, such as the United States, are attempting to find markets in countries like Myanmar, India, and Vietnam for their recycling, though switching supply chains so abruptly is a challenge.

“There may be alternative markets but they’re not ready today,” said Emmanuel Katrakis of the Brussels based European Recycling Industries Confederation. In the meantime, the United States, which annually sends over 1.42 million tons of scrap plastic and 13.2 million tons of scrap paper to China, will be forced to either spend taxpayer money on upgrading recycling processing facilities domestically or, like the UK, divert the excess to landfills according to Adam Minter, author of “Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade.” “Without China, there will be less recycling in the United States, and it will cost more,” the author said.

The United States initially relied upon China to recycle its plastic waste due to market incentives; it was simply cheaper to send recyclables overseas than it was to expand recycling capacities at home. With the shifting of incentives caused by China’s tightening regulations over recent years culminating in the most recent ban, it is costing the U.S. $2,100 per shipping container to return recyclables by ship from Chinese ports back to California.

“The public doesn’t realize this, but recycling is made possible by technology and markets – they think its just a matter of technology,” an expert on China’s waste management reported to Quartz. “And we don’t have strong enough markets in the U.S.”

While this market change will almost certainly harm the U.S.’s environment in the short term as recycling friendly states like Oregon and Washington divert their recycling to landfills, in the long term it could be beneficial as American states become incentivized to build their own recycling facilities.

Sources

1. De Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko. “Plastics Pile Up as China Refuses to Take the West’s Recycling.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 January 2018. Web. 16 January 2018.
2. Guilford, Gwynn. “China doesn’t want your trash anymore – and that could spell big trouble for American cities.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 8 May 2013. Web. 27 January 2018.
3. Guilford, Gwynn. “US states banned from exporting their trash to China are drowning in plastic.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 21 August 2013. Web. 27 January 2018.
4. Ives, Mike. “China Limits Waste. ‘Cardboard Grannies’ and Texas Recyclers Scramble.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 November 2017. Web. 16 January 2018.
5. Kaskey, Jack and Ann Koh. “China’s Blow to Recycling Boosts U.S.’s $185 Billion Plastic Bet.” Bloomberg. Climate Changed, 6 December 2017. Web. 16 January 2018.
6. Staub, Colin. “Exporter response to China: ‘We are changing our whole strategy.'” Plastics Recycling Update. A Resource Recycling, Inc. Publication, 4 January 2018. Web. 16 January 2018.